two randalls - angela & graham » Food

Bento Boxes

angela — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 22:28:33 +0000

Meatball and omelette bento, originally uploaded by Bento Business.

I probably wasted 2 hours online today reading everything I could find about bento boxes. I’d found a nice little article in the New York Times, “Bento Boxes Win Lunch Fans,” and it was literally all I could do to contain myself (ha!) from spending $200 ordering all the fun little accouterments I’d need to make all our meals bento meals.

Not that we bring our lunch anywhere. Instead, I’m having visions of wee little dinners with cute little flower carrots, plastic giraffe skewed cubes (of what tba), and pretty little rice mounds in the shape of butterflies, stars, and – of course – Texas. (Where does one find a wee little Texas?)

AND the piece de resistance for all this madness? Bentos are nice little portion control devices. Be still my heart.

Links:
MomoCon Bento 2 – Look at that awesome sun!
“Bento” search on Flickr

Ya’ll know what self control it takes for me to not go buy all kinds of crap to eat bento style for the next month? HUGE amounts. Picture it: Bento breakfast! Bento dinner!

Bento Thanksgiving!

You know there’s more coming. I’m so excited. (Bento kitty cat dinners!)

Edited to add a few more links and update in WordPress (since I posted this from Flickr):
I love Obento – a nice little website that ships bento supplies from the U.S. I suspect they’ll have an order from us (a small little order) by the tomorrow. Also, they’ve got me thinking about how I can reappropriate things I already have in the kitchen to bento supplies. Mainly stuff like cookie cutters and paper cupcake cups.

Also, check out this nice little recipe for Curried Lentil Risotto.

On Running Again

angela — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 23:31:10 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about going back to running, mostly for the adrenaline rush and sense of immense satisfaction at finishing a 5-mile run. Me! I ran 5 whole miles. I first started in 2006 with a girlfriend; we both had the life goal of completing a marathon but settled with 1/2 marathon training for year one.

In spite of the 5-mile runs I completed, things didn’t go quite as smoothly as I hoped. First of all, I started running in July in Houston, so it was about a billion degrees outside. I got dehydrated on more than one Saturday run and was mostly miserable for the rest of the day. (Such a princess!) Once I discovered Propel, I was a bit better and the August weekend I ran in Iowa I made it through most of the day before cratering. I cleaned up my strict vegetarian diet a bit, but it was nothing that would address iron deficiency or the fact that I was almost 20 lbs overweight. And then came the thyroid, which oddly enough, those symptoms there led me to running. Full circle, I quit in September.

Three years later, I’m thinking of going back. We live wonderfully close – less than 2 miles – to a gorgeous park with a 3-mile running trail. I could easily walk to the park, run, and walk home. Or walk part way to the park, run, then walk part way back. Or run to the park, run, and run back. Seven lucky miles.

As if by providence, I found a wonderful little article today by Mark Bittman on battling energy dips (crashes) during running. Mark Bittman’s one of my favorite chefs in the world – his cookbook “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian” is now my #1 “go-to” cookbook for day-to-day recipes. Where he got my attention this time, though, was with this:

But once my weekly mileage surged past 25 miles a week, I was tired much of the time. Not only that, I’d often run out of energy halfway through even four-mile runs.

Um, I know that. Not that I ever got to 25-miles. I think the farthest I ever got was 6. But even at 3 and 5-miles, I had the fatigue. And I ran out of energy 1/2 way through the day; I called them “energy avalanches.”

Perhaps – hope?

I’m skeptical of any claims that vegetarians don’t get enough protein, mostly for the reasons listed in the article and throughout the comments. Most Americans do get too much protein. The protein issue is the #1 question I got as a vegetarian. (I’m now pescatarian, entirely for the more easily absorbed heme iron.)

But if Mark Bittman’s printing the discussion – especially in the context of running – and doing the experiment on himself, then I’ll listen. And what do you know, there may be good news for my triumphant return to running: add protein. Strategically eaten peanut butter, oatmeal and eggs (among others), will do the trick.

Dr. Fernstrom notes that exercise scientists continue to debate the relative importance of carbs versus protein, and in her experience, every runner should try to find the combination that feels best to them.

