What is it with America and its meatloaf? I’ve never made a meatloaf until the other night, and with this one simple act, I think I’ve solved many of this country’s problems.

Meatloaf is not a quick and easy meal. Seriously people, if this is the way you all cook, it’s no wonder that America eats out 4-5 nights a week on average. I’d eat out too if all of my meals took multiple steps and over two hours from start to finish. Put a piece of fish on a grill pan and roast some broccoli and sweet potatoes. You’ll have a delicious, healthy meal in a half hour.

It is not fun to make a meatloaf. It’s fun playing in a sandbox. I enjoy rolling ginger cookies into balls and coating them with sugar. I do not ever again want to take my wedding rings off in order to plunge my hands into two pounds of cold, raw meat and mix. With. My. Hands. I may as well have been swimming in Maine’s oceans, for crying out loud. We’re talking severe pain deep within the blood vessels, too cold for words. I’m so sure this was a job for my KitchenAid. I’ve washed my hands three times and there is still crusty raw meat stuck under my fingernails.

But it’s all OK, because I’ve just made the world’s most delicious meatloaf and I’m beginning to understand what you people see in this dish.

I never, ever watch the news, but when I saw Stephi’s of Boston’s recipe for cheddar meatloaf, I decided it was finally time for me to participate in this American pastime of meatloaf-making. As usual, my recipe looks absolutely nothing like hers in the end; I don’t even use cheese. I will always thank Stephi for her inspiration and perhaps I’ll even attempt the cheese someday.

Debbie’s Gourmet Meatloaf

Ingredients:

• 1 pound ground turkey, dark meat
• 1 pound ground beef, 85%
• 1 egg
• 1 medium onion, chopped and caramelized
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• 2 tablespoons tamari or soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1/3 cup ketchup
• 2 teaspoons grainy mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon oregano
• 1 tablespoon fresh basil, chopped
• 1 slice of bread toasted and food-processed (or 1/2 cup bread crumbs)
• salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix the egg and the next 6 ingredients in a large mixing bowl and then add the meats, oregano and basil and salt and pepper to taste. Mix with your hands (or for crying out loud, try your KitchenAid) until completely blended. Fold in bread crumbs until just blended.

On a cookie sheet lined with foil, form a loaf with mixture and coat with salt and pepper. Bake at 375 degrees for 1 hour, fifteen minutes or until 160 degrees in the center.

I served my meatloaf with a giant mesclun salad and that’s all. Well, OK, the five-year-old dipped it in ketchup, but he does that with everything.

If you’ve been following along at home, you know that I’ve never made baked ziti before. Part of me knows why I’ve been avoiding it: it’s a lot of steps, and a lot of dishes! But this particular recipe had a hook that convinced me it was time to try it. It makes enough for two casseroles, and one pops right into the freezer. I’ve become a monster when it comes to having easy meals ready, so I thought it would be worth the time and the mess.

What’s the verdict? Was it worth the sink full of dishes and the time spent on the multiple steps to make this casserole?

I’m on the fence with that answer, mostly because I’m a food snob. Baked ziti … wait for it … is a plebeian dish. When I can make a pasta dish that is more innovative than this one, with more unique flavors and less steps and dishes, I’m not sure why I’d choose this sausage and pepper baked ziti recipe.

That said, we couldn’t stop eating it, even though it was in the back of my mind (and yes, it did come out of my mouth too) that this was a meal that would fit in with the all-you-can-eat pasta buffet at the likes of Olive Garden. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing, but for a food snob, it does become a factor.

In all honesty, it was very delicious and with just a few tweaks it could be pretty amazing:

• I’d add some frozen spinach next time.
• It also needed some spices, so I’d probably just mix in an Italian spice blend or Trader Joe’s 21 Seasoning Salute. This was in the back of my mind while preparing it, but I wanted to be true to the recipe for a test drive, and I thought maybe I was underestimating the sweet Italian sausage.
• Fresh basil would go a long, long way in this dish.
• As would some feta cheese.
• The vegetables would have more flavor if browned instead of (essentially) steamed.

By the way, I was right — it was a huge mess!

I’m curious, I really am. This recipe for chocolate truffle cake is low-fat and has absolutely no butter in it. Really, the only fat comes from the low-fat milk in the recipe.

This is a problem for me on so many levels. First of all, I embrace fat in my diet. Butter? I’m all for it (as long as it’s organic). Coconut? Bring it on.

Also, the only flourless chocolate cake I have ever made is pretty much chocolate, butter, eggs and sugar, so I find it hard to believe the texture would be anything but … well, icky without the creaminess of the butter.

People, if you’re going to do it, do it right. Eat the most decadent flourless chocolate cake you can make, and enjoy just a sliver. Why make something you’ll only sort-of enjoy when you can indulge with willpower and make every bite be the perfect flourless chocolate cake experience.

With that said, here’s the recipe for flourless chocolate cake that I’d recommend. It’s my go-to and it’s perfect in every way, especially if you add a nice raspberry coulis to the plate.

I suppose if you’re allergic to good-tasting foods or something then the low-fat recipe might be for you. In all seriousness though — has anyone tried anything like this? Is it even worth eating? If just one person tells me it’s amazing, I just might try baking it. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be forced to eat my words along with the cake.

Join Debbie as she raves about whole foods, rants about chemicals and generally celebrates cooking and eating with fresh, local, nutritious foods. And sometimes she might get a little feisty….

Words cannot describe the perfect day of apple picking we experienced last weekend. Picture this: a gloriously sunny autumn day in New England, some of our favorite fellow foodie friends and a potluck picnic at the only organic apple orchard in Massachusetts. We really couldn’t have asked for much more, except… pretty apples.

Note the above picture, for those are our crop of green crisp apples (with a few Liberty and MacIntosh thrown in). Don’t get me wrong, they are completely delicious in every way and not in the least bit inferior to conventionally grown apples that are sprayed with, you know, lots of poison. But try telling that to the four-year-old.

It seems that any blemish on the skin of an apple constitutes a personal affront to Owen. To me, the little lumps and bumps on the apples are akin to the empty bag of skin that is my lower abdomen from carrying Owen for nine months — something to be proud of! They are like “the little apples that could”…. against all odds of wet weather and lack of sunshine this season, those organic apples grew strong. Despite not being sprayed with any protectants, pesticides, fungicides… they grew into the perfect fruit that we enjoy today.

Incidentally, if you’ve never had a green crisp apple, you are really missing something. They are super-crisp and just tart enough, the way I like an apple. You can have your whimpy red delicious, folks; give me a tart apple any day of the week.

