Food
66 posts · all topics
Cumin Club: Indian Food Meal Kits
My experience with an Indian Food meal kit
Home-Cooked Meals with Shef
Testing the Shef meal service
Keto Experiment # 1 (July 2020)
10-day ketogenic diet experiment tracking ketones, glucose, macros, and blood panel results showing dramatic triglyceride drop.
Tajin spice
A simple vegetarian dinner with sauteed eggplant, sweet potato, and Tajin chili-lime seasoning for a unique flavor kick.
Popular new foods
Trending food flavors and restaurant trends from Datassential research: Levantine cuisine, Asian sweets, regional Japanese, and more.
Easy oyster mushrooms
Grow your own mushrooms
What little I know about nutrition
Brief overview of what I know about nutrition science
Sprouted black beans
Make your own
Sleeping better on a different diet
Exploring the connection between dietary changes, gut microbiome composition, and sleep quality through personal tracking data.
My Philosophy of Food
Personal food philosophy covering sugar avoidance, carb reduction, exercise balance, and practical tips for healthy eating.
Just say no to ‘No MSG'
Why MSG fears are a myth — the science of monosodium glutamate, umami flavor, and why glutamate is safe and natural.
Just say no to ‘No MSG’
Why MSG sensitivity is a myth — the science behind glutamate and why fears about monosodium glutamate are unfounded.
Frozen blueberries are better for me
DayTwo microbiome analysis shows frozen blueberries score better than fresh for my gut, backed by anthocyanin research.
Soylent and my microbiome
Tracking my gut microbiome daily to see how drinking Soylent affected my Bacteroidetes/Firmicutes ratio compared to a clinical trial.
Koji and aged ribeye
Use fermentation to improve the flavor of meat
Clabbered milk
How to make clabbered milk by leaving unpasteurized milk at room temperature — a traditional fermented food and leavening agent.
[book] The Gluten Lie
View on Amazon Most people will think Alan Levinovitz , a Professor of Religion, an unlikely author of a diet book, particularly one like this that refutes many…
Starbucks Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room
It’s as impressive as you’d expect: full-blown Probat roaster right out in the open, a long line of Clovers at the main bar, As a tourist attraction it…
Are potatoes good for you?
Diabetics, and anyone watching the glycemic load from their food knows that potatoes, with their large amount of starch, raise blood sugar levels. The otherwise high nutrient value…
[book] All Natural
The subtitle of this book by Nathanael Johnson explains why I read it: "a skeptic's quest to discover if the natural approach to diet, childbirth, healing, and the…
Sauerkraut (Take 2)
It’s been a year, but finally I get over my laziness and have the time to attempt another batch of homemade sauerkraut . The probiotics fad is pushing…
Is grape juice bad for you?
Our kids love grape juice, but there’s some controversy in our household whether we should indulge their taste or steer them to lower-sugar fruit juices instead. After all,…
Break out the sriracha
Seth Roberts often came up with hunches, reasonable hypotheses, about various foods or habits. But don’t pick the hypotheses randomly; base it on something, make sure it fits…
How accurate are food labels?
We take for granted that a label printed with calorie and other nutrition information is accurate, but is that true? A short 6-minute documentary and editorial published last…
Call it processed milk
Our middle schooler came home from school yesterday and noticed for the first time that our family drinks whole milk, not the skim milk that her teacher had…
Is there such a thing as a "generic" apple?
When you eat any food, shouldn't you care more about the particular piece you are eating, rather than the generic values listed in an app or book about…
The Post-Pasteurian world
As a long-time fan of food writer Michael Pollan (read more here and here ), it was inevitable that I’d read his latest, Cooked- A Natural History of…
Homemade sauerkraut
As already noted , I’ve become interested in the role of microbes in our bodies, including the value of fermented foods. First yogurt (which I still make regularly),…
A Bite of China
After months of recommendations, I finally watched my first episode of the CCTV documentary A Bite of China (舌尖上的中国) and I was not disappointed. It’s a well-produced, professionally…
Easy homemade yogurt
Among the many important aspects of health that science can’t yet explain is the role of microbes , zillions of them in every part of your body, with…
McCafe is not worth it
On my long and dangerous journey through snow to Seatac this morning, I swung into McDonalds to try those new coffee beverages they’ve been advertising. They give out…
Purple toes in Zillah
There are no wine lovers in the San Francisco Bay Area (or in Seattle for that matter) who haven’t been to Napa Valley. But comparatively few people know…
Free coffee at Starbucks
I dropped in on West Mercer Elementary school this morning: and then I went downtown and got one of these for free: Incidentally, I disagree with the idea…
Last day this year for Farmers Market
The Mercer Island Farmers Market closes for the winter after today, so my six-year-old and I rode our bikes there one last time to stock up on fresh…
Konga at Trabant Coffee
Mike at Trabant Coffee and Chai saw that I was looking for more Ethiopia Yergcheffe Konga coffee (it’s sooo good!), and let me know that a new batch…
Finally, sun at the farmers market
