Podchef's Gastrocast Podcast

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The podcast about cooking, food, and the politics of what we eat.

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Live New Orleans Blog

 This via The Seattle Post Intelligencer--a live blog from New Orleans.  It seems this guy is holed up inside his office tower keeping his data center up and running with a generator. The blog posts and comments are a wild commentary on the scene you won't hear anywhere else. Looting by citizens, AND police. . . . Recently he just had to go down to the ground floor to re-secure the entrances to keep people out--seems like there's a Highlander episode, or Bruce Willis film like this. . . .
Not only is he blogging about everything--he's got a live camera feed going as often as he can manage to keep it up. Right now the main live feed is down, but there is an alternate of somewhere else. It must be on some sort of underground mainline data trunk cable or something because he's got bandwidth.

Anyway, I strongly urge you to check this out as the information and scenes from this event have the potential to teach us a lot about what could happen just about anywhere else under any other circumstance. My thoughts are really with everybody affected by this tradgedy. I once thought to call New Orleans my home. It's a cool, beautiful city and I am sure it will climb out of the present craziness, but I don't think it will ever be the same.

by: ChefNeal at 08/31/05 21:33 | link | comments |
blogs, katrina

Gastrocast #22

 At last, Gastrocast #22 is here.  Mexican Style Spare RIbs and a Roasted Chipotle & Tomatillo Salsa. I also talk about the proposed NAIS--the National Animal Identification System. The Ingredient of the Week is the Tomatillo.

Flicker photoset.

Please take the survey if you haven't.

by: ChefNeal at 08/26/05 15:52 | link | comments (2)|
cooking, rant, podchef, grilling, garden, knives

Peakanomics

 My comments to this article:

"Okay, so you've taken the moderate position on this "problem". Others want to be extreem on either side of the issue. Nevertheless, the real issue is being ignored: 1st World Countries are using too much of a non-renewable resource. The shortages, and problems this will lead to, maybe not today or tomorrow--or this decade--will be real and globally painful. Beyond wind generators and solar power we need to begin to solve this shortage issue--to send a message, like you said, to the oil producers--perhaps they will drop prices; but that only works for a while--even oil producers are up against fixed costs.

How can we send this message and what will it be? Should we all switch to hybird cars? Quite possibly. But there are other solutions--using used vegetable oil from restaurants to power desiel vehicles is a start (frybird.com). Perhaps, today, don't drive so much. Stop waiting for the outcome to cry foul. Reduce your number of trips to WalBobs or the MiniMart now, not when things get worse--they already are worse.

If you want to make more of an impact, start looking for local sources for your foods and other household items. Why pay, both in increased product cost and global costs, to have a sofa from the other side of the country? Or beets? Or carrots from China? Someone in your neck of the woods is growing carrots, beets and a whole lot more. Start going to Farmer's Markets and supporting the locals. If enough people do this then the money stays in the community and your neighbor begins to travel less, and their neighbor and so on. I'm not suggesting that everything we use can be found within 100 mile of us, but that by shopping as locally as we can. By reducing transportation times and costs, every individual can have a global impact by reducing fuel consumption. This winter, find a local craftsperson and spend a few extra dollars to buy a nice thick sweater from locally grown wool. Then keep the thermostat at 68 degrees during the day. At night drop it to 65 or 60.  If Chicken Little had had any sense he would have pause for a moment, surveyed what his position was and cornered the market on falling acorns. The Sky-is-falling position is fear mongering and never leads to a solution in time."

This article on the true cost of producing our nations's food, mentioned in the above referenced article,  is also well worth a read.

by: ChefNeal at 08/22/05 13:59 | link | comments |
oil crisis, energy woes, freakonomics

Be the editorial

 In a creative move, our "local paper"--already a podcasting maven--The Settle Post-Intelligencer is going to open up the Editorial page via a web site. After the morning meeting about what the column will contain they will post the topics for comment (like pre-OP ED) before a word is written. Sound's great, but will this new porthole into the Fourth Estate be the beginning of Open Source News Paperage or just a gimmick to keep people reading the paper through an assumed involvement in the process?

