Monsanto for dessert

Yesterday I got my last copy of Saveur magazine. My financial situation is so grim that I have started getting rid of anything that isn't essential so all the magazine subscriptions have been 86'd (maybe I'll read them occasionally as a treat at an airport). Magazines are in general a huge waste of natural resources (old growth forests! who needs them?) that it made sense, to me, to just stop the madness.

So when I got my last copy, which had a big sign on it saying LAST COPY! I was sad and opened it up promptly to see what I was going to be missing henceforth. On the cover is a wonderful picture of a luscious chocolate caramel tart, chocolate crust with a gooey caramel filling topped with a layer of chocolate and sprinkled with sea salt. I showed the picture to Neil, he looked at and said "we've had that!" Indeed we have, this recipe is from a restaurant I have written about many times, one that I respect greatly for their dedication to sustainable agriculture and local ingredients Marlowe & Sons.

By this point my heart is pounding and I'm all ready to get out my pen and write a grocery list and plan on making this piece of heaven immediately. There on page 102 is my soon to be, most favorite tart to make. Then I look at the ingredients. It starts off good with butter, flour, cocoa...then I see confectioners' sugar. Why don't they say organic or offer a substitution? Commercial confectioners' sugar is made with genetically modified corn starch, unless of course you specify organic or add a little asterisk to it and say at the bottom: "oh hey you might not want to help Monsanto ruin the planet by buying products that contain genetically modified organisms", but then I breath and think "it's just icing sugar, get over yourself."

[A side note on icing sugar is that instead of spending more money on another food "product" you can just put regular organic sugar into a food processor and whizz it about until it's ultra fine, a perfectly fine substitute or you can go out and by one of the many brands of organic confectioners' sugar. Or in the case of this pastry you could indeed just use sugar. The French have used it to great effect for a long time now. Although a very fine baker and friend of mine who owns a very successful business here in NYC, Maury Rubin, uses it in his pastry and he is French trained, but I also know he uses all organic ingredients at City Bakery. Who knows? I'm self taught, I never went to any fancy school to learn how to make fancy pies, maybe the French have discovered icing sugar as the new ne plus ultra of pate sucre.]

The next section "for the caramel": ...1 1/2 cups sugar, 3 tbsp light corn syrup..." What?! Did I read that right? Saveur magazine writes a cover article on the RESTAURANTS THAT MATTER, including this beacon of local sustainability, and they publish a recipe with two ingredients brought to you by Monsanto? What is wrong with this picture? If it were in Quick n' Cheap Eats magazine and the recipe was by Paula Dean or Rachael Rae I'd not even mention it, but that's not where it's coming from. It's coming from my favorite food magazine and one of the restaurants I admire most in NYC.

Let me be perfectly clear. Under no circumstances do you ever need to use corn syrup.

In the chocolate pecan pie I make, I substitute dark grade B maple syrup instead of high fructose corn syrup. In this instance you could use any number of things. Off the top of my head, I'd say the fancy grade A light maple syrup or maybe agave syrup or maybe use brown sugar instead of white and just not add anything else? It's just 3 tablespoons. And please don't go on about how the viscosity and sweetness of corn syrup is so unique. Bullshit. It's so sweet because it was made in a fucking lab, OK? It was "developed" in a lab as a cheap substitute for sugar so big corporations like Coca Cola could make more profit. It is sweeter than sugar, it was engineered that way. It's the worst of science and the worst of "products" (I always put "products" in quotes because it is not food). Period, end of discussion. Those are the facts, so why do we ignore them?

The really insidious thing about this is when you buy high fructose corn syrup in a store, as I have had to do for food styling work, it says on the label in big letters "Corn Syrup", but when you look at the ingredients you see the truth: high fructose corn syrup. Of course big food corporations with the help of the previous republican government made it possible for you to not have to state if any of the contents are genetically modified. 65% of American food "products" contain genetically modified substances.

The farming of GM crops wreaks unfathomable havoc on our soil, ecosystems and health. I could list a page of links to medical, scientific, farming and health sites detailing long list of the hazards, both environmental and health, that this kind of agriculture engenders.

When are we going to wake up? What hope is there if smart, talented people cook and publish recipes calling for the use of ingredients that we know are destroying our planet and making us sick?

So tomorrow I am going to make this tart with real food and will report back.

Oh and in case anybody is still reading and wondering why exactly this makes me upset, recently Neil and I watched Werner Herzog's new documentary Encounters at the End of the World. A must see exploration of life in Antarctica. At one point more then half way through the film Herzog, who narrates, says quite casually that the scientific community seems to agree that there will be another massive extinction event like the one that killed the dinosaurs only next time the species that becomes extinct will be humans. Most agree it will happen sooner then we think.

Go ahead have extra GM high fructose corn syrup in your pie, while you can.

For more information check out:

www.deliciousorganics.com/controversies/corn.htm

or watch the video:

Neil sneaks in with a posting! Let's see how long Mark takes to notice I did this.
Its the citation for a research paper by a friend of mine, liver pathologist colleague Beth Brunt, and her collaborative team. It is a nice big, digestible bit of organic scientific research that backs up Mark's concerns about high fructose corn syrup in the diet, i.e. Why Americans (and Everyone Who Eats Like an American, Including Rats) are Fat and Diabetic... Severe Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Dosease with hepatic necroinflammatory changes in mice fed trans fats and a high-fructose corn syrup equivalent.Tetri LH, Basaranoglu M, Brunt EM, Yerian LM, Neuschwander-Tetri BA.in: Am J Physiol Gastrointest Liver Physiol. 2008; 295: G987-95.
Abstract: "The aims of this study were to determine whether combining features of a western lifestyle in mice with trans fats in a high-fat diet, high-fructose corn syrup in the water, and interventions designed to promote sedentary behavior would cause the hepatic histopathological and metabolic abnormalities that characterize nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Male C57BL/6 mice fed ad libitum high-fat chow containing trans fats (partially hydrogenated vegetable oil) and relevant amounts of a high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) equivalent for 1-16 wk were compared with mice fed standard chow or mice with trans fats or HFCS omitted. Cage racks were removed from western diet mice to promote sedentary behavior. By 16 wk, trans fat-fed mice became obese and developed severe hepatic steatosis with associated necroinflammatory changes. Plasma alanine aminotransferase levels increased, as did liver TNF-alpha and procollagen mRNA, indicating an inflammatory and profibrogenic response to injury. Glucose intolerance and impaired fasting glucose developed within 2 and 4 wk, respectively. Plasma insulin, resistin, and leptin levels increased in a profile similar to that seen in patients with NASH. The individual components of this diet contributed to the phenotype independently; isocaloric replacement of trans fats with lard established that trans fats played a major role in promoting hepatic steatosis and injury, whereas inclusion of HFCS promoted food consumption, obesity, and impaired insulin sensitivity. Combining risk factors for the metabolic syndrome by feeding mice trans fats and HFCS induced histological features of NASH in the context of a metabolic profile similar to patients with this disease. Because dietary trans fats promoted liver steatosis and injury, their role in the epidemic of NASH needs further evaluation."

