Pav Bhaji

What do the laws of electromagnetism, the Portuguese, the price of cotton, time zones, vegetarianism, and the American Civil War all have in common?

They came together to invent the iconic Mumbai street dish known as pav bhaji (pronounced: paav bhaaji — the two "a"'s are actually long vowels.)

Every good military general would tell you that the best way to win a war is through economics. The naval Union Blockade of April 1861 which heavily targeted New Orleans (Louisiana) and Mobile (Alabama) made the cotton exports of the South come to a grinding halt. The savvy Gujarati speculators of the old Cotton Exchange in Bombay knew the drill. Rates were wired in and orders wired out late into the night when the corresponding exchanges in Chicago would've been open.

(Bombay made its fortune on the basis of its cotton mills — a fact that is quite clear even today in its geography. The point being that the price of cotton mattered hugely and the American Civil War and the telegraph provided a mechanism to speculate on the price swings. Note that the world was on a Gold Standard back then so that exchange rates between the dollar, the pound and the rupee, which was basically the pound, would not matter.)

The word for trader in both Hindi and Gujarati is dalal (दलाल) — it's not a neutral word. It has a slightly shady connotation to it. No trader would self-describe themselves as a dalal even though that's exactly what they are. It carries with it the negative connotations of both "speculator" and "pimp". The Japanese equivalent is kabuya (株屋) — stock-broker/stock-slinger (= speculator.)

Now you have a bunch of traders working hard into the deep night. They're largely vegetarian. They're rich (or wanna-be rich) but in the classic tradition of rich people, they're also cheap. When you have a demand, a corresponding supply opens up. It has to be fast, tasty, and yes, cheap.

Where do the Portuguese come in?

India had no tradition of baking leavened breads before the 15th-century just like most of Southeast Asia. The Portuguese were responsible for introducing the yeasty bread (pão in Portuguese) which is paav in Hindi and パン (pan in Japanese).

The dish is made from the cheapest of ingredients — potatoes, tomatoes and onions. Plus fried bread. It's a street dish. It's not fancy. You toss in whatever vegetables you have lying around. It's also infinitely configurable with different toppings depending on the individual taste buds.

The critical point is that everything could be made ahead of time. You're basically stir-frying at the last moment. Even the bread could be made ahead of time. It could even be slightly stale because it would be fried again. Every corner that could be possibly cut was actually trimmed. This is one efficient caloric machine.

Needless to say, it was an instant hit.

Nothing's changed since 1861. This dish is still a hit and will continue to be so.

It's endlessly addictive. It's one carb-laden umami-laden butter-laden bomb!

 

Ingredients

(serves 4)

6 small potatoes (or 3 large ones)
8-10 tomatoes

1 large onion (finely chopped)
1" ginger
4-5 cloves garlic

butter
salt

3-4 tbsp pav bhaji masala

chopped vegetables (peas, carrots, cauliflower, french beans — optional)

12-16 pieces pav

Toppings

red onions (finely chopped)
lime
cilantro (finely chopped)

Note 1: Some of the toppings are missing in the photograph. Specifically, the red onions with lime and cilantro. (The toppings are frequently mixed together so you just add as much as you like including the lime juice.)

Note 2: The CC knows that the bread in the picture is not fried. As Julia says, butter makes everything better, but sometimes a little restraint also works. (People also add extra butter on the bhaji itself which is kinda "over the top".)

Note 3: Yeah, the CC is totally aware that the picture below isn't the "real" paav but one must work with what one has in New York not what one wishes one had. It's the closest approximation to the "real thing". The bread pictured above has the right texture — hard exterior and soft interior. It's from a local bakery.

Note 4: For once, the CC is not going to post a recipe for the spices. You are better off buying this at a Indian grocery store. You could do it yourself but the proportions would be all off unless you plan on making a year's supply. Sorry.

Note 5: Note the presence of two different kinds of sourness — amchur (= dried green mango powder) in the pav bhaji masala and lime juice. This is a consistent theme in Southeast Asian cooking. The presence of a dry "mellow" kind of sourness allied with a wet perfumed "fresh" kind of sourness.

