Personal Chef to Go makes eating fresh and healthy food simple. Each menu item is always trans-fat free, made with whole grain goodness so it's full of fiber and low-glycemic index carbs for sustained energy, has NO preservatives or additives and created using all natural meats and seafood.

The newest busy singles menu has been delivered, and here is what you could be eating this week:

Kitchen twine, also known as butcher's twine, is a thick cotton string often used for trussing or tying meat and other ingredients such as stuffing together. The meat may be wrapped with cheese to form a roll, for instance, or it may be sliced open and stuffed with a prepared filling. In order to keep the entire preparation together during the cooking process, a chef will often use lengths of kitchen twine to bind it. After the meat dish has finished roasting or broiling, the kitchen twine is usually cut off with a knife or kitchen shears before carving and serving.

The string used for kitchen twine is almost always made from linen or cotton, never plastic or other synthetic material such as polyester or nylon. Kitchen twine must be a non-toxic food grade material, since it will be in such close contact with raw foods. Synthetic yarns and twines would either melt under the heat or leech dangerous chemicals into the food. A thick natural cotton twine is usually threaded onto a large spool and marketed in cooking supply stores as kitchen twine.

There are several different ways kitchen twine is used to truss meats. One of the easiest methods involves cutting several lengths of kitchen twine off the spool and looping each one around the meat dish approximately one inch apart. The individual loops can be tightened down with a simple half-loop at the top, much like tying a shoelace, then locked off with a second loop or square knot. The excess kitchen twine can then be trimmed off with a knife or kitchen shears and the trussed meat dish can be put into the oven.

Tying cuts of meat and wrapping whole birds with twine helps them keep their shape, which makes for tidier and more uniform cooking. Twine can keep stuffing firmly inside roulades or the cavities of birds. And it can fasten items that you want on the outside, such as herbs or slices of bacon—a technique called barding that's kind of like wrapping a present without tape. Herbed pork loin for example, is even better when it's barded with bacon. Lengths of twine, spaced at even intervals, secure the bacon to the pork.

Although there are many knots to choose from, the square knot is probably the most useful in the kitchen, by far. Just tie two overhand knots, left over right, then right over left: The tidy results will look like two interlocking loops

Another way to use kitchen twine is called a butcher's knot, and is most likely the  preferred method of professional chefs. The twine is pulled off the spool and is threaded over one end of the meat dish. The cook then forms a loop at the top by overlapping the first section of twine and then starting a second loop a short distance away. The first loop can be cinched tightly around the meat and the process continues until the entire meat dish has been trussed. This method does require a learning curve, but the meat dish should hold together well during the cooking process.

A final way kitchen twine can be used for trussing meat is a bit more complicated. The cook can use special meat-trussing needles to pin both sides of a split meat back together. These needles have open loops on one end, and kitchen twine can be threaded through these loops much like laces on a pair of shoes. Once all of the needles have been threaded, the tightened kitchen twine should keep the trussing needles firmly in place while the meat dish cooks. How easy is that?

Haagen-Dazs's new line of ice cream, Five, doesn't hide the ingredients in tiny type on the back of the carton. Ever=y one -- milk, cream, sugar, eggs and vanilla bean -- is prominently displayed in bright-orange capital letters. The fact that the brand's regular vanilla bean ice cream also has just five ingredients is beside the poin t. Food marketers have come to realize that simplicity sells.

Advocates for healthful eating have long tried to steer Americans away from highly processed foods that contain dozens of unnatural and unpronounceable ingredients. Now, driven by a drumbeat of food recalls -- ground beef, peanuts and, most recently, pistachios -- consumers may be more inclined to heed the call.

Last week, Snapple Beverage unveiled a reformulated line of drinks and an eight-figure marketing campaign emphasizing that its iced teas are made from green and black tea and "real" sugar. Frito-Lay is boasting that its potato chips, tortilla chips and even Fritos are each made with just three ingredients. The hope: that consumers will equate fewer ingredients with healthfulness, even when it comes to ice cream and chips.

"It's a convergence of health, food safety, taste and traceability," said Phil Lempert, a food and consumer behavior analyst who calls himself the Supermarket Guru. "People are reading labels more carefully than they were previously. When they pick up a product and it has 30 ingredients and they don't know what half of them are, they are putting it back on the shelves."

The message of simplicity and purity is just the latest in a long line of marketing strategies employed by food manufacturers. In the 1980s, product labels trumpeted low-fat credentials. In the 1990s, even packages of bread crowed about low levels of carbohydrates. "We've reduced fat and calories; that's reductive," said Aurora Gonzalez, a Frito-Lay spokeswoman. "Now we look at how can we add pluses. Whole grains are a good example of that. Another part that is complementary is the simplicity of ingredients."

On one hand, the move is a victory for those who have long preached the glory of simple, less processed foods. In his best-selling book "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto" (Penguin, 2008), Michael Pollan writes that the first rule is to avoid any food products with more than five ingredients and those that contain unfamiliar ingredients (or high-fructose corn syrup).

But such advice was not meant to suggest that anything that contains a large number of ingredients is bad. A home-cooked stew or a Spanish paella, for example, has dozens of ingredients but is what Pollan and others deem "real" food. Sugar, in contrast, is just one ingredient but can be harmful in large quantities.