“Having some protein before and/or after the run provides essential amino acids,” she said. “It is not an exact science. Many runners consume protein after the run and don’t like it before. I tend to think individual preference works best here — as long as you get the amino acid boost.”

So now I eat that concentrated protein twice a day. My dinners are usually hearty enough anyway; it’s just a matter of getting some into my lunches..

Now if he could just do something about this 100 degree Texas heat/humidity combination.

Horchow Estate Collection

angela — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:33:41 +0000

A few weeks ago when we were in Dallas, we tried to swing by Horchow’s location in Highland Park near SMU but found it had closed. Rather than go to an alternate location, we just went home. Next time we won’t be so easily deterred.

Why?

I’m in love. I discovered Horchow Estate Collection today, a wonderful array of what appears to be genuine estate antiques and not a collection of “reproduction antiques.”

How could I not be in love when I find wonderful things like this:

Fretwork Cake Pedestal, c. 1900 - Fretwork Cake Pedestal, c. 1900 - Handmade wooden fretwork cake pedestal is very finely carved with delicate patterns of scrolls, fans, and leaves. Stand comprises a large round platter over two crosspieces fitted together with mortise and tenon joints and secured with four small screws. Cake pedestal measures 12 inches Dia. x 2.75 inches T. Made in France.

Look at all the carved detail! I love detailed symmetry and repeating patterns in fixed mediums like wood, and the fine work in this cake pedestal is my idea find. Be still my beating heart – the fine Fretwork Cake Pedestal is only (ONLY) $550.

And then there’s this charming Capipota, c. 1890:

Capipota, c. 1890 - Historical Background A capipota, also known as a bastidor (framework) or santos mannequin, is a simple Madonna figurine meant to be displayed dressed in fine fabrics appropriate for specific Catholic holidays. A stuccoed head, arms, and torso are usually perched atop a cage-like skirt framework which serves as a sort of petticoat. Some capipota are articulated; the torso and arms are usually painted blue.

Check out the “cage-like” skirt – I’ve not seen that before but I like it. By golly, I like it a lot. And at $2900 it makes the fretwork seem like a veritable steal.

And finally, who knew that baby spoons used to come with “pushers”?

Sterling Silver Baby Spoon. Sterling silver loop-handled baby spoon and matching pusher have raised floral and scroll accents on handles. Spoon bowl depicts tableau of all characters from the nursery rhyme The Cat and the Fiddle, 3.25 inches L. Pusher handle terminates in a flat, perpendicular piece designed to push food from the spoon into the childs mouth, 3 inches L. Hallmarks indicate both pieces were made in Birmingham, England, in 1918 and 1919. Both also bear L and S makers mark. Made in England.

Does that even work? Why’d pushers go out of fashion? And why is it that no one actually uses sterling silver baby spoons? Weren’t they made to be used?

Oh, Goodie! Gourmet Magazine’s Holiday Cookie Collection

angela — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:51:36 +0000

With Christmas just a week away, I found Gourmet Magazine’s Holiday Cookie Collection 1941-2008.

A Sample of the offering from the Gourmet Magazine Holiday Coolie Collection Beautiful Stained Glass Teardrops!

Honestly, most of them look both scrumptious and beautiful. I also love these “Old Fashioned” Christmas Butter Cookies from 1947 cut in the shape of little Christmas trees. What’s really nice is that they include a bit about each decade’s trend.

Dialogue Between Benjamin Franklin and the Gout

angela — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 11:22:41 +0000

Dr. Benjamin Franklin, wearing fur hat and spectacles, facing left, in oval tied with a ribbon at top and festooned with ivy. Maverick, P. R. (Peter Rushton), 1755-1811, engraver. c. 1794 (Library of Congress)