From Snarkmarket

by: ChefNeal at 08/19/05 17:28 | link | comments |
virtual editorial

Gastrocast #21

 A strange little Gastrocast this time.

Flickr Set is here.

If you haven't yet, please take the survey.

Recipe


(adapted from Kaffeehaus)

Bread Crumbs--for dusting
3/4C Sugar
2 Large Eggs
1T Dark Rum
1T Honey
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
4 oz, or one stick, or 1/2 C Butter, melted
11/3 C All-purpose flour
2oz Walnuts
1tsp Baking Poweder
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp (about 2" piece of whole) cinnamon ground
pinch of salt
2C zucchini, shredded

3T Apricot Jam thinned out with 1T water, warmed
1/2C heavy cream
4oz dark, bittersweet chocolate broken into small pieces

Preheat oven to 350F (180C).  Butter 8 x 11 glass baking dish, dust with bread crumbs.
Whisk the eggs, sugar, rum, honey, and vanilla well. Slowly whisk in the melted butter.
Blitz the flour, walnuts, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon in a food processor until the nuts are round fine. Combine with the liquid mixture.Fold in the zucchini. Pour into pan and tap to remove air bubbles and even out surface..
Bake 25-35 minutes in center of oven, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Allow to rest for 5 minutes. Using a wire rack, invert and unmold the cake. Let cool completely.
Bring the cream to a boil, then pour over the chocolate pieces. Let stand 5 minutes off heat. Mix the cream and chocolate together to form a smooth ganache. With the cake on the rack, over a plastic-wrapped baking tray, our the ganache over the top of the cake so it flows from the center outwards. Smooth with a palatte knife.  Refridgerate a minimum of 20 minutes for the glaze to set. This cake can be made up to a day in advance if covered with plastic wrap and stored at room temperature.

by: ChefNeal at 08/18/05 19:37 | link | comments (2)|
gastrocast, baking, dessert

Drive while you can

 Just finished watching the evening dose of the Daily Show--actually last night's program. Seymour Hersh was the guest,  speaking about the confluence of Iran and Venezuela over oil. Didn't one of those countries throw us out last week? His prediction of coming oil craziness seems to match my own dark fears. Now I'm not saying we've all got to go dig a bunker in our back yards, or start storing petrol in our sheds. But I am thinking ahead to this winter when fuel oil will be dear. Time to head out and saw some blow-down trees for fire wood. Time to head out to the farmer's markets and get some more great, local food to put up for the winter. Time to get new tires for the bicycle and start planning a few more ways to be a part of the solution. Eat Local in August, might be a good exercise in thinking how to eat more local or at least centrally all year long.  Think what a slim and beautiful nation we would be if we all started walking a bit more thanks to the OPEC diet.

by: ChefNeal at 08/18/05 04:01 | link | comments (2)|
oil crisis, local, seymour hersh

You have the sniffles. . . .

 . . .do you want Mummy to call the doctor?

This could be the number one phrase leading to a huge and scary health problem FOR US ALL.  The doctor, at Mummy's insistance, is going to prescribe antibiotics to Junior--"because he has so much to do at school, he really just CAN't be sick right now. . . ." Of course there is nothing wrong with wanting to feel better. To making sure that the strep throat going around doesn't wipe you out. But over presribing of antibiotics is causing common germs like e coli, campylobacter and salmonella to become drug resistant and even more dangerous than before.

These germs have been with humankind for life--they aren't new in the 20th or 21st centuries.  Why then are they such a problem in our "modern" age with all sorts of sanitaition and cleanliness? Perhaps too much of a good thing, eh? 50, 30, 20 years ago these germs were not the threat they are today. Sure, people got sick, some even have died, but not at current rates. Botulism is on the rise as well--but I put that down, mainly to stupidity: people don't remember the rules for correctly canning foods, and are foolish when it comes to trusting commercially canned goods.

