CK Food Links--Friday May 22, 2009

Here's yet another selection of particularly interesting links from around the internet. As always, I welcome your thoughts and your feedback.

PS: follow me on Twitter!

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The Impatient Cook at Dorie Greenspan's Blog
Even prolific and accomplished food writers occasionally forget the cardinal rule of mistake-free cooking: read the recipe twice!

Beans, Rice and Hot Peppers at Spanish Recipes
My favorite Spanish cuisine blog posts a recipe perfect for CK readers, cheap, spicy, easy to make and presented in an original way. PS to USA-based readers: if you can't find pimientos del padron, you can substitute jalapenos.

Coq Au Vin at The Amateur Gourmet
Adam runs one of the clearest posts I've ever seen on how to make the classic French dish. It's a lot less intimidating than it seems.

Mojito Marinated Chicken at RecipeGirl
Baked-then-grilled chicken soaked in rum, lime juice and mint. A really creative yet simple recipe, and it comes with a bonus list of six different mojito recipes. Oh, and let me add a key rule of my own for this dish: don't drink the marinade after the chicken's been soaking in it.

Cod with Lemon-Caper Sauce at A Mingling of Tastes
I always love a simple and elegant fish recipe. Julie brings us a laughably easy dish that is perfect for one and can be easily doubled for two.

The Temptation of Soda Taxes at Food Politics
Marion Nestle presents some interesting reactions to a New York Times article on taxing soda. I'll agree, soda is a tempting tax target, uh, except for those shares of Coke that I own. Readers, what do you think? NB: See that chart on food price inflation in both articles? If you can identify three (or more) fallacies or logic errors in that chart before 6AM New York time on Saturday 5/23/09 (that's when I'll run an article of my own that rips apart that very chart), I'll send you a free gift. Leave your answers in the comment section below.

26 Common Food Labels, Explained at Cheap Healthy Good
An excellent and encyclopedic post from Kris explaining exactly what terms like "cage-free," "all-natural" and "organic" really mean (in terms understandable to normal humans) when they appear on your food labels.

My Personal Credit Crisis at the New York Times
If you run an article like this, which is a saddening post-mortem of how a key economics reporter for the Times can't even manage his own finances, doesn't this sort of annihilate the credibility of your economics coverage?

Get Your Kids Off Your Facebook Page at Double X
Neo-feminism's newest website posts an article slamming women who use their kids' pictures for their Facebook profile photos. Author Katie Roiphe calls it a retreat "to a time when women were called Mrs. John Smith," and then spins this observation into a horror-stricken article about how an entire generation of moms has surrendered their identities. Three thoughts: 1) I'll lay money down that she doesn't have kids, 2) I can't wait to see her Facebook page once she does, and 3) maybe it's just not worth getting worked up over certain things.

My Life is Average
More mind candy for you. A parody of (and an improvement on) fmylife.com, where people write in average things that happen to them. And it's shocking how compelling it is to read all these uncompelling things. A couple of samples: "Today, I woke up early and didn't feel like putting my contacts in. I just wore my glasses instead" and "Today I wanted to go farther with my girlfriend than I have before. But just ended up going as far as I usually do."

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4 comments:

Liz T. said...

RE: your take on 'My Personal Credit Crisis', it's no secret that doctors and therapists don't always lead the tidiest lives but still manage to help a lot of people.

Look at the ministers and politicians who have been caught doing the very things they rail against. Most of us fallable humans experience a disconnect between what we know and what we do.

Hindsight is always 20/20. I can't tell you how many times I've smacked myself of the forehead and said 'why didn't I see/know that before?'

I'm sure this isn't as coherent as it sounds in my head, but hopefully you can see what I'm sayin'.
:)

Daniel said...

Hi Liz:
Great point. I hear you, and certainly everyone's fallible.

And to extend your example, I'd happily go to a marriage counselor who happened to be divorced, IF he disclosed up front that he was divorced, and if his advice was useful. Hey, maybe he learned lots of things from his divorce that could help his clients avoid the same fate.

But I'd be pretty upset if he had gotten divorced and never told me, or if after years of counselling sessions, he springs on me, "oh by the way, I've been divorced all this time."

That's essentially what this guy did. During all his years of writing dozens of articles about finance and economics, he never had to say that he lacked the ability to handle basic financial life skills. In my opinion this hurts his reporting credibility, albeit retroactively. To me it's about the timing of the disclosures.

Thanks as always for reading and thank you for a thought-provoking comment!

DK

Joanne said...

Thanks for this - I especially liked the article with all the decoded food terms. It's always so hard to navigate, especially with meats. Now I know - pasture-raised and grass-fed are the way to go.

Melissa said...

Good links on this one - thanks for making me revisit that Coq au Vin recipe.

Doin' a flyby. Still catching up post-vacation. Hope you had a great long weekend!