(This is Mark, the reason Neil talks so funny is because he's a doctor.)

A Message from the Corn Refiners Association: You're Confused

Yep that's right.  The people who market high fructose corn syrup have decided that the only way to:

"clear up consumer confusion about the product"

is to change it's name to:  Corn Sugar

This is according to the NYT, who seem to be shilling for the Corn Refiners association.  It reads more like an advertisement than a piece of journalism.   Personally I'm kind of amazed at Marion Nestles' quotes; I respect her greatly, but for a nutritionist to say:

"But you have to feel sorry for them. High-fructose corn syrup is the new trans fat. Everyone thinks it’s poison, and food companies are getting rid of it as fast as they can.”

I have to feel sorry for them, why?  It is poison and there are many studies out there to prove it so why, Dr. Nestle, are you not mentioning them?  Or are you just being edited this way by the NYT?

To be fair, let's define poison.  High Fructose corn syrup is government subsidized, industrially grown, most likely a GMO and highly processed.  Sugar is a non GMO grass that, depending on the kind of sugar, can be processed to varying degrees.  Sugar can be bought in an organic version, HFCS can not.

It has been proven that HFCS prompts considerably more weight gain which leads to Diabetes, Obesity, Heart Disease and Liver Problems.  For a more exhaustive discussion on the topic you might want to start out by reading Tom Laskawy over at Grist; he's done a great job breaking it all down for you with lots of sources.

The bottom line is this:  why eat a processed genetically modified food when you have a choice to eat one that isn't?  Why eat corporate food when you have a choice to eat honey grown on the rooftops of Brooklyn or organic fair trade sugar?  In the end it is our choice - our choice of where we eat out, what we buy at the grocery store and our choice to reclaim our food lives by living a more seasonal, local life and cooking at home with ingredients, not products.

Just remember if the FDA approves the name change (it'll take a coupe of years):  when you start to see Corn Sugar on labels think,  Oh High Fructose Corn Syrup!

Then put the product back on the shelf and don't buy it.

I posted this ages ago, but it seem like it was worth a second viewing given today's subject matter:

Do as I say not as I do

Please excuse my grumpiness.

I just saw a headline that said Al Gore ignores earth hour. Hold on to your chairs the world is about to end! Al Gore is my hero, and this post has nothing to do with him except it is in the spirit of setting an example that has put me in this state this morning.

last week I wrote about how Mark Bittman had a video/article on ramen made with ketchup. Predictably I wrote about how if you want to use ketchup you should point out the genetically modified nature of high fructose corn syrup. I wrote a comment on his blog and when I checked last night I see that only positive comments are posted on his blog and there is an editors note say that the "Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive." Apparently being annoyed is abusive over at the Times, you can only mention any criticism couched in a lovely pillow of Bittman adoration, so the only one comment that mentioned high fructose corn syrup was this one posted by Marya:

But this, this I wouldn’t eat with his mouth. Why in heaven’s name would I want to eat ketchup? Yuk, yuk, yuk. How about reconfiguring the recipe to include a quarter cup of Miso instead? What do you mean you don’t have miso? I’m supposed to have ketchup and you don’t have miso? Get some, it’s tasty good for you and you can use it 25 different ways.

Who was then gently scolded a few posts down by Susanne:

Now, now - no ketchup snobbery please! Miso is great, but it’s an entirely different beastie. Didn’t Reagan make ketchup an official vegetable? Hilarious. Mark did say you could use tomato paste and sugar if you wanted. I have a nice bottle of Muir Glen ketchup (I’m a total no-corn-syrup-please snob) I made this broth the other day and added the step of sauteing a bit of garlic and ginger at the beginning. I also threw in some bean sprouts at the end. Delish!

Maybe I'm just a crotchety, unemployed, middle aged man, maybe I shouldn't even bother with this, but if you are going to write a book telling us what to eat like Mr. Bittman has in his:
Food Matters: A guide to conscious eating then don't turn around and write a recipe extolling the virtues of ketchup and not mention that in Heinz ketchup, the brand leader, when you look at the ingredients it contains not only high fructose corn syrup, but also regular old corn syrup. That's not conscious eating that's eating with your head stuck so far up your ass it's too dark to read the ingredients label eating.

And while I'm on the topic, the New York Times has just had to lease out most of their building
and have laid off hundreds of employees, people are talking about the death of the newspaper, maybe if they encouraged actual debate and freedom of speech in their comments section more people would be inclined to go there and engage them, instead of stifling the first amendment rights of it's readers by preventing comments it doesn't like from being published. It's not like I insulted anyone I just simply asked why he would not make a point of being conscious about what choices you make when buying certain products? Is that unreasonable? Is that abusive? Apparently at the Times it is.

High-Fructose Corn Syrup Ad 2

This is such a joke. The corn syrup industry has an ad campaign to convince people that high fructose corn syrup is an OK, healthy, feel-good product we should hold close to our hearts and embrace, mindlessly, like a character in a zombie movie. As you can imagine, trying to put a good spin on an obesity- and diabetes-causing, genetically modified, Monsanto-is-taking-over-the-world, government subsidized "sugar product" isn't easy.

It is, however, particularly galling given recent reports about contamination of corn syrup with mercury. Just another negative to add to the already long list of why we shouldn't even make the stuff. Anyway, enough of me ranting, here's what the new findings are:

"In one study, published in the journal Environmental Health, former Food and Drug Administration scientist Renee Dufault and colleagues tested 20 samples of high fructose corn syrup and found detectable mercury in nine of the 20 samples".

For the full article go here.

Mark Bittman calls Ketchup a real Ingredient

In today's New York Times Mark Bittman makes a version of Ramen with Ketchup.

The following are my thoughts on this.

OK sure you want to make a cheap, quick, easy recipe with things you have around the house. Maybe it's semantics, but I don't think condiments are "real ingredients", I think they are, um, well, condiments. Real ingredients to me are scallions, which he does use as a last minute garnish, and the noodles. He points out that often there is no egg in the egg noodles it's usually just coloring, wouldn't it maybe be a good idea for him to say: "try and find noodles with real ingredients in them, not just food coloring?"

Or offer an option?

One person in the comments section says she replaces them with soba, which I think is a great idea and they are easy to find in healthy version i.e. organic.

Don't get me wrong I like Mark Bittman I just think he wasn't thinking on this one. Or I am crazy and obsessed, but I see no reason to promote food products that are knowingly bad for you. If, indeed we are having a food revolution as the Times just last week talked about how is it that they are still telling people with authority to use ketchup without saying: "buy the organic one made with cane sugar." I mean how hard can that be? Yet again and again it happens. We get all up everyone's butt about buying local and doing all these other potentially esoteric things yet some thing really simple and basic like encouraging the general public to use a good ingredient like tomato past, which to his credit he mentions in the text of the article, but not in the video. Why he even include the ketchup? Why not just use a real ingredient like tomato paste or a small can of crushed tomatoes? I don't get it, we need to change the way we eat and think about food, not coddle people into think that it's still OK to use the same old bad condiments and expect a different result.

