Survival Arts

[Y]ebisu sold now as "Sapporo Reserve" in the U.S.?

A few days ago I ordered an Ebisu/Yebisu beer at Tanto Japanese Restaurant (an izakaya) in Campbell, California, and was told by the waitress that it's now being sold under the label "Sapporo Reserve":

Yes, that's a Japanese beer sold at a Japanese izakaya, served in the glass of a Korean competitor, Hite.

Sandy's incredible baked chicken recipe

I've had this recipe pinned to my refrigerator door, meaning to transcribe it here. It's a baked chicken recipe which I've made a couple of times in the last few years, after having had it at my friends' house a few years ago. You need these ingredients:

• One large, whole chicken
• 2 tablespoons butter
• One clove of chopped garlic
• 1/4 cup cooking wine
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/2 cup pineapple juice
• 1/2 lemon
• 1/2 onion

Stuff the chicken with the half lemon and half onion. Place it breast-up in a deep baking dish, and pour all the ingredients listed above in the dish around and over the chicken. Wrap the dish a couple of times in aluminum foil, taking care to leave some space between the foil and the chicken, and place the dish in an oven pre-heated to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Cook 30 minutes, then remove from the oven and turn the bird over, using a baster to spread more of the resulting broth over the bird. Re-cover with the foil and cook another 90 minutes. Allow the bird to "rest" for about 15 minutes before serving. The chicken should be incredibly tender and moist. Enjoy.

7:07am Texas time, Tuesday last week

Gunshot taken at 7:07am east Texas time, photo shot taken at 8:43am, Tuesday last week:

As mentioned in a previous post tonight, this was taken from about 110 metres, from a blind near an identified hog trail, on a very large ranch of a friend of mine. I waited for 20 minutes before determining that none of the hog's clan would be following in his hoofsteps before calling my buddies (also in blinds about a mile from mine) for retrieval.

In praise of Remington Core-Lokt

Last week, I took a coyote, a feral hog, and assisted in a friend's take of another feral hog, using one 150-grain Remington Core-Lokt in .308 caliber shot from a Jeff Cooper edition Steyr Scout in each encounter. This particular round (or remains thereof) I dug out from underneath the skin of the one I took:

This particular round hit the hog midships, high, and completely busted the spine, spleen, and vented the lower lobes of the lungs, causing pneumothorax evidenced by a "deflating balloon" sound when I first moved the hog carcass. Intererestingly, the lead core seems to have punched through the hog, leaving the copper jacket:

Here, I show the path of the bullet, taken by the hog from about 110 metres, entering starboard and (partially) exiting port:

You know, in this shot, I look almost as (literally) knackered as the hog itself. East Texas is hot and humid this time of year...

Quote of the Day, or "Guess what I did last week?"

Once again:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

Robert A. Heinlein
The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

"John Cleese's Wine for the Confused" (2004)

One of the pleasures of having a Netflix subsription is being able to add oddball titles to my queue, click-and-forget, and receive it later as a "surprise." One such title is a short wine documentary, "John Cleese's Wine for the Confused":

Wine snobs, beware: Monty Python's witty John Cleese aims to educate the masses with this enlightening, snoot-free wine guide. Cleese guides wine novices through the basics -- finding wines you like, getting the best value, and serving and storing wine at home. His vintner's tour includes lessons in wine vocabulary and identifying subtle flavors. Not a fan of snobbery in the least, Cleese also reveals how to cork up condescending sommeliers.

Cleese has a house on the Central California coast, and decided - on a shoestring budget, which he freely admits on camera - to visit a few of the local wineries, surveying products of the handful of "great grapes" (e.g. Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir). I found the tips about finding bargains in a wine seller's shop particularly useful.

Unlike a commentator in the IMDB entry, I'm not surprised Cleese would do such a documentary: in the early 90's, working for a company in London, I found the tedium of mandatory training videos greatly lessened with Cleese as presenter. He has an impressive resume of this type of stuff.

Barracuda for lunch today

The software company where I work has a number of free restaurants on campus. Today, I had barracuda! Nothing spectacular - it was good enough - but that's a checklist item on my To Do list that I hadn't considered. Added and checked off, all in one operation!

Finished Japanese translations of "Support Denmark" banners

The Dissident Frogman has incorporated my Japanese translations of his popular "Support Denmark" banners into his multilingual contributions archive page.

