tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163795502011-11-10T19:20:53.209-05:00It's a Food Blog, and a Science Blog, and a New York City blog, all in one!Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.comBlogger1611100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-60553193900761669842009-10-20T13:35:00.002-04:002009-10-20T13:39:34.556-04:00

On the off chance anyone is still subscribed to this blog, just an FYI that I've started writing occasionally on a new personal/professional web site. The selection of content is still under consideration by a crack team of consultants, but will probably be somewhat similar to what I wrote about here.http://www.harlan.harris.name

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-60346978463723052152007-02-01T16:01:00.000-05:002007-02-01T16:27:14.662-05:00

After some thought, I've decided to put this blog on a hiatus of indefinite extent. It has been an enjoyable project, and I've learned a lot in the last year and a half, and accomplished many of the goals I set out for myself. Much of the reason I've decided not to continue this blog, at least in its current format, is that many of my goals are now being done much better by other people! Here are

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-68086473926876256032007-01-15T12:12:00.000-05:002007-01-15T12:23:27.782-05:00

There have been a couple of cool photos of sooty buildings recently bouncing around the blogosphere. Here in New York, was this photo, originally posted at trevorlittle.com (click to see it full size):That photo shows the dramatic effect of power washing a building on the Lower East Side, a building that apparently hasn't been cleaned since coal use started to decline many decades ago... And

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-19036196152427624992007-01-09T09:00:00.000-05:002007-01-09T09:21:51.304-05:00

As promised recently, I made truffles. (The suffering I go through when having to use up a pound of Callebaut baking chocolate!) They're not technically difficult, but there do seem to be some tricks, not all of which I've figured out yet. Despite that, they were delicious, even when making them vegan, with coconut cream instead of dairy cream.The main recipe I used was the techniques from

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-19066988112781884852007-01-08T09:12:00.000-05:002007-01-08T09:12:55.010-05:00

One of my culinary pet peeves is cold butter at restaurants. You sit down, are served slices of hand-made, utterly delicious French bread with a perfect crispy crust and a soft interior, and... an ice-cold bowl full of these:Argh! What are you supposed to do now? The butter is hard as a rock! It doesn't spread; it barely slices. You try to put it on your bread and the bread becomes a squished

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-2158299037639461902006-12-23T13:00:00.000-05:002006-12-23T13:00:09.754-05:00

For the cooking club last weekend I got to try a new (to me) cooking skill -- tempering chocolate. Chocolate is an interesting beast, as far as temperature goes. Let stored chocolate get too warm, and the cocoa butter melts and recrystalizes, forming that chalky-looking bloom on the surface. Get chocolate too hot and it burns. Melt it, then let it cool rapidly, and the result is greasy, soft, and

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-47312667489278285822006-12-21T08:03:00.001-05:002006-12-22T16:03:16.120-05:00

Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation was on the early side of the current boom in food books. Published in 2001, it described in sometimes gruesome detail the process by which cows, corn, soybeans, wheat and potatoes get turned into Happy Meals. The New York Times said "Not only will it make you think twice before eating your next hamburger … it will also make you think about the fallout that the

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-47305879510853036122006-12-19T11:20:00.000-05:002006-12-19T11:42:42.418-05:00

There have been several bits of news about NYC in the last couple of days that make me happy.First is another hint of actual putting-bricks-together at the trade center site. They'd started regular work on the foundation of the Freedom Tower building a couple of months ago (after laying a cornerstone, now safely off-site, about a year ago), and now as the New York Times reports, the first steel

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-29039172599631502532006-12-15T17:13:00.000-05:002006-12-15T17:23:27.089-05:00

This week there were two science stories about dolphins in China. In one case, a freshwater river dolphin called the baiji, which has long been endangered due to industrial pollution and habitat pressure from humans, has been declared extinct by a multinational survey team. The small, nearly blind white dolphin, also known as the baiji, was nicknamed "the goddess of the Yangtze.""It's possible

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-30159185637110457762006-12-13T10:07:00.000-05:002006-12-13T10:52:48.823-05:00

It's been pointed out that this year has been a particularly good year for food books, and this after several years of particularly good years for food books. This year, we had Omnivore's Dilemma, which was one of the New York Times' 10 best books of the year (I agree) and The United States of Arugula, which made their 100 notable books list (I'm halfway through it, and it's very enjoyable!). But

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-57696225917313995112006-12-06T12:56:00.000-05:002006-12-06T13:05:33.067-05:00

OK, this is weird. This blog's page view stats have spiked in the last couple of days, and something like half of my visitors are coming from Google. And not just any random search, but for the string saltimbocca seasoning. WTF? First of all, there isn't such a thing. If you search for the same string in quotes, so that Google looks for the entire phrase, you get no hits! And second, the only

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-79730284865370568032006-12-06T09:11:00.000-05:002006-12-06T09:27:22.362-05:00

Harold McGee has a new occasional column in the New York Times, called The Curious Cook, and dedicated to the chemical properties of food and how cooking works. McGee, of course, wrote the essential book on food chemistry, On Food and Cooking. In today's column, in addition to recounting his personal history of how he got into writing about food science, and noting some interesting new theories

