William Quincy Belle

It's a WTF moment. A headline in an online newspaper alerts me to a culinary phenomenon I have never tasted much less heard of and as the combination of salt, sugar, fat and gawd knows what else amounting to a four alarm get the paddles cardiac arrest sinks into my brain, I can feel the twinge of my pharyngeal reflex wanting to automatically respond with horrified disgust. Yes, folks. It's a hamburger that uses two Krispy Kreme donuts as the bun.

Apparently this gastronomic monstrosity was pioneered in the southern United States and popularized by one Paula Deen of the Food Network. According to various newspaper articles, it seems this all-in-one hamburger slash dessert has become something of a hit at various fairs. Experts seem to differ on the exact numbers, but I'm seeing calorie counts of a thousand to fifteen hundred. A single Krispy Kreme glazed donut has 250 to 300 calories depending on the source of nutritional information so consider your count is starting from 500 to 600 just because of the donuts. Now go ahead and add the burger, the eggs and the bacon. Geesh, just how much salt is in all of that? It used to be the recommended daily intake of sodium was 2400 milligrams but as of last December, various health experts had reduced that to 1,500 milligrams per day. I am confident that just one burger will blow all of our diets right out of the water and then some.

A few years ago, on a lark, I stopped in at a Wendy's to have a Baconnator just so I could brag to the family I had managed to eat one. Afterwards, I looked it up on the Internet and discovered just one of these over the top hamburgers contains 1,920 mg of sodium. Holy saltshaker. Do we have any idea of what we're putting in our mouths?

History
The predecessor to this dubious edible invention seems to be something called the Luther burger. The urban legend has it that singer Luther Vandross was one day making burgers and discovered he didn't have any hamburger buns so substituted donuts. An article on Snopes.Com says this is conjecture but the story lives on as the origin of this unusual combination.

A Krispy Kreme Bacon Cheeseburger Recipe
You can supposedly whip this one up in 15 or 20 minutes. Obviously you can drastically cut down on meal times as you are eating your main course and dessert at the same time. This is truly "fast food".

Ingredients:

1 1/2 pounds ground beef
3 tablespoons freshly chopped parsley leaves
2 tablespoons grated onion
6 slices American or cheddar cheese
House Seasoning: mix together 1 cup salt, 1/4 cup black pepper and 1/4 cup garlic powder
2 tablespoons butter
3 eggs
6 slices bacon, cooked
6 glazed Krispy Kreme donuts

Directions:

Use a large mixing bowl to mix the ground beef, chopped parsley and grated onion together. Use the House Seasoning to liberally spice up the concoction then form 3 hamburger patties.

Spray a large cast-iron skillet with a non-stick cooking spray then heat it over a medium-high burner. Put in your burgers and cook until the desired temperature. Four to five minutes per side should do it for medium-rare.

Fry up your bacon until crisp. Remove strips and drain them on paper towels.

While your burgers are cooking, heat a non-stick pan over medium heat then add 2 tablespoons of butter. Crack the three eggs into the pan then cook them until the yolks are slightly set but still runny.

Place a couple of slices of cheese on the burgers at the last minute to slightly melt the cheese.

Lay out your doughnuts as buns and place your cheese-topped burger patties on them. Top each burger with 2 pieces of bacon and a fried egg.

Serves three people. Make sure there is a fourth person in the room who is capable of operating the defibrillator.

Uploaded by 2010FloridaStateFair on Feb 10, 2010
Krispy Kreme doughnut burger
Yes it's a sign of the apocalypse. Ha ha ha


Final Word
Final word? You want a final word? How about I'm going to barf? Oh... my... gawd...!!!! *laughs uproariously* What people eat never fails to amaze me. Good lord, can anybody make something to eat which has your recommended daily caloric intake in a single sandwich? Wait! What am I talking about? This probably exceeds your recommended daily caloric intake. Holy freak-out!


References

Wikitionary: gag me with a spoon
(slang) An expression of disgust
Usage notes: This is a stereotypical phrase in "valspeak".

Wikitionary: Valspeak
The 'dialect' spoken by stereotypical Californian valley girls.

Wikipedia: Luther Burger
A Luther Burger, or doughnut burger (among several naming variations), is a hamburger or cheeseburger with one or more glazed doughnuts in place of the bun. These sandwiches have a disputed origin, and tend to run between approximately 800 and 1,500 Calories (3,300 and 6,300 kJ).

Google image search: krispy kreme burger

Google video search: krispy kreme burger

Wikipedia: Paula Deen
Paula Deen (born January 19, 1947) is an American cook, restaurateur, author, actress and Emmy Award-winning television personality.

snopes.com - Mar 3/2005
Luther Burger
[While the site states that the "Luther Burger," a bacon cheeseburger served on a Krispy Kreme doughnut bun, is a real food named after R&B singer Luther Vandross, it points out that Mr. Vandross inventing it one day when he had run out of hamburger buns is merely conjecture.]

2011-08-05

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Mr. Colin Gregory Palmer Grey is a time management consultant working out of London, England. As well as his day job, he also produces on occasion short videos about different subjects. Today, I ran across his latest cinematic opus called "Coffee: The Greatest Addiction Ever". How could I resist? Ah, coffee, my favourite drink. And it would seem just about the favourite drink of a zillion other people as well. Who hasn't regretted not buying shares in Starbucks or Tim Horton's?

