(Signe Wilkinson via GoComics.com)
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There’s always that one huge container of Well-Intentioned Horror from a dear friend or relative who only meant the very best. In my youth it was anything involving green jello, shredded coconut or miniature marshmallows; today it’s more liable to be a demonstration that producing a low-fat, vegan, gluten-free, no-sodium entree that’s also edible is a task best left to experts…
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some guy
sweet potatoes demand mini marshmallows
eemom
Can someone please explain to me what the “gluten free” thing is all about? I SO don’t get it.
currants
@eemom: Wheat allergies. Celiac disease.
Xecky Gilchrist
producing a low-fat, vegan, gluten-free, no-sodium entree that’s also edible is a task best left to experts…
I managed vegan, low-fat, and edible. Which ain’t bad!
@eemom: I think the gluten-free thing started with celiacs, who have a good medical reason for it, but the wider gluten-free enthusiasm is based on a belief that gluten is bad for everyone. Not sure how much if any medical research backs that up.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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Fortunately, the latest Anything But Liberal movie appears on youtube.
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Xecky Gilchrist
@Xecky Gilchrist: Oh yes, currants’ mention of wheat allergies. That too.
JGabriel
Reminds me of a saying we have in IT: Fast, Cheap, or Quality — Choose Two.
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Gex
That’s why I always bring Gladware full of cash.
JGabriel
@some guy:
No. No they don’t. Someone suspend Some Guy’s sweet potato cooking privileges.
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Steeplejack
Night shift checking in. Got off work early, about 10:15, and because I have a loaner car for a few days I got home about 11:00, after a stop at the grocery to pick up a few victuals.
Store was very busy, but not trampling, pepper-spraying busy. On an “average” (but busy) weekend day we do about $24,000. We did about $43,000 today.
Steep +¼ (just starting fluid replacement therapy)
Steeplejack
@JGabriel:
I had a colleague once who had some really good-looking fake business cards for Select-2 Systems, with the tag line: “On time, on spec and on budget: Select-2.”
Wag
My Neice insisted on making a tofurkey, in addition to the regular turkey. Soilent Green would have been much tastier.
But I guess Soilent Green isn’t vegan, being made from people and all.
And as far as the whole gluten free thing is concerned, yes, a gluten free diet is required IF you have celiac disease, an allergic reaction to gluten, a protein found in grains like wheat and barley. A gluten free diet is difficult to maintain, and you miss out on many of the joys of life such as bread and beer. There is NO EVIDENCE that a gluten free diet makes any difference for people without celiac disease. Those who espouse a gluten free diet for all are falling for the latest dietary fad, and until last year were drinking soy milk but have now discovered the joys of Greek yogurt. Next year something else that will be their fountain of youth.
JGabriel
@eemom:
Celiac Disease and Gluten Sensitivity.
Short version: gluten can cause some people to develop rashes and sores on their skin by stimulating of IGa (Immunoglobin A) production, and it can also causes malnutrition in some people by preventing the gut from properly absorbing nutrition. Another symptom is very pale shit.
So that should explain why some people need a gluten-free diet.
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JGabriel
@Steeplejack: Heh. Like that one.
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JGabriel
@Gex:
I wanna come to the parties you go to.
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some guy
@JGabriel:
of all the dishes we served the traditional sweet potato with marshmallow was the ONLY dish that had no leftovers. ha!
Yutsano
@JGabriel: I’ll have what she’s having. :)
Mnemosyne
I have to admit, I never quite understand the thinking that if some people are allergic or sensitive to a particular food, that means that food is somehow bad for everyone. I have a friend who’s allergic to oatmeal — does that mean it’s poison and everyone should stop eating it despite its health benefits?
robertdsc-PowerBook
LOL.
Enjoying Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer for PS3 tonight.
JGabriel
@some guy:
Do you live in the south, or some equally backward environ like Pennsyltucky or Indiana?
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Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: My dad is allergic to shellfish. Everyone else in the house loves it. Fortunately he likes white fish, so even eating at a seafood place he’s good.
some guy
@JGabriel:
cooking sweet potato with marshmallow as a traditional holiday dish was something I learned from my Irish Catholic grandmother in Boston, but thanks for playing, nimrod.