Here's what I wrote the Times:

In Mark Bittman's video, "Egg Noodles in Soy Broth", he claims to make ramen with "real" ingredients. In reality he uses conventional ketchup and fails to mention that this condiment in it's non-organic version contains high fructose corn syrup which is genetically modified. It's easy to chart the sharp upward trend in obesity and diabetes in this country to Nixon's corn subsidies and the coinciding laboratory discovery of how to make high fructose corn syrup. High fructose corn syrup has devastating affects on our health. The impact of genetically modified crops of all kinds have proven to have disastrous effects on our planet. To have the New York Times food guy centering a dish around such a non-food, one that has created an epidemic of obesity, is irresponsible and dangerously misleading.

Halloween Treats

 

My inbox has been packed this week with mail from different high profile food magazines and online recipe sites giving suggestions for goodies to make for Halloween and whether apples are a good thing to give little trick or treaters (yes).

In each email is a recipe or two with High Fructose Corn syrup as an ingredient. 

I've ranted about this for years now and I think if you are on this blog you know how I think it should be banned.  It is unnecessary as an ingredient, really bad for you and really bad for the environment.  If you absolutely must make a recipe calling for its use Lyle's Golden Syrup as a substitute.

For more reading about my thoughts on this topic, here are the search results from posts on this blog over the years discussing the issues surrounding genetically modified corn and high fructose corn syrup.

Please spend some time in the kitchen making your kids and family homemade sweet treats this Halloween with quality ingredients: not corn syrup.

You want them to have fun not diabetes.

What to eat?

Increasingly, I have anxiety.

It's free floating and wide ranging.

But it takes roots in my interest in food: where it is grown, how it is grown, and how it is used.

Is it just something farmers grow that we can happily enjoy on our plates? Or, in this day and age, is food even always food? Or is it a commodity, something to be made into other things like commercial soy and corn?

What about genetically modified soy grown in fields that used to be the rainforest? That should give us all anxiety. Oil based fertilizers, decreasing seed diversity, proprietary seed companies like Monsanto who have made it illegal – yes, illegal – to save seeds (every year you plant Monsanto seeds you have to sign an agreement preventing you from ownership of your corn seeds and requiring you to buy new seeds each year).

We have created artificial “nature" (an oxymoron?) that destroys itself after one season so it can create better profit for the corporations that sell it, depriving farmers of a life that has been practiced for thousands of years based on the saving and trading of seeds and, thus, the saving and trading of diversity fundamental to safe agricultural propagation –anyone remember the Irish potato famine?

Food shouldn't be complicated. How is it we got ourselves so far away from the field, the kitchen, the kitchen table and our families? My manifesto is that we need to stop eating these products. We need to be aware that ALL PROCESSED food is worrisome, even if it is labeled Organic. How is it that a microwaved Boca Burger with soy cheese on it is considered a healthy option?

The conditioning to eat edible substances that are not truly food is deeply embedded in the way the last few generations of Americans have been raised. Think about popcorn at the movies. One goes to the movies – has always gone to the movies – and entering the cinema, the smell is overwhelming, tempting, and delightful. In response to that smell, our conditioning tells us: eat popcorn! Eat buttered popcorn! Eat it in vast quantities and alternate the salty with the sweet: soda!!!

But is it popcorn? Is it butter? Is it even sugar? The popcorn is now a single crop, non-diverse product of industrial agriculture – no variations, no diversity, and precious little flavor.

The typical conversation:

"Hi, can I have a large soda water and a large popcorn please"

"Soda Water?"

"Seltzer, you know, plain"

"Oh. And a large popcorn."

"Please"

"You want butter on that?

"Is it real butter?

"No"

Now first thing that comes to mind is how is it that it is legal to ask "Do you want butter on it?" when it's not butter?

To me this represents everything that is wrong with how we eat and our commercial food culture.

How do we change such a deeply embedded culture of non-food consumption? Would it be such a challenge for someone like say the Landmark Sunshine theaters to start offering local heirloom popcorn with real butter at their theaters? And, if you really need something sweet, how about drinks sweetened with real sugar, rather than high fructose corn syrup (would you like some diabetes inducing poison with your non-buttered popcorn?) Start eating real food like that and the edible non-foods available at AMC and Loew’s theaters will become clearly detestable in a short time. One's tastebuds quickly adjust to re-recognize "the real" from the the poison.

We eat things based on a certain willingness to believe what we are told:

"High in Fiber!" "Heart Healthy" "Low in Sugar!" "Healthy!" "Natural!"

Bullshit.

We've been sold a nasty bill of goods for at least the last 30 years since the discovery of high fructose corn syrup.

Look at grocery store and butcher's windows. Ever notice the sign that proudly says:
"Corn Fed?" Funny how we take this as a sign of something good and healthy. It conjures bucolic images of Americana: “Oh what a beautiful morning – all the cattle are standing like statues – the corn grows as high as an elephant’s eye!”

Sadly, corn is poison to cows and makes them so sick, with such terrible gas, that they have to be given antibiotics (yes, that’s why our beef cattle are loaded with antibiotics). And the methane produced by the abnormal digestion of corn is now known to be a clear contributor to greenhouse gases and to climate change.

Does this benefit anyone? Not the cows. Not those of us who want to eat them. But the cattle industry grows ever richer and they and their lobbyists who control policy in Washington have been give free range (more then is given to their cows) to deceive us.

OK so you've heard this rant before? Actually, I'm amazed really, after all these years, that it still gets to me in such a powerful way.

Yet food is such an emotional issue and even people who know better break down and eat shit they shouldn't, myself included. It's hard. We each have a personal history of eating and all the associations and meanings that go with it.

So, with this blog I am trying to offer a start, an approach to eating real food in the city. In the country I would think it would be even easier and hopefully wouldn’t require an on line blog to provide the information. (If you live in a suburb, well, I'm sorry for you as it seems to me there is nothing of value in suburbs, just miles of strip malls, box stores and commercial grocery stores with four miles of corn syrup infused breakfast cereals to get you and your children off to a good start!)

Since I’m really a city boy – always have been and always will be – I'm not interested in living in the country. How can I make city living, well, specifically city eating, as connected to the land as possible? And avoid the ubiquitous commercial food? And still have a life and make a living?

My fantasy would be to live in a city where it was possible to have some small plot of land that you could plant, a roof filled with solar panels that provides a majority of our electricity as well as rain water collection. A city where you could take public transport or a bike every where you needed to go, where you have density and community and are able to provide yourself with most of the basics without having to have it flown in from Chile or New Zealand or California.

I can't see myself moving any time soon. (Though I do have an ongoing affair with Vancouver that I just can't seem to quit.) How can I make my NYC realty as green and responsible as possible without making everyone around me crazy?

So I try. And I start by stressing the need to buy as much that is produced locally as possible.

There are certainly things that I would say are necessary exceptions that I hope I never have to do without. They are, in no particular order: coffee, chocolate, spices, lemon and lime, citrus from Texas and Florida (but only when it's in season there), ginger, Spanish wine and cane sugar.