Midnight, 22 October, 1780. FRANKLIN. Eh! Oh! eh! What have I done to merit these cruel sufferings?	1
GOUT. Many things; you have ate and drank too freely, and too much indulged those legs of yours in their indolence.	2
FRANKLIN. Who is it that accuses me?	3
GOUT. It is I, even I, the Gout.	4
FRANKLIN. What! my enemy in person?	5
GOUT. No, not your enemy.	6
FRANKLIN. I repeat it, my enemy; for you would not only torment my body to death, but ruin my good name; you reproach me as a glutton and a tippler; now all the world, that knows me, will allow that I am neither the one nor the other.	7
GOUT. The world may think as it pleases; it is always very complaisant to itself, and sometimes to its friends; but I very well know that the quantity of meat and drink proper for a man, who takes a reasonable degree of exercise, would be too much for another, who never takes any.	8
FRANKLIN. I take—eh! oh!—as much exercise—eh!—as I can, Madam Gout. You know my sedentary state, and on that account, it would seem, Madam Gout, as if you might spare me a little, seeing it is not altogether my own fault.	9
GOUT.in life is a sedentary one, your amusements, your recreation, at least, should be active. You ought to walk or ride; or, if the weather prevents that, play at billiards. But let us examine your course of life. While the mornings are long, and you have leisure to go abroad, what do you do? Why, instead of gaining an appetite for breakfast, by salutary exercise, you amuse yourself with books, pamphlets, or newspapers, which commonly are not worth the reading. Yet you eat an inordinate breakfast, four dishes of tea, with cream, and one or two buttered toasts, with slices of hung beef, which I fancy are not things the most easily digested. Immediately afterwards you sit down to write at your desk, or converse with persons who apply to you on business. Thus the time passes till one, without any kind of bodily exercise. But all this I could pardon, in regard, as you say, to your sedentary condition. But what is your practice after dinner? Walking in the beautiful gardens of those friends with whom you have dined would be the choice of men of sense; yours is to be fixed down to chess, where you are found engaged for two or three hours! This is your perpetual recreation, which is the least eligible of any for a sedentary man, because, instead of accelerating the motion of the fluids, the rigid attention it requires helps to retard the circulation and obstruct internal secretions. Wrapt in the speculations of this wretched game, you destroy your constitution. What can be expected from such a course of living, but a body replete with stagnant humors, ready to fall prey to all kinds of dangerous maladies, if I, the Gout, did not occasionally bring you relief by agitating those humors, and so purifying or dissipating them? If it was in some nook or alley in Paris, deprived of walks, that you played awhile at chess after dinner, this might be excusable; but the same taste prevails with you in Passy, Auteuil, Montmartre, or Sanoy, places where there are the finest gardens and walks, a pure air, beautiful women, and most agreeable and instructive conversation; all which you might enjoy by frequenting the walks. But these are rejected for this abominable game of chess. Fie, then, Mr. Franklin! But amidst my instructions, I had almost forgot to administer my wholesome corrections; so take that twinge,—and that.	10
FRANKLIN. Oh! eh! oh! Ohhh! As much instruction as you please, Madam Gout, and as many reproaches; but pray, Madam, a truce with your corrections!	11
GOUT. No, Sir, no,—I will not abate a particle of what is so much for your good,—therefore—	12
FRANKLIN. Oh! ehhh!—It is not fair to say I take no exercise, when I do very often, going out to dine and returning in my carriage.	13
GOUT. That, of all imaginable exercises, is the most slight and insignificant, if you allude to the motion of a carriage suspended on springs. By observing the degree of heat obtained by different kinds of motion, we may form an estimate of the quantity of exercise given by each. Thus, for example, if you turn out to walk in winter with cold feet, in an hour’s time you will be in a glow all over; ride on horseback, the same effect will scarcely be perceived by four hours’ round trotting; but if you loll in a carriage, such as you have mentioned, you may travel all day and gladly enter the last inn to warm your feet by a fire. Flatter yourself then no longer, that half an hour’s airing in your carriage deserves the name of exercise. Providence has appointed few to roll in carriages, while he has given to all a pair of legs, which are machines infinitely more commodious and serviceable. Be grateful, then, and make a proper use of yours. Would you know how they forward the circulation of your fluids, in the very action of transporting you from place to place; observe when you walk, that all your weight is alternately thrown from one leg to the other; this occasions a great pressure on the vessels of the foot, and repels their contents; when relieved, by the weight being thrown on the other foot, the vessels of the first are allowed to replenish, and, by a return of this weight, this repulsion again succeeds; thus accelerating the circulation of the blood. The heat produced in any given time depends on the degree of this acceleration; the fluids are shaken, the humors attenuated, the secretions facilitated, and all goes well; the cheeks are ruddy, and health is established. Behold your fair friend at Auteuil; a lady who received from bounteous nature more really useful science than half a dozen such pretenders to philosophy as you have been able to extract from all your books. When she honors you with a visit, it is on foot. She walks all hours of the day, and leaves indolence, and its concomitant maladies, to be endured by her horses. In this, see at once the preservative of her health and personal charms. But when you go to Auteuil, you must have your carriage, though it is no farther from Passy to Auteuil than from Auteuil to Passy.	14