My thanks to knowledgeable friends Mariko and Garth for their thorough critiques of my pre-final draft. Thanks also for feedback on the issue of translating the original phrase "the legacy of the West", which was problematic, by these people on the honyaku mailing list: Richard Thieme, Peter Durfee, Benjamin Barrett, J.C. Helary, and James Sparks.

An interesting view of Yelp

Charles Hudson has written an interesting opinion piece on the potential of Yelp (which I mentioned recently.) Thanks to Matthew P. for the pointer. Excerpt:

Yelp is collecting a ton of data from those who take the time to rate and review restaurants, hotels, etc. In the same way that Junglee/Amazon revolutionized how people find books and other goods by using collaborative filtering, I can see Yelp (at scale) achieving a similar aim. Right now, the "missing lens" is the ability to filter reviews and ratings based on similar interests. I would love the ability to use Yelp to filter reviews and ratings based on how similar other reviewers' scores are to ones that I have entered. This is something that nobody seems to be doing today. Ultimately, this collaborative filtering might prove even more useful than reviews provided by my friends.

Allowed myself to accept another social network invitation

Some friends of a friend started a geographically-oriented business review site, Yelp.com, with an apparent emphasis on restaurant reviews (but an ontology supporting very many more categories.)

I've joined on her recommendation, and have been surprised to discover just how useful it's been already: I've found some nearby places I'd never considered before, and am now using to drive some of my purchases at local specialty shops.

Now, whether Yelp is another Next Big Thing remains to be seen. It's a closed system, with no apparent provision for RSS syndication of the content we the users add to the review base, and relatedly, no leveraging of microformat standards such as hReview, a serious issue (thanks to Mike Linksvayer for pointing me to this recently.)

Yelp seems to have purchased a GIS-oriented business database, and coded some Google Maps integration into their interface. Rather nice, but entirely US-oriented, with no indication they're ready to scale into the English-speaking markets of Tokyo (big expat and traveller population) and other locales.

Speaking of which, I just tried inviting a good friend, an American living in Panama who could be a productive member of the Yelp community, and he sent me back this, reprinted with his permission:

'Hi Russell,

These morons ask for a zip code and won't accept my sign-up without one. I see this sort of shit all the time. When are US geeks going to get a clue the the US is not the world and that not everyone who has internet also has a "zip" code? So Thanks, but no thanks. I won't sign up with jingoistic idiots. Please feel free to pass along my exact words, if it pleases you.

Regards,
Sandy'

Wow. Well, he does have a point. I see this as one of those "We weren't planning to be so successful" scaling issues. Can't count the number of times I've seen this. I think the Yelpers really should have generalized their GIS integration to allow world-wide registration, from the very beginning. I have lots of friends in Europe, Asia, and South America who won't be able to join due to this and related issues. Maybe agitating in the Yelp forums about this might help; I've noticed they do tend to pay attention to issues of interface (e.g. marking businesses as closed or moved) so they may listen. Of course, they may be planning some kind of world-market rollout, but it would help if they advertised that somewhere prominent.

In the meantime, I'm going to use the hell out of it until and unless it ceases to be interesting. It's a much more convenient place for me to bulk-load all those pictures of food and storefronts I take in my travels, more so than the Movable Type blogging interface I'm using here, and since most of my reviews are locale-specific, it's probably a better place for my rants and raves about local businesses (and ones I visit in other cities.)

Testing hReview Creator, thanks to Mike Linksvayer

Just minutes after I'd complained in my latest blog posting about the lack of taxonomies for doing business reviews, Mike Linksvayer leaves a comment to the contrary:

In-blog reviews, no hacking required beyond copy and paste.

In the fullness of time these will be aggregated by someone for viewing in the context of similar reviews. On the other hand, reviews posted at review sites may be similarly aggregated.

OK, now trying out hReview Creator:

Billion Monkeys & a start at restaurant reviews

Yesterday, I visited Ramen Rama in Cupertino, California, with my longtime friend Suzu. Here's another of what Brian Micklethwait refers to as a "Billion Monkeys" moment:

Some other tech industry friends of Suzu have started a company called Yelp, whose product is a business reviews website, where Suzu and I have reviewed the ramen shop. I've not populated this blog with restaurant review entries to my satisfaction, since the blog format is not granular enough (without hacking) to support a taxonomy for star ratings and such, so I'm going to experiment with posting my reviews on Yelp and pointing to them from here. Putting my own reviews in the context of others' should add value to the opinions.

