What the Food?!? - Grāpple Apples

The other day, Russell brought home something that has inspired me to start a new blog topic to celebrate all food & food-like products that should not exist; at least not in my own opinion (or diet). I have decided to title this topic "What the Food?!?"...or WTF?!?

To start off this new category, let me introduce you to the Grāpple. Pronounced "grape-l," not "gr-apple."

As the name suggests, this fruit is a combination of an apple & grapes. It is not a genetically engineered/modified hybrid fruit. According to the manufacturer, a Grāpple is a Fuji or Gala apple that has been given the flavor of concord grapes via a "bath" of artificial flavoring agents & water. And since the actual composition of the apple is not changed, the nutritional value of a Grāpple is the same as the unaltered apple it is made from.

A package of 4 Grāpples sells for $3.99 @ my local produce market. The price is not exactly expensive as the same amount (in weight) of Fuji apple is $3.61 and the same amount (in weight) of Gala apple is $2.70.

When Russell brought the package home, my first impression was being taken aback by a overwhelming, artificial fragrance. It reminded me of cheap grape-flavored candy...even worse than grape-flavored cough syrup!! On appearance, all 4 apples had some sort of defect such as bruising or rotten spots. When I took my first bite, the flavor of the fruit was not grape'y as promised on the package. The texture of the apple was OK but it wasn't any different from a normal Gala apple. It took a lot of effort to ignore the grape'y smell but once I was able to do it, I realized the apple itself wasn't even sweet to begin with.

I don't understand why a Grāpple exists!!  Apples & grapes are tasty, nutritious snacks by themselves & they really don't need to be messed with!!  For me, I will continue to eat my apples & grapes separately. The food industry is constantly coming up with novel products to attract the attention of today's consumers; but the Grāpple?? No.

Playing with My Food - Cling Wrap Poached Egg

Our cat has a strict routine.  Every morning @ approximately 5:56am Sheldon would reach his claws under the blankets & "play tag" with my toes.  After being threatened to get kicked off (literally) the bed a couple of times,  Sheldon would proceed up to my pillow where he'd settle down comfortably next to my head & begin to munch on my scalp/hair.  On a work day my alarm goes off @ 6:00am so it's not usually such a big deal; but on the weekends when I don't have an alarm, it's really annoying.  So what does Sheldon's morning ritual have to do with what I'm writing about?  I'm getting to it.

This past Saturday morning Sheldon gave me the usual morning call & after giving him breakfast, I was desperately trying to fall back asleep.  You see, it was GRE day & for me, standardized testing and sleep deprivation just don't mix.  One tried & true way to get me to quickly fall asleep is to have me watch a show - any show - while in a comfy position (e.g. in bed).  So I picked up my phone, opened up Netflix, & began browsing for something to watch.  As I scrolled, I stumbled upon a PBS show called The Mind of a Chef featuring chef David Chang of the Momofuku empire. Did I mention the show is produced by Anthony Bourdain?  Anyway, the plan was to watch this show for 10-20 minutes, fall asleep, & go on with my day.  I finished the first episode (~20 minutes); then I watched the second episode; then I woke Russell up & we watched the 3rd episode; then we got out of bed & watched more episodes until it was time for me to leave to take the GRE. To say I was hooked on the show is a little bit of an understatement.

The GRE went well enough & the rest of Saturday passed with Russell & I stuffing our faces with oysters before heading home to watch more episodes of Mind of a Chef.  This pattern of "obsessive viewing" continued for parts of Sunday when all of a sudden Russell decided he was going to try out one of the cooking techniques featured in the show; the one where David Chang poaches eggs in little packets made of cling wrap.

The process is simple...
     Put a good-sized piece of cling wrap over a small bowl or ramekin
     Spray the cling wrap with a little bit of non-stick spray & sprinkle on some salt & pepper
     Crack the egg into the cling wrap & bring up the sides, making sure to remove all the free air
     Take a piece of string or a strip of cling wrap& tie off the packet.
     Place the packet into barely boiling water & let it cook for 4 minutes
     Careful unwrap the packet & remove the cling wrap from the egg

When we unveiled the egg it looked a lot like a ball of fresh mozzarella cheese but once we cut into it, the gooey yolk started to run out just like a regular poached egg.  According to other recipes for cling wrap poached egg, you can use any kind of oil & seasoning to flavor the egg before it is cooked.  This technique for poaching eggs is so quick & simple compared to the traditional methods of making a vortex or adding vinegar to the water.  Before I knew about this technique, my eggs would either get stuck at the bottom of the pot or half of the egg white would float off in little chunks.

