Do Pop Rocks and Coke really make your stomach explode?

The Legend: Mickey from the Life cereal commercials hates everything, except Pop Rocks. He gorges himself with the candy (He's rich from doing the commercials and spends all his money on Pop Rocks) and washes it down with a soda. The chemical reaction in his stomach causes an eruption and he explodes.

Besides the fact that "Little Mikey" (aka John Gilchrist) is still alive... I watched this episode of MythBusters where they actually tested this myth, plus dozens of people on YouTube testing it out for themselves... and the answer was no, actually it just gives you a good case of gas.

Introduced in 1975, Pop Rocks would, as the name suggests, pop in the mouth of anyone who ate them. This popping sensation is caused by highly compressed carbon dioxide bubbles in the candy. The belief in the spread of the rumor is that the carbonation in the candy, when mixed inside the human stomach with a carbonated beverage, would create a lethal reaction where carbon dioxide would be released at such a rapid rate that the stomach would explode, presumably killing the person who ate the candy and drank the soda. It is entirely unknown why Little Mikey was the target of the myth,[8] though some believe that it is because the actor who played Mikey did not appear in any commercials after the legend began to spread.
[source]

The only way that Mythbusters was able to get a stomach to explode was with a few lbs of baking soda + coke.

Are Raw Vegetables Healthier than Cooked?

Amander and I had a debate last night at Uno's as to whether or not her excuse for not eating the steamed broccoli in her Fetuccini Alfredo was valid or not. "Cooked vegetables have no nutritional value anyhow, most of the nutrients are cooked out of them". I disagreed, and thus a blog was born.

It turns out we were both a little right, and both a little wrong.

Raw food experts will tell you that raw food improves overall well-being, purification, longevity, gives you more energy, and is a cure for diseases like chronic fatigue syndrome, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, and even cancer. Scientific evidence has yet to back up these claims.

It is also thought that cooking (heating foods above 116 degrees Fahrenheit) destroys vitamins and minerals and that cooked foods take longer to digest and tend to allow partially digested fats, proteins and carbohydrates to clog up our digestive system and arteries.

Organica's manager Larry Weinstein, a longtime raw food enthusiast agrees that exposing these enzymes to heat and nearly all will be inactivated. The body, he says, then has to pick up the slack and make more of its own enzymes, using energy that it could've used for other things -- like chewing a raw carrot.

But raw isn't always best. Rutgers University and Taiwanese researchers at last spring's annual American Chemical Society meeting in San Francisco say that they found that the body more easily absorbs iron from 37 of 48 vegetables tested when they're boiled, stir-fried, steamed, or grilled. Of note, the absorbable iron in cabbage jumped from 6.7% to 27% with cooking. That of broccoli flowerets rose from 6% to 30%. [source]

An article from 2000 by Tula Karras of WebMD says that tomatoes may also be best not in the salad, but in the sauce. A study published in the December 6, 1995 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found that eating cooked tomatoes could improve your chances of avoiding prostate cancer. Harvard researchers studied men who ate lots of tomato sauce, including that in foods like pizza and spaghetti. Those who ate at least 10 servings of tomato sauce every week were 45% less likely to develop prostate cancer than men who ate fewer servings.

According to the Dec. 26 issue of ACS Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a new study says that researchers evaluated the effects of three commonly-used Italian cooking practices — boiling, steaming, and frying — on the nutritional content of carrots, zucchini and broccoli. Boiling and steaming maintained the antioxidant compounds of the vegetables, whereas frying caused a significantly higher loss of antioxidants in comparison to the water-based cooking methods, they say. For broccoli, steaming actually increased its content of glucosinolates, a group of plant compounds touted for their cancer-fighting abilities.

"The findings suggest that it may be possible to select a cooking method for each vegetable that can best preserve or improve its nutritional quality", the researchers say.

In conclusion.. it seems that Amander should have eaten her broccoli. I win.

Are microwaves or microwaved foods dangerous?

Microwaves are strange. You put food inside, press a few buttons, the thing starts humming, and your food does a twirl until it’s hot. But the microwave does not get hot. It just gets dirty.