And just in case you have more apples that you can chomp and enjoy, you could try making our favorite fruit crisp recipe with your extra apples. We did, and served it with some homemade vanilla coconut milk ice cream, using this recipe but omitting the cocoa powder and adding an extra teaspoon of vanilla extract.

It’s getting that we can’t eat unhealthy in major cities across these United States. In a growing trend, Baltimore has limited the amount of trans fats to less than 0.5 grams per serving. This means the local diner (with the waitresses who call everyone “Hon”) will serve lard-less cherry pies and french fries in peanut oil rather than partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. If you want to have your arteries hardened and blood pressure increased you’ll need to go outside the city limits.

I’m of two minds on this (in addition to the two minds I already have). On one side I can see the benefits to regulating these products; reduction and monitoring of trans fats leads to healthier and happier population, especially in a city like Baltimore, where heart disease is one of the leading causes of death.

On the other side, why should a city monitor trans fat intake when it should be the responsibility of the individual?

I wouldn’t say this is Big Brother looking over everyone’s shoulder to keep things under control. It’s more like Big Brother looking over everyone’s shoulder because everyone is lazy and doesn’t keep their own eating under control. Trans fats are bad; that’s agreeable. However, with a proper eating plan (not diet … I hate that word) and some exercise, trans fats won’t do the damage they would normally do if someone ate a whole bucket of fried chicken infused with the stuff.

Cities really shouldn’t be putting these programs into effect. Face it, we go to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston to chow down on the fattening stuff we can’t get in the suburbs. It’s up to the individual in those cases to control the amount of cheese steaks they devour or the amount of cannolis they consume at Mike’s Pastry. Reducing the amount of trans fats isn’t going to reduce the health conditions of the populace as long as they continue to eat the way they do.

What do you think? Does monitoring of trans fats (and in some cases, sodium content) really help the population of a city become healthier?

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Commence rant.

Alright, I have a bone to pick. There is something that’s been gnawing at me for a while and this past weekend it finally came to a head. I was browsing the internet, looking for appetizer recipes trying to find something that I could bring to a cookout. I kept going back and forth between my favorite two recipe websites: Epicurious and Food Network.

I was consistently discouraged, because I was making one vital mistake in my search for the perfect recipe: I was reading the online reviews and comments.

Now, as a blogger, I love comments and commenters. Seriously, I didn’t even realize just how amazing it would be to get comments until I started doing this whole blogging thing. Now, they are like crack to me. I don’t even have a problem with all the people spreading negativity over the web in blog comments. I’m pretty much doing it in this post, so I don’t want to be a big hypocrite. What I do have a problem with is people who decide to make a recipe, change ingredients or don’t follow instructions, and then completely slam it in the comments and reviews.

Being a notorious recipe doctorer myself, I don’t blame people for tweaking recipes to their own liking. I do, however, have a problem when they do this and then decry the recipe as a bad one. It seems like every recipe I went to had comments from people who thought the recipe was just horrible, the worst one they had ever tried… oh, and by the way, they substituted five ingredients, baked something that was supposed to be grilled, and left out another two ingredients. It’s great that people want to voice their opinions, but really, until you learn how to follow a recipe, I don’t want to read yours.

I found myself falling into the trap of dismissing countless recipes because of something one commenter said. Finally, I let my normally over-inflated ego take charge and decided that I know better than any of these anonymous cooks.

In closing, I would like to encourage everyone to try recipes that they find online, and by all means, please leave a comment. If you leave out some ingredients, though, or skip steps, keep your opinion to yourself.

End rant. Sorry.

I normally have glowing things to say about Whole Foods Market. In fact, I would almost consider my coverage biased at this point I love the place so much. However, today things change. Alright, so they don’t change that much because I still love my Whole Foods. However, they have let me down recently, and I want to share the story.

I know that conventional wisdom says that you should never grocery shop while hungry. I find that I tend to make far more compulsive purchases when I shop thirsty. I gave up just about all sugary and flavored drinks a couple years ago, pretty much sticking to water, orange juice, and booze. However, if I’m particularly parched while in the market, I tend to buy Italian sodas and iced tea.

On such a recent visit I found myself checking out the Italian soda rack. I was looking for my favorite flavor (grapefruit), but was disappointed to find it unavailable. What I did find was a large bottle of Whole Foods brand mint sparkling water. My mind immediately drifted off to thoughts of a large pitcher of ice cold water with fresh cut leaves of mint floating in it, giving it a refreshing subtle flavor. I picked up the bottle, figuring it would be delicious and thirst quenching.

When I got it home, I popped it open and poured it over some ice, taking a big swig. I had expected a subtle mint undertone, what I was met with instead, however, was an overpowering fake tasting peppermint flavor. It was literally like drinking carbonated toothpaste. That doesn’t sound very appealing does it? It shouldn’t, because this sparkling water was anything but appealing. Why Whole Foods? Why?

Has anyone else tried this? Am I alone in my opinion?

Lauren’s back Guest-clacking for us again, after last sharing with us her diatribe on the atrocity that is mayonnaise.

I wouldn’t want anyone to think from my last post that I am a picky eater. I am, but I don’t want you to think that because I hate mayonnaise. Indeed, there are foods out there that other people looooooooathe — like I loathe the dreaded mayonnaise — that I just love.

My love of the fungus took a long time to procure. One of my first memories is sitting in preschool, in a big circle, and our teacher asked us to tell the class what our favorite food was. To say I was painfully shy when I was a kid is like saying Waterworld was a little bit terrible — a vast understatement. I was nearing the point of hyperventilation by the time the circle got around to me, and the only word I could manage to spit out was “mushrooms.” I had never eaten them, never even seen them outside of that one (kinda racist) scene in Fantasia, never had the desire to eat them at all. Yeah, I don’t know.

Well, somehow word got back to my parents that mushrooms were my favorite food and instead of rolling their eyes and going on about their day since kids lie all the time about random crap, WE WENT TO THE GROCERY STORE TO BUY MUSHROOMS. OMGWTFNOOOOO. The rest of the day is pretty hazy for me, but I probably cried a lot. And it took me years to finally give ‘em a whirl.

You have to start small when it comes to new foods, so I think the mushrooms started in good ol’ Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup, probably in a casserole at a friend’s house. The trick is to not tell me what I’m eating until well after the fact. It worked out, because casseroles featuring cream of mushroom soup are delicious. From the casserole came soup, still cream of mushroom but in bread bowls at sandwich places.

Then my dad started making the Holy Grail of mushrooms: marinated portobellos on the grill. OH. MAH. GAH. It’s like steak. STEAK. But it’s a MUSHROOM. A giant, delicious mushroom with a texture like meat. I am not a vegetarian, nor have I ever entertained the idea, but man … if you said to me I could never eat steak again, but rather these delectable fungal steak substitutes instead, I would probably be less inclined to beat you upside the head.

