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Drink Ideas

Wine whine

grapesI’ve been exposed to the wine mystique quite a bit because I worked in fine dining. I never thought high- priced wines tasted better than moderately priced ones, and often no better than cheaper wines either. But you’re encouraged to praise the pricey stuff, like the king with no clothes kids’ story.

I felt vindicated when I read this about wine in “Gulp” by Mary Roach.

Because it’s hard for people to gauge quality by flavor, they tend to gauge by price. That’s a mistake. Langstaff (a taste expert) has evaluated wine professionally for twenty years. In her opinion, the difference between a $300 bottle of wine and one that costs $30 is largely hype. ‘Wineries selling their wines for $500 a bottle have the same problems as wineries selling their wine for $10 a bottle. You can’t make the statement that if it’s low-cost it’s not well made.’

Most of the time, people don’t even prefer the expensive wine – provided they can’t see the label. (There’s) a top wine judge who plays a game with his wine-marketing classes at Napa Valley College. The students. most of whom have several years of experience in the industry, are asked to rank six wines, their labels hidden by brown paper bags. All are wines that the expert enjoys himself. At least one is under $10 and two are over $40. ‘ Over the past 18 years, every time, the least expensive wine averages the highest ranking, and the most expensive two finish the bottom.’

It’s safe to say that wine is mainly sold on Christian countries. Isn’t this Christianity’s biggest idea: treating others in the same way that you’d want them to treat you? Combine that with New Testament stories in which mention wine a lot and it seems ironic that the wine industry uses marketing hype and mysterious jargon to sell wine. This trickery creates an environment that’s more “buyer beware” than the “golden rule.” I know he can make his own, but what sort of wine would Jesus drink?

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Exercise Food and Drink Health

Hey coach!

Football coachesWhat’s happening with these American football coaches? I don’t think it’s fat shaming to wonder what’s going on with these guys. If health is wealth then these guys must have long ago declared bankruptcy.

Maybe they think the way they look is what successful high-level coaches  look like, so they neither recognize nor accept that their actions have consequences for which they’re ultimately accountable for.

These guys are metabolically broken. It probably took a long incremental path to get to where they are. Action, or in this case inaction, expresses priorities.

What are the Euro coaches doing differently? Is it the culture? Maybe some of these American coaches should reach out to their European counterparts for advice.

It’s difficult to get people to understand something, when other people around him act like everything is normal.

Do they ask their doctor what they should do about their weight? The poor doctor will probably spin out advice that allows the obese coaches to feel better about themselves.  Instead, the coaches should ask their doctor what he’d do if he were in their place.

I don’t follow pro football, or soccer, so maybe the way these guys look is the new normal and no one mentions it. But It seems grotesque to me. The coaches shouldn’t need to look like athletes but they shouldn’t give up any attempt at health either.

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Food pot

Pot and popsicles

hidden dangerThere were four kids in our house when I was growing up. Because our Mom tried to avoid sweets but our Dad didn’t, when it came to packages of six popsicles, there was always one unclaimed popsicle that our Mom wasn’t going to eat.

That unclaimed popsicle became a sought after treat for us kids. The first kid to get home on a shopping day would lay claim to the orphan popsicle. The usual method was to open up the extra popsicle and give it a lick. This was the accepted technique amongst the kids for marking the extra popsicle as yours. It boiled down to controlling your scarce resource by repulsion.

What made me think of this was strolling past some vendors the other day. When I moved to Mexico years ago, the handicraft vendors seemed to be hawking pipes with stems that bore a strong resemblance to a human penis. What was that about? I imagined a few theories about this.

One idea was that tourists bought enough of these pipes as a novelty item that a demand was created. Or maybe Mexican potheads just had a cultural preference for that style of pipe. Another was that maybe this style of pipe was so weird that traveling potheads felt little attachment to it and so wouldn’t be tempted to smuggle it back home.

So back to the other day. I noticed there weren’t many penis pipes for sale by the street vendors. I’m not a pothead so maybe I just never noticed the decline until now. When I mentioned it to my friends I also told them my theories for the penis pipe. Then one friend who is a pot smoker mentioned his theory.

He thinks that the popularity of the style was probably due to its innate ability to control your scarce resource, because by using a penis pipe to smoke pot, and then offering it to someone else they’re more likely to decline if that’s how they have to smoke it. So you’re effectively managing your scarce resource.

Who knows really? But if that’s true, it’s not unlike keeping your popsicle yours by grossing out other people who want your scarce resource.

 

 

Categories
Drink Food and Drink

Toddy Coffee

Espresso makerThis is a picture from a coffee shop. Most of the coffee here is brewed with hot water.

