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Cooking For Geeks
jsuda writes "You've got to have a lot of confidence and nerve to write and try to sell a nearly 400 page book on cooking to the take-out pizza and cola set. No cookbook is likely to turn many geeks into chefs or take them away from their computer screens. However, even though Cooking for Geeks contains a large number of recipes, it is not a conventional cookbook but a scientific explanation of the how and why of cooking which will certainly appeal to that group, as well as to cooking professionals and intellectually curious others." Read on for the rest of jsuda's review.
Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food
author
Jeff Potter
pages
432
publisher
O'Reilly Media
rating
9/10
reviewer
jsuda
ISBN
0596805888
summary
an excellent and intriguing resource for anyone who wants to experiment with cooking
The author is a geek himself and brings "geek-like" approaches to the subject matter - deep intellectual curiosity, affinity for details, appreciation of problem solving and hacking, scientific method, and a love of technology. What is even better is his filtering of cooking concepts by a computer coder's framework, analogizing recipes to executable code, viewing of ingredients as inputs and as variables, running processes over and over in a logical manner to test and improve outcomes. This is not a mere literary shoe-horning of cooking concepts into a coder's framework but an ingenuous approach to the topics that should loudly resonate with geeks.
The subject matter includes selecting and using kitchen and cooking hardware; prepping inventory; calibrating equipment (especially your oven, using sugar); understanding tastes and smells; the fundamental difference between cooking and baking (and the personality types which gravitate to one form or the other); the importance of gluten and the three major types of leavening (biological, chemical, and mechanical); the types of cooking; using time and temperatures; how to use air as a tool; the chemistry of food combinations; and very thorough and detailed discussions of food handling and safety. The book is organized into seven chapters and includes an appendix dealing with cooking for people with allergies. The recipes are indexed in the front of the book.
The major conventional flavor types of salt, sugar, acids, and alcohol have been supplemented by modern industrial elements - E- Numbered (a Dewey decimal system-like index) additives, colloids, gels, foams, and other yummy things! All are itemized, charted, and explained in the chapter entitled "Playing with Chemistry." A whole chapter (and an interview with mathematician, Douglas Baldwin) is devoted to the latest and greatest food preparation technique - sous vide - cooking food in a temperature-controlled water bath.
Threaded through the sections are short sidebar interviews of mostly computer and techie types who are serious cooks or involved in the food industry. Some of these contributors are Adam Savage (of Myth Busters fame) on scientific technique, Tim O'Reilly (CEO of the book's publisher) on scones and jam, Nathan Myhrvold, on Moderist cuisine, and others. Other interviews deal with taste sensitivities, food mysteries, industrial hardware, pastry chef insights, and many more. There is an insightful section just on knives and how to use and care for them.
Anyone who is interested in cooking will learn from this book. I now pay attention to things I've never heard of before: browning methods like caramelization and the Maillard processes, savory as a major taste, transglutaminase (a.k.a. meat glue), for example. There is stuff I didn't really want to know - "if you've eaten fish you've eaten worms."
Although one of the strengths of the book is the systematic organization, there are useful tips spread throughout. For example, keeping a pizza stone permanently in your oven will help even out heat distribution; storing vegetables correctly requires knowing whether they admit ethylene gas or not (a chart is included); you can test your smell sensitivity profile by using a professional scratch and sniff test kit obtainable from the University of Pennsylvania. Whatever specialized information not contained in the book is referenced to external sources, especially on the Internet.
If all of this is not stimulus enough for the geek crowd, how about learning how you can spectacularly kill yourself cooking with dry ice, liquid nitrogen, blowtorches, and especially an electrocuted hotdog. Cool! This is mad scientist stuff. Engineering-minded types can learn how to make their own ice cream machine from Legos. You'll also learn how NOT to kill your guests with bacteria and other toxins.
The production is nicely done with easily readable text, plentiful drawings and charts, color captions, and many other quality production features. Weights are based in both grams and US volume-based measurements.
You can purchase Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
The subject matter includes selecting and using kitchen and cooking hardware; prepping inventory; calibrating equipment (especially your oven, using sugar); understanding tastes and smells; the fundamental difference between cooking and baking (and the personality types which gravitate to one form or the other); the importance of gluten and the three major types of leavening (biological, chemical, and mechanical); the types of cooking; using time and temperatures; how to use air as a tool; the chemistry of food combinations; and very thorough and detailed discussions of food handling and safety. The book is organized into seven chapters and includes an appendix dealing with cooking for people with allergies. The recipes are indexed in the front of the book.
