Go2

Coca-Cola

Pepsi

I normally don’t drink any soda, but curiosity got the better of me, and I had to investigate.

Ugh.

My conclusion is that if you’re going to drink cola (and you shouldn’t), you should just shell out the extra 30 cents per two-liter bottle and get the real thing (whether it’s Coke or Pepsi).

Ingredients:

• One ripe avocado (I prefer to err on the side of almost-ripe rather than over-ripe).
• Extra virgin olive oil.
• Fresh sea salt.
• Ground/powdered chili pepper.
• Other spices to taste (paprika, etc.).

Preparation:

• Cut avocado in half.
• Scoop out of rind, cut into thick slices (either latitudinally or longitudinally is fine), place on plate.
• Slightly separate the slices from each other. (The slices will inconveniently stick to each other; there is no need to go overboard with this, it is for the next step.)
• Drizzle olive oil over the avocado slices.
• Add salt, pepper, and spices to taste.

Eat with fork.

If the avocado turns out to be too ripe for fork slices, it can also be mashed like guacamole, spiced, and spread on toast.

• Pizzas Recalled (Thank God the Pizza Rolls Are Okay) (SFist.com)
• Totino’s, Jeno’s pizzas recalled (Chicago Sun-Times)

I used to live on Totino’s – 10 pizzas for $10 at the local Publix.

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:

• The dumplings are better constructed; they don’t disintegrate in boiling water as the supermarket stuff is wont to do.
• The dumplings are bigger.
• The dumplings do taste better.
• The store is closer to home; we don’t have to drive so far.

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’m bothered by the thought of drinking nasty germ-ridden municipal water. Yes, I know, Brita only filters out chemicals and doesn’t do anything for microbial agents. But growing up in a doctor-headed household, and now living in a family of doctors, it’s more natural for me to think in terms of germs instead of chemicals.
• I really do think the Brita-filtered water tastes better.

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 …

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.

• Boboli 100% Whole Wheat Crust: $3.89, 10 oz. (12″ diameter)
• Hunt’s tomato sauce: $0.50, 8-oz. can
• Part-skim shredded mozzarella cheese: $2.29, 8-oz. bag (2 cups)
• Free-range vegetarian-fed hot italian chicken sausage: $4.49/lb., 1-lb. package (5 links)
• Organic mushrooms: $2.49, 8-oz. container
• White onion
• Fresh cilantro: $1.50, one bunch
• Spices: garlic powder, oregano, basil, chili pepper

Ingredients (serves 2):

• 1 pizza crust
• ½-can tomato sauce
• 1 cup mozzarella cheese
• 1 sausage link
• Toppings to taste (onion, mushrooms, cilantro, spices)

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 425°.
2. Spread tomato sauce on pizza crust.
3. Add cheese, toppings, and spices.
4. Heat pizza for approximately 12 minutes.

Cost and nutritional analysis for whole pizza:

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:

• George Foreman Grill ($49.99 from Amazon). There are many varieties of Foreman Grill; ours has only a timer (one-minute increments) with no heat control.
• 10″ sauté pan ($16.99 from Amazon)
• 8″ omelette pan
• Olive Oil Sprayer ($19.99 from Amazon)
• Large spatula for hash browns and sausages
• Small delicate spatula for egg

Groceries:

• Jimmy Dean Maple Pork Sausage Links: $3.79, 12-link (10 oz.) package. We used to eat turkey sausage, but the supermarket stopped carrying them.
• Oreida Hash Browns: $2.99, 30-oz. package
• Large Brown Cage Free Eggs: $2.99, 1 dozen. Aside from guilt-free consumption of eggs laid by humanely-treated hormone-free vegetarian chickens, the eggshells are sturdier, and the eggs taste better. These “gourmet” eggs do not come in “extra large” or “jumbo” sizes.
• Tropicana “Pure Premium” Orange Juice: $3.99, 3-qt. (96 fl. oz.) container
• Crisco Pure Canola Oil: $3.49, 48-oz. bottle
• Filippo Berio Extra Virgin Olive Oil: $25.99, 3L container

Preparation:

• Foreman grill
• 10″ and 8″ pans
• Frozen sausage links
• Frozen hash browns
• Egg, cracked open and poured into a bowl, set aside for later
• Canola oil
• Olive oil sprayer pumped and ready
• Hash brown spatula, egg spatula

Cost and nutritional analysis:

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):

• Weight loss (yes!): eating this tasty 516-calorie meal three times a day will result in less than the recommended daily 2000 calories.
• Osteopenia (brittle bones): this diet is low in calcium and vitamin D.
• Constipation: this diet is low in fiber.
• Increased risk of type 2 diabetes (poor wound healing, heart attacks, blindness, kidney problems, neuropathy, amputation): potatoes have a high glycemic index, which causes increased insulin levels.
• High cholesterol (strokes, heart attacks): the sausages are high in animal fat.

“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.”