Five Guys Wins – Best Burger in America

Today on the Today show, one of my most favorite fast food places was honored with a Zagat’s Best Burger Award. Five Guys has the Best fast food burger in my opinion (read my review here). What do you all think? Best Burger?

As seen on the NBC Today Show and Blog…

According to the latest Fast Food Survey by Zagat, the best burger in America comes from Virginia-based chain Five Guys. But while the regional chain edged out national players in the hamburger category, Dairy Queen rules the Best Milkshakes category, while the best fries still come from McDonald’s.

Check out what else Zagat Rated as Best Fast Food in the complete article.

“Don’t eat any foods you’ve ever seen advertised on television.”

from http://www.thebigmoney.com/blogs/daily-bread/2010/06/18/pollan-forget-about-those-food-rules

Pollan’s New Rule To Ding Big Food

By Dan Mitchell

One of Michael Pollan’s “food rules,” is—or, more accurately, was—to eat only foods that list five or fewer ingredients.

But I came upon a video of a January bookstore appearance in which Pollan says, well, forget that rule. Why? Because of the jiu-jitsu employed by the food industry whenever someone offers sound advice, he says. For instance, Pollan notes the recent introduction of Haagen Dazs Five, which boasts of having just five ingredients in each of its varieties. Well, obviously Pollan’s rule wasn’t meant to encourage anyone to eat ice cream. “It’s still ice cream,” he says. The fact that it only has five ingredients “doesn’t turn it into health food.”

Similarly, he said, Frito-Lay‘s (PEP) Tostitos has started marketing its chips as having just three ingredients: corn, oil, and salt. “This is just another way to sell us more food, as they did with ‘low-fat’ and ‘non-fat.’ ”

Well, yes. He’s right, of course. Recall SnackWells, the cookies marketed by Kraft‘s (KFT) Nabisco as “fat free,” which are loaded with sugar and calories. They exist precisely because of this kind of marketing chicanery. But at the same time, some of us are going to continue to eat junk food. And junk food that contains fewer ingredients is marginally better, generally, than junk foods that contain a bunch. It’s still junk food, of course, but, if nothing else, it at leasttastes better. I recently tried Haagen Dazs Five. It’s good stuff. I think that making junk food a little better for us is, well, a little better. As always, we should limit our intake of junk foods, even those with only a few “natural” ingredients.

(In his talk, Pollan says of Haagen Dazs Five: “You know how many [ingredients] they had before they went to five? Five!” That’s true in a few cases, but not all. Some regular Haagen Dazs flavors contain several more than five ingredients, and some of those even contain the dreaded corn syrup—though not the high-fructose kind.)

His overall message, though, is spot-on. Witness the recent trend of food companies reformulating their snacks and soda pops with “real cane sugar.” This is “brilliant,” Pollan says, because they’ve “constructed an implicit health claim for sugar.” Brilliant, but from a health perspective, it’s total nonsense. Pollan notes, as I have noted many times, that high-fructose corn syrup is no worse for you than sugar. But the food industry has found a way to turn the demonization of HFCS to its own advantage.

Pollan says that in the face of the food industry’s superior fighting skills, he decided it was “hopeless” to try to communicate simple rules for avoiding the terrible foods the industry foists upon us, because it would always find a way to corrupt them. That is, until he thought of a new one: “Don’t eat any foods you’ve ever seen advertised on television.”

Perfect. Because, with just a few exceptions, you never see healthy foods advertised on TV. Lettuce doesn’t have the marketing budget of, say, fruit roll-ups or Hot Pockets.

The complete video of Pollan’s talk is available here.

20 Worst Drinks in America – via Men’s Health

Following up on their “20 Worst Restaurant Foods in America“, Men’s Health recently posted their list of the “20 Worst Drinks in America“. This article is part of their excellent “Eat This, Not That” series and not only gives you the sugar or carbohydrate equivalent to the drink, but also a much better alternative to the offending beverage.

