One of my fave food blogs, Pinch My Salt, has just posted about a program Barilla pasta is running right now: they are offering FREE downloads of their Celebrity Italian Table Cookbook, and for every cookbook downloaded, they will donate $1 (up to $100,000) to America's Second Harvest.
Sounds like a win-win situation to me!
I just downloaded it and while the design and photos are kinda cheesy, the recipes, created by the delightfully delicious Mario Batali, look squisita.
So do a good deed and help yourself!
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Dinner Tonight!
Oh my gosh I already knew I loved Martha Stewart's Everyday Food magazine, but now they've just gotten better: they have a new blog called Dinner Tonight, in which they post their quick & easy idea for dinner each day.
Tonight's dinner idea looks delish. If I weren't already planning to make pasta with sauteed broccoli di ciccio shoots and canellini beans, I'd so be down for some flank steak with chimichurri sauce!
This is a great idea for those of you (and you know who you are!) who aren't into planning a weekly menu and prefer to plan day by day.
You can sign up to receive each night's dinner idea in your inbox or of course subscribe in your feed reader. So handy!
(And no, I swear I am not paid by nor am I a part of Marta Stewart's OMNIMEDIA for this. I just love this stuff!)
Tonight's dinner idea looks delish. If I weren't already planning to make pasta with sauteed broccoli di ciccio shoots and canellini beans, I'd so be down for some flank steak with chimichurri sauce!
This is a great idea for those of you (and you know who you are!) who aren't into planning a weekly menu and prefer to plan day by day.
You can sign up to receive each night's dinner idea in your inbox or of course subscribe in your feed reader. So handy!
(And no, I swear I am not paid by nor am I a part of Marta Stewart's OMNIMEDIA for this. I just love this stuff!)
Pressing Tofu
This is what does the trick in my kitchen when I need to get tofu ready for sauteeing or stir-frying. Leave it like this for 10-15 minutes, and your tofu will fry better and the dish will be less watery overall.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Pan Porn
Guess what I got for my birthday a few weeks ago?
That's right, my friends....
I got the pan of my dreams (cuz I already have the man of my dreams!) -- the ULTIMATE in cookware: All-Clad. I kind of can't believe it. I've wanted one for so long that it's weird to have it in my kitchen. But it's also totally awesome.
For a long time I've been wanting a large (ie, 12-inch diameter) stainless / NOT nonstick skillet, as my only large skillet has been nonstick for years. And my only stainless skillet was a 10-inch, which just does not put dinner on the table quickly most nights.
A HUGE thank you to my very generous parents, who were the givers of this great gift. :-)
So lo and behold the beauty that is the All-Clad stainless 13-inch skillet!
I'm in love.
That's right, my friends....
I got the pan of my dreams (cuz I already have the man of my dreams!) -- the ULTIMATE in cookware: All-Clad. I kind of can't believe it. I've wanted one for so long that it's weird to have it in my kitchen. But it's also totally awesome.
For a long time I've been wanting a large (ie, 12-inch diameter) stainless / NOT nonstick skillet, as my only large skillet has been nonstick for years. And my only stainless skillet was a 10-inch, which just does not put dinner on the table quickly most nights.
A HUGE thank you to my very generous parents, who were the givers of this great gift. :-)
So lo and behold the beauty that is the All-Clad stainless 13-inch skillet!
I'm in love.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Round Steak for Andrea
My friend Andrea emailed me recently with a question about alternatives for round steak other than its classic preparations, chicken-fried (or country-fried) steak or a slow braise.
Below is my suggestion to her. Pair with a side salad or some side vegetables, and you've got dinner done.
Preheat broiler. Rub steak with extra virgin olive oil, lots of kosher salt, and pepper on both sides. Let it sit for a bit with this mixture so as to let that sink in. Ideally, you'd let the salted steak sit for an hour before cooking, so as to let the salt do something similar to brining it, but if you don't have that kind of time, that's okay.
Put steaks on a rack (so air goes around the bottom side too and fat drips away from the meat) on a baking sheet (or on your broiler pan rack), then place in oven. Broil for about 8-10 minutes, depending on how hot your oven is, then flip and do 8-10 minutes more; remove from oven. Let it rest for a good 15 minutes. Then slice it thinly and serve with whatever else you got going on!