Me and Dale Seago at a recent Rabbie Burns Birthday celebration

Meant to put this up a few weeks ago: me and Dale Seago at a recent (21 January 2006) Rabbie Burns Birthday celebration in front of San Francisco's Edinburgh Castle Pub:

It was busy that night: I managed to snag the last booth upstairs in the mezzanine area, with a sightline into the area where we expected the haggis to be piped in. It took an hour and a half to get our fish & chips, which were worth the wait; they're made at some nearby mom & pop shop and delivered in. In the meantime, we enjoyed a few of the most excellent Belhaven peat-smoked ales, my first time trying that, and I thank Dale for introducing it to me.

The festivities were well worth the trip up to the city. The piper was very good - and looked every bit the part, wish I'd snagged a good shot of him - and the Burns poetry readings were rousing, marred only ever so slightly by some rather self-consciously narcissistic political posturing on the part of a (I'm not making this up) Scottish socialist lesbian Buddhist working class nun.

The night culminated in a hearty reading of "Address to a Haggis" followed by a free-for-all of flying forks in a frenzy of delectation. I managed to snag a small amount, happy I had any, and returned to the booth to enjoy it... and discovered to my gratitude that Dale had managed to snag double servings for both of us! I quite enjoyed it, and may even keep a small stock of it in cans for emergencies.

Tonight's Danish products buying binge

I took a break from studying this evening and visited a number of local stores to buy Danish food and booze products. Here's what I came back with, minus duplicates (I had to buy more than one of the tins of ginger cookies):

From left to right, purchases from various stores in Cupertino, California:

From Trader Joe's:

• Rosenborg Danish Blue cheese
  
• Silver Goat Organic Feta cheese
  
• "The Queen's Cookies" Ginger Spice Cookies (made in Denmark for Trader Joe's)
  

From Whole Foods:

• Denmark's Finest Havarti cheese
  
• Denmark's Finest Havarti cheese with dill
  
• Rosenborg Danish Blue cheese
  
• Blue Danish Castello Triple Cream cheese
  
• Fontina Danish Cheese
  

From Safeway:

• Denmark's Finest Fontina cheese
  
• Denmark's Finest Blue cheese
  
• Primo Taglio Havarti with Dill cheese
  

Especially notable and tasty are the ginger spice cookies made under contract in Denmark for Trader Joe's:

The thing that's missing from the first picture above: Danish beer. None of the three supermarkets above had any Danish beer - assumedly Tuborg and Carlsberg - and the one place I think might have such beer (Cost Plus World Market) closed tonight before I could check out their stock. I'll try there tomorrow night. In the meantime, I'm enjoying my Havarti with Newcastle Brown ale tonight.

I encourage all of my readers to participate in this Danish buycott.

Show your support for the Danes and for free speech

The Dissident Frogman is actively maintaining and updating a blog entry with "Support Denmark" graphics in multiple languages. Translations in additional languages are forthcoming (Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Farsi, Arabic, Vietnamese, and Korean, to the best of my knowledge.)

Oh, yeah: go out and stock up on Havarti cheese... it's not only a show of support contra the recent Islamist boycotts and violence against the Danes (and random others in their neighborhood) but it's also damned fine cheese.

The Japanese have no monopoly on weird fast foods

Seen on a trip to the supermarket:

Oh, yum, gotta eat me some of these right away. Not.

Tito's Handmade Vodka

I recently tried a little surprise from Austin, Texas, sold at Trader Joe's supermarket in northern California: Tito's Handmade Vodka. It's the cleanest-tasting vodka I've ever had, and I highly recommend it for those who mix their martinis with vodka rather than gin (I admit to doing both on occasion.)

An alternative to paying Coinstar's fee

Like many, I keep a pocketchange bank on my desk, where I throw my end-of-the-day coin shrapnel. Until recently, I'd taken the 8.9% hit on Coinstar exchanges at a local supermarket, since I value my time highly enough not to spend it counting out 6 pounds of coin. A few days ago, I noticed that one of the options on the Coinstar machine allowed for a conversion of my coins to stored value on an anonymous Starbuck's card... with 0% commission. Since I regularly drink Starbuck's coffee - when a Peet's is not convenient - I found this a rather good deal.

Quote of the Day

If you stir, as opposed to shaking, your martini will simply not be cold enough. There are many ways to destroy a martini, but none surer than by not serving it just short of frozen. Anyone who tells you that shaking a martini "bruises the gin" is probably also capable of talking about "bending air." It's true that shaking the mixture will make it slightly cloudy, but in my opinion it looks better that way.