There are plenty of drinks on here that I recognize and lots I don’t. Lots of the comparisons are down right shocking. The winner for the “Worst Drink in America” is…

Cold Stone PB&CImage – Men’s Health

From the article

1. Worst Beverage in America
Cold Stone PB&C (Gotta Have It size, 24 fl oz)
2,010 calories
131 g fat (68 g saturated)
153 g sugars

Sugar Equivalent: 30 Chewy Chips Ahoy Cookies

In terms of saturated fat, drinking this Cold Stone catastrophe is like slurping up 68 strips of bacon. Health experts recommend capping your saturated fat intake at about 20 grams per day, yet this beverage packs more than three times that into a cup the size of a Chipotle burrito. But here’s what’s worse: No regular shake at Cold Stone, no matter what the size, has fewer than 1,000 calories. If you must drink your ice cream, make it one of the creamery’s “Sinless” options. Otherwise you’d better plan on buying some bigger pants on the way home.

Drink This Instead!
Sinless Oh Fudge Shake (Like It size, 16 fl oz)
490 calories
2 g fat (2 g saturated)
44 g sugars

Read the rest of the losers… or winners here.

Essential Kitchen Tools: Microplane Grater

Hey everybody,
I thought I’d pick up where JJ kinda left off.
Today I’m going to discuss one of my all time favorite kitchen tools, the Microplane.

image from Amazon.com
This little tool has an interesting past. It started off basically as a wooden rasp, commonly known as a surform, or surface forming tool, and made from sheet metal that has been chemically etched and each hole has been sharpened. Originally designed to take little shavings off of wood, helping to shape the wood. Then some ingenious cook, in seeing this, bought one and moved it to the kitchen. There it has replaced the fine detail work that was in the past done by first using a clumsy box grater and then finished off with a knife.
I tend to use mine pretty regularly in my household cooking. It is unsurpassed when it comes to zesting citrus fruits. Be it limes, oranges or lemons, the Microplane will shave off the right amount of zest, bringing with it the essential oil and flavors of the fruit and leaving behind the coarse and bitter pith. At work, it makes small work of limes for our Shrimp Mango Salad; zesting oranges for our Orange Rice Pudding; and lemons in this month’s Polenta that is served alongside Ratatouille.
I also love it to shave hard cheeses overtop of pasta. I keep a block of Parmesan in the fridge, and my Microplane goes right through it, adding it’s cheesy goodness to my pasta bowl.

image by tokyofoodcast via flickr.com
Also in a pinch, it makes a great garlic press. I usually choose a large clove, put it on the end of a fork and glide it back and forth over the Microplane’s surface and give it a firm rap over the food getting the garlic.

Care couldn’t be simpler. At work, it goes straight through the dishwasher and meets up with it’s cover to go back into the knife drawer. At home, if I catch myself quick enough, just a rinse under hot water does the trick. It might need a soaking if the cheese or garlic dries on, still easy. Also, store with the guard on. I have nicked myself on it before.

Links:

For more information go to: www.microplane.com
To purchase the Micropalane shown above go to: Microplane Grater/Zester

Wine for vegetarians

I’m not much of a wine enthusiast, primarily because I decided to get educated about coffee instead of it, but lots of white wines are good. For whatever reason, I lack the ability to pair wine with foods, but this article was quite informative:
From the SF Chronicle:

These winemakers love grapes, not meat

Michelle Locke, Special to The Chronicle

Sunday, April 25, 2010

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Brant Ward / The Chronicle

Winemaker Jon Grant, a vegetarian, samples Pinot Noir as he prepares risotto in his St. Helena home.

View Larger Image

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It’s the classic pairing mantra: red with beef, white with chicken or fish. But what if the winemaker is a vegetarian?

As winemaker Thomas Houseman of Anne Amie Vineyards in Carlton, Ore., points out, winemaking is “a pretty carnocentric club.” But he says you don’t have to be a meat-eater to make or enjoy good wine.

“Anything that you can pair with meat, if you think about it stylistically, it’s easy enough to pair with either vegetables or meat alternatives,” says Houseman, a former cook and a vegetarian since high school.