Gex
@JGabriel: I’d probably rather do holidays with you than with most of my family, so we can probably work this out…
Gravenstone
I particularly like the clowns using “gluten free” as a marketing ploy. Particularly when its being applied to fucking MEAT! It’s a vegetable protein you disingenuous cretins. I’m sure the people who need to avoid it know full fucking well it’s not going to be found in your butcher case. So who exactly are you targeting your lies towards?
Cracked into the Everclear tonight. In need for the sort of high impact mood adjustment that only comes with ear splitting metal backed by high octane booze. /skoal
Mack Lyons
@JGabriel: Thanks. I had little idea of what the whole gluten-free diet thing was about until now.
Villago Delenda Est
The “gluten free” thing has become a marketing tool to play to people who don’t have the medical condition who are worried about…something.
Remember back in the 80’s when they changed the name of Sugar Frosted Flakes to just Frosted Flakes? Taking “sugar” out of the name improved the nutritional value of that cereal 100%!
/rolls eyes
Steeplejack
@JGabriel:
Yeah, good times. We had a running joke in our mini-department whenever we got an impossible or doomed-to-fail project: “Oh, we’re going to have to outsource this to Select-2.”
Or someone would just come by your desk and drop off some stuff with the comment: “I’ve got a Select-2 project for you.”
It never happened, but I was always waiting for the glorious day when some pointy-haired manager would say in a meeting, “These Select-2 guys are doing some really good work for us!”
Yutsano
So remember that whole discussion about Star Trek technology and how it expanded the art of the possible? Welcome to the next step in replication.
some guy
@Villago Delenda Est:
They’re Greeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!
JGabriel
@some guy:
My Irish Catholic grandmother in Pennsyltucky cooked it too. I thought it was a rural thing. My bad.
Though I still think adding candy to sweet potatoes is unnecessarily disrespectful to a dignified root vegetable who never asked to be gussied up in a frothy, spongy, confection.
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Jebediah
@JGabriel:
I recall Keith Bontrager’s version, regarding bicycle parts: light, strong, cheap – pick two.
Alison
@Villago Delenda Est: What drives me mad about it is that those people who do the gluten-free thing for woo-woo bullshit reasons make it harder on folks who actually have Celiac or whatnot and really do need to avoid gluten. Friend of a friend is in that category, and she basically has to have a damn note from her doctor in order to keep people from rolling their eyes and serving her whatever anyway. When it became a trendy diet, it became a target for scorn, and real sufferers get caught up in the pushback.
FlipYrWhig
My brother, who is politically way, way to the left, and organizes and occupies and generally raises a ruckus in ways I’ll never attempt, is also super way anti-gluten. I can only associate anti-gluten and anti-capitalism now.
FlipYrWhig
OT: I’ve been using an iPad to comment just now–no Reply link. Any workaround for that?
some guy
sweet potato works well as a fry, even better grilled, goes well with pecans when mashed, but one can’t beat the marshmallow. we wimped out and used the mini’s, whereas traditionalists demand Fluff, and lots of it.
Anne Laurie
@some guy:
My Irish Catholic grandmother was in NYC, and used shredded coconut and Karo syrup as well as mini-marshmallows in her “famous” sweet potatoes (which she called “yams”). One year my dad decided to commit a science experiment by allowing the leftovers to sit in the back of the frig until it was time for the pre-Xmas cleanout; the container remained untouched even by the one kid we called Pigman for his omnivorous, undiscerning tastes, and remained “fresh” — no more or less glisteningly glutinous — as a Twinkie.
When I left home, kind friends introduced me to sweet potatoes roasted with salt & garlic. They’ll never be my favorite vegetable, but at least they’re edible.
burnspbesq
@JGabriel:
This. There is no food that can’t be ruined by proximity to marshmallows.