While I get that the idea of eating a fungus is not so appealing to some people, those people just need to get over themselves. I have some good friends, some of whom are even vegetarian, who won’t eat mushrooms. And frankly, it makes-a no sense to me. There are so many different types of mushrooms to try! Spinach and porcini mushroom quiche? YUM. The portobello mushroom sandwich with spinach, goat cheese, and roasted red peppers at Caliente here in Richmond? DEAR GOD, YES PLEASE MORE OF THAT. Spinach, mushroom, and Vidalia onion pizza with feta? IN MAH BELLY! Mushrooms on salad, mushrooms in dips, mushrooms in lasagna, mushrooms atop a hamburger with onions! Truffles! More mushrooms! All the time! The flavor and the texture just meld together to form a perfect union, and their uses are plenty! Hooray!

Look, all I’m saying is that I gave mayonnaise a chance — over and over. And it did nothing but disappoint, enrage, and sicken me. But you mushrooms haters who have never had mushrooms because you can find them growing on a rotted out log? MISSING. OUT. So go on, give mushrooms a chance. You might be pleasantly surprised. Or maybe you’ll want to throw up. But at least you’ll know, and I’ll still think you’re wrong.

To the owners of restaurants, diners, cafes, bistros, and grease trucks…Hi! Let’s talk about menu items, shall we?

Over the past weekend I partook in one of your eating establishments. I won’t mention the name in order for you to avoid undo embarrassment. Let’s just say that it was a diner in a state on the East Coast of the U.S. that normally isn’t known for its diners. While perusing the menu board for the day’s specials, I came upon the list of vegetables that were being served. Among those listed were Squash, Buttered Corn, California Blend, and…macaroni & cheese?

Of course, I was a bit mystified about this since I normally don’t see mac & cheese in the produce aisle of my local supermarket. Eventually, I chalked it up to confusion on whoever wrote up the specials. I mean, macaroni is normally made with some form of grain, and grains are grown in the ground like many vegetables. And cheese…well, cheese is made with milk, and that comes from cows. Cows walk on the grass, which is on the ground, which is where most vegetables are grown.

So, like I said, there could’ve been some confusion. That is, if the confused person was living in a parallel universe where macaroni & cheese was actually a vegetable! Come on, guys! Who are you trying to fool by putting mac & cheese on the menu as a vegetable? It’s like ketchup being considered a vegetable in school cafeterias during the 1980s, or Paris Hilton being considered an actress, or Rush Limbaugh being considered the voice of the Republican Party. In other words, it’s not believable.

Oh, you could chalk it up to laziness. But that would make the error even worse since the laziness would be connected with blatant ignorance. You start forgetting those things and, the next thing you know, you’re forgetting table orders, charging customers the wrong amount, and not flushing after you do a number two. Soon enough, the world is in chaos, you’re mixing meat with milk, and people are bringing assault rifles to health care town halls (oh, wait, they’re doing the last thing now).

There was an easy way to avoid this pretty visual error: change the heading from ‘Vegetables’ to ‘Sides’. Really, all it would have taken was a dry eraser, a dry marker, and someone who knew how to spell ‘Sides’ to make this change. Ten seconds at the most. Then, you wouldn’t have had someone like me writing this post up for everyone in the Interweb to see.

Look, I’m just an average citizen (albeit, a handsome one with incredible writing skills) who wants to make sure the world is safe from the simplest, idiotic action. That’s why I’m giving you fair warning about mislabeling your specials. Take a few minutes to proofread your stuff before posting it out to your patrons. And, don’t even think of putting sweetbreads on the dessert menu. If I see that, then I’m coming to get you!

Today’s Guest-clacker, Lauren Delaney, works an incredibly exciting day job at a box factory, like John Locke from Lost. Unlike John Locke from Lost, she has a kid, loves to bake and drink (sometimes together, sometimes separate), and possesses no knowledge of how to slaughter a wild boar.

I am a woman of strong opinions. From politics to food to worthless reality celebutards, I have something to say about any and all of it. But nothing, and I mean NOTHING, not even Michael McDonald, arouses my ire more than mayonnaise. I will not call it “mayo,” because giving it a nickname somehow humanizes its putrid existence, like it’s trying to be beloved by all.

Well I for one will not stand for it! Mayonnaise is, quite frankly, The Devil. It is the most vile of all condiments. Sandwiches worldwide have been ruined by its wan pallor and sickly thick consistency (thinking about it now is making me mildly nauseous). The British and Dutch ruin their delicious chips and frites with mayonnaise.How can two seemingly innocent ingredients of eggs and oil come together and make such a nefarious concoction? The black magic of science, probably. (I’m not a food scientist, so the details aren’t very clear to me, but I think something called emulsion happens, which just sounds awful.)

The fact is, I don’t understand mayonnaise. The flavor is mild, though disgusting. It brings nothing to a sandwich. Now mustard? Mustard has flavor! A bright pop for your turkey and cheese! Be fancy — get some spicy brown or go all out and get the Grey Poupon! How delicious!

Also, the texture of mayonnaise is just… disgusting. It’s thick and creamy, but in the same way as old dairy products, not in a good, custard-y way. Mustard has no such texture! It is light and undetectable! A perfect complement to a BLT.

Mayonnaise is, in short, the worst thing to happen to the world. Oh, it has its place. Like if I want a tuna fish sandwich, a teaspoon of mayonnaise can go in, but only if I hold my breath so I can’t smell the rancid stench wafting through my kitchen while dropping it into the bowl. Occasionally a remoloude will be able to pass my lips, but only if heavy on the other ingredients and topping the greatest crab cake ever made. Only a smidge, though. And of course there are various dips and dressings, but, let’s be real people. They’re made so much better when you up the sour cream (mmm… sour cream) and downsize the mayonnaise.

You can flap your yap all you want about Hellman’s vs. Duke’s or how wonderful homemade is, but you’ll never sway me from my stance that mayonnaise is the worst thing in the world. Mustard wins all the time. I’ve sent sandwiches back before because they’ve had mayonnaise on them. Don’t think I won’t do the same in your house. Because I totally will.

Join Debbie as she raves about whole foods, rants about chemicals and generally celebrates cooking and eating with fresh, local, nutritious foods. And sometimes she might get a little feisty….

Inspired by Bob’s post on when cooking becomes cooking, I was pondering today how fresh something has to be so that it can be considered fresh. This is really a question with many layers, so those of you who poo-poo the frozen vegetable aisle, listen up.