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-8023719802249228422006-12-03T15:19:00.000-05:002006-12-06T12:49:04.581-05:00

Another one of those family hand-me-down recipes (like the hot dog casserole I wrote about earlier this year) is my dad's spaghetti sauce recipe. He's been tweaking it for decades, and it's reached a level of flavor that far surpasses any of the marinara sauces you get in a jar, and a level of richness that, in my opinion, far surpasses the simple-and-elegant fresh tomato sauces you make in

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-82053556647594412592006-11-27T22:45:00.000-05:002006-11-27T23:20:29.705-05:00

I've written a couple of times in the past about development in New York City, and the issues involved with trying to figure out how to increase the density of a city that already has 8 million people. But Science News this week has a feature article (subscribers only, unfortunately) that relates to an almost directly opposite problem, what to do with the empty parts of the country.If one group

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-35474765557331627312006-11-21T20:57:00.000-05:002006-11-21T22:54:37.161-05:00

I think that oftentimes creativity is easiest in the context of some sort of constraints. This isn't exactly a new idea, as poets have thrived with strict meter, and celebrity chefs on Iron Chef have thrived having to make five complex dishes based on clams. There's even a recent book on the topic (warning, I know nothing about the book).My cooking club, I think, also works best under constraints

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-69115876459375450872006-11-20T22:04:00.000-05:002006-11-20T22:27:53.697-05:00

Fall being the beginning of stew season (remember this one from last winter?), and R wanting a dish with a little (but not too much) beef in it, I made a very tasty Philippine stew the other day. Called pochero, it's a Philippine adaptation of a traditional Spanish dish called cocido, which is one of those stews with eight types of meat and a smattering of vegetables and chickpeas. The variant I

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-43974184399762097982006-11-08T09:32:00.000-05:002006-11-08T09:50:16.130-05:00

Two very interesting essays in Gotham Gazette today (thanks to Curbed for the links). In one, Amanda Burden, the chair of the New York City Planning Commission and director of the Department of City Planning, talks about the competing influences of Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses on city development. Jacobs was an advocate of streets and neighborhoods. Moses was a central planner and an advocate of

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-76200280275793954842006-11-06T19:36:00.000-05:002006-11-06T20:35:49.383-05:00

Tomorrow is of course the US elections, so a few thoughts about politics from a scientific point of view... A few days ago the AP ran a story about a possible genetic basis for political views. Coincidentally, the same day I learned about the research done by a social psychologist in my department on a possible psychological basis for political (and related) views. Let me fill you in on both of

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-91221075608125539992006-10-26T22:02:00.000-04:002006-10-27T08:00:49.360-04:00

Well that was rather a treat. The New York Academy of Sciences has a new series(*) of public lectures on the Science of Food, and I went to see the first event tonight. Shirley Corriher was the guest this evening. She's a chef with a chemistry background, she's written a couple of books on the science of cooking (CookWise from 1997 won a Beard award; BakeWise is not yet available), she's been a

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-50863969877094169572006-10-25T11:52:00.000-04:002006-10-25T12:13:19.770-04:00

I've been really impressed by a newish blog about the streets of NYC, Streetsblog. It's a project of the New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign, and it covers the (slow) improvement of NYC streets as modern urban planning takes over from the (in my opinion) mostly misguided highway-centered development of the mid-20th century. Unlike my other favorite NYC blog, Curbed, it focuses on

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1161313882158909172006-10-19T22:34:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:50.305-04:00

In last week's New York Review of Books the great physicist and thinker Freeman Dyson reviews a book called The Best of All Possible Worlds: Mathematics and Destiny by Ivar Ekeland. (link) The book doesn't seem particularly worth reading; Dyson says it "gives a slanted and partial view of history." But the review is worth reading. Here's the first couple of paragraphs.Ivar Ekeland has a Norwegian

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1160709210993380652006-10-12T22:43:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:50.241-04:00

The new Zagat's guide to New York Restaurants was released yesterday. Despite the fact that they sent me a free copy in the mail Tuesday (my first blog perk!), I'm not all that thrilled, and it's got me thinking a bit about restaurant recommendations.There are lots of ways that people hear about restaurants. Sometimes you're just walk or drive past something and go in based on the name. In some

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1159912373867502972006-10-03T17:39:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:50.102-04:00

Two more cases of imminent food shortages in the last couple days! On Monday, about 4% of this year's US crop of hops burned in a fire. And last week, the Indian government banned export of lentils to "ease inflation in the Indian domestic market." Relevant quotes:The United States produces 24 percent of the world's hops, and about three-fourths of the U.S. crop comes from the Yakima Valley. Hops

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1159558302793781612006-09-29T15:17:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:50.033-04:00

The AP is reporting on a tragic story. Millions of young anchovies have washed up on the shore in Northern Spain and died. The speculation is that they were fleeing from predators (chefs in submarines?) and beached themselves. The fish are actually endangered in the region, and fishing of anchovies has actually become restricted to allow the species to bounce back.If the beached specimens had

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1159200050444507642006-09-25T11:36:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:49.964-04:00

