A fascinating article on the Syrian reactor

If you can recall the non-incident, incident involving an alleged fission reactor in Syria a few years ago you might find this article in Salon a fascinating read. Nothing like another good Mossad spy story. Whether you buy into the analysis is more a question of what you think the various players involved are thinking or not thinking these days.

How Israel destroyed Syria's Al Kibar nuclear reactor

Thoughts on Bon Appetit

Well, I finished my last issue of Gourmet and just two days ago received my first two issues of Bon Appetit (which Conde Nast is offering to all Gourmet subscription holders).

Here is my snap judgment: it's just not the same.

Bon Appetit lacks the sense of travel and adventure of Gourmet. It has too many recipes, not enough food writing. It is in a sense like the difference between Road Bike Action (a magazine filled with stats and bike reviews) and Bicycling, which spends more time talking about adventures to have on your bicycle. I think if I wanted Food TV magazine, I would have ordered it.

I will give it a few more months, perhaps with the demise of Gourmet they will tweak the format a bit, but at the moment I am disappointed.

They shot my horse - Gourmet z"l

Well not really, but Conde Nast is taking Gourmet out back and putting a gun to its head. It might make financial sense, but I don't think I will ever feel the same sense of grandeur and delight reading Bon Appetite.

Gourmet Magazine, may your memory be a blessing z"l

More on the sad news over at the NYT.

Why I might never order another hamburger

Even for people like myself who have read Upton Sinclair, Fast Food Nation, Michael Pollan and much more this article was pretty scary.

E. Coli Path Shows Flaws in Beef Inspection

Gay in Middle School?

Just read this fascinating piece in the NYT about kids coming out of the closet in middle school. Thinking about my own middle schools years in rural Wisconsin it seems all but unimaginable that there could have been anyone "out" in those days. Of course almost all of the friends I had thought might be gay later came out in college- but middle school, no way.

New Project

For anyone who has enjoyed my food based musings I am working on a new blog with my old friend Amiee, find it at jewishfood.wordpress.com

An App for that?

Random thought, for all of the frequent readers of Salon and other on-line publications. There should be an app that blocks Netflix pop-ups (which occur even while running the latest version of Firefox). I don't want to deny Netflix their paid for advertisements, but I already have an account with them.

Deep dish pizza while camping

As someone who has taken the single pot method of cooking to some extremes in the past I felt that this camping trip should live up to the tradition. That said, I wanted to try something new and had the idea to try making a Chicago style deep dish pizza in my dutch oven over a camp stove. A quick Google of the idea yielded almost no guidance. So I offer my experience here for the edification of the next person to give it a try.

Dough:
I made and froze a half pound dough before I left, along with about a cup of marinara sauce. My dough is a simple 1lb flour, 1 tb salt, 1 tb brown sugar, 2 tsp yeast and 1+ cup of water. This was half that.

At the campsite I oiled my dutch oven, stretched the dough and placed it inside the oven working it up the sides. The trick I discovered here is that the dough wants to fall back into the center so you need to have all the fillings close by and ready. I placed a layer of large cheese slices in first, followed by my other fillings, then sauce and then a final layer of cheese.

I baked it on my lowest setting for about an hour. Upon removal I discovered that yes, the crust had baked but that part of the bottom was burned. All of the fillings were hot, the cheese was molten and the side crust was great.

When I attempt this again I will try to spread the heat a bit, perhaps with a heat tamer between the stove and the oven. Or, I could do it in the coals of the fire.

Back from camping

Went camping with the family for the last few days. It was oddly refreshing to have some intense heat (as I write this the sun is finally breaking through the Bay Area fog at 11 am) and to be off the grid for a few days. We camped at Del Valle, a reservoir and park managed by the East Bay Regional Parks district outside of Livermore CA.