MikeJ
@FlipYrWhig:
They both hate bread, dig?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@JGabriel: On the soapmaking forum I frequent, we had a thread go for about 7 pages before its originator deigned to climb down from her marshmallow cross – it hurt her feelings that her family wanted the candied sweet potatoes because “i’m a fucking fabulous cook and i make kickass sweet potatoes without marhsmallows.” She got good and shirty with some of us who pointed out that holidays with families are finite…
burnspbesq
@FlipYrWhig:
It’s hiding. Click on “link” and it will appear.
some guy
@Anne Laurie:
acquired tastes are the best tastes
Don K
@JGabriel:
I’m guessing marshmallows on top of sweet potatoes is one of those things that was popularized through some 50’s cookbooks or recipes in some women’s magazine or other, because I remember it with horror from Presbyterian Church potluck dinners in South Jersey in the 60’s.
If you like sweet potatoes with marshmallows, then fsm bless you, but I find sweets mashed with butter, salt, pepper, and cinnamon to be just fine. Perfect is baked sweet potatoes (in the jacket) with just butter, salt, and pepper.
Oh, and they also make a wonderful cream soup (similar to carrots or winter squash).
Anoniminous
Some people are allergic to gluten. It’s a screw-up in their biochemistry.
Some people are allergic to rational thought. This stem from refusal to use that thing behind their eyes and between ears from anything other than keeping their head from imploding. To cure this I suggest a concentrated effort to distribute a new meme: The Jumping Off Tall Buildings Diet.
JGabriel
@Don K: Dried cranberries in mashed sweet potatoes aren’t bad either, maybe a little funny looking — like those lonely raisins in tapioca — but tasty nonetheless.
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some guy
well we bake them straight at least once a week, and the kids eat em up just fine. mashed with pecans is another favorite around here. adding marshmallows to make candied yams (my Nana called them that, too) is one of those holiday things you either get, or you don’t.
acquiring tastes. Allahu Ahkbar for plenty.
FlipYrWhig
@burnspbesq: Eureka! Many thx!
some guy
But what about the candied sweet potato (aka candied yams)?
Without a doubt, by 1880 Americans were enjoying some sort of variation of candied sweet potatoes. American cookbooks, such as the widely published 1893 Boston Cooking School Cookbook by Fannie Farmer featured a recipe for glazed sweet potatoes. Likewise, in 1896 Texas Farm and Ranch published Sweet Potato Culture for Proftt: A Full Account of the Origin,History and Botanical Characteristics of Sweet Potato , which included a recipe for glazed sweet potatoes.
Around the same time, George Washington Carver compiled more than a hundred recipes for the vegetable. Carver’s recipes no. 9 and 10 discuss two different ways to make glacé sweet potatoes (glacé often refers to something that is sugared or candied). By the 1910’s candied sweet potato recipes were wide-ranging in the United States, appearing in Martha McCulloch-Williams 1919 Dishes from the Old South and Florence Greenbaum’s 1919 International Jewish Cookbook.
burnspbesq
It’s hard to imagine that there could be an uglier basketball game played this year than today’s abomination between Harvard and Florida State. Harvard shot 27 percent from the field, committed 17 turnovers, and won.
some guy
What about the marshmallows?
Early sweet potato pudding recipes, such as the one found in the first American cookbook,American Cookery(1789) by Amelia Simmons features a recipe for potato pudding** that is similar in to our contemporary recipe for candied sweet potato with marshmallows. It includes mashed sweet potatoes, milk, nutmeg, and egg whites. Eliza Leslie’s 1840 Directions for Cookery also gives instructions for a sweet potato pudding, calling for mashed sweet potatoes and milk, topped with egg whites, and baked in the oven.
One of the earliest published recipes that uses marshmallows was in a 1919 booklet from the Barrett Company on Sweet Potato and Yams , which suggests adding marshmallows to candied yams.** A decade later, Ida C. Bailey Allen’s Vital Vegetables (1928) gives readers a browned sweet potatoes with marshmallows recipe.
burnspbesq
@some guy:
Both of my grandmothers thought that brown sugar was the answer to every culinary question, and they certainly didn’t skimp on it where sweet potatoes were concerned.
some guy
1789. doesn’t get much more traditional than that, outside of cranberry and turkey
Gretchen
We did our first gluten-free Thanksgiving due to a daughter’s recent celiac diagnosis. Gluten-free green bean casserole and stuffing were pretty much a failure. The rest of it not too bad.
burnspbesq
Listening to a very interesting recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, by the Minnesota Orchestra conducted by Osmo Vanska. Modern instruments, but an orchestra and chorus stripped down to the size that would have been customary in Beethoven’s time. A really refreshing alternative to the big, bombastic von Karajan recording from the 1960s. Like it.
Lol
Dated a girl who had a slew of allergies, including gluten and shellfish. She consequently was fairly blunt and high maintenance, which was a shame because there was otherwise a lot to like.
Anoniminous
@burnspbesq:
Have you heard this performance of Debussy’s L’après-midi d’un faune by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski?
Part One
Part Two
Steeplejack
@burnspbesq:
I will check it out.
Listening to Oliver Nelson now, prompted by your mention last night.
burnspbesq
@Anoniminous:
Yup. A classic.
Gretchen
@burnspbesq: Thank you. I’ve been wondering that too.
burnspbesq
If you want to hear some amazing playing by musicians who seem like they are barely out of diapers, go to youtube and search on “Mark O’Connor berklee.” You’ll find a series of clips from a concert he did with Berklee students, including Julian Lage (who is now part of Gary Burton’s working band) and Sierra Hull (who got nominated for two IBMA awards this year). Shockingly good stuff.
Mnemosyne
G says he wants to learn to play the ukelele — should I let him? I think it’s because he has a crush on Amanda Palmer.
(To be clear, G is my 40-year-old husband, so I don’t have a huge veto here, but I do find it cute that he wants one.)
Punchy
Despicable Me followed by Die Hard. Shawshank on after that. I may never go to bed tonite.
Mnemosyne
Um, is ukelele a forbidden word? That’s the only unusual one I can see in my post that’s stuck in moderation.
ETA: Maybe it’s the YouTube link?
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne:
Haven’t seen your comment come out of moderation, but I have on rare occasions had something in the jumbled letters of a YouTube link that FYWP did not like. Never could figure out what the offending letters/words were. But I did narrow it down enough to confirm that whatever FYWP didn’t like was in the YouTube link. Go figure.
Anoniminous
Listening to Basil Poledouris’ music for Les Miserables on YouTube. Marvelous
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack:
It would be funnier if “ukelele” was the forbidden word, but I think you’re right and it’s the YouTube link.
Anyway, G wants to learn to play the ukelele and I’m trying to decide if I should forbid it (as much as one can forbid things with one’s spouse, anyway). I think right now all I’m saying is that he has to learn to play “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” because that would be awesome on the ukelele.
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne:
You’re breaking my pedantic balls here. It’s ukulele.
If G goes down this path, all will be well. Dude has two or three excellent albums.
Prayer. Answered.
Soonergrunt
@Mnemosyne: I just cleared it.
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack:
I started watching that, but the guy singing was too sarcastic (IMO). Personally, I think it’s because G has a crush on Amanda Palmer, but at least he has good taste in women.
(The link that’s stuck in moderation is the better-sounding studio version of the same song.)
ETA: Thanks, SG! It’s a very catchy little anthem.
ETA #2 to fix grammar. Ukulele!
burnspbesq
@Mnemosyne:
Buy him a couple of Jake Shimabukuro records, and tell him he can’t bring his instrument into the house until he can play like that.
Soonergrunt
OK–I feel like a fracking idiot.
I have been saving up and buying components in order that I could play the new Star Wars The Old Republic game when it comes out. I was thrilled to death to get invited into the beta the last two weekends and this weekend.
I was moving my system into a bigger case with better airflow than my heavily modified 7-year-old Antec case, when I plugged the damned ATX 12V connector to the mainboard 90* turned from the correct orientation. I didn’t have any problem getting it in, which I should have, but I didn’t. So I fired it up, and killed the mainboard and power supply.
Ironically enough, I do this stuff for a living.
I don’t need this shit in my life right now. Life is like that, I suppose.
