There’s nothing worse than waking up, clicking a link to National Chocolate Chip Day only to find out that it was yesterday!!!
Sad, sad morning.
Now it’s on my calendar for next year. =]
By night and weekend, I may be a chef, but my “day” job keeps me busy in a laboratory as an organic chemist. I enjoy going in to work and solving new problems about synthesis and biology, but my training gives me a special appreciation for the chemistry of the kitchen.
I thought I might share a few of the following links for your reading enjoyment!
The first link is to a subsection of a more general science blog, and is a slightly more formal version of Alton Brown’s “Good Eats” (which is a show I really enjoy!). Basically, the two people who host this website talk about the science of food, both at a high-end level and at a detailed molecular level. For example, popcorn. How much pressure is necessary to pop popcorn? Why is popcorn better at popping than sweet corn? How can I turn this into a sweet lab experiment for my class after studying the ideal gas laws? There are a lot of fun topics on it, so check it out!
Link #2 is to the final post of a series of blog articles on misperceptions the general public has regarding chemistry. The whole series is interesting, but I thought that this particular article was fun because it talked a bit about our perceptions of household or common items. It’s presented in the form of a “would you rather?” game – would you rather eat meat infused with carbon monoxide (CO) or nitric oxide (NO)? Neither sounds great (and both are toxic gases), but you’ve probably eaten meat infused with these gases at some point.
The final link is to the list of approved or banned substances in organic foods. (And that’s an entirely different discussion that I don’t want to go into here.) I’m not suggesting that you go through and read the entire list, but there are a number of surprising entries that challenged my notion of what organic food should contain. For example, trace amounts of aspirin in meat. Copper salts used in processing. Supplemental milk antibodies. There were a number of surprising compounds on the list!
This is an interesting idea: start eating the animals that are damaging the environment. Seems like it would work well in the short term, but long-term I can see it backfiring really easily.
A soda jerk, that is. Best quote from the article: “Coca-cola and Pepsi killed soda for everybody.”
There’s supposedly an authentic soda bar (is that even the right term?) somewhere in Southern Illinois that’s very good. I haven’t been, though.
This is gross. Thanks (I think?) to K’s mom for the link.
Update: Here are some more, weird but less gross ice cream flavours, again courtesy of K’s mom. Parmesan gelato? Sign me up!
Here’s another take on the vast and endless shades of vegetarianism out there: Meatless Mondays. What is cool is that so many restaurants are playing along.
This is an interesting article about trying to identify fish in supermarkets, and how rampant mislabeling is.
As an added bonus, it shows a way to blend science and food – and how awesome is that?
You can find it here. It’s definitely a cookbook I’m excited to make some more recipes from.
The food plate has officially been revealed!
I just hope I don’t wind up with truly purple protein in the process.
I’m interested to see exactly what replaces the beloved food pyramid. I remember exercises in elementary school that involved us filling out portions of the pyramid by memory. Over the last decade, the food pyramid has evolved and changed and (as of next Thursday) will be discarded in favor of a food plate. (Just don’t call it a pie chart!)