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
More Belated Menu Posting
Sigh....sometimes working full-time really gets in the way, no?
Anywho...here's what we've been eating and will eat at Casa Dena this week:
- Monday: Cuban chicken with garlic-sauteed broccoli and cabbage salad
- Tuesday: Chili
- Wednesday: Quinoa with Balsamic Brussels Sprouts & Red Onion (this is one of my favorites....I forgot to take photos this week but I'll make it again next week and post this recipe.)
- Thursday: I have Book Club so hubby will be eating Wednesday night leftovers, which he is very happy about, as that meal is one of his faves too
- Friday: Ravioli (variety TBD) with garlic-sauteed Chard
My friend Liz got inspired by this blog a while ago and told me she made her own Homemade Indian Takeout and loved it! I cannot tell you how gratifying this is. It totally gives me a "Pay It Forward" feeling. My dear friends Robin and Winston supported and inspired me to cook real, whole, complete meals on my own (instead of, say, microwave kettle corn with some carrot sticks and ranch dressing for dinner) many years ago, and I have been so grateful for that ever since. To think I've inspired someone to cook even one meal is a lovely thought.
On a similar-ish note, I got a shout-out on one of my fave food blogs and I am completely bowled over. I'm having a little bit of a moment, actually. I'm not worthy!
And what are you eating for dinner this week?
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Alas
Alas, I have been very lackadaisical in my blogging lately. I am not happy about that. Hopefully I will have more time for it next week.
I thought I would at least share my meal plan for this week, though we're nearly over. So it's really more of a sharing of meals cooked and eaten, I suppose.
Sunday: Robin Salad
Monday: Cuban-spiced chicken breasts, red cabbage salad, garlic-sauteed broccoli
Tuesday: Homemade Indian Takeout
Wednesday: DeLessio's Takeout (busy, late night at Casa Dena)
Thursday: Delicious Wild Mushroom Pasta
Friday: Season to Taste takeout
Monday, February 4, 2008
Why I Only Eat "Eco-Kosher" Meat
Sometimes it's a pain in the butt to be strict with myself about the meat I'll eat, especially when eating out. But I do it, because I know I have very good reasons for only eating free-range, grass-fed, humanely raised and slaughtered -- and ideally organic and local -- beef and poultry.
Today, all those reasons made themselves all to clear once again. I am so not ever eating factory farmed, industrially-raised meat ever again. Not only is it physically disgusting, it is absolutely ethically wrong.
And this is what our schoolkids are being fed today...makes my stomach turn a little.
I'm sure this kind of thing makes a lot of people want to go vegetarian. I think that's fine. But to me, not only do I love eating meat, I think it's politically more powerful to continue to eat meat, but to insist on it being humanely and sustainably raised and slaughtered.
* * * * *
Published on Monday, February 4, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
Viewers Cringe at Slaughter Video While USDA Spins
by Martha Rosenberg
You wouldn’t think you could “spin” a video that shows slaughterhouse workers electric shocking downer cows, “water boarding” them, jabbing their eyes with herding paddles and ramming them with forklift blades while they squeal in pain, posted at www.hsus.org, but USDA is trying.
Bad enough the slaughterhouse, Hallmark Meat Packing Co. in Chino, CA, supplies the National School Lunch Program, a certain portion of children have already eaten the meat.
Bad enough US downer cattle are, according to Cattlenetwork, “being forced to their feet in order to pass inspection and be processed,” in violation of mad cow regulations, USDA inspectors were onsite–at the plant–while the video was made.
Bad enough Jack-In-the-Box and In-N-Out have pulled beef from the Chino slaughterhouse, what happens to the five year long charm offense toward Asian nations since the last mad cow scare?
You’d be spinning too if you were USDA!
Just look at the history.
Less than two years after diners in 11 restaurants in nine California counties ate meat from the first US mad cow according to the San Francisco Chronicle, newly appointed US agriculture secretary Mike Johanns who left last year vowed to reverse the ban on downer cattle.
