My name is Rick Bradley and here I intend to share some of the recipes that have worked for me, resources I've found, sites that have inspired or interested me, and other food related 'stuff' as I come across it.

A brief resume can be found here.

I currently have the privilege of supplying the board and various committees of our local United Way with sustenance and enjoy taking my turn instructing the "What's for Dinner" classes at the Chatham and Sarnia RCSS Cooking School

"Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who is not hungry gets the best of the argument."
Richard Whately (1787-1863)

Alfred P. Knopf has invited a cross section of people to participate in a celebration of Julia Child, to mark what would have been her 100th birthday. The select few (many?) are all publishing online and will be trying out a new JC recipe each week till the happy day in August. I mention it here because a few days after the selected people get the recipe it will be shared on the JC100 page on facebook http://www.facebook.com/JuliaChild?ref=ts so that we mere mortals may also join in the celebration (and perhaps be tempted to purchase a cookbook?).

Government cutting 100 food-safety inspectors The witless wonders at the helm in Ottawa seem determined to gut what few protections consumers have. This story is old news (a month old anyway) but put into perspective by these two postings on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency site. Food Safety Investigation - E. coli in certain ground beef products and List of Affected Products for Certain Ground Beef Products Produced at Establishments 761 and 530
Might just be time to dig out that old meat grinder and find a local farmer with a cow except of course the idiots in Toronto are trying to put a stop to that too.

Dr. Terry Wahls learned how to properly fuel her body. Using the lessons she learned at the subcellular level, she used diet to cure her MS and get out of her wheelchair. She tells her own story here.
For a little more detail on why we should be eating leafy greens, sulphur rich vegetables, and brightly coloured fruits and vegetables.

The Organization for an International Geographical Indications Network - oriGIn - is a not-for-profit NGO based in Geneva. Established in 2003 in response to the increasing phenomenon of Geographical Indications (GIs) abuse, oriGIn represents today some 350 associations of producers from some 40 countries (including Canada’s own Conseil des appellations réservées et des termes valorisants).

Like many, probably most, others when I had a dish that called for boneless, skinless chicken I went to the store and bought it. No questions asked. I certainly adjusted the weeks menu if it went on sale.

Then one day I needed to make supper for a whole gang. I got to the store running late and lo and behold, nary a skinless, boneless breast to be found. With no time to change plans and bemoaning my fate, I grabbed a few club packs of split breasts and tore off home.

Still sure that I was in the grips of a merciless fate I started into the extra task of boning the chicken. After the first one it was clear that dinner was going to be late. I said a few bad words and began to reconsider the reasoning that made up my choice of stores.

A couple of breasts later and I began to get the hang of it. By the time I worked through that pile of chicken I was down to just a bit more than 2 minutes each. Hmm. That wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Enough rumination however as dinner was still going to be a rush.

The next day I still had a tray full of chicken scraps in a milk bag in the fridge. Some of those (the first few) had quite a bit of meat on them and a stock was the obvious use. By the end of the day I had several litres of stock (1L milk boxes make excellent freezer containers) and a curiosity about the cost of the whole process.

In a not terribly scientific experiment I purchased a club pack of split chicken breasts, timed the deboning process, and weighed the results. There were four breast halves which took an average of 3 minutes to trim and debone (this package may have been produced by trainees on the night shift judging by the scrap). The results are shown in the following table. The cost of boneless skinless breasts was $10.54/Kg or about seventy percent of the store price.

regular club pack bone in skin on RCSS
	Weight			effective	cost of	Time
	whole	deboned	% waste	$/Kg	scrap
1	398	270	32.2%	$9.67	$0.84	3
2	391	207	47.1%	$12.39	$1.21	3
3	356	236	33.7%	$9.90	$0.79	3
4	271	168	38.0%	$10.58	$0.68	3
Avg	354	220.25	37.8%	$10.54	$0.88	3
Total	1416	881	37.8%	$10.54	$3.51	12

Saving money for a few minutes of work (it works out to 8.5 min/Kg or $34.47/hr) always makes me happy and I ended up with 535 grams of scraps to boot. A bit of onion, carrot, celery, peppercorns, and water and now I have a couple of litres of rich stock. Another $4 in my pocket to add to the $4.29 that I saved already.

