On popcorn:
For flavorings, you can add real butter or dried seasonings, such as dillweed, vegetable flakes, or soup mix.
Say what now?
Also:
"Try this experiment: Buy a conventional potato in a store, and try to get it to sprout. It won't," says Moyer
Yes, it will, in my experience (I am a bit haphazard in the kitchen and thus leave potatoes unattended for too long).
Tomatoes, beef, microwave popcorn, potatoes, salmon, milk and apples
Mix salmon and microwave popcorn in a bowl with half of the milk. Still until combined. Line a casserole with thinly sliced beef, then fill with alternating layers of thinly sliced apples and the salmon and popcorn mixture. Top with shredded potatoes and one whole tomato and bake for an hour at 375. Cut into slices, and serve immediately, pouring the remaining milk to taste over the slices.
I just clicked through... heebs, why are you reading foxnews.com?
I mean, apparently it's reprinted from Prevention magazine, but still. Weird.
Potatoes sprout on me if I keep them for too long.
If just anybody can have milk without poison, why should I bother?
5: I know. It was in my facebook feed, and I didn't feel like finding the original Prevention article.
Potatoes sprout on me if I keep them on me for too long.
9: What if you keep them in a drawer or pantry?
10: There's a potato in my drawers . . . and it's sprouting!
We're slowly reverting to a system based entirely on the principle of caveat emptor.
What a marvel of contextless facts:
A recent comprehensive study conducted by the USDA and researchers from Clemson University found that compared with corn-fed beef, grass-fed beef is higher in beta-carotene, vitamin E, omega-3s, conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), calcium, magnesium, and potassium; lower in inflammatory omega-6s; and lower in saturated fats that have been linked to heart disease.
How much and in what way do the implied-to-be-good things help your health? How much of them do we get from other sources? Considering the amount of beef an average person eats, do the implied-to-be-bad things make a significant difference in health risks? This might as well be touting grass-fed beef for its higher thiotimoline content.
Also fantastic that their source for this entire section is a "farmer," i.e., the owner of a farm that sells grass-fed beef.
13.last: well, half the other "experts" appear to be lobbyists, so it's almost an improvement.
We're slowly reverting to a system based entirely on potatoes sprouting on me.
You should sue. Every one loves tater torts.
It was in my facebook feed
Every time I've clicked a link to a news story from Facebook in the last few days, I get a message asking me to sign up for some kind of app. Have they done away with normal links?
The only thing I see on Facebook is articles about how Henry James killed Daisy Miller.
These kinds of articles aggravate me. Information is important, and I, as a SWPL bougie whatever, obviously hold many of the same views that the 'experts' do. But holy Batman, this sort of thing just makes me want to run to the nearest supermarket and stock up on non-organic frozen tater tots out of some sort of perverse reaction to the style of the article.
I am kind of curious about how serious the BPA in tomato cans is, and if it is, why more firms haven't shifted to something else. Most companies dealing in food-grade plastic shifted to BPA-free stuff very quickly, after all. (Also, I really like canned tomatoes.) For some reason, the scare of BPA never really hit home; I haven't done enough reading, probably.
17 gets it right. Not only can I not delete all these links to Washington Post articles like I can with most annoying apps, I can't even click on them and get to the Washington Post in the event that one of them actually looks interesting.
"We're slowly reverting to a system based entirely on the principle of caveat emptor."
this is just a taste of what the great libertarian Utopia will be like.
12:"reverting" is the correct word. Back past Carson to Frank Norris and Upton Sinclair.
Except, times arrow, and the New Gilded Age will be much worse than the last, because of the lack of competition in the markets and the lack of counter tendencies in the politics.
I've seen the various videos of pus-laden milk being produced by rBGH cows, but there's also the disclaimer on every food product that says they don't use rBGH milk: "The F.D.A. has said no significant difference has been shown and no test can now distinguish between milk from rBGH treated and untreated cows." Now, maybe lobbyists are so powerful they can get the FDA to print an outright lie on millions of food products, in which case drinking pus milk is the least of our worries, but I would think that a test to detect pus milk (or excess IGF-1) would be pretty simple to invent- I know how to run an IGF-1 test- and that therefore all that pus is not really what's being shipped to the supermarket.
well, half the other "experts" appear to be lobbyists, so it's almost an improvement.