One of the topics I find really interesting is New York City's processes of urban renewal, as it comes back from the blight of the 70s and 80s (click on the famous image to the right for background), and expansion, as its population rises rapidly to record levels. The New York Sun has an article today about the history and development of Union Square.In 1979, architecture critic Paul Goldberger

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1158632250308842642006-09-18T21:22:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:49.828-04:00

Exactly one year ago today, I posted here about the filming of a movie in the neighborhood. That movie, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, written and directed by Astoria-native Dito Montiel, has its official premier today downtown, and opens in New York and LA on September 29th. It won two awards each at the Sundance and Venice Film Festivals, and had a sneak preview last weekend here in

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1157599980166726012006-09-06T23:13:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:49.752-04:00

Once again, Deborah Madison saved the day when the CSA assortment of vegetables came in yesterday! The share this week was lettuce, fennel, (lemon) basil, eggplant, a yellow bell pepper, and roma tomatoes. With the help of a friend who came over to help eat the haul, I made use of all but the lettuce and eggplant, supplementing with a few other vegetables, in a fantastic (and rather photogenic)

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1157479338729512942006-09-05T14:01:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:49.680-04:00

Some good news on two fronts for fans of spicy foods!First, as I saw in Science News (subscription only), researchers in Australia found that regularly eating chile peppers as part of meals significantly reduces the amount of insulin produced as a response to eating. (summary) In people with diabetes and pre-diabetic conditions, the pancreas tries to compensate for insulin resistance, an

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1156877883321731412006-08-29T14:15:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:49.479-04:00

Here's another intruiging science-of-food result, published in last week's Nature. (Link may require Nature subscription, sorry.) A team of scientists in San Diego wanted to figure out exactly how we taste sourness, such as the fantastic acidic taste of a white balsamic vinegar. People already knew how sweet, bitter, and umami tastes work, what chemical receptors are triggered when each of those

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1156372262912378772006-08-23T18:22:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:47.315-04:00

My Uncle Ron, an engineer living in Austin, TX, had heart surgery recently to replace an aging replacement valve that had been giving him trouble. He's recovering well, and wrote a great letter to his relatives about it. "I found the combination of low tech (sawing thru the bone, needle and thread) and hi-tech (carbon fiber valve and the computer with megabytes of mememory in my chest) very

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1156205448322599542006-08-21T19:55:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:47.219-04:00

In astrophysics and cosmology, dark matter is a postulated form of matter that acts like normal matter when it comes to gravity, but does not interact with normal matter in other ways (like collisions). Apparently, the amount of visible stuff in galaxies (stars, gas, black holes) isn't nearly enough to account for the ways galaxies behave gravatationally, so researchers basically made up this new

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1155850358597669432006-08-17T16:56:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:47.147-04:00

The journal Nature has a couple of interesting essays in last week's issue about carbon sequestration as a solution to global warming. In general, I'm somewhat skeptical about carbon sequestration, where excess carbon dioxide is pumped underground or down to the sea floor or something like that. It's treating the symptom, not the problem, it doesn't deal with the problem of peak oil, it might not

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1153793024715323892006-08-13T19:44:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:46.917-04:00

OK, I'm back from the trip and from some fairly stressful grant-writing at work... hopefully I'll be writing here a bit more again...In my parents' home state of New Mexico, enchiladas are unique in a couple of ways. Instead of being a tortilla rolled around a filling and covered with sauce and cheese, the tortillas are flat, with the filling in between. The most traditional New Mexican

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1154446735255462052006-08-01T11:35:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:46.991-04:00

Looks like three days of 100 degree humid weather here in New York. Hooray. On the way into work this morning, I snapped this cell photo of a road construction area near my apartment....Doesn't it look happy, next to the 8 foot tall concrete thing that's been parked on the street for six months?

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1153709107523145532006-07-23T22:40:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:46.848-04:00

Although the outage is not as widespread as the one in St. Louis, the outage here in Western Queens has been going on for six days, and parts of it may last for several more. Which blocks have had outages and which haven't has been very hit-or-miss, and I've been very lucky. Some disruptions to my cell phone and cable modem, but I've had full power, even as people just a couple blocks in each

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1153491746549429242006-07-21T10:16:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:46.777-04:00

There was recent news that there's been too much clay in NYC water, and the city might have to, for the first time, build a filtration plant to filter out impurities in the water we get from upstate reservoirs. Today, the Times had an article on reaction from bakers:The wrong water can ruin things, he said. “You can’t use well water to make bagels,” he said. “You could, but they won’t come out

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1153076670354419332006-07-16T14:46:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:46.605-04:00

This isn't about tiny little deep fried fish as found at Red Lobster. Thankfully.For some reason I got it into my head that popcorn would make an interesting ingredient, not just a tasty snack. It might have been the two large bags of gourmet popcorn sitting in my cabinets. In any case, I did some Googling for recipes with popcorn as an ingredient. There aren't very many, and in fact the only

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1152810942472880062006-07-13T13:14:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:46.532-04:00

Over the last several months I've seen several articles talking about "65 degree eggs" (that's Celsius). One of Hervé This's contributions to modern cooking is his rigorous study of how to boil eggs without overcooking them. There are a couple of standard rules of thumb for hard-boiled eggs, like boil them for 10 minutes, or put them in boiling water, turn of the heat, and letting them sit for 13