“I supported Ann Veneman when she announced that–just to assure the public that we were aggressively on top of this issue,” said Johanns. “But gosh the testing that has been done [shows the risks are low] and our animals have done well.”
A year into Johanns’ tenure, the Houston Chronicle reported 29 downers untested for mad cow got into in the food supply because inspectors “did not believe that they had the authority” to go into the animals’ pens.
Meat executives tried to claim the animals suffered injury after passing inspection–which would make slaughter legal–but investigators found no records of injuries after arrival for 20 of the downers that ended up on US dinner plates.
How can USDA spin a video that’s convinced 150 school districts from New York City to Los Angeles to quarantine their meat? Called “something out of Dante’s Inferno” by Gene Evans of Oregon’s school system?
Well first of all, “there’s no evidence that any of the animals, particularly downers in particular, did in fact enter the food supply,” said Dr. Kenneth Peterson, assistant administrator, Office of Field Operations for USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) in a conference phone call on Thursday. “Now perhaps they moved them in an unacceptable manner but the fact remains, did they go into the food supply?” he told reporters. Maybe “the facility was moving them back out of the slaughter chain.”
Right. And maybe they were taking them to dinner and a movie.
Then there’s the fact that the video represents “allegations” only pending USDA’s own investigation says Peterson to which Bill Tomson of Dow Jones News Wire responded incredulously, “I mean, do you actually expect to go down there and ask them if they were doing anything illegal, and people to say, well yes we were?”
There’s also the fact that no one has gotten sick yet, say FSIS officials, deliberately confusing bacteria like e Coli and salmonella which cause treatable conditions that make you sick right away and can be cooked out of food with the mad cow prion which is an untreatable replicating protein that is virtually indestructible and manifests years later.
Then there’s the fact that the downers in the video aren’t battered from unremitting abuse on mega dairy farms which created mad cow disease by feeding dead cows to live ones–a cheap and plentiful protein for rBGH frenzied metabolisms–they just have broken legs and hips from unfortunate accidents, says Peterson.
The important thing is the USDA mad cow prevention system that relies on filtering out Specific Risk Material (SRM) like brains and spinal cords–isn’t an entire downer SRM?–and the unsupervised honor system known as HACCP, works!
So well, restaurants who got the meat won’t be notified says Peterson, because, “I have a lot of information from this plant both on the obviously the inspectional side but also plant records…that all point to a singular conclusion that the product coming out of the plant not only meets regulatory requirements but is safe and wholesome.”
We believe their meat is safe because we believe their meat is safe.
But reporters weren’t buying it.
How can inspectors observe slaughter activity and “be discreet” when “all the workers know who they are?” asked the Oregonian’s Andy Dworkin.
“It seems like maybe the folks had outsmarted the inspection system,” observed Steve Cornet with Beef Today. “Is this a system that’s…easily circumvented?”
“Just so that I understand you clearly, you suspended Westland [a distributor of the Hallmark meat] for…allegations rather than what an inspector directly observed?” probed Steve Kay of Cattle Buyers Weekly, possibly wondering what USDA is being paid for if the Humane Society is doing its work.
Yes, responded Peterson. Any more questions?
Martha Rosenberg is a cartoonist for the Evanston Roundtable in Evanston, Illinois.
Article printed from www.commondreams.org
URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/04/6839/
Today, all those reasons made themselves all to clear once again. I am so not ever eating factory farmed, industrially-raised meat ever again. Not only is it physically disgusting, it is absolutely ethically wrong.
And this is what our schoolkids are being fed today...makes my stomach turn a little.
I'm sure this kind of thing makes a lot of people want to go vegetarian. I think that's fine. But to me, not only do I love eating meat, I think it's politically more powerful to continue to eat meat, but to insist on it being humanely and sustainably raised and slaughtered.
* * * * *
Published on Monday, February 4, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
Viewers Cringe at Slaughter Video While USDA Spins
by Martha Rosenberg
You wouldn’t think you could “spin” a video that shows slaughterhouse workers electric shocking downer cows, “water boarding” them, jabbing their eyes with herding paddles and ramming them with forklift blades while they squeal in pain, posted at www.hsus.org, but USDA is trying.