If you need any further evidence of how thoroughly the USDA has been captured by producer interests, I recently learned that the USDA beef grade formerly known as "Good" (i.e. the lowest quality beef sold at retail) has been rechristened "USDA Select".
Now, maybe lobbyists are so powerful they can get the FDA to print an outright lie on millions of food products
No, but they are powerful enough to get the agency to impose a labeling requirement that kneecaps their competition.
I was reading up on the BPA-in-cans thing, and it sounds like nobody has a good replacement for the complete set of can-liner uses (in-can cooking/sterilization at ~240F, plus the moderate-to-high acid of tomatos), and the replacements for BPA-including epoxy for low-acid uses are more expensive in the $0.03-$0.05/can range.
Yes, those "Social Readers" are horrible. I thought people were actually inexplicably installing them, but now I'm wondering if every link to the Washington Post, Guardian, etc. funnels you to that permissions page.
I was reading up on the BPA-in-cans thing, and it sounds like nobody has a good replacement for the complete set of can-liner uses (in-can cooking/sterilization at ~240F, plus the moderate-to-high acid of tomatos), and the replacements for BPA-including epoxy for low-acid uses are more expensive in the $0.03-$0.05/can range.
I've also been trying to make sense of this. BPA is banned in Europe, so there must be a way to do can liners, even for tomatoes. But none of the organic tomato growers opt to go that route in the US. I mean, a nickel markup is hardly prohibitive in the organic market.
Re: the social reader thing: if you click a link on facebook that somebody else shared with the social reader, you can't get to the article without installing the social reader yourself. I fucking hate those things. And because so many people click on them, they inevitably trigger the "Top Story" feature, often over and over again for the same story as more people read it (even after I uncheck it as a top story).
BPA is banned in Europe
Oh hey, I guess maybe I don't have to ponder this too hard any more.
if you click a link on facebook that somebody else shared with the social reader, you can't get to the article without installing the social reader yourself
That hasn't been my experience. If you hit Cancel on the install app, it just takes you to the website. At least, that's the way the Grauniad one works.
pus-laden milk being produced by rBGH cows
This strikes me as highly implausible. Dairy farms are notably fastidious about hygiene in the milking parlour, because milk cooperatives test for bacterial contamination at source, and will refuse to accept a load milk that tests positive. A farmer that allows pus-laden milk into the milk tank is throwing away money.
Mind you, lactating dairy cows need to be milked every day even if they have mastitis, so it's all together possible that someone took a video of a cow with pus on its teats being milked. That milk goes straight down the drain, not into the food supply.
Is there any reason not to buy tomatoes in Tetra Paks?
BPA is allowed in Europe, only banned for baby bottles.
If you hit Cancel on the install app, it just takes you to the website.
This has been my experience as well, but I didn't figure it out until someone told me: it seems like cancel would just abort the whole thing. Clearly they designed it that way on purpose.
Is there any reason not to buy tomatoes in Tetra Paks?
They're not always that widely available. Of the several grocery stores I go to, only the slightly downmarket one has the Pomi brand. Our nearest WF doesn't have any Tetra Paks, and our TJs doesn't stock theirs.
30: oh, right. I think I knew that, because the author of 35 told me. But I still fearfully shun those links.
I just looked back for such links in the last week on FB to test this, and couldn't find any. Perhaps my cri de coeur on the subject had some effect.
Is it ever possible that something "from Heebie" shows up in other people's facebook feeds, but if I went to my own wall, I wouldn't see it there?
I have a big fear about this.
I'm pretty sure neither Pomi nor Tetra Paks are available in our town.
39: I kept going to my own wall to check if anything had shown up, and have also had that vague worry.
Milk has been tested for germs since forever (well, the 1930s in the UK and we were late to the party). Mind you that was remembered enough that when I was a kid in the Yorkshire Dales, glass milk bottles used to come marked "from so-and-so's herd of British Friesians, tuberculosis tested and brucellosis accredited".
tuberculosis tested and brucellosis accredited
I read this as "tuberculosis tested, brucellosis approved".
In California, I really love the Muir Glen brand of organic tomatoes. They're fantastic. And...they only come in cans. And now I see I still need to worry about BPA.
45: I'm eating chili made with those tomatoes right now.