Those of you who stick your nose up at canned vegetables, keep on doing that. There is never a good reason, nutritional or taste-wise to eat a sodium-soaked, soggy vegetable from a can. That’s not entirely true: canned beans are a completely inspired invention that are to be glorified by everyone, no holds barred. There’s not really such a thing as fresh beans anyway; canned or dried are pretty much your choices.

As I yanked some severely limp scallions out of my fridge tonight to use in a fresh tomato salsa I whipped up for our grilled halibut, scallions that were freshly picked from our CSA farm just a few days ago, I wondered how many nutrients could be left in the shriveled little tubes. I know they weren’t stellar examples of crops from heaven, since it has rained for almost two months here in the northeast, and I don’t look so pretty when I’m waterlogged either, but they sure didn’t look as fresh as they were.

So then I started wondering how disgustingly old the produce in the supermarket must be. It’s traveled a long way, and even though it might look OK, we just learned that looks can be deceiving. Is all that plumped-up pretty produce weeks old? Is the shriveled red pepper that’s on sale left over from last season’s harvest? You never know.

That’s why buying local is such a great idea, beyond supporting local agriculture and saving the environment by reducing fuel usage needed to transport produce. It’s a lot easier to know what you’re getting if you go to the local farm stand, farmer’s market, CSA farm — even your own yard!

So back to my thought at the end of the first paragraph, which leads me to believe that the entirety of this post was one huge digression: are frozen vegetables actually fresher than fresh ones? This idea has been tossed around a bit though the years. Over at Eating Well, they think that off-season frozen veggies retain more nutrients than the fresh ones, even though they are blanched before frozen. Since they are picked fresh and ripe and frozen right away, they beat the non-local fresh veggies.. interesting.

Is there even an answer to my original question, “How fresh is fresh?” I’m going with local whenever possible, and trying to freeze as much as I can myself so I know where it’s coming from and that it hasn’t been blanched. What do you all think?

Last night I wanted to whip up a simple and quick dinner. For some reason I was in the mood for that delicious and classic combination: sausage with peppers and onions. In the past, however, I’ve had bad luck cooking fresh sausages. It’s really easy cooking up those sausages that are already fully cooked because, well… they’re already fully cooked. When I’ve tried to use my trusty grill pan on the fresh sausages, however, I’ve ended up with uncooked centers and blackened sausage skins. This isn’t a great combination, especially when it’s a chicken sausage, unless of course you enjoy food poisoning.

In order to avoid another undercooked sausage I turned to the place where all good chefs turn with questions — their mom.

I recalled that my mom had a particular method for cooking fresh sausage, but couldn’t remember what it was. Here’s the trick: simmer the sausage in a pan with water (reaching about halfway up the sausages) for 8-10 minutes, turning the sausages half way through the cooking time. Make sure that you prick some holes into the casing so that some of the fat can leak out as they poach. Then, drain the fat and water from the pan and sear the outsides of the sausage to your desired brownness.

I tried this method out last night, and let me tell you, it worked perfectly. My sausages were perfectly cooked and a good amount of the fat was removed too. They were probably still jam packed with fat, but at least I felt like I was doing something good for myself. I sliced up those puppies and enjoyed them with sauteed onions and peppers over a bed of quinoa. Delicious.

Am I the only one who had a problem with fresh sausage in the past? Is this a well known technique that I just wasn’t privy to?

Yes, you can make the argument that anything you get at a restaurant can be made at home for a fraction of the price, but my belief is that I’m paying the extra money at least in part to have somebody more talented than I make my dinner. However, when it comes to a frozen grocery store veggie burger, there’s not really anything anyone can do with it that I can’t do myself, leading to the whole affair just feeling like a disappointing ripoff.

This is why, for years and years and years, I loved Ruby Tuesday. You guys, they had this veggie burger that, while I’m sure was frozen and shipped in from parts unknown, was amazing. It was thick and meaty, and flat-out the greatest veggie burger I had ever had during my nearly thirty years on this planet. Even my friends who would never eat a regular grocery store veggie burger would talk about how amazing this thing was. It never failed to make me happy, and when I moved to New York and no longer had access to it, I would often lie in bed in my non-air-conditioned, shoebox apartment and dream about the delightful patty.

After not having one for a few years, I had pretty much learned to live without it — then I got pregnant. I got pregnant and my baby spoke to me often. Usually he said, “hey, why don’t you leave the office and go down and get a burrito bowl from Chipotle? Yes, I know that it’s Thursday and you’ve had one for lunch every day this week and the people behind the counter know your name and it’s getting a little awkward because you’re crazy fast food burrito lady, but I NEED GUACAMOLE NOW, WOMAN.”

Sometimes, however, he would whisper to me at night. He would whisper about Ruby Tuesday, and the most amazing veggie burger in the world. So one night, when he wouldn’t stop talking to me, I busted out the laptop and did a little search. By this time we were living in Jersey City, so as it turned out, the Ruby Tuesday was coming from inside the house.

Okay, not really. But there was totally one about 11 miles away in Elizabeth. Even better, it was right across the street from the Ikea. Swedish housewares and the best veggie burger in the world? We could make a day of it!

And make a day of it we did. Several times. I would just think up reasons why we needed to go to Ikea. “Hey, Luke. Don’t you think we need new, uh, salt and pepper shakers? How about some frames? Are we good on lamps? What about bookcases? Do we perhaps need more? No? What if I buy more books? Then will we need to go to Ikea and buy more bookcases and perhaps work up an appetite that we would need to sate in a conveniently located mid-price chain restaurant? Hmmmmmm?” Eventually he would take pity on my crazy, pregnant ass and we’d make the trip and my baby would be happy once again.

Eventually, the kid was born, and instead of “crazy pregnant lady,” I was “super-hormonal new mom who had no idea what she was doing and was on the verge of a nervous breakdown every second of every day.” To combat this, I would still try to get out of the house with the baby as much as possible. This is how I ended up back at that same Ruby Tuesday with a month-old infant and an appetite for the best veggie burger in the world.

When we sat down and the waiter gave us our menu, I knew something was different. The menu had gotten larger and boasted fresh ingredients. Generally fresh ingredients is a good thing, so I didn’t pay much attention to the new development. I made sure my beloved veggie burger was still on the menu and ordered. Then everything went horribly wrong.

The waiter brought me a sandwich — in that a sandwich can be defined as two slices of some sort of bread with a food-type filling in the middle. The thing between the two halves of the bun though, could never, ever, by anyone’s definition be called a burger. Now I understand that some people like Jeff would scoff at me even calling a veggie burger a burger, but OH MY GOD, this was something else entirely.