Bad enough the slaughterhouse, Hallmark Meat Packing Co. in Chino, CA, supplies the National School Lunch Program, a certain portion of children have already eaten the meat.
Bad enough US downer cattle are, according to Cattlenetwork, “being forced to their feet in order to pass inspection and be processed,” in violation of mad cow regulations, USDA inspectors were onsite–at the plant–while the video was made.
Bad enough Jack-In-the-Box and In-N-Out have pulled beef from the Chino slaughterhouse, what happens to the five year long charm offense toward Asian nations since the last mad cow scare?
You’d be spinning too if you were USDA!
Just look at the history.
Less than two years after diners in 11 restaurants in nine California counties ate meat from the first US mad cow according to the San Francisco Chronicle, newly appointed US agriculture secretary Mike Johanns who left last year vowed to reverse the ban on downer cattle.
“I supported Ann Veneman when she announced that–just to assure the public that we were aggressively on top of this issue,” said Johanns. “But gosh the testing that has been done [shows the risks are low] and our animals have done well.”
A year into Johanns’ tenure, the Houston Chronicle reported 29 downers untested for mad cow got into in the food supply because inspectors “did not believe that they had the authority” to go into the animals’ pens.
Meat executives tried to claim the animals suffered injury after passing inspection–which would make slaughter legal–but investigators found no records of injuries after arrival for 20 of the downers that ended up on US dinner plates.
How can USDA spin a video that’s convinced 150 school districts from New York City to Los Angeles to quarantine their meat? Called “something out of Dante’s Inferno” by Gene Evans of Oregon’s school system?
Well first of all, “there’s no evidence that any of the animals, particularly downers in particular, did in fact enter the food supply,” said Dr. Kenneth Peterson, assistant administrator, Office of Field Operations for USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) in a conference phone call on Thursday. “Now perhaps they moved them in an unacceptable manner but the fact remains, did they go into the food supply?” he told reporters. Maybe “the facility was moving them back out of the slaughter chain.”
Right. And maybe they were taking them to dinner and a movie.
Then there’s the fact that the video represents “allegations” only pending USDA’s own investigation says Peterson to which Bill Tomson of Dow Jones News Wire responded incredulously, “I mean, do you actually expect to go down there and ask them if they were doing anything illegal, and people to say, well yes we were?”
There’s also the fact that no one has gotten sick yet, say FSIS officials, deliberately confusing bacteria like e Coli and salmonella which cause treatable conditions that make you sick right away and can be cooked out of food with the mad cow prion which is an untreatable replicating protein that is virtually indestructible and manifests years later.
Then there’s the fact that the downers in the video aren’t battered from unremitting abuse on mega dairy farms which created mad cow disease by feeding dead cows to live ones–a cheap and plentiful protein for rBGH frenzied metabolisms–they just have broken legs and hips from unfortunate accidents, says Peterson.
The important thing is the USDA mad cow prevention system that relies on filtering out Specific Risk Material (SRM) like brains and spinal cords–isn’t an entire downer SRM?–and the unsupervised honor system known as HACCP, works!
So well, restaurants who got the meat won’t be notified says Peterson, because, “I have a lot of information from this plant both on the obviously the inspectional side but also plant records…that all point to a singular conclusion that the product coming out of the plant not only meets regulatory requirements but is safe and wholesome.”
We believe their meat is safe because we believe their meat is safe.
But reporters weren’t buying it.
How can inspectors observe slaughter activity and “be discreet” when “all the workers know who they are?” asked the Oregonian’s Andy Dworkin.
“It seems like maybe the folks had outsmarted the inspection system,” observed Steve Cornet with Beef Today. “Is this a system that’s…easily circumvented?”
“Just so that I understand you clearly, you suspended Westland [a distributor of the Hallmark meat] for…allegations rather than what an inspector directly observed?” probed Steve Kay of Cattle Buyers Weekly, possibly wondering what USDA is being paid for if the Humane Society is doing its work.
Yes, responded Peterson. Any more questions?
Martha Rosenberg is a cartoonist for the Evanston Roundtable in Evanston, Illinois.
Article printed from www.commondreams.org
URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/04/6839/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