Otherwise everything else is here. New York City markets have a vast selection of meat vendors from pheasant sausage to soup chickens, wonderful fish from Long Island, cheese from all over, eggs, milk, cream, yogurt, jams and of course lots of fruits and vegetables. As long as you like apples, the winter isn't really so bad.

I encourage you to make your list.
To think before you eat.
To question everything you put into your mouth
To start making a change and committing to eating real food.
To give up your microwave and your frozen dinners and your soda, to give up ordering in from restaurants that don’t provide you with edibles derived from ingredients that meet your standards (and, thus, start cooking your own food, in your own kitchen).
To realize that every little step makes a difference not only for you, and your family's health and happiness, but for the whole planet.

Another way I alleviate my anxiety is by taking part in the bigger discussion - here's a good start: www.wecansolveit.org

The Trials and Tribulations of Eating Out

In the last week or so I've been very lucky to eat at some of my favorite restaurants in town. It's always nice to have generous house guest who like to eat out. Momofuku and Double Crown are still as good as ever. Yesterday, after yoga, I was starving and in need of a quick fix so I went to Momofuku's sister restaurant Ssam Bar which I went to when it first opened and it didn't really do it for me. Yesterday all I had was a BBQ Spare rib sandwich with red onion slaw served on a chewy, baguette type roll and it hit the spot perfectly. The highlight though was an interaction I overheard, between two staff members, one of whom was the very friendly and efficient server behind the counter who was doing prep work for the bar, juicing limes? Any way he had thrown all the juice lime carcasses in the garbage when one of his co workers (maybe a manager?) came by and said:

"Don't forget we are composting!"

How fucking great is that? One of the things I most admire about David Cheng's empire is his dedication to things homemade, like pickles. I can't remember a time when I was ever served something at one of his restaurants that wasn't made in his restaurant. And now I find out he is composting! My hat goes off to him.

And speaking of condiments, I had a wonderful burger and deep fried corn on the cob with watermelon butter at Diner for lunch the other day. It was all perfect. The room is one of my favorites, the server was lovely, but why oh why do they have cod in their fish and chips? To get it before its extinct? Truly it is a very confusing situation as no one in the fishing industry wants it put on the endangered species list even though it has been off and on many for decades. Cod is seriously depleted and my two cents is that it shouldn't be on menus especially of very smart informed places like Diner. The thing that really miffed me was the double corn syrup GMO special Heinz Ketchup served in bottle on the table with the burger (tomatoes, distilled vinegar, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, salt, spice, onion powder, and natural flavors).

What? I get that the shape of the bottle of the historic nature of Heinz Ketchup is very cool and in keeping with the look and feel of the room, but come on guys make your own and put it in the same bottles and put a Diner label on it that has the same feel as the Heinz one only that is made with real ingredients. Or just buy bulk organic ketchup. It's very competitively priced at this point.

Which brings me to another wonderful meal we had next door at Diner's sister restaurant Marlow and Sons. I love this room and the food is also fresh and top notch. The only thing that I think is strange is how offended the waitress was when I asked her two questions that she answered all wrong, my first question was: Are you still using corn syrup in your chocolate caramel tart?

She got very flustered and kind of huffy like I'd asked her was the chicken actually a rat from the back alley or something. The reason I asked is because in the published recipe for that tart both confectioners sugar and corn syrup are called for, both containing GMO corn products unless you buy the organic version, but nowhere in the recipe was it mentioned that you should do this. Something I find remiss, but still I think it's a perfectly valid question just as was my second question which was: Do you make your fruit pies with beef suet. Again I asked because they have published a recipe for pie pastry using beef suet and I think for people who keep kosher or for vegetarians, if you are going to serve a dessert item with meat in it you should let people know, it's just an issue of disclosure plain and simple. So I felt my question was not out of line.

The waitress, again was like are you from outer space or what dude? And assured me that they only used butter.

I love these restaurants and don't mean to pick on them, I just want them to be consistent to their dedication to quality food and I find the corn syrup thing off base and kind of weird.

Lastly, Neil and I tried to eat at the new Motorino Pizza on 12th street last night. It's a bustling place, a new outpost of the popular Williamsburg pizzeria. When I first go there I was greeted by a nice guy who looked like he was kitchen staff. I told him I was waiting for my friend and he said that there was a fast turn over so seating would be no problem.

Then a few minutes later as I stood gazing at the menu a woman came up to me and asked if I
was looking for a seat. I told her I was waiting for a friend. I could see that there were two 2 tops open and figured there was no need to put my name on a list. It's a small place, maybe seats 30 tops so it's very tight. It struck me as odd why the previous twosome was seated on the outside table leaving the empty table for 2 on the hard to get to wall side, but this is New York and who knows, maybe they didn't want to sit next to the wall?

As I'm waiting on the street I see two guys go in and instead of being seated the woman takes their names and they come join me on the street. A minute later another couple, a man and a woman also enter and after a minute are relegated to the street with their names on the list.
I'm perplexed: why when you have 4 empty seast are you making people wait outside. I go in to investigate.

I asked the hostess why she is putting names on the list when there are 2 empty tables for 2?
She said that it would be a 15-20 minute wait and that the people sitting in the tables next to he empty seats had already been inconvenienced enough and would I want to put my name on the list?

I said to her: this is New York what is the problem with just asking them to move so people can sit next to them?

What I was thinking, having seen them being seated on the outside of the tables, was: why didn't you make them sit on the inside in the first place?

So I gave her my name and at that moment Neil showed up on his bike. We decided to eat at Cafe Orlin. I found the whole thing to be off putting and rather a strange way of doing business.

Hire a hostess who is incompetent and make customers wait for tables when there are empty ones waiting? Good luck with that.

In a city full of excellent pizza I don't see myself going back to Motorino any time soon.

Lunch at Diner

I love Diner.  When friends are visiting I always try and take them for lunch (dinner is great too, but the chance of getting a booth diminishes in evening when it is so packed) and when I want to treat myself it's one of those restaurants that always seems to cheer me up.  It's also just one subway stop away so that doesn't hurt either.

But here is the thing, and I have written about this before, and here I am writing about it again because I JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND.  Here is a place that has a wonderful market driven, seasonal menu with lots of daily specials.  They are so fanatical about their meat that they source everything locally and even have their own butcher shop that features local grass fed meats,

They make sensitive choices by having things like Cane Cola, making an obvious statement that this is a place where you won't find diabetes and obesity inducing high fructose corn syrup, right?

So after our lovely Kale Caesar and a kick ass Cranberry bean soup with poached egg (the soup without the egg is vegan), my friend's $13 grass fed with Vermont cheddar cheeseburger and fries comes to the table along with a bottle of Heinz Ketchup! Yes the kind with TWO kinds of corn syrups, the Monsanto approved Corn Syrup rich ketchup: Heinz. The same Heinz who (because of ranting people like me) now have an organic version, so there is really no need in serving this shit.  So why does this great restaurant that is so sensitive and smart and tasty on every other level still after all these years serve it?  

Makes me crazy.  You know how easy it would be to make your own?  Or to buy the CANE Ketchup?