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1152802053853663102006-07-13T10:29:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:46.461-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, the CSA gave us fresh lavender. If I may make use of gender stereotypes for a moment, all of the women in the CSA squealed and said, "yay, lavender, I'll dry it and put in my clothes drawers to make everything smell nice!", while all of the men kinda squinted and said, "uh, can you eat it?" Actually, that's not stereotyping, that's exactly what happened.I, of course,

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1152462365358214142006-07-09T12:17:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:46.391-04:00

Also in the Times today is an article about food in movies. It reviews past classics, talks about the appeal of food in cinema, and notes some upcoming films:On Nov. 10, 20th Century Fox is scheduled to release "A Good Year," in which a London investment banker, played by Russell Crowe, inherits a vineyard in Provence. And Warner Brothers just finished filming a remake of the German film "Mostly

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1152460674173451172006-07-09T11:36:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:46.323-04:00

I take the subway train every day from home, in Astoria, to work, in Greenwich Village. The subway is elevated in Queens, and the last stop before it dives under the East River and into Manhattan is Queensboro Plaza. This "plaza" is the Queens base of the Queensboro (59th St.) Bridge, and it's a fairly ugly and industrial part of the fairly ugly and industrial neighborhood of Long Island City.

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1152372170855144762006-07-08T10:40:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:46.258-04:00

There's a very American steak dish called Steak Diane, usually involving a pan-fried steak, and a pan-sauce with cognac (possibly flambeed) and some other things. It was more popular 40 years ago, before the advent of Americans eating Thai food and carb-free salads, but it's still an interesting, flavorful, and quick dinner. It's origins are obscure, and different sources give different

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1151942856788324392006-07-03T11:37:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:46.193-04:00

I was channel surfing yesterday when I ran across some Italian TV towards the top of the dial. And not just any Italian TV, but La Prova del Cuoco ("The Test of the Cook"). It's an Italian version of Ready Steady Cook, a daytime BBC cooking show where two celebrity chefs battle to cook meals in 30 minutes with 5 pounds worth of surprise ingredients, in front of a live audience. But that's not the

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1151551851038174252006-06-28T23:30:00.001-04:002006-10-23T11:52:46.055-04:00

A study published in Science last week was particularly compelling to me, and I had a particularly visceral reaction to it. (If that link doesn't work, try this summary at the Brainethics blog.) The researchers, from 13 different universities, studied variations in altruistic behavior among 15 widely different societies around the world. Their conclusion is that people have evolved (both

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1151551837326079822006-06-28T23:30:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:45.969-04:00

Oliver Sacks (author of Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, among others), wrote a great essay in the latest New Yorker about stereo vision. Unfortunately, the essay is not available online, but a brief letter to the editor of Nature is available. The essay is about stereo vision, which is a property of our having two eyes, rather than one. In addition to other cues about the

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1151348513464984542006-06-26T14:48:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:45.900-04:00

New Scientist is reporting (thanks to Megnut for the link) on a new study that found that monkeys fed strictly controlled diets showed that trans fats cause a lot more weight gain than other types of fat. One set of monkeys was fed a diet with 35% of calories from fat, and 8% from trans fats. Another set was fed a similar diet with no trans fats.After six years on the diet, trans fat-fed monkeys

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1150851900255874272006-06-21T09:31:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:45.831-04:00

My most recent dish for the cooking club was (if I do say so myself) really good, although (1) it wasn't an original, and (2) everyone else's stuff was even better. Still, it's worth writing about! From Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, (a cookbook I've cited three times before) it's the Black Bean Cakes, which I served with a homemade papaya salsa and sour cream.A detailed

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1150849689034966432006-06-20T20:18:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:45.762-04:00

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I'd joined a CSA, on the day of the first pickup. That day was 6/6/06, the day of the beast. When flipping through recipe books, I ran across a recipe for stir-fried Beef with Asparagus, which would go well with the asparagus (I thought) we were getting that first day. Best yet, the recipe was on page 666 of The New Joy of Cooking! This would have been a killer

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1150748767256073972006-06-19T16:01:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:45.690-04:00

An interesting blog article on the taste of lamb by Frank Bruni: [T]wo friends and I bite into a cylinder of flesh encrusted with various herbs. One of those friends looks puzzled, concerned. “This is lamb?” she asks. “According to the menu,” I answer. At which point her husband looks even more unsettled. “I thought it was tuna,” he says. It sounds like a wild, ridiculous comment, but it

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1150142081512161142006-06-12T15:32:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:45.556-04:00

One of the types of things that statistics can tell you about is whether events happen independently, or instead whether an event causes another event. Take soccer, for instance. As News@Nature.com reports, there's been a longstanding assumption that the first team to score a goal will tend to score more goals. It's certainly the case that if you have two teams, and one is better than the other,

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1149943374851925392006-06-10T08:29:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:45.488-04:00

Thanks to Boing Boing for noting the next Pixar film after Cars (which has gotten mostly good reviews, but I'm not all that enthusiastic about it). Opening next summer will be Ratatouille, the story of a foodie rat living in Paris! Such good food, but getting it (for a rat), is so dangerous...! The trailer is brilliant, and I can't wait to see this!