The only thing stranger than microwaves is the food that comes out of them. Water takes longer than expected to heat, and when it’s done it’s different than any water you’ve ever tasted. It’s almost like it’s not hot enough, even though it might have boiled. Then there’s burrito explosions, metal sparks, and electrified CDs. And have you ever tried to cook meat in a microwave? I wouldn’t feed the result to my dog.



So…does all this weird stuff mean that eating microwaved food is dangerous?

There really is no straight answer to this.

This article cites numerous studies stating that microwaves can create dangerous foods my deforming molecules – making food less nutritious or potentially carcinogenic. In 1991 a nurse in Oklahoma injected mircrowaved blood into a patient, killing her. Remind me to never get sick in Oklahoma.

Microwaves can also leak small amounts of radiation, which is very bad, but there are ways to prevent that.

The truth is, even through microwaves have been around since the 70s, no one’s sure if they pose health risks. “Much research is under way on microwaves and how they might affect the human body,” according to the US FDA.

In case you were wondering, microwaves work by sending radio waves into food. That causes the food’s water molecules to move around and create friction—or heat. Regular ovens create heat and spread it around food until it’s absorbed.

Do Screw Caps instead of Corks = Cheap Wine?

I had this question because I used to always associate screw caps with a nice $6.99 bottle of wine, which is all well and good, but I feel like if I buy a $30 or $50 bottle of wine, there should be a cork. And I'm not even sure why that is since the bastards are so hard to get back in the bottle.

Luckily, I don't even have to write about this too much, because StormHoek, (the "social media" wine, made popular due to the fact that it was the first wine blogged about), wrote an entry about it:

One of the questions I seem to be asked all the time is “Why use screw caps instead of cork”. Most people seem to associate cork with expensive wine and screw caps with cheap wine, this may have been true 20 or so years ago in the States, but now a days some of the best vineyards in the world are bottling their wines with screw caps. Why?

Well over the last couple of centuries the wine industry has been using more and more cork, however as cork is harvested from trees that are approximately 6 to 9 years old the supply has not managed to keep up with the demand, this has led to a much higher use of pesticides and wood preservatives to get the cork ready sooner. These treatments on the trees are what most people are pointing at to account for the large increase in corked wine.

Corked wine is basically wine that smells and tastes undesirable and the main cause is bad corks. The way this happens is that chemicals (mainly TCA) that can be found in the cork react negatively with the wine and cause the wine to smell and taste bad. If you look at the percentage of wine that is corked you will see the figures sometimes go up to 15%, can you imagine any other industry where this amount of fail rate would be accepted, I doubt it.

Screw caps on the other hand have an almost 0% fail rate (we have been using them since 2004 on our wines and have had no negative feedback), they can also be recycled easily, and have been used to age wine now for many years, even producers in Champagne have aged their wines with screw caps with no told negative impact (most wine is consumed within 24 hours of being bought off the shelf anyway)

For this reason you will find the vast majority of our wine is bottled with screw caps, but if your still keen to use a cork screw, for the meantime you will be pleased to find we still use cork on our reserve range of wines.

(If anyone is wondering about plastic corks they aren’t great as they are not a memory material so you cant age wine with plastic well, and it can still react negatively with the wine due to the chemicals in the plastic. Also they are very un-eco-friendly)

What are the risks of using the Lap-Band to lose weight?

The Lap-Band is an inflatable band that's placed around the upper stomach to limit food intake in severely obese individuals. It was approved in 2001 by the FDA because the FDA felt that the benefits outweighed the risks. The benefits to the Lap-Band are that it can be easily adjusted, unlike other surgeries where, when it's done, it's done.

And at least it doesn't cause anal leakage or excessive gambling.

Since I'm a negative nancy, I'm really just going to focus on the risks of the Lap-Band because I think it's more important to know the risks, since we already know the benefits to having a clamp on your stomach. And after all.. 13 year olds are already getting the surgery done.