Why not serve Coke if you're going to serve Heinz?  I'm going to stop this rant mid rant because you've all heard it a million times and the fact is I go to Diner and just don't eat the ketchup, but some people do and that really is the point.  My friend did as you can see in the picture below.  Is it going to kill him?  No.  But that's not my point.  My point is that it makes no sense to be so particular about sourcing and butchering your meat, serving local and maybe even organic vegetables and Cane Cola and then presenting double GMO high fructose corn syrup ketchup.  It's just mind boggling to me.  And so easily fixed.  So why do they keep doing it?  What's the point?  

Rant complete.  I feel better now, thanks for listening.

The Sweet Smell of Success

or something close to it. Read this great article about the decline of Hight Fructose Corn Syrup in today's New York Times:

Here's my favorite part:

What started as a narrow movement by proponents of natural and organic foods has morphed into a swell of mainstream opposition, thanks in large part to tools of modern activism like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter and movies like “Food, Inc.” and “King Corn.”

As a result, sales of the ingredient have fallen in the United States. Charlie Mills, an analyst at Credit Suisse, says that the combined United States sales of high-fructose corn syrup for Archer Daniels Midland, Tate & Lyle and Corn Products International were down 9 percent in 2009, compared with 2007. A further decline is expected this year, he says.

Shocking News Cinema Snacks Are Fattening

Several media outlets today reported:

Popcorn in Movie Cinemas is fattening and high in calories, not to mention outrageously over priced (they didn't report the last part that's just my added editorial comment).

This is news?

I'm pretty sure I've recounted here my conversation with refreshment stand help that I've had many times over the years when contemplating the temptation of ordering some of the evil highly caloric puffed corn we love so much and for some reason has become so synonymous to the movie going experience.

In bright lights the sign behind the counter says Popcorn with Butter! There are pictures of melting butter being lovingly pour over light and delicious kernels of perfected popped corn.

The conversation would go like this:

"would you like butter on your popcorn?"

"Is it real butter?"

"um, no"

In such a litigious country it is mind boggling to me that somehow lawyer with a fat kid hasn't sued cinemas for perpetrating this lie?

Besides being bad for you and fattening, popcorn is also a GMO (genetically modified organism).
I mean if you're going to spend all that money on a GM corn product why not just buy stocks in Monsanto?

Anyway it seems to me absurd that all of a sudden today I've read on several sites about this study that tells the truth about how soda and popcorn (both GM corn products in this country - high fructose corn syrup in the regular soda or cancer causeing chemicals in the diet ones).

As initially reported by CBS:

According to laboratory analysis conducted by the Center for Science and Public Interest (CSPI), the concessions from Regal, the country's biggest movie chain, have 1,160 calories and three days worth - 60 grams - of fat. Regal said that the medium popcorn had 720 calories and the large had 960, but CSPI's tests found those numbers to be understated. A small popcorn at Regal had 670 calories - the same as a Pizza Hut Personal Pepperoni Pan Pizza. Even if you share a small popcorn - it's still about a day's worth of saturated fat per person, according to CSPI.

Here's my take on this, everyone understands that this is a treat and junk food so it's obviously not going to be good for you, but why on earth can't they just make it with real ingredients? Why not offer air popped organic non GMO local corn popcorn? With real butter, it used to be real I remember when I worked in a movie cinema as a teenager we would put a huge chunk of butter into the back of the butter melting machine.

No one expects treats to necessarily be healthy, but hre is an example of something that could be made so much tastier and healthier and better for us and the planet if we just made it with something other then chemicals and partially hydrogenated tropical oils.

Cinema chains want the biggest bang for their buck and real ingredients cost too much.

Fuck your health it's about their bottom line.

And as long as people are willing to buy it why should they change? It's like MacDonalds or smoking, no matter how much people know how bad something might be for you it doesn't mean they are going to stop doing it.

For me in the end it comes down to taste. I'd rather bring some good popcorn into the theater in my knapsack then spend the money on the scrappy stuff they sell. This suggests to me that there is a market for something better, but apparently not a big enough of one to bother to offer an option - something good, old fashioned, not genetically modified, made with real butter and in the instance of soda real sugar.

The Market Hall on Bergmannstraße, Bio in Berlin and the Search for Molasses

My first 4 days in Berlin were spent going to grocery stores and markets to source the food that I we would need to buy for the BBQ/opening on Saturday night. One if my menu items was baked beans which required molasses, so my Holy Grail was to find, in Berlin, Molasses.

A general observation about food shopping in Berlin: organic food is a priority here.
There were two organic grocery stores near me in Kruezberg, one was LPG, a co-op type situation to which you need to pay 30 Euros a month to become a member, the benefit of membership being a deep discount on the regular price. The other was a grocery store chain called Bio Company (bio =organic) with an outlet directly across the street from the market hall on Bergmannstraße. This place is great. They have everything you need including wine (I love that in Europe you can get wine with your groceries) and I was particularly impressed with the vast selection of wines that were either organic or biodynamically grown and produced.

Indeed, "Bio" is everywhere in Berlin. Riding our bikes down the canal there was a truck that sets up every day that sold local produce. Even in the shopping malls (see video below) there are local bakeries, local vegetables, meats, preserves, fruit and pretty much anything else you can imagine (except molasses).

Molasses in Berlin is elusive, if it exists at all, in the blackstrap form I was looking for.

I figured a big store like KaDeWe would have it no problem and was very excited when I was told they had an American section and a Deli section that both carried "typically" American groceries. Apparently to most Germans that translates into junk food. The shelves were filled with Marshmallow Fluff, ketchup, Jack Daniels BBQ sauce, and so on, but no molasses.

The good new is that most junk food, stuff that would be riddled with high fructose corn syrup here, is actually made with sugar there. Some had fructose syrup in them, but I'm led to believe this isn't as nasty and, in general, is genetically modified.

I even had a Coke with my pesto pizza from Ron Telesky's Canadian Pizza company in Kreusberg after I read the label and discovered, to my joy, that it did not contain any corn products whatsoever, that it is indeed made with zucker. I just couldn't resist. Check out his site, by the way. The song is hysterical. I actually met co-owner Ole Schack. He has a canoe out front which I commented on, as I used to love to canoe as a teenager in Canada. Ole told me that his canoe was actually from the former East Germany. He also told me that he had been an exchange student in Peterborough, Ontario and had worked at the pizza place there which is where he got his inspiration. Too funny. My slice was delicious, the variety available was really good. Keith had a slice with sweet potatoes and rosemary.

However frustrating the hunt for molasses, after days of searching, I had gotten a great overview into the food culture of Berlin. What a great city for food shopping. It isn't as multi-cultural or diverse as NYC, but then very few cities are, and Berlin certainly can hold it's own. Walking through Charlottenberg, Keith and I came across a huge Thai grocery store that has a small food room tucked away where Thai moms were making the real deal for people to take away or eat in. Everything it would seem, but molasses.

In the mostly Turkish grocery store, across the street from the Turkish market, I finally found both grape and pomegranate molasses. I was tempted to try the grape, but in the end was afraid to experiment in a situation where I wanted to make a good impression. In the end I used maple syrup in my baked beans and they managed to all get eaten.

