Elementary Chef

Well, I guess it’s a step up from killing monsters and flying simulations. From the reviews I’ve seen, it appears everybody has tried it loves it. One day I keep telling myself I’ll get a Playstation or an Xbox, just to have around for the kids.

But apparently this game is so far only available for Nintendo DS and in March for Wii. Maybe by summer it’ll be out in some other platforms.

I’m intrigued. I’m also all for it if it encourages kids to learn how to cook for real!

CookingMama

OSAKA (Kyodo) Momofuku Ando, the founder of Nissin Food Products Co. and inventor of instant ramen, died of heart failure Friday evening at a hospital in Ikeda, Osaka Prefecture, his family said. He was 96.

Read more here.

How To Makeover Ramen Noodles – (This is about makiing them healthier.)

In the days before I realized the fat content of ramen, I developed a recipe for a quick shrimp pasta salad that appeared in my local newspaper’s cookbook. It was pretty much about using the flavor packet of the shrimp-flavored noodles as the basis for the dressing, by adding it to mayonnaise.

The rest of it included standard salad veg, such as green pepper and celery and green onions, with some black olives and/or sliced jalapenos, depending on taste.

I still see people buying the noodles by the case, and I know the fat content is a perennial concern for those in the health field who deal with low-income people.

ramen, noodles, recipes, Japan, cooking

I got this for Christmas — good thing, ‘cos my most-recent copy was starting to fall apart. This is my third or fourth copy! So here’s a review, kinda. If you want serious, exhaustive critique, there are plenty of them out there. Here’s one.

I haven’t had a chance to use it, really, but what I see right off the bat is that it’s printed in Arial font, rather than the old Times New Roman, which makes it a little harder to read.

There is also only one bookmark ribbon in this hefty new edition, when there used to be two. I’m going to see if I can figure out a way to add another. So often I’m using more than one recipe or reference at a time, so I need more than one bookmark!

I keep telling myself I’m going to get the CD version, which my son has and wouldn’t be without. Maybe this year…

Oh, yeah, they have a website, now too. Complete with videos and newsletters!

Joy of Cooking

From the site:

There’s a lot of great recipes and cooking advice out on the Internet. Unfortunately there’s a lot of unhelpful stuff there too. Kitchenlackey.com is a site where you can share your favourites, vote and comment on others, and find new ones.

Now this one is right up my alley! I’ll be going by there frequently to see what’s what!

cooking, food, digg, web2.0, socialnetworking

Apparently nobody bought Trix and Cocoa Puffs with 75% less sugar, so General Mills is going to phase them out by March. Maybe everybody’s not as health-conscious as reported trends would suggest!

general mills, cereal

I noticed yesterday there was yet another e.coli story involving another restaurant chain. Since the food suspected wasn’t mentioned, it may or may not be that e.coli is the culprit.

But I’m willing to bet that there are a lot of people wondering about the safety of restaurant food in general.

The good news is that, in light of the massive spinach scare earlier in the year, followed by a situation involving maybe green onions, then they said it was lettuce you know that major food chains are going to be scrupulous about their produce, and where they get it from.

The bad news is, that if e.coli is in fact, present, and it’s on something to be served raw, there isn’t much than can be done about it.

Cooking is what gets rid of it. That’s why so much is made of cooking hamburgers to an inner temp of 160 degrees. That’s the temperature you need to kill e.coli

So if you’re concerned about this particular problem, then the best thing to do is, if you eat out, order things that have been cooked, and steer clear of the salads for a while until the uncertainty clears.

The same rule applies, by the way, if you encounter a grocery store where it seems their cleanliness might be questionable. Only buy things there that you’re going to cook, or that are canned or frozen.

Here in Arizona, we’re in the midst of our produce harvest, and I can see that the growers are taking every precaution they can to ensure the lettuce and other things we grow are kept away from any possible source of e.coli.

lettuce, produce, spinach, ecoli, Arizona

Snicker ;>) Anyhoo, here’s the skinny:

WHAT: Amstel Light is helping to ring in the holiday season with festive surprises for commuters and shoppers in Union Square.

The Live Tastefully Bottle Symphony will entertain straphangers in the Union Square subway station with a unique rendition of holiday tunes, performed by blowing notes on Amstel Light bottles. Members of The String Orchestra of New York City, providing a soothing musical moment during an otherwise noisy commute, will accompany the group.

WHERE: Union Square Subway Station
Above the N/R/W platform
Closest entrance is Union Square West at 14th Street
New York, NY

WHEN: Thursday, December 14, 2006

• 9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
• 12:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

WHO:
• Amstel Light
• The Live Tastefully Bottle Symphony
• The String Orchestra of New York City

beer, concert, NYC

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 /U.S. Newswire/ — The Institute of Food Technologists, the international not-for-profit scientific society of food professionals, believes that a few changes to regulatory policies involving functional foods could provide very positive benefits to consumers and consumer health. IFT commended the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for holding Tuesday’s public hearing on functional foods and made recommendations to the agency.

In its Expert Report Functional Foods: Opportunities and Challenges released in 2005, IFT’s 18-member expert panel defined functional foods as foods and food components that provide a health benefit beyond basic nutrition. (more…)

It appears a woman in LA is suing Kraft foods due to a lack of avocado in their guacamole.

I’ve known for a long time that most commercially-produced guacamole products have little or no avocado in them. I avoid them for just that reason. You can tell whether the dip you’re buying is actually avocado-based in two ways:

1. Check the list of ingredients. If avocado isn’t the first one on the list, then pass it by.

2. Check the price. With avocados running as much as a dollar apiece, and even more in some areas, you can expect to pay $3 or $4 for an 8 oz. package of guacamole. If the dip is one of those that’s 99 cents for a 16 oz package, it’s probably not what you’re hoping for. There’s one labelled as a sour cream/avocado dip that doesn’t even have real sour cream!