The Center for Progressive Reform studied the records of 1,080 OIRA meetings over two Administrations. They found that OIRA changed 84% of all environmental regulations, and 65% of others, under the Obama Administration. This is an increase over the Bush Administration.
Industry dominates the OIRA meetings process. OIRA makes no effort to balance its meeting schedule by hearing from even a rough equivalence of organizations supporting protective regulations. In only 16 percent of reviews involving meetings did OIRA meet with organizations from across the spectrum of interested groups, while in 73 percent OIRA met only with industry representatives.
48: They found that OIRA changed 84% of all environmental regulations
I knew it! Those goddamn Fenians aren't green at all!
Cancel does not take me to the article from Facebook. It's the most annoying thing on the Internet since Nytimes put in tht dictionary lookup "feature."
There's a new Chrome extension which makes those horrible Facebook things go away: http://nikcub.appspot.com/frictionless-browser-plugin
Or you can do what I do and pray that the Washington Post goes out of business.
Aha: from 51:
There is no consistant behavior across the applications. Some of them require an install, some of them allow you to hit cancel and still read the article, some of them load an alternate version of the article within Facebook, while others open the original website.
||
Hey. A list of the people appointed to the UCD pepper spray task force!
My first thoughts:
Headed by Cruz Reynoso? I'm glad he's recovered enough from the car crash to be doing stuff like this. I liked him, but others in my classes thought he wasn't particularly focused.
Alan Brownstein taught me torts. He is fucking fantastic. I couldn't want a stronger, clearer, more moral voice on the list, although I'm glad to see another strong clear voice we know.
Man, the students on that Task Force are in for an amazing experience.
|>
Not that any of you care about this, obviously, but the comments to that newpaper article are the usual newspaper cesspool.
55: My local paper is apparently about to add comments, and all I can think is, NOOOOO!!!!!
This, in a nutsheell, is what annoys me about some parts of the organic/food awareness/vegetarian movement(s); when asked what to substitute for farmed salmon, this is the asnwer:
The solution: Switch to wild-caught Alaska salmon. If the package says fresh Atlantic, it's farmed. There are no commercial fisheries left for wild Atlantic salmon.
Gee, if farmed salmon is bad for your health and wild salmon is actually being driven extinct due to overfishing, why not stop eating it altogether?
Also annoying: supposed vegetarians who eat fish and are clueless about the much greater damage they do that way, what with ninety percent of fish in the oceans being gone already and commercial fisheries having switched to hunting slow growing deep sea fish we barely knew existed even ten years ago.
wild salmon is actually being driven extinct due to overfishing
What? Wild salmon's doing fine. Much better than most other fisheries.
What? Wild salmon's doing fine.
Martin's a dirty European and might be talking about Atlantic wild salmon, which are not doing well like the Alaskan fisheries.
Probably, but the passage he's quoting and responding to refers specifically to Alaskan wild salmon.
58: Martin's figure actually refers to big, predatory fish (salmon, tuna, swordfish, halibut & c.). Small fish populations are surging as a result -- and one of the recommendations of some parties for more sustainable fishing is less consumption of the big fish, which consumption is driven heavily by high-end demand, in favour of small fish like herring and sardines -- but there's really no replacing the big fish once they're gone, especially since the small fish replacing them aren't necessarily always something we'd want to eat, and small fish stocks are subject to natural boom and bust above and beyond the pressures of fishing and global warming. (In view of all this it would be surprising if wild salmon was genuinely doing "fine.")
(Though it may well be doing better by comparison with the havoc wrought on other big fish.)
Martin's figure actually refers to big, predatory fish (salmon, tuna, swordfish, halibut & c.).
Those are all very different fish, though, with different habitats, breeding strategies, and so forth. My general impression is that groundfish like halibut (which are harvested out on the high seas where enforcement of fishing quotas is very difficult) are in trouble, but anadromous fish like salmon are doing better. Salmon in particular is very heavily regulated by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, which has a ton of data on harvest levels, prices, etc. I don't see anything in the data to indicate that salmon are being overfished at this point, but feel free to dig into it and come to your own conclusions.