FRANKLIN. Your reasonings grow very tiresome.	15
GOUT. I stand corrected. I will be silent and continue my office; take that, and that.	16
FRANKLIN. Oh! Ohh! Talk on, I pray you.	17
GOUT. No, no; I have a good number of twinges for you to-night, and you may be sure of some more tomorrow.	18
FRANKLIN. What, with such a fever! I shall go distracted. Oh! eh! Can no one bear it for me?	19
GOUT. Ask that of your horses; they have served you faithfully.	20
FRANKLIN. How can you so cruelly sport with my torments	21
GOUT. Sport! I am very serious. I have here a list of offenses against your own health distinctly written, and can justify every stroke inflicted on you.	22
FRANKLIN. Read it then.	23
GOUT. It is too long a detail; but I will briefly mention some particulars.	24
FRANKLIN. Proceed. I am all attention.	25
GOUT. Do you remember how often you have promised yourself, the following morning, a walk in the grove of Boulogne, in the garden de la Muette, or in your own garden, and have violated your promise, alleging, at one time, it was too cold, at another too warm, too windy, too moist, or what else you pleased; when in truth it was too nothing, but your insuperable love of ease?	26
FRANKLIN. That I confess may have happened occasionally, probably ten times in a year.	27
GOUT. Your confession is very far short of the truth; the gross amount is one hundred and ninety-nine times.	28
FRANKLIN. Is it possible?	29
GOUT. So possible, that it is fact; you may rely on the accuracy of my statement. You know M. Brillon’s gardens, and what fine walks they contain; you know the handsome flight of an hundred steps, which lead from the terrace above to the lawn below. You have been in the practice of visiting this amiable family twice a week, after dinner, and it is a maxim of your own, that “a man may take as much exercise in walking a mile, up and down stairs, as in ten on level ground.” What an opportunity was here for you to have had exercise in both these ways! Did you embrace it, and how often?	30
FRANKLIN. I cannot immediately answer that question.	31
GOUT. I will do it for you; not once.	32
FRANKLIN. Not once?	33
GOUT. Even so. During the summer you went there at six o’ clock. You found the charming lady, with her lovely children and friends, eager to walk with you, and entertain you with their agreeable conversation; and what has been your choice? Why, to sit on the terrace, satisfy yourself with the fine prospect, and passing your eye over the beauties of the garden below, without taking one step to descend and walk about in them. On the contrary, you call for tea and the chess-board; and lo! you are occupied in your seat till nine o’clock, and that besides two hours’ play after dinner; and then, instead of walking home, which would have bestirred you a little, you step into your carriage. How absurd to suppose that all this carelessness can be reconcilable with health, without my interposition!	34
FRANKLIN. I am convinced now of the justness of Poor Richard’s remark, that “Our debts and our sins are always greater than we think for.”	35
GOUT. So it is. You philosophers are sages in your maxims, and fools in your conduct.	36
FRANKLIN. But do you charge among my crimes, that I return in a carriage from M. Brillon’s?	37
GOUT. Certainly; for, having been seated all the while, you cannot object the fatigue of the day, and cannot want therefore the relief of a carriage.	38
FRANKLIN. What then would you have me do with my carriage?	39
GOUT. Burn it if you choose; you would at least get heat out of it once in this way; or, if you dislike that proposal, here’s another for you; observe the poor peasants, who work in the vineyards and grounds about the villages of Passy, Auteuil, Chaillot, etc.; you may find every day among these deserving creatures, four or five old men and women, bent and perhaps crippled by weight of years, and too long and too great labor. After a most fatiguing day, these people have to trudge a mile or two to their smoky huts. Order your coachman to set them down. This is an act that will be good for your soul; and, at the same time, after your visit to the Brillons, if you return on foot, that will be good for your body.	40
FRANKLIN. Ah! how tiresome you are!	41
GOUT. Well, then, to my office; it should not be forgotten that I am your physician. There.	42
FRANKLIN. Ohhh! what a devil of a physician!	43
GOUT. How ungrateful you are to say so! Is it not I who, in the character of your physician, have saved you from the palsy, dropsy, and apoplexy? one or other of which would have done for you long ago, but for me.	44
FRANKLIN. I submit, and thank you for the past, but entreat the discontinuance of your visits for the future; for, in my mind, one had better die than be cured so dolefully. Permit me just to hint, that I have also not been unfriendly to you. I never feed physician or quack of any kind, to enter the list against you; if then you do not leave me to my repose, it may be said you are ungrateful too.	45
GOUT. I can scarcely acknowledge that as any objection. As to quacks, I despise them; they may kill you indeed, but cannot injure me. And, as to regular physicians, they are at last convinced that the gout, in such a subject as you are, is no disease, but a remedy; and wherefore cure a remedy?—but to our business,—there.	46
FRANKLIN. Oh! oh!—for Heaven’s sake leave me! and I promise faithfully never more to play at chess, but to take exercise daily, and live temperately.	47
GOUT. I know you too well. You promise fair; but, after a few months of good health, you will return to your old habits; your fine promises will be forgotten like the forms of the last year’s clouds. Let us then finish the account, and I will go. But I leave you with an assurance of visiting you again at a proper time and place; for my object is your good, and you are sensible now that I am your real friend.	48