I took my bike (actually I had four hung on the back of the car) and took the opportunity to ride in a new area since this is further south than I can roam normally. I rode up Mines Rd, which much to my surprise ran a good 20+ miles uphill from the 700 ft at the park entrance up to 2600 ft just south of the Santa Clara county line.

It was some really good riding though, a weekday morning and the number of cars and bikes encountered did not exceed my total number of fingers and toes over the course of nearly four hours of riding out and back. The road was quiet, the landscape charming and I even spotted a few jack rabbits and wild turkeys trying to decide if I was intent on chasing them. I did have a passing thought about the chance of a mountain lion being in the area, but decided with the large number of deer they would be well fed without me in their diet.

Convergence

Convergence of my two favorite subjects: food and bicycles -

Five-Star Tour Cuisine for Guys Who Eat and Ride

Some additional Tour chatter

So amongst the usual tour chatter with coverage from the NYT, lots of video coverage (see below) there are some nice background stories that emerge during the tour that otherwise would not get written in other seasons. So if you ever wondered why Lance Armstrong rides for Astana (sponsored by the glorious nation of Kazakhstan- insert Borat joke here) this little snippet from the New Republic might help fill in the gaps. It all comes down to who you work with (in this case Bruyneel) rather than who you work for.

Where I'll be for the next few weeks

Tour de France, live streaming.

http://tdf.sbs.com.au/tdf2009/

Update:
That link isn't working anymore. So try this for a list of possible links to live video:

http://www.cyclingfans.com/live_race_coverage

The burger has its "bacon" treatment in the NYT

I think the real question you have to ask yourself after reading this article on burger construction is. "do I need a dedicated food processor for meat?"

The Perfect Burger and All Its Parts

A special nod to the mention of Gus' Pickles on the Lower East Side. For of those not familiar with it, go rent Crossing Delancey where it has a supporting role.

No rest for anyone, even when you are told to

There is a nice article in the NYT about how people are coping (or not) with work furloughs. For those of you not familiar with the idea, think of them as mini-layoffs. You get a couple of days of unpaid leave and hopefully the aggregate savings your employer enjoys allows them to keep you on the payroll. I have a friend who works for an agency that is contemplating this measure and I have met others whose companies have gone as far as shutting down for a month as a way of coping with a fall off in business.

The article was most interesting in examing the dynamic with public employess who have not been furloughed in the true sense of the word. Rather they have just had their pay cut. Why? Well it turns out that they have to schedule their furlough days (much like a vacation or personal day) and they are so busy and short staffed that they can't get approval to take the days off. Since the days aren't covered in the normal employment scenario there are no rules to govern their use or lack there of.

In the end it says more about our desire to work (and the role that plays in our self-worth and self-image) than anything else. We all aspire to a life of leisure, but most of us would have a hard time with it even if we could.

30 Rock and the Muppets

A persuasive case for 30 Rock being a rip-off of the old Muppet Show. Now if they could get John Denver to do a guest spot...

How smart is it to have a smart phone?

So I have a smart phone (for the curious it is an HTC S620 aka T-Mobile Dash). I have taken to using it as phone, calendar and most often as a web browser. I probably consume a good chunk of the NYT on that tiny 3 inch screen. Often sitting on BART I see fellow phone readers. They are reading e-mails. surfing the web or in the case of Iphone-ers playing games. There is a nice article in today's Times about our little "problem" and why its been a winner even is a recession.

Does this even need an entry?

Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest

A logical sequel to the bacon craze

Slate has a short piece on the return of lard. It makes sense now that bacon has been put into everything from meatloaf to chocolate. Now if I could find a recipe for pork chops deep pan fried in lard, oh there it is.

Trails riding

Does not actually involve any trails, oddly enough. Mostly it is the use of a modified mountain bike to ride over anything in the urban landscape. I just was passed this by a friend, check it out.

Danny MacAskill April 2009

Some there there

A good friend of mine sent me this article about how the Oakland food scene is taking off. SF'ers read it and weep into your overpriced mixed micro-greens.