I buy and use muir glen tomatoes for sauce all the way over here in narnia. because our local tomatoes are so-so. naturally many of our vegetables are amazing and delicious, and things such as tarragon and lemon thyme are also grown...somewhere nearby enough to end up in the stall at the wet market. which could mean australia, frankly, but is usually the highlands of peninsular malaysia. it's a shame my children like raspberries and blueberries so much, they're brutally expensive (seeing as how they come from america) . couldn't we all just love some cheap longan? then again, who blames them, berries are just plain delicious! they like mango and rambutan and mangosteen and litchi and other normal stuff too. still a no on the durian.
still a no on the durian.
""They are simply delicious, by far the best food I have eaten anywhere: a quintessence of strawberries, bananas, pineapple, cream, and custard with the texture of batter - and yet with a savoury tang of onion and Stilton cheese and a faint suggestion of drains."
Best description of durian I have ever read. (It's from F. Spencer Chapman, "The Jungle is Neutral".)
still a no on the durian.
Shame. If you mix a litre of durian juice and a litre of cold Earl Grey tea, you get a healthy, delightful drink suitable for summer. You'll never grow old with a pitcher of durian grey.
Stanley is a very bad influence.
||
The triumph of objective journalism. From an article by the Washington Post about a proposed deficit cap for the euro-zone:
"If adopted by other nations in the union, the deal would mean drastic cuts in European budgets. It would also spell the end of three decades of overspending that helped finance a cozy social protection system envied by much of the world."
|>
69: thanks, Washington Post. And what did your last three decades of overspending get for you?
At least the quote in 69 lays bare the underlying reasons for pushing for an EU wide spending cap when having this would not have prevented the crisis, nor be implemented quickly enough to matter in resolving the crisis, let alone be any help in doing so.
The Muir Glen canned tomatoes are much tastier than the Pomi ones in the Tetra Paks, which are often a bit watery. I especially love the Muir Glen fire roasted tomatoes, which I had the good fortune to accidentally buy for use in Homesick Texan's New Year's black-eyed pea recipe last year.
The fire-roasted ones are absolutely amazing, and perk up any and all recipe. Also excellent are the ones that contain diced green chilies. Their crushed tomatoes with basil respond excellently to Marcella Hazan's butter + onion treatment, too.
Sorry for the nattering, but Muir Glen tomatoes are to me what Rancho Gordo beans (which I also enjoy) are to many here. And, if you find them on sale, much more reasonably priced. If only they would make BPA-free cans!
63: Those are all very different fish, though, with different habitats, breeding strategies, and so forth.
What they all have in common is that they're mostly on the brink of going out. I don't doubt you're correct that Alaskan salmon may be a local exception to this trend, but on the global scale this really doesn't alter Martin's point. Worldwide, salmon is in as steep a decline as a factor in the wild ecosystem as any other species. The problem is widespread pressure from industrial fisheries on the whole range of accessible habitats.
Shit like 69 always depresses me. Things are not going to get better, as Martin says in 71.
As the song says: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=monyiOsoKxg
People really haven't gotten the message about the destruction of worldwide fish stocks; it's quite disgusting to see people who would otherwise donate to the Sierra Club or whatever slurping down Toro. It's like the equivalent of driving a Hummer, people!
I wonder how long it would take for fisheries to recover if we really backed all the way off -- no fishing of anything pressured at all. Fifty years? A century? Some much shorter time?
78 -- I've read that cod from the grand banks just isn't coming back, ever. The ecosystem has changed.
The only fish I know are okay to eat (environmentally speaking) are sardines and anchovies. Both of which I eat the hell out of.
On the other end of the spectrum, I know that lots of the big fish are overfished, probably already to the point of no return but I don't need to be contributing to the problem.
There's a lot of in-between that I have no idea about, however. Is there anything else that's okay to eat, or, not really, no? I eat wild alaskan salmon from time to time, although I've always felt like that's sort of cheating, for the reasons mentioned in 74. I also eat catfish, although that's sort of a different thing altogether. Is there anything else that I can order with a clean conscience?
This thread reminded me that I had months ago printed out this article on over-fishing but never read it.
Mmm. I should eat more sardines. I love sardines. I've hardly eaten fish other than in a restaurant for years -- we don't have a neighborhood fish store these days and I don't like buying fish from anything but a dedicated fish store, or the highest end possible supermarket. But I could get FreshDirect to deliver frozen sardines.
frozen sardines
I've never even heard of these. What exactly do you do with them?
