Community New Update: The House and Arsenic Rice

Posted on November 30, 2012 by Jason

This photo came up when I googled "super rice."

On October 8th, I wrote about the Consumer Reports investigation that revealed dangerous levels of arsenic in pretty much all the rice we eat. In that post, I also mentioned that there are currently no federal laws governing how much arsenic is permissible in food. The FDA regulates arsenic in bottled water, but that’s it.

Turns out three House Democrats (Conn. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, N.J. Rep. Frank Pallone, and N.Y. Rep. Nita Lowey) have introduced a bill—The R.I.C.E. Act—that would require the FDA set a legal limit for arsenic levels in rice. Continue reading →

Imperious Imperials and Sexy Stouts

Posted on November 28, 2012 by Llalan

Spoiler Alert! This one wins.

“You can really taste the chics!” Ben quips after his first sip of Dogfish Head Chicory Stout. Upon review, this means nothing, and was in fact a harbinger of the nonsense to come. This tasting of stouts was brought to you by Ben and me and only Ben and me. The pressure to keep witty banter aloft between us while maintaining lucidity nearly buckled my resolve to try all six high-powered beers. Fortunately I’m known for both my resolve and my ability to handle alcohol.

When tasting beers it’s wise to begin with the brew with the lowest percentage of alcohol by volume (abv) so as to not blow out your taste buds immediately. We tried the aforementioned Dogfish Head (5.2% abv), with high hopes for this perennially good and weird brewery, but unfortunately all we got out of it was a puckered face and a mediocre pun. The next was unremarkable enough to skip here. I began to question the prudence of taking this project on all by ourselves.

I was already feeling a bit warm at that point, which reminded me to follow my own advice. We took the next four beers out of the fridge to ensure we got the most of their flavors. The next stout was from Weyerbacher, a brewery I highly recommend. That said, this is when I began to suspect imperial stouts were just not to my taste. Old Heathen Imperial Stout (8% abv) was sweet with a taste somewhere between licorice and raisins. Dry hop back, but little bitterness — too sweet, like those soccer moms you suspect are popping Valium in the back of their minivans. It is a good beer, but not my beer. Continue reading →

Curried Brussels Sprouts and a Vinegar Sop

Posted on November 27, 2012 by Jason

I surely ate Brussels Sprouts growing up, though I can’t seem to remember them. They’ve merged in my mind with the steamed cabbage that accompanied corned beef and that I’d drown in red wine vinegar.

Your assumption might be that I turned the cabbage into a vinegar sop in order to liven up a limp, unseasoned vegetable, and you’d be right. But I also came to view those limp leaves as an excuse to drink vinegar, something I will unabashedly admit I still do with some frequency. I also clean our kitchen counters with vinegar, (though the white wine kind) and mix red wine vinegar and my buddy Reece’s honey as a tonic before bed. Shannon’s grandmother’s best friend Naomi (pronounced, in rural Ohio, as “Nee-oh-ma”) drank it nightly without fail, and she made it into her early 90s without being prescribed a single medication. It’s the wonder food!

I don’t eat much steamed cabbage any more, but I do rock the Brussels Sprouts, and sometimes with vinegar. They’re a fantastic winter veggie that you should pick up at the market and prepare, possibly, in one of the following two ways.

Cooking and eating these very simple recipes will make you happy.

