essence of frozen custard

When you go get a frozen custard anywhere...first get a small vanilla cone. That is the best way. Cool "velvet on the tongue". A spoon just muddles the experience. Then after you have enjoyed the pure essence of the vanilla variety, you can get another flavor or a sundae. Go hungry. Around 5:30 pm. Call it supper. You're blissfully done eating for the day.

Frozen Custard Sundae

Frozen Custard is on my mind lately. I was so pleasantly surprised, when on a recent trip to Silverthrone, Colorado, they had a custard place called "Good Times". The photos above are taken from the website

http://www.stlouiscustard.com/

Bottled Water

AP – FILE - In this June 3, 2008 file photo, Liberty Valley Elementary School, then, kindergarten student



I wanted to save this article that was posted on yahoo today because I may never find it again .... not only do we have to worry about the quallity of the water in store bought water bottles, we have the problem of the plastic it is stored in...

Stricter labeling urged for bottled water
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ap_on_bi_ge/us_bottled_water_vs_tap/print
By EMILY FREDRIX, AP Food Industry Writer Emily Fredrix, Ap Food Industry Writer Wed Jul 8, 7:41 pm ET

Consumers know less about the water they pay dearly for in bottles than what they can drink almost for free from the tap because the two are regulated differently, congressional investigators and nonprofit researchers say in new reports.
Both the Government Accountability Office and the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, recommend in reports released Wednesday that bottled water be labeled with the same level of information municipal water providers must disclose.
The researchers urged Americans to make bottled water "a distant second choice" to filtered tap water because there isn't enough information about bottled water. The working group recommends purifying tap water with a commercial filter, however.
Both reports were released at a congressional subcommittee Wednesday morning.
Bottled water — an industry worth about $16 billion in sales last year — has been suffering lately as colleges, communities and some governments take measures to limit or ban its consumption. As employers, they are motivated by cost savings and environmental concern because the bottles often are not recycled.
Bottled water sales were growing by double-digit percentages for years and were helping buoy the U.S. beverage industry overall. But they were flat last year, according to trade publication Beverage Digest.
Beverage Digest editor John Sicher said some consumers are turning on the tap during the recession simply because it's cheaper.
From 1997 to 2007, the amount of bottled water consumed per person in the U.S. more than doubled, from 13.4 gallons to 29.3 gallons, the GAO report said.
The issue before a subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee was less about waste and water quality concerns and more about the mechanics of regulating bottled water.
As a food product, bottled water is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration and required to show nutrition information and ingredients on its labels. Municipal water is under the control of the Environmental Protection Agency.
The two agencies have similar standards for water quality, but the FDA has less authority to enforce them, the GAO said, and the environmental agency requires much more testing.
Subcommittee chairman Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., said the subcommittee was requesting information Wednesday from a dozen bottled water companies on their water sources, treatment methods and two years' results of contaminant testing. It was not immediately clear which companies were being contacted.
"Consumers may not realize that many regulations that apply to municipalities responsible for tap water do not apply to companies that produce bottled water," he said in statements opening the hearing.
The GAO noted the FDA has yet to set standards for DEHP, one of several chemicals known as phthalates that are found in many household products, while the EPA limits the presence of phthalates in tap water.
In a survey of officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, the GAO found they think consumers are misinformed about bottled water.
"Many replied that consumers often believe that bottled water is safer or healthier than tap water," according to the GAO report.
The Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Working Group said in its report that consumers do not get enough information to determine which water is best for them.
Both groups said some bottled water brands include the same information required of tap water providers on either labels or company Web sites.
The GAO called for more research but said the FDA should start by requiring that bottled water labels tell consumers where to find out more.
Community water systems must distribute annual reports about their water's source, contaminants and possible health concerns.
Consumers should know where all their water comes from, how it is treated and what is found in it, said Richard Wiles, senior vice president for policy and communications for the Environmental Working Group.
"If the municipal tap water systems can tell their customers this information, you would think that bottled water companies that charge 1,000 times more for this water could also let consumers know the same thing," he told The Associated Press.
The bottled water industry's trade group, the International Bottled Water Association, planned to testify Wednesday that the product, — subject to the same regulation as other soft drinks, teas, juices and other beverages — is safe. Additional standards apply for bottled water products labeled as "purified water" or "spring water," among other labels, because they must prove a connection to those sources, according to planned testimony from Joseph Doss, president and chief executive of the International Bottled Water Association.
Doss said consumers can learn about bottled water by contacting the company, reading its Web site and visiting sites run by state governments.
State safeguards for bottled water often exceed the federal, though they are less stringent than for tap water, the GAO wrote.
The trade group declined to comment on the reports before they are released

