Friday, May 06, 2016

Batch of links

- I just finished reading Julia Child (and Alex Prud’homme)’s My Life in France, and It is excellent. As it turns out, her old Provence residence, La Pitchoune, can be rented on Airbnb.

- Allrecipes reveals the enormous gap between foodie culture and what America is actually cooking.

- I haven’t seen rhubarb in stores yet, even though it’s already May. As it turns out, farmers in Ontario and Quebec grow forced rhubarb as early as February, and it looks even more delicious than the regular one!

- Here’s a job I didn’t know existed, but I already like: pie consultant!

- It turns out that bleached cake flour really should get a place in my pantry. But only for angel food cake – for the rest, I’m sticking to my white whole wheat flour!

- According to Paula Forbes on Epicurious, Texas’ HEB is the best grocery store chain in America. That’s where we usually shop, and it’s nice and all, but I wouldn’t call it the best in the country. Even though I’ve never set foot in a Wegmans, I’m more inclined to agree with the Micheline Maynard article, also on Epicurious, proclaiming Wegmans as the best chain. I’ll see if I can stop at one on our annual road trip this summer…

- There’s this great Kickstarter project called Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, which has stories about 100 real-life women who broke the rules, “from Elizabeth I to Serena Williams.” Personally, I think this book isn’t just for girls, because it’s important for boys to identify with female protagonists as well. The project is fully funded already (it only took 30 hours), but it’s unclear whether there will be print copies available after the campaign…

- How have I not shared this link yet? Bask in the brilliance of the Nine Inch Nails parody “This Is a Trent Reznor Song". It’s funny because it is so spot-on!

- Medical errors are now the third leading cause of death in the US, behind only heart disease and cancer. Flabbergasting!

4 comments:

malt_soda said...

https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/are-medical-errors-really-the-third-most-common-cause-of-death-in-the-u-s/ Was a good follow-up article

Also, is white whole wheat flour interchangeable with all purpose?

Amélie said...

That IS an interesting follow-up article! I guess the main problem is that we don't really have a good definition of what "death by medical error" entails, much less actual data country-wide.

I use white whole wheat flour instead of all-purpose white flour *almost* all the time. In cakes, cookies, pie dough, pancakes, etc. If you make bread or more delicate pastries, though, I recommend using all-purpose, because otherwise your bread or pastries might turn out too heavy or dense. I also use all-purpose for angel food cake, though now I'm thinking I should use bleached... I just make that so rarely that I don't really want to keep bleached flour on hand (same with cake flour, I usually make my own by adding corn starch to a lesser amount of flour). You can always start using it in something like a chocolate cake, where you likely won't notice any difference, and go from there. Speaking for myself, the extra fiber in there agrees with me better. :)

malt_soda said...

Yeah, I'm toying with the idea of white whole-wheat for the same reason, especially since I've been reading the book I recommended to you by Steve Hodges. I just finished reading the chapter on adding more fibre into your diet. I also dislike having too many different types of flour- I do have cake flour in the house for a recipe I made awhile ago, but generally just use all-purpose. I make muffins a lot so maybe I will invest in a small bag and see if my kids notice...

Amélie said...

I counted recently and I have 6 different types of wheat flour in the pantry, plus all the non-wheat ones... I know I'm supposed to keep that in the freezer, but there's just no room! Anyway, I do think muffins are a good place to start, we expect those to be hearty anyway... Basically, I think you shouldn't expect "fulffy" results, but I'm so used to it that I don't miss it. In Canada, I used to buy Robin Hood's Nutri flour, though here I use King Arthur.
(If a recipe calls for 1 cup all-purpose + 1/2 cup whole wheat, I tend to just use 1 1/2 cups white whole wheat and figure I'm getting roughly the same results.)