Hormone and antibiotic free meats are healthier in my opinion. This is because many of these substances are fat-soluble and so are stored within the fat cells of the animal.

The problem is that these meats are much more expensive — often 2-4 times as costly — as regular meat. Boneless skinless chicken breasts, for example, are about $2.50 for mystery meat brand, and up to $7.99 for organic.

I hate the idea of paying so much for the meat, and I’m looking for ways to cut down on the cost. One option is to buy a whole chicken. Organic boneless-skinless chicken breasts at our store are $24.99 a kilo. A whole organic chicken is only $9.99 a kilo. This is down towards the cost of regular meat. (A chicken’s bone mass is not that high, so it seems like a good deal.)

We’ve bought these chickens to roast before, but I’ve always been intimidated to actually go ahead and butcher one myself. Today, I decided that it can’t be that hard. Guess what? I looked it up and it looks really easy!

Here’s two different instruction sites on cutting up a chicken. The first separates the legs from the bird first, good if you want to cook the breast in one dish and the legs in another. The second butterflies the whole bird, good if you want to serve half chickens with both light and dark meat in each portion. Both look like they’ll be easy to do the first try.

Quartering method

And while I’m talking about chickens, here’s a pet peeve of mine. A chicken does not have breasts although it has a breast. These are not mammary glands. The meaning of the word breast here is the second sense, namely “the fore or ventral part of the body between the neck and the abdomen” (Merriam-Webster).

 › food     2007-07-28 19:20   ...0 comments

After many years of preparing for camping trips I created a list of those important things that you have to have with you: camping equipment, camping food, camping clothes, camping supplies. I’ve been using the list for about 10 years or so, and over that time it’s gotten pretty good at reminding me about what I’ve likely forgotten.

I won’t swear that everything important is on this list, but people often ask me for a copy and enjoy using it. I thought I would post it here so that as it gets updated I can come back here and re-post it, and so others can benefit.

Camping List: PDF or Excel format.
Last updated: May 24, 2007

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

    2007-05-24 12:01   ...1 comment

A few months back we all went for lunch at a local Fish ‘n Chips place. We ordered an appetizer of deep fried Smelts. Ordering deep-fried fish doesn’t seem like a really appropriate appetizer when your main course is deep-fried fish, but hey — Smelts are good!

This deep-fried fish lunch really got me to thinking — what if the fish were combined into one dish. Of course, I then immediately thought of a Turducken, and that led me to the concept of a turducken of the sea, or perhaps Fish Turducken.

It would go something like this, take a deep fried smelt, and embed that into a deep fried rainbow trout, put that into a deep fried salmon, insert that into a deep fried swordfish and jam it all into a deep fried whole tuna.

I think it’s brilliant. When can the marketing begin?

 › food     2007-04-14 11:20   ...1 comment

It’s post christmas christmas time again and I’m thinking about Turkey cooking. I always roast meat using a meat thermometer because it takes all the guesswork out of a great roast. Even though the thermometer is a superior method for knowing doneness, you still need some idea of how long it will take — in order to avoid having your turkey finish cooking hours before your guests arrive!

I usually go on the internet to see what’s what. The other resource that’s been useful is a meat book that Mum has had for years. The problem is that these resources often disagree on cooking times. The book recommends much longer cooking times, even though modern turkey standards require higher internal temperatures.

The reason for this discrepancy has always puzzled me. Finally I have found a site that gives the reason. The National Turkey Federation explains the shorter times by saying that today’s turkeys are bred to increase the amount of white meat. Since white meat cooks faster, your turkey is done sooner.

That page also gives a table of times for preparing turkey at 325 °F.

I realize that several of our friends are using the high heat method with turkey flipping, for some reason I’m sticking with the 325 temperature. It’s always worked in the past! And for the record, the longer roasting times consistently produce juicy delicious birds at my Mum’s place; it seems that as long as it’s cooked, a different length of time in the oven isn’t that critical.

 › food     2006-12-28 11:21   ...0 comments

Stuffed grape leaves are a cultural tradition all over the Mediterranean.

Many people are familiar with them by their greek name dolmades. In our family they are simply called feuilles de vigne (grape leaves), and we make them with ground beef as well as rice.

I think they’re a real treat, but I know from family lore that making them well is something that can only be taught by example. Accordingly, we asked my dad’s cousins to our place for a rolling session. It was a lot of fun, produced lots of tasty food, and now I think we can do it ourselves.

