20 foods that are good for you and 10 that are just horrible

Brian’s new picture at the top of the blog (from a sequence entitled “Eating Turkey Legs at the 2007 NC State Fair with Brian and John”) got me thinking about a cool story I found on Digg last month.  In the vein of Deep Fried Atrocities, Divine Caroline has Ten Foods You’ll Find, Eat, and Regret at the State Fair.  It’s a pretty good list, including deep-fried spaghetti and meatballs (pictured) and a new offering from the man who brought us deep-fried Coke — deep-fried chocolate chip cookie dough.  No doubt that he’s a cardiologist.

At the same time, the Digg gods have also brought us 20 Common Cooking Ingredients that Act Like Medicines.  Many of my favorites were on the list, but it looks like I’ll have to find a way to include more ginger, rosemary, cloves, and kale in my diet.  Either that or write a funk sequel to a certain Simon and Garfunkle album.  My favorite on the list was good old horseradish which, given my love of rare steak, I rely on heavily for its antibiotic properties.  I have been known to talk a certain (then) girlfriend into trying horseradish on crackers for severe congestion.

Carolina “Classic”

There are some things about North Carolina almost everyone knows, such as tobacco, basketball, and NASCAR. Then there are things that you only learn if you live here for a while; e.g. coleslaw is a condiment.

That’s right, any self-respecting North Carolinian restaurant serves a tiny cup of coleslaw on the side with every sandwich (and many other orders) so that you can put it on your sandwich if you care to. It actually works quite well because the cole slaw here is the best I’ve ever had: unlike its Midwestern brethren it contains only a bit of mayonnaise, and unlike the local barbecue it’s light on the vinegar.

Coleslaw features prominently in Carolina-style burgers, which also have chili, chopped onion, and mustard. Even Wendy’s has a fast-food version that is sold regionally. Apparently there is some sort of difference between coleslaw and “slaw,” but either way I find them to be delicious.

Another, more interesting North Carolina “quirk” has to do with how I’ve used quotation marks in these last two sentences.

Eating the Whole Goddamn Bag

Way back in September 1999 The Onion ran a story “Scientists Discover Gene Responsible For Eating Whole Goddamn Bag Of Chips.” Much of the gag hinged on the idea that there was a single reason, other than, perhaps, willpower, responsible for eating an entire bag of chips in one sitting. As a person who has always found snack food hard to resist, I really identified with the story, no matter how ludicrous. Despite my skepticism for simple explanations for complex behaviors, I do think there is one factor out there that might not just be responsible for eating the whole bag of chips, but for a lot of the obesity epidemic in general.

Behold monosodium glutamate. That’s right, according to a recent piece in the New York Times, everyone’s favorite excitotoxin (and bane of Ann and many other migraine sufferers‘ existence) is present in five separate forms in Nacho Cheese Flavored Doritos. Five separate flavor enhancers!

Liveblogging the Super Bowl Brunswick Stew

3:50 p.m. Well, Brian’s annual Super Bowl party may be a bit hard to reach this year on account of him graduating and becoming a professor in another state, but that doesn’t mean he needs to miss out on the “traditional” making of the Brunswick Stew.

I’m starting a little later than I planned on (our car broke down

My Eighth Annual Super Bowl Party of One

For the first time since 2000, I will not be hosting a Super Bowl Party. (The first year was just me and Brent, and we left at halftime to go to Burger King.) For a couple of years, it was the social event of the season for the graduate students in Duke Physics and their friends. In later years, though, as my involvement in the department shifted from “very” to “kinda”, the crowd reduced to several close friends. Alas, now that I live in a different city, and most of my friends are married with children and/or live prohibitively far, the streak comes to an end. Frankly, it’s a relief. I’m not much in the mood to host a party right now.

My favorite Super Bowl party memory is from 2002. Our friend Karl attended, and it was apparently the first time he’d ever had any interaction with Brad. After observing Brad and I trading barbs all night, he later commented, “I thought that guy was being a dick!”

Anyone else care to share?

What will you do with your 30 minutes?

Domino’s Pizza has recently brought back their “pizza in 30 minutes” guarantee and have let everyone know with a new ad campaign asking what you’ll do with your 30 minutes. Domino’s now answers their own question by bringing pizza delivery into the 21st century with their new pizza tracker. What will you do with your 30 minutes? Apparently you’ll track your pizza. Unfortunately you can’t actually track the location of your pizza, you just get to see when the key pizza making steps have been completed (Order, Prep, Bake, Box, Delivery).

Yet to be answered is the age old question revived on Seinfeld, when does a pizza become a pizza? Pro-life Poppy insisted a pizza becomes a pizza as soon as you put your hands into the dough while Kramer argued that it’s not a pizza until it’s baked and comes out of the oven.

Consumerism II

So I’m a little behind in reading my subscribed magazines and I’ve just finally gotten to the December 8 New Scientist.  In it there is a review by Chris Mooney of the book Shopping Our Way to Safety by Andrew Szasz.  The review is interesting for two reasons, the more trivial being that the reviewer likes the ideas but doesn’t seem to like the book (which reminds me fondly of Vonnegut’s alter ego Kilgore Trout, who had wonderful ideas but couldn’t write).

 More interesting is the book’s thesis of “inverted quarantine,” which something like economic survivalism.  The idea is that we (Americans, at least) have given up on collective approaches to solving problems

I Dream of Martha

It’s Monday night, and a young man’s thoughts turn to football, chicken nachos, cheap-but-good beer, honey barbecue chicken sandwiches, free desserts on fake birthdays, and a chance to win a thousand bucks. And Martha, of course.

You can’t go home again.