One fine day (when a package hits the quick sale table) I'll repeat the experiment on one of the premium brands. I suspect there will be less scrap so less of an advantage but we'll see.

In the meantime sharpen that boning knife.

This was last year's story and to no one's surprise it's still happening. Basically a large American producer takes slaughterhouse scraps and "liquefies the trimmings and uses a spinning centrifuge to separate the sinews and fats from the meat, leaving a mash that has been described as 'pink slime,' which is then frozen into small squares and sold as a low-cost additive to hamburger". But when it was tested "the tests came back showing that the slime was rampant with harmful bacteria" so they treated it with ammonia! Yummy!
But it gets worse. Seems the ammonia made it taste funny (ya think??) so they started using weaker solutions which don't kill all of the nasties. Then the USDA allows them to call the ammonia a "processing ingredient" and exempted the slime from normal testing. TLC story or Google 'pink slime in meat' for 7 million other stories.
This just in - and I wish it were hard to believe
March 19, 2012 USDA Gives Schools the Option to Buy Beef Without "Pink Slime" only after 7 million pounds of the crap has already been purchased for school lunches this year alone. story
Now I'm sure that you'll all be pleased to know that MacDonalds is no longer using 'pink slime' as of February 2012 but the kicker is that they quit using it because they couldn't get enough to feed the whole world. Don't you just love corporate ethics? ABC story
These fillers are banned in the civilized world but just be careful the next time you pick up a package of ground beef. The CFIA is none too fussy about what it lets in the door and it seems that our supermarkets don't much care either.

The winter Insider's Report had the usual parade of boxed and packaged goodies to tempt the time deprived shopper over the holiday season. Tucked away on the second last page was the gem that made perusing the flyer worth the effort. BACON MARMALADE.
I'd heard about the product from Skillet Street Food in Seattle and tried a recipe by Not Quite Nigella which was good but just needed a little something extra so I was quite pleased to see that the President had taken up the gauntlet.
I found the jar last week, resplendent in its black label, trumpeting 'MADE WITH BALSAMIC VINEGAR OF MODENA' over a montage of foodstuffs. I hurried home with my treasure, abandoned the box of groceries at the door, and rushed into the kitchen to find a roll or a cracker.
I spread a generous dollop on a bit of bread and prepared to savour the treat.
I was flabbergasted. All I could taste was ORANGE!!! It wasn't bacon marmalade. It was orange marmalade with a bit of bacon, damn little at that as it's seventh on the ingredient list.
It boggles the mind how the President can give us such fine products as Memories of Lyons (unfortunately discontinued AGAIN) and 4 Peppercorn Steak Spice then turn around and try to palm this off as Bacon Marmalade. Shabby!

Second Opinion:
It seems that my disappointment in this product may not be as common as I would have expected. I shared the product with the participants in this weeks 'What's for Dinner' and several of them found it to be satisfactory (though I did not see anyone accept the proffered bottle).

Update:
I made a batch of jam this week and am quite pleased with the result. It has a distinct taste of onion as the caramelised onions provide most of the sweetness. The recipe is posted here.

If you're a follower of the Food Network (Canada) or have shopped in any Loblaws outlet in the last 2 months then you'll be at least peripherally aware of the contest that the title refers to (http://www.recipestoriches.ca). I had the opportunity to taste most of the products and my brief comments follow.
The winning products which made it into the store were:

• Sweet Puddings and Pies - Luscious Lemon Pudding ~ Way too sweet for me but then I like my lemon concoctions to be TART.
• Cakes - Multi-Layered Peach Cake ~ I was pleasantly surprised by this one as it was not cloyingly sweet. I actually bought one of these.
• Appetizers - Grilled Chicken Skewers ~ I like hot food but this was just hot with not much flavour.
• Savoury Pies - Bannock Hazelnut Pie ~ I've a nut allergy so I passed on this one.
• Sweet and Savoury Snacks - Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies ~ Bleh. This was so bland. I can't imagine how it won.
• Frozen Treats - Kulfi Karma ~ Now this one was interesting. Ice cream with Indian flavours, notably cardamom, which made for a very refreshing taste.
• Entrees - Pulled Pork ~ Another product that was way too sweet. I suppose it could be corrected but if you're going to start that then just make your own.