I just eat the canned ones. (Probably not bpa-free.)
81: there's a list here:
http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/sfw
And you can probably find others. The problem, I think, is that fish labeling is notoriously poor and fraudulent. It's bard enough to know that the kind of fish is labeled correctly, much less whether the fish is "line caught" or "tank farmed" or what have you, and the method and location of catch makes all the difference. I'd say that unless you are hyperconscious it's pretty hard to justify a lot of fish consumption.
Eh, sorry, that list didn't work because I was trying to do it on my phone. Just google "Monterey Bay Aquarium" "seafood watch" and "super green list."
85: wait, my sardines have to be "U.S. Pacific"? Why? I don't think many (any?) of the ones I regularly buy are. I'd have to check to see if those are even available--I mostly remember Chile, Portugal, etc. on my grocer's shelves.
I've never heard of sardines as anything but totally environmentally okay to eat, without any qualification about their origin.
I'm not crazy about canned fish -- I'll eat canned sardines camping, but they don't taste great unless I'm really hungry. Fresh sardines fried or grilled, on the other hand, are good.
Wait, swordfish is good now? I thought swordfish was on a "You'll go straight to hell if you look crosseyed at a swordfish" list. Did they recover wildly in the last decade or so, or was I just confused?
Monterey Bay says Atlantic sardines are being seriously overfished, and the sustainable ones are US caught from the Pacific. So, many on the grocers shelves are nonsustainable. Sorry.
90: I always thought swordfish was generally fairly sustainably fished (not perfect, but better than most). I thought it was on all the "Seafood not to eat" lists because of very high mercury, not fishing practices.
90-- only domestic swordfish caught by certain methods. See the labeling problems above; it's still prob not OK to just go into a NY restaurant and order swordfish.
93=me, and I'm getting this from the MBA's iPhone app.
If those charts are accurate, the regional variation within the US about which fish are okay to eat and which aren't is much more significant than I would have expected.
91: You know, their Northeast handout linked in 85 doesn't even list 'sardines'. Not good, not bad, they don't exist.
People can eat Asian carp or any other kind of carp. They're a major food fish everywhere in the world but here, most important fresh water food fish.
If only there were carp with a pretty face. People like to kill and eat pretty things lie trout. Not carp. ("You always eat the one you love". Ballad of Reading Gaol.)
Carp are heavy in the mercury, but past the age of 50 you're only a couple of decades away from dementia anyway, and mercury accumulates slowly.
Carp can be pretty. Koi are certainly pretty and I think they're carp, right?
94: I just downloaded this app, which seems great.
So, a question: pacific wild caught sardines are a "Best Choice" because "Pacific sardine populations appear to be abundant and healthy".
How long would this last if people stopped eating the overfished atlantic sardines? In other words, are the best choices just the relatively-least-destructive (if you must eat seafood) options, but still pretty objectively bad, if fish consumption continues at anything like it's current levels?
I want a list of genuinely guilt-free options. Is this it? Or just a list of least-bad options?
I'm open to the possibility that fish cannot be eaten guiltlessly.
96: I think the iphone app is easier to use and more clear. Sardines are on the "national guide", which if I'm understanding correctly is meant to be a general guide for anything not listed differently in the regional guides. The regional guides control for anything they specifically cover.
People hate it when you eat their koi. But wild carp are ugly.
The Great Lakes tullibee/ chub / whitefish / lake herring / cisco / gray back fishery isn't doing at all well, possibly because of quagga mussels. Smoked these are the tastiest fish of all. There are at least six popular names for five related species, and there's no attempt to match one name to one species. Many-to-many mapping.
it's quite disgusting to see people who would otherwise donate to the Sierra Club or whatever slurping down Toro. It's like the equivalent of driving a Hummer, people!
On the sushi guide, "Toro/Tuna" is one of the "Best Choices" (as long as it is "Yellowfin (US troll/pole)").
71: This is possible, though the Washington Post has a long running animus against the welfare state.
104 cont.: Or US Atlantic troll/pole Bigeye, according to the iphone app. (Although the iphone app doesn't say anything about US troll/pole Yellowfin (but does note that other Yellowfins aren't good choices). The inconsistency here is weird. I may retract 102.)
"You always eat the one you love". Ballad of Reading Gaol.