Of course, using the word "drug" along with the drink refers to its active ingredient, caffeine. Wikipedia writes:

The stimulant effect of coffee is due to its caffeine content. The caffeine content of a cup of coffee varies depending mainly on the brewing method, and also on the variety of bean. According to Bunker and McWilliams (J. Am. Diet. 74:28–32, 1979), coffee has the following caffeine content:

* brewed: 1 cup (7 oz, 207 ml) = 80–135 mg.
* drip: 1 cup (7 oz, 207 ml) = 115–175 mg.
* espresso: 1 shot (1.5–2 oz, 45–60 ml) = 100 mg

Red Bull has sometimes stirred up a bit of a controversy about its caffeine content; however it contains no more caffeine than coffee. A single can, the normal size, contains 80mg of caffeine (Wikipedia).

I add here about the pros and cons of this drink. Scientific studies have examined the relationship between coffee consumption and an array of medical conditions. Findings have been contradictory as to whether coffee has any specific health benefits, and results are similarly conflicting regarding the potentially harmful effects of coffee consumption.

The same Wikipedia article goes on about cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, etc.:

Coffee consumption has been shown to have minimal or no impact, positive or negative, on cancer development; however, researchers involved in an ongoing 22-year study by the Harvard School of Public Health state that "the overall balance of risks and benefits [of coffee consumption] are on the side of benefits." For example, men who drank six or more cups of coffee per day were found to have a 20% reduction in developing prostate cancer. Other studies suggest coffee consumption reduces the risk of being affected by Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, heart disease, diabetes mellitus type 2, cirrhosis of the liver, and gout. A longitudinal study in 2009 showed that those who consumed a moderate amount of coffee or tea (3–5 cups per day) at midlife were less likely to develop dementia and Alzheimer's disease in late-life compared with those who drank little coffee or avoided it altogether.


Uploaded by CGPGrey on Jun 22, 2011
Coffee: The Greatest Addiction Ever
[This short video offers a number of interesting facts about this most popular of beverages. Mr. Grey's web site has the complete script of the video which is reproduced below.]



The web site Just About Coffee says that coffee is:
* The second most widely used product in the world after oil.
* It was worth 6 million tonnes per year in the mid 90's.
* It is worth €30 billion per year to the producing countries.
* It is a living to more than 100 million people.
* It is consumed at the rate of 1400 million cups per day.
* The world's second most popular drink after water.

Coffee Facts from the Gourmet Coffee Zone adds:
Regarded as the largest retail coffee chain, with over 15,000 stores world wide, Starbucks actually sells more milk by volume than coffee. Starbucks has established a brand based on strong, bold dark-roasted coffees. Some even consider the roasting style over-done, pushing the respectable and popular dark-roast preference too far into the burnt category. While the milk products comprise the significant component in the Starbucks coffee drinks (lattes, cappuccinos, etc. ), perhaps another driver behind the volume of milk sold is a customer preference to tame or tone down the Starbucks over-roasted, strong and bold coffee profile.

Final Word
Mmmmmmm.


References

Wikipedia: Coffee
Coffee is a brewed drink prepared from roasted seeds, called coffee beans, of the coffee plant. Coffee beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees in over 70 countries, cultivated primarily in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. 'Green Unroasted' coffee is one of the most traded agricultural commodities in the world. Coffee can have a stimulating effect on humans due to its caffeine content. It is one of the most-consumed beverages in the world.

Wikipedia: Economics of coffee
Coffee is an important commodity and a popular beverage. Over 2.25 billion cups of coffee are consumed in the world every day.] Over 90% of coffee production takes place in developing countries, while consumption happens mainly in the industrialized economies.

Wikipedia: Caffeine
Caffeine is a bitter, white crystalline xanthine alkaloid and psychoactive stimulant. Caffeine was first isolated from coffee in 1820 by the German chemist Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge and again in 1821 by French chemists Robiquet, Pelletier, and Caventou. Pelletier first coined the word "cafeine", which became the English word "caffeine".

Wikipedia: Health effects of caffeine
The health effects of caffeine have been extensively studied. Short term side effects such as headache, nausea, and anxiety have been shown as symptoms of mild caffeine consumption. The long term consequences of moderate caffeine consumption can be reduced risk of developing Parkinson's disease, type 2 diabetes, hepatic diseases, and cardiovascular disease.

Colin Gregory Palmer Grey
http://www.cgpgrey.com
[Mr. Grey is a Time Management consultant working out of London, England. He has an ebook called "30 Days to a More Organized Life".]

YouTube: CGPGrey's Channel
[As well as this video on Coffee, he seems to have put together a number of educational video speechs on a variety of topics

Grey's Blog: Coffee: The Greatest Addiction Ever

The Script (from the above video)


The world’s largest buyer of coffee, the US, has to import nearly all of this as the coffee trees from which caffeine is harvested will only grow at commercial levels between the tropic of cancer and the tropic of capricorn in an area called the coffee belt. Only a single state, Hawaii, is within the belt.

However, the United States is only the largest buyer because it’s so populous. The most enthusiastic coffee drinkers per capita are, in increasing order, the Netherlands, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and, the world champions, Finland, where they drink three times as much coffee a day as the average American. All of these countries are outside of the coffee belt and must import 100% of their caffeine supply.

To get this caffeine, first bees must pollinate the flowers of a coffee tree and these flowers develop into bright red berries. Unlike more cooperative domesticated plants, the coffee tree does not ripen all its berries at the same time so they need to be hand picked and sorted.

Once picked, the coffee bean is removed from inside the berry. This young seedling of the tree is then dried, heated, ground and submersed in boiling water to get out the precious, precious caffeine. It takes about 40 coffee beans to make one shot of espresso.

But why is caffeine in the coffee beans in the first place? It’s not like the coffee trees want to have humans cutting bits of them off and committing a holocaust of their offspring.

