Category: Eats

Food, glorious food

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Is it the calories, or is it the weight?

Today’s lunch time discussion centered on food and weight gain. The question that was posed was this: Neglecting influences such as metabolism, exercise and such, if you eat a pound (or kilogram) of food and nothing else, can you gain more than a pound of weight.
The actual answer to the question itself wasn’t important. What I thought was more interesting was the distribution of answers. One of my friends at work asked a few random people in the cafeteria at lunch. Almost all the men said no, if you eat a pound of food, the most you could gain was a pound of weight.

However, the women that were asked all responded by saying yes it was possible, and that it was the calories that mattered, not the weight. Most of them quoted the rule of thumb saying 3500 food calories = 1 lb, so if that 1 lb of food you just ate had 5000 calories, then you could gain more than 1 lb of weight.

Interesting. So if eating 1 lb of food can make you gain more than 1 lb of weight, where does the extra come from? On the other hand, if calories is the only thing that’s important then eat as much as you want as long as it’s low-caloric density food.

Of course to really answer the question you need to factor in variables such as metabolism, physical activity and the like.

So how would you answer? Based on the trend from my friend’s informal poll, you’d say no if you were a guy, and yes if you were a woman.

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I have a new vice

and it is called Cold Stone Creamery. One just opened up on King St and their offerings are sooo good.

They offer ice cream in three sizes, Like It, Love It, and Gotta Have It. The Love It size is the one I usually go for, and is almost more ice cream then I can eat at one sitting.

But the place is very cool (literally). You tell them what you want (or come up with your own ice cream/topping combination), they throw some huge scoops of ice cream on to this ice cold marble slab and mix everything together in front of you. You can get it in a regular styrofoam bowl, or one lined with a waffle cone. Then the trick becomes eating it before it turns into a liquidy mess and drips all over your fingers and pants. Or else wait until it becomes a liquidy mess. I suppose it’s up to you how you want to eat it.

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Let’s eat!

Alton Brown says it pretty well in his latest rant/blog after seeing Supersize Me!.

We are fat and sick and dying because we have handed a basic, fundamental and intimate function of life over to corporations. We choose to value our nourishment so little that we entrust it to strangers. We hand our lives over to big companies and then drag them to court when the deal goes bad. This is insanity.

Is MacDonalds food bad for you? What do you think? Does that mean you shouldn’t eat it? No, it just means you shouldn’t live on it or anything else made by someone you wouldn’t hug.

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Carolina Barbeque

One of the best things about South Carolina (next to living close to the beach and ocean) is the barbeque. I’m not talking about burgers and hot dogs on the grill. No sir. I’m talking slow cooked, wood smoked hunks of pig. Smoky juicy tender shreds of pork and slabs of falling-off-the-bones ribs. Mmmmm, oh yeah.

There’s lots of places to get barbeque around here. I haven’t been to all of them, or all that many of them. But the ones I have been to have all been good. I’d hazard a guess that you would be hard pressed to find a bad barbeque place around here.

But what’s a guy to do when there’s no barbeque place around? Well, you could do it yourself, but that takes a lot of time and babysitting. Definitely the way to go though if you’ve got a few hours to kill and are trying to avoid yardwork. But not everyone has that much spare time.

That’s where the slow cooker comes in.

I love my slow cooker. It is without a doubt my favourite kitchen appliance. My wife isn’t too wild about slow cooker food (she says all the flavours get melded together), so I don’t get to use it quite as much as I want to.

Slow cookers are the perfect appliance for busy people. Throw everything in before you leave for work, and when you come back dinner’s ready! And that makes it perfect for barbequing. Not real barbequing of course. That would require smoke, and slow cookers aren’t that good at smoking. But you can fake it pretty good with one.

So here’s what you do. Brine your hunk of Boston butt per Alton Brown‘s Pulled Pork recipe. Then go with the Pulled Pork Barbeque recipe from Slow Cookers for Dummies.

After brining your hunk of pork, throw it on a hot pan and sear the outside. Put the seared meat in the slow cooker, and toss some sliced onions and chopped garlic into the pan. Brown and add a half cup of your favourite barbeque sauce. Simmer for a few minutes, then pour over the pork. Pour in a couple of 18 oz bottles of your barbeque sauce, turn the slow cooker on to Low, and head off to work.

When you come back home 8 hours later (or however long your work day lasts), you’ve got a hunk of cooked pork in your slow cooker that’s so tender you’ll have a hard time lifting it out in one piece. Careful not to burn your tongue eating while you shred.

It’s not real barbeque, but it sure tastes damn good.

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e-Everything

I was just watching Kitchen of the Future on the Food Network.

Connected refrigerators that know what’s in your fridge with RFID-tagged foods. The stove that you can control with your cell phone. The steam iron that tells you if it’s on, or that it’s still hot.

So now our e-fridge can tell us if we have any e-cookie dough to e-bake in our e-oven and then later e-eat. And we can do this all with our e-cellphone (mostly).