For each man drinks the drink he loves
From tankard or from jug
Some do it seated by the fire
Some standing on a rug
The upper class from thin-stemmed glass
The lower from a mug!
Well, but that's what makes it so difficult. Maybe Toro is OK if it comes from the US Atlantic and was pole caught, but the odds that you're getting something caught by a Japanese trawler in international waters using a Longmont is high, and the sushi restaurant isn't going to tell you which one you're getting.
107 should be
Gods! what a tumult rent the air,
As with a frightful oath
He seized the waiter by the hair,
And cursed him for his sloth;
Then, grumbling like some stricken bear,
Angrily answered, "Both! "
For each man drinks the thing he loves,
As tonic, dram, or drug;
Some do it standing, in their gloves,
Some seated, from a jug;
The upper class from thin stemmed glass,
The masses from a mug.
The wine was slow to bring him woe,
But when the meal was through,
His wild remorse at every course
Each moment wilder grew;
For he who thinks to mix his drinks
Must mix his symptoms too.
In the 1960s, after the USSR discovered the Southern Ocean fisheries, apparently all kinds of fish used to show up in fishmongers around Russia that they could only identify by its Linnean name.
In Soviet Union, always long line at fishmongers.
Carp was a serious suggestion, but no volunteers so far. Probably the people in the gourmet world should just quit eating fish, because the species that aren't stressed now will be soon enough. All it would take would be a few years of bad government in Alaska to destroy that run too.
Carp and prawns - you can farm prawns. And squid too, there are lots of squid (taking over the top predator niche that the tunny and swordfish used to fill).
Squid also are under less pressure from sperm whales. They don't seem to have caught on as a routine food item for anyone except Mediterraneans, even though people will eat them as a sort of change of pace.
I want a list of genuinely guilt-free options. Is this it? Or just a list of least-bad options?
I want one that rates fish under both environmental impact and mercury content.
See, carp are actually a pest. Not endangered! Bad for the environment! Eat them, people!
Wildlife managers are desperate to get rid of the lake trout that infest Flathead Lake, and its ecosystem, and Yellowstone Lake. On Flathead, the sponsor contests twice a year to see how many a single person can catch over a two week period (I think it's two weeks -- and I think the limit is 100 fish per day).
I think I'll write the governor a letter: BS needs to go to NYC, with a metric fuckton of fresh lake trout, and see if he can get some chefs interested.
Oh, it goes at least six weeks!
Once I was a vegetarian who ate (grass-fed local) beef just to annoy my vegetarian except fish friends.
But yes, you really just have to feel guilty about eating fish. You're in pretty safe waters (ha!) with scallops, mussels, and lobsters (and what tasty waters they are) because they are farmed or cockroaches of the sea.
There's the labeling problems, the fishing method problems (dredging for wild scallops is like clearcutting), longlines (albatross), the fishing-down-the-trophic-level problems (i.e. Suddenly we have all these sardines! What possibly could have happened? Let's eat them all (or feed them to our pets or feed them to our farmed fish). You know what happened? You ate all their predators! The predators won't come back if you eat all their prey), there's the fishing regulation problems (offshore vs. nearshore fishing), the local fishermen problems (catch-share policies favour big trawlers over the little guys). Not to mention climate change projections that indicate potentially huge changes to where and when upwellings occur.
Alaska salmon are doing well now but the CA, OR and WA salmon stocks were doing well until a couple years ago when there was a record year and the expected adults didn't come back. And everyone can't switch to wild-caught Alaska salmon - especially if they want pretty and big salmon steaks.
It's really depressing. There's this kind of stupid study where a researcher looked at the pictures taken of sport catches in the Florida Keys (McCLENACHAN 2009. Cons Biol). Nothing fancy but holy cow. Depressing.
They can get pretty big. And not ugly like carp.
Speaking of unsustainable food choices, for breakfast this morning I ate a whole package of long-expired, undercooked sausage. I thought it was probably fine since it was organic, free-range pork, but I'm starting to second guess myself. I've felt a bit queasy all morning, and it's getting worse.
You're in pretty safe waters (ha!) with scallops, mussels, and lobsters
What about crabs?
Oh, I forgot I have an app for that. Looks like some are okay, but most aren't.
121: Not up to your usual standards, really.