My 6-year-old and I biked this afternoon to the Mercer Island Farmers Market , taking advantage of today's unusual sunny weather to stock up on fresh fruit and…
Bad year for blackberries
The empty lot near my house is always chock full of invasive Himalayan blackberry bushes , and each August my kids and I enjoy picking bucketful after bucketful…
Best home espresso machine
I'm still using my humble Starbucks Barrista, purchased almost ten years ago and still going strong, faithfully producing my raw milk latte every single morning. A friend who…
Konga Co-op from Terroir Coffee
There is no point drinking bad coffee if you live in the Seattle area. In fact, some would argue there's little point living here period, in all this…
Mercer Island Farmers Market: The Video
It's finally here! I was out of town during last week's opening day, but the first thing I did upon arriving back was to head over to Mercerdale…
[book] Fast Food Nation
View on Amazon I liked this book, which gives a nice behind-the-scenes overview of the conditions under which we get much of our food. It's not nearly as…
From Kurtwood cow to me
Nothing beats the taste and nutritional value of raw milk : fresh, not cooked unpasteurized, from cows grazing on real pasture -- the kind I drank as a…
Grandma and Me
I spent last week with my 92-year-old grandmother. A lifelong dairy farmer, she grew up in a cabin with a dirt floor, deep in the woods of rural…
Brown your teeth with Crest Pro-Health Rinse
Image no longer available About two months ago, I bought one of those special giant Costco boxes of a mouthwash from Crest. I've been long convinced by the…
In Defense of Food [book]
View on Amazon "Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly Plants." That's the summary, and I'm a believer. Since reading Omnivore's Dilemma , I've been quite the fan of…
Seattle Cheese Festival
We love cheese as much as we like good tofu , so of course we also dropped in on the Seattle Cheese Festival , held this weekend at…
Seattle's Best Tofu
Most of my friends don't like tofu, and I don't blame them. The stuff you buy at the grocery store is so dull it tastes rancid. But I…
What's good about McDonalds
Everyone loves to pick on McDonalds , but a paper by Adrian Tschoegl from the Wharton School of U-Penn shows how dramatically the hygiene standards improve in a…
Edible Magazine
Image no longer available "I want farmers to be as famous as rock stars", says Jill Lightner, the editor of the new foodie quarterly, Edible Seattle . As…
Clover Coffee Sells to the Man
The good news is that soon we're likely to see Clover Coffee machines everywhere, now that Starbucks and the Clover Equipment Company have announced plans to merge .…
Theo Chocolate Factory Tour
This month is my turn to host our local Y-Guide boy's club, so I arranged for everyone to visit the Theo Chocolate Factory in the Fremont Area of…
Coffee shops and women
Caitlin Knowles Myers from the Middlebury College Economics Discussion Grou p reported last September on a study of about 300 transactions at Boston-area coffee shops concluding that female…
I'm a Tull
If there's no Espresso Vivace or Trabant , I'll much prefer Tulley's over Starbucks . [see Crosscut posting about what your taste in coffee vendor says about your…
Organic vs. Conventional food on Mercer Island
Another reason to support a farmer's market : a new study of 19 kids from Mercer Island Elementary schools shows significant levels of pesticide residues in kids who…
How safe is that bridge?
Neal pointed me Bridge Tracker, a site that uses Virtual Earth to let you know the level of safety (or danger) for public bridges near you. Here's what…
Bloggers and libel
It's fun, though a bit annoying, to watch inept PR firms try to shut down free speech in the name of "libel". One of my favorite foodie blogs,…
$20,000 coffee machines from Japan
Jason pointed me to a NY Times article from last week about high-end coffee machines , including the siphon pot from Japan. Also see a much more detailed…
Take Flouride out of our water?
The January 2008 Scientific American does a summary of the rethinking about flouridated drinking water, Second Thoughts on Flouride : Researchers are intensifying their scrutiny of fluoride, which…
Northwest Food and Wine
Celebrating Food and Wine in the Northwest is a short (9-min) podcast from NPR last week worth listening to if you like food. From the description: Weekend Edition…
Mercer Island Farmers Market
A group of citizens are trying to create a farmers market for Mercer Island , an absolutely wonderful idea that is long overdue. I can't make it to…
Amazon Fresh Morning
We returned from a long trip last night and, knowing we'd arrive late with no food in the house, I decided to try Amazon Fresh and their pre-dawn…
Another coffee shop, please
Mercer Island enjoys plenty of nice coffee outlets, but why do I have to drive to Seattle for the really good stuff ? Slate this week makes a…
Clover Factory
A big treat today: while visiting Seattle I stopped by the world headquarters of the Coffee Equipment Company where Zander Nosler gave me a personal tour of their…
Clover Coffee
After reading the writeup in this week's Economist , I just had to try coffee made on one of those high powered Clover machines . Made by a…
Blue Fin Seafood
Why do people classify sushi as ethnic (Japanese) cuisine, rather than seafood, which is what it really is? Some of the more high-end seafood places already classify it…
Reading Omnivore's Dilemma
The Roman writer Livy warned in 14 A.D. that a society is in danger when its chefs are aggrandized and of course that's exactly describes America today, whether…