Later on in the show chef Wylie Dufresne (wd~50) demonstrates his interpretation of Eggs Benedict & he remarks that Eggs Benedict is a dish made with eggs topped with more eggs (Hollandaise sauce is made with egg yolks).  This was a total lightbulb moment for me!  It's so obvious I can't believe I had never seen it like that before.  I repeated this statement to Russell & he said the idea of egg-on-egg is too "gratuitous." To simply matters, we came up with a brilliant idea: to replace the egg yolk with Hollandaise sauce.  Now we just have to experiment until we can get it done.

Risky (Meat) Business

After years of resisting, I finally broke down & got myself a Twitter account a few months ago....for the sole purpose of being able to conveniently stay up-to-date with the rest of the world.  One morning a few months ago, the American Public Health Association posted a tweet that read:

Ground beef & chicken are the riskiest meat & poultry products in the U.S. food supply, says @CSPI

I had no idea what CSPI is or how it came to that conclusion, but it appealed to my inner PH260 (principles of infectious disease) nerd & so when I got home from work that day, I followed the link on the tweet & downloaded the report.

To start off, I found out that CSPI stands for the Center for Science in the Public Interest.  Founded in 1971, CSPI is a 501(c)(3) non-profit consumer advocacy group that focuses on nutrition and food safety in the United States.  Thank you, Wikipedia. [1]

In this report, CSPI compiled and examined 1714 food-borne outbreaks that occurred in the US between 1998 and 2010. [2]  To make sure they can make a clear link between a particular meat product & an outbreak, the report only included outbreaks that were fully investigated by the CDC & were definitively linked to USDA-regulated meat & poultry products.  Of all the outbreaks examined, 564 did not have a known etiology, or pathogen.  Each of the 1700+ outbreaks were categorized into 12 groups according to its associated meat or poultry product.  To determine the foodborne disease risk of each group, CSPI calculated a "severity score" which is equal to the sum of the number of cases caused by a particular pathogen multiplied by the CDC-defined hospitalization rate of that pathogen.

Severity score of a meat/poultry product = ∑(cases)_i(hospitalization rate)_i

Now to to some results.  At the top of the list with the highest severity score is chicken.  Within the 12-year period examined, there were 452 outbreaks - totaling 6896 cases of illness - associated with this poultry.  The most common pathogens found in chicken were Salmonella and Clostridium perfringens.    Second on the list is ground beef with 336 outbreaks & 3800+ cases of disease.  The most common pathogen associated with ground beef was E. coli O157:H7 which caused approximately 38% of all cases.  Over the 12 years, outbreaks have led to the recall of over 70 million pounds of ground beef.  At "high risk" are steak, beef (other), and turkey.  At "medium risk" are deli meats, barbecue meats, pork, and roast beef.  Finally, processed meats such as chicken nuggets, ham, & sausages are in the "low risk" category.

Most people - if not all - have experienced at least 1 episode of foodborne intoxication/infection & it is not fun.  While most people get away with diarrhea and vomiting, many have been hospitalized & some  have even died from ingesting contaminated or improperly cooked meat/poultry.  I am a meat eater, I think meat is delicious, & reading this report is not going to stop me from eating meat.  And it shouldn't stop you either, if eating meat is your thing.  However, this report does remind me that I - along with other omnivorous & carnivorous human beings out there - should always make sure that my meat products are stored properly & that they are cooked to the right temperature.  To take this 1 step further,  it would be even better if we grind our own meat so we are assured that the end product we get started from a single source.  It's not possible for a lot of people (me included) to grind their own meat; in that case, choose products that specify a single origin (e.g. ground from whole turkey breasts).  I can't say these claims are 100% trustworthy, but that's a whole 'nother issue that I'm not prepared to tackle.