I'll be surprised if all of these products don't end up on the quick sale table.
ps. All of the products have artsy names and packages but as they didn't see fit to put those on the website I've just given you the original recipe names.

In honor of Thanksgiving, the Food Network et al are kicking off the first annual Communal Table on Food Network, an event that we opened up to the entire food community. The response was outstanding — it blew us away. Experts from the industry were excited to “pull up a chair” to our table and offer readers their favorite recipes for appetizers, sides, salads, breads, mains, desserts and cocktails.

The typical fast-food burger is made with slaughterhouse trimmings, fatty cuts of beef typically reserved for pet food and cooking oil. What's more, these burgers contain pieces of hundreds, potentially even thousands, of different cows. This creates an environment where bacteria thrive, so to clean the meat, the USDA allows a company called Beef Products to pipe the raw beef through pipes and expose it to ammonia gas. Never mind that ammonia is a poison or that evidence suggests the process may not be fully effective. The USDA deems it safe enough, and it allows the meat to be sold without any indication that it received the gas treatment.
From Men's Health - 20 Scariest Food Facts

Corn in the US (and we follow right along behind them) has an amazingly high glycemic index. Our sweet corn hybrids score a 60 on the Glycemic Index. Compare that to Italian Ice cream; the really good stuff, vanilla flavored. That ice cream only scores a 57. Our sweet corn is sweeter than some ice creams.
Do another comparison. Sweet corn from New Zealand only scores a 37. Their corn 37. Our corn 60. Like I said, they don't call it sweet corn for nothing.
One hint for eating sweet corn. Drench it in butter. When you have a food that has a high glycemic uptake and you balance that off it won't hit your system so harshly. So the butter will make the corn easier on your system. Never thought someone would tell you the butter is the good thing for you, did you? Excerpt from http://www.arcamax.com/recipes/zola/s-936690
For more (a LOT more) information on the GI Revised International Table of Glycemic Index (GI) and Glycemic Load (GL) Values—2008

One of the little things in life that bothers me WAY more than it ought to is food that is consistently given the wrong name. The two which come immediately to mind are yam/sweet potato and fennel/anise.
Sweet Potato	Yam
The sweet potato has yellow or orange flesh, and its thin skin may either be white, yellow, orange, red or purple. Sometimes this root vegetable will be shaped like a potato, being short and blocky with rounded ends, while other times it will be longer with tapered ends. A big sweet potato weighs 1 pound	There are approximately 200 different varieties of yams with flesh colors varying from white to ivory to yellow to purple while their thick skin comes in white, pink or brownish-black. Their shape is long and cylindrical while their exterior texture is rough and scaly. Wild yams have been recorded to weigh up to 130 pounds
There must be an excuse for this one but I can't imagine what it might be! They aren't even close.
Fennel (really Florence Fennel)	Anise
Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) is a perennial herb. It is erect, glaucous green, and grows to heights of up to 2.5 m, with hollow stems. The leaves grow up to 40 cm long; they are finely dissected, with the ultimate segments filiform (threadlike), about 0.5 mm wide. The flowers are produced in terminal compound umbels 5–15 cm wide, each umbel section having 20–50 tiny yellow flowers on short pedicels. The fruit is a dry seed from 4–10 mm long, half as wide or less, and grooved. Fennels aniseed flavour comes from anethole, an aromatic compound also found in anise and star anise, and its taste and aroma are similar to theirs, though usually not as strong. The Florence fennel (Foeniculum vulgare Azoricum) is a cultivar group with inflated leaf bases which form a bulb-like structure. Their inflated leaf bases are eaten as a vegetable, both raw and cooked. Wikipedia	Anise is a herbaceous annual plant growing to 3 ft (0.91 m) tall. The leaves at the base of the plant are simple, 0.5–2 in (1.3–5.1 cm) long and shallowly lobed, while leaves higher on the stems are feathery pinnate, divided into numerous leaves. The flowers are white, approximately 3 mm diameter, produced in dense umbels. The fruit is an oblong dry schizocarp, 3 – 5 mm long. It is these seed pods that are referred to as "aniseed". Wikipedia
The fennel/anise confusion if not defensible at least has a considerable pedigree. The two plants are of the family Apiaceae, are similar in appearance (at least in the wild), and have been mixed up for hundreds, probably thousands of years in dozens of languages. To add to the confusion when Europeans were introduced to a Chinese dried tree fruit they called it Star Anise because it too contains anethole.

