I've been doing a lot of "spending time outside" in the all-to-brief northern hemisphere summer, so that's why the posting volume has decreased here at the Moldy. Anyway, just to keep you interested, here's some quick looks from around your world.
- The Chinese keep finding new ways to innovate when it comes to food processing.
Baozi are a common snack in China, with an outer skin made from wheat or rice flour and and a filling of sliced pork. Cooked by steaming in immense bamboo baskets, they are similar to but usually much bigger than the dumplings found on dim sum menus familiar to many Americans.
Sound good? Here's what a Beijing TV station found is really being put into your local baozi:
Squares of cardboard picked from the ground are first soaked to a pulp in a plastic basin of caustic soda -- a chemical base commonly used in manufacturing paper and soap -- then chopped into tiny morsels with a cleaver. Fatty pork and powdered seasoning are stirred in.
Maybe this TV coverage will be the modern-day version of
The Jungle?
- How walkable is your house? This Google Maps mashup finds local hardware, grocery, and dry cleaning stores (and parks and libraries...) and plots their distance to your home, scoring neighborhoods from 0-100. My wife and I life in a neighborhood scoring a not-so-great 37, but they probably don't count the 4-block walk to the lake.
- A fat people, we Americans are finally getting pre-packaged foods in non-obese portions. Of course, this lovely pre-packaging also means a lot more garbage. The following may be good advice, but will many people try it?
It's simple and quick to measure out your own serving sized snack packs. Just take a look at the serving size information found on the nutrition label. If a serving is given as a number of pieces (ex. serving size: 20 pieces), count out that many pieces into a graduated measuring cup. Look to see if the number that you've counted comes to 1/4 cup, 1/3 cup, 1/2 cup, etc., and measure that amount for the rest of your servings instead of counting. If the serving size is given as a measurement, then simply measure that amount. If you're fixing a snack to be gobbled up immediately, eat out of a re-usable dish. If the snack is for later or lunch boxes, use a reusable container or a baggie that can be rinsed out for re-use.
1 comment:
The walkable thing is really cool. My house in Lindstrom / North Branch is a "2" (the county park down the road). My fiancee's in NE Mpls is a 57.
We definitely do different activities at each house.
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