Winemaker Jon Grant stopped eating red meat at age 12 and went vegan 15 years ago. None of which stops him from turning out reds – traditionally paired with hearty meats – as the owner of St. Helena-based Grant Family Wines and as assistant winemaker at Turley Wine Cellars.

“Pinot Noir and mushrooms are a great go-to,” he says. “Wild mushroom risotto with an understated California Pinot Noir can be quite lovely.”

Winemakers differ on how big a role being vegetarian or vegan plays in the cellar. For Grant, being vegan is part of a bigger philosophical approach.

“The interesting thing about this, at least for me, is it’s almost like a lifestyle thing as well. I make my wines naturally. I don’t inoculate, I don’t acidulate and filter and fine (all techniques to manipulate wines). That is an example of the way I go about my life in general, that is minimal impact – just be conscious of where I am and just let things happen more organically.”

Peter Wellington of Wellington Vineyards in Glen Ellen, vegetarian for more than 40 years, sees pros and cons to his diet.

“One advantage, I think, is actually probably a more sensitive palate to more subtle flavors,” he says. “Disadvantages are, it limits making food and wine pairing suggestions. It makes it tougher to make those to the general public.”

Houseman, on the other hand, thinks your palate is affected by the style of food you eat – a lot of spices, for instance – but doesn’t think eating or not eating meat makes much of a difference.

Something all the vintners agree on: Winemaker dinners require careful navigation.

“Pinot Noir is always matched up with either pork or duck,” Houseman says. “There are very few dinners that I go to that don’t have pork or duck in them.”

These dinners are usually long and elaborate; chefs tend to pull out all the tricks in their bag – lots of foie gras and “meat two ways.”

The trick, vegetarian winemakers say, is to ask in advance for a meatless menu and make sure no one at the table feels the slightest bit uncomfortable. Houseman tries to eat “with as little fanfare as possible so that I don’t call attention to myself. Really, I want the wines to show and I want people to have a great time. I don’t want them to go, ‘What are you having?’ ”

Grant feels the same way, although if the interest is friendly he doesn’t mind talking about his choices.

“The last winemaker dinner I did was in Aspen. The people that were sitting immediately around me were actually jealous of the dishes I was getting” – roasted tomato soup, grilled vegetables and a fresh berry dessert.

Twenty years ago, Houseman remembers having to pack his own food for road trips. But these days, more and better vegetarian options abound.

“I love food,” says Grant. “I’ve lost count of how many phenomenal meals I’ve had at the French Laundry.” The Yountville restaurant, possessor of three Michelin stars, will make vegetarian or vegan tasting menus given sufficient advance notice – ideally when the reservation is made.

At Gather in Berkeley, a restaurant that serves vegan entrees as well as meat dishes, chef Sean Baker sees wine-vegetable pairing as challenging, but not impossible.

“I feel like we’re pretty much always able to make a pairing. You can make wines work,” he says. “Does it feel forced sometimes? It could, but there’s always something out there.”

Vegetarian food doesn’t have to mean insipid. “We’ll do stocks where we work on it all day long,” Baker says. “Dried porcinis, roasted mushrooms, all these deep, earthy flavors and we cook it down with lots of merlot, lots of tomato paste. You come up with this stock that pretty much tastes a little bit nicer than a beef stock. Put some morels on that with any kind of nice Barbera.”

As for wine itself, it’s essentially a vegetarian product, although in some cases animal products such as egg whites and gelatin are used to fine the wine, a process that removes sediment.

Houseman fines reds when he thinks it necessary. Grant doesn’t fine wines based on his philosophy of non-interference, although it isn’t a deal-breaker for him when selecting other people’s wines to drink. Wellington’s wines are vegan.

For Grant, being vegan is “more of a philosophy than it is a practice,” he says. “I’m doing what I can because I feel it’s the right thing for me to be doing for me.”

And although they’re in the minority, they do sometimes find kindred spirits.

Wellington recalls going on a wine tour of France in the early 1980s and approaching the issue of dinner with some trepidation considering he was in the land of foie gras and beef daubes.