But good coffee can be brewed without using hot water. It just takes longer to make.

“Toddy coffee” is what most people call cold brewed coffee. Toddy coffee is cold brewed coffee made using a Toddy coffee maker. It’s easy to do, I’ve been brewing yummy rich flavored coffee this way for years.

I have two Toddy makers so I can brew two batches at once, which will last for about two weeks. Once made, the coffee is always ready in the fridge, add some cream and have it cold or heat it up if I’m in the mood. It’s easy and tastes great.

What made me think about this is that Starbucks will start selling cold brewed coffee at 2,800 stores, and I started wondering if it catches on, will people realize it’s easy to make and how convenient it is to drink?

What is cold brewed coffee exactly? Here’s how the NYT described it:

“Cold brew coffee has a milder, smoother and often sweeter taste than iced coffee that was first made with hot water. It can be up to 67 percent less acidic than hot coffee (or the iced coffee that comes from it)… Infuse coarsely ground coffee overnight in cold water, about 5 cups for every 1/2-pound of coffee, then press or filter the brew from the grounds.”

Although I’m guessing Starbucks won’t use the Toddy device because of the volume they’ll need, the NYT article described the Toddy maker since that’s what is most commonly used by home cold brew coffee makers like me, “(it) is a plastic container with a thick feltlike pad that fits over a stoppered hole in its bottom. When the stopper is removed, the liquid drains through the mass of grounds and the pad, which filter out tiny coffee particles, letting a dark yet clear coffee concentrate drain into a pitcher. The concentrate can be diluted with either cold or hot water for a quick drink.”

A “quick drink” that also is delicious and easy to make might cause Starbucks to lose some business as some clever customers figure out how to do it at home, saving themselves a daily wait in a line.

 

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Food and Drink

Get Busy

weeks in 90yr

 

In your lifetime you’ll eat around sixty tons of food.

Just in case you don’t remember, a ton is two thousand pounds.

Maybe that sixty tons will be a little more or less depending on whether you’re a man or a woman and where you live.

You don’t have that much time really. Look at this display of how many weeks you’ll have if you make it to ninety.

“But most people don’t live to ninety years old.” you might say. You’re right. So you better get busy.

Categories
Food

How’s that jellyfish sandwich?

jellyfishThe “age of the jellyfish” is on the way. It sounds like a joke. But, jellyfish are a problem. For example they’re already boxing out Antarctic penguins. Have the oceans already come to the point where the jellyfish will be dominant?

Before the rise of complex life systems jellyfish were flourishing. Jellyfish fossils go back 550 million years.

Now the jellification of the oceans is ramping up through a combination of factors like: human overfishing their competitors, the appearance of giant islands of trash their young can cling to, increased ocean acidification affecting shellfish, and extended jellyfish ranges due to warming oceans. That’s the opinion of some sober scientists.

Jellyfish blooms (sudden population explosions) have been impacting humans for a while. They’ve clogged cooling water intakes on aircraft carriers and power plants. Tons and tons of jellyfish get removed  from cooling system intakes.

It could be confirmation bias on my part, but it seems like there are more jellyfish in the surf, at least over the seven years I’ve been surfing the same area

Maybe it’s time to consider jellyfish as food. When all you have is lemons, make lemonade. Jellyfish are eaten in China and Japan. A Chinese American, whose family once owned a Chinese restaurant, told me jellyfish were good to eat, but he only knew them to be eaten as part of an appetizer at banquets.

We’ll probably need to think beyond the first course.

Categories
Drink Food and Drink

Yeast Power

I don’t drink a lot, so I’m going to pass this along as a public service for people who do drink a lot. Plus, I’m fascinated by the main idea that’s in the Esquire magazine article, “How to drink all night without getting drunk.”

Of course the idea this idea isn’t for everybody. For some, the whole point of drinking is all about getting drunk. I haven’t tried out the idea in the article yet, but I will. And you might want to as well when you need to drink but don’t want to get drunk.

The article’s author spends time with Jim Koch, the chairman of the Boston Beer Company, sampling beers and talking about beer culture and the author claims (I’ve done some abbreviating):

I’d long noticed Jim was always lucid, always able to hold court, and hold his own with those much younger, and was doing likewise with me at 4 PM on a Thursday afternoon despite the fact we were both now several beers deep. So what was the secret?

“Active yeast. Like you get at the grocery store.”

Koch told me that for years he has swallowed your standard Fleischmann’s dry yeast before he drinks, stirring the white powdery substance in with some yogurt to make it more palatable. “One teaspoon per beer, right before you start drinking. And it’ll mitigate – not eliminate – but mitigate the effects of alcohol!” Koch told me. 

He’d learned the trick from the late-Joseph Owades. With a PhD in biochemistry and an early job in the fermentation department at Fleischmann’s, Owades probably knew more about fermentation and alcohol metabolism than perhaps any man who’s ever lived. He became good friends with Koch, helped perfect Boston Lager, and passed on to Koch his little yeast secret.

It turns out that active dry yeast has an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenases (ADH). Roughly put, ADH breaks alcohol molecules down into their constituent parts of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, the same thing that happens when your liver metabolizes alcohol. Owades realized if you also have that enzyme in your stomach when the alcohol first hits it, the ADH will begin breaking it down before it gets into your bloodstream.

Go forth and experiment.

Categories
Food and Drink Health

Our Stone Age Bodies

I didn't changeWe still have Stone Age bodies that haven’t evolved much beyond those of cave men. You could even have kids with someone from the Stone Age. Maybe you feel like you have kids with someone who’s from the Stone Age.

The problem is that now we live with foods and conveniences that our Stone Age bodies don’t cope well with. It’s not new or big news but it is important news.

The other day I heard an NPR interview on “Fresh Air” with a Harvard professor explaining why it’s important to be aware of the disconnect between the way many people live now and what our minds and bodies are calibrated for.  There’re lots of people putting out the idea that we have Paleolithic bodies, but maybe the ideas will be given more weight coming from a Harvard professor who can lay out the idea in a clear way.

Okay, maybe you don’t relate to the professorial approach. What about the advice of a trainer to some of Hollywood’s A-list actors? These actors depend on their looks for their livelihood so they work with trainers who get results.

One of those trainers is Vinnie Tortorich. He’s college educated and has been training people for 25 years. What’s his underlying message? If you want to lose weight, don’t exercise, fix your diet by cutting out most sugars and grains and  also embracing fats.

That’s what our Stone Age bodies work best on. He doesn’t  really put it like that to his clients, but that’s what’s going on.

Whether you prefer the professor’s theory or the trainer’s results, you’ll see there’s something to using an evolutionary approach when considering how to live in the modern world.

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Food and Drink

Want really fast food?

contentThere’s a crowd funded startup company that’s close to releasing a meal replacement food.  It’s for more than just replacing a meal, or a product for adding  extra calories to your daily intake. Those things are already on the shelves. This is really an eating replacement product. No cooking, less expensive, just mix with water, and drink it. That’s it. Conceivably forever.

To me, it’s like the bottled blood replacement for vampires called true blood  on the show, “True Blood.” The vampires never have to hassle with biting humans again.

The product is called Soylent. It claims to have all the nutrients you’ll need in a powder  you mix with water. The company is even planning on providing you a nalgene bottle to shake it up in and drink from. And you can it take on the go. No dishes,  just rinse out your bottle.

There’s a writer who tried it for two weeks. His longish diary and comments are on Tim Ferriss’ blog. If you don’t want to slog  through a mono drink diary, I did it and basically he had a good overall experience drinking only Soylent for two weeks.

If you’re super busy it makes sense. When there’s nothing  else around to eat because of famine or natural disaster I get it.

But what’s the “why” in the extended, long term use of Soylent? What situation are you in that’s making you think an eating replacement plan is something you’d do and enjoy long term? Once you reach some future  goal, will you then step off the treadmill move to a slower, simpler life where you eat and drink regular food? Probably.

I’m for being efficient, streamlined, and optimized but quaility of life trumps those goals for most people.

As a short term or occasional solution, I get it. But when it’s presented as a long term eating replacement activity, it’s kinda like saying sexting with your smart phone is all you need when it comes to sex.

Categories
Food

Really Hot

chili-contestantWhat’s up with this guy?Did he fall off a bus, just shoot up, or is he having an epileptic fit?

Turns out he’s a contestant at a chili pepper eating contest in India. A contest with really hot chilis. The contestant who eats the most chili peppers in 20 seconds is the winner – or maybe not.

There’s a scale used to measure the hotness of chili peppers. It’s the Scoville scale. There’s some imprecision, but it’ll give you a good idea of what you’re biting into. Some examples are, a bell pepper which wouldn’t really budge the needle, Tabasco sauce coming in at less than 8,000 Scoville heat units (SHU), and some habanero peppers will rate 400,000 SHUs.

Then there’re the naga jolokia peppers, scoring a scorching 1,000,000 SHUs or more!

For comparison, law enforcement pepper spray delivers around 1,750,000 SHUs. You’ll have to go to Northern India if you want to sample naga jolokia peppers and their relatives.

Peppers won’t hurt you but some of them can be overwhelming, I don’t want to know what happens the next day when the peppers exit the contestants’ bodies.