• Because the Lap-Band is an implantable device, it does carry a small risk of slippage (causing complete blockage of the gastric pouch) or erosion into the stomach (causing weight loss to stop). In either case, another laparoscopic surgery would be required to re-position or remove the band. [source]
  

• Other technical problems can arise. In a few cases, the tube may kink or the reservoir may twist, which may require minor surgery. [source]

• The Lap-Band is not a perfect solution, and it will not result in weight loss if you start eating an excess amount of chocolate or high-calorie drinks, such as ice cream, milk shakes and soda. [source]

• There are also added risks in any operation for patients who are seriously overweight. Death is one of the risks. It can occur any time during the operation. It can also occur as a result of the operation. Death can occur despite all the precautions that are taken. [source]
  
  
• There is a risk of gastric perforation (a tear in the stomach wall) during or after the procedure that might lead to the need for another surgery. In the U.S. clinical study this happened in 1% of the patients. [source]
  
  
• In the United States clinical study, with 3-year follow-up reported, 88% of the 299 patients had one or more adverse events, ranging from mild, moderate, to severe. [source]
  
  
• Nausea and vomiting (51%)
• Gastroesophageal reflux (regurgitation) (34%)
• Band slippage/pouch dilatation (24%)
  
• Stoma obstruction (stomach-band outlet blockage)
  
• 25% of the patients had their band systems removed
• Esophageal dilatation or dysmotility (poor esophageal function) occurred in 11% of patients
• Constipation, diarrhea and dysphagia (difficulty swallowing) occurred in 9% of the patients.
  
• In 9% of the patients, a second surgery was needed to fix a problem with the band or initial surgery.
  
• In 9% of the patients, there was an additional procedure to fix a leaking or twisted access port. The access port design has been improved.
  
• Four out of 299 patients (1.3%) had their bands erode into their stomachs. These bands needed to be removed in a second operation.
  
  
• Adverse events that were considered to be non-serious, and which occurred in less than 1% of the patients, included: [source]
  
  
• esophagitis (inflammation of the esophagus),
  
• gastritis (inflammation of the stomach),
  
• hiatal and incisional hernias
  
• pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas),
  
• abdominal pain,
  
• infection,
  
• redundant skin,
  
• dehydration,
  
• diarrhea (frequent semi-solid bowel movements),
  
• abnormal stools,
  
• constipation,
  
• flatulence (farts),
  
• dyspepsia (upset stomach),
  
• eructation (burping),
  
• cardiospasm (an obstruction of passage of food through the bottom of the esophagus), hematemsis (vomiting of blood),
  
• asthenia (fatigue),
  
• fever,
  
• chest pain,
  
• incision pain,
  
• contact dermatitis (rash),
  
• abnormal healing,
  
• edema (swelling),
  
• paresthesia (abnormal sensation of burning, prickly, or tingling),
  
• dysmenorrhea (difficult periods),
  
• hypochromic anemia (low oxygen carrying part of blood),
  
• band system leak,
  
• cholecystitis (gall stones),
  
• esophageal ulcer (sore),
  
• port displacement,
  
• port site pain,
  
• spleen injury,
  
• and wound infection.

It's true, in comparison to the seriously dangerous gastric bypass surgery, the side effects would be considered minimal. It's 10 times less likely to kill you. SWEET. Also, with the Lap-Band, you can still have children, all they do is deflate the band.

Still interested? Here's the official Lap-Band site.

How Do You Make Cola?

Cola is more or less a mix of caramel (yum), caffeine (mmm), sugar (double mmm), soda water(yum?), citric or phosphoric acid (umm), and eight essential oils (yay).

Like any good beverage business, both Coke and Pepsi keep their recipe under wraps. Well if you've ever heard of Open Source Software, you know that the world is moving in the opposite direction of secret recipe societies.

So if you're interested in making cola, why not invest some time (and a few grocery runs) into making OpenCola? Creators of the cola recipe even invite users to edit and modify the drink for optimal flavor. It's the open source cola drink!