Joseph Dobrian

But wait, there's more

Not only did I indulge myself with scorpions in Beijing last week, I also had snake meat and silkworm pupae. I've eaten plenty of snake, and this one was undistinguished (they're usually pretty rubbery), but the silkworm was new to me: a soft, pulpy interior in a paper-thin skin. I didn't have more snake later, but I did follow up with another silkworm grub skewer a while later.

Beware, beware of Baijiu!

Beware, beware of Baijiu! Within my first two hours in Beijing, I was taken out for kebabs and beer by my friend Serin. We met this affable guy, Ken, who'd enquired "Naguoren? (where ya from?)" and offered me one of his sealed shot glasses of baijiu. This was an 80-proof (40%) standard formula. After two shots, he brought out a bottle whose name translates from Chinese simply as "56 Percent." We shared that bottle. Apparently, I pulled out my Sony CyberShot to Capture the Moment:

I tried red eye reduction in iPhoto in an attempt to clear up my eyes in this photo, but apparently, the red-eye in this case is not a camera artifact.

I paid dearly the next morning for this act of intercultural male booze bonding, comparable only to an episode I experienced after boot camp, half a lifetime ago, when I swore, "I'll never drink that again."

A little walking-around food

A little walking-around food (or "little food that was recently walking around") in Beijing's Wangfujing: Yanjing beer and scorpions. These little buggers are actually very good indeed. I've had scorpion once before, a different variety with a thicker, blacker thorax, in Thailand, also spiced, and also very good.

Sucking the marrow in Beijing

Last night, before leaving Beijing, my friend Serin and I had a late night snack at a small neighborhood shop specializing in kebabs and Hui specialties. It was pretty chilly outside, so we ordered some comfort food, such as this mutton bone soup, with the shafts cracked to expose the marrow, straws provided for convenience:

Quote of the Day

I get the occasional numb-nut. They say, "I can see how you can shoot ugly wild boars, but not a beautiful deer." Oh, a little more Hitlerism is just what we need. This can live and this can die according to my whims. Eat me, you fuck! Here's the truth so you can print it in bold, capital red letters: The cuter the critter, the sweeter the meat.

Ted Nugent
Interview in April 2004 Maxim magazine, p104

Just because I can.

Today after work I headed up for Thursday night Bujinkan training (the weekly outdoor session, which I'd been missing until recently due to school), and had a great time tonight. Before heading to San Francisco, I did a quick search for late night coffee shops with free wireless internet access, located within a reasonable drive of the training park, and found the Samovar Tea Lounge in the Castro/Mission district.

I'm sitting there right now, having "Russian High Tea" way too late in the day. Service includes all-you-can drink high-octane self-serve tea from - you guessed it - a samovar: "dilute to taste" is the operative term. This place is genuinely cool, and I highly recommend it.

About the "just because I can" thing: an acquaintance of mine, Marc Stiegler, once wrote in one of his novels that it's vitally important to maintain a childlike sense of wonder about the world. Here I am, sitting in a friendly place, an oasis of light in the darkness, warmth against the wind, music from the walls, and good food I would never have thought of making myself, talking to people in other cities on a 4-pound device that I use to bring me money... life is a good thing.

Those cactus pears I mentioned recently

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my discovery of the cactus pear as an edible fruit. Here's a picture of that succulent delight:

 
I'll be looking for more of these on my next trip to Half Moon Bay. Yes, yes: I do often take pictures of stuff I eat, if I find it particularly interesting. I'm not a normal guy.
 

Oregon Freeze Dry's Mountain House eggs still good after all these years

Just a few minutes ago, I tore open a pouch of Oregon Freeze Dry's Mountain House brand "Freeze Dried ~ Precooked Scrambled Eggs with Real Bacon" I'd purchased over 5 years, to see how they taste. Quite palatable, though the "Real Bacon," even with 8 minutes of steeping in boiling water, still tastes like bacon bits. Of course, 5 years is actually a rather short time to store this type of food. I expect a package of the same food to taste the same 5 or 10 years hence.