Well, the trees, of course, don’t want or feel anything and originally evolved caffeine for their own benefit. Caffeine is an insecticide that effectively paralyzes or kills bugs chomping on the tree.

Whether or not the insects go out experiencing the greatest caffeine high ever is not known.

While caffeine is technically lethal, it’s adapted for for 1g bugs, not monkeys 100,000 times more massive. So you’d really have to try to win this Darwin Award.

But, if you must: to calculate the dose of caffeine you’ll need to ingest to have a 50% of death, take your mass in kilograms and multiply it by 150mg.

Or in terms of coffee, for every kilogram of mass you have you need to drink one latte to get a visit from the grim reaper.

That’s a lot of coffee so it’s not surprising that there are no recored deaths in healthy adults from this method and it’s doubtful that it’s even possible. Because, while you’re busy getting the coffee in, your body is busy getting it out by one way or another.

The rare recorded deaths from caffeine are from diet pills, pep pills and crazy people who eat the drug in its pure form.

Poison though caffeine is, you do still develop addiction to the stuff. And it’s is a real physiological addiction not a wimpy psychological addition like people claim for videos games and the internet.

But caffeine isn’t heroine – rapid withdrawal won’t kill you – it might make you cranky and give you a wicked headache – but since caffeine releases dopamine to make you happy and it gets rid of headaches there’s really no reason to ever stop using it.

And who would want to give up the stuff anyway? I mean, aside from converts to Mormonism and Rastafarianism. Caffeine is the world’s most used psychoactive drug – and with good reason it’s pure awesome.

It increases concentration, decreases fatigue and gives you better memory.

This isn’t just a placebo – these are real effects replicable in a laboratory.

And, contrary to popular belief, drinking coffee isn’t a faustian bargain where the devil gives you the ability to work faster but in exchange makes your life shorter.

For normal, healthy humans there are no medical concerns. Coffee and the caffeine within it may even has medical benefits such as protection from cardiovascular disease, diabetes and Parkinson’s.

Caffeine can even get rid of migraines, but the amount required and the and method of ingestion is… uncomfortable.

Moving right along…

You know what else you can thank caffeine for? A little thing called the enlightenment. In the 1600s people drank more beer and gin than water. But with the introduction of coffee and tea, people switched from a depressant to a stimulant. It’s not surprising then that this time was an intellectual boon compared to earlier centuries.

Ben Franklin and Edward Lloyd loved their coffee for the same reason that modern workers and students do. It’s invaluable for staying awake and concentrating when you need to finish a TPS report or to get through that boring physics class.

Coffee is the fuel of the modern world, so go grab a cup guilt-free and get working smarter and faster.

2011-06-23

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Last November 26, 2010, I wrote a short article about a web site dedicated to cooking called "The Cook in Heels". The online newspaper Oye! Times reprinted my blog posting and now, almost four months later, the author of The Cook in Heels has left a comment saying that her web site has now been renamed "The Well Heeled Cook". I thought that such a remark out of the blue warranted a second look of our sexy siren with a skillet.

In my original article, I noted that "The Cook in Heels" had the tagline "add sizzle to your life". The new web site, "The Well Heeled Cook" sports the line "indulging in food's finer pleasures" however the central idea, the content and presentation seems to be the same.

Each recipe is written out with a list of ingredients followed by instructions on how to prepare everything. But the "hook" for each recipe is a companion video. The author remains out of sight during the videos; you only ever see her hands and her high heels. She never speaks; short text instructions appear periodically and you watch the steps of preparing various dishes. These videos are of a very high quality; they are professionally made. Considering that this is all available for free, I do wonder how this person is paying for all this.

As an aside, about the high quality of these videos, the author states on her About page: I am the alter ego of my creator, a filmmaker who loves food, fashion, glamour and fun, all of which she has uniquely combined to create a whimsical yet mysterious character in touch with her sensual side. It is obvious that she is having fun and the results show that she certainly is talented in producing videos. Is this just a fun hobby of a professional filmmaker? Or could this be a calling card as in an example of her work for a C.V.?

I asked myself originally what financial remuneration the author may be getting from this web site. However, I have noted many times in my travels on the Net that there are all sorts of people publishing not just high quality, but professional quality work as a hobby. The results are there for all the world to see free of charge. For me it is surprising to discover the calibre of the talent which lies out there in the world. There are a lot of unknowns but oh my, with such talent!

Ms. WellHeeled states that eating is a complete sensual experience. We utilize all our senses: sight, smell, taste, touch, and yes hearing (remember the sizzle). So the trappings that surround the food matter:  candlelight, music, table setting, clothing and, yes, fabulous high heels.

I have to chuckle at how the filmmaker has deftly managed to combine the art of cooking with the art of seduction. Each video highlights a sensuality coupled with an implied sexual tension in the creation of a culinary aphrodisiac. I just want to kick off my shoes, loosen my tie and... get out a knife and fork. From my original article:

I watched the short clip about stuffing a turkey and preparing a cranberry sauce and holy smokes, even though nothing "dirty" occurred, I still felt I should be holding my hand over the eyes of anybody under the age of 18. Sexy? Gosh, did I see a wisp of smoke rising from my computer monitor?

Antibes
Ms. WellHeeled captured my attention with a dish and a video done in Antibes, a resort town on the Mediterranean coast in southeastern France. Having been in the neighbourhood, specifically Hyères, 1.5 hours or 300 km down the coast, I was fascinated by the scenes shot in the market where our sexy cook is seen purchasing varous ingredients for her next je-ne-sais-quoi. Gee, is everything just somehow better in France? En français, tout est meilleur grâce à un certain joie-de-vivre qui existe partout dans le pays, n'est-ce pas?