“Everywhere we went, even the top restaurants, I would tell them, ‘Well, I’m a vegetarian,’ and half the time the response was, ‘Oh, the chef’s a vegetarian, too!’ ” he says. “I gained so much weight. I ate like royalty.”

Pairing without meat

Here are some tips for vegetarian food and wine matching.

– Cooking styles can be a hint. If the traditional pairing is roasted meat, try roasted root vegetables instead. Instead of duck and Pinot Noir, try a platter of oven-roasted root vegetables. A meaty grilled portobello mushroom is another option.

– Winemaker Thomas Houseman likes Pinot Noir with french fries. To go all out, toss the fries with truffle oil, salt and maybe a dusting of fennel pollen.

– Pizza and rustic Tempranillo can be good partners. The same is true of a vegan pizza made with lots of vegetable toppings and soy cheese, says winemaker Jon Grant, a vegan.

– For a challenging pairing like asparagus or artichoke, Grant adds lemon and salt to offset the umami, or savoriness, of the vegetables and bring the flavors into balance.

– When in doubt, try sparkling wine.

- Michelle Locke

Michelle Locke is a freelance writer in Berkeley. E-mail her at wine@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page K – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/25/FDN11COMVJ.DTL&type=wine#ixzz0mQhKYwcH

P.O.V.

Be sure to catch Food, Inc. on PBS tonight!

P.O.V.

“Food, Inc.” Authors Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan offer insight into the food industry in America, including how food is produced.

Soy concerns

From http://gothamist.com/2010/04/13/popular_veggie_burgers_contain_pois.php

This may be less worrisome that what is written, since I’m sure we come into contact with things like this, but I don’t think it does any good to add to the number.

Summertime is around the corner, and many of the city’s vegetarians are gearing up for their rooftop BBQs with their soy burgers and tofu dogs, resting peacefully with the fact that no animals had to die so they could eat. But were other humans harmed in awful factory conditions that exposed them to deadly chemicals? Probably.
A new study shows that a number of popular soy products contain trace amounts of hexane, which listed as a “hazardous air pollutant” by the EPA and is known to cause nervous system failure and skin disorders in humans. It’s unclear how much hexane you need to eat before getting side effects, but do you feel lucky, veggie?

The 37-page report [PDF] says that though the use of hexane is prohibited in “organic” food processing, it’s widely used in the “natural” soy industry, and even by some companies that use the wording “made with organic ingredients.” Mother Jones reports that since many fake meat producers aim to have as little fat as possible in their products, they will soak soybeans in a hexane bath to separate the oil from the protein. One researcher said, “If a non-organic product contains a soy protein isolate, soy protein concentrate, or texturized vegetable protein, you can be pretty sure it was made using soy beans that were made with hexane.”

So what brands out there contain the hazardous chemical? Sadly, most of the good ones. Here’s a little list:

• Amy’s Kitchen
• Boca Burger, conventional
• Franklin Farms
• Garden Burger
• It’s All Good Lightlife
• Morningstar Farms
• President’s Choice
• Taste Above
• Trader Joe’s
• Yves Veggie Cuisine

Below, the safe brands:

Hexane-free brands:

• Boca Burgers “Made with organic soy”
• Helen’s Kitchen
• Morningstar “Made with organic”
• Superburgers by Turtle Island
• Tofurky
• Wildwood

The verdict is out on Whole Foods brands and Silk soymilk, as they did not participate in the project, but the Village Voice has the whole toxic list here. The worst part may be that many popular baby formulas also contain hexane! The report states, “Nearly every major ingredient in conventional soy-based infant formula is hexane extracted.”

This has me curious why Whole Foods so rarely participates in things like this.  This is probably the fifth article I’ve read where they’ve declined to give data.  There was a bit on salmon last year that someone covered where they were acting sketchy, but I’m not locating it right now.

Michael Pollan. Live.