References:

  [1] Wikipedia. Center for Science in the Public Interest. Accessed 1 July 2013.

       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Science_in_the_Public_Interest

  [2] CSPI. Risky Meat: a CSPI Field Guide to Meat & Poultry Safety. Washington DC.  2013.

       https://www.cspinet.org/foodsafety/riskymeat.html

Simple Yet OCD-Satisfying Menu Planner

This is a really typical conversation in our household:

     R: What are we having for dinner tomorrow?
     K: I don't know.  What do you want?
     R: I don't know.  Whatever.
     K: Well I can defrost something.
     R: Nah...
     K: We really shouldn't go out.  How about chicken?
     R: I guess...

This particular conversation ended with the next night's dinner being chicken; but not all conversations end with staying in.  Because of our lack of planning & preparation, we end up eating out quite a bit; filling our bodies with junk & draining our wallets with unnecessary spending. As part of my new year resolution to take better care of myself, I needed to figure out something that would help me better plan my meals.

I remember seeing a few pins on Pinterest for menu planners so I thought I'd try my hand @ making one.  While these fancy shmancy menu boards featured on Pinterest are great, they are way too complicated to make & too intense for my purposes.  I really don't need handmade gemstone magnets to know what I should eat for the next 2 weeks.  I then did some Googling and saw these really cool menu planners that use a picture frame & you write on the glass with a white board marker.  That's a great & simple idea but I am picky & wanted to have something that will let me see my meals @ least 2 weeks @ a time.  Besides, a decent 10x14 frame can cost about $15.  I wasn't sure what I was going to do until I was walking around Target & saw a white board calendar on sale for $4.  This was perfect!  Nothing fussy, just a straight forward calendar that I can write on & erase as often as I pleased.  I picked up a box of tiny magnets & a pack of whiteboard markers & that was it.

The black is the meals that we're going to eat.  The blue is the starch that goes with the meal.  The green is the vegetable side dish; unfortunately we don't have one for everyday.  The red is for eating out.  The ? is for when I have run out of ideas so we are going to just wing-it the day of.  I also like to look up recipes that I want to try ahead of time, write them down, & keep them on the board with a little magnet.

This is working out really well so far.  We are not eating out as much, we only buy the stuff that we need from the produce market, & I have been trying out new recipes.  As a nice little bonus, my knife skills are getting better.  The entire menu planner "kit" - calendar, magnets, & markers - cost only about $12.  I am pretty sure it has saved me that much already & I haven't even had it for a month.

So why is this menu planner so OCD-satisfying?  Other than allowing me to excessively plan out my life?  If you know me, you know I have this thing about my handwriting having to be perfect so the white board gives me the freedom to easily erase a day's meal & write it over again if I didn't like the way it looked.  I am slightly ashamed to say this, but I have erased the whole board & re-written it before...several times.

Cracking the "Whip" on Heavy Cream

A friend & I were embarking on a little baking adventure when she asked me if I knew the difference between heavy cream & heavy whipping cream.  Great question!  Why do some recipes call for heavy cream & some for heavy whipping cream?  Do they react differently?  Do they taste different?  What exactly is the difference between the 2?

To start off with the basics, cream is the yellow'ish fatty layer that lies on the surface of raw milk before homogenization [1].  There are 8 types of commonly used cream & they are classified by their butterfat content which then defines how well a cream can be whipped & how stable it is [2].

So what are heavy cream & heavy whipping cream?  In the United States, both heavy cream & heavy whipping cream are creams with a butterfat content between 36%-40% [3]. The main difference is that heavy whipping cream contains small amounts of stabilizers & emulsifiers.  Why?

Before the invention of heavy whipping cream, chefs (& probably home cooks too) would try to whip up plain heavy cream only to have it end up curdled because the cream & the utensils weren't cold enough.  To make things easier for the consumers, manufacturers added in small quantities of Monoglyceride, Diglyceride, Polysorbate 80, & Carrageenan - thereby creating the "whipping" aspect - so the cream can be whipped up more quickly & at slightly lower temperatures [4].  This industrialization process not only made heavy cream easier to use, but the increased stability also meant giving the product a longer shelf life (also reduced production cost & greater profit margins for manufacturers; but that's a different blog post all together).