It's not as easy as making gingerale though, so pay close attention:

--------------------Ingredients:--------------------

Flavoring

• 3.50 mL orange oil
• 1.00 mL lemon oil
• 1.00 mL nutmeg oil
• 1.5000 mL cassia (cinnamon) oil
• 1.25 mL coriander oil
• 0.25 mL neroli oil (similar to petitgrain, bergamot, or bitter orange oil)
• 2.75 mL lime oil
• 0.25 mL lavender oil
• 10.0 g food-grade gum arabic (thickener)
• 3.00 mL water

Concentrate

• 5 mL flavoring
• 17.5 mL 75% citric acid
• 2.28 L water
• 2.36 kg granulated white sugar
• 2.5 mL vitamin b
• 30.0 mL caramel color

--------------------Directions for making OpenCola:--------------------

Flavoring Formula

1. Mix the oils together.
2. Add gum arabic and mix completely.
3. Add water and mix well. For this step, use a hand mixer or blender to thoroughly mix together.
4. The flavoring can be made in advance and stored for use later. Place in a sealed glass jar and place in the refrigerator or keep at room temperature.
   
   • When stored, the oils and water will separate. Just mix again before use. When used, the gum arabic will keep things together.

Concentrate Formula

1. Mix 5 mL of flavoring with the phosphoric or citric acid.
2. Add the water and sugar and, while mixing, add caffeine if desired.
   
   • Make sure that the caffeine is completely dissolved before moving on to the next step.
3. Add caramel color and mix completely.

Soda Formula

1. Mix one part of concentrate with five parts water. In other words, however much you use of the concentrate, use five times as much of water.
2. Carbonate the beverage. There are a few ways this can be accomplished:
   • Carbonate the beverage yourself
   • Mix soda water directly with the concentrate, as described in the previous step
   • Use a soda fountain that will combine the concentrate with carbonated water at the tap

Thanks to WikiHow for this great recipe!

Coca-Cola is unphased by these things though. After a few people claimed to have made imitation coke in past, this is what they had to say: "As the saying goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," says a Coca-Cola spokesman. "But our product is unique. Anyone with a selection of ingredients could make a type of cola, but there can only be one Coke."

What is the most expensive cheese in the world?

The most expensive cheese in the world is made from moose milk in Sweden. That’s right, moose cheese. It costs $500 bucks a pound – or a month’s rent in a bad apartment.

The cheese is so expensive because milking a moose is a pain in the ass.

“The moose only produce milk between May and September, the time from when they calve to when they are in heat again…It takes up to two hours to milk a moose and they each produce up to a gallon of milk a day,” according to the AP article.

The small farm specializing in this cheese is in Bjursholm, Sweden, 404 miles north of the capital, Stockholm. It was the only moose milkery in Europe in 2004, and it probably still is.

A fishy part of this story: the three moose that make the milk were found abandoned in the woods as calves and taken in by the farmers. So….they just happened to stumble over these money pissing cash cows?

Conspiracy theories aside I will say this: I like cheese. Cheese is good. But do I love it enough to pay $500 bucks a pound for it? No.

Wait! Maybe moose cheese is only the most expensive unprepared cheese in the world. After all some fool paid $28,000 for a 10-year-old grilled cheese with the Virgin Mary “magically” imprinted on it. That’s like 1/16th of an ounce of aged American cheese for two years of college!

Why Do Onions Make You Cry?

I'm such an onion and garlic fiend that I think I'm immune to the tears caused by onions (though probably not the bad breath). But I mean aside from the possibility of getting squirted in the eye with onion juice, how is it that a normal person can be feet away from an onion that is being cut, and still feel the emo effect?

As it turns out, it's a serious chain reaction on both you and the onions part:

• You cut the onion
• You break open onion cells
• The onion cells' enzymes decompose amino acid sulfoxides, form sulfenic acids from the onion
• All this decomposing causes gas (no, not that kind)
• The gas reacts with the moisture from your eyes
• Gas combined with eye water turns it into a mild sulfuric acid
• The sulfuric acid irritates your eyes which stimulates your nerve endings
• Your nerve endings tell your brain to produce more water to dilute the acid
• You cry

But don't be mad, because this "volatile compound" is also why onions taste and smell so good. [source]

According to About.com, aside from wearing safety googles or running a fan, you can keep from crying by refrigerating your onion before cutting it (slows reactions and changes the chemistry inside the onion) or by cutting the onion under water.