Cactus Pears: kiwis of the desert

This weekend in Half Moon Bay, I picked up a small bag of an intruiguing fruit I'd seen many times in several deserts, but never taken the time to investigate eating, the "Cactus pear," better known as the "Prickly pear" in the American southwest. I tried the Mexican variety known as Roja Pelona, a deep beet-red fruit the size and rough consistency of kiwifruit, less overbearingly sweet and with larger (edible) seeds than the kiwifruit. Delicious! It's interesting to note that the Israelis grow these too, as per Daniel Rogov in his "Cactus as an Edible Fruit":

With their large flat pads, their thorny fruits, and flowers that blossom annually, the sabra cactus is an inescapable and charming part of the Israeli landscape. Because the sabra cactus, which is a member of the genus Opuntia, grows easily in the sandy and limestone soils of the country and because the direction of its grown is easy to control, these sprawling cacti are planted by farmers as windbreaks and to divide their own fields from those of their neighbors. So well known are the plants that one of the best known regional stereotypes compares the personality of native born Israelis with the fruits of these cacti. According to the image generated by this stereotype, both are tough and thorny on the exterior but sweet and soft inside. Both the fruits and the native born Israelis are known as "Sabras".

Oh, yes: tip o' the hat to Julia Child

While I'm enthusing about food, I should point out that Julia Child would have been 92 years old today. She died yesterday, however. My maternal grandmother was born 3 months after Child's birth date; I plan to visit her in a few weeks, I'm reminded. I'm also reminded that the women in my family live a long time, though not nearly long enough, my standard being centuries, but that's of purely tangential interest here.

The modern crop of food divas and divos (the humorless Martha Stewarts and the gimicky "Bam!" Emerils) owe a debt of gratitude to Child, an eccentric of the first order (anyone else remember the Dan Ackroyd parodies?) She was a woman with a very interesting personal history (reminding me of Martha Raye, "actress and denture wearer," the only civilian buried at the U.S. Special Forces cemetary at Fort Bragg), which includes having been an OSS officer during WWII.

Child is quoted as having said in an AP interview in 1989:

"What's dangerous and discouraging about this era is that people really are afraid of their food... sitting down to dinner is a trap, not something to enjoy. People should take their food more seriously. Learn what you can eat and enjoy it thoroughly."

Sounds like someone who lived her life fully. Too bad she couldn't have stuck around a few more centuries to enjoy it even more thoroughly.

By the way, Child's original TV set kitchen is preserved at the Smithsonian.

Our day of oysters

Peggy and I visited Pescadero (south of Half Moon Bay) today, eating at a local place, Duarte's Tavern, which has been around since 1894. As an appetizer, we took some Hog Island oysters, which were quite good, though not as fresh as from the Hog Island restaurant at San Francisco's Ferry Building which we visited a couple of weekends ago. Later, heading back inland - and into warmer weather - we stopped off in Mountain View and happened upon this year's Small Brewers Festival. Next to the big top tent, an acoustically raucous place, is an alley with some fine lusty fare on offer. One of the food vendors was a group of Mexicans selling - among other things - barbequed oysters. We paid $6.50 for 3 huge oysters fresh from the grill, soaked in a fantastic garlic butter, and were blown away by the sensation... we'd had nothing like it, ever.

So, what do we do? We head home, where I fire up the barbeque and she headed to the market to pick up some oysters, to see if we could replicate the oyster recipe. One bottle of Chardonnay later, we think we need to head back to the festival tomorrow (after a morning at the shooting range) to research the recipe again. It was good, but something's different... some rice wine vinegar, maybe?

Stayed tuned.

Hog Island Oyster Company, Ferry Building, San Francisco

If you have the opportunity to do so, visit Hog Island Oyster Company in San Francisco's Ferry Building and eat a dozen or so of their excellent Tomales Bay oysters (including Kumamotos, one of my favorite varieties.) I normally don't dip good oysters in any sauces, but I was converted recently by their version (which has rice wine vinegar as its base) of a Mignonette which was superb. Their clam chowder is also fantastic - expensive, but worth every penny - and made unlike any you've ever had elsewhere. If you prefer your seafood with a good beer, they've got North Coast Old No. 38 Stout on tap.

Hang Ah Team Room, San Francisco Chinatown

I found this place, off the beaten path in San Francisco's Chinatown, on a visit several weeks ago with a friend: Hang Ah Team Room, which apparently has been a feature there since around 1920. The food is fantastic, service is friendly and personal, and the prices are half what I expectecd them to be, an opinion shared elsewhere in this SJ Mercury News article: "Eating Cheap in SF."