Brussels Sprouts with Curried Yogurt

Ingredients: Plain, low-fat yogurt / Brussels Sprouts (the smaller ones are tastier) / One Onion / Garlic / Chili, either as pepper or power / Curry Powder / Salt

Trim any woody ends off the Brussels and, if you’ve got those guys that are the size of those big, hollow gumballs, cut them in half.
Steam them, either in some container built to be used with a pot on the stove or in a covered bowl in the microwave with a teaspoon of water poured in. Remove them when they’re a bright, Easter-grass green.
Meanwhile, slice the onion and sauté it in olive oil until it’s soft.
Meanwhile², mix half a cup of the yogurt with curry powder to taste. Continue reading →

Turkey Bones and the March of Time

Posted on November 22, 2012 by Shannon

McSorley’s Old Ale House, in the East Village, is not my favorite bar. The service is inevitably surly, the place is always in-your-face packed with tourists and frat boys, the smell is a bit on the musky side, and the weird little half-pints of beer only come in two varieties (brace yourself, Llalan), dark and light. They didn’t even let women in the front door until they were forced to do so in 1970. Basically, if the bar itself was a person, I probably wouldn’t like him much.

A photo of the bones, pre-dusting, from the New York Times

But I can’t help but hanker for an occasional trip to McSorley’s. Established (or at least allegedly established) in 1854, it’s one of the few places where you can still feel how old of a place Manhattan really is. If you could manage to elbow your way to a table and order up one of their cheese plates (The cheddar—so sharp! The onion—so raw! The mustard—so spicy!), you’d have a perfect vantage point of some weird artifacts of Old New York, like photos of long-gone drinking club members and antique fireman helmets and turkey wish bones hanging above the bar covered in decades of dust. You could eye those bones and, depending upon the story you chose to believe, think about the quirky bar owner who’d collected them or the WWI doughboys who never made it back from Europe to take them down. And, a little tipsy, you could have deep thoughts about death and decay and the long slog of time and wash it all down with a gulp of light. You could have, that is, until the health department stepped in last year. Continue reading →

ABCs of Baking: Cornbread (and Stuffing, Too?)

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Shannon

Hardly could one find a more emblematic Thanksgiving food than cornbread. It is a “New World” food, a staple of the natives of this continent for centuries, unleavened and cooked over a fire. (I believe that the Little House on the Prairie Cookbook called this form corn pone—an unfortunate name, but still more palatable sounding to me as a child than the recipes for hardtack and headcheese.) But the Europeans couldn’t keep from meddling with the pone any more than they could its cooks, and their eggs and baking powders brought it closer to the cornbread we know today. Long after we’d solidly colonized the cornbread, however, controversy continued to rage, with Southerners preferring a more dense and savory variety, Yankees adding sugar to give it a more muffin-y taste and Midwesterners being too polite to definitively vote either way.

With Thanksgiving close at hand, I could hardly ignore this most complicated and divisive of foods, and I decided to try my hand at my first batch of cornbread stuffing from scratch. First, of course, I needed to bake some cornbread. But with which regional version to cast my lot? Savory seemed right for a stuffing, so I sought out Paula Dean to guide me. I’ll be honest—I’ve never made anything by the Food Network queen of Southern cooking, but I had recently heard an old NPR interview in which she explained how to deep fry an ottoman (“Oh, it’s easy, honey, you just dip it in egg first.”) and it had thoroughly charmed me.

Does the color of this batter make me look Irish?

So I dutifully scribbled down the ingredients for her cornbread and stuffing recipes and headed to the grocery store. The store, however, had already been ravaged by pre-Thanksgiving shoppers, and the only variety of self-rising cornmeal they had left was made with white corn. I hemmed and hawed over this. I had had in mind the deep golden color of waves of grain, and I didn’t want my stuffing to look pallid. I was loath to walk to another grocery store, though, and besides, I’m used to being one of the whiter things in this neighborhood, so I grabbed it and headed to the checkout. Continue reading →

Holiday Season Preview

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Shannon

Yes, it’s been a wild and wooly few weeks here at PitchKnives, with a whirl of hurricanes, marathons and work foibles. But fear not; plenty of holiday treats are on their way.

What’s on the menu? The real story of cornbread, a Grub Match revival, holiday cookies aplenty, Shannon’s Christmas vodka infusions, and maybe even a festive holiday fast. So pour yourself a nice glass of nog and keep checking the blog. The season of epic eating is upon us!