Mnemosyne
@burnspbesq:
He was showing me that guy’s videos on YouTube, so I think he aspires to it. :-)
I suspect the sudden ukulele desire is turning-40 related, but it’s better than buying a sports car, so I think I’m for it.
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne:
Balls. Breakin’ ’em. You ask for “Teen Spirit” on the ukulele, something that must be vanishingly, uh, specific, but then, presented with that, you send it back because the singer’s too “sarcastic.” Justin Bieber on a tuning fork.
Joel
I have much love for my fellow wrong half-jews (per the Mishnah) and appreciate Ryan Braun getting recognition. But Matt Kemp, who is not a butcher in the field, was robbed.
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne:
True dat. Pick your battles.
Steeplejack
@Soonergrunt:
I’ve been there. What’s really bad is when you do it, oh, like now, when you can’t immediately run out to your seedy little PC place to get replacement parts and you just have to sit there and live with the shame.
Drinking helps.
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack:
Well, I kinda found that version earlier but forgot to mention that part.
To make up for it, how about an awesome girl singing “Hey Ya!” with ukulele?
Soonergrunt
@Steeplejack:
Yes. Yes it does.
SG+2
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne:
Great video. I was reading a review of some musician’s memoir recently, and someone was quoted as saying that people will pay to see someone betting on themself, and that’s the basis of a lot of pop/rock fame/charisma.
This girl has that attitude, in a good way.
Steeplejack
Damn, there are a lot of ukulele videos on YouTube. Kind of scary. I’m going to look for tonettes.
ETA: Oh, Lord.
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack:
I told him I had put it to the blog and he said, “Geez, it’s not like I want to learn the accordion.” So there’s that, too.
Since Orla Gartland’s EP is less than $3 on iTunes, I think I may buy it. She’s a talented kid.
MikeJ
@Mnemosyne:
47 year old Eddy Vedder put out an album of uke tunes this year. On a stroll back from the store last week I saw neighborhood kids unloading band equipment into a garage and one of the (16? 17?yo) kids was carrying a uke.
Tell him he should get ahead of the curve for the next big thing and go with a glockenspiel.
Amir Khalid
@burnspbesq:
Hence the famous song lyrics
magurakurin
My sister has wheat allergies, and to several other things as well. She has to avoid gluten. But, she hates it. She wishes nothing more than to be able to eat a real goddamn cookie or a slice of pizza. She wishes every day she didn’t have to eat a gluten free diet, so she damn sure doesn’t try to convince others to join in her suffering. The truth is though, wheat makes here really sick. Sucks to be her in that regard. People who relish in such things and take pride in pleasure in never eating something made from wheat, I imagine it just sucks to be them all the time, in all ways.
ruemara
Am I the only one who prefers a savory sweet potato dish? Last Thanksgiving, i did twice baked ones, baked, scoop out cooked taters, mix with sour cream, garlic and shredded cheese, fill skins and bake again. I liked them.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@JGabriel: That’s not specific to IT, it’s the generic Project Management goal: On schedule, under budget, meeting the specs.
Dunno if I ever hit them all, on my good projects I hit two, and sadly, I’ve hit the trifecta and blown all three on a couple.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@JGabriel: Sweet potatoes demand bourbon. My sister-in-law had a great recipe that involved beaucoup whiskey and brown sugar. There was usually a little left for the cook’s assistant.
suzanne
@MikeJ:
WHAT?! Sweet Jesus. I’m OLD. FourLoko is right.
On a totally unrelated note, I sometimes wonder how and why I ever developed any hobbies apart from masturbating.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Mnemosyne: Watch out, he may get a crush on Victoria Vox.
Who accompanies her ukelele on mouth trumpet and has a kickass cello player backing her up now.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Steeplejack: Awesome. And the guy second from the left has a National Resophonic ukulele for that trashcan tone you can’t get from something as mundane as wood.
Steeplejack
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:
That’s what I’m talking about. National Resophonic for the win.
Going to bed. Suddenly very tired. Snow crash.
PurpleGirl
@JGabriel: We had the same saying in publishing, re proofreading, copyediting and other production-type tasks. You had your choice of any two, but never all three at once. It’s a good saying to live by.
Mnemosyne
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:
Oh, he probably already does. He tends to like cute guitar-playing singer/songwriters, so I’d be surprised if she’s not in his iTunes yet. I know he loves him some Ingrid Michaelson.
nancydarling
@Anne Laurie: @some guy: The only respectable place for a marshmallow is on the end of an unbent coat hanger over a camp fire—you can add graham crackers and hersheys if ‘smores is your thing.
Sweet potatoes should be baked and eaten with butter, salt, and pepper or used in a roasted root vegetable medley where they are tossed with rosemary and garlic infused olive oil before roasting.
WereBear
@Mnemosyne: Ukulele? That’s kind of cute. You could have my guy, who wants a full Moog synthesizer.
As though Inna Gadda da Vida on bagpipe didn’t confuse the cats enough.
What happened with the medical profession and gluten sensitivity is that they used to think it only caused digestive issues. If you didn’t have a digestive issue… that meant you didn’t have a gluten issue.
Now they have accepted that it can cause skin, joint, and nerve reactions… that it can behave like an auto-immune disorder. Without a digestive reaction.
Myself as a case in point: the past couple of years my hands have gotten rather painful with osteoarthritis. I went gluten-free almost a year ago… and they gradually improved to the point where they have almost completely stopped hurting.
I may not like the trade-off; but on those nights when they woke me up at 3 AM and I had to pop more OTC painkillers, I really really wished for some kind of trade-off that would keep me away from inevitable joint damage and the bad health consequences of prescription NSAIDS.
I got one.
JPL
@nancydarling: I agree. Sweet potatoes caramelized in the oven are perfect. One thanksgiving I baked them early and reheated them with a little maple syrup and crushed pecans on the top. That was acceptable but not worth the extra time and effort.
Punchy
Anyone see the latest Obama poutrage? Apparently O didnt specifically thank god in his t-giving day addy, n now yahoo links to an article about how furious his critics are. And you’ll never guess the critics–the Las Vegas paper (obscenely righty), Fox News, and some English cage-liner. Yup, its the new GodGate.
nancydarling
Should be ‘smores ARE your thing. Hope I beat the grammar mavens.
Punchy, I saw that yesterday. It’s all part of the push back on the “war on thanksgiving” whatever that is. One of the things I love about the holiday is it belongs to everybody. You can be religious or not. The xtianists are trying to take it away from us.
JPL
@Punchy: Well at least he had on his flag pin. I thought his message was excellent but unfortunately the haters are going to hate, no matter the day.
DecidedFenceSitter
@magurakurin: They make non-gluten pizza depending on where you are. I’m in Northern Virgina which means there are a lot of yuppie places. It may be worth looking at the upscale places. For example in NC, SC, and VA there’s Brixx Pizza. And I know of another place around, but I can’t remember the name.
Alternately, get her a bread machine for christmas and then buy her some non-wheat/gluten recipe books for making pizza crust in the bread machine. It won’t be perfect, but it is still good.
(How do I know this – one of my closest friends was diagnosed with Celiac’s at the beginning of large arc of popularity almost 6-7 years ago and I love cooking for her. And as far as advertising meat as gluten free, it sounds stupid but I’ve found gluten in the strangest of places.)
It is weird for me to cook for a large group and not be worrying about 3-4 different food allergies all interacting.
Whatsleft
my dear SO made some sweet potato “fries” baked in oven with a Cajun seasoning that was beyond yummy. I know what I’m having for breakfast…
Cat Lady
Husband’s late grandmother used to make a green jello mold but with sour cream, shredded carrots and apples in it each Christmas. Yeah. No. Anyway one Christmas she was passing the plate of it and because her wrist was weak, the plate started to tip and we got to watch in slow motion as the whole green abomination slowly, slowly slowly crashed and burned onto the table. No one really made a move to stop it either, which is why much hilarity ensued. She also made sweet potato glop with mini marshmallows. I blame Betty Crocker.
Sko Hayes
I am here to stand up for people who hate sweet potatoes, and when you add marshmallows, it’s nothing but adding insult to injury.
As for gluten allergies, celiac disease can be debilitating for some people, so food companies making gluten free foods to cater to an ever growing population makes sense from a marketing standpoint.
On the turkey feast front, I had a wonderful Thanksgiving feast but my sister in law spent $4 a pound on an organic 12 lb. turkey, and it got terrible reviews from the family- tough, dry and tasteless. Ouch!
I’ll stick with my Sharia Butterball, thank you.
ThresherK
@Villago Delenda Est: Or Post’s “Super Sugar Crisp” renaming to “Golden Crisp”. That poor bear’s career never recovered. He was practically a modern-day Norma Desmond.
Amir Khalid
@MikeJ:
You mean, like this guy?
jeffreyw
Tired of turkey?
WereBear
Further complicating the gluten sensitivity issue is that the Green Revolution wheat from the 1970’s is a dwarf hybrid with extra chromosomes and built-in herbicides and fungicides. This has almost completely replaced the unchanged-since-Biblical-times wheat the world ate prior to that time.
The plant geneticists involved were trying to increase the yield, especially the protein content, to keep people from starving to death, and in that they succeeded spectacularly.
However, there is some evidence that these same mutations are not settling into the unchanged human genome as smoothly as expected. When you up the protein content, you are also increasing the gluten… the very substance people are sensitive to. And this new wheat has different enzymes, which might interact with our own enzymes in unknown ways.
This is all highly speculative because it has not been studied. It was assumed that if it looked like wheat and baked like wheat our bodies would go, “Yay! Wheat!”
Further implications might not be explored because the Koch brothers’ company supplies some 10 million tons of nitrogen fertilizer products annually. The new dwarf wheat cultivars (from Monsanto) cannot live without these chemically matched fertilizers.
I just find it highly ironic that many people get rightly upset about hormones in milk and antibiotics in chicken and the fact that you can’t know if a food is genetically modified because it’s not allowed to be put on the label. But we are floating in a sea of modern wheat; the most heavily genetically modified substance ever created…
And people who explore the possibilities that this enormous, world-wide, “Frankengrain” experiment might have unknown implications are considered “faddish health cranks.”
gelfling545
@eemom: Generally an inability to digest wheat, oats, rye & barley that is a part of Celiac disease.
harlana
I had a sucky Thanksgiving, so THIS!
(somebody’s gotta suffer)
Barry
@Gravenstone:
“I particularly like the clowns using “gluten free” as a marketing ploy. Particularly when its being applied to fucking MEAT! It’s a vegetable protein you disingenuous cretins. I’m sure the people who need to avoid it know full fucking well it’s not going to be found in your butcher case. So who exactly are you targeting your lies towards?”
Years ago, I noticed the additional tag ‘A Fat-Free Food!’ on a bag of jelly beans.
On a serious note, unless this is a straight and simple cut of meat, there could be wheat in the whatever liquid they pack things in.
Scuffletuffle
If you’re having mashed sweet potato for Xmas, try adding a little peppermint extract with the butter when mashing. Out of this world delicious, as I discovered by accident. (Peppermint extract spilled onto butter dish.)
Serendipitous!
Barry
@Villago Delenda Est:
“The “gluten free” thing has become a marketing tool to play to people who don’t have the medical condition who are worried about…something.”
As somebody with celiac disease, it’s one marketing ploy I’m loving the heck out of.
Barry
@JGabriel: “Though I still think adding candy to sweet potatoes is unnecessarily disrespectful to a dignified root vegetable who never asked to be gussied up in a frothy, spongy, confection.”
So there’s now sweet potato Santorum?
Barry
@burnspbesq: “It’s hard to imagine that there could be an uglier basketball game played this year than today’s abomination between Harvard and Florida State. Harvard shot 27 percent from the field, committed 17 turnovers, and won.”
Meanwhile, Florida State had to declare bankruptcy after the ‘support staff’ brought down by Harvard removed every valuable thing from campus, including some of the buildings.
Barry
@Gretchen: “We did our first gluten-free Thanksgiving due to a daughter’s recent celiac diagnosis. Gluten-free green bean casserole and stuffing were pretty much a failure. The rest of it not too bad.”
