Category: Food and Drink

I try to avoid shopping anywhere but Whole Foods, Wegmans, Shoppers FoodWarehouse, and ethnic groceries.  But several times lately I’ve stopped at food marts at gas stations.  Each time I’ve noticed how much better they are than the average 7-11, most of all for selection.  There are plenty of such marts, so I’m wondering why I should ever go to a 7-11 again.

Are the prices at the gas station food marts so much higher?  Are my data points too few?  Or is the rest of the world discovering this same truth?

Check out the photos.  My vote goes to Schmitty’s, in Lockhart, Texas.  Lexington Barbecue wins "most overrated."  Thanks to Arnold Kling for the pointer.

Several of you might have heard of this excellent philosophical time waster before, but it’s new to me (apparently it was first devised by Wilfrid Sellars):

Identify three foods A, B, and C such that any two of these are complementary (taste good in combination) but the trio does not.  So A and B must be complementary, B and C must be complementary, and A and C must be complementary, but A, B, and C must be foul when combined together.  (It’s harder than I thought!)

Here are some possible answers.  I opt for Coke, Merlot, and Chicken.  The pointer is from Ananda Gupta.

Addendum: In the comments, Stephen Dubner nails it.

A loyal MR reader wants to hear about:

’08 elections. where Kurzweil and company are most right and most wrong. veganism/vegetarianism/cave man diet/pescatarianism/organic.

1. Yes it does matter who wins but my gut reaction is to compare candidates to soap commercials.  At the end of the day there is a soap bar in your hand, but interest in the topic is driven mostly by our irrational side, programmed to respond emotionally to human faces and characters.  Candidate blogging usually bores me.  If you are figuring out who to vote for, try to predict a politician’s ruling coalition.  The current political question is whether the bad tendencies of Bush 43 are one-time or represent a shift in the political equilibrium and what it takes to govern; I think it is about 50-50 in each direction.

2. Here is my earlier post on the singularity, try to spot the facetious sentence.

3. I have nothing against eating animals per se, even live ones, but I think it is immoral to eat animals raised under awful conditions, such as factory farming.  Personally, I often try to be good but I often fail as well.  I never feel bad eating meat in Europe, and animal welfare is the best argument for European farm subsidies.  I will pay more for humanely-raised food, but I won’t drive through ten minutes of extra traffic to get it. 

4. For a diet I recommend fish, nuts, fruit, green vegetables, and lots of braised pork belly.  At least that’s what tastes good.  Few processed foods are worth buying; I come close to the caveman diet view without being dogmatic.  A good bread is not to be rejected and come on, can rice really be that bad for you?  Just avoid all junk foods.

#26 in a series of 50.

Cook some fatty bacon just enough to be slightly done, then chop it a bit and mix it with equal parts smoked trout, chopped into comparably sized pieces, in a bowl.  Mix in three tablespoons Chinese wine.  Mix in two tablespoons of chili flakes or chili oil with flakes.  Mix in two tablespoons black bean sauce.  Steam for at least forty minutes, or until the stock market drops, more is better, in a heatproof bowl, at relatively high heat.  Mix in a little bit of sesame oil at the end.  Serve with rice and a green vegetable.

It’s the sort of place where a group of people will battle to save cats being made into meatballs or hats, but you can pay $75 to feed a sheep to a tiger. (This clip could be a little much for sensitive folk.) [TC: please don’t watch, I didn’t]

Here is the link, the pointer is from Yan Li.

Four chairs, one table, A+ decor, and the best Asian food in D.C.  Nothing nearby comes close.  Staff = 1, so you must call not only for reservations, but indeed hours in advance with an actual order so he can start making your food.  I loved the salmon in red curry sauce, the pad thai, the larb, and some amazing chicken dish with the guy’s last name on it; the drunken noodles are recommended as well.  But I am not not not saying the other dishes are worse.  515 Florida Avenue, NW.

I’ll never view the theory of the firm in the same light again.  Monitoring doesn’t work, and who needs division of labor anyway?  The coolest place in DC right now, by far.  Here is the menu.

Not as bad as some people say:

A Swedish researcher put 18 volunteers on the same diet that filmmaker Morgan Spurlock went on while filming "Super Size Me."

The result?

While
one volunteer gained 15 percent body weight after following the
high-choleric diet for a month, several others experienced only minimal
weight gain.  [He] was thus forced to conclude that "some people are
just more susceptible to obesity than others."

Also: The 12 men and six women were banned from exercising.

While all gained weight, none reported mood swings or liver damage like Spurlock did in the movie.