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1149860109550017672006-06-09T09:20:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:45.405-04:00

This is only partly on-topic for this blog, but I thought it was such a great idea I had to mention it! There's going to be a series of "classic" movies screened on location (!) in August, courtesy of Netflix. The first one will be The Warriors, the late-70s cult favorite about gangs in New York City. A gang from Coney Island has to make it back home, through the territory of other gangs, and

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1149651525349606532006-06-06T23:25:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:45.330-04:00

Today was the first distribution day for the CSA (community-supported agriculture--buy a share in a farmer's crop, get a selection of fresh produce once a week) I joined here in Astoria, and as part of the loot we got some rhubarb. The traditional thing to do with rhubarb is of course strawberry-rhubarb pie, which is great, but I prefer a different recipe. Rhubarb "bread" is a quickbread, like

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1149526107465357722006-06-05T12:32:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:45.261-04:00

Are you tired of the excessively elegant food you cook, eat, and read about on food blogs? Are the elegant photos of crispy and flakey butter cookies at Chocolate & Zucchini getting your down? The Freakonomics Blog, of all places, points out the answer. Adam Scott, a Canadian video blogger, has embarked on a project to avoid cooking, shopping, and dishes, by eating nothing but ZuPreem brand

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1149166168585898882006-06-01T08:33:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:45.174-04:00

From ScienceNow, two stories this morning about scary things in food...First is a story about some new research suggesting that the metal manganese may, in part, cause the initial mis-folding of proteins that ends up causing Mad Cow Disease and related prion problems. Those diseases happen when proteins, whose function is determined by the shape that they naturally fold, fold in the wrong way.

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1148996374294799462006-05-30T09:30:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:45.105-04:00

I got a new camera this weekend. It's a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ20, a so-called "ZLR" camera with a big impressive-looking lens, but without the through-the-lens feature of a true SLR and without the ability to replace the (big impressive-looking) lens. On the other hand, it's a lot cheaper and lighter than a true SLR. It's a 5MB digital, with lots of cool features, including 12X zoom and optical

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1148651081633029462006-05-26T09:27:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:45.031-04:00

Consumerist pointed me at Odessa Piper's commencement address to the University of Wisconsin-Madison graduating class this Spring. I'm a UW-Madison alumnus, and so it was particularly a treat to read Ms Piper's success story. She dropped out of school, and after living on a farm commune in New Hampshire, moved to Madison where she worked for Ovens of Brittany (which I remember as being the source

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1148341064061625312006-05-22T19:27:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:44.963-04:00

National Geographic News has an interesting article about the hurricane risk in New York City. The risk is fairly low to the city itself, since most hurricanes parallel the coast this far North, and are unlikely to run directly into the city without spending a bunch of time over land first. Long Island, sticking out to sea, is at more of a risk. On the other hand, the potential consequences of

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1147789744105398002006-05-16T09:51:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:44.897-04:00

OK, here's another good article on food controversies, this time about organic food. Steven Shapin writes in the last issue of the New Yorker about organic food and whether it's all it's cracked up to be. I am certainly happy to buy good-quality organic food when I can, but don't usually go out of my way to do so. Here are some particularly interesting excerpts from the article, which I

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1147561290245882862006-05-13T18:20:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:44.821-04:00

Here's another food ethics dillema for you... In order to cost-effectively raise enough pork to meet demand, pigs in the US and in the rest of the industrialized world are fed grains (corn, soy, etc.) instead of their usual omnivorous diet. The pigs are happy enough (unlike cows, which get infections and thus preventative antibiotics when fed only grain), except that their manure is very high in

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1147368661985980172006-05-11T12:42:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:44.739-04:00

Three crappy cell-phone photos for you, of hopefully amusing New York scenes...Half-crushed Froot Loops on the floor of the subway.You know you're in Queens when a house in the neighborhood has a six-foot tall plastic Statue of Liberty on the porch. In May.A rant posted to a pillar in the Union Square subway station. It says: "In order to purchase tobacco products at Walgreens you will need a

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1147189107842471942006-05-09T11:22:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:44.581-04:00

Mark Liberman over at the linguistics blog Language Log has some cautionary words about the story out today about dolphins having names. The actual paper itself isn't out yet; it'll be in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences soon, but all of the articles so far are based on press releases. As Liberman says, "[t]he media reliably overinterpret science stories that push their buttons

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1147116938894518212006-05-08T15:06:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:44.513-04:00

There are several really interesting ethical dilemmas in food production, including whether organic food is elitist, and whether GMO food is an ecological step forward or backward. In Salon.com today there's an interview with ethicist Peter Singer, who has written a new book called "The Way We Eat." The most interesting, to me, section of that interview has to do with local vs. non-local food

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1146956655059068492006-05-06T18:33:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:44.443-04:00

I just finished Frans de Waal's Our Inner Ape, a pop science book about chimpanzees, bonobos, and to some extent people. Dr. de Waal is a primatologist who studies the social interactions of these apes (the first two, not people), and his book compares and constrasts their behaviors in an effort to figure out where we fit in. He covers family relationships, power in troops, sex, violence, and