It seems that if you have very much of anything people don't want it. Lake trout is highly prized in the Great Lakes, a trash in fish Montana.
So: You always eat the pretty endangered species you love.
I can't imagine trout going begging, unless it tastes very different from any trout I've ever had. Someone should set up a trout smoking business and ship it all to me. I would be willing to live on smoked trout forever, with perhaps an occasional cracker.
121 cont: I didn't intend it to be undercooked, of course, it just came out that way, and at that point I didn't have time to fix it. And since it didn't smell bad, I assumed the expiration date probably wasn't an issue. And it tasted totally fine. This morning I thought the queasiness was completely psychosomatic, but it's definitely worsening as the day progresses. Although it could be completely unrelated.
I love smoked fish, and lox in particular, so much that I would probably make it my last meal.
|| Off topic: I think that most expiration dates are bogus (lawsuit protection or something) and I usually ignore them except on prescription pharmaceuticals. But one thing I use that's very perishable is hydrogen peroxide. I found a bottle in a cupboard awhile back and looked seriously at an expiration date for probably the first time in my life, and guess what? No expiration date. ||
How long had the pork sausage been expired, urple?
(I'm actually genuinely impressed that urple smelled the sausage to determine whether it was still okay to eat, rather than depending upon the stamped expiration to tell him.)
Off topic: I think that most expiration dates are bogus (lawsuit protection or something) and I usually ignore them except on prescription pharmaceuticals.
Me too.
I think legally, the expiration date is how long the company guarantees full strength of their product. And then obviously there's an incentive for their product to have a shorter lifespan, as long as consumers aren't paying close attention.
The expiration date was in July, but it was frozen for a while between then and now.
I really like cooking with squid. Cleaning is gross and time consuming, though, not a quick meal after work.
Urple, ever tried making your own nuoc mam? What could go wrong?
except on prescription pharmaceuticals
Ignore them here, too, with the exception of tetracycline-family antibiotics. The active ingredient may be a bit less potent than when it was fresh, but they don't go bad.
Wait, 136 was specifically about medicine. Not sausages.
I would eat expired sausages if they looked ok. But why didn't you fully cook them?
But why didn't you fully cook them?
See 130.
129 You should expect a call from the governor.
128.1 -- They're a trash fish because, I think, some well meaning but ultimately clueless midwesterners introduced them. Our introduced kokanee salmon were delicious and beloved, but in that case, the wildlife people wiped them out trying to help them. Helped by their lake trout henchmen, as it turns out.
"Hi, Siscowet I'm Kokanee. Have we been introduced?"
They're a trash fish because, I think, some well meaning but ultimately clueless midwesterners introduced them.
Exactly. Not trash in the sense that people don't think of them as good to eat. They're just a blight on natives like cutthroat and salmon.
One solution would be to overfish them. But people don't want to overfish lake trout. They want to overfish beautiful, beautiful kokanee and cutthroat.
http://missoulian.com/news/local/article_77afb480-2137-11e0-b13d-001cc4c002e0.html
It was the stupid shrimp.
People are trying to fish the crap out of the lake trout. On Yellowstone lake, I think it's more of a government operation than a private thing.
I suspect that there are Midwesterners who would gladly drive 1000 miles for no-limit lake trout fishing.
148 -- You might get a call from the governor as well.
I'm not the guy. But a letter to one of the local fishing magazines should get responses.
I sent the letter, but I suspect it's a bit late for this year.
85 is why I err on the side of caution and not eat any fish at all and nor do my cats.
132 reminded me of the time I was using over the counter eye drops for a while and they hurt every time I applied them. It was only after several such incidents that I thought to look at the label and it turned out that I was actually applying hydrogen peroxide. We'd gotten that to help with our oldest cat and the buildup of wax in his ears...
Muir Glen tomatoes
SWPL alert: Personally I slightly prefer the Bionaturae or Eden Organic tomatoes.
It looks like the might also solve the BPA problem -- the former is available in glass jars, the later claims
Eden Organic Tomatoes are packed in steel cans coated with a baked on r-enamel lining. Due to the acidity of tomatoes, the lining is epoxy based and may contain a minute amount of bisphenol-A, it is however in the 'non detectable' range according to independent laboratory extraction tests. The test was based on a detection level at 5 ppb (parts per billion).