I really wanted a "dear sister" spoof on onion cutting, but this'll do:

Why Do Beans Give Gas?

Beans, beans, they're good for your heart!

Beans contain sugars that we humans cannot digest. The most offensive sugars, known as "flatulence factors" to scientists who research farts, are raffinose, stachiose, and verbascose. When these sugars reach our intestines, the bacteria go wild, have a big feast, and make lots of gas! [source]

Well, when we eat beans, or cabbage, or any other gassy food, it all gets mushed up in our stomach and is passed into the small intestine. Now, the types of sugar found in beans are a bit big to be taken into the body through the walls of the small intestine and we have no enzyme to break them down into more manageable chunks. This means it all ends up in our large intestine where all the bacteria tuck in and start to reproduce to take best advantage of all the yummy food. [source]

Unfortunately for us, gas is produced by the bacteria during the breakdown of their dinner - carbon dioxide, hydrogen and some methane is released and escape the body via the only opening available to them. These gases don't smell much, but methane and hydrogen do burn pretty happily, which is why farts can be set alight. However, this is NOT recommended as the gas can ignite backwards up your bum, burning all the trapped gas in your rectum and scorching you in the most painful way imaginable. Imagine having to explain that to the A & E nurse. [source]

Want to better cope with your windiness? Try these three things [source]:

1. Soak your beans in water overnight before cooking them. Discard the soaking water, rinse your beans, and cook them in fresh water.
   
   
2. Take Beano.
   
   
3. Embrace your unique talent and go pro.

Aren't you glad I asked?

Why do potato chips have green edges?

You know it happens. You’re eating a bag of chips, maybe even enjoying a sandwich with them. You’re just about to cram another chip into your mouth when you see a flash of green. What the hell was that? You look closely at the chip and realize you’re not hallucinating—part of the chip is actually green.

You wonder: what should I do with this freak? Should I eat it and risk death? Or should I discard this rogue and forget all about it. Maybe I should just set it aside and think about this…

But sure enough, you finish the bag of chips and that last green one is on the table—going to waste. To throw it away would add to the endless piles of landfills in our world. It would waste food when so many are starving. When there’s starving kids in China! We cannot have this! Into your mouth the chip goes…

The fact is some potato chips have green edges because they’re trying to kill you. As ridiculous as that sounds, and as stupid as the images is for this post—it’s the truth.

But green potato chips are not very good at killing you. They’re like ants trying to take down a buffalo—there needs to be a lot of them.

Potatoes start to turn green when exposed to sunlight in the field, in storage, or just about anywhere. That’s why some potato chips are green. They’re made from potatoes that someone left out in the sun.

The green is actually chlorophyll, which is harmless by itself. But that chlorophyll is biosynthesized at the same time as a glycoalkaloid called solanine, and solanine is a poison.

Don’t worry too much, though. Unless you’re in a frickin’ potato famine and you’re forced to eat green and rotten potatoes day in, day out, then you’re not going to have any problems. One potato chip won’t kill you. It would take many pounds to do that. And if you eat so many potato chips that you ingest pounds of green ones then you should just die anyway.

How Do You Make Gingerale?

Ok, so I have a habit of making things at 2am when there's no food in the apartment and I feel the need to "create". Well, it's often that at 2am, I also have cravings for my super-fave-drink-omg, gingerale. I know a lot of people associate it with feeling sick, but I just love it.

As it turns out, the ingredients to make gingerale aren't really that weird. WAY better than the crazy refrigerator-burning compounds used to make cola.

What you'll need:

• clean 2 liter plastic soft drink bottle with cap
• funnel
• grater (preferably with fine "cutting" teeth)
• 1 cup measuring cup
• 1/4 tsp and 1 Tbl measuring spoons
• cane (table) sugar [sucrose] (1 cup)
• freshly grated ginger root (1 1/2-2 tablespoons)
• use only fresh ginger root (purchasable at most large supermarkets, or Asian food shops)
• juice of one lemon
• fresh granular baker's yeast (1/4 teaspoon)
• cold fresh pure water

Not so bad right? Well this isn't really the most 2am optimized beverage because it needs to sit for 24-48 hours, but my 2am creations don't always need to be instantly edible.

