On Cooking the Books: Kathryn Borel Makes Perfect Hollandaise Sauce
The book sounds quite nice, but I feel skeptical about this hollandaise. I am willing to be flexible on the issue of clarified butter versus whole butter, but I like my yolks to be cooked and my sauce to be fluffy, even satiny. This Craig Claiborne recipe seems about right: http://events.nytimes.com/recipes/10089/1985/11/03/Hollandaise-Sauce/recipe.html
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On Happy Bizarre Queens Election Day!
This is my neighborhood. For the last week, my phone has been ringing incessantly with pleas to vote for Peralta, and my mailbox has been filling up with his shiny flyers and magnets(!). According the Jackson Heights listerv, all of this has led to...112 people voting in my district (35), as of about 1pm. The numbers are supposed to be about the same for neighboring districts.
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On The Great Annual Change Bowl Guessing Game
Hmm. So many quarters! $234.79.
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On The Argument Against American Sex Laws
Another terrible aspect of American sex laws: civil commitment. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/us/04civil.html
Because it makes so much sense to keep sex offenders locked up forever, often with limited access to therapy or treatment.
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On Ratings Agencies Sued Over Top Ratings For Crap
Whether HFCS is or is not more evil than cane sugar, it is clear that agricultural subsidies in the US are largely used to encourage farmers to grow a very narrow range of crops. Many processed foods, as Michael Pollan points out, are simply "clever arrangement of carbohydrates and fats teased out of corn, soybeans and wheat â€" three of the five commodity crops that the farm bill supports, to the tune of some $25 billion a year. (Rice and cotton are the others.) For the last several decades â€" indeed, for about as long as the American waistline has been ballooning â€" U.S. agricultural policy has been designed in such a way as to promote the overproduction of these five commodities, especially corn and soy."
If farmers are only scraping by despite the $25 billion in subsidies they receive, isn't it reasonable to ask some questions about where that money is going and if some of it shouldn't be reallocated? As consumers, we are surrounded by artificially cheap (because of all of those Farm Bill subsidy dollars) artificially produced food. Making Cheetos cheaper than carrots seems pretty morally objectionable to me.
I'm all for supporting farmers, but I object to lining the pockets of Monsanto and subsidizing the cost of processed foods, which (as far as I can tell) is pretty much what the Farm Bill currently does.
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On Icelandic Volcano Making Northern Europe Even More Annoyed At Iceland
I just hope this doesn't mean a repeat of the 1816 "Year Without a Summer": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer