Shared ItemsNothing like having a little E. coli for dinner:
I used to live on Totino’s - 10 pizzas for $10 at the local Publix.
The name and website of this hole-in-the-wall place sound like a bad Hong Kong comedy-action flick:
But it’s no joke. There are two rooms here (that I could see). In the back room are a few people seated around a round table making dumplings and buns by hand. In the front room (the store) are a bunch of freezers with the wares: Shanghai dumplings (xiao long bao), dumplings (jiaozi), wontons, and pot stickers. And they are all delicious.
They are more expensive (about $6 for a bag of about 21-25 dumplings) than the stuff you can find in supermarkets ($3-5/bag), but it is worth it:
As soon as we walked in, the storekeeper looked at Patrika and asked her if she spoke Chinese (in Chinese, of course). She started to shy away, but we then realized he just wanted to know which language he should use (he speaks perfectly understandable English) to gush about his dumplings, how everything in the store is fresh and hand-made, not sitting in some supermarket freezer for months with preservatives (”Ugh, I don’t know how people eat that stuff”). Pretty entertaining.
I’ve been drinking Brita-filtered water at home just about exclusively for over ten years (using the same original two pitchers, even; is that bad? - I do change the filters regularly, religiously). I just can’t drink tap water anymore:
Why does Brita-filtered water taste better? Ostensibly, all the bad-tasting bad stuff is filtered out. And Brita marketing would like us all to think that.
But … what if there is some insidiously-applied taste agent included in the filter (alongside all that activated charcoal)? I looked on the outside of my box of filters, and on the shrink-wrap around each individual filter. The front of my 4-pack box of filters prominently reads:
Guaranteed to make your water taste better.
The back of the box reads:
The Amazing Brita® Filter - The Brita Filter’s activated carbon and ion exchange resin work together to filter your water so you get healthier, great-tasting drinking water.
Interesting. The taste of the water gets top billing, and removal of chemicals is only alluded to with the mention of “healthier” water. I found nothing resembling a “List of Ingredients” that you find on food items. I suppose that is reasonable, since the Brita filter is not “food”. And one might argue that the recipe for filter technology is some kind of proprietary trade secret, like Colonel Sander’s secret recipe, or Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi. But it also means that we all could be unknowingly drinking lightly-flavored vitamin water, or something worse …
I couldn’t find any other research into Brita filtration. The best I could come up with was some people using a Brita pitcher to make some deep-well vodka taste like something closer to Grey Goose (hey, I’ll have to try that some time) …
Conventional wisdom says that municipal water supplies are viable targets of terrorist attack, but if I were a trillionaire maniacal arch-villain bent on world domination via some water-soluble ingestible mind-controlling drug, I think I’d just buy Brita (the company) and use their filters as my delivery vehicle. And their US headquarters is just an hour away in Oakland …
Today we have a pizza shoot-out between the Tsaiberspace Homemade Pizza and Freschetta frozen pizza.
| Tsaiberspace Pizza | Freschetta Frozen Pizza | |
|---|---|---|
| Prep Time (minutes) | 10 | 0 |
| Cooking Time (minutes) | ~15 | ~15 |
| Cost (whole pizza) | $7.31 | $5.00 |
| Calories | 1267 | 1440 |
| Calories from fat | 370 | 600 |
| Crust | thick whole wheat | crispy thin crust |
| Toppings | many, fresh, chunky | sparse, frozen bits |
On the surface, the two pizzas appear to be formidably equally matched. However, the Freschetta was not sufficiently filling; we had to top off our appetites with a ½-can of Chunky soup each. The Tsaiberspace pizza wins by a nose on intangibles; all that remains is to master the technique of generating a crispy whole wheat crust.
Groceries:
Ingredients (serves 2):
Instructions:
Cost and nutritional analysis for whole pizza:
| Ingredient | Cost | Total calories | Calories from fat |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 oz. whole wheat pizza crust | $3.89 | 750 | 125 |
| 4 oz. tomato sauce (½ can) | $0.25 | 26 | 0 |
| 1 cup mozzarella cheese | $1.15 | 320 | 180 |
| 1 sausage link | $0.90 | 150 | 60 |
| Mushrooms (½-cup, 2 oz.) | $0.62 | 10 | 3 |
| ¼ Onion | $0.25 | 10 | 1 |
| Spices | $0.25 | 1 | 1 |
| Total | $7.31 | 1267 | 370 |
| (Single ½-pizza serving) | $3.65 | 634 | 185 |
NutritionData reports a whole 12″ Pizza Hut pizza as containing 2083 calories (762 from fat). Ordering a medium thin’n crispy pizza with sausage, mushrooms, and onions from the pizzahut.com website costs $13.00.