According to WikiHow, here are the steps to some good ol' homemade gingerale:

• Add 1 cup of sugar to the bottle through the dry funnel. Leave the funnel in place until all the steps are complete and you are ready to cap the bottle.
• Measure out 1/4 teaspoon of fresh granular active baker's yeast. Use Fleischmann's or any brand that you might buy in the health food store
• Add the yeast through the funnel into the bottle. Shake it to disperse the yeast grains into the sugar granules.
• Grate the ginger root on a fine "cutting" grater to produce 1 1/2 Tablespoon of grated root. See the Tips below for more information on using the right grater
• Place grated ginger in the cup measure
• Juice a whole lemon. Lemon is optional, giving a little tartness to the ginger ale. Try it both ways to see which you prefer.
• Add the juice of a whole lemon to the grated ginger.
• Stir the lemon juice and grated ginger to form a slurry.
• Add the slurry of lemon juice and grated ginger to the bottle. (It may stick in the funnel. Don't worry, the next step will wash it into the bottle.)
• Rinse the containers that held the lemon juice and grated ginger with fresh clean water. Do not dump the water just yet.
• Add the rinsing water to the bottle.
• Cap and shake the bottle.
• Reopen and fill the bottle to the neck with fresh, cool, clean water, leaving about an inch of head space, then securely screw the cap down to seal. Invert the bottle repeatedly to thoroughly dissolve sugar. Also check the bottom of the bottle because the suger tends to stick in little pockets there. (The ginger root will not dissolve, of course.)
• Place the ginger ale in a warm location for 24 to 48 hours. See the Warnings below.
• Test to see if carbonation is complete by squeezing the bottle forcefully with your thumb. If it dents in as in the picture, it is not ready.
• Once the bottle feels hard to a forceful squeeze, usually only 24-48 hours, place in the refrigerator. Before opening, refrigerate at least overnight to thoroughly chill. Crack the lid off the thoroughly chilled ginger ale just a little to release the pressure slowly. You do not want a ginger ale fountain!

Here are some warnings:

• This recipe will produce alcohol in the finished product
  • The quantity of alcohol in the finished product over a 2-3 day fermentation period is going to be minuscule, however, if left out for several days (see further warnings) it will continue to ferment until all of the sugar and the alcohol content will be considerably higher. It will taste nothing like ginger ale.
• Do not leave the finished ginger ale in a warm place any longer than the time it takes for the bottle to feel hard. Leaving it at room temperature longer than two days, especially in the summer when the temperature is high, can generate enough pressure to explode the bottle! Once it is thoroughly chilled, there is little danger of explosion.
• When purchasing your yeast, do not buy "brewer's yeast", as this is typically inactive yeast left over from the brewing process. It is dead yeast, and will not work. For best results, buy yeast from a beer and wine maker's supply store.

I'm feeling a late night Stop & Shop run...

Here are a few other recipes:

How to make OpenCola - the "open source" cola
How to Make Root Beer
How to Make Cheap Wine
How to Brew your own Beer

Why do some egg yolks turn green?

Generally the wierd green ring that forms on overcooked eggs reminds you of belly-button cheese is normal for things like, Egg McMuffins and your grandma's deviled eggs.. But WHY man, WHY? Is it cool to eat?

According to AskMrBreakfast.com:

A greenish grey film will form on the surface of the yolk when the temperature of the yolk exceeds 158 degrees Fahrenheit. This discoloration is not unhealthful. It's just a visual indicator of a natural chemical reaction... hydrogen sulphide from amino acids in the white of your egg (or albumen) is reacting with iron from the yolk which causes a film of ferrous sulphide to form on the yolk's surface. If the film is thin, your egg will still taste fine.

How (long) do you cook hardboiled eggs?

When munchies hit, what's a better idea than making deviled eggs? But how long are you supposed to cook them? And how do you avoid the weird green ring that happens from over-cooking?

AskMrBreakfast.com and WikiHow.com say:

1. Let eggs sit at room temperature for 15 minutes
2. Put eggs in a saucepan, covered with atleast 1 inch of cold water
3. Bring water to a rolling boil
4. Reuce heat to a medium boil and cook uncovered for 11 minutes
5. After this, pour eggs gently into an bowl of ice-cold water to avoid green ring and let sit for 2-5 minutes
6. To peel the easiest: roll egg around on a cutting board and slide the shell off.
   

And just for the record.. in the time it took me to look this up and write it down.. I totally green'd up my eggs. I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY.

Screw fondue - How to make an Asian Hot Pot??

So a few weeks ago I went to The Melting Pot. It was beyond tasty, and a fully satisfying dining experience. It was even worth the $95 bucks dropped for only two people. However, just watching them prepare the stuff (because they do it right infront of you), you know that you can do this at home.

The dish I particularly wanted to try tonight is the "Asian Hot Pot". Basically, you don't need a fondue set, you don't even need the traditional asian hot pot. Seems like all you need is a pot and some vegetable oil. I don't have a single electric burner that I could use on the table, so we'll likely be dipping from the stove. But it's ok, no need to be classy all the time.

Here's what I learned from the Melting Pot while I was there:

• Cook beef & pork for 2.5 minutes (in boiling broth)
• Cook chicken and duck for 2 minutes (in boiling broth)
• Cook shrimp and other seafood about 1 minute (in boiling broth)
• Cook potstickers, and stuff like that about 30 seconds, just to heat up
• Cook in vegetable broth, you can add any veggies for flavor
• Make sure the broth is boiling before you start, or your food will be sitting for a while!
• Have a good collection of sauces for all your different types of food
  

Here are a few VERY HELPFUL tips from About.com's article, Twenty-Five Tips for Cooking Hot Pot:

• Don’t feel you need to purchase an authentic Asian Hot Pot (also called a firepot) to enjoy this popular dish. Aluminum, stainless steel, and electric fondue pots can all be used for hot pot cooking.
  
  
• Plan on having no more than four diners at an average sized fondue pot, and six for larger Asian hot pots and electric fondue pots. Too many diners sharing one pot leads to spills, crossed dipping forks, and longer cooking times.
  
  
• When preparing Asian fondue, a general rule of thumb is to have bland broth and spicy dips. This allows guests to season the food according to their own tastes.
  
  
• Plan on serving approximately at least four dips, with 1/2 cup of each type of dipping sauce.
  
  
• For easy dipping, keep the fondue pot approximately 2/3 full. (The total amount of broth needed will depend on the size of your fondue pot).

Anyone else hungry?

How bad is Ellios pizza for you? - frozen pizza ratings..

I may be the only person above age 18 that loves Ellios pizza, but I do not care. I heart the sweet sugary sauce and the cheese flakes that hardly cover the top, I really do. So after looking at some comparisons online about flavor, I was interested to know how bad it really is for you in comparison to other brands.

In my analysis, the nutrition facts are based on one serving. For most of these, that means one slice, except for Ellios, which means two slices. According to an article called Pizza on Earth, the best way to avoid serving-size problems is to look at what percent of a pizza's calories come from fat, because doesn't depend on the arbitrary serving size the manufacturer chooses. (I've included that info in my chart too).


Thanks to calorie-count.com, dietfacts.com, and ellios.com, I think I've happy with the winner :) (and kind of shocked at that bastard Tony for his lard-ridden pies of death).

What's up with Stop & Shop handheld scanners?

Oh.my.gosh.

In an article posted on the 14th of this month, they say that starting this week, shoppers at more than 100 Stop & Shop supermarkets across New England can do their shopping with the help a portable shopping assistant powered by a Quincy company's interactive shopping technology.

This was something I needed to check out for myself, without my best friend Google, so I went grocery shopping last night at my local stop & shop store, and all I can say is WOW.

Basically, here are the steps:

• You walk into the store, scan your Stop & Shop card at a kiosk.
• One of the scanners lights up and you take it.
• You grab some bags (paper or plastic) so that you can bag along the way (awesome).
  