Trader Joe's Reduced Carbohydrate Cinnamon Walnut Bread

I just finished off a loaf of luscious Trader Joe's Reduced Carbohydrate Cinnamon Walnut Bread (along with an equally luscious jar of their Cashew/Macadamia Spread): 6 grams total carbohydrates per slice - a fraction of the normal load - and 8 grams protein per slice!

Lesson #1: Know all of your allergies!

This from my friend Franklin: Man Becomes Ill After Gorging on Cicadas.

Short note about last night's MicroMiniShindig

Last night's Firefly MicroMiniShindig was a more intimate gathering than the previous one in January, with 13 attending. We got a late start on the TV viewing part of the night, since I'd forgotten the DVD player's remote, so I ran home nearby to pick it up. Of course, that gave the rest time to enjoy the excellent food (the elkburger was a popular pick last night) and chat before my return. We had exactly the right amount of time to air "The Train Job" and "Bushwhacked", finishing just as the Tied House was being closed.

Unfortunately, in all my rushing around doing hostly things, I didn't get around to taking any photos for posting here. Maybe next time... if there is a next time. My original reasons for hosting these types of events included spreading freedom memes so nicely packaged in the series, as well as doing my little bit to increase the possibility that the series might get picked up again by a television network. Well, in the interval since the previous MicroMiniShindig, something like the latter has indeed happened: the Firefly movie has recently been greenlighted. So, we've won, at least to that extent. If I do hold one of these things again, it will only be as the result of at least 30 people agreeing to actually appear at a particular time and place. If you're one of those interested people, let me know, otherwise this Shindig thing is happy history.

If you're interested in this series, I strongly recommend you buy the 4-DVD box set and watch it for yourself.

"Drunk until proven sober"

Jim Lesczynski mentions this unbelievable little bit of dreck from the New York State Assembly, A03054:

This bill requires the installation of ignition interlock devices, similar to breathalyzers, in all cars sold or registered in New York State.

"Oregon Berries" by Cranberry Sweets & More

Just finished a small box of "Oregon Berries" by Cranberry Sweets & More, which we picked up on our trip to Portland a few weeks ago. We'd been nibbling very sparingly on these, since they're so good. I really like these candies, and they make nice little gifts. You can pick up some yourself, since the company does mail order

Kitazawa Seed Company, Oakland CA

For those into growing their own vegetables, and who have a taste for Asian food, you should check out the Kitazawa Seed Company in Oakland, California: over 220 varieties! This year, I'll be saving the $0.15-$0.20/leaf cost of Ao Shiso (Blue Shiso mint) by growing my own.

Dang... the beer's actually selling

A few months ago I joked about Michelob Ultra being an "Atkins Beer." Just now on Fox News an announcer pointed out that it's now Anheuser-Busch's best selling beer ever!

Speaking of Atkins again: Trader Joe's chocolate

Speaking of the Atkins diet thing again, I've found a decent-tasting chocolate bar at Trader Joe's, home of Two Buck Chuck wine. It's U.S. $1.49 for a 100gram bar of:

• Dark Chocolate - "Net Impact Carbs: 0.13g"
  
• Milk Chocolate - "Net Impact Carbs: 0.50g"
  
• White Chocolate - "Net Impact Carbs: 0.00g"
  

The bars are usually kept by the checkout stands in the stores, in a black wrapper with the words "Low Effective Carb & Sugar Free." Sweetening is almost entirely done with maltitol, a species of sugar alcohols or polyalcohols ("polyols"); noted on the wrapper:

Maltitol has been omitted as its conversion requires little or no insulin and does not cause an appreciable increase in serum glucose levels.

It's made under contract from F.G.H. Consulting U.S.A. in Boca Raton, Florida, which interestingly was fined in May 2003 for a controversy involving false labelling. I'm assuming that Trader Joe's knows of this issue and has dealt carefully with this contractor. You can call them directly at 561-706-6178 and find out yourself. The direct manufacturer is indicated as "CHOCOLATES TORRAS S.A." of Spain, so F.G.H. is likely the trading company.

The bars do taste acceptably delicious.

The Atkins Revolution proceeds apace

I was hungry after a hard workout a couple of days ago, and on the way home my muscles were screaming "food! food!" so I stopped by the first fast food place I saw, Carl's Jr., expecting to have to do the "big burger hold the bun" thing, when I saw this:

I had to try this: advertised at 6 grams of carbs, eliminating the 66 grams usually found in the bun. Of course, it was the same price as the combo (U.S. $6.05) with the bun, but I'm glad they were offering it at all. I didn't get a "diet" cola with the meal - I hate sweet colas - settling on an iced tea instead. Yes, I know that caffeine stimulates insulin production in the pancreas, but I'm not an Atkins purist, and I still hold on to some habits of a Southerner's childhood.