S & M
I ran across one provocatively titled video called S&M which starts with our lady zipping up some high heel boots which seem made for a dominatrix but it turns out that the S&M of the clip stands for spaghetti and meatballs. The author introduces her recipe with "Want to experiment with a little S & M? With this dish you are definitely in command and not likely to get any refusals." I'm looking at that plate of pasta and the Sergio Rossi zippered stilettos and all I can say is that I will obey. :-)

How did I originally hear about this site?
It's funny how I run into all sorts of stuff just by surfing around. Last Fall, I wrote an article on the New Yorker Cindy Gallop (see my blog Cindy Gallop: Make Love Not Porn). - She's quite the woman and you must see for yourself her claim to fame. - In researching Ms. Gallop, I followed her Twitter account for a bit and ran across one of her tweets in which she said that The Cook In Heels is fabulous. It was that tweeted comment which led me to Ms. WellHeeled in the first place, although then, it was Ms. CookInHeels.

Well Heeled
I had to double check the meaning of the expression "well heeled". Princeton University's WordNet defines the expression as meaning comfortable, prosperous, well-off, or well-to-do. I realise the author is referring to her high heels but I wonder if this change in the name of the web site is now supposed to be a play on words? Has her status changed? I mean her financial status?

Our author has posed the question on Facebook, "The Cook in Heels is now The Well Heeled Cook! Same sauciness. Different name. Thoughts?" I'm not sure. The problem with a brand name lies with the expression changing horses in midstream. It takes time to build an audience and is that audience going to get mixed up about what is what?

Alexa, the web site ranking company, gives a rating of 329,069 in the U.S. for thecookinheels.com but has no rating for thewellheeledcook.com. Ms. WellHeeled has already built a following as Ms. CookInHeels and it is going to take time to get the message out to all of them. If I google "The Well Heeled Cook", I get 3 hits, but if I google "The Cook In Heels", I get over seven thousand hits.

Cooking and High Heels
The idea of combining the sexy with the tasty seems to be catching on. In perusing the Net, I find a British site called "How to Cook in High Heels" by Sasha Parker and Korin Nolan. Unlike Ms. WellHeeled, these two ladies are on camera with some nice British accents showing us to how to make various dishes.

Shanel Cooper-Sykes has written a book called "Stilettos in the Kitchen" although she seems to working more on the whole idea of relationships as opposed to just cooking.

June Manton
Ah, the power of Google. You can find out just about anything if you know the right keyword. I google "The Cook In Heels" and go down the list of hits and find TradeMarkia which shows the application for the trademark "The Cook In Heels" and there I find a name. Well, it seems that The Cook in Heels or now, The Well Heeled Cook is one June Manton. Her web site redheadshooting explains what she does with directing, webshooting, commercials, presentations, editing, creative solutions.

On the page "My Work", she has example videos from her Well Heeled Cook and some commercials she's done. I found the commercial for Jay Strongwater Jewelry with its older transvestite and the line "Life is such a drag. Is that a pun?" to be amusing.

So, it woud seem as I previously said, The Well Heeled Cook is, amongst other things, part of Ms. Manton's C.V.

Final Word
The author, Ms. WellHeeled continues to present an interesting web site with a quality product. I still can't get over the high quality of the videos; this is professional work. Yes, I don't make videos so what the heck do I know about any of this, but I am still impressed.

I would recommend anybody to have a look; I, for one, appreciate the results. As Ms. WellHeeled points out in her combining all of our senses, taste, touch, smell, hearing and of course, visual, the largest sexual organ is the brain. She has certainly captured my imagination.


References

The Well Heeled Cook

Facebook: The Well Heeled Cook

Twitter: The Well Heeled Cook: @WellHeeledCook

redheadshooting: June Manton
What is redheadshooting?
It’s shooting that gets noticed. Turns heads. Creates an impact in any format with eye-popping imagery and cut-through concepts.

Why redheadshooting & editing for the web?
The smaller format of the internet especially needs attention-getting visuals and stand-out story telling. I bring my extensive experience as a Filmmaker, Advertising Creative Director, and Editor, with work ranging from award-winning documentaries to award-winning commercials, to your project to get the “pop” you need.


2011-03-20

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I run into the darnedest things surfing around the Internet. I look at the line "30 days and 30 ways with macaroni and cheese" and think to myself, "What!?!" Well, my curiosity piqued, I click on the link and discover a web site, a blog devoted to just that, providing a delicious and innovative way to serve up the ol' standard of macaroni and cheese for 30 days in a row. This sounds like an interesting challenge and I'm sure at first glance anybody is going to be asking themselves, "Why?" when the answer may turn out to be nothing more than, "Why not?" I guess this is sort of the same thing as asking the man why he climbed a mountain and he answers, "Because it's there."

Right off the bat, I note that the web site writes in a sidebar entitled "About Us":

Welcome to 30 Days, 30 Ways a blog brought to you by the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board. We've collaborated with 30 different food bloggers to create 30 inventive recipes for the classic dish — Macaroni & Cheese.

Check back often — we'll post a brand new recipe each day for a month!

As of this writing, we're at day 24 and the recipe of the day is called "Asiago Fig Macaroni & Cheese" credited to The Avid Appetite. Ah, I get it. To put the site together, the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board has called upon various entrepreneurial cooks to contribute their creativity to this basic of all dishes. The Milk Marketing Board advertises their product, milk, and the individual cooks advertise their expertise along with a link back to their own web site. It seems that The Avid Appetite is one Rachel from New York who has managed to combine her love for cooking and her love for writing into a wonderful blog dealing with the creation of various culinary delights.