• You walk around scanning everything you want
• To do produce, they have a scale you put your veggies/fruits on, which then weighs it, and prints a sticker with a bar code, which you scan. awesome.
• Everything else has a barcode including meats, etc.
• You can browse store specials directly on the device
• You can see what your total is right on the device (BEST FEATURE EVER)
• You can remove things as you wish once buyers remorse hits.
• When you're done, you scan a "end of order" barcode at the register, hand your device to the cashier along w/ your stop & shop card.
• And pay. Everything is already bagged by you, and you're done.

Even simpler, without all the hubub:
Scan card > Take Scanner > Scan > Pay > Leave > Eat

I totally geeked out during my experience... This lady came up to me asking me how to use it and if i liked it and i was all OMG ITZ LIKYE THE BEST DEVICE EVERRRRRRRRRRR and gave her the best tutorial anyone has ever seen.

The only drawbacks I see (for the store, not us) is that it's likely to increase stealing, so the money they'll save on cashiers will be spent on tightened security. Also, every 10 minutes or so the scanner goes "cha-ching!" to let you know of a sale. It's all good though in my opinion!

I hope everyone gets a chance to try these out soon. Stop & Shop is wayyy expensive, but they just made a frequent shopper out of me.

Can you buy the Texas Roadhouse Italian Salad Dressing?

NO is the answer. Which is so sad.

But since everyone seems to want it, they've come up with some super recipes to try to mock it, so yay.

A guy named Peter on TexasMonthly.com wrote this:

I asked a waitress at my local Texas Road House, She said the "secret" ingredient for the Italian Dressing is mustard. I found and made this dressing and it is close. A little tweeking anyone, try It I did and like it.

VERY SIMPLY

• 50 ml of Balsamic Vinegar
• 100 ml of Olive Oil
• 1 teaspoon of medium hot mustard
• water, pepper, salt and sugar to taste
• Mix vinegar and mustard together and slowly add olive oil.
• Add salt, pepper and wate to taste
• I also add oregeno

Also, I found that maybe I should taste test some grocery store dressings marked as "sweet italian dressing" such as the Sweet Italian Dressing recipe from Cooks.com. This is because recipes you will find online with similar ingredients to the one below, tend to be marked with those three words.

Also, the house dressing from The Melting Pot is VERY VERY similar. And you can buy it online for $5 bucks.

How can i tell if my milk has gone bad?

When in doubt, throw it out!

According to Everything2.com:

When milk goes bad it's pretty easy to recognise. Several different things may happen to it: it may thicken (very common) and turn sour (just as common); one may occur without the other. Thickening by itself doesn't affect the taste at all, but milk turned sour is usually disgusting (acidity and taste vary widely). Our buttermilk (karnemelk) undergoes both processes in a controlled way, resulting in a much better taste, although opinions vary. Quite unusual is a fermentation process, where the milk will assume a sparkling taste; controlling this process leads to Norwegian kulturmelk, one of my favourite drinks.

As far as your health is concerned: these processes serve as an early warning system: they affect the milk in appearance or taste, but they do not make it unhealthy; milk turned sour is actually better protected against genuine dangers, such as moulds. If milk hasn't turned thick or sour, you can be fairly sure it's safe to drink it, and I always do.

A good indicator is hot and/or acid fluids (tea with lemon); milk will decompose much sooner in them, they can tell you if milk is turning bad before your own taste buds can. If the fluid is sour enough, even perfectly fresh milk will decompose, so use this test with caution.

In my search for the answer to this, I also learned four other things:

• The date on the bottle is the shelf date, you still have a day or two to consume.
• If your fridge is not cool enough, your milk will expire early.
• If you open the milk for the first time ON the expiration date, you will have 3-4 days to drink it.
• A dirty fridge = stinky milk. Clean it w/ bleach and water, then wipe down with water.
• Pasteurized milk lasts longer.

There was also a hilarious page at HalfBakery.com called Bad Milk Indicator.

Why I Googled it: I've got a half gallon of 2% with a January 13th expiration. Nuff said.