I still don’t really know how to accurately describe it, except it seemed to involve rice and … beans? Molded into some sort of vaguely circular patty-type object. If you knew my family you would know exactly what it looked like, because my sister is a ridiculous individual, and whenever she goes to a Mexican restaurant, she gets a giant bean burrito that she then cuts and mashes up until it’s a warm, brown, soupy mix of vomity-looking goo. That’s what this “burger” reminded me of.

I tried, you guys. I waited tables for a long time, so I am loathe to complain about anything in a restaurant. I had one bite, though, and that nervous breakdown I had been staving off nearly occurred right then and there. I don’t exactly remember what happened next; I probably whimpered something sadly to Luke and then blacked out. The point is, at the end of it, I had a salad instead, and, as far as I know, the best veggie burger in the world no longer exists.

I’m all for eating well and eating fresh food; I know that America in general and I, specifically, rely too much on processed foods and that they’re terrible for you. Once in a while though? They’re the greatest things on earth. But Ruby Tuesday took that thing away from me, and that’s how a mid-priced chain broke my heart.

Granted, this highly-expensive bowl of potato chips is part of the Hospitality Menu of Paris Las Vegas, but it’s still over-the-top. According to the menu, each bowl represents 1 pound of potato chips. You could buy a 1 lb. bag of chips and a nice bowl at the local Wal-Mart and pay much, much less. By the way, potato chips aren’t the only $25 snack on the menu. You can also order pretzels, Goldfish, or fancy mixed nuts (they wear tuxedos). And, if you want dip, that’s an extra $10 added to the cost.

But, that’s not all! If you’re having a large group over to your room to watch the big game you’ll need to cough up an additional $2.50 per person, plus sales tax. And if it’s a group of ten or more, a 20 percent gratuity is automatically added to the bill. In the end, that $25 dollar bowl of chips could run you almost one hundred dollars!

Look, I know it’s Vegas, and I know some high rollers couldn’t give a gold-encrusted poop to the cost of a bowl of potato chips, but this is a tad bit insane even for Sin City. I’d just recommend going down to the gift shop, purchasing a few $3 snack bags of chips, a few $3 bottles of water, and calling it even. Use the money you save on gambling, buffets, or call-ahead hookers.

Join Debbie as she raves about whole foods, rants about chemicals and generally celebrates cooking and eating with fresh, local, nutritious foods. And sometimes she might get a little feisty….

Oh, coconut chocolate chip cookies, I am beholden to your beauty … your golden brown edges, your mountains of chocolate, your hills of coconut. You are divine. If only I could eat you….

But alas, you are filled with refined sugar, processed wheat flour, non-organic butter and everything else that I have worked so hard to remove from my diet over the years. You were not baked for me and my family, but for a bake sale. It was hard work, but I found a way to cater to the masses and save myself some money by baking with ingredients that haven’t seen the inside of my shopping cart for years. I hope someday I can come to terms with the fact that I’ve contributed to the poisoning of my town.

Here are some tips on how to ditch your healthy ways — and ingredients — and bake for people who don’t seem to mind — or maybe don’t know — that they are damaging their liver, blood glucose levels, insulin levels and risking cancer and heart disease….

1. Use regular flour. No one cares about your sprouted spelt flour, they really don’t (although I bought unbleached flour for the same price as white; there’s only so many concessions a gal can make!).

2. Resist the urge to cut the amount of sugar in the recipe by half. You can cut it down just a little bit; no one will ever know and you’ll feel better knowing that you poisoned the masses just a little less than you could have.

3. Akin to number one, just buy regular chocolate chips. No one cares about your precious grain-sweetened ones, especially in a recipe that stands on its refined sugar content.

4. Even though it has been said that if you can only buy one thing organic, it should be butter, since there is such a high concentration of pesticides in butter, even though that’s a scientific fact, even though pesticides can act like synthetic hormones in the body causing all sorts of cellular damage … I bought and baked with non-organic butter. Forgive me, Lord, for I have sinned. I cannot claim ignorance.

5. Save your local, free-range eggs for your tasty frittata or eggs over easy; buy the cheapest ones you can find. You won’t be imparting a high content of omega-3s to your cookie recipients, and they’ll probably get some unwanted antibiotics in the process, but you probably won’t go to Hell for it.

6. Make coconut chocolate chip cookies and chocolate chocolate chip cookies. Chocolate chip cookies are best sellers at any bake sale, and it’s fun to have a variety of specialty cookies to offer your buyers.

7. Relax and have fun; it’s just one day and you don’t have to eat them… just bake them and raise some money for your good cause!

Let’s talk about food allergies for a moment.

About ten years ago, I met a good friend of Deb’s at the wedding of a mutual friend. During cocktail hour, hors d’oeuvres were being passed around, one being some sort of stuffed mushroom or something. This friend of Deb’s grabbed one of these niblets of food and, just as it was about a millimeter from touching his lips, he decided to ask the server if it had shellfish in it. In fact, it was stuffed with crab meat.

“Oh! Well I can’t have that then,” he said, and he tossed it out.

“What would happen if you ate it?” I asked.

“Oh, my throat would close up, I’d go into anaphylactic shock and might die; I’m severely allergic to shellfish.”

Uh, wow. This guy was a mere millimeter from death! What if he hadn’t asked? Well, he’d be dead or at least would have been a huge downer to the wedding reception. Total buzzkill.

My son has food allergies, so I’m no stranger to having to ask the ingredients in foods. Deb, as you know, is mayophobic, so that question comes up … a lot. Being allergic to a food means, if you don’t spit it the hell out, you should be very nervous about what you ate — you might have to have someone standing at the ready with an EpiPen! What, though, do vegans and mayophobics do when they realize they’ve eaten something they strive to stay far away from, but it won’t endanger them?

An in-law of mine was once served some yummy cherry chocolate chip ice cream. He was loving it and was nearly finished the bowl, when he found out it was actually soy ice cream. Immediately he said he thought he felt ill and threw the rest of the dessert away. Sorry, but what the hell? You were enjoying the hell out of it a second ago!

Seriously, I’m curious about this. To borrow from commedian Zach Galifianakis, what do vegans do if they eat a tasty pepperoni pizza and find out later the mistake they made? “Man, that was a tasty pepperoni pi … ah FUCK!” Do you induce vomiting? Go into severe depression? Are you banned from the club? I want to know!

Today’s Guest-clacker, Andrea, is a food enthusiast and all around geek with an interest in where her food comes from. Her interest in healthy eating comes from growing up in a household where processed food was limited, and a family that practices nutrition as preventative medicine. Her blog, Andrea the Gastronaut (a reference to a children’s song by a Canadian duo from the ’80s) can be found at https://www.canadianfoodiegirl.com.

