Eric Bergen

The rotating plate that became a standard feature on most microwaves some years ago were a great addition. They enable food to be cooked more evenly. The bowls and mugs best for microwaving have handles on them to protect your hands from the freshly heated contents. If you build microwaves please bring these two features together and build a microwave that stops the rotating plate in the same position it started in so hands aren’t burnt trying to rotate the mug to grab the handle.

For those of you that don’t live in the culturally diverse bay area, pho is a Vietnamese soup consisting of rice noodles in a clear broth and various meats. Around here it’s typically eaten with over sized plastic chopsticks. The problem is that wet noodles are very difficult to pick up with plastic chopsticks. The Pho Hoa in Mountain View recently switched from plastic to wooden chopsticks. Hooray! Chopstick challenged patrons like myself can now safely eat pho without risk of a large blob of slippery noodles sliding off the sticks into the bowl blasting them with scalding hot broth.

Next they need to get rid of their $10 minimum Visa charge.

Yahoo lunch subsities are getting better every day. Today we have the option of “$25,000 Beef Chili” for a mere $1.75 for a small $2.25 for a large. I hope it is as good as the name suggests. I will post a review after lunch.

Am I going to try it? Hell no. The full menu entry is “Cock-A-Leekie Soup – Chicken and Leek Soup” Somtimes we get strange items on the lunch menu here at Yahoo! but that one has to be the worst.

First let me start by admitting that I didn’t come up with this idea but I do feel I can expand on the concept a bit.

Most people employ one of the following ways of eating popcorn. The painfully slow one piece at a time method. The hand full in your face, funny sound snarfing method. Bite off all the “fluff” and save the core for later method. The one I used to use, grab a hand full and pick each piece out of my hand with my tongue. All of these methods have one common problem. Fingers touch food so any liquid on the food is transferred to fingers.

There are basically two solutions. First, no butter. Butter is great so I’m going to scratch that off the list. Second use a tool to move the popcorn from the container to your mouth. I’m going to go off topic here for a minute. I’m tired of all the comedians making fun of chop sticks, “I know they’ve seen the spoon. They have shovels.” I’d like to see them eat sushi with a fork. Chopsticks have survived for a reason. They are much better for picking up odd shaped objects than a fork or spoon. Back on topic. Keeping our hands clean requires a tool that can pick up odd sized, odd weighted objects. Popcorn will just fall off a spoon. The ideal tool, CHOPSTICKS! They allow you to move popcorn from the container to your mouth without getting your hands greasy. This leaves them nice and clean to touch other things. Such as your date.

Wait, there’s more. For an even better time try dipping your chopsticks in sticky liquid. Honey, peanut butter, whatever you have around. Then slide them in the popcorn to make something of a popcorn on a stick.

… and everyone is going to be really upset. Especially M&M Mars and their horrible new advertising compaign.

Borange – The same fruit you can get every day from any place that has fruit. Even when you don’t want it (a twist on the side of a breakfast dish).

Add your own…

American cheese pisses me off. How dare it try to take the place of cheddar. Omelettes, breakfast sandwiches. I see this shit cropping up everywhere. American cheese has one place. The grilled cheese sandwich and it’s not all that great there. PLEASE PEOPLE, COMPANIES!! Bring back the cheddar. For me. For everyone.

On a side note, one place where people seem to forget the cheese is salad. A bit-o cheddar shredded with some ranch can really kick up a salad. I will post my famous ranch salad (I even have a classy hard to eat version) recipe one of these days.

Sometimes when deciding what to eat I think about where the food is at that moment that I will consume in the future. The hamburger patty sitting in a box in the freezer at Wendy’s or the sour cream in the caulk gun they use at Taco Bell are all patiently waiting for me to decide their fate. Somewhere there is a cow eating grass that will spend it’s final minutes as a steak on my plate next year. Sometimes I get god like thoughts that I have the power to control what lives and dies but then I realize that if I don’t eat it somebody else will. What will you consume in the future and where is it at right now?

Recently I have been trying to get people from work to go to a near by sushi bar. So far there has only been one taker and he loved it. We have been back since then at his suggestion. The most common reason for not going has been, “I don’t like raw fish.” To which I respond, “Have you ever had it from a sushi bar?” The response is always, “No.”

Sushi does not mean raw fish. It’s a style of cooking that is more centered around rice then fish. My experience has been that the raw to cooked fish dishes is about 50/50. The two sushi bars I have been to clearly mark which items are cooked and which aren’t.

One other common misconception about raw fish is that it smells ‘fishy’. A good sushi bar will never smell fishy. Some dishes such as the american invented ‘California Roll‘ contain no fish.

One of my personal favorites is Nigiri which is a bed of sushi rice covered with a thin slice of raw fish. The main reason I like this so much is because of the little wasabi suprise ball in the center of the rice. This gets the new guys every time. Seymour likes to call these ‘The Snails” because they are slightly curved and salmon has very distinct stripes in the meat making it look like a snail shell.

The whole point behind this rant is, don’t be afraid to try something new. If you don’t like it at least you know. Chances are you will find something you like and be able to enjoy it for many years down the road.

I know this is a little late but it came up in a conversation today.

French as in ‘french fries’ has nothing to do with the culture or people. In cooking ‘to french’ is a verb meaning “to cut into thin strips”.

French:
1. To cut (green beans, for example) into thin strips before cooking.
2. To trim fat or bone from (a chop, for example).

To every small cafe that renamed ‘french fries’ to ‘freedom fries’ thinking the french actually care or you were going to cause world peace. Stop, please. You are embarrassing us.