For this dish of day 24, I read Rachel's rendition of the process of coming up with something original with the required ingredients of macaroni and cheese.

When the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board asked me to be a part of the 30 Days 30 Ways Macaroni & Cheese Blog to celebrate National Cheese Lover’s Day, I couldn’t wait to get a little creative with an old standard. There’s something inherently comforting and desirable about macaroni & cheese, don’t you think? I’m not sure if it’s the hearkening back to childhood or the mere richness and creaminess that feels appropriate only on a cold winter day while wearing sweatpants, but offer anyone a dish of warm, decadent macaroni & cheese and find one person to turn it down. It just won’t happen!

When I saw that Asiago was on the list of Wisconsin cheeses, it seemed like a fun flavor change up from what one traditionally thinks of in this classic dish. And once I had Asiago in my pocket, I knew it needed something equally delicious to balance out the sharpness while taking the flavor profile to a whole new level.

Always one for the fruit and cheese combo, it’s no surprise that my flavor hunt led to figs. Not overly sweet, a light fig topping is the perfect balance in this dish. It complements the Asiago while adding an unusual twist!

I have to admit that I have never had figs mixed into such a dish and certainly never would have considered it. Nevertheless, the article provides some photos of the completed dish and I would certainly wonder just what a mixture would taste like. Gosh, does this seem like a promising start to 30 ways of preparing the old standard? I always have to return to that famous line from the comedy troupe Monty Python: "And now for something completely different."

As I look over the other days, I see some very interesting titles:

Day 22: Smoked Gouda Mac ‘N Cheese with Cauliflower and Bacon

Day 6: Easy Brie-zy Mac ‘n Cheese Parfaits

Day 2: Wisconsin Parmesan and Pasta Cacciatore Frittata

Day 17: Butterkäse Mac ‘N Cheese with Pickled Green Tomatoes

A little history about mac and cheese
It seems as though pasta itself has with us for just about forever. Wikipedia states that the oldest known pasta or noodle-like food comes from China and is 4,000 years old. Macaroni has a history which is difficult to pin down but like the Chinese pasta, it seems to be really, really old.

Macaroni and cheese is mentioned as far back at the 1300's or at least the idea of pasta and cheese. The modern dish as we know it has many stories but I cite the tale that the classic American macaroni and cheese returned with Thomas Jefferson to Virginia after his sojourn in Italy. Jefferson had brought back a pasta machine from Italy. His daughter Mary Randolph became the hostess of his house after Jefferson’s wife died and she is credited with inventing the dish using macaroni and Parmesan cheese. Later, the Parmesan was replaced with cheddar cheese. True or false? Only Kraft may know!

And speaking about Kraft, I would say that you can't utter the expression "macaroni and cheese" without thinking of Kraft Dinner, the ubiquitous and inexpensive meal in a box. As per Wikipedia:

Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, known as Kraft Dinner in Canada, is a macaroni and cheese convenience food that requires minimal preparation by the consumer. The original product, a packaged dry macaroni and cheese mix, was introduced in 1937 by the company now known as Kraft Foods.

The timing of the product's launch had much to do with its success. During World War II, rationing of milk and dairy products, and an increased reliance on meatless entrees, created a nearly captive market for the product, which was considered a hearty meal for families. Kraft Dinner is seen as inexpensive, easy to make comfort food, with marketing to highlight its value and convenience. New product lines using different flavors and pasta shapes and increases to shelf life were introduced over the decades.

A "hearty meal" sounds attractive and when coupled with "inexpensive", it seems like a surefire winner. However there are some health concerns:

There are nutritional facts panels on packaged macaroni and cheese such as Kraft Dinner which inform an educated consumer that the product when prepared contains high percentages of ingredients such as saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, and sodium which should be limited and low quantities of desirable nutrients such as dietary fiber, Vitamin A, and Vitamin C.

Macaroni and cheese is rated low as a food choice for people seeking to lose weight. Due to its low cost relative to other prepared dinners it appeals especially to low-income shoppers, exacerbating concerns about its effect on obesity. Most manufacturers of macaroni and cheese now offer "reduced calorie" options on their packages that allow cooks to omit ingredients that add to the calorie, and in particular, fat level.

Final Word
Mac and cheese: the same old same old? Not quite according to the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board. "30 Days, 30 Ways" deserves some credit for coming up with inventive names for the dishes. Ha! That seems to be a good way of getting our attention. Then again, the photos of each dish do make my mouth water. Mmmm, just what does that one taste like? Time to get out a saucepan and a serving dish and make a decision about which one of these recipes to try out. Bon appetit to any of the readers about to do the same thing. Kraft Dinner never looked so good!


References

30 Days, 30 Ways with Macaroni and Cheese
Welcome to 30 Days, 30 Ways, a blog brought to you by the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board. For the fourth year, we've collaborated with 30 different food bloggers to create 30 inventive recipes for the classic dish — Macaroni & Cheese.

Wikipedia: Macaroni and cheese
Macaroni and cheese, also called "mac and cheese" in American English, Canadian English, and Australian English; "macaroni pie" in Caribbean English; and "macaroni cheese" in the United Kingdom, and New Zealand; is a dish consisting of cooked elbow macaroni, white sauce, and cheese.

Wikipedia: Kraft Dinner
Kraft Dinner (Canada), known as Kraft Macaroni and Cheese or Kraft Mac and Cheese in the United States and Australia and Macaroni Cheese or Cheesey Pasta in the United Kingdom, is a packaged dry macaroni and cheese mix. The product was first introduced in 1937 in the United States by the company now known as Kraft Foods. It is now available in several other formulations including Easy Mac, a single-serving designed specifically for cooking in microwaves.