Difference between Mid East and Turkish Food

(Food Photo shows Ali Nazik....
We went to San Diego today for John's Dr. appointment and picked up the San Diego reader, which comes out weekly. This restaurant review was so informative, I had to save it here, and the photo that came with the article...enjoy!


Gimme More Turkey
By Naomi Wise | Published Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Pasha Mediterranean Grill & Café
3614 Fifth Avenue, San Diego, 619-294-4444

http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2009/jul/01/gimme-more-turkey/?print

Pasha drew my eye with an ad in this paper, including a coupon for a freebie appetizer platter. Hmm...a new bargain destination? Worth trying? I scurried to the website and found that the restaurant wasn’t just another generic Mediterranean eatery but specifically Turkish. Now that’s something fresh! (There’s also the charming Bird House Grill in Encinitas, and a doner-kebab joint downtown, but that’s about it for Turkish, far as I know.) The menu revealed standard Middle Eastern dishes, but also several distinctly Turkish specialties I’d never encountered before — two salads, three entrées, a dessert. Good enough for a start. And this would be third in a row for an exploration of new or newish restaurants serving various global forms of “barbecue,” after Southern and Japanese, and leading right in to July 4. Posse roundup time!

Several of my friends have traveled in Turkey. They’ve come back raving about their trips but not so much about the food. Still, knowing a trifle about Turkish history, I’m curious about the cuisine.

First off, Turks are not generic “Middle Easterners,” even if they share a common religion in Islam. They don’t speak Arabic (a Semitic language) but the totally different Turkish (a Ural-Altaic Turkic language, most closely related to Azeri and Uzbek). Their location and ecosystem tie them to Asia Minor (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, etc.), Persia, and the Adriatic Sea, rather than the Mediterranean Arab world — think snow, not sand.

And when the Ottoman Empire swept through the rest of Asia Minor en route to Greece, its military fell in love with Armenian food (same as me) and scooped up large numbers of Armenians to serve as army cooks while they were conquering the world. Greece gained an infusion of fresh recipes from Armenia, shaping the Greek cuisine we know today, but traditional Greek dishes also gained worldwide currency, especially their ancient masterpiece of stuffed grape leaves — now best known by the Turkish word dolma.

One end result of all this conquest was the settling of a huge Armenian population in the city of Izmir, which became the “cuisine capital” of Turkey, after a fashion, spreading its culinary influence (at least until the whole Turkish-Armenian thing went horribly tragic, as the empire rotted, but I’m not going to go into that in a restaurant review…).

What other influences did the Turks pick up in their conquests and meld into their own cuisine? Inquiring minds want to know.

When we arrived at Pasha, we found a medium-small room with dark tablecloths, paper napkins, walls painted a light terra cotta and hung with a spare but beautiful collection of Turkish handicrafts. The restaurant is owned by a youngish couple, the husband from Lebanon and the wife from Turkey. Both do some cooking and some serving. But the night we ate there, most of the Turkish dishes — the malatya (Turkish potato salad), the etli borek (meat pie), and the spinach borek — were all unavailable; they just hadn’t been prepared for a midweek night.