Food Inc. begins with a stroll through the supermarket from the point of view of a grocery cart.  The camera cuts between a supermarket tour and individual price signs and food labels superimposed with opening credits a la Weeds. The accompanying music is reminiscent of the score from a Tim Burton film as if to forewarn ominous or frightening events to come.

The film ends with a call to action, a list of steps that one can take to affect change.

In between the film is shot like a book. The opening credits serve as the introduction, or the prologue.  Each titled section – or chapter – of the movie discusses a different food issue. Each chapter is a commentary on how big corporations are affecting our food with help from the U.S. government. The story becomes somewhat of a horror movie. The impact that big corporations have on farmers is frightening. Decisions affecting farmers are being made by company executives miles away far removed from the consequences.

Scarier are the revelations about Monsanto and how far they’ll go to protect the patent on their genetically modified seeds. One can almost imagine that Monsanto has hitmen working for them and that anyone caught saving Monsanto’s seeds could meet violent consequences. This isn’t far from the truth. Monsanto is a litigious company when it comes to protecting their patent.

Food Inc. introduces some of America’s farmers who are working under the food processors. It shows the illegal immigrant workers, arrested and deported at night as to not disrupt the food production during the day.

And the consumer? No one is safe from the affects “big food.” Not meat eaters, not vegetarians. Filmmaker Robert Kenner states that we’re creating foods that are making lower income people sick because we’re subsidizing certain foods that are not healthy. 90% of supermarket food has corn or soy in it because these crops are government subsidized. These products cost less than fruits and vegetables.

There’s a poignant scene in the film in which a low income family visits the supermarket. Dad is diabetic and spends much of his truck driver’s salary on medication. The mother and the younger of the two girls are obese. Dad laments that broccoli, at $1.29 per pound, is too expensive. The younger daughter asks for pears but at 99 cents per pound the family can only afford two or three. Her request is denied. Mom looks on, appearing despondent. In an interview she expresses sorrow: “Sometimes you look at a vegetable and say, ‘okay, well we can get two hamburgers over here for the same amount of price.'”

Not surprisingly, the big food corporations all refused to be interviewed for the film.

What can we do about this? Vote at the cash register, with our wallets. Demand change. Walmart started carrying organic products because there was customer demand for it. Gary Hirshberg of Stoneyfield Farms justifies his association with Walmart by saying that the more space that his products take up on shelves, the less space there is for non-organic products.

Hirshberg appeared on an expert panel for a Q&A that took place following the preview screening that I attended.

The irony of people eating popcorn and soda while watching the film was not lost. At one point during the screening a woman in the audience shouted out acknowledgment of that fact. It’s an issue that one of the panelists raised as well.

Food Inc. is difficult to watch. Some images are gruesome; so much so that you might shield your eyes. Animals were harmed during filming. The film is a wake up call, a depiction of ideas brought forth in books such as Fast Food Nation and Omnivore’s Dilemma. It is a call to action. If you’ve read books about the food industry you might not learn much, but the images are extremely powerful. It’s like watching the film version of a book, with less left to the imagination. The issues aren’t new but the stories are.

Food Inc. opened in LA. and New York last Friday and opened YESTERDAY in Toronto and many other cities. Check Food Inc.’s website to find out when it’s playing in your city.

View the trailer:

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2sgaO44_1c

For example: Is it really so complicated to cook hot dogs that one needs a specialized rotary grill to cook them?  Deion Sanders thinks so.

If your dad doesn’t like football, or doesn’t have a kitchen the size of a football field, maybe he’d prefer a hot dog toaster. Nothing says “I love you, Pa!” like “Delicious Hot dogs In Minutes!” Toasted hot dogs? Has the world really come to this? Whatever happened to a pan on the stove? Or a grill? Or forgoing hot dogs all together for sausage, which is much tastier and probably has fewer pigs’ ears in it?

Speaking of grills, this Rocket Grill has got to be the saddest excuse for a grill I have ever seen. At least the George Foreman grill leaves grill marks. The Rocket Grill appears to be ginormous, and you’ll need to buy special parchment bags, and, okay, fine, the Amazon reviewers kind of love the thing, but that doesn’t sound like grilling to me! I don’t know about you, but I like to think about my dad grilling outside. With his big grill or smoker. And a big slab of pork ribs. Or heck, even some zucchini and portobella mushrooms. Not with a plastic thing and parchment paper in the house.

Okay, forget the cooking contraptions. Maybe something for serving food instead? How about the Snac Daddy Food Tray? I don’t know about you, but whenever I serve buffalo wings, I’m always deeply concerned about where to put the bones. A bowl by the tray of wings just never worked for me. I think I should make my guests pick up the entire tray of wings with one hand so they can discard their bones underneath the remaining wings instead. No unsightly mess! Until someone tips the whole darned tray over entirely, that is….

I could go on forever and still not catalogue even a tiny fraction of the sheer nonsense that is the specialty food gadget industry. Besides, isn’t that what Gadget Clack is for? So, take it from me, if you want to buy your Dad something totally unsuitable that he’ll never use, stick with an ugly tie. At least that won’t take up precious cabinet space!

Happy Father’s Day, Daddies of the world! Thanks for all you do!

Even sadder: It’s finally spring and very nearly summer. There are greenmarkets full of fresh vegetables to eat, if only I were to exert the effort to find them. And wash them. And slice them and dice them. And clean my kitchen after I’m finished eating them.

And suddenly I remember why I’ve been eating takeout lately: Cooking takes effort! And I’m tired!

Now, I know when I started this column way back in January, I was all gung-ho about making quick, easy, healthy foods for myself. But lately, I’ve lost my inspiration. Part of it is force of habit, I’m sure. I typically work until 7 or 8 pm, and honestly, I’m hungry by 6 pm. So I eat in the office cafeteria or order out. On weekends, when I’m not sleeping in until 1, I spend a lot of time running around.  I may be working, traveling out of town, or going out to eat with friends, but I’m not doing much cooking.

As I sit here, my falafel dinner still a rock in my belly three hours later, I am convinced that something has got to give. I’m tired of SeamlessWeb. Tired of palak paneer from Baluchi’s, the Mediterranean salad from Cafe Metro, the tuna mac from that mac-and-cheese-only restaurant near work, the quasi-enchiladas from any “Mexican” restaurant in a 20-block radius from my office, the Cuban-style panini from the French bakery around the corner. I want nothing more to do with any of it!

