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Category: food

Cheating Curry

I am currently making a cheating curry, using Trader Joe’s jarred Red Curry Sauce, pre-sliced mushrooms, and an eggplant and three green peppers from the CSA. The rice is basmati, will be cooked Indian-style by boiling like pasta, and should be done in about eight minutes.

Past experience with Trader Joe’s jarred curries makes me believe that this will result in a decent lunch for tomorrow, and a few subsequent days. After this I’ll bake the cookies (dough already made) for a potluck at work tomorrow, and then grill up a chicken sausage for dinner.

Through all this the kitchen shall remain clean. Good food and a nice, clean kitchen. Mmm!

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Artificial Sweeteners and Overeating

I’ve read a few things hinting that artificial sweeteners such as Aspartame (NutraSweet) and Saccharin cause an insulin response, leading to blood sugar drop and often overeating. While I don’t know enough to say how true it is, these three articles seem to support this:

Effects of artificial sweeteners on insulin release and cationic fluxes in rat pancreatic islets.

[…] Sodium saccharin (1.0-10.0 mM), sodium cyclamate (5.0-10.0 mM), stevioside (1.0 mM) and acesulfame-K (1.0-15.0 mM), all of which display a bitter taste, augmented insulin release from islets incubated in the presence of 7.0 mM D-glucose. In contrast, aspartame (1.0-10.0 mM), which is devoid of bitter taste, failed to affect insulin secretion. […]

A role for sweet taste: Calorie predictive relations in energy regulation by rats.

[…] We found that reducing the correlation between sweet taste and the caloric content of foods using artificial sweeteners in rats resulted in increased caloric intake, increased body weight, and increased adiposity, as well as diminished caloric compensation and blunted thermic responses to sweet-tasting diets. These results suggest that consumption of products containing artificial sweeteners may lead to increased body weight and obesity by interfering with fundamental homeostatic, physiological processes. […]

Sweet taste receptor expressed in pancreatic beta-cells activates the calcium and cyclic AMP signaling systems and stimulates insulin secretion.

[…] In these cells, artificial sweeteners such as sucralose, succharin, and acesulfame-K increased insulin secretion and augmented secretion induced by glucose. […]

When I was rather young, eating anything containing NutraSweet would give me a pretty bad headache. While this doesn’t happen any more, I do wonder if it was related.

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Corned Beef and Swiss on Rye from The Bread Basket Deli

After taking a wrong turn somewhere while heading back from the Tree Farm, I found that the fastest route home would involve a trip up 8 Mile. Just before reaching Telegraph I was surprised to pass a Bread Basket Deli, and it was open! I’ve wanted some Sy Ginsberg Corned Beef, one of Detroit’s finest products, for a while now so I very quickly doubled back and ordered a corned beef and swiss on rye and some cream soda.

What I received is exactly what you see above, a giant and wonderful tasting corned beef sandwich with both old and new pickles. I’m currently eating it, but with a glass of Arcadia’s Angler’s Ale instead of the Dr. Brown’s Cream Soda. I’m a bit disappointed because the Dr. Brown’s now contains high-fructose corn syrup. I was not aware of this earlier, otherwise I wouldn’t have purchased it. Oh well; the sandwich is outstanding. This is the kind of food that makes me want to utter profanities while eating because it’s just simply that good.

If you’re interested, here is a photo of the outside of the deli, along with my bike on the car.

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World’s Greatest Pizza Sandwich

This right here, the lunch that Danielle and I a few minutes ago, is the world’s greatest pizza sandwich. First, make the aforementioned tomato sauce with a can of Trader Joe’s Fire Roasted Crushed Tomato and Chilis, garlic, olive oil, oregano, salt, and pepper. Then acquire some good sandwich pepperoni, muenster, and good quality cibatta and do the following:

· Cut a piece of cibatta of appropriate size, slice it in half like a sandwich.
· Apply thin sliced deli pepperoni to each half.
· Put sandwiches, open faced, under the broiler (on low) until the pepperoni is sizzling.
· Pull the sandwich halves and put sauce and cheese under the pepperoni on the bottom half.
· Apply sauce on the top bread , beneath the pepperoni.
· Put the sandwich halves together, with lots of mushrooms and a bit of sauce between the pepperoni.
· Place the assembled sandwiches back in the broiler, and broil until bread is slightly toasted.
· Pull from the broiler, let sit for a few minutes, then eat.

This tastes very good with Mexican Coca-Cola, and ice cream likely makes a good dessert afterward. Note that washing one’s hands after eating the sandwich will be required.

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Not Quite Ready: Mushroom Tomato Sauce, Kofta, Kohlrabi

I’ve currently got a tomato sauce cooking on the stove, as seen on the upper left. This will be used on ciabatta with deli pepperoni and muenster to make sandwiches for lunch. It contains one can of Trader Joe’s fire roasted crusted tomatos with chilis, a teaspoon of garlic, olive oil, oregano, salt, and pepper processed together. Sliced, raw white button mushrooms were then added and it is all being cooked together. As the mushrooms cook they should take on the flavor of the sauce, which will be nice.

Below this is some kohlrabi that has been pickled with dill, garlic, honey, salt, and vinegar. It will be put in the fridge sometime this evening. Plain kohlrabi tastes somewhat like a cross between cabbage and broccoli, but with the texture of apple. Raw it is very good and has a wonderful aftertaste; I hope it’s equally good (or better) once pickled.

The other photos are kofta that Danielle is making to take to a party tonight and cook on skewers over a BBQ. It contains two pounds of beef, 1/2 cup of parsley, one small onion, 1/4 tsp of allspice, salt, and pepper.

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Pancakes!

For the first time in as long as I can remember, which is likely 12 years or so, I’ve made pancakes. Danielle and I are eating three each, and there are three left over for hopeful eating tomorrow. While my pancakes were eaten with a fair amount of butter and grade B maple syrup, Danielle ate hers with some red current syrup that she made a few weeks ago using currents from the CSA.

They were made using this recipe from Allrecipes for ‘Good Old Fashioned Pancakes’ and here is a photo of them cooking, before being flipped for the first time. It also appears that this style of pancakes is also known as ‘Scotch drop scones’, ‘Scotch pancakes’, or just simply ‘drop scones’.

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Bus Pirate v2.go LEDs (and other Moblog Photos)

Today I finally got to poking around with the Hack A Day Bus Pirate v2.go. It’s a a nice little debugging tool which shows up as a 115.2k serial terminal via USB, and allows one to send and receive a bunch of different serial protocols to devices for testing. However, the LEDs on it are far, far, far brighter than they need to be. At my normally-lit desk in a normally-lit office, they are glaring. I’m going to consider replacing them next time I place an order from Mouser or Digi-Key.

Here’s some other recent moblog photos:

· Toadstools on the mountain bike trails at Bald Mountain South Unit.
· This morning’s coffee is made in a moka.
· Bloody nose pickings wiped on the mounting bracket for a urinal partition in one of the bathrooms at work.
· My sister’s dog Molly laying on the back porch at my parent’s house.
· Joy’s mom’s fruit Extra Easy Fruit Cobbler recipe.

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