We began with the vegetarian meze platter, for which we had the coupon. Everything on it was very pleasant, especially the lively tabouli and the light, faintly smoky baba ghanoush. (A typo on the website spells it “Babagannosh,” which sounds like Turkish/Russian-Yiddish for “Grandpa’s getting a snack.”) None of the appetizers on the platter seems uniquely Turkish, or in any way different from every other meze platter in town.

Be sure to save some of the çaçik (pronounced “jah-jik,” the Turkish version of Greek tzatziki or Indian cucumber raita) and the garlic-yogurt sauce for your main courses, as dips for your grilled meats.

We also ordered the Turkish Shepherd Salad (coban salatasi) — diced tomatoes amended by cukes, scallion, onions, parsley, and bell pepper in a lemon vinaigrette, topped with a light snowfall of feta cheese. The tomatoes are under a lot of pressure to perform in this dish, and sad to say, they didn’t: They were nearly tasteless, hard supermarket-style globe tomatoes, and June is not yet their season. The dressing needed more acidity for “oomph” to compensate for their blandness. “This time of year,” said Marty, “the only tomatoes worth anything are little ones, cherry or grape tomatoes.” “Yeah, even if you leave the regular ones on the counter, they never ripen and sweeten,” added the Lynnester. Oddly, the leftovers of this salad improved greatly during two nights in the fridge, allowing the dressing to soak in and saturate the veggies.

The best of our entrées by far was a Turkish specialty, Ali Nazik. It features small, richly seasoned cubes of charbroiled beef served on a warm bed of tart, creamy patliçan (pronounced “PAHT-lee-jahn”) salad, mashed eggplant mixed with yogurt and plenty of garlic. It comes with grilled tomato and grilled slices of slightly spicy red pepper. It all works together, with a fine contrast between the chewy, salty meat and lush, garlicky eggplant. (The eggplant is also available separately on the meze list.) “I’d come back for this dish,” said Lynne, who lives nearby, and probably will do just that.

Shrimp kebabs came in second. The shrimps were well seasoned if quite salty, and reasonably tender. Like nearly all other entrées, they were accompanied by fluffy basmati rice, pita, hummus (standing in for the baba ghanoush promised on the menu with the seafood dishes), and the fine house salad, a lively mixture of greens, tomatoes, cukes, onions, and (in this plate alone) a few whole basil leaves.

The lamb shish kebab was flavorful with a marinade and charring, but dry and rather tough. It set Marty, Dave, and me to reminiscing about Sayyat Nova, an exquisite Armenian restaurant in Greenwich Village, way back when I was a teen beatnik, thrilled to taste this new cuisine with my dad and stepmom. That restaurant’s rendition had a subtle, garlic-perfused olive-oil marinade for large leg of lamb chunks charred outside but rosy inside.

At Pasha, the chunks are smaller and cooked medium (pinky-brown) inside, and the marinade is more assertive, possibly, judging by the result, including an acidic, tenderizing component like lemon juice. “I think the meat’s been marinated too long,” said Dave. “The texture on the exterior, just under the char, is a bit mealy.” “And the lamb doesn’t have much lamb flavor,” Marty observed. “I don’t know whether that’s because it’s cooked too well done or if the lamb itself is lacking.”

Unable to fulfill our hopes of a borek, we asked the owner whether the gyro meat in the Iskender (doner) kebab plate was house-made or bought. Bought, alas. Instead, the owner persuaded us to try a shawarma. Because this is a newbie restaurant with not much volume yet, the traditional shawarma of a huge hunk of flesh rotating on a vertical spit has proven impractical. “Instead, I cut it in slices, so the delicious marinade goes all through the meat, then I charbroil the slices,” he said. We chose beef shawarma over the alternative chicken breast, which dries out too easily. But the beef proved just as dry. “It’s almost like jerky!” Lynne said. “You can’t even taste the marinade, just the charring,” said Dave. Dipping the slices in çaçik or garlic sauce left over from the appetizer platter helped, but only a little.