Of course, when I think about it rationally, I know that I’ll be happier if I cook for myself more often. The food I make is so much healthier than restaurant food. I like the flavors better, and even when I go to my local over-priced grocery, it’s probably still cheaper. And frankly, takeout usually takes 20-30 minutes to arrive at my apartment anyways, so it’s not like I’m saving myself that much time.

Can you help me out, CliqueClackers? Have you any encouraging words? Bright ideas? Challenges? I’m at a loss! What do you do when you’re lacking inspiration in the culinary department?

Annie Boyd, today’s Guest-clacker, is a freelance photographer (and part-time blogger) in Fairfax, Virginia who has spent the last six months devoid of all things fast and most things boxed/canned. She is free to eat whatever she wants to now. And she will!

Six months ago, I took a TB skin test. Six months ago, it came back positive. Now, I’ve lived in five different countries, and visited god knows how many others. It took a meeting at work for me finally come in contact with a TB germ-filled sack of ass. Six months ago, my doctor handed me a few pieces of paper which detailed the foods I could no longer eat due to their tyramine and histamine content. No alcohol, because these meds destroy your liver. I also couldn’t eat anything pickled or smoked. No chocolate or caffeine, either. And, as I would soon come to learn, I could eat nothing with soy.

Most of these things were a “try it and see what happens” kind of thing. Everyone’s bodies react differently to meds. I managed to put some things back into my diet (tomatoes and mushrooms), but soy remained the one thing that my body, now with veins pulsing full of Isoniazid antibiotic, would freak the fuck out over. The headaches were unbearable. I tried to go back to my doctor and ask for some migraine pills, and she said no. My headaches were being caused by my blood pressure spiking. She said to quit messing with the soy, unless I really wanted to have a stroke.

Poo.

Have any of you guys out there taken a look at what you’re eating? Have you read the list of ingredients? I developed a major respect for people with allergies and intolerances. Soy is in everything. Everything. Soy lecithin, soy flour, soybean oil.

I lost 50 pounds.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I didn’t eat. I created my own delicious dishes. I made my own stews, soups, fries (those didn’t turn out too well), Chinese food, pancakes and bread (that turned out fantastic). But I still craved. Oh, did I crave. I went from picking up McD’s breakfast every other weekend to not being able to eat a simple waffle.

Tomorrow I take my last dose of Isoniazid. Tomorrow is my last day of being a slave to ingredient lists, or asking what something is fried in. Tomorrow is my last day of being forced to stay away from coffee and tea. Tomorrow…. *sigh*

My friends have asked me what my first meal will be. What will be the first thing that I put between my lips and suckle with fervent bliss?

Holy crap … what will it be?

I can’t really go apeshit on Saturday. As much as I want to. The meds will still be in my chemistry, and it’ll take about a month before my body is really free to enjoy whatever it wants to. My family and friends are planning a big 4th of July party … full of booze and cheese and strawberries and chocolate. We’re gonna call it, “Annie Can Eat Again!”

So, here’s to the past six months of living in a strange and foreign world. Here’s to the future of trying new things, and rediscovering awesome (and not so awesome) foods.

Now, where’s my margarita?

I have been posting here on CliqueClack Food for a while now. I have really enjoyed bringing my simple recipes to everyone, and I have gotten some really good replies and suggestions from many people. I have promoted the site on my blog and on twitter — you can follow me at jelo45110 if you like — and I have brought CliqueClack Food to several people that probably would not have found it. I have had my differences with Kona and her crazy ideas about chili with no meat. I have also gotten requests from people I know at work and from people I know on Twitter, so this has got me to thinking.

Up until now I have been writing my posts using the recipes that I like. I have not paid attention to how healthy or unhealthy my recipes are. I just cook what I like and share those recipes with everyone here. After reading Kona’s post, Why don’t you just eat a burger?, I really got to thinking. My parents raised me to respect other people’s choices in life. Just because you don’t agree with their choices does not make them wrong. I certainly have not been as bad as the jerk mentioned in Kona’s post, but I have been pretty close.

So I have been looking into Vegetarians, low carb, diabetic restrictions and I have come to the conclusion that none of it makes any sense. I am totally lost. I want to expand my repertoire and maybe I will learn something in the process. So I am asking you, the readers and writers of CliqueClack, to help me out. What are your dietary restrictions? What will you eat? What won’t you eat? I have made it clear that I will eat pretty much anything slathered in bacon grease.

I know that Kona and Cate have restrictions on what they will eat because there are some vegetables that they just do not like and will not eat. As summer is fast approaching and the fishing season is beginning to pick up, I intend to have some good fresh fish recipes coming up soon. I know some vegetarians that will eat fish, some that will only eat certain kinds of fish, and some that won’t eat any fish. As a confirmed and life long meat eater I am not looking to change. I do, however, want to be able to invite a vegetarian to dinner and offer them something more than a bowl of lettuce or a mushroom sandwich.

I have some members of my own family that have type 2 diabetes and have to watch what they eat so I have some experience with that.

I know that Keith and Debbie have restrictions on goat’s milk and gluten because of food allergies their son has. I have known others that have been gluten intolerant and have tried some of the food they ate. It had very little flavor and I would rather eat cardboard than some of it. I know I am supposed to be writing recipes but this has been bothering me for a while and I really need help from all of you so, thanks for reading my ramblings and helping me out.

Thank you.

… or vice versa. Either way, I can’t seem to eat enough cherries when they’re in season. Strangely enough, I used to think that I didn’t like cherries. Then, I moved into a house with a backyard that could only be described as an orchard, with three cherry trees, each a different variety.

The biggest tree is a black cherry tree. It’s also the first one to bloom and the first one to ripen. There are so many cherries, most of them go to ruin and it’s just a shame, but we also give away a ton (to whoever wants to brave climbing up the giant ladder to pick them!), and eat as many as we can. This year I also made an awesome strawberry/black cherry compote, the recipe for which I will soon post that, combined with pancakes, was one of the most delicious things I’ve ever eaten in my life.

We also have a sour cherry tree, which I still haven’t really gotten into very much. They are, after all, sour. The worst thing about them, though, is that the majority of the cherries on this tree are made into live-in pantries for tiny worms. I don’t know why it is that the sour cherry tree is the only one that is infested year after year, but I think it might have something to do with the fact that they’re the last to ripen.

But the one that really turned me into a hardcore cherry addict is our relatively tiny Rainier cherry tree. I didn’t know what they were called until maybe last year, but for the most part, I didn’t care because I was too busy shoveling them into my mouth. If you’ve never had a Rainier cherry, you are missing out. When they are perfectly ripe, they look almost pinkish-red on one side, and the other is a creamy yellow color, as is the flesh inside.