 › food     2006-11-28 14:37   ...0 comments

Here’s three random shots I like. The first two are over Dow’s Lake when we had a picnic there with Andrew and Keltie. Dow’s lake pavillion and Carleton University.

The last is from our cooling supper, we had it outdoors on May 30. The humidex was 38, so everything was supposed to be cooling dips, from homemade yogurt with cucumber and hummus, to salsa and homemade guacamole, to olives and red wine. All soaked up with fresh pita. It was a treat… even if I do say so myself!

    2006-11-23 10:22   ...0 comments

LJ is screwing up the fetching of my blog for some reason. I’ve made some changes to the feed which hopefully should fix this. Sorry for spamming you!

 › blogging     2006-11-01 11:55   ...0 comments

Just found this link from one of the sites I frequent.

This rose is made of chocolate. Believe it.

 › food     2006-07-19 17:27   ...2 comments

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is the publisher of the widely read Nutrition Action Healthletter.

I recently came across the saturated vs. trans fat debate in an online article, and it is interesting that the position of the CSPI on trans fats has run the gamut over the last twenty years or so.

An article by a detractor aims to pin the CSPI for flip-flopping and trying to cover its role in promoting trans fats through Nutrition Action. The article has many problems, and you really have to work to sift the interesting historical information regarding CSPI from the random flaming the author indulges in.

Likely the truth is in the middle; we all know that eating too many saturated fats is not good… and that movie popcorn is bad for you. However, the essay does quote Nutrition Action’s comments over the years, and if you look at them (distinct from the rest of the rant) they don’t make a pretty package.

I come down on the side of trying to consume products that are made of food, and not chemical substitutes and fillers — or gobs of mouth-pleasing fat. If, however, you believe the author’s claim that the CSPI was the central figure in the creation of the trans fat industry then they have a lot to answer for and have not done much answering.

Read the essay and judge for yourself!

ETA: See also CSPI on Wikipedia. A bit slanted too, but to me the news is that there is a possible slant. Perhaps it’s just the name, but I did not know there was controversy over this organization at all.

 › food     2006-05-18 16:11   ...0 comments

Quite pleased with myself! I recerted my National Lifeguard Service qualification tonight at the annual “Old Fart” recert at Dovercourt. I was a bit apprehensive before going… my qualification has been expired for a long time (about 5 years I think) and I knew I would be rusty. I didn’t want to be embarassed by falling flat on my face, but things actually went quite smoothly. I’m a lifeguard again.

I met an interesting person tonight too, one that I thought would be a good fit for both Jen and I in terms of a new friend who also is into the outdoors and stuff. Perhaps I should have said would have been a good fit, but actually it was a bit of a missed opportunity because I didn’t really make the connection with the person despite chatting for a bit.

Thinking about the situation in hindsight I realized a couple of things. First, I spend a lot of time getting people to talk to me while I listen. That is nice, but I realized after the fact that the person likely did not know that we shared interests, because I didn’t provide any information that revealed my interests… I just listened. Second, I realized that I have no idea how to move from the “hey this is a nice conversation but we’ll never see each other again” stage to the “hey let’s get together sometime” stage. It must be possible to do, but the devil is in the details and I’m never sure how to go about it.

Coming up in a future entry… how to ensure you won’t be invited back on a winery tour…

 › sports     2006-05-17 01:10   ...1 comment

Here’s the thing. I’ve never been into team sports. I know you will all be shocked to hear I was that kid who would much rather have done some tedious homework rather than play a team sport. I played soccer for a few years (kid soccer is a serious institution here in town) but it never clicked with me. I just never got into it. I wasn’t very good at it. Lately I’ve been speculating about why that might be.

I think I’ve figured it out: Most team sports are just plain old mean and rude.

The standard team sports (e.g. hockey, soccer, basketball, waterpolo, football, quidditch) all share a similar game play idea: keep the token (ball/puck/quaffle) away from the other team and defeat the goaltenders. Whenever possible you should steal the token away from an opposing player. Whenever possible you should interfere with an opposing player to frustrate them and prevent them from making progress. If you can be in their face pushing them around, that’s great. Basically, you should make life lousy for the opposing player, and inhibit them in every way from doing their best.