Michael Pollan has a somewhat different take:

I would submit that the ideology of nutritionism deserves as much of
the blame as the carbohydrates themselves do – that and human nature.  By framing dietary advice in terms of good and bad nutrients, and by
burying the recommendation that we should eat less of any particular
food, it was easy for the take-home message of the 1977 and 1982
dietary guidelines to be simplified as follows: Eat more low-fat foods. 
And that is what we did.  We’re always happy to receive a dispensation
to eat more of something (with the possible exception of oat bran), and
one of the things nutritionism reliably gives us is some such
dispensation: low-fat cookies then, low-carb beer now.  It’s hard to
imagine the low-fat craze taking off as it did if McGovern’s original
food-based recommendations had stood: eat fewer meat and dairy products.

Many people eat healthy foods to assuage their consciences, and then they proceed to eat bad foods to satisfy their cravings.  Start by boycotting the healthy stuff that doesn’t do you much good, like fruit, and you’ll munch on fewer pastries.  You will feel the need for more conscience in your dietary portfolio, and maybe you’ll cut meat, dairy, and processed foods, which is what you should be doing.  Do keep on eating those plants, though.

Hot Coke with Ginger, A Possibly Magical Elixir. 

In older times the recipe was made with brown sugar water, but now the traditionalists prefer Coke; the recipe, however, is "cola-neutral."  The pointer is from Yan Li.

No, I don’t want to eat another arepas or tamale, I am too full.  It won’t taste good.  I won’t enjoy it, I can’t stand any more.  But I will eat it, because I know the memory of it will be superb.

My anti-authoritarian, free-wheeling, libertarian colleagues and I easily found a dealer in downtown Chicago willing to sell us an illegal substance.  Don’t tell the man but if you are in Chicago and want the good stuff ask for Kevin.

(Do not become frustrated if in the course of your work you make slight tears in the skin [of the duck].  It happens to everybody.  Simply sew the holes with needle and thread.)

That is from Eileen Yin-Fei Lo, The Chinese Kitchen.  The next recipe has two long sections, entitled "Day One" and "Day Two"…

Buy whole spices, not ground.  Get:

Cinnamon stick (not the Mexican kind)
Cumin
Coriander
Cloves
Cardamom, preferably both green and black
Black peppercorns

Red chilis, or red chili powder
Wet ginger paste (go to an Indian grocer’s), or fresh ginger, never ever ever powdered ginger
Garam masala, here a good powder from an Indian mart is OK though better to make it fresh
Turmeric, powder will do

For bases, draw upon:

1. Sauteed and pureed yellow onions
2. Plain yogurt, some will wish to add heavy cream as a thickener
3. Coconut milk

Now start your dish.  Create the chosen base.  Ghee (clarified butter) can be added to #1 or #2 for yummy richness but I usually don’t for health reasons.  Don’t mix #2 and #3.

Then take your preferred mix of spices.  Fry the hard ones for two to three minutes over medium heat (3.5 on an electric stove) and puree them.  Cinnamon stick should be left whole in the sauce to leach out its flavor.  Never are more than three cloves needed and they can be left whole too.  Cardamoms can be inserted whole and then removed, especially if large ones are smashed open a bit with a blunt edge.  Otherwise experiment with preferred combinations.

In a separate pan, quickly cook your preferred meat over high heat, just enough to make it a bit translucent or pink.  Insert the partially cooked stuff into the liquid base and turn to low heat until the dish is ready.

Vegetables can be substituted for meat.

You can introduce mace and mustard seeds, or tomato can be a base in sauces.

You now have a combinatorial knowledge of many many Indian recipes and you need not memorize anything.

By the way, if you must buy powdered curry, Golden Bell is by far the best.  It is packed with bay leaves and stays potent for months.  You can sautee some chopped yellow onions, toss in ground lamb, douse it in Golden Bell, cook over low heat until dry, and when on the plate, over rice, coat it in plain yogurt.

Gary Becker does a quick cost-benefit analysis in his head:

With a small taste benefit from the use of trans fats– the New England Medicine Journal article I cited earlier does admit positive effect of trans fats on
"palatability"– the total cost of the ban would equal or exceed total
benefits.  For example, suppose 1 million persons on average eat 200
meals per year in NYC restaurants with trans fats.  If they value the
taste of trans fats in their foods only by 35 cents per meal, the taste
cost to consumers of the ban would be $70 million per year.  Then the
total cost of the ban would equal the benefits from the ban.

If you click on the link, you’ll see some good arguments against paternalism as well.