Use a rice and chestnut stuffing. e-mail me at [email protected], with ‘GLUTEN’ in the subject line, and I’ll send you a whole bunch of recipes.
Barry
@magurakurin: [email protected], subject line ‘GLUTEN’. I make a mean pizza.
PIGL
@nancydarling: has the right attitude towards root vegetables. If she shares also my loathing of beets, I will propose matrimony.
Gretchen
We were really happy when we found a good gluten free pizza for my daughter with celiac disease, but then her GI doc said his brother in the restaurant business said they probably use the same pizza cutter for the wheat and the gluten free pizza. He advisid her to be obsessive-compulsive about it, which makes her cry – she loves bread and pasta.
Gretchen
That’s an interesting idea on why gluten-sensitivity seems to be on the upswing. They wouldn’t let anybody study their genetically-modified strains, because if they were studied we might find something wrong with them. So they were just unleashed on the population and now we can see what happens.
PIGL
What is all this angry, twisted get-off-my-lawn-ism? Is anyone forcing you to not eat gluten? If not, the adult thing to do when confronting somone elses’ medical condition or dietary fetish is to be politely supportive and otherwise to ignore it. Not conducting hate-fests in vaguely liberal blogs.
One sees the same childish sense of inchoate violation in guilty meat-eaters, when some passing vegetarian, a stranger to them, reminds them that not everyone eats meat.
Mnemosyne
@PIGL:
It’s a response to the people who self-righteously lecture me when I bring out a sandwich and exclaim, “Don’t you know that gluten is BAD FOR YOU!?”
Of course, I live in Southern California, the land of food cranks, so I suspect I get more of it than people in other areas of the country. There’s nothing like being stuck at a lunch table listening to a strict vegan and a macrobiotic argue about which one of them is going to die first because the other person’s food is poison.
Mnemosyne
@WereBear:
I also wonder, though, if it’s a result of what turned out to be spectacularly bad advice from allergists to make sure kids and pregnant women avoided the major known allergens like peanuts. They’re now attributing the huge explosion in peanut allergies to the fact that they get introduced to a child’s diet so late and that if they hadn’t been so strictly avoided, fewer kids might have developed life-threatening reactions.
So having people without celiac disease or a wheat allergy avoid gluten might actually make them more prone to react to it when they do come in contact with it.
Barry
@Gretchen: “That’s an interesting idea on why gluten-sensitivity seems to be on the upswing. ”
Diagnostic tests have radically improved over the past decade, and awareness has skyrocketed. In my support group, back in the mid-1990’s, times from symptoms to diagnosis were measured in years (single digits if one was lucky). More recently, those times have gone to months (note – for people joining this group).
Ab_Normal
@Barry: Yep, I was dx’d in 2008 after six months of iron-deficiency anemia that didn’t respond to supplementation, and my daughter got her dx in 2009, since her blood test showed she had the genetic markers & elevated ATTG levels. I went online looking for support groups and ran into people who’d been misdiagnosed for YEARS.
We’ve found an excellent GF flour blend that goes 1 to 1 in our existing recipes; only work involved was dialing in the xanthan gum amounts.
I’m hoping there isn’t a huge backlash when the gluten-free fad passes; I like being able to find food at the grocery store without having to shop in the sensitive new-age fluffy-bunny organic section. ;)
nancydarling
@PIGL: Sorry but I love the earthy taste of beets seasoned with butter, salt and pepper. Have you tried them pickled? I make mine with honey, vinegar, cloves and cinnamon sticks. They are yummy. You can eat the leaves too. Cook them just like chard or spinach.
Chris Grrr™
That opening sentence is pure magic, Anne.
Tnx.
JGabriel
@Barry: Sigh. We’ll never be able to use the word “frothy” innocently again.
.
Cassidy
I never feel guilty for eating meat. I only feel guilty if the chunk of bloody beef is so big that I have to order two beers to make it go down right.
Barry
@Ab_Normal: From what I’ve heard each launch of GF products has been wildly successful, across many companies. It’ll be around for a while, even if it subsides a bit.