Does anyone else think that is weird or unnatural? After all, here in 2006 we are all supposed to be sensitive new age folk, valuing everyone’s efforts, looking for win-win situations and being co-operative. Why do team sports have to be nasty. I don’t like to be nasty, so why be nasty on the pitch?

I think I like the idea of a team-based sport from the point of view of being on a team. I like the idea that there’s a social aspect. That one is motivated to show up and play hard by the desire to not let the others down. Shared achievement and shared disappointment. All that stuff. It’s appealing. But I just don’t like getting in there and tripping people up and pissing them off.

There are other team sports, I realize, and some of them aren’t appropriate because I’m just not that co-ordinated (e.g. volleyball). But I don’t dislike them nearly to the same extent that I’m put off by the canonical team sports.

What kind of team sport would I like to be involved in? I don’t dislike the idea of friendly competition. I like the idea of teams playing against each other. That gives you a reason to get out there and try. I just don’t want to be in-your-face about it.

I remember in grade 7 or 8 I ran on the school’s 4x100m relay team. I really enjoyed that. I got to try my hardest for my team, directly against four opposing teams, and I didn’t have to be nasty to anyone. It was very polite. And sweaty. There need to be more sports like that.

I don’t mind the shuffleboard/curling type games where you aim to frustrate your opponent politely and from a distance. Those sports are low on the sweat factor though…

What kind of energetic team sports are left that one can play politely? Enquiring minds want to know.

 › sports     2006-04-03 23:56   ...2 comments

It’s a beautiful winter day today, and the photos in Andrew’s soon-to-be-infamous Cock entry made me realize that I haven’t posted any photos in a while. I’ve been taking a bit of a photo break, I guess, as I’m never that inspired by generic “Winter” photos and we haven’t done much this winter outdoors due to the soggy conditions. Also I’ve been spending too much time ranting about politics.

I just remembered, though, that I did take pictures a few weeks ago when we were snowshoeing. I’ve been playing with exposure compensation on my camera, and I’ve just started to understand what it’s for. I overexposed most of the photos, but here’s a few good ones of Jen and one overexposed one that I still like because of the stream shape.

Read the Complete Entry

 › sports     2006-02-11 12:13   ...0 comments

It has been a very busy week, but I managed to squeeze an hour of time out tonight to inaugurate the Rideau Canal here in Ottawa.

For those not in the know, the canal is the world’s longest skating rink (confirmed by Guinness) at 7.8 km (4.8 miles). It’s quite a good skate to go from one end to the other and back. I did nowhere near the full canal tonight… just a quick skate around Dow’s lake.

The canal opened for skating today, and although it looks like it will be a good season, waiting until 8pm meant that I didn’t get optimal conditions as I’m sure it was very popular. There was a lot of scraped up snow and the ice surface needs to be flooded a few more times. Despite that, I got up to a good speed with only a few stumbles on hidden cracks in the ice.

I was particularly pleased that it only took a few minutes to get to the canal. According to the inestimable Google Earth (doesn’t seem to be released, yet I seem to have a copy… weird) I am 363 metres from the canal, 720 metres along the road. There’s something fun about living 363 metres from a major tourist attraction… that is actually worth going to.

So, who wants to go skating?

 › sports     2006-01-07 21:59   ...0 comments

Kevin Hayes showed me this hilarious review of the Breakfast From Hell: Swanson Hungry Man All Day Breakfast. Wow. Imagine a product whose main selling feature is a callout that reads “Over 1 pound of food”. This is not for a family folks… it’s for one person.

This reminds me of the 30 000 calorie sandwich. Man. What is wrong with people.

And did I mention that people Deep-fry Turkeys? And that the Underwriters Laboratory disapproves? (Don’t forget to view the UL video available at that last link!)

 › food     2005-12-13 22:58   ...5 comments

The Canadian Parliamentary Access Channel (CPAC) is now providing a daily podcast of Question Period.

Of course, there won’t be any question periods for a few weeks, but it is a great idea!

 › blogging     2005-12-02 13:49   ...1 comment

Two years and still going. Last year I promised an entry about why I like blogging. This year, I’m just telling you that I like it, and no entry justifying this position will be forthcoming.

However, a celebratory picture is in order:

 › blogging     2005-11-10 16:16   ...1 comment

Finally, a restaurant for Jen.

 › food     2005-10-29 00:49   ...0 comments

You are Wash. Not only are you a great pilot, you are also the joker of the group. Your devotion to your wife is admirable, though you sometimes feel insecure. Thank god you shaved off your moustache.

Which Firefly character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

 › memes     2005-10-05 01:07   ...0 comments

Well, my beer blew through its first stage of fermentation. This is the stage where the yeast eats sugar and puts out alcohol (and some other byproducts). At this point, the beer is ready to condition for a few weeks, giving the yeast time to consume their initial byproducts and flesh things out a bit.

At this exact moment the beer is 4.1% alcohol by volume, which is a bit better than I’d hoped. I was projecting 3.8% or something. (I started off a bit lighter than I had wanted, so a bit heavier is good.)

I’ve tasted it and compared with some of the unfermented stuff I saved and refrigerated. The beer tastes much less sweet now. It’s quite bitter actually. (I am not sure if that is going to be tempered by the aging process, but it is possible that I over-hopped the beer a bit.) It is certainly not undrinkable. The taste of it right now is sort of like a greenish cask-condition ale. Actually, it is a greenish cask-condition ale. Give it two weeks and you could serve it at the Arrow and Loon.

Anyway, it’s been transferred to a new container (a glass carboy) to get it off the dead yeast cells and brewing sludge that it was in when it was in the plastic bin. It looks mighty nice I have to say.

Next time I’ll stop a bit sooner in the transfer. As you can see, some of the sludge made it. But a lot more was removed, so I’m not going to get excited about that.

 › food     2005-09-30 01:41   ...1 comment

As some of you may know, I have decided to try home brewing. I have got all the stuff. I have tried it. This is my brief report: I hate our stupid stove.

Making the beer was a challenge, but the biggest challenge was that our stove could not be bothered to heat things to the boiling point.

As you can imagine, you need to boil a lot of water to make a big batch of beer. Three to four gallons (roughly 11-15 liters) at a time, in fact. The biggest pot we owned had a capacity of about two gallons. So I went out to Zeller’s on Saturday night and bought a $29 stock pot. Got it home and found that it wouldn’t really boil water on the stove.

Why would a pot not boil water you may ask? Well, our #%@^%# stove has a flat ceramic surface. The pot does not have a flat bottom. If you were looking at this pot upside down, you’d see a depression like a bowl cut into the bottom. Almost like looking at the bottom of a frisbee, except not as deep and with a much larger rim. I assume the purpose of this is to sit right down over an electric stove burner, kind of hugging it or something.

Our stove has no damn burners except under a sheet of glass. This means that when the pot is on the stove it has a nice air gap between the bottom of the pot and the stove. In other words, the pot is incompatible with our stove. Who thought you were going to have to evaluate compatibility of cooking appliances.

Of course, by the time I convinced myself of this I had 3 gallons of not-boiling beer on my stove.

I threw out the batch of beer and went to the Bay and bought a proper pot. $179 on sale for $80. Grr. Then I went to a homebrewing store and bought more ingredients with which to start again. Grr.

Got the new pot home. It worked better, but not that much better. You see the stove element is probably 8” across, and these pots are like 14-15” across. The stove manual pompously explains that the stove will only work if the pots are “matched to the burner size”. I hate this stove. How likely do you think I am to find a 20 quart pot that is 8” across at the bottom. Grr. Anyway, the beer boiled a bit, so I am hoping that that will be sufficient.

I was prepared for problems with the beer, but I don’t think that it’s a stretch to suggest that a stove should be able to boil water in a stock pot. A stove that doesn’t cook: Who decided that this was going to be a good plan? (And you can’t cook with Aluminum. And you can’t cook with cast iron. And you can’t move the pots around while you’re cooking. And it can’t be cleaned except with expensive cream. And. And. And. Who are these people!)

I started at 9:30 am and finished at 9:30 pm. Phew. I am very tired now, and a bit surprised at what can go wrong in a recipe with only three steps: Boil grain sugars. Add pinecone bits. Add yeast.

Despite all this, I am hopeful that the beer will be good. I am working from Palmer’s How To Brew eBook which is excellent. I have read much of the book, including all the beginner stuff. I do like the idea of brewing my own beer, but I think it will take several batches before I get the hang of things. In particular I need to develop techniques to avoid dirtying sanitized things that I’ve used and will use again.

 › food     2005-09-26 01:10   ...2 comments