Note 6: The CC knows that it's much more tricky to describe a street dish than it is to describe a more conventional one. However, when you are faced with alternatives and problems, the key question you need to ask yourself is "Would a street vendor in 1861 worry about this problem in the middle of the night?" If the answer is no, then the CC says, "Wing it!" Except for the butter, the spice mixture, onions, potatoes and tomatoes, it's all up in the air anyway!

Note 7: If you've ever watched it being made on the street, you'd realize that your puny home cooking range simply doesn't have the BTU's. Additionally, the tomatoes are simply not ripe enough. They toss whole ripe tomatoes onto the sizzling skillet and de-skin them with their spatula. You have neither the heat nor the skill to do so. Do it the CC's way, OK?

Note 8: The vegetables may or may not have been part of the original recipe but they've become "traditional" with the advent of healthier eating.

Recipe

First boil the potatoes. Skin them and set aside. Mash gently.

Pass the tomatoes through a food mill to get just the pulp. If the tomatoes are not completely ripe, you may need to par-boil them for 5-6 minutes each to get them to soften.

Pound the ginger and garlic into a paste.

Heat up the butter in a pan. Add the onions and fry till they turn pink. Do not let them caramelize. Add the ginger-garlic paste and fry for a bit. Add the tomatoes and let it come to a boil. Skim if you prefer that. Let it cook for at least 10 minutes. Add the pav bhaji masala.

Add the mashed potatoes and let it cook for 8 minutes or so. This concoction has a tendency to act like molten lava splashing everywhere so cover the lid partially otherwise you will be cursing the CC.

Taste. You may need to add more pav bhaji masala. It's hard to predict how much exactly.

Split the bread into two without cutting all the way. Take a skillet. Add butter and let the bread fry on both sides. (This is optional.)

Serve the bread, the pav bhaji and the toppings on the side (as needed.)

Saffron v/s Turmeric

The CC comes across endless references in medieval cookbooks for turmeric as a "substitute" for saffron.

They are nothing alike.

Saffron depends fundamentally on smell. You add it as the last or semi-last step to a recipe with the volatile liquids suspended in warm water or warm milk as it were.

Turmeric has a strongly metallic taste that is sui generis. You wouldn't mistake one for the other in a million years blindfolded in your sleep. It would be like conflating cats and cheese.

It's obvious why one would be substituted for the other. Turmeric is dirt-cheap. Saffron costs more than gold. Even today the CC sees these two being "substituted" and he scoffs.

For the record, saffron is the only spice even today that you need to get from a really reputable source. What you get in the routine markets is garbage. They are hustling you silly.

Saffron is so valuable that there are specialized merchants in Spain, Switzerland, and India — the three prime producers — whose only job is to supply unadulterated saffron. They are banners of quality and you can bet your goddamn economic ass that they charge a premium to do so.

Which is still superior to getting ripped off.

The CC has met plenty of people who think that saffron is not "worth all that" and it's "over-hyped". To which the CC can only respond, you've been ripped off all your life. How would you even know? It's absolutely worth all that from pasta to pastries.

Sad, isn't it?

Even in the age of the internet where everything is everywhere, you need reputation to get the good stuff.

Where is the arbitrage, O Nobel-Prize Winnin' Efficient Markets' Theorists of Univ. of Chicago?

The Fetishization of Seasonal and Local

One of the great tragedies of the culinary world is that it is not only faddish but also completely ignorant of science, history, economics, and the mechanics of trade.

In an ideal world, we would all eat seasonal and local but it's not an ideal world. For starters, there are 7+ billion people in the world and they can't all eat locally. An increasing amount of the world's population lives in cities so it is literally impossible that everyone in the city eat locally. It's just a simple mathematical argument about the population versus the amount of arable space and the steepness of its value. (The value comes from the fact that the population provides steep "value" on the economic food chain.)