And if I may so say myself, they tasted damn good!

It was well worth the exploration, even if I did end up ultimately empty handed. It was great to be able to discover what turns out to be a very environmentally concerned city that is dedicated to organic food, not as something special and rare, but as daily staple. A place where local fruit, veggies and products are highlighted and prized.

Funny, you don't think of Berlin and decide: "Oh I want to do a market tour!" which is too bad because food culture in Berlin is every bit as interesting and extensive as it's art or club scenes.

High-Fructose Corn Syrup Spoof

Drags Queens you got to love them. Jackie Beat does this over the top spoof of those insipid corn syrup commercials. I think she makes her point. Not for the sensitive!

How Industry Replaced Artisty and How We Can Get Back to the Garden

Let us begin on a journey backwards, to a time when people were happy to be food artists, to a time when artistry won out over industry, when we realized and appreciated the value of the planet we lived on and lived off.

What exactly is the hurry every fast food TV commercial talks about? Ready in 3 minutes? Just pop it in the microwave - ready in seconds!

Since when is one of the most primal, important and pleasurable activities of human existence - eating - something to be not thought about and enjoyed leisurely? Why is it now we have created a culture where it's an inconvenience to feed yourself? How has eating and cooking become some hasty, nasty necessity, something that has to be gotten over as quickly as possible instead of enjoyed?

Would we ever think about sex in this way? Of course not, or at least I hope not. So why do we think about food this way? Who brainwashed us into believing we should not spend time with our family over a meal, that we should not prize quality healthy ingredients over cheap manufactured ones? Who made it so that the choice between cheap and expensive was so great and that a grocery store like Whole Foods, which actually tries to educate its consumers about the food they are buying by listing the place of origin and farming practices used is systematically smeared by campaigns calling them "Whole Paycheck?" This smear is a falsehood: sure they have high end products as part of a vast selection, but that selection also includes store brand organics that are cheaper then the closest equivalent at Fine Fare. This is something I've pointed out here repeatedly. Take olive oil. It's way cheaper by many dollars at Whole Foods then at Fine Fare (a popular grocery store in poor neighborhoods).

Also studies have shown that it is harder to find healthy food at stores in poor neighborhoods. Healthy and organic foods are also way more expensive, if you can find them, in a poor neighborhood grocery store. Why even buy vegetables when you can get cheap fast food? The price of two hamburgers at a fast food chain are cheaper then a pound of green beans, so why buy green beans which aren't going to give you that full feeling? Once again we show our cultural disdain for the poor by not only giving them the least healthy foods in their neighborhoods, but also encouraging them to eat badly by filling their neighborhoods with cheap fast food outlets. Corporate America at it's worst.

It reminds me of how we dealt with DDT, after it was vilified and banned here in the States, corporate America just changed its marketing strategy and started selling it to developing nations. Mexican Mango, anyone?

What is the solution to all this madness? It's not easy and it doesn't seem to me that there is anything near to a quick fix at hand. What I do see is a new generation of young people who are ready, willing and able to give up on the existing food structure and go backwards. People here in New York, like the Mast Brothers, Anne and Benoit at Saxelby Cheese, Vere Chocolates, Rick’s Pickles, all the folks at the New Amsterdam Market, Brown Cafe, Broadway East, Marlow and Sons and Daughters and Diner and Bonito and so many more; people who have chosen to make nurturing themselves and their communities a top priority. They do this by eschewing the big bucks, choosing quality over quantity, and rejecting the mass produced commercial to embrace the authentic.

In this time of great economic despair and increasing unemployment we have to ponder how it is we live and what it is we do with our time. The last ten months of unemployment have given me the opportunity to wonder what do you do with your time when you have so much of it and so little money? What is my time worth? Does being home make me the de facto house slave? If I was one of those people who was preparing and eating my meals in minutes this gives me all the more time to ponder: now what? After a great deal of struggle I've discovered a night of making bread can be fun and very cheap, given a loaf of artisanal bread can easily cost 6 bucks it’s a thrill to discover I can make that same loaf (or similar) at home for a fraction of that price. You see, I'd rather take to the kitchen given these circumstances then take to my bed and watch Oprah. It's a choice.

It's also intensely gratifying to give to my friends as a present a loaf of bread or a pint of homemade ice cream or a container of wonderful stew or some chewy sweet home made caramel that you know now tastes so delicious made the old fashioned way, with brown sugar, butter and cream, and no GMO high fructose corn syrup required. You see immediately from the reaction on your friends' faces that they love this kind of gift way more then some plastic wrapped rose, from some chemically fogged, slave labor dependent, green house in South America.

There are so many ways to change how we do things. Prioritizing food, family and artistry in our life is, to my mind, an easy choice. I'd much rather spend time with friends leisurely over a meal then watch TV with a microwave dinner. I'd rather spend what little income I have on seeds to grow food at my community garden or buy groceries then on a grossly sized flat screen TV that's going to cost a fortune and raise my electricity bill (so much so they are banned in Europe).

Call me madcap, but I love being in the city sitting around the dinner table with friends in a room lit by candles sharing stories of our lives, being passionate about politics or whatever else our hearts and minds want to express. We don't need to escape to an idyllic country setting to accomplish this, we don't need to have a car and drive for hours to get there, we don't even need to have a fancy cut of meat to feed our friends, In our home some cheesy, homemade lasagna goes faster then almost anything else, add a salad and a sweet and you have an entire evening of fun. I don't see this as cutting back, it's more consolidating. It's the art of living. It's not complicated or expensive, it's actually really simple and straightforward.

Lastly, it's important for all of us to embrace diversity. It's hard to be home and unemployed as a man because you are brought up with the expectation that you need to be the breadwinner. Increasingly, in these times, if you are lucky enough to be sharing your life with someone you love what does it matter the gender of the person who stays home? And although it will cause anxiety and readjustment we need to really enjoy and appreciate (note to self: quit being so damn critical!) the fact that two people have come together to help each other out. Maybe if you get really lucky, when your loved one comes home from work you can say:

"Hey honey I made dinner. It's simple, but I made it myself, from real ingredients and love, for us to share." Hokey? Maybe, but true none the less.

This is how we start to create the change we need, to replace industry with artistry, at home in your kitchen, with some simple ingredients and a friend.

A Hot Tub of High Fructose Corn Syrup

Double click on this to view better.  This breaks down visually how much HFCS people eat on a daily basis right through to a lifetime, yes that is a hot tub.  This illustration is from the NYT, more on the Sugar as Toxin article soon....but can I just say I posted Dr. Lustig's video and wrote about this over a year ago (March 10, 2010)  right here on Urbanfoodguy, just saying....off to lunch, much more later...

Heritage Radio Network and thoughts on BBQ and What to Eat?

Sounds like some right wing Christian thinktank, but thankful it's a Bushwick based radio station that's all about food and food related topics.

Today while blogging and doing research I've been listening to Urban Foraging. These guys and gals are a hoot.