Pairing Beers on Thanksgiving: It’s All Relative

Posted on November 14, 2012 by Llalan

Uh, pass the beer, please?

Winter arrived in Ohio at approximately 4pm Monday afternoon. The weekend had been suspiciously warm and there was something eerie in the air. Some kind of evil was approaching and it was set to the “Jaws” theme song. As soon as the weather broke and flurries floated in the streetlights, I knew: Thanksgiving with the family.

Thanksgiving is by far my least favorite holiday. Kids and pets tangled around my legs, strangers in Cosby sweaters, relatives with wildly differing politics who like to talk politics. But I will admit that these events became far more endurable and entertaining once I reached legal drinking age.

Any seasoned beer drinker / relative of mine knows you must head into the Turkey-Day Battle with a plan. Allow me to help you fill your Arsenal of Ales with the proper ammunition. Keep in mind: these people knew you when you were four and probably have photographic evidence of your awkward stage. Choose wisely.

First comes the cheese and olive plates and catch-up with the grandmas. Start with a light beer, one with a delicate flavor and low alcohol content. Try a pils perhaps, or a small pale ale, as these will offset the richness of the cheese and will clear the palate better than those silly little pickles you love but can’t pronounce. And yes, I know it goes against your gut, but you need a session beer to start with. You’re going to be entrenched here for a while and it’s best just to accept this. I urge patience and restraint; this is only the first time you’ll be asked why you don’t have babies yet. Continue reading →

What Will Oscar Eat?: Antipasto Edition

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Shannon

The Tomato Slayer is at it again, but this time he has moved onto another Mediterranean delicacy: olives. The other night, Jason was holding an empty olive container, and Oscar, drawn to its briny traces like a moth to a flame, began lavishing affections on it to a degree approaching lewdness. His eyes took on a blank, glassy look as he became increasingly mesmerized by his single-minded pursuit, and he remained undaunted by dozens of camera flashes. This continued for about ten minutes, and the spell was only broken when we became nervous that he was choking on an olive pit and had to pry apart his beastly jaws and shake it out.

Which begs the question, I suppose, of whether Oscar’s strange food proclivities are really good for him. He does seem blessed with a remarkably strong constitution, but it’s also true that he is becoming rather zaftig. Over the weekend, Jason dreamed that I called Oscar fat and that, in response, Oscar picked up a pencil in his paw and flung it at me. In reality, though, pleasantly plump though he may be, he remains unable to launch projectiles and will have to resort to the more passive aggressive but time-tested revenge of coughing up nighttime hairballs in places where I might step in the morning before putting my contacts in. I fear for my soles should a stricter diet be enforced.

Community News: Prop 37 and Our Lens on Life

Posted on November 8, 2012 by Jason

Prop 37, the California referendum that would have required the labeling of all food that includes genetically modified organisms, failed on Tuesday in a 47% to 53% split. The initiative was riddled with holes indicative of the way the laws that regulate our daily lives today are bought and sold: exemptions for dairy products (feed the cows GM corn), exemptions for meat (feed them more!), exemptions for organic labels (wait, what?!)*

In spite of that disappointing reality, approval of the ballot would have brought to the fore a public discussion in a country dying of its own obesity and caloric emptiness. We are what we eat, and we should consider our own physical well being a value beyond calculation in dollars. Prop 37 lost because its opponents (spending $44 million, compared to $8 million) had the support of the rural counties where so much of our food is grown. They convinced those communities that Prop 37 would cut into their profits, and for most folks those profits are already slim. So those concerns are real for people, even if not for Monsanto, who donated $8 million themselves and would certainly not be harmed by a dip in profits.

And maybe 37 really would have cut into those profits. Interviews with Industrial Agriculture companies indicate that those companies would switch to non-GM, and thus likely more expensive, ingredients rather than risk the market share loss anticipated from labeling. Continue reading →

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Monthly Archives: November 2012