Simple economics argues against it. The crux of a modern city — and by modern we have to understand that this is at least 500+ years old — is upwardly-mobile cheap labor. The desire to have a better life propels the cheap labor into the cities in the first place. The idea that these people can eat "local" is risible beyond the extreme. If cheap labor propels cities then by definition, it's cheap food that propels the cheapness of the labor.

So cheap means invoking Ricardo's principle of comparative advantage. Source the produce from wherever labor is cheapest and that means Africa, Asia and South America.

Seasonal is another bugaboo.

Places that have absurdly short growing seasons (think: Japan, Korea, Russia, Poland) rely to an unprecedented degree on pickled salted food.

Before World War II, Japan had the highest rate of stomach cancer in the world. It was so high as to be a routine tear-jerker movie cliché most memorably exploited by Kurosawa in his masterpiece Ikiru (生きる). It was definitely due to a heavy reliance on salted, smoked, and nitrate- and nitrite-rich foods (cured meats), the heavy incidence of the bacterium H. Pylori which thrives in stomachs with heavy salt diets, heavy tobacco usage, and above all, the lack of fresh vegetables for all but the briefest of growing seasons.

The same happened in Korea, Russia, and most of Eastern Europe. The common factor is the "short growing season" which means a reliance on "pickled foods".

Compare with both China and India where in spite of the heavy smoking and an equally important pickling tradition, the vegetable-rich diet traditionally traveling along trade routes had stomach cancer incidences at de minimus levels.

This is not just speculation. We have evidence for this.

After World War II, when vegetables flooded the Japanese markets thanks to free trade, the rate of stomach cancer plummeted precipitously. (Even then today, it's still 4x the rate in the UK!)

Do we really want to go "seasonal" so that we can go back to these bad old days?

To rephrase, going non-local caused stomach cancer rates around the world to plummet. Is this a bad thing?

Seasonal and local are not bad things.

For one, the seasonal component gives you an extreme rush of excitement. There's an anticipation to looking forward to something pleasurable that won't come around for another six months. There's also the fact that seasonal actually means cheap. Whatever is plentiful is cheap by the simple laws of supply and demand.

Local is a good thing too.

You can talk to the farmer. You can actually ask for something that lies outside the norm and since you are there to pay for it, they will do it. (Try doing that at a supermarket!)

What's wrong is the fetish. The hide-bound rules that don't allow for five thousand years of trading history (think: spices!), and science (think: stomach cancer) and a certain flexibility of both thought and process. A certain give and take (trade pun intended!) in the approach to food and markets.

Why not have a rich understanding of the subject and the best of both worlds?

Hellas! Tragœdia

It would be quite hard to see the effect of the Greek collapse (and resulting Depression) in the canyons of Wall St. but it can easily be seen in the Greek stores in Astoria.

There is a wonderful store called Titan Foods. It's one of the largest Greek supermarkets in New York.

The collapse of the Greek economy has taken out a large portion of their supply chain. The CC having gone to this store for more than ten years can easily see the impact that it is having on the market.

Normally, the store would be groaning under the weight of all kinds of Greek goodies but you can see the strain.

Still the CC came back with some anchovies packed in salt, spanakopita, karidopita (walnut cake), taramosalata, yogurt, sheep-milk feta, and other assorted ingredients.

The Dark Side of Pastoral

The genre of food writing both memoir and cookbook are the last gasp of the Pastoral.

The pastoral is the genre of art, literature or music which depicts rural life as lived in harmony with nature preferably according to the seasons. It's heyday was in the Romantic era late into the Industrial Revolution. The revolution had created a massive upheaval and migration from rural to urban centers. It also created massive wealth through increased productivity.

It was possible then for an urban aesthete to romanticize the myth of the unsoiled countryside clashing violently with the notably apparent grime of urbanity and thus mythologize the past.

If you find yourself thinking that this resembles a massive number of books in recent time about the "joys" of farm life, you would be entirely correct.

There is a book published recently by a woman who married a Japanese farmer, and the book is spectacular, of course, but the CC was a little puzzled that she could afford a modern house with fancy equipment in rural Japan. A teeny-tiny little dig beneath the surface, you find out that she made her money running an English school.