Add variety to your diet – more great foods!

angela — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 01:55:08 +0000

I love the New York Times Health Section. They’ve got a wealth of interesting health information that rarely borders on trite or overexposed information. The tidbit I found for today is an excellent example: 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating, submitted by nutritionist and author Jonny Bowden.

Nutritionist and author Jonny Bowden has created several lists of healthful foods people should be eating but aren’t. But some of his favorites, like purslane, guava and goji berries, aren’t always available at regular grocery stores

Bowden’s most exhaustive list is available in his book “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth About What You Should Eat and Why” (2007), but here are the 11 he submitted as readily available, but underutilized, healthful foods.

Beets
Cabbage
Swiss chard
Cinnamon
Pomegranate juice
Dried plums (Don’t miss David Lebovitz’s recent piece in the Los Angeles Times on dried plums – “A fruit that’s better than chocolate? Forget the ganache. He’d rather bite into a prune, a luscious pruneaux mi-cuit.” He’s such a funny man.)
Pumpkin seeds
Sardines
Tumeric
Frozen blueberries
Canned pumpkin

Does anyone have any good recipes for the other 10?

High Fructose More Readily Converts to FAT

angela — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:57:19 +0000

When I became a vegetarian and started reading ingredients on the products I bought, I was bowled over by the number of items I regularly consumed listing high fructose corn syrup. Not only that, they usually listed it was the first or second ingredient, which meant that it was a primary ingredient. With this information alone I resolved to eat dramatically fewer processed foods. And today, while I’m far from perfect, I still limit the amount of high fructose corn syrup we eat.

It looks like intuition may have done me a favor. The New York Times Health Section reports on a Texas study finding high fructose corn syrup more readily converts to fat than glucose, another form of sugar.

Dr. Parks noted that the study likely underestimates the fat-building effect of fructose because the study subjects were lean and healthy. In overweight people, the effect may be amplified.

…limiting processed foods containing high-fructose corn syrup as well as curbing calories is a good idea, Dr. Parks said.

“There are lots of people out there who want to demonize fructose as the cause of the obesity epidemic,” she said. “I think it may be a contributor, but it’s not the only problem. Americans are eating too many calories for their activity level. We’re overeating fat, we’re overeating protein and we’re overeating all sugars. [emphasis added]

Even though her study findings linked fructose to fat, I liked the fact that she didn’t scapegoat fructose as the singular culprit. Nice touch.