The flavor and texture of Rainier cherries is unbeatable. While black cherries are sugary-sweet and a little on the soft side, Rainier cherries are a little more firm and chock full of cherry-berry flavor, with a wonderful tart note. It’s strange, because they have one of the highest sugar contents out of all the varieties of cherries. After my dear husband took the time to pick over a gallon and a half of cherries off the tree, I can’t tell you how many times I passed by the gigantic bowl of them that we kept on the dining room table, and found myself in a cherry coma ten minutes later.

After doing a little bit of research, I realized that for those of you in the States, Rainier cherries haven’t even come into season yet! Do yourself a favor at the end of this month or the beginning of July and check to see if your local fancy-dancy grocery store is carrying them, because whatever they cost, it will be worth it.

I’m a tea snob because the only tea I will drink is white tea. Black tea is too strong; drinking it, I get the same strange icky feeling in the back of my throat as if I had just downed a shot of vodka. Green tea is too… green. And often bitter. Herbal tea can be okay, but I usually want some caffeine. White tea is just perfect and delicious. It has less caffeine than green or black tea, but it is there, just enough.

I’m sure I would love white tea brewed with a tea infuser like Keith uses — they just don’t sell loose white tea here! I am okay with it though, because during my first ever Makro excursion recently (which I was really way more excited about than any grocery shopping trip deserves) I found Tetley Mandarin Orange White Tea in drawstring tea bags.

This tea is awesome. Yeah, okay, it has “orange flavoring,” which I know isn’t all that wonderful, but it also has some actual bits of Mandarin orange in it (as opposed to bits of real panther). The awesomest thing about this tea though, is the drawstring. Seriously? I bought it because it was white tea. But the drawstring won me over.

I always hated trying to use a spoon and the little paper tab thingie to squeeze out a teabag before throwing it away. I burnt my finger doing it every time. And it would still drip all over the place before I got it in the garbage can. With the drawstring tea bag, all you do is rip the paper where it’s perforated, and pull in opposite directions, and it actually works. I haven’t burnt my finger or dripped any tea anywhere once since I got them. And that, my friends, is a damn good reason for me to keep using them.

Let me preface the following with the disclaimer that I am not a doctor, I don’t play a doctor on TV and have zero authority in telling you or anyone else what’s going to make you sick or well. The following and preceding is for informational purposes only. But it’s good information, because it’s from me.

I once wrote about how much I hate when restaurants don’t believe me when I say I want my meat cooked medium-rare or my fish cooked rare. I grew up always ordering my meat cooked medium, but now that just seems too much to me. Nevermind medium-well or (gasp) well-done!

I get that undercooking meat can be risky due to foodborne nasties and such. It’s the overcooking of meat that I’m here to clack about, because I’ve seen way too many people do this, and it’s not only gross (to me) but unhealthy (for you)!

The results of studies have been released, many of them recently, informing that overcooked meat — more specifically, meat that’s been blackened on the outside — contains cancer-causing carcinogens that you really don’t want to be ingesting. As far as I’m getting from the results of these studies, you do not have to worry if you’re blackening sauces or herbs on the meat, just the meat itself. The art of “blackening” meat does not mean blackening the meat itself — you’re charring the herbs that coat it.

With the nice, warm weather comes more grilling, which means there are more chances people will be overcooking and charring those poor, defenseless pieces of chicken and beef. There are two key rules you should first follow when you’re grilling meat and want to avoid charring it:

1. Stop eating well-done meat.

2. Turn the freakin’ grill temperature down!

Number one might be tough for some people, and if you can’t go there then you may as well just stop reading now. For some, step two is easier said than done, but I’m here to tell you it is easy.

I’ve witnessed way too many grillers throw a piece of meat on a grill and kick the temperature up to its highest setting. Of course, this only relates to people using gas grills, but you can just as easily regulate temperature on a charcoal grill by not overstoking it nor emptying a can of starter fluid on the coals. The problem with keeping your temperature up so high is that you’re very much at risk of overcooking the outside of the meat, leaving the inside undercooked. Then you get into doing the unforgivable — cutting into the meat to make sure it’s done. Or, at risk of firing squad, you do it more than once.

A few of key things to add to steps one and two above:

3. Make sure your meat is completely thawed first.

4. Stop cutting into the meat to check it — you’re letting the juices out!

5. Meat will keep cooking after you take it off the grill.

Yes, you read number five right. You want to take the meat off the grill once you figure it has a couple of minutes more to cook. The heat is retained in the meat, so it’s going to keep cooking a bit once you take it off. So, if you keep the meat on the grill for that couple of minutes more that you figure it needs, it’s too late — you dried it out or charred the hell out of it.

Keeping the heat down to medium will help lower the risk of charring the outside of the meat and will make sure you get the heat to the inside before charring occurs. Gas grills have several temperature settings for a reason, otherwise there’d just be an “off” and “high” switch.

So, there you have it. Stop overcooking that steak and chicken this summer and start enjoying life a little more. Finally guests will come over to truly enjoy a “juicy” steak and not that hockey puck you keep plunking onto their plates.

An final note regarding barbeque sauce. Please don’t put the sauce on before you grill. You’ll enjoy it much more if you put the sauce on the meat when there’s only five minutes more grill time left.

That night I decided to make some sauteed broccoli, scarily similar to the recipe Bob posted recently. It has to be my favorite way to cook (and eat!) broccoli. Yet, the first bite I took, I realized there was something was … not quite right. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I just was not enjoying my food.

At first I wanted to blame the broccoli, but I could tell it was fresh when I bought it, so that couldn’t be it. After a couple more bites, I knew the culprit was the purple garlic. It’s strange because I could swear I’ve used purple garlic plenty of times before — my neighbor grows it. Maybe I just never used it in a dish where the flavor really stood out.

I can’t quite say what was wrong with the flavor, just that it wasn’t what I wanted from my garlic. This has happened to me before, when I accidentally bought elephant garlic to make garlic bread. Although, a quick look at the Wikipedia page in the link tells me exactly why I don’t like it — it’s actually a kind of leek, which means it’s more like an onion, which means it is awful.

As for the purple variety though, I don’t really understand. I could only describe the flavor as kind of … musty. Which is just not how I want anything that I eat to taste. All signs point to it being perfectly fresh as well, though.

And if you remember from the beginning of my story, I bought five heads of the stuff. I’m sure it’s not a total loss, it’ll probably get pureed into tomato sauces and used in recipes where it will have to compete with stronger flavors. As for the broccoli though,  I couldn’t finish it, which is just a shameful waste of perfectly good veggies. Lesson, consider yourself learned.