What's for Dinner?

[fargon]

The aftermath
I tried to upload the aftermath, and after re sizing the pic three times it still would not load. FUCKING COMPUTERS!!!

[bbro]

fargon - those look gorgeous. I have never been able to successfully make bones of any time

Dana - like these pictured. Do you have a different name for them?

[DanaC]

Yeah - pasta sheets.

'noodle' is only ever used to refer to long thin strips/strands. Like the stuff you get in noodle soup, or chow mein. It isn't used as a wider word for pasta, as (I now realise) it is used in the US.

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Yeah - pasta sheets.

'noodle' is only ever used to refer to long thin strips/strands. Like the stuff you get in noodle soup, or chow mein. It isn't used as a wider word for pasta, as (I now realise) it is used in the US.

It's funny, I call them Lasagna noodles, and spaghetti, capellini, fettucini, ramen, soba, are also noodles, but any other pasta shape is either pasta or whatever its Italian name is. Farfalle, Ditalini, gemelli and so on.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

It's funny, I call them Lasagna noodles, and spaghetti, capellini, fettucini, ramen, soba, are also noodles, but any other pasta shape is either pasta or whatever its Italian name is. Farfalle, Ditalini, gemelli and so on.

Ahh now - spaghetti is never called noodles here - that's spaghetti. Or pasta.

[BigV]

fargon, those look delicious. damn.

[Big Sarge]

Addie fixed latkes with onion and garnished with a dollop of sour cream. Quite proud of my 7 year old. Of course, Elizabeth hovered over her. They just got through playing dreidel. They used pralines for coins.

[sad_winslow]

Hi guys. Those ribs look pretty excellent, and latkes, my god I'd shank someone kosher-style for a pile of good latkes about now. A smooth, clean draw across a major artery with a blade so fresh and sharp that god could shave with it and not realise for a week that it's taken an eyebrow and half an ear along with it. In exchange for potato things. Fair trade.

I just wanted to tell you guys I tried, and fucked up horribly, making african food tonight: a Tanzanian-style rice pilao with peanut sauce. I forgot to get normal, natural peanut butter from the store for the sauce, and it turns out that choosy africans don't actually choose Jif. Who knew? The end result isn't terrible, as such, but it's a lot like I'm eating some interesting and exotically seasoned food between bites of a peanut butter sandwich. Luckily, I did not actually add the sauce directly to the rice, so in the end what I've got left is a pot of wild rice with carrots, onions, and a few dabs of mushroom and potato, and some spicy peanut goober with mushrooms and onions. Lesson learned. I think I'll try just putting peanuts in the rice next time.

Other than that, I wanted to ask readers here: thoughts on "kombucha" tea? Anyone tried it, liked it, disliked it? I think I like it, but it's a very odd thing to me.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Does that mean you've had a proper "Tanzanian-style rice pilao with peanut sauce" to compare?

[sad_winslow]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Does that mean you've had a proper "Tanzanian-style rice pilao with peanut sauce" to compare?

Well, I think I had something closely approximating it, anyways. My boss is a wildlife ecologist specializing in large mammals of africa; he lives in africa quite a large portion of the year and has done so for ages, he and his wife both. They invited me to a christmas dinner party a couple weeks ago and what they served as the main course was an african rice pilao with mushrooms and onions and a spicy peanut sauce. A Tanzanian student was also in attendance and it seemed to meet with his approval, and I loved it to pieces, myself. Relatively simple in nature, but surprisingly complex in flavor thanks to the addition of a spice blend that's a combination of cumin, cardamom, cloves, black pepper, and cinnamon. Also some things like ginger, garlic, cayenne, and green chiles, and a little coconut milk. It's quite a lovely taste, a lovely sort of subdued, earthy spice going on. I had to blend the spice mix by hand, though, and one thing I probably need to do is let them all integrate together a bit longer before I use them again. I can say that today, after it's been in the fridge overnight, the cooked dish actually smells and tastes even better than it did last night, in part because the flavors were able to meld together a bit better.

[Clodfobble]

Kombucha is fermented, and tastes like it. If you enjoy things like kimchi, real sauerkraut, etc., then you will probably also enjoy the tang of kombucha. Most people I know drink it because it's good for them, not because they genuinely like the flavor.

[sad_winslow]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

Kombucha is fermented, and tastes like it. If you enjoy things like kimchi, real sauerkraut, etc., then you will probably also enjoy the tang of kombucha. Most people I know drink it because it's good for them, not because they genuinely like the flavor.

I think that it's probably sad to drink it if you don't like the flavor because it's not really that great for you in particular, although it's pretty likely not bad for you. Any magical health benefits ascribed to it are pretty much either outrageously overblown or outright false, so if you don't like the "unique" taste it seems silly to drink it. The "probiotic" nature of the unpasteurized stuff is maybe equivalent to that of yogurt, and how beneficial that is exactly is still kind of up in the air, even. Yogurt is good for you not necessarily because of the microorganisms directly, but rather what they've done to the milk sugars they're fed, not to mention the resulting dietary and lifestyle changes in people who decide it's time to eat more yogurt. Kombucha has also got some B vitamin content, which you can get from pretty much anything in a balanced diet, and any excess above what your body can use at the moment is just excreted in urine.