This is the single most amazing opportunity ever.  If you’re in the area and can afford it, I suggest that you make every effort to go.  If you are not in the area, but can still afford it, I suggest you go anyway, since the food at Zingerman’s is the best in all the land, and you can stop by their store and buy everything.  I mean it.  Everything.
If you are not in the area and cannot afford it, I suggest you purchase a false mustache and a monocle and sit toward the back. Just go.

April 11, 2010
6:00 pm	to	8:00 pm

A Fundraiser for the Ann Arbor Local Food Revolution

5:30pm—private reception | 6pm—conversation and book signing

$500 – includes: • Private Reception with Michael Pollan • Conversation & Book Signing • Package of Chris Bedford’s DVD’s & • Pollan’s 3 books.

$150 – includes: Conversation & Book Signing

Join bestselling author and food visionary, Michael Pollan, at Zingerman’s Roadhouse for an intimate conversation about the revolution in food and farming underway in the United States. He will present a unique personal view of the forces behind the current headlines dealing with food and health. Part of the evening’s conversation will be based on questions from the audience.
Proceeds from this fundraiser will support Ann Arbor’s Homegrown Festival and the Edible Avalon Project: a community garden program supporting low income residents in Washtenaw County in growing their own organic food. The event will also support the work of the Center for Economic Security in making “Growing Health,” a film illuminating the connections between healthy living, soil, and reduction in chronic disease.
Chef Alex Young will prepare a delicious selection of appetizers for the reception, using ingredients from his own Cornman Farms.

Reserve your seat

The 40 Deadliest Fast Food Meals—via The Daily Beast

Not everyone can be good and cook at home every single day. Most of us American are working 9-5pm just like me. So an easy way out as far as food is usually fast food. I have nothing against fast food and even consumed them from time to time, but knowing what you are up against and what to pick when you go will at least get you to make a better choices.

The Daily Beast posted “The 40 Deadliest Fast Food Meals online. I thought I would share with you.

From The Daily Beast…

Obama’s just-passed health-care law requires chains to post calorie counts next year. From Big Macs to Taco Bell chalupas, The Daily Beast offers a preview, ranking the unhealthiest items.

Lost in the acrimony of the health-care reform, there was one clause that all sides seem to agree on: Beginning next year, all restaurant chains with more than 20 locations will have to post calorie counts and other similar information.

Click Here to See the Unhealthiest Fast-Food Items in America

Book review: Food Rules, by Michael Pollan

It’s no secret that I’m a major proponent of all things Michael Pollan.  If I were to wake up one day and hear on the news that he had taken over the planet, I would smile and turn over, and go back to sleep, comforted in the knowledge that the bad guys lost, and that everything will be ok.

The trouble with food information is that we have had ideas crammed down our throats and those ideas were all terrible.  We have been taught what not to eat, what foods to avoid, and to throw our hands up in defense to where we indirectly fear food.  There are those who don’t have this fear, but to listen to them requires time, which none of us have, and a willingness to undergo some discomfort, which none of us want to do, as well as a shunning of one’s culture, which is awful.  Michael Pollan manages to strip away all of that, and deliver his message in such a way that you can feel like you will be successful.
This book isn’t about weight loss.  It isn’t a diet.  You needn’t avoid particular items nor ascribe points to the foods you do eat.  But as you read it, you kind of begin to remember that you did actually eat this way once, and it was good.

The best part? There’re only 64 rules.  Things like, #11 Avoid foods you see advertised on television. That makes complete and total sense.  Because if advertising is involved, you can assume that the cost of this food is inflated, and if it isn’t, farmers aren’t getting paid what they should be to produce it.

#19 If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t. Another bit of brilliance.  Do not eat manufactured foods.  You don’t know what is in them, and probably the people who made them don’t really know either.

Nothing in this book is preachy.

Nothing in this book is new, either.  If you’ve read his other books, you already know this stuff.  This book is for the absolute novice who has decided that they want something better for themselves, for their family.
I got it on amazon.com for $5.00  I think that might be cheaper than a McDonalds value meal in downtown Chicago, and this book will change your life.