So you could try either of those if you feel like splurging those are worth trying.
Interesting note, here is the Bionaturae comment about BPA in cans which appears to have the same meaning/content as the Eden Organic, but has a very different tone:
We confirm that the lining of our organic canned tomatoes does contain Bisphenol A, BPA. We have been told by a number of major can manufacturers that there are no BPA-free cans available suitable for tomato products at this time. Alternatives are currently being tested but are not available yet. As a company, we truly care about this problem and recognize consumer concern about this issue. We therefore offer two tomato products in glass jars (strained and paste) that do not contain BPA. We test our canned tomatoes for the presence of BPA at independent laboratories, and results have always been negative at a level of 0.005 parts per million, but we do not deny the presence of BPA in the lining. We are told that, if the can were unlined, the tomatoes would react with the can and metals would leach into the product
Aren't Atlantic seaboard fisheries managers begging people to overfish and eat invasive lionfish?
Have they tried breading it and dunking it in a deep fryer?
"The study showed that the most effective way to even maintain current lionfish population densities, at least 27% of the invasive adult populations would have to be killed monthly. The fact that lionfish are able to reproduce monthly throughout the entire year means that this is an effort that must be maintained monthly for the maintenance of current population densities."
Irresponsible aquariumists.
We'll probably lose a few prep cooks, but the linofish eradication and consumption mission must fulfilled.
"How to conquer the invasive lionfish? Saute it."
The articles notes: "Between 2004 and 2008, local densities of lionfish increased by roughly 700 percent in some areas; there are now 1,000 lionfish per acre on certain reefs."
1,000 per acre?? Fuck.
Huh. Do we still put bounties on pests? That sounds like a candidate.
I assume that an acre of ocean-space is still a 2-dimensional measurement? So in very deep water, it would actually be a lot of space?
(I realize that reefs are mostly in fairly shallow water, so this isn't an especially important in this particular context. I'm just wondering.)
Irresponsible aquariumists.
It's always depressing to learn that humans are completely fucking up the planet in some way that I was totally unaware of. The things I know about are more than bad enough; the idea that we're doing who knows how many countless other things at the same time is just... gah.
They don't sound like school fish, so catching them looks pretty labor intensive. I bet that a machine to strip their spines would be pretty easy to make.
Sounds like a good gift to an ex-wife or ex-husband, if you can't afford a Komodo dragon.
163: I think the trick would be to set the bounties at the rate where a full-time lionfish catcher, at a high but not implausible level of skill, would be making a living at it.
164: they're caught by spearing, it seems.
Would a bounty just empty out supply in the local exotic fish stores? Or would it be easy to safeguard against that? (Genuine question.)
NPR blames it on Hurricane Andrew in 1992. I am dubious.
Although, thinking about it, I suppose the local exotic fish stores might now be getting their lionfish stock from the Carribean, instead of oceans on the other side of the world. So maybe that's not a problem.
Yeah, it's only a problem if Pacific lionfish are so much cheaper to catch than the locals that it's worth shipping them in. Possible, given the different workforces, but I'm guessing not.
"Lionfish, also called turkey fish, ..."
Wait, what? Turkey fish?
You could combine a bounty with a commercial fishery, no different than subsidized wheat and corn and more justifiable. And then put a tariff on lionfish imports. And then find a use for the toxins.
I'm not one who is terrible encouraged by "rarely fatal".
119: But yes, you really just have to feel guilty about eating fish.
I've skimmed this thread very fast, but I just want to check: as a mostly-vegetarian who's been thinking that she should really consider eating more fish for nutritional reasons, is this really the verdict?
Damn. And there's no out? Okay, I'll try to learn to like scallops (no go on the mussels, lobster too complicated).
Also, eating Pacific lionfish is good for the ecosystem.
I'm glad to see that urple survived the day.
Survived and thrived. The afternoon was touchy, but things have been better since.
I'd just like to note that the Monterey Bay Aquarium agrees with me on Alaska salmon.
177: excellent. All you have to do now is avoid squirting corrosive rocket fuel into your eyes and you should be fine.
When people talk about "the magic of the market" they never mention how effective it is at exterminating endangered species. All we have to do to get rid of most of the world's carnivores larger than a coyote, especially the felines, is nothing.