Otherwise, what you're pretty much doing is drinking sweet tea that's had the sugar converted to vinegar and fizz.

I like the taste, myself, though. Vinegary and acidic, a little fizz, earthy funk, I can dig it. I'm a sucker for fermented things in general, though, and I really like sour beers. Kombucha, I've found, is sort of like the non-alcoholic (mostly, there's still a fraction of a %) hippy version of a lambic.

[monster]

Spag Bol

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by sad_winslow

The "probiotic" nature of the unpasteurized stuff is maybe equivalent to that of yogurt, and how beneficial that is exactly is still kind of up in the air, even.

This is not true, but you couldn't have known that you were accidentally diving into a conversation with a probiotic obsessive. Truly fresh kombucha that has been fermented for 24+ hours (which is not necessarily true for something you get from the store that calls itself kombucha, and certainly not "kombucha tea" which is like "cheese product,") has trillions of CFU of both beneficial bacteria and yeasts. Your average store yogurt has only about 5 billion CFU per serving, and what's more, it is artificially seeded with only 2-4 species of bacteria and no yeast, compared to literally hundreds of species in the kombucha mother which have evolved together into a balanced colony.

I'll grant you that store-bought yogurt is as probiotically useful as store-bought "kombucha tea." But real, fermented yogurt and kombucha are both entirely different things, and exponentially more potent.

As a favor to everyone else here, I'll leave the rant about the many proven health benefits for another time.

[sad_winslow]

My point was that kombucha is ascribed magical healing properties that it doesn't have. It's not going to cure cancer, relieve gout, make arthritis go away, fix autism, stop heart attacks, replace vaccines, cure the common cold, make your immune system invincible, keep you alive until you're 120, cure HIV, or a dozen other things kombucha(or latest fad) is claimed to do. Whether there's a hundred or a hundred billion fungal/bacterial colonies isn't terribly important. A hundred billion multiplied by zero ability to cure cancer is still zero. That's what I was driving at.

I would never argue that probiotics overall aren't generally healthful. There's a pretty decent amount of evidence piling up for fermented, live-culture products being generally good for digestion and helping with conditions in which there is a gut flora imbalance, which is nice. But don't take up chain smoking thinking that it'll balance out the risk of cancer, and don't give up the chemo once you've got the cancer, either; nor should you throw away the ibuprofen and expect to be running marathons on those worn-out joints just because of some bacteria-rich spoiled fungus tea. And if you've got HIV/AIDS, my god, don't go near the stuff; for the immunocompromised, if pouring live microorganisms into your face doesn't at least sound like a bad idea, Darwin might have some words for you.

It's also worth noting that drinking too much kombucha can actually lead to some gastric problems, as it's really quite acidic, being loaded with vinegar and carbonic acid. It can erode the teeth, throat, and stomach lining, leading to ulcers, and has been implicated in cases of severe lactic acidosis. I'd argue that while it may not be quite as microbially loaded as kombucha, yogurt is a more gentle way to treat one's insides, and comes in a nice fat-and-protein buffer solution. Arguably tastes better, too.

But broadly, if drinking a little kombucha keeps a person from eating big macs and drinking cokes and motivates them to adjust their lifestyle to fit what they think a "kombucha drinker" consumes, then yeah, they're going to start feeling better physically. The same is going to happen if they start eating, say, oatmeal for breakfast instead of a hot pocket and a red bull.

I am overall very much an advocate of eating "whole" type foods, including fermented stuff. I can't get enough of (real, sour-type) pickled cucumbers and other vegetables, sauerkraut, sour beer, miso and other fermented bean pastes, yogurt, kefir, kimchee, kombucha, fermented chile pastes, on and on... I also once ate stinky tofu, and that's a story for another post. But I don't think that any of it is magical medicine, and I don't think anyone else should, either.

so I wasn't really asking about kombucha to bust anyone's chops or anything. I was more just wondering if anyone was drinking it and had any opinions the.. "unique" flavor, found a brand they like/hate, or started brewing a variety that they particularly love or hate. But you couldn't have known that you were accidentally diving into a conversation with a real scientist.

Citations available upon request.

(Also, I am so very going to try your way of cooking a duck. That looks amazing, and I've never actually cooked a duck before.)

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

This is not true, but you couldn't have known that you were accidentally diving into a conversation with a probiotic obsessive. Truly fresh kombucha that has been fermented for 24+ hours (which is not necessarily true for something you get from the store that calls itself kombucha, and certainly not "kombucha tea" which is like "cheese product,") has trillions of CFU of both beneficial bacteria and yeasts. Your average store yogurt has only about 5 billion CFU per serving, and what's more, it is artificially seeded with only 2-4 species of bacteria and no yeast, compared to literally hundreds of species in the kombucha mother which have evolved together into a balanced colony.

I'll grant you that store-bought yogurt is as probiotically useful as store-bought "kombucha tea." But real, fermented yogurt and kombucha are both entirely different things, and exponentially more potent.

As a favor to everyone else here, I'll leave the rant about the many proven health benefits for another time.