2011-02-13

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I think the first time I heard this word was about 7 or 8 years ago when an American woman visiting the family brought one for an outdoor patio meal. I smile at how the Americans love to mangle the English language in search for new words, new formations, and new abbreviations, whatever. I rolled my eyes at the word and said to myself, "Now what?"

I listened to the description of how a chicken is stuffed inside a duck which is then stuffed inside a turkey: tur(key) - duck - (chick)en. WTH? What the heck? I'm sorry; this just sounded a tad bizarre. However being a brave man I stepped right up to the table with my plate and served myself up a helping. My impression? I don't think my palette could quite figure out just what it was tasting. There seemed to be such a mishmash of flavours. Was I eating chicken? Was I eating duck? My brain had an expectation of something but what the taste buds were reporting back to it didn't match the brain's memories of that flavour.

In the end, I can't say I was partial to the dish. I love chicken; I love duck; I love turkey but all mixed together? I didn't know what to taste. Now granted, that was just one recipe. Are there others? The Internet seems to have scads of them so maybe one of these other recipes may make a believer out of me but at the moment, I am remaining sceptical. Oh and I'm not dismissing this because of just one go with the triple bird. I had another occasion to taste this woman's culinary artistry regarding this dish and the second time didn't leave me panting for more. I'm not sure if my reaction is strange as it seems there are people who swear by this dish. Beats me why.

Nevertheless, my research into this dish leads me to rethink this as something more popular or mainstream then I initially thought. After all, Paul Prudhomme, the American celebrity chef has a recipe for this which would give the dish an air of legitimacy. This isn't just some screwball I-got-drunk-one-night-and-thought-three-birds-would-be-funny meal. In fact, it seems that the whole idea of cooking more than one bird or more than one animal together has been around for a long, long time; centuries if not millenniums back to the Romans.

Apparently the roasting of several birds or animals has been documented for centuries. The only restriction for some of this cooking is that it was more for the wealthy. Hmmm, not everybody could afford three birds at once? What, they had turduck? Or ducken? Or maybe turken? [laughs]

Wikipedia's article on turducken talks of a company called Hebert's Specialty Meats in Maurice, Louisiana where supposed this dish started in America. According to a story, a local farmer brought in his birds and asked the company to prepare them a certain way and the company has continued since 1985 to make the dish. Their web site says they sell about 3,300 turduckens per year.

I see that there are variations on this dish. A "gooducken" is a chicken stuffed in a duck which is stuffed in a goose. In England, there are various multi-bird roasts including a five-bird roast: a goose, a turkey, a chicken, a pheasant, and a pigeon, stuffed with sausage.

Some newspapers have run stories about how people, in search of something new for the holiday season have decided to replace the traditional turkey with a turducken. Really? Is this thing catching on? Other than the American woman, I've never been anywhere else when somebody has offered me that dish. For me, it seems like a rarity.

Then again, maybe the world has moved on to something else. According to this Twitter entry:

Turducken stories are out of date. This year's hot trend is turducklambhamcowen.

O... M... G... ! :-)


References

Wikipedia: Turducken
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turducken

Wikipedia: Whole Stuffed Camel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_stuffed_camel

About.Com: How to Make Turducken Recipe - Step by Step Recipe
http://homecooking.about.com/od/turkeyrecipes/ss/turduckensbs.htm

Turducken by Chef Paul Prudhomme
http://www.chefpaul.com/site.php?pageID=300&view=186

2010-12-16

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When I grew up, Mom made this from time to time as a family treat. Considering my childhood dates back to the 50's, it would seem this recipe has been floating around for years.

During my travels, I have eaten a lot of different cheesecakes but this recipe is unique in how it is so different from traditional cheesecake. Oddly enough, I had eaten Mom's recipe exclusively as a kid so in my teens when somebody finally served me a regular cheesecake, I first said, "What the heck is this?" I thought all cheesecake was like Mom's!

To this day, I must admit that whenever I bite into a cheesecake, in the back of my mind is the memory of what Mom made so my taste buds express a little disappointment. I have to mentally prepare my sense of taste for accommodating the flavour of the traditional cheesecake. Ha!

So, to the diehard purists, this is not a traditional cheesecake. In fact, somebody may argue that the only thing cheesy about this is how this recipe is very much a poor man's... or poor woman's cheesecake. Nevertheless, it's easy; it's fast and judging by the reactions from people, it's good. There is no cooking so this one can even be left to the last minute.

Ingredients

• 1 ½ cups of graham cracker crumbs
  Or 2 cups if you like a thicker crust.
• 1/3 cup of margarine
• 2 envelopes of Dream Whip
  Yes, the "dream" in my "dream" cherry cheesecake turns out to be Dream Whip. Ha!
• 1 cup of milk; ½ cup for each envelope
• one 8 oz. package of cream cheese
• 1 can of cherry pie filling

Puttin' it all together
For the base, mix the graham cracker crumbs and the margarine together. The original recipe from Mom added brown sugar to the mix but personally, I found things to be sweet enough so I always leave this out. Spread out the mixture into a rectangular pie dish making sure it is evenly tamped down. You want the mixture just on the bottom of the dish, not on the sides.

You want the crust to be somewhat hard; after all, you are going to cut this and want to be able to serve it with a cake knife. If you are doing this at the very last second, you can stick the entire dish in the freezer for 10 minutes in an effort to solidify the mixture.

Mix up the 2 envelopes of Dream Whip according to the instructions; this entails one cup of milk; that is ½ cup of milk per envelope. You'll need a mixing bowl and a beater but if you have an electric beater, so much the better. A half teaspoon of vanilla for each envelope is mentioned but I always leave this out. Okay, I'm a lazy cook but I can say that nobody has complained!

