Tag: food

Cooking by numbers

Are you cooking-challenged? Then Philips’s new invention may be for you (if it ever becomes a real product). From New Scientist‘s invention blog: The secret is to measure the amount of water released while the food cooks, whether it is baking, frying or being cooked in a microwave. Apparently, this accurately reveals the food’s dryness …

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I’ve never liked milk in my tea…

…so this doesn’t bother me at all. Reading the Swallows and Amazons books as a kid, the one thing that drove home to me the utter alienness of the culture depicted therein (1920s England) was the putting of milk in tea. Yuck!

Organic chicken?

No, thanks. Turns out, …organic poultry is actually less nutritious, contains more fat and tastes worse than its mass-produced equivalent, research has shown. That’s going to make some people squawk.

Cotton: it’s what’s for dinner

Or, at least, it could be soon: “The exciting finding is that we have been able to reduce gossypol – which is a very toxic compound – from cottonseed to a level that is considered safe for consumption,” said Dr. Keerti Rathore, Texas Agricultural Experiment Station plant biotechnologist. “In terms of human nutrition, it has …

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Photo of the Day: Mount Stephen’s Hall

No blogging today, and no writing, because we’ve been tasting wine and eating great food at the International Wine and Food Festival at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel. Here’s where we had lunch: Mt. Stephen’s Hall. Not bad, eh? (There’s currently a wedding dance going on down there–our room is right above it, alas, and …

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Advances in apples

If “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” it’s rather surprising there’s still a need for doctors, considering Canadians consume around 11 kg of apples per person per year. They can choose from a bewildering array of apple cultivars, too (more than 7,500 are known), from the crisp and tart (Macintosh) to the soft …

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Taste testing (a.k.a. sensory evaluation)

Everyone has different holiday traditions–and almost all of them involve food. You will therefore be as relieved to discover as I was that science is doing its best to ensure that our holiday favorites continue to delight us. The Sensory Analysis Lab at the Prince Edward Island Food Technology Centre has helped insure that islanders’ …

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The spice(s) of life

There are certain spices that just naturally come to mind as we approach the holiday season. Cinnamon, for instance. Cloves. Ginger. And, of course, hot peppers. (Hot peppers? Well, when I was growing up, Christmas dinner sometimes featured my mother’s famous enchilada casserole, which could be made mild, medium–or hot.) And unlike many of the …

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Hot chocolate

Come this Sunday, some 50,000 people will be sitting in the stands at Taylor Field for the Grey Cup, their minds focused on one thing–how much they’d love a cup of hot cocoa. They needn’t worry about indulging, in light of new research that shows that cocoa has an even higher concentration of antioxidants than …

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French fries

It’s Exhibition week in Regina, and while some may sing the praises of the midway, the craft shows or the agricultural displays, let’s face it: it’s really all about food. And not just any old food. No, the quintessential fair foods are deep-fried, from elephant ears and miniature doughnuts to the famous, fabulous French fry. …

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Bitterness blocking

Taste is highly subjective.  You may like rhubarb, which I regard as mutated celery.  I, on the other hand, like haggis, whereas organ meats ground up with oatmeal and boiled in a sheep’s stomach may not appeal to you.  And so on. And yet soon we may all be able to agree on what we …

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Are bananas doomed?

Canadians eat approximately three billion bananas a year; it’s our favorite fruit. But a recent news story suggests the bananas we enjoy so much could be extinct within 10 years. The villain is a fungus by the ominous name of Black Sigatoka that’s spreading out of control through the banana-growing countries of the world, threatening …

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