(Sorry, no picture. I tried, but the camera just doesn’t do the pizza justice.)
This weekly breakfast is one of the only rituals I’ve consistently maintained since leaving college: hash browns, sausage links, and an egg, over-medium. I hate cooking, but I love my American-farm breakfast. With sufficient practice, I’ve got this down to a science. To prepare this delicious meal, you need the following equipment:
Groceries:
Preparation:
| Timeline | |
|---|---|
| 0:00 | Get everything ready (described above). |
| 1:00 | Plug in the Foreman Grill to get it pre-heated. Ours is preset to pre-heat for 5 minutes, after which it will beep. |
| 1:15 | While waiting for the Foreman Grill, pre-heat some canola oil in the 10″ saute pan; pour in at least enough to cover the bottom of the pan with a thin film (1-1½ tbsp.). You can’t really go wrong here; you just have to prevent the hash browns from burning. After that, you just have to strike your own balance between healthy hash browns (less oil) and tasty hash browns (more oil). The oil is ready when it has liquified and easily flows around the bottom of the pan. Heat-wise, all stoves vary; we use 75% heat. Too little heat, and the hash browns won’t cook. Too much heat, and the hash browns might not cook properly (burned on the outside, cold on the inside). |
| 2:15 | Pour in the hash browns: cover the bottom of the pan with a thin layer of hash, just enough to not see the bottom of the pan. This will yield two 1¼-cup servings (the recommended serving size). Let the hash browns cook. |
| 6:00 | The Foreman Grill beeps. Spray the top and bottom of the Foreman Grill with olive oil. Lay four sausage links on the grill, cross-wise 45° to the grill marks (for that nice outdoors-grill grill-stripes look). Set the timer for 4 minutes. |
| 10:00 | The Foreman Grill beeps. Turn all sausage links (to cook all surfaces), and rotate them so they all sit in the grill grooves for maximum contact (to make sure they all get fully cooked all the way through). Set the timer for 4 minutes again. |
| 10:30 | Flip over all the hash browns. One side should be a nice golden brown now. Feel free to add more canola oil if things look dry. |
| 11:00 | Pre-heat some canola oil in the omelette pan, maybe two quarters’ worth of surface area, at about 75% heat. Too little oil yields a burnt egg; too much oil yields a greasy egg. Too little heat and the egg takes longer to cook, or comes out too rare. Too much heat and the egg cooks unevenly (burned on the outside, rare on the inside). Practice makes perfect. Carefully monitor the egg. Cook to taste. |
| 12:30 | Egg is probably done by now. Turn off heat, serve egg on plate. |
| 13:30 | Pour two glasses of orange juice. |
| 14:00 | The Foreman Grill beeps. Unplug it, serve sausage links on plates. |
| 14:15 | Hash browns are also done. Turn off heat, cut them into quarters, and serve on plates |
| 15:00 | Season breakfast to taste (salt, pepper, Tony’s, etc.). Serve and enjoy breakfast. |
| 20:00 | Clear table, bring dirty plates and utensils back to kitchen. |
| 20:15 | Clean cookware: omelette pan, saute pan, spatulas. |
| 23:00 | Rinse and load dishwasher: silverware, dinnerware, glassware. |
| 25:00 | Scrape and clean Foreman Grill. This is the most painful part of the process, but with practice, only takes a few minutes. |
| 28:00 | Hand-dry and put away Foreman Grill. Clean and wipe down counter. |
| 30:00 | All done. |
Cost and nutritional analysis:
| Entrée (single portion) | Cost | Total calories | Calories from fat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sausage (2 links) | $0.63 | 100 | 73 |
| Hash browns (1¼ cups) | $0.30 | 70 | 0 |
| Canola oil (1½ tbsp.) | $0.06 | 180 | 180 |
| Egg (1) | $0.25 | 70 | 40 |
| Orange Juice (7-oz. rocks glass) | $0.29 | 96 | 0 |
| Total | $1.53 | 516 | 293 |
I researched this meal with a very expensive board-certified nutrition specialist for a medical opinion: “The recommended daily diet is 2000 calories (25-35% fat), spread out over 3 meals and 2 snacks. Calorie-wise (516), this meal is not bad. Fat-wise (57%, or 33g), not so good.”
Taste-wise, excellent.
“Also, you should know that most Americans eating a variation of this popular meal are probably eating much larger portions of everything, such as 2 or 3 eggs, and a large glass of orange juice.
“Possible side-effects from eating this delicious meal three times a day every day include (but are not limited to):
“For a healthier meal, substitute the hash browns with buttered multi-grain toast. This will reduce the glycemic index and fat (depending on the amount of butter) and add some fiber.”