I couldn't get the entire episode to play, but the segments played fine. I just finished listening to Extracting Flavors from Ingredients a chat with Will Goldfarb (dessert chef and owner of Room 4 Dessert) hosted by Zakary Pelaccio, Jori Jayne Emde.

The highlight of the conversation for me was the discussion of smoke, liquid smoke and how grilling and barbecuing things are carcinogenic.

My potentially annoying side note to this is that after having survived July 4th BBQ's I realize that between smoking cigarettes, consuming factory farmed meat, drinking GM high fructose corn syrup with gay abandon that most people really are either blissfully unaware of the dangers lurking in our food and to a larger extent in our food system or, they know, but just don't care.

Which makes me wonder, why do I care? I wish I had an answer for that, I wish the whole thing was simpler, but alas it isn't.

My favorite comment about my food habits from this weekend was the delightful and very generous hostess of one BBQ I went to who, when offering me a platter of hamburgers (some with bright orange American "cheese") and hot dogs on white buns, said:

"Oh just have one! I know you're all bitchy about food, but..." then she re-thought the offer and moved on to more enthusiastic eaters.

This theme is appearing in my life: what can I eat? Or probably more honestly put, what will I eat now that I know what I know about our food and our food system. A few days after seeing Food, Inc. I was on the subway reading Pollan's Botany of Desire as a bookmark I was using a postcard for Food, Inc. when my stop came I got up to exit and dropped my book the postcard fell to the floor as I bent down to pick it up an young Indian woman sitting across from me saw it and said excitedly:

"Oh I saw that at the Film Forum yesterday! Did you see it? I loved it...it was great, but now, I don't know what to eat."

Jon Stewart in his interview with Robert Kenner the maker of Food, Inc. echos this comment with: "I saw your movie and now i don't know what to eat."

Neil has banished himself from the hospital where he works cafeteria and complains now all the time: " There is nothing to eat!"

Which has started a healthy trend; I know make sure Neil has a lunch to take to work with him. It's cheaper and he knows from whence his food came.

Not sure where this particular digression was meant to go, other than to say I wonder how this will all play out?

As someone who soaks himself in information about the dire state of our environment and the relationship big agriculture, chemical companies, government subsidies and our general food culture plays in creating it, you have to wonder how long can it last? How long can we go along buying the same old deadly foods before something happens?

Certainly big business will fight tooth and nail to maintain the status quo because it makes them powerful and rich. In a recent panel discussion Anthony Bourdain confronts Alice Waters and tells her that all that matters, basically, is that it's cheap and tastes good and everything else is irrelevant.

Obviously where I stand on this is clear. I find it hard to even listen to Bourdain speak as he just seems to horribly out of touch and willfully stupid. However, he represents a large portion of the population.

So what to do? For me all I feel I can do is to continue to read and understand as much as is possible what the moral, ethical and environmental impact is on the way we eat and the way food is made and from there, make decisions on how and what I will eat.

This weekend made it clear to me that even people who know better are in no hurry to change the way they eat. It's deeply personal, ingrained and very hard to change something you have been doing all your life.

Change comes very slowly. My hope is that urbanfoodguy and all the thoughts/ideas/information here in might, just might and help change hurry up a little bit!

Watch the video and see what we're up against:

Food. Work. Revolution.

One of the reasons I thought I would start a blog is because after cooking all my life I'm now trying to make food a career. I was always very reticent about taking something that I've loved so much as an avocation and turning it into work, my fear being that it would take something precious and ruin it by making it mandatory and mundane.

So far I'm pleased to report that isn't the case. I find every food-related job teaches me something new and improves my skills. I just wish there was more work, but that's where the blog comes in. It's pretty clear from the posts here so far that I have an impassioned view on the environment and food and how the two interrelate. I believe strongly that we need to radically change the way we live and eat. Food is not a commodity and corporations who make processed food "product" really only want our money and could care less the impact their products have on our bodies and planet.

It's funny to me how people perceive food and how it fits into their lives, how most of us have been totally co-opted into the idea its OK that we rarely have enough time to make something to eat for ourselves, that the invention of the frozen dinner was a gift from the Almighty, that microwaves are a miracle technology, and that living in a city has to be about alienation from nature.

"I'm so tired when I get home it's all I can do to throw something in the microwave" - a common refrain, no?

Well would we say the same about other necessary bodily functions like sex and bowel movements?

"I was just too tired to defecate – thank GOD for Depends!" Or...

"I told my wife that she had only 2 minutes to get me off because I was just too tired to be bothered procreating."

I don't think so. Maybe you see those as extreme examples but to my mind they aren't.

Sure, in the city we can always go out to eat when we just don't have it in us to cook, but the more you know and care about food the more you will realize, or at least the more I have realized, that very few places make food that I want to eat. Most of my favorite cheap and cheerful places in the East Village and on the Lower East near our apartment buy food that is the cheapest. It's a business and they want to make as much profit as they can and who can blame them? But the result, while often tasty enough, is still “cheap” in the worst ways as well as the best. So if you, like me, are increasingly (and painfully) aware of what goes into creating manufactured food - factory farmed meat, pesticide soaked, genetically altered vegetables, non-food poisons like trans-fats and high fructose corn syrup...you start to wonder if cheap and cheerful is really worth it.

I have started a campaign of questions. All the places I go to or have gone to on a regular basis I have started to ask the waitstaff if the chicken is free range, local, organic. I ask the same about eggs and dairy. Almost without exception I get looked at like I was crazy and they nod their heads "no" or say "I don't know" or "are you kidding?" and I order something vegetarian. Which is a drag because I love my chicken burrito. But I believe that in an aware cultural hub like Manhattan most people are savvy to the idea that they should be eating local and organic as much as they can. But if the option isn't there how can you order it?

The solution isn't to just go to the one or two places that specializes in this kind of healthy eating; the solution is to have a broad based diverse selection of restaurants that are all making an effort – which is so not happening at this point. Sure places like Cafe Orlin (nymag.com/listings/restaurant/cafe-orlin/) use organic eggs and sometimes have an organic chicken dish on special. This is wonderful, but how about dairy? And why is the organic chicken only ever a special?

The fact that when they do offer it, it's only $12 makes one also ask: if Cafe Orlin can afford to sell a delicious organic chicken dinner for $12, why can't other restaurants? And what if it cost $14 or even $16? If it was offered I believe enough people would order it to make it worthwhile, but it has to be offered.

Take oatmeal for example, what a cheap organic easily accessible grain. Yet how many places offer it for brunch? With some local yogurt and maybe some preserves they made last season when peaches where so sweet and flavorful?

Do we have to wait for some huge catastrophe to happen before we wake up to the reality that each and every one of us can, as individuals, make a difference? If we all were asking our local diners and burrito places why they don't have some local or organic food options on their menus maybe they would start listening, but they can only do this if we all join in this revolution of questions and start sending letters and chatting with managers and waitstaff and making it clear that their patrons want this change and that it would be in their best interest to make a change. The time is now. We can't wait and be complicit in the further destruction of our food and of our planet.

So please, speak up!