Dips and sauces are categories of products that are very often less than what you expect. The rules of ingredients and price apply to almost every one. That’s mainly because you’re paying for the labor (and/or machinery) involved in making the product, and ingredients are only one factor involved in setting price.

It’s not hard to make your own — the problem is that you can seldom buy ripe avocadoes. You generally need to bring them home and let them ripen for a day or two, which is no help if you’re serving snacks for a spur-of-the moment thing.

food, guacamole

I always like to see these things at the end of the year. That’s because I go back the next year, and see what what was on-the-mark, and what was a non-starter.

It quite often takes a lot longer than a year for some of these predictions to make their way to the AZ desert. For example, I’ve been hearing about packaging that lets you know if fruit is ripe or what, for a long time, and have yet to see it materialize.

Anyway, you can read the whole thing here. It’s a press release, BTW.

I do hope those exotic fruits don’t take too long to show up — I’m intrigued!

Meanwhile, if you want some data on the frozen food industry, that’s here.

Funny thing about writing a food blog when you’re hungry — it’s the same thing as shopping, everything looks good! Think I’ll go get some breakfast.

If you see more of these predictions, let me know, wouldja?

food, trends, foodtrends

A book was first published this week in 1931 that became one of the nation’s longest-running bestsellers, as well as a gift for newlyweds of several generations - “The Joy of Cooking.” The volume was first self-published by author Irma Rombauer, and became an institution.

The first commercial version of the book appeared in 1936, and offered a revolutionary format, in which ingredients and instructions were given in chronological order - now used by most cookbooks. More than 14-million copies of “The Joy of Cooking” have been sold. More than 5 percent of all books sold in the U.S. annually are craft and cookbooks.

You can find these and more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau on the Web at http://www.census.gov

Note from me — there have been several incarnations of the Joy. I missed out on the last one which was rumored to be pretty lame. There’s a new edition recently released, and I’m hoping Santa will bring it! The original has also been reissued. Read the reviews here.

Profile America - Monday, November 27th. Imagine if you stopped by the supermarket for a few items, including your favorite coffee, and found it was rationed to one pound every five weeks?

That’s exactly what happened this week in 1942, as World War II interrupted shipments of coffee beans, and because people were hoarding coffee.

But rationing only lasted until the next summer, as imports began to pick up again.

It’s thought coffee was introduced into America by Captain John Smith, one of the founders of the Jamestown Colony in Virginia. Its popularity jumped after both the Boston Tea Party and the beginning of Prohibition. Today, Americans drink an average of just over 24 gallons of coffee each year, in all forms - regular and decaf, as well as latte and espresso.

You can find these and more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau on the Web at http://www.census.gov

coffee, history

How to Save Money Without Using Coupons!

I wrote this awhile back. It was originally intended to be a book, but I never got that far. The basic information is there, though. You may find it helpful.

Seasonal produce
There’s a monthly calendar here which shows which produce items are in season when. This is good to know, since out-of-season produce is expensive, if it’s available at all.

Grocery Shopping for One or Two
This site by Ohio State University has a little chart to help you figure out how much stuff to buy.

Nutrient DataThis USDA website allows you to enter a kind of food and find out what nutrients are in it. You can also look for a nutrient, such as fat, calories, and a range of vitamins and minerals, and find what foods contain those nutrients.

nutrition, produce, shopping

You don’t often think of the Desert Southwest as being an agricultural center, but here in Yuma AZ, right on the Mexico and California borders, we grow massive quantities of things like lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus and citrus fruits.

We also grow kale and flowering kale here — that pretty dark green, purple or white garnish you see often in restaurants.

One of the reasons they use kale as a garnish is that it has staying power. It can sit on a buffet at room temperature for hours without wilting, and it’s easily arranged on a platter to make anything look fancy. It’s usually widely available most of the year, and the price is not a big concern, because you don’t need much to dress up a dish.

Right now the season for these things is just getting started, and there’s a serious lack this year of people to pick the stuff. So much so, they’re advertising on the radio for field workers, which I’ve never seen in 20 years of living here.

Look for skyrocketing prices on all kinds of produce this winter!

garnish, cooking, produce, commodities

When I was in high school, we used to cut class and go to Gerry Gilbert’s house and watch the Galloping Gourmet. Graham Kerr was the first TV chef I remember, and I’ve got the whole series of cookbooks based on that original TV show.

Next came Julia Child, who will always be Numero uno as far as I’m concerned!

These days we’ve got a whole TV network devoted to food, and a lot of the other channels have at least one show devoted to cooking. (I caught a program on cooking over an open fire not long ago!)

It’s pretty hard to plan to watch, or even know about ALL the shows. The Salt Lake Tribune provides a weekly guide to some of them (close, but not entirely comprehensive) here. They tell you they have a complete list of food programming on their main page, but I sure couldn’t find it! Let me know if you locate it?? Otherwise, it’s a really good food section!

Yahoo’s got a pretty good list here.

I have to admit, I don’t watch these programs very often anymore. Sometimes when we’re both home at the same time, my husband and I will pick a food show and criticize it. ;>) Both the cook and the program will fall under extreme scrutiny, and not too often do they emerge unscathed.

However, it was the glut of TV food programming that inspired the creation of The Elementary Chef, so I owe those guys, anyway!

cooking, TVcooks