The book is selling a fantasy.

The blunt truth is that there is very little money to be made in farming. The reason is simple. It requires minimal skill. Any farmer in rural Africa or Asia can do the job so there's a ton of supply and only a fixed demand which goes up only slowly as populations rise.

There is an exception naturally. As any good economist would tell you that it consists of having a high demand and only limited supply. In this context, it would mean selling a unique product that nobody else produces.

This explains the rush for obscure heirloom tomatoes, varieties of eggplants, herbs, etc. The CC should also mention the existence of Sembikiya in Japan where "perfect" fruit is sold akin to jewelry (with prices to match!) These are luxury items and can easily sustain a livelihood.

Of course, you could always be a "gentleman farmer" as can be seen in the books of Jane Austen but the wealth has always been obtained from somewhere else. The farm is a consumption item not one of production, and the consumption comes attached with the genuine pleasure in consuming a superior product.

So as Ricardo might have understood it, you might as well out-source the problem, and consume the finest produce, meat and seafood that other people can procure or produce better than you unless you happen to be skilled at its production which case the CC would appreciate an invitation!

The Story of Curry Powder

Everyone who's not completely demented about cooking knows there is no such thing in Indian cooking as "curry powder".

Yet, this yellow-looking vaguely Indian-ish powder is a global phenomenon showing up everywhere in menus from the finest French restaurants to Japanese fast-food ones serving kare raisu — curry rice that is gloppy, disgusting, and the staple of Japanese businessmen everywhere!

It should be noted that the fastidious Japanese with their ethic of purity and order eat this extraordinarily sloppy dish that would never show up on a kaiseki menu. And the main ingredient is an extraordinarly gaijin thing known as "curry powder".

So what's the story anyway? How did "curry powder" (which doesn't even exist in India) become French and Japanese? Why are there "curry ramen noodles"? Why are there Singaporean "curry noodles"? Which Frenchmen first served "curried cauliflower soup" and "curry vinaigrette"?

To answer this question, we're gonna have to rewind the clock and examine the mores of the 19th century. And we're gonna find that the people behaved, quite unsurprisingly, like people at any other time and place.

In short, they craved novelty.

And once novelty was provided, an equivalent market opened up to serve the novelty at the cheapest possible price, or to phrase it in modern lingo, they "commoditized the consumption".

There are virtually no cultures that don't appreciate novelty. Once novelty is provided, instantaneously the influence becomes "indigenized" - converted into the "native" framework of cooking. This is as true of tomatoes in Italy as green peppers in Thailand as potatoes in India. None of these are native to any of the regions (they are all "New World".)

The short story is that with the rising power of the British Empire in India, it became fashionable to serve all things "Indian". Queen Victoria, the Empress of India, was photographed wearing stereotypical "maharani" regalia. She even went as far as to appoint an Indian khidmatgar (servant), Abdul Karim, who rose to be her chief confidant. Poems were written (see here) and balls held in London where the guests dressed up in "Indian" costume and ate "Indian" food.

Needless to say, the British East India company did everything it could to market this phenomenon. When men go mad, avenues open up to supply them with the very objects that they need to go mad with so that profits can be made.

Enter "curry powder" — marketed to busy housewives so that they didn't need to concern themselves with the details of the "very foreign, very difficult" yet "deeply desired, and exotic" cuisine.

Unsurprisingly, the cheapest stuff correctly marketed turns out to be a monster hit. Same today as in the 19th century.

Commercial curry powder consists of the four cheapest ingredients in Indian cuisine -- coriander, cumin, fenugreek and turmeric (the latter giving it its yellow color while the fenugreek carries the characteristic bitter edge.)

That it spread to France from Britain should come as no surprise to anyone. Les rosbifs have always exhibited more than a little cultural fascination for "the Frogs" (ditto for the reverse.)

But the fastidious Japanese?