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1146838459418911462006-05-05T10:02:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:44.379-04:00

I was at an American restaurant and bar in Brooklyn the other day with a couple of friends, and we noticed some very amusing things on the menu. I took photos with my trusty cell phone, which I've cropped, combined, and enhanced so that you can actually read it...A few things to notice. First, as pointed out by Dylan, there are five types of cheeseburgers. Did they say "Cheeseburger (American,

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1146796540458109972006-05-04T22:06:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:44.310-04:00

Neuroeconomics is an interesting new field at the intersection of neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics. It's the study of how decision making, and in particular decisions about risk, reward, and punishment, is implemented in the brain. Neuroeconomists try to figure out what parts of your brain and what biochemicals are involved when you (for example) weigh a guaranteed small reward

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1146585633149141662006-05-02T11:47:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:44.228-04:00

There was a seven-alarm (!) fire this morning in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I could easily see the smoke from my apartment, five miles away. A set of abandoned warehouses along the East River just "happened" to catch fire at 6am. As Curbed snarkily puts it: "Greenpoint Clearing Land for Waterfront Development." Photos there too. Slash-and-burn, right here in the big city...The other particularly

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1146426462343267412006-04-30T15:21:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:44.126-04:00

After seeing mention of chocolate nibs a couple of times on the food blog Chocolate & Zucchini, I picked some up at Kalustyan's, the brilliant Indian and Middle Eastern spice shop and grocery in Murray Hill. Chocolate nibs are roasted and crushed cocoa beans, with no sweetness and no smoothness. They add crunch and raw chocolate flavor to whatever you add them to. Then a couple month's ago,

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1146326296692944532006-04-29T10:53:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:44.062-04:00

I obviously don't do a lot of movie reviews here, but I'm making an exception for Eden, a German film screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, and a film about glorious cooking. I saw the movie with several other foodie friends at a very nice theater in... the Upper West Side. The Tribeca Film Festival has outgrown its roots in Lower Manhattan, and has now spread a 20 minute subway ride away. But

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1146013255773030802006-04-25T20:43:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:43.993-04:00

In an effort to find a nice springy recipe for a recent cooking club dinner, and to try something new, I stumbled across a recipe for Veal Scallopini with Spring Pea Coulis and Asparagus. It's quite good, straighforward, and involved veal scallopini, a trivially simple meat preparation that I'd never happened to make before. I learned a bunch of new things in the course of making the recipe, and

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1145380188635628522006-04-18T12:30:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:43.927-04:00

A magazine called Metropolis (which looks interesting -- urban design sorts of things) has an article this month entitled Ground Zero's Saving Grace, about the small, small shreds of hope that the new construction at the WTC site may actually be something other than a fiasco, contrary to all other current indications. The author of the piece, Karrie Jacobs, discusses how impressed she is with the

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1145299189842674632006-04-17T14:34:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:43.862-04:00

I rarely post links to other articles without something constructive to say, but I'm making an exception here. London food blog Jam Faced has an excellent article today about eating with your hands. I agree with almost everything said there, except I don't think asparagus is finger food, Chicago-style (and thus God-given) pizza cannot be eaten with your hands, and non-pitted olives ought to be. [

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1144960220118920582006-04-13T16:17:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:43.798-04:00

To paraphrase Heraclitus, no man may read the same article twice, for although it is the same article, he is not the same man. This is my thought as I discover that, once again, I have re-read a journal article without even recognizing it or considering it familiar. About every six months I read a paper, think "oh, that was quite interesting, I learned a lot", then go to enter in into my

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1144851220801671252006-04-12T09:51:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:43.725-04:00

The Times has an interesting story today in its Dining & Wine section about those Oreo clones I've been seeing in the "health" food aisle of the supermarket. (I've been tempted, but never bought them, cause I know I'll eat an entire bag in two days... Mmm, Oreo-clones...) They're manufactured by Newman's Own, and are called Newman-Os. (Are they made from real Paul Newmans?)Real Oreos, of course,

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1143485023433302812006-04-10T00:02:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:43.512-04:00

I've made the classic French dish coq au vin a few times recently, from different recipes, and have been struck by the commonalities and variations among the recipes. Coq au vin, at its simplest, is just a chicken, cut up and browned, then simmered with bacon, mushrooms, pearl onions and thyme in red wine. But like any great dish cooked frequently by home cooks across France, and now across the

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1144419542890564452006-04-07T10:05:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:43.661-04:00

From Science News, this amusing note about a 16-year old girl in Massachusetts. She apparently got talked into eating an earthworm by a "friend," then caught a fairly common parasitic infection called Toxocara (roundworm). (Image of an adult roundworm from here.) Second in frequency in the US only to pinworm, it can cause pneumonia-like symptoms, and sometimes affects the eyes and liver.) The

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1144104728589664042006-04-03T18:43:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:43.589-04:00