"It is better that the food be simpler than more complex," Pollan said in an interview. "On the other hand, this is another case of food manufacturers reformulating to reflect whatever the latest critique of their food is and turning what it is a criticism into a marketing strategy to sell more food."

Five is not a great departure for Haagen-Dazs, which has always catered to consumers who value high-quality ingredients. But it approaches the message in a new way, stressing wholesomeness and purity over indulgence.

Source: Jane Black,Washington Post

Pundit George Will has joined the ranks of those who have noticed that the U.S. government’s treatment of corn is wrecking the health of Americans.

Ever since Nixon, government policy has been to sell large quantities of calories as cheaply as possible -- especially calories coming from corn. Now, a quarter of the 45,000 items in the average supermarket contain processed corn, often in the form of high-fructose corn syrup.

The result?

Rates of chronic diseases like cancer and Type 2 diabetes are much higher today than they were in 1900. Type 2 diabetes is a $100 billion a year consequence of, among other things, obesity related to a corn-based diet. Four of the top 10 causes of American deaths -- coronary heart disease, diabetes, stroke and cancer – have well-established links to diet as well.

Making matters worse, by now you may have seen “crystalline fructose” as an ingredient in beverages.

If you’ve been wondering what it was, it turns out that crystalline fructose “is produced by allowing the fructose to crystallize from a fructose-enriched corn syrup.” This information is from the sugar producers themselves. So, it is made from corn syrup, and not only corn syrup, but “fructose enriched” corn syrup. Sounds like another name for high fructose corn syrup.

By Tom Philpott via Grist

Editor’s Note: This is a version of an address delivered before the High Country Local Food Summit on March 26, in Boone, N.C.,organized by Appalachian State University’s Sustainable Development Department. The High Country is a three-county region in the mountains of western North Carolina.

I’ve been asked to talk about how to create a robust, diversified food system here in the High Country.

Now the High Country is a largely rural area, constructed around a relatively small town called Boone. But I’m going to start by doing something odd. I’m going to quote someone who’s probably the most famous urban theorist of our time: Jane Jacobs, who died in 2006. Don’t worry, I will circle back to what an urban theorist’s work has to do with our situation here in rural north Carolina.

In her great book, The Economy of Cities, Jacobs praised what she called the “valuable inefficiencies and impracticalities of cities.” To illustrate her point, she invited readers to consider two examples from Victorian England: Manchester and Birmingham—or as she put it, “Efficient Manchester,” and “Inefficient Birmingham.”

A 19th century marvel and widely hailed as the “city of the future,” Manchester represented a break from the past. What Manchester did that was so new and different was simple—it specialized. The city threw its lot with one industry—textiles. Jacobs refers to the “stunning efficiency of its textile mills.” By the 1840s, the textile industry dominated the city entirely, Jacob tells us. The industry was brutally competitive; less efficient producers got swallowed up by larger, more streamlined players.

Contemporaries were impressed. For boosters, Manchester’s textile industry represented the triumph of the industrial revolution, the vindication of the power division of labor and specialization. As for detractors, a German writer named Karl Marx witnessed Manchester’s boom period and loathed the inequality he saw—a few wealthy mill owners and the thousands of impoverished mill workers. He also deplored the dehumanization of labor—the need to force humans to behave repetitive-motion machines. But like the boosters, Marx saw Manchester as a portent of the cities of the future—places that consolidate economic activity into a single industry, and then produce a single kind of product with terrible efficiency.

Read the rest...

Photo Courtesy of RICHIR on Flickr

It's Friday! Weekend reading! Yay!

From Reuters, Americans are eating way too much salt. 

European restaurant concepts coming into the US. From Fast Casual,

Jersey Royal Potatoes, best of show? From the Telegraph, an article that praises the Jersey Royal which you can only get in the channel Islands and mainland Britain.

From SFGATE, Nopalito is setting the standard in the Bay Area for wonderful Mexican cuisine. Good review from MB.

From Food Nav, the debate over meat and climate change is starting to heat up.

Soft drink sales are continuing to decline. From AdAge, This is a good outcome of the current economy. If we all go back to eating and drinking better it is cheaper overall and much, much healthier. Soda is empty in every aspect. 

Green tea may be linked to tooth health. From World Tea, an article that overviews a published report form the Journal of Periodontology.

Feel good food is starting to pick up in sales. When they say feel good, they mean junk food and things that make you laugh, not healthy items that would make you feel good. From USA TODAY. 

From the NYTIMES, The new Find A Farmer website link. Cool.

Have great weekend everyone!

Photo credit: Vintage-Love

With warmer weather on the way, you'll want to be able to eat outdoors. Picnics, spring barbecue dinners and clambakes all share something in common - plastic utensils and paper plates. If you’re seeking to make the outdoor dining experience a little more cool, a little more classy and a lot more functional, check out Snap and Dine.

With a design that's reminscent of a plastic model kit, London based Demelza Hill's Snap and Dine uses a single plastic injection mold process to create a complete, yet recyclable, table setting to make such culinary endeavors a little more elegant and yet, provide for the convenience of toss away, recyclable dishware. It offers a complete 3-course setting with a very ornately designed plastic plate and recyclable plastic cutlery designed to look like elegant silverware.

Snap and Dine is a is both easy to use and dispose/recycle at the same time and reintroduces a disposable society into the notion that plastic dishware dining can be an elegant experience no matter where the table is set.