Cilantro is the darling of the SouthWestern set, integral to SouthEast Asian, Mexican, Portuguese and many other cuisines and the bane of our existence to an astounding number of people (estimates range from 12% to 47%, neither of which I'd believe) including the renowned Julia Child. Put in the very simplest of terms, the inclusion of cilantro ruins any dish!
The problem it seems lies in the nose. Those of us who dislike (or hate) the Fetid Barb of Green have certain receptors enabled or overactive while others are disabled or at least of diminished capacity. The culprits in this little drama are unsaturated aldehydes which are present in cilantro and are also byproducts of soap making (see NYTimes article). It seems that those of us who dislike the weed smell these aldehydes to the exclusion of the other smells which lovers of the herb find so attractive. Of course there is a substantial middle ground of those who can tolerate it in small amounts or in certain dishes.
Bottom line? You won't find cilantro in many recipes here.

BERKELEY — In a new study suggesting pesticides may be associated with the health and development of children, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Public Health have found that prenatal exposure to organophosphate pesticides – widely used on food crops – is related to lower intelligence scores at age 7. (read article)

Drug-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus, a bacteria linked to a wide range of human diseases, are present in meat and poultry from U.S. grocery stores at unexpectedly high rates, according to a nationwide study by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen).
Nearly half of the meat and poultry samples -- 47 percent -- were contaminated with S. aureus, and more than half of those bacteria -- 52 percent -- were resistant to at least three classes of antibiotics, according to the study published April 15 in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. (read the article)

A veritable powerhouse of nutritional goodness, the sweet potato is only distantly related to the potato. And don't call it a yam — it’s not even the same species! The sweet potato is a flowering perennial vine in the same family as morning glories, with delicious, starchy, tuberous roots. Read the whole article at Eating Well

Garlic is delicious, but its dragon-breath after effects can last days. New research suggests certain foods may offer a remedy. Studies show that parsley, apples, spinach, basil and other phenolic-rich foods help kick garlic breath. The polyphenols (compounds that act like antioxidants) break down the smelly sulfur compounds in garlic.
http://www.arcamax.com/healthyrecipes/s-792563-166840

The never ending battle to eat better and safer is being actively thwarted by some manufacturers. When you're reading the next label you come across remember that Aspartame is now called AminoSweet and High Fructose Corn Syrup is now called Corn Sugar.

Growing vegetables shouldn't seem exotic. It's straightforward stuff.
As a horticulturist and life-long gardener, Steve Biggs shares practical experience about simple ways to garden. And as a writer and journalist, he gives frank opinions about what you need...and what you don't. You'll find advice served up with a simple, no-nonsense approach.
http://www.the-locavores-garden.com/index.html

Knives are one of, if not the most important tool in the chef's kit. A sharp knife is a thing of beauty while a dull one is a threat to all who use it. I've looked at some of the many resources online and assembled some of the ones that make the most sense to me and put them here

Salt tossed on a grease fire on the stove or in the oven will smother flames. Never use water; it will only spatter the burning grease.
Courtesy of FoodReference.com.

According to studies by the USDA, The amount of alcohol remaining in a cooked dish is:

• Boil liquid, remove from heat - 85%
• Flamed: 75%
• Baked or simmered for 15 minutes - 40%
• Baked or simmered for 30 minutes - 35%
• Baked or simmered for 1 hour - 25%
• Baked or simmered for 1.5 hour - 20%
• Baked or simmered for 2 hours - 10%
• Baked or simmered for 2.5 hours - 5%

<soapbox>Our governments really need to get their shit together if we hope to be able to continue to feed ourselves.
Between the feds letting in tons of American meat without so much as a quick peek to see if it's rotten and the province trying to drive local producers out of business report we'll be lucky to be able to find a local tomato much less afford one.</soapbox>