Oh and the image at the top of the post has very little to do with the post except it is a picture of a revolution, one that we need to all support and that is to Free Burma. For more information check out: burmaitcantwait.com/burmaitcantwait/

555 Pound Boy's Mom Charged with Criminal Neglect - For Letting Him Over Eat?

This is just so crazy. The government of South Carolina has charged this boy's mom with a felony because he is so morbidly obese. Watch the interview with the lawyers - they say he spent his days at school eating at the school cafeteria, several lunches.

Why isn't the state suing the school for selling unhealthy junk food in their cafeteria? Why aren't the makers of trans-fat and high fructose corn syrup being sued for the way they market their disease causing non-foods to children? Seems to me there's a parallel with the cigarette industry here that needs to be explored in the legal realm...

Chocolate Pudding Cake with a Peanut Butter Twist

My Grandmother used to make the classic version of this dessert for me when I was a little boy.

Over the years I've played around with it, trying many different variations: low fat milk instead of water, coffee instead of water, adding cinnamon and hot pepper, and so on....this is my latest and I think my favorite variation: Peanut Butter Swirl.

By adding 4 tablespoons of creamy organic peanut butter into the batter you get a gooey baked Reese's Peanut Butter Cup in cake form made with really good ingredients!

Just be sure you use organic peanut butter none of that stuff with high fructose Corn Syrup or dubious hydrogenated tropical oils. No need to destroy the rain forest, become obese, get diabetes and support Monsanto just because you want a little peanut butter in your chocolate pudding cake.

Whole Foods sells a reasonably price peanut butter and they offer an unsweetened version which I highly recommend.

Try it, you'll like it.

Chocolate Pudding Cake with a Peanut Butter Twist

First preheat the oven to 325 F and butter an 8" square pan (I used my clay dish it's 8 x 11 and worked just fine, I just cook it a little less).
In a bowl add 3/4 cups brewed coffee (I used left over from that morning) with 3/4 cups hot water (you can use all water if you want, I have a friend who is very coffee phobic and even though I don't think you actually can taste the coffee in this dish, he could). Put aside.

In another bowl add 1/3 cup cocoa, 1/3 cup brown sugar tightly packed and 1/3 cup cane sugar and mix together into a fine powder. Put aside

Add 6 Tablespoons unsalted butter, 2 ounces bittersweet chocolate (finely chopped) and 1/3 cup cocoa in a bowl and place over a barely simmering pot of water, stirring until completely melted and mixed together. Remove from heat and set aside.
Mix together 2 teaspoons of baking powder, 1/4 teaspoon of salt and 3/4 cup of all purpose flour.

In a large bowl (I know, this is a bowl heavy recipe) whisk 2/3 cups cane sugar, 1 egg yolk, 1/3 cup whole milk (or half and half) and 1 Tablespoon of amber rum, scotch or Vanilla.

Add chocolate mixture and whisk until it is well incorporated then add the flour mixture. Mix until just blended. Spoon out into buttered pan.

Now here's the fun part: spoon 4 tablespoons of creamy organic unsweetened Peanut Butter into each corner of the batter and swirl around (I used a butter knife).
Then sprinkle with the cocoa sugar mixture.
And finally, cover with the water/coffee mixture.
Pop in the oven and cook for 35-45 minutes. Check on it at the 35 minute point, this is one of those cakes that the more you cook it the less pudding on the bottom you will have. Up to you, but I like it to be half and half pudding and cake so I usually take it out of the oven at the 35 minute point. See how it's looking, if it's still really wobbly give it more time.
Add some unsweetened whipped cream and dig in! And if you did use rum or scotch offer your guest a sip on the side, it can only enhance the experience. ;-)

Another Reason Not to Drink Coke

Besides the obesity making, genetically modifed, high fructose corn syrup in each gulp and the wasteful, fossil fuel-based plastic bottle it comes in, now there is this news just in from MoveOn:

Dear MoveOn member,

Why would a company like Coca-Cola oppose solutions to global warming?

Coca-Cola is a prominent member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which just launched a $100 million campaign described as a "declaration of war on the White House." The Chamber is pouring millions into killing clean energy as well as health care reform.¹

Recently, an uprising of companies fighting back against the Chamber of Commerce has begun, led by companies like Apple, Nike, Johnson & Johnson, and GE.²

But Coca-Cola continues to help fund the Chamber's anti-climate agenda through their Chamber dues.

Can you call Coca-Cola and urge them to quit the Chamber of Commerce? If you're a customer of Coca-Cola, be sure to mention it when you call. Here's the info:

Coca-Cola
(800) 438-2653, press 2

Then, report your call by clicking here:

http://pol.moveon.org/chambercalls/coca-cola.html?id=17578-3196443-ud.lc6x&t=4

For years, the Chamber of Commerce has pushed a right-wing agenda.³ But now, it's trying to kill progress on clean energy, health care, workers' rights, and even financial reform.⁴

The U.S. Chamber has gotten so out of step with its own members that even local chambers are joining the rebellion. "They don't represent me," the head of the Greater New York Chamber said the other day.⁵

The top issues causing companies to walk away from the Chamber are clean energy and global warming. Wind and solar power create jobs and help the economy, and most business leaders know it.⁶

But the Chamber isn't listening. After Apple quit, the Chamber's president said of his critics, "Bring 'em on."⁷

So why is Coca-Cola still funding the Chamber? The Chamber wouldn't be able to run multi-million dollar campaigns if it weren't getting so much money from its members.

Call Coca-Cola today and urge them to quit the Chamber of Commerce:

Coca-Cola
(800) 438-2653, press 2

Then, help track our progress by clicking here:

http://pol.moveon.org/chambercalls/coca-cola.html?id=17578-3196443-ud.lc6x&t=5

Thanks for all you do.

–Steven, Wes, Anna, Noah, and the rest of the team

Sources:

(I haven't attached all these links if you want to access them just cut and paste - thanks!)

1. "Does the U.S. Chamber Speak for Big Business?," Business Week, October 7, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=84889&id=17578-3196443-ud.lc6x&t=6

2. "Apple quits U.S. Chamber of Commerce over global warming views," San Jose Mercury News, October 5, 2009
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_13492186

"Nike Resigns From Chamber Board," The New York Times, September 30, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=84826&id=&t=7&id=17578-3196443-ud.lc6x&t=7

3. "A Quiet Revolution In Business Lobbying: Chamber of Commerce Helps Bush Agenda," The Washington Post, February 5, 2005
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=84896&id=17578-3196443-ud.lc6x&t=8

4. "Corporate America Is Fighting Back," Financial Post, October 14, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=84891&id=17578-3196443-ud.lc6x&t=9

5. "Defections Expose Chamber's Dirty Little Secrets" The Washington Post, October 16, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=84890&id=17578-3196443-ud.lc6x&t=11

6. "At Chamber of Commerce, Member Exodus on Climate Issue a Big PR Problem," Newsweek, October 6, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=84820&id=&t=8&id=17578-3196443-ud.lc6x&t=12

7. "Defiant Chamber Chief Says 'Bring 'Em On,'" The New York Times, October 8, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=84829&id=&t=11&id=17578-3196443-ud.lc6x&t=13

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