0 Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us

After reading this article about the science of making food addictive in the New York Times, I knew I would need to read Michael Moss' whole book about the subject. The author describes how the three titular ingredients are combined, along with a bunch of nasty preservatives, in a variety of ways into convenience and snack foods in order to make consumers want more. Food researchers have discovered how these ingredients activate the pleasure centers of our brains, and study how much of each of these ingredients we can stand - the bliss point. And, as it turns out, there is no bliss point for fat! There is no limit to how much fat food manufacturers will add to prepared foods, because consumers will just keep feeling better and better about eating them. In fact, I was very surprised to read that  some prepared food producers were actually advocating government regulation on added fat in order to level the playing field. Right now Kraft, Nestle, Pepsico, et al appear to be in some sort of arms race to get the biggest snack food share, by having the foods that will make their consumers the happiest through fat. It was not surprising to learn that the rise in consumption of convenience food is correlated with the busyness of the lives of baby boomers, who will often skip breakfast in order to get to work for an early meeting, or just have a quick bite at their desk, then rushing home to take their children to sports practice or other extra curricular activities. The more people skip meals, the more they will snack.

There were a lot of things that made me cringe while reading this. Especially the description of how Lunchables were invented, and then marketed directly to kids. While I will admit to always keeping chicken nuggets and boxed macaroni & cheese on hand when my daughter was little, I take some pride in the fact that I never fed my daughter one of those yucky things. She even asked once when she might be able to have one, after all, her friends at school brought them all the time. "Never" was my simple answer.

This book will definitely make readers reconsider they way they think about food, even for those who have already done so!

Detail: Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us

0 The Colonel's Apple-Stuffed Pork Chops, adapted for Sandy

About a year ago I wrote a post entitled "Oddly, I'm looking forward to reading this..." about a (then) forthcoming "food autobiography" of Colonel Sanders (of KFC fame). Last week I remembered the post, and did a bit of internet searching to find out if the book had been published yet. It had. Online. And for free. The catch is, you have to "Like" KFC on Facebook to get it.  I am pretty selective about what I like on Facebook, especially anything corporate, especially corporations I don't actually like. I was given the option, though, of making my "like" not visible to others, and so I downloaded the book (184 pages, including about 50 pages of recipes). I have not yet read the autobiography part, but I did browse through the recipes and noticed Apple-Stuffed Pork Chops, and we had recently ordered pork loin chops from Crescent Ridge Farm, which delivers our milk each week. We could not even remember the last time we had pork chops it is such a rare meal in our house, so we knew we had to make it good. We also have had a lot of apples lately, delivered in our CSA farm box this month, so this recipe was a good match of our local farm deliveries. We also knew that Hurricane Sandy might have caused our power to out at any time, and the recipe calls for cooking the chops for an hour in the oven. We decided to use our covered indispensable cast-iron skillet and cook on the gas stovetop instead, which was good, because our power did go out in the middle of cooking. These did not take long to prepare, and James and I working together had them ready for cooking in about 20 minutes. I chopped the apples and onions and cooked them in butter to soften. James mixed bread crumbs and fresh parsley (he braved the storm and got it from our garden!) and cut pockets into the chops. We then combined the bread and parsley mix with the apple and onion mix and added a bit of apple sauce (the recipe called for apple juice, but we didn't have any, and were not about to go out in the storm for that.) and stuffed the chops with it. The chops were then coated with flour and placed in the hot skillet and browned on each side. Then we turned down the heat, added more apple pieces and let them cook, covered, for about an hour.  Perfect. These were tender, and tasted like autumn. Eaten by candlelight, while the winds whipped and the rains came down, and paired with a South African Merlot/Cabernet Sauvignon "Le Bonheur" this meal was cozy and romantic.

Detail: The Colonel's Apple-Stuffed Pork Chops, adapted for Sandy