Kare raisu singlehandedly fails every Japanese culinary norm. Unsubtle, pungent, oil-based — the muddy yellowish sludge poured over rice could not be less Japanese. And yet, it's to be found in every train station and shopping district. It's chowed down by locals at lunch like it was going out of fashion. Irony of ironies, it's one of the most-requested "home-cooked" dishes in Japan.

How did this inauthentic powder turn Japanese?

The answer, of course, is the East India Company that nakedly peddled this powder all through the West and the East. Imported verbatim from the British idea of the dish, one can clearly see echoes of the dish in the 1872 Seiyo Ryōri Tsu ("Western Cooking".) The recipe is nearly identical to modern concoctions.

However, that explains the origin of the dish but not its overwhelming popularity. For that, you must look at the dish itself. It's warm, cheap, soothing, hearty, filling — all qualities that the Japanese have traditionally respected as an agrarian society must. Cheap sustaining fare that fuels the working masses. Does that or does that sounds Japanese?

The origins aside, the brute fact is that "curry powder" is global. Has been global for more than two centuries now, and authencity be damned, quite delicious.

Curry Cauliflower Soup

Ingredients

1 head cauliflower (cut into florets)
1 red onion (diced loosely)

1 tbsp curry powder

olive oil
sea salt
black pepper

Recipe

Toss the cauliflower florets with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast in a 400°F oven for 30 minutes until lightly browned.

Fry the onion at a low heat for 10 minutes. Toss in the cauliflower, water, and curry powder and purée.

All that glitters is ... golden goodness?

MSNBC reports: Parmesan producers bank on cheese.

All that is golden in bank Credito Emiliano's temperature-controlled vault is not precious metal, but something equally prized in Italy: aging Parmesan cheese.

Row upon row of 85-pound wheels of straw-colored Parmesan cheese, stacked some 33 feet high at a secure warehouse, age for as many as two years under the care of bank employees trained in the centuries-old art of Parmesan making.

The program allows Parmesan producers to pump cash into their business by using their product as collateral while it is otherwise sitting on a shelf for the long aging process. While the mechanism was not born out of the current economic crisis, dating rather from Italy's post-World War II years, producers say it is ever more important because it ensures that credit keeps flowing during otherwise tight times.

A cheesemaker turns over a percentage of his production, say 25 percent, to a bank warehouse and is given a certificate which can be presented to the bank to secure the loan, Morini said. In many cases, the cheesemaker then sells title to the cheese to a distributor while the cheese is still aging.

"An advance payment, as the one offered from Credem (Credito Emiliano) is a really positive thing because it gives at least the chance of surviving the lapse of time, hoping that the market will recover in a short period of time," said Cristian Bertolini, a quality check expert for the consortium.

Typically, a Parmesan maker who produces 7,000 wheels a year might put up 2,000 as collateral for a loan. According to Morini's calculations, each wheel is worth as much as 300 euros ($425), valuing the cheese collateral at 600,000 euros. The bank would then issue a loan of 60 percent to 70 percent of the value, so around 420,000 euros.

The Parmesan loan business contributes just 1 percent to the bank's annual revenue — but is critical to its image in the region, where agriculture is a key economic driver, said William Bizzarri, director of the Credito Emiliano subsidiary that deals in Parmesan deposits.

Bizzarri said Parmesan deposits are up about 10 percent due to the recession. At capacity, the cheesy deposits are worth from 120 million euros to 130 million euros.

Only disagreement is that they are surprised that the assets are up. Hard assets always go up relative to financial assets in a deflationary environment.

Go, parm, go!

The Depression Special

Food, Glorious Food from Oliver!

I Say Potato, You Say ...

The CC loves the Economist. They get all down and dirty about detail in a way that very few appreciate.

2008 in the International Year of the Potato, and that brings us to what they have to say.

MENTION potatoes in the United States and most people immediately think of Idaho, where more than a quarter of the country's crop is produced. In Europe, Ireland and its famine or Poland and its vodkas come to mind. But nowhere is prouder of its potatoes than Peru, where they were domesticated more than 7,000 years ago. The country is home to up to 3,500 different varieties of edible tubers, according to the International Potato Centre, whose headquarters are near Lima.

The United Nations has designated 2008 as the “International Year of the Potato” and not surprisingly Peru hopes to use this to draw attention to itself and its crop. Alan García, the president, has ordered that a government-sponsored programme of free breakfasts for poor families should serve bread made from a mixture of potato flour with (expensive and mainly imported) wheat. He also wants barracks, hospitals and prisons to start serving chuño, a naturally freeze-dried potato that is traditionally eaten by Andean Indians. Boiled chuño and cheese are said to have replaced sandwiches at cabinet meetings.

The government has joined forces with the potato centre to organise an international roadshow to promote the spud, starting this month. Apart from a giant foam-rubber model of a potato, the roadshow will include demonstrations of recipes by leading chefs.

But perhaps the propaganda should start at home. Many Peruvians eat more rice than potatoes; the country even imports frozen chips for use in fast-food restaurants. Only 25 varieties are grown commercially in Peru. Domestic consumption of spuds is about 90 kilos (200lb) per head a year, according to Ismael Benavides, the agriculture minister. That is barely a quarter as much as Belarusians, the world's champion potato-eaters, manage to chomp through. Nowadays Peru produces only 3.3m tonnes a year, or barely 1% of world output. “Peru needs to re-identify with the potato, because we have turned our back on it for too long,” says Mr García.

Mississippi Masala

The Mississippi Legislature is introducing a bill to ward off obesity. They are considering putting in a "door size" into fast food restaurants. If you can't fit in, you can't eat!

Sweet sufferin' stouties.

(Libertarians will note that this will just increase the drive-thru business not change anything.)

Pollan's Principle

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly vegetarian.
The above is due to Michael Pollan whom the CC deeply respects (even on the few occasions when he disagrees with him, and even though the Berkeley-preachy earth-mother persona gets a little tiresome.)

It's basically a credo for food, and within each lie a few subtleties.

The first one is, paradoxically, the hardest. If not food, then what? What Pollan means however is a little more precise:

"Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize."
The CC will add an addendum: "Don't eat anything someone's great-grandmother wouldn't recognize."

The CC knew his great-grandmother till age thirteen, and is quite confident that she would not have thought of sushi as food. However, food it is as legions of Japanese great-grandmothers undoubtedly would tell you.

The point is simple : if you don't recognize the ingredient, or can't pronounce it, don't eat it.

Modified food starch? Soy lecithin? Ethoxylated diglyceride?

PASS!!!

The economic pattern driving this is clear. If you cook from scratch, there is very little that companies can sell you. Hence, the drive for "convenience", or "enhanced nutrition", etc.

But if you eat a nutritionally varied diet, there is no need for "enhancement" so that one is pretty much bullshit straight out of the bull. The "convenience" part you will have to tangle with yourself. The CC cannot help you there.

Lest it not be clear, the CC's repeats his position: processed food = bullshit food.

The second point should be self-evident. We live in a world of excess not of starvation like our ancestors. Eat till you are 80% full, as they say.

The most important part is to have a healthy relation with your food. The key is balance. Remember that fat-phobia and carb-phobia are media creations, and they have no basis in science (the CC will be happy to elaborate at bloody length, and bore the living crap out of anyone who's interested.)

In short, enjoy your food, and make peace with your personal demons, whatever they may be.

The CC has made his peace with duck confit, lard and goose fat. Not to be eaten frequently but nevertheless to be savored and celebrated in moderation.

That's a natural segue into the last point.

The health argument for eating "mostly" vegetarian is overwhelming. The flavor argument for many a fish and meat is equally overwhelming. However, we are best served by treating meat as a herb or a spice (which is exactly what you will see in Italy, incidentally) than as a foundation of a meal. The fish issue used to be more straightforward in days of yore but in modern times, there are other issues with it like ingesting mercury, etc.

Incidentally, this brings us to something that deeply rankles the CC to his core.

It's the inability of US Dept. of Agriculture to talk about issues related to nutrition in an honest manner. The reason is clear -- at the intersection of food and economics, the money masters win out.

It is their policy that the so-called "food pyramid" be done in a way that "agrees with American tastes". Never mind the fact that nobody knows what "American" tastes are. They seem to embrace everything from pizza and fried calamari to pad thai and phô but the bureaucrats have some peculiar notions.

The pyramid must be designed to "American tastes", and it can't be changed; and why can't you change it? Well, because it would go against "American tastes".

Hellooo, Heller!

The reality as anyone with an iota of a brain can figure out is that lentils and legumes are superior to meats both economically and nutritionally. You could eat for a month for the same price that you are paying for a single meal, and you can take the difference in money to make all the meals vastly more interesting and diverse (thus satisfying George Orwell's criticism as well.) Kudos to the Washington Post for pointing this out a few years ago!

(For those interested, the Guardian has generously printed the entire last chapter of Pollan's book.)

Once again then, the CC reiterates Pollan's principle:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly vegetarian. With pleasure!

Hungry Planet

The CC will let the numbers and the presence of processed food (= bullshit food) speak for themselves! (Source: Hungry Planet: What the World Eats.)

What is an opinion?

Ever hear of the "age-old adage" that "breakfast is the most important meal of the day"? Do you refer to "bacon and eggs" as a quintessentially "American breakfast"?

More importantly, do you believe them to be true?

Both are the creation of the public-relations genius (or evil genius) Edward Bernays, and were created to increase sales of bacon. Effectively, it involves manipulation via using "third-party authorities" to plead the cause.

First, doctors were polled on the "virtues of a heavy breakfast". Then, other doctors were polled with the adage that their colleagues thought that "heavy breakfasts were virtuous for the following reasons" and "did they agree with it?" (Psychology being what it is very few people have the guts to disagree with their colleagues.) Then, it was publicized that "most doctors recommend a heavy breakfast", "bacon and eggs are a heavy breakfast", "most Americans like bacon and eggs", etc. and voilà! Instant Americana.

Same goes for pancakes by the way. A pure creation of Dr. Bernays' propaganda.

Morals, if any?

Don't believe "received opinion", and "authenticity" is a dubious beast.

2008...

... will be the International Year of the Potato!

Who wants rosemary fries with that?

Popcorn

Well, you may or may not have been reading about the ridiculous "microwave popcorn", and the chemical diacetyl causing cancer, etc, whoop-dee-doodle-doo, blahtee-bloody-blah.

Popcorn making is trivial. In fact, the CC is a big fan so he makes it often, and no funny chemicals need apply.

Let not these complete fools dissuade you. Follow these instructions, and you will have glorious golden popcorn every single time (unless you use red or blue corn.)

Ingredients

popcorn kernels
olive oil (or any vegetable oil)
salt

Recipe

First, note the ingredient list. Do you see anything funny?

No? Then the "microwave popcorn"-people are just nebbishes and clueless retards.

Pour a smallish amount of oil into a pot, something sturdy. Turn the heat to medium-low, definitely less than medium high, and toss in three to four corn kernels, and cover the pan (you need a sturdy cover too.)

Wait for the first pop or two. (this is the "hard" part.)

When they do, and the CC assures you, they will eventually, open the pan, toss in the salt, and the rest of the kernels, cover the pan again, lift the pan with gloves, shake horizontally vigorously (to cover the kernels in the oil and salt), put them back on the stove, and wait.

Wait. Wait. Wait.

Do not turn the heat up. Just wait.

When they "finish" popping, pour them into a bowl, and enjoy. You may need to add extra salt or seasoning to taste.

The Economics of Food

There was an excellent article on the economics of food by Michael Pollan in the New York Times Magazine a little while ago.

He has provided the entire article on his website: link.

The article asks the correct question (ed: rephrasing is mine)

How can it be that an processed product with 39 ingredients, packaging, shipping, and a marketing budget be cheaper than a bunch of carrots (which are, basically, nothing more than roots pulled out of the ground?)

The article is bang on target, and it pretty much explains why there's such a strong negative correlation between income and obesity.