By the way, the original recipe included icing sugar. Believe me, you don't need it. This thing is already sweet enough to throw your recommended daily intake of sugar off for a week.

Once you have the Dream Whip whipped up which means it is now thick, you want to blend in the cream cheese. If you're doing this with a hand beater, you're going to want to do this a piece at a time until you've put in the entire package. If you have an electric beater, heck, throw in the whole package at once! Let's let the machine do all the work!

Spread your Dream Whip mixture evenly over the crust.

Now, the original recipe talks about refrigerating this to help it solidify. If you've got the time, go for it. But if this is a last minute panic, you can once again make use of the freezer. If you are really, really pressed, go on to the next step.

Spread the can of cherry pie filling over the Dream Whip mixture. If you're doing this in one go, be careful. The Dream Whip will not have the hardest of consistencies so you want to make sure that in spreading out the cherry mixture you do not end up inadvertently blending the two mixtures. With the Dream Whip soft, there is a tendency of having the cherry filling mix with the Dream Whip instead of spreading out over top of it. This is supposed to be three layers: crust, whipped middle and cherries. Try to keep it that way.

True Story: The crust
Years ago I whipped this dessert together for the family when we had some guests. I did include the brown sugar and I think in "winging it", I inadvertently used too much brown sugar and butter. When I got around to serving it, I literally could not cut the graham cracker crust. I ended up having to get a butcher's knife and had to saw my way through the crust in order to serve up the pieces. I think it was even dangerous to bite down on the crust; you had to suck it for a bit before chewing it.

I was slightly embarrassed in front of our guests but everybody in the family found this quite funny especially since I am well known for not being much of a cook. Afterwards, we were laughing about my blunder but the kids claimed it was the best crust ever! They apparently enjoyed sucking on the pieces of hardened graham cracker crust.

Final Word
I admit to not being a cook. Consequently, if I can do this, anybody can do this. The plus side of the recipe is, once again, that you can whip this one up at the last minute and have something of a reasonable quality. I know those aficionados of traditional cheesecake are probably going to be horrified but as I said, this is what I grew up on so for me this is really what "cheesecake" is.

Bon appétit. :-)

Note: My apologies to dltk-kids.com. They had the perfect image of this type of cheesecake so I... ah, borrowed it.

2010-11-30

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When I was growing up, my mother told me to add a touch of oil and a pinch of salt in the water before boiling spaghetti. When I got out on my own, not being much of a cook, I never bought oil and rarely used salt. As a consequence I never followed my mother's advice. Through trial and error, I discovered the best recipe to end up with perfectly cooked pasta. Well, the best recipe for me as I was trying to minimize the amount of work involved in cooking spaghetti and said recipe did not entail oil or salt.

Out of curiosity, I thought I would go back and take another look at this age old technique of cooking pasta and find out if there is any truth to it or not.


Raising the boiling point of water with salt
Water boils at 212° F or 100° C. According to eHow: Adding salt to water raises the boiling point. This is a scientifically measurable effect, but it takes 2 oz. of salt to raise the boiling point of 1 litre nearly 2 degrees F, so the effect is not noticeable in your average kitchen.

According to Google, 1 ounce is equal to approximately 28 grams so 2 ounces are equal to 56 grams.

According to Wiki Answers, salt weight about 6 grams per teaspoon or about 18 grams per tablespoon.

To raise the temperature of boiling water of just 1 litre of water from 212° F or 100° C to 214° F or 101° C, we would have to add 2 ounces of salt or 56 grams or slightly more than 9 teaspoonfuls or 3 tablespoonfuls of salt.

Adding oil to the boiling water
In checking with several web sites, the consensus seems to be that oil is not necessary. Many of the recipes don't even mention it at all so the following two examples which do mention it are the exception.

HotToDoThings.Com: How to Boil Pasta
Some recipes will call for you to add oil onto the boiling water. You may or may not prefer to do this. Oil will keep pasta from sticking onto the pot or clumping together. But it will also prevent the pasta sauce from adhering to the pasta, thereby reducing the flavor of your food. If you decide not to use oil in boiling your pasta though, make sure you stir the pasta in the boiling water regularly with a wooden spoon. Stirring will help keep the pasta from sticking together or sticking onto the pot.

CookingIndex.Com: How to cook pasta properly
It is hard to work out where this idea came from originally but 44 per cent of Americans say they add olive oil to the cooking pan. I suspect the idea is that the oil will stop the pasta sticking together in the pan but what it in fact does it to coat the pasta with a thin layer of oil which means that the sauce you serve with it will not stick to the pasta properly.

If you have used enough water and remember to stir your pasta regularly as it is cooking, it will not stick together. So there’s no need to add oil.

Adding salt to the boiling water
While the consensus is to use salt, there are an addendum. First, if for health reason - a low sodium diet - you can leave salt out altogether. Secondly if you do use salt the amount varies from a pinch up to several teaspoonfuls.

eHow.Com: How to Make Spaghetti Noodles
Many Italian chefs recommend salting the cooking water liberally so that it is "as salty as the Mediterranean Sea." Don't worry--most of the salt won't end up in the pasta. But cooking spaghetti noodles in heavily salted water infuses them with flavor and seasons them in a much more effective way than salting them after the fact. You may reduce the amount of salt if you are watching your sodium intake.

HotToDoThings.Com: How to Boil Pasta
When the water is nearly boiling, add about two tablespoons of salt, as this will help bring out the pasta's flavor. Use coarse salt (kosher) for this. Don't worry about adding too much, as two tablespoons is necessary for a properly seasoned pasta meal. If you are on a strict diet however, you must reduce the quantity to what the doctor has ordered. Don't add the salt before the water has been boiled as this will slow down the boiling process.  At the same time, very hot water keeps salt deposits from damaging your pots. If you put the salt in before the water is even hot, you allow deposits to stay in your wares and sometimes these are harder to remove.

About.Com: Busy Cooks: How to Cook Pasta
Add salt. Salt makes pasta taste better, and won't appreciably increase the sodium level of your recipes. Use 1 teaspoon per gallon of water (3.8 litres). At that level, 2 ounces (56 grams) of uncooked pasta (1 cup cooked), the FDA serving size, absorbs about 20 mg of sodium which is about 1% of the recommended daily sodium intake.

Yahoo Answers: Boiling pasta + oil & salt? Answer #4


Testing Salt vs. No Salt
Just by chance, I discovered a small test done by 2 students. They set out to answer the question about whether salt is necessary to cook pasta.

Is Table Salt Necessary To Cook Pasta?
They set up a controlled experiment where they cooked pasta in 3 pots, one with no salt, one with 5g of salt and one with 10g of salt. They cooked the pasta then tested the water for salt content.

The results of their 3 tests were that there was more salt in the water after cooking the pasta than before. Their conjecture is that pasta releases salt into the water and that salt must come from the flour.

Let me repeat that as it certainly baffled me when I read their paper. There were 3 pots, one without salt, one with 5g added and one with 10g of salt added. They cooked the pasta then tested the water afterwards. In all 3 cases there was more salt in the water than before the pasta was cooked. In other words, the pasta did not absorb salt; it released salt into the water.

I am sure that you like me are incredulous and have a hard time believing this to be in fact true. Unfortunately I have been unable to find any corroborating evidence elsewhere so for the moment until somebody else steps up to the plate I am going to leave this aside as a curiosity.


A Julia Child Recipe
I found this recipe which is supposedly an original Julia Child creation

Fill a large pot with water, add a good sized pinch of salt, and heat water until it comes to a boil.

You will note that the great lady herself is suggesting no more than a pinch, yes a pinch of salt in the water.

Conclusion
From going through the above, I arrive at these conclusions:

• Adding salt and saying it's to raise the boiling point of water is not true. It seems you would have to use way more salt than anybody in any of the above recipes would suggest.
• Most do not even mention using oil. The others that do mention it say it's not necessary; I think I only found 1 recipe which did say to use it.
• The amount of salt to put in varies from "a pinch" to a couple of tablespoons. Who could possibly taste a pinch? Some say for salt restricted diets, just leave it out. In light of that, just how important is salt? I think this is more of a tradition than a necessity.
• I can't find any other experimental data to back up what the students found in their test: pasta does not absorb salt; it releases salt into the water. If this is true however I'm going to be laughing because it completely disproves an entire tradition.

Can my sister tell the difference?
A little aside to explain my position on using salt.

Years ago my sister insisted I butter both slices of the bread when I made her a sandwich. When I asked why she explained that she liked it. I said that nobody could tell the difference. She said she could. Of course you can see where this one is leading.

I made her a sandwich leaving out the butter but told her that I had used butter. She ate the sandwich and said it was good. I then revealed my ruse but she wouldn't believe me at first.

My point was that the quantity of butter in a sandwich like tuna fish for instance is so negligible that any possible taste of butter would be completely lost in the mixture of tuna, mayonnaise and whatever you may add into the mix like celery, lettuce and possibly tomato. The fact that my sister failed to recognise the lack of butter proved my point.

The same goes here with spaghetti. The quantity of salt in the overall experience of spaghetti noodles, tomato sauce, Parmesan cheese and possibly meat balls is insignificant and I would defy anybody to be able to tell if I had used salt or not. I think that even if I put together 2 identical plates of spaghetti, one cooked with salt and one cooked without, you couldn't distinguish one from another.

FYI: Butter can be an excellent addition to sandwiches if you are going on a picnic. If the time from making a sandwich to the time you eat the sandwich is going to be lengthy, there is a risk that the bread will absorb any filling which may be more liquid than solid. Mayonnaise for instance will soak into the bread making for not the most pleasant sandwich experience. Putting butter on both slices can actually protect the bread, sort of sealing the slice from soaking up any filling like mayonnaise. So yes, butter can have its place.

My final word
Okay, I'm no cooking expert but what I'm saying here comes after cooking spaghetti for the past 40 years.

I never use oil. It's just not necessary.

I never use salt. I agree that there is more than enough salt in whatever sauce I'm using and considering I like lots of sauce, I could never categorize the pasta as being bland as some have declared elsewhere. A bland spaghetti noodle? Who eats a noodle all by itself without sauce so as to judge it as being bland?

It is of the utmost importance that the water is boiling, I mean really boiling before you put in the noodles. If you do this before the water is actually boiling, you are going to end up with noodles stuck together in a big mess.

Stir. You have to stir the cooking noodles. If you don't, they may stick but worse, they may stick to the bottom of the pot. Actually, I usually find a few stick to the bottom no matter what but filling the pot with a little dish soap and hot water afterwards and letting it soak takes care of that problem.

I always dump the spaghetti noodles into a sieve or colander then rinse them with hot water. I find the noodles can be sometimes and somewhat gooey from the starch being released during the boiling. Some of the sources already listed above have said salt stops this but I can't refute this with documented evidence. I'm just telling ya what I do and it works!

So, no oil and no salt. Mom would have been so ticked off with me. :-)

Buon appetito!


References

WonderHowTo: How to cook pasta properly (a short video... they use salt!)
http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to-cook-pasta-properly-143017/

2010-11-10

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