Friday, August 03, 2012

Batch of links

- For those of you who would like some ideas for quick and easy 3-ingredient recipes that are perfect for summer: here are 53 of them over at Real Simple, from appetizers to desserts. (Readers also submit theirs here.)

- There’s a relatively new movement to get restaurants (or chefs or recipes) SPE-certified. SPE stands for sanitas per escam – health through food. This certification/consultant service is designed to “enhance the nutritional quality of the meals, without compromising the taste”. This means that not only are meals created to have less fat and fewer calories than many of their traditional counterparts, but also that they have conceived to maximize the nutrition you get out of them – like adding vitamin C to help you get more iron out of plant-based foods, such as in a salad of spinach with strawberries. It’s the food equivalent of LEED-certified buildings, basically.

- Five ways to tell if your knives are sharp enough. (Hint: they probably aren’t. I should learn how to sharpen mine properly!)

- Jamie Oliver will be collaborating with Montreal chef Derek Dammann to open a new restaurant, Maison Publique. This makes me much happier than Gordon Ramsay’s ill-fated adventure on Laurier, though I was saddened to learn in the same article that DNA had closed its doors. DNA was a molecular restaurant where I had hoped to go someday, but I guess chef Dammann decided it was time to move on. According to several posts on Chowhound, people who had reservations there were surprised to get a simple phone call or email saying they wouldn’t be honored.

- Excellent article on Steve Ells, founder of Chipotle, in Time magazine (unfortunately, you have to be a subscriber to read the full content). I talked about Chipotle before, calling it ethical fast food – and relatively healthy, to boot. Not to mention delicious! I was most surprised to learn in this article that only about 30% of the chain’s customers know about the ethical side of it, whereas for me, that’s what’s most remarkable about it and that’s the reason I went there in the first place.

- Unfortunately, I don’t have a link to share here, because the LCBO doesn’t have its Food & Drink articles on its website for whatever reason… But the Summer 2012 issue had a really interesting article on citrus. Did you know that there are only three kinds of citrus in the wild? They are citron, pomelo and mandarin (pomelo is apparently so rare that my word processor thinks it’s a typo). I learned that “crossing a pomelo with a mandarin creates an orange. That orange crossed with a citron becomes a lemon. Cross that lemon with a citron, and voilà – a lime.” I always thought that oranges and lemons could grow in the wild, and somehow assumed that the huge pomelo must be a cross. Shows how wrong I was!

- Scientists have isolated a molecule that kills the bacteria that causes tooth decay and cavities; it’s been dubbed Keep 32. They plan to add this molecule to mouthwash and have it on the market in 14 to 18 months. I’ll be first in line to buy it!

- It’s now a proven scientific fact: Pop music really is louder and really does all sound the same, compared to several decades ago. It’s nice to have actual data to support what many have complained about.

- Have you ever wondered how much it would cost to be a superhero? Well, some people actually sat down and did the research. It turns out that it would cost almost $683 million dollars to be Batman (as per the Christopher Nolan films), and a whopping $1,613 billion dollars to be Iron Man (again, as per the movies)! No wonder Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark are multi-millionaires. It would appear that this, along with being an orphan, is a prerequisite to become a superhero (assuming you don’t have any superpowers).

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