The major conventional flavor types of salt, sugar, acids, and alcohol have been supplemented by modern industrial elements - E- Numbered (a Dewey decimal system-like index) additives, colloids, gels, foams, and other yummy things! All are itemized, charted, and explained in the chapter entitled "Playing with Chemistry." A whole chapter (and an interview with mathematician, Douglas Baldwin) is devoted to the latest and greatest food preparation technique - sous vide - cooking food in a temperature-controlled water bath.
Threaded through the sections are short sidebar interviews of mostly computer and techie types who are serious cooks or involved in the food industry. Some of these contributors are Adam Savage (of Myth Busters fame) on scientific technique, Tim O'Reilly (CEO of the book's publisher) on scones and jam, Nathan Myhrvold, on Moderist cuisine, and others. Other interviews deal with taste sensitivities, food mysteries, industrial hardware, pastry chef insights, and many more. There is an insightful section just on knives and how to use and care for them.
Anyone who is interested in cooking will learn from this book. I now pay attention to things I've never heard of before: browning methods like caramelization and the Maillard processes, savory as a major taste, transglutaminase (a.k.a. meat glue), for example. There is stuff I didn't really want to know - "if you've eaten fish you've eaten worms."
Although one of the strengths of the book is the systematic organization, there are useful tips spread throughout. For example, keeping a pizza stone permanently in your oven will help even out heat distribution; storing vegetables correctly requires knowing whether they admit ethylene gas or not (a chart is included); you can test your smell sensitivity profile by using a professional scratch and sniff test kit obtainable from the University of Pennsylvania. Whatever specialized information not contained in the book is referenced to external sources, especially on the Internet.
If all of this is not stimulus enough for the geek crowd, how about learning how you can spectacularly kill yourself cooking with dry ice, liquid nitrogen, blowtorches, and especially an electrocuted hotdog. Cool! This is mad scientist stuff. Engineering-minded types can learn how to make their own ice cream machine from Legos. You'll also learn how NOT to kill your guests with bacteria and other toxins.
The production is nicely done with easily readable text, plentiful drawings and charts, color captions, and many other quality production features. Weights are based in both grams and US volume-based measurements.
You can purchase Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
A site in a similar vein.
Does this cook book have the geek staples? Does it have recipes for Mountain Dew and Twinkies?
A geek's four basic food groups:
* Mountain Dew
* Twinkies
* Pizza
* Beer
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
The microwave is usually the optimal algorithm, as it cooks food in logN time.
Alton Brown has been doing this stuff for years. Interesting stuff, in any case.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
Just watch Good Eats with Alton Brown... the biggest geek of us all.
Preparing Scrambled Eggs:
INSERT INTO bowl SELECT * FROM spoon_and_raw_eggs ORDER BY RAND()
Making pulled barbecue from a slow cooked slab of beef:
fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork();
I'm outta material :(
Is it such a stretch that some one who enjoys intellectual pursuits would never laden down their bookshelf or kindle with a copy of the Larousse Gastronomique, or even Joy of Cooking?... Maybe its just me.
-= AC =-
who needs a whole book telling you how to boil Raman Noodles?
Trolling is a art,
It has been my experience that a large larger of geeks enjoying cooking. Cooking itself is rather geeky.
I'm a developer (for 20 years) and I wouldn't so far as to say I love cooking but I enjoy it most of the time and I make almost all of my food from scratch. Really it's the only way to get good tasting healthy food these days.
cooking is. Everything raw, that's the way.
Of-course for a vegetarian it's a much easier proposition.
You can't handle the truth.
I do most of my cooking in the microwave, and I've actually gotten pretty good at it. About the only thing that goes in the conventional oven is frozen pizza, and about the only thing I cook on the stove is hamburgers, french fries, steak, and eggs. Other meats and vegetables go in the microwave. It takes me about ten minutes to cook a good balanced meal - last night I had lemon-pepper pork chops, hominy, lima beans, and a baked potato.
Even chicken can be cooked in the microwave without turning to rubber if you do it right. I've never gotten the hang of frying chicken on the stove.
I'd starve without my microwave.
Free Martian Whores!
If you want to cook food in log time you should use an open fire.
Have you ever looked at the recipes on the back of a box of Saltines crackers? It's stoner food.