Blog A Full Belly links to this great article about how to pour ketchup quickly. Executive Summary: tilt the neck of the bottle only slightly downward, then whack the neck of the bottle against your hand. (Or, if appropriate, squeeze plastic bottle...)And this reminds me of one of Malcolm Gladwell's great essays, about choice and variation in foodstuffs, entitled The Ketchup Conundrum. Executive

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1143230640101372832006-03-28T17:20:00.000-05:002006-10-23T11:52:43.238-04:00

An early posting of mine on this blog was about science in courtrooms, and an interesting controversy regarding the role of expert witnesses and judges' ability to prevent their testimony. A related and very interesting issue was the topic of a commentary in a recent issue of the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience. In this commentary, Nigel Eastman (Chair in Law and the Ethics of Psychiatry at

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1143396333297118192006-03-26T12:26:00.000-05:002006-10-23T11:52:43.375-04:00

The cover story in today's New York Times Magazine (free registration required, I think) is completely enthralling. Michael Pollan is a journalist and writer on science and the environment. His well-received 2001 book The Botany of Desire was about how four plants (apples, marijuana, potatoes, and tulips) have co-evolved with humans. The essay today is an excerpt from his forthcoming book

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1143241412728713352006-03-24T17:52:00.000-05:002006-10-23T11:52:43.301-04:00

Trends in Cognitive Sciences has an interesting meta-analysis of the ongoing controversy over evolutionary theory and intelligent design. Two psychologists and and a philosopher write in to take an educational-psychology and philosophy-of-science approach to the controversy. They have a couple of interesting points that I didn't know about:Although it is tempting to think the controversy stems

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1142992325592426082006-03-21T20:28:00.000-05:002006-10-23T11:52:43.173-04:00

Some recipes get passed down through the generations. Recipes for pork roasts, or for turkey stuffing, or cakes. Perhaps my karma has a sense of humor, 'cause one of the most prominent family recipes I have is a 1950s American housewife back-of-can special called Hot Dog Casserole. It's really good. I had a bit of a bad day yesterday (didn't get a grant I was hoping for), so I decided that this

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1142782045278664732006-03-19T09:57:00.000-05:002006-10-23T11:52:43.043-04:00

I'd dabbled in Indian cooking for several years, borrowing recipes from Indian friends and so forth. But my repertoire has been greatly expanded by a cookbook I picked up last year, Madhur Jaffrey Indian Cooking. Madhur Jaffrey is an Indian-American cookbook author and actress, and she is widely viewed as a premier popularizer of Indian cooking in the US, in the same sense as Marcella Hazan is

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1142481269303985522006-03-15T22:42:00.000-05:002006-10-23T11:52:42.971-04:00

You know those snooty wine reviews that surround the wine with flowerly language, "kissed with a touch of motor oil, hiding undercurrents of roasted pork rinds, etc..." Well, chocolate is the new wine, and it's a lot cheaper. I buy chocolate (and other things) at a gourmet store (Garden of Eden, 14th and 5th, for locals) fairly regularly, and they'd been out of my favorite bar for a couple of

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1142350992347460722006-03-14T08:54:00.000-05:002006-10-23T11:52:42.906-04:00

One of my earliest blog posts was on a movie being filmed in my neighborhood, Astoria. That movie, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, is now completed and screened to rather positive reviews (and two awards) at Sundance. I've seen some screenshots of scenes that were filmed half a block from my apartment...What I didn't know at the time was that that movie was significantly aided by a package of

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1142181518537165932006-03-12T11:30:00.000-05:002006-10-23T11:52:42.844-04:00

I've never been all that thrilled by mangoes. But over the years I've had a half-dozen Indian and Indian-American housemates, and they have all been insistent that you can't get good mangoes in the United States. They mostly had good taste in food, so I'm willing to believe them. So imagine my delight this morning to read an opinion essay in the Times by Madhur Jaffrey, writer of one of my

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1142095094478002502006-03-11T11:18:00.000-05:002006-10-23T11:52:42.774-04:00

A friend from grad school and her husband used to throw fantastic parties on their porch. Highlights in my mind include wicked good mojitos and her homemade chocolate bread, served with marscapone cheese. Before we left Illinois for porch-free climes, I made sure to snag the recipe for the bread. This is a fine, fine dessert bread, made with cocoa powder and best-quality bittersweet chocolate

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1141945485713265322006-03-09T17:36:00.000-05:002006-10-23T11:52:42.702-04:00

Tortillas, the Mexican and Central American food used to wrap up other foods, are historically made from corn. In Tex-Mex and Cal-Mex cuisines, however, flour tortillas are used to make Burritos as Big as Your Head. Corn tortillas are healthier, with about a tenth as much fat as flour tortillas. But, the market says that tortillas should be soft and easy to wrap, so at least twice as many flour

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1141938229069720022006-03-09T15:49:00.000-05:002006-10-23T11:52:42.641-04:00

I've been thinking about the World Trade Center site, the events of 9/11, and how they are viewed by people. 9/11 was of course an exceptional event, way outside our day-to-day lives, with terrific horror and heroism. The year after that day was also remarkable. The cleanup of the site was completed much faster than expected, for less money than was predicted, with fantastic organization and

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1141830638366668362006-03-08T10:04:00.000-05:002006-10-23T11:52:42.579-04:00

The Times today has a photo of a melting glacier sculpture being constructed by artist Deborah Fisher, some of whose work is at the Socrates Sculpture Park here in Astoria/Long Island City. I wouldn't mention it, except that on the Times' web site, they have an interesting multimedia slideshow of Fisher, with her talking about how and why she became an artist. Recommended...