There are two desserts. The house-made baklava is flaky and nutty (with both pistachios and walnuts) but sparing on the honey syrup — much less sweet than standard versions. “I like this a lot,” said Lynne. “It’s not overwhelming.” Kunafa is genuinely exotic, a large wedge-shaped pastry with delicate top and bottom crusts of crunchy farina flakes, sandwiching a filling of melted mild cheeses (mozzarella and Jack or Havarti, or another cheese of that ilk). It’s topped with crumbled pistachios, lightly dressed with fragrant rosewater-scented sugar syrup, and is barely sweet at all. It’s like a cheese course and a dessert all in one.

The Turkish coffee was strong and a little bitter, with all the “mud” hiding at the bottom of the cup. It comes unsweetened. We stirred in sugar with our fork handles (no spoons provided — yeah, it’s still a start-up).
Bottom line: Pasha is indeed a bargain. With the coupon for a free appetizer platter, the bill came to $28 per person total, all inclusive. But I feel the restaurant isn’t making the most of its greatest potential strength. Generic Middle Eastern restaurants are a dime a dozen, some cheaper than this and some offering easier parking. In order to compete, the Turkish dishes that distinguish Pasha from the crowd should be available all the time, and I’d also like to see more of them, if the Ali Nazik — outstanding hit of our dinner — is any example. Then there’d be a reason to come back over and over and explore what could be a unique menu. Hey, flaunt it if you’ve got it, baby!
Pasha Mediterranean Cafe & Grill

** (Good)

3614 Fifth Avenue, Hillcrest, 619-294-4444, themediterraneancuisine.com.

HOURS: Tuesday–Sunday 11:00 a.m.–10:00 p.m.

PRICES: Soups and appetizers, $5–$22; salads, $7–$13; sandwiches, $8–9; entrées, $9–$25 (most $13); lunch specials, $6.

CUISINE AND BEVERAGES: Middle Eastern (Lebanese) menu with several Turkish specialties.

PICK HITS: Vegetarian meze platter, ali nazik (Turkish beef cubes over eggplant salad), patliçan salad (eggplant salad, if not ordering ali nazik), shrimp kebabs, baklava.

NEED TO KNOW: Loads for vegans, including three entrées (two always available). Unisex bathroom, marginally handicapped accessible. No alcohol. Halal (Islamic version of kosher) ingredients.

Highy recommended product!

John orders this box of packets of crytals that you put in a glass of water...the flavor is so so yummy (I do love anything citrus, though.) It is great with ice cubes in the tallest galls you can find! So refreshing...and all that vitamin C ! Here is the site:

http://www.luckyvitamin.com/item/itemKey/49639

treat

I need to think of a good name for these. Any ideas? You melt 63% dark chocolate chips...then place tablespoons of this melted chocolate onto a cookie sheet lined with wax paper. Then you place 3 pieces of dried fruit/nuts on each one., so the pieces sink into the chocolate. I used dried fruit and nuts from Costco called Fruit and Nut Medley.
Then put in fridge for it to harden.
The result is a delicate dark chocolate wafer with intense taste of whatever dried fruit and nuts you put on. My favorite is dried pineapple and dried banana and a piece of walnut.

Discovering Coconut Oil !!!!

While we were in Utah, Doug's Aunt Claudia introduced us to Coconut Oil. She made popcorn with coconut oil, using Amish blue popcorn. Eating it was a unique experience....for the popcorn was very slightly infused with a coconut flavor.
She showed us the book, Coconut Cures and I read it through and was amazed. Coconut is the king of foods, plus you can benefit by rubbing it on your skin.

There were many stories in the book about people being cured from certain ailments by eating coconut. John received coconut macaroons for Father's Day (made by Kelsy) and he reported they cured his diarrhea.
I could go on and on, but get the book and read it yourself!
We are converted to it.