Lasagna: Saltines, Velveeta, ketchup.
And I don't even like having to remove the film and stir it halfway through microwaving. Where's *my* book, dammit???
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
if you've eaten Worcestershire sauce then you've eaten fermented anchovies.
if you take premare then your then someone's been taking the piss out of pregnant mares.
I'm not sure where they get all those nitrates from in preservatives, but I should imagine the synthesis is a lot easier than collecting buckets of piss from outside pubs nowadays.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I'll wait for Nathan Myhrvold's "Modernist Cuisine" - http://modernistcuisine.com/
The original release under Kanamit Publishing was titled Cooking 4 Geeks: A Four-Course Experience.
They are just trying to fatten you up.
Most of the geeks I know are also foodies, and a large percentage of them love to cook.
When I grew up my mother had a grueling 12 hours work day. So I had to cook myself if I wanted to have something hot on my plate (yes I am so old my early teen years predate the microwave oven). This drown or swim approach to cooking tought me well and ensured I was always able to whip something up for myself.
Although I am still spending more time on the computer cranking out code than in the kitchen I consider myself something of a foodie now. Bake my own bread, make killer potato pancakes and have pretty much abandoned all precooked frozen food items.
How To Cook For Geeks... How To Cook Forty Geeks... How To Cook For Forty Geeks!
For anyone interested in this sort of book, I'd also recommend Cookwise: The Hows & Whys of Successful Cooking by Shirley O. Corriher. Not nearly as geeky as this book sounds, but it does incorporate a great deal of science into nearly every recipe. And it does it in a way that probably won't scare off non-geeks, either.
I am not a crackpot.
...has been doing the same things for years. The physics of heat transfer, the chemistry of almost everything cooked, bits of biology and botany, a dash of history, etc.
Nice, a scientificly book on food. On the other hand anyone that is interested in quickly preparing a meal does not have to look further to the (by now very old, but venerable) "How to prepare your input" by no-one else than Andrew S. Tanenbaum (aka Andy for students/friends).
www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/home/how_to_prep.ps
Important note: Last time I saw him he still looked healthy to me :)
Art: Julia Child
Science: The Joy of Cooking.
All you need.
Three Squirrels
That's the corollary for this.
I've often thought someone should write a book with this title, since I almost never use anything but a microwave to make breakfast, lunch, and supper. And yes there is a technique to microwave cooking, so you end up with Food rather than a rubbery (or burnt) hunk of matter,
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
My personal favorite of all the introductory cookbooks I have ever seen is, "How to boil water",
( http://www.amazon.com/Boil-Water-Food-Network-Kitchens/dp/0696226863 ). It has labeled pictures of things you might find in a kitchen, so when a recipe says to use a "frying pan", you can go look at the picture and get the right thing out of the cabinet. The first recipe is "coffee". The next chapter is "things you can eat without having to cook them first".
I've worked in IT. I've worked in kitchens.
And I don't get why people need to make them into the same pursuit.
Here are some things I've learned: you check steaks for doneness, not by shoving thermometers into them ... but by touching them and feeling for firmness.
You can tell how hot a pan is by watching how oil moves across its surface.
You can tell how hot a pan is by listening to the patch of food as it sears / sautees / sweats.
At a certain point, you're just collecting more data while losing out on the visceral, five senses appeal of doing something that can be intensely creative.
But maybe it's just me.
You know, since it covered staples like twinkies and deep fried food does that mean this book covers deep fried twinkies?
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
"Anyone who is interested in cooking will learn from this book."
Probably not. I outgrew entry level cookbooks a decade or more ago and purged my cookbook collection of kitsch and crap nearly as long ago.
I also see, that like most cookbooks, it teaches you to cook by time and temperature - which would be great if food were digital and standardized. But food, like much of the rest of the real world, is analog and variable. Real cooks cook with their senses, resorting to instrument only when the senses aren't up to the job.
"Although one of the strengths of the book is the systematic organization, there are useful tips spread throughout. For example, keeping a pizza stone permanently in your oven will help even out heat distribution"
No it doesn't - it minimizes temperature variation. (And actually only does so if the oven is preheated long enough for the stone to fully heat.)
Then again it now seems kind of simple that it's amazing I ever thought it was difficult. (IE thaw, brush oil/butter on both sides, sprinkle both sides with kosher salt and pepper, use pan with either some butter or oil and cook each side for 2 minutes.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