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1141573891177669212006-03-05T10:39:00.000-05:002006-10-23T11:52:42.440-04:00

I bought an MP3 player last year. Not an iPod, but an iAudio U2, which is like an iPod Mini, but boxier and less elegant. (And cheaper and with more features.) I listen to music on it, certainly, but I also listen to a lot of podcasts. Although food, science, and New York City are three of my favorite things, and they're the things I like to write about, for some reason they're not my favorite

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1141174801770836682006-02-28T19:46:00.000-05:002006-10-23T11:52:42.360-04:00

I'm amused, but maybe not so much intruiged, by this story. Some scientists in Australian wanted to make a wheat variant that would have different proportions of starches. One kind of starch, amylopectin, is quickly converted into sugar in the body, and is digested. (This is particularly true with white bread, and less true with whole-wheat bread, which is why diabetics try to avoid white bread -

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1141011378956119532006-02-26T22:09:00.000-05:002006-10-23T11:52:42.291-04:00

I managed to last 2 and a half years in New York City before going to see a Broadway musical, but the time arrived. A very kind friend had an extra ticket to Chicago, due to some relatives from out of town not being able to attend, and so I went. I've been to off-Broadway theater and dance performances, but not to any musicals, and not to this sort of well-hyped tourist-infested production. It's

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1140566143726576982006-02-21T18:22:00.000-05:002006-10-23T11:52:41.144-04:00

An interesting story on ScienceNOW is reporting on some cool new genetics research with birds. Researchers in Germany and Wisconsin looked at a mutation in chickens that affects the process of embryonic development. The mutation in the gene called talpid2 usually kills the chickens after a couple of weeks of development, but right at the end of those couple of weeks the researchers found some

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1140093665766896072006-02-16T07:35:00.000-05:002006-10-23T11:52:41.022-04:00

In some sort of spat between a professional food writer and the world of food bloggers, in which the pro said food blogs are as interesting as cheese sandwiches, the food blog community is apparently celebrating Cheese Sandwiches today! So, support your favorite food bloggers, and have a cheese sandwich! I prefer a grilled cheese on 100% whole wheat bread, with a mix of sharp cheddar and plastic

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1140063557510474622006-02-15T22:57:00.000-05:002006-10-23T11:52:40.963-04:00

Seed, that new science-and-culture magazine I mentioned a while back, has an article (not available on-line, as far as I can tell) about how architects are eschewing boxes and basing their work on organic shapes and objects. They mention a worm-like pavilion in Holland, a science center in Germany, some spa buildings based on the airflow around termite mounds (!) in Botswana, and a museum in Lyon

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1140052400330391872006-02-15T19:56:00.000-05:002006-10-23T11:52:40.901-04:00

OK, five blog articles on food in a row is too many for a blog that's supposed to be about science (and sometimes New York) too...From ScienceNOW, an interesting article about a surprising consequence of increased CO2 levels. Some new research has shown (through simulations) that decreases observed in the amount of fresh water may be due to increased CO2, through the amusing mechanism of sweating

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1139961998243682702006-02-14T18:37:00.000-05:002006-10-23T11:52:40.842-04:00

I totally nailed a roasted rack of lamb this weekend. It was unbelievably fantastic. I'd wanted to make a rack of lamb for the cooking club, and ended up finding a recipe for a Moroccan lamb with Shiraz-honey sauce. In the process, I learned a few things that I thought I'd post here.First of all, the lamb itself. A rack of lamb is just half of the rib cage of a lamb, with the attached meat and (

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1139882741686298182006-02-13T20:51:00.000-05:002006-10-23T11:52:40.778-04:00

In places like Chinatown, it's common to see cured cooked meats, like chicken and duck, hanging in the window of a restaurant. These aren't just decoration -- they're sold to customers -- and they're not refrigerated. Here in New York City, restaurant owners who allowed this would regularly be fined for violating health codes, despite the fact that fully cooked chicken is relatively sterile and

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1139671287173315422006-02-11T10:06:00.000-05:002006-10-23T11:52:40.714-04:00

Ah, insomnia. One of the great things about waking up in 5am on a Saturday is that you can have a bowl of cereal, and then a few hours later enjoy that great Hobbit meal, second breakfast!Today I made one of my two favorite pancake recipes, my recipe for blueberry pancakes. It's a slightly complicated version, with beaten egg whites, but I think the texture and flavor are worth the bit of extra

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1139577660513390762006-02-10T08:12:00.000-05:002006-10-23T11:52:40.658-04:00

Oy, vey. 36 hours later, I'm now recovered from a case of food poisoning. It's been years and years since that's happened to me... A certain Chinese take-out place is gonna get a call to 311 (the city's information line) on their behalf...I very likely got hit by the most common cause of food poisoning, staphlococcus aureus. The staph bacteria typically comes from food preparers with some sort of

Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com2