The "sandwich" was excellent, essentially the stuff between a standard "Six Dollar Burger", a fairly decent sandwich which lives up to its billing. Of course, they need to work on the wrapper concept a bit: it's a bit difficult to eat around, since it's not meant itself to be eaten. I think. The garden salad side order is your standard bland lettuce & cherry tomato with shredded carrot thing. I treat these salads as culinary digestive shotgun wadding whenever I come across them, eating them last in opposition to the standard American convention.

This was a good deal for the money, and I noticed that I didn't feel at all drowsy later, since I'd avoided the bread. Oh, and no fries, of course, which helped.

A forum for afficionados of Two Buck Chuck

A year ago I wrote '"Two-Buck Chuck": Tough times mean cheap wines', which turns out to have been one of the 2 or 3 most-commented-upon entries in the last year. It seems to be the endpoint of a number of Google searches on the subject too, from what I regularly see in the site's stats. Speaking of which, I've found there exists an actual forum on the wine at net-sightings.com.

"The Pepper Plant" Chunky Garlic Hot Pepper Sauce

I mentioned this in detail on a mailing list where friend L. Neil Smith was praising garlic. I chipped in with a recommendation for Chunky Garlic Hot Pepper Sauce in "The Pepper Plant" line of sauces by Blossom Valley Foods (800-541-4355) in Gilroy, California ("Garlic Capital of the World"). You can buy this fantastic sauce - with which I often drown the Chorizo Scramble I sometimes have at a local eatery - online at Yahoo, and at various San Francisco Bay Area locations. Magnificent stuff.

William N. Rice is a pissant little mobster

Yesterday on Fox News, I witnessed Washington State's Actiing Director of the Department of Revenue, William N. Rice, declaim his belief that tax-free internet sale of tobacco products to Washingtonians is "a slap in the face" to those who pay the confiscatory taxes customary on cigarettes in his state. His argument is morally equivalent to that of a mugger asserting that a potential victim who successfully avoids being mugged (e.g. by being armed, avoiding dangerous places, etc.) is somehow culpable for not having been mugged. Rat bastard mobster.

I don' t smoke cigarettes, but I will redouble my efforts to avoid taxes when buying my cigars from now on, just to spite him and pissants like him. Yes, I'm a political smoker nowadays. That makes me and people like me "political niccers"... are you one too?

Dan & Louis Oyster Bar, Portland, Oregon

On our recent trip to Portland, Oregon, we walked the streets in the evening hours after rolling into town and stopped into downtown's Dan & Louis Oyster Bar. I ordered their "Bloody Mary" made with oyster juice (below), and it was fantastic. My friend James, in conversation at the recent New Year's eve party we attended, insists that this drink is actually a variant called a "Caesar":

Another friend of ours, Stephany, asked at that same party, "Which oysters did you have there?" Being the compulsive note-taker that I am, I actually kept the label note I'd pulled off the serving tray and annotated:

• Hammersley (British Columbia)
• Kumamoto (Oregon)
• Netarts Bay (Oregon)
• Olympia (Washington)
• Willapa Bay (Washington)
• Yaquina Bay (Oregon)

The best, I think, were the tiny, flavorful Kumamotos, followed by the rather large and similarly flavorful Yaquina Bay oysters. I was least impressed with the relatively bland Olympias. Unrelated to taste, but interesting to those of us fascinated by nature is the fact that the Willapa Bays had the most unusual shell morphology: deep and narrow, more like a jai-lai cesta than a fielder's glove (hope the sports analogy helps... otherwise, sorry, look it up yourself.)

We took our drinks and repeated plates of oysters in the small, pubbish barroom with a view into the rainy alley street fronting the meandering cluster of rooms at the Oyster Bar. This turned out a good choice, since we had the excellent company of the 20-something bartender Kevin, a font of knowledge about All Things Oregon. If you're interested in visiting this place, try to find a seat near his bar. Oh, and do look at - or through - the floor near the end of the bar: there's a lucite window covering a lighted cistern accidently excavated during a renovation the owners undertook a couple of years ago. Pretty neat.