While we are @ it, let's clear 1 more thing up: what is whipping cream?  Not heavy, not light, just whipping.  Well, as you might have guessed it by now, it has something to do with the butterfat content.  In the United States (I guess different countries have different standards), regular whipping cream is a cream that has a butterfat content of 30% [3].

So there, mystery solved: heavy whipping cream is simply heavy cream + chemicals.  According to my research, almost all grocery stores nowadays sell only heavy whipping cream (even if it is not named as such); so for those of you out there who are trying to move away from processed foods, I strongly suggest skimming the ingredients lists before making a purchase or maybe even consider venturing to farmers' markets or diary farms to find natural heavy cream (just make sure it's not raw please!).





















References:
[1] "Cream." Wikipedia. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cream>.
[2] "Types of Cream - Definitions of Cream - What is Cream?" What's Cooking America
      <http://whatscookingamerica.net/Sauces_Condiments/CreamDefinitions.htm>.
[3] "Cream." Joy of Baking. <http://www.joyofbaking.com/Cream.html>.
[4] "Heavy Cream Vs. Heavy Whipping Cream." 5 min: Life Videopedia.
      < http://www.5min.com/Video/Heavy-Cream-Vs-Heavy-Whipping-Cream-517142420>.

De'Caf Or Not De'Caf

That is the question.

For those of you who know me, you know I love my coffee.  To say I am coffee dependent would be an understatement.

I recently read in The Man Who Ate Everything about a French diet which bans caffeine.  As much as I love my sugar'free vanilla Americano, I couldn't help but wonder - is caffeine contraindicated for weight management? Why?  How?  I did some research - nothing serious - and come up with the following:

Caffeine & Weight Management: The Good
     Diuretic.
          Diuretics increase people's rate of urination.  When you urinate more, you lose
          more water.  Therefore caffeine can lead to (temporary) reductions in weight.
    Appetite suppressant.
          Effects are minor & brief.  The exact mechanism is not clear.
     Increases metabolism.
          Caffeine increases thermogenesis - heat creation - increasing the number of
          of calories burnt.

Caffeine & Weight Management: The Bad
     Stimulates production of adrenaline.
          Adrenaline increases your blood glucose level; therefore increasing production
          of insulin.  The insulin will eventually absorb sugars & fatty acids in the blood
          into cells.  The more sugar & fat stored in your body, the more you weigh.

So this basically shows that caffeine does good things & it does bad things. Great.  But what does that mean for people who drink coffee but are trying to manage their weight? Should we keep drinking coffee like usual?  Should we cut back?  Should we go completely decaf?  At this time I don't think there is a definitive answer to these questions; I am not sure if there ever will be a single answer.

Other than weight management, caffeine has also been show to have an impact on other aspects of health.  Most recently, a study conducted by Brigham and Women's Hospital & Harvard Medical School showed that women who consumed 3+ cups of coffee per day had 20% lower risk of developing basal cell carcinoma - the most common form of skin cancer.  Men who consumed 3+ cups of coffee per day benefited from a 9% reduction in risk.

Personally I believe in the cliche "everything in moderation".  Until there is strong evidence proving the beneficial/detrimental effects of caffeine on health, I am going to keep my morning cup.  But just to be cautious, I  think I will only have my afternoon cup only a couple times a week.

A final note, regardless of what type of coffee you like to drink, too much fat & sugar are definitely bad for you.  So whenever you can, try to stay away from the TripleGrandeCaramelMchaccinoWithWhip.

On the iPad - The Man Who Ate Everything

The other night, I was watching Iron Chef America when I heard the familiar phrase: "...he's the man who ate everything...he is Jeffery Steingarten."  Without knowing what the book was about or if it was well received, I downloaded it.  I haven't gotten very far (~10%) into the book yet but right from the start, Steingarten's passion for food & also for learning is clear.  If you love food and/or you're looking for something different to read, check this out.