In an article this moring from the BBC there is alarming news that in commercially raised chickens in Britain (although not organic ones--hmmm. . . .) there are surprisingly high counts of antibiotic-resistant e coli and campylobacter. The piece goes on to state that there are two theories for this. One claims that over-use of antibiotic in animal feed is leading to the problem. The other side of the issue is that over presription of antibiotics in humans is the cause. Still, again, is the claim that food poisioning is high (1 out of 3 people???) and that people just aren't cooking their food enough.

While I agree that proper food preparation and handling techniques are not being taught to our children, let alone the illiterates who often work in or own restaurants, I do not think it is fair to totally blame the victims in the last stage of the cycle.  Why are the ingredients we cooks are using so contaminated?? Beef, Chicken, Scallions, Watermelons, Cantaloupe??? What makes these, and other items, such a threat? Why can't our foodstuffs be safe when they come through the back door? We need to stop making the food service industry the scapegoat and start casting the blame further afield.

This heads right back in the direction of faceless, uncaring Agribusiness. Production and profits, not protection. Mad cow and e coli--directly related to getting beef from birth to entrecote as quickly as possible for maximum profit. But, we all know--haste makes waste; or in this case, wasting diseases. . . .The occurance of e coli and mad cow contamination in grass fed, organic, and therefore slowly produced meat products is rare.  Same is true for chickens. Free Range Hens have a lower occurance of salmonella than battery hens crammed in stinking housing without any exericise or healthy change of air. Not only do carefully raised food products have lower disease rates, they also require less medications.

That produce has contaminations of fecal waste products is also just as wrong and just as baffling. Not only are the vegetables and fruits soaked in non-organic fertilizers and herbacides and bug sprays--in the mega-factory-farms make the most for the least mentality they don't provide enough outhouses and washroom facilities for their undereducated migrant laborers and they don't use proper sanitation procedures when it comes to cleaning the soil from their crops.

So, what's the solution? Bleach the hell out of everything? Scrub up with antibiotic soaps and take some magic pills to fortify ourselves against the onslaught of microbial warfare? That's what some want you to do. However, such procedures will surely lead to chaos. The human race will collapse like a house of cards with people dying from tummy aches and starvation as more and more food becomes unfit for consumption. The bugs will have one through the triumph of science. 

No, stop reaching for the antibiotic soaps EVERY time you wash your hands--only use them, and bleach, after working with raw meats, or scraping out the sewers. Let yourselves be sick. Let the overburdened medical systems of the world relax a bit. Bed rest and plenty of fluids will do more to cure your (and our) ills than working through a raging illness while taking stronger and stronger doses of bug killers. And, finally, get to know your local farmer, butcher, candlestick maker (that's bee keeper for you city folk)--build up your immune system again by eating healthy foods. Have a tummy ache and the scoots once an a while--that means the bugs are in you and at work--not just the bad ones, but the good ones as well. And stop treating yourself like a penned veal calf or caged hen--get out of the cubicle, stop taking prescription drugs to counteract the poor air quality and get some fresh air and exercise.

by: ChefNeal at 08/15/05 14:44 | link | comments (3)|
rant, food contamination, superbugs, e coli, salmonella

Currently Yours

So I got curious and paused the satellite feed of the Current TV Channel for a few hours and then fast forwarded until their "Current Podcast-atastic" segment showed up. It didn't take long. It was a nice 30 second promo for this show and two others. A brief audio description of the show, a mention to hit this blog and view the photos, and all the while the web address was on screen. Nice! Maybe because I'm West Coast, and they're LA-centric?? Don't know. But it's great to be one out of 43 so-called food shows and even more--one out of 7000 podcasts--and even get a mention on this hip so-new-as-no-one-has-heard-of-it TV station, at least two days in a row. I have LA connections, but I'm still trying to find out if they came into play on this one or if it was just a lucky dip in the podcast pool.

by: ChefNeal at 08/11/05 21:23 | link | comments (2)|
gastrocast, current tv