Day off.

Sorry, took Thursday off.  I will suggest this though:

A friend of mine made some thoughts about my organic chocolate chip cookie recipe blog:

"Just throwing out a fun fact for you in regards to your organic cookie post, there has not been one legitimate scientific study to date that has been able to show an organic product is healthier than a non-organic product….not one.

Also, if you like conspiracy theories, there is an “organic food council” that acts as a quality board and a lobbying board for the organic industry….the President and vice president of this council just happen to be the CEO of Whole Foods and the CEO of Dean foods the largest dairy provider in the country……hmmmmm wonder why??????"

Makes you wonder, right?  What if the people who make a choice as to what is organic and what is not organic are the leaders of these organizations.  Would that or could that suggest a bit of friendly corruption?  Because I am king everything I say is law? Could the CEO of Whole Foods declare that since he is leader of the Organic food council, that all of the foods he sells at his stores are organic, no matter if they are not?

I did see this :"The weight of the available scientific evidence has not shown a significant difference between organic and more conventionally grown food in terms of safety, nutritional value, or taste."- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_food 
I know that wikipedia isn't a really viable source, but, since so many people can edit it, if something was incorrect, it could have been edited by now. 

It is interesting.....


 Now, for fun, since I have been making ice cream for a bit now, I stumbled upon a new recipe in my MG cookbook. (Molecular Gastronomy)  The book is an e-book called Texture.  http://blog.khymos.org/recipe-collection/  This book, focuses on the Hydrocolloid, which is a substance that gels or hardens or thickens when added to water.  You can find one in just about every food you eat, from food at restaurants to food your grandma makes.  If you have have ever had gravy made at home, it was likely made with flour, arrowroot flour or even corn starch.  Corn starch is a great thickener for gravies and is a hydrocolloid.  I was peering through the book and found a recipe for ice cream, using corn starch.  So, instead of egg yolks and heavy cream, it has milk and corn starch.  It gets a thick consistency and then you freeze that in your ice cream machine for a smooth ice cream.  Also, when you make ice cream this way, it has a large amount less of calories.  I highly suggest looking at this book as there are recipes to make everything from ice cream to spheres in here.  Don't feel bad if you cannot get a recipe to work.  It took me many times to get the spherification process to work.  I didn't even get the olive oil gummy bears to work.  Anyways, it is fun to read and fun to look at.

Thought I would give you a few things to think about.

A whole new opinion

If you check through my posts, I think near the beginning of them, I posted that I really didn't like Whole Foods.  A few years ago, when I went to Whole Foods, the food, all of it, was expensive.  I don't make much money, and the thought of spending $50 for 16 items at Whole Foods, where that same $50 can get me more than 30 at another store like Dierburgs makes me question how good the Whole Foods items can really be.  I was disdainful of the smug people who drive their hybrid vehicles, complain about parking far from the store, and then complain inside and that much is true.

But...

Some of that has changed.  This past weekend, my wife and I went to Whole Foods.  We were just going to look around and see what we could find, after we picked up some lunch and ate it in the cafe' area.  As we walked through we did need a princess and I'll tell you more about her later and she does seem to embody or represent how most of the people act at Whole Foods.  But the food prices were actually not expensive anymore.  I think the reason for that is that the normal food prices at other stores, have gone up, so now the organic prices are the same.  So, you get the same amount of food, roughly, but one is organic and pesticide free and the other is not.  So, anyways, the biggest good point of the night was the meats, which were on sale.  We picked up some chicken habanero sausage and some pork sausage.  Both sausages had no nitrites or preservatives and were in natural casings.  So, no bad stuff.

The best thing we picked up, well two best things, was the dandelion greens and the bacon.  The greens were huge and way better than the 2 inch long leaves growing in my yard now.  I can't wait to do something with them.  We also picked up some bacon, on sale as well.  The bacon was black forest bacon and has no salt and no preservatives.  Imagine a world where people didn't put harmful chemicals in their food.   :)

Now, that part was all cool and made me like Whole Foods again.  What made the trip bad, was the amount of smug and pretentious people that you meet there.  You have women complaining about the pesticides in their food and then after they spent $300 on food there, they light up a smoke as they walk out to their car.  You have the guys who act like they are doing a personal favor to the planet by shopping there and then get their groceries into their H3.  Finally, you have the housewives who appear to have been let out of their cage for the first time in their lives.  While money does create a class system in America, and anyone who tells you otherwise is full of it, it doesn't mean that you have to treat someone any different because they make less money than you do.

I really want to rant and rave about these people but that is not what I do.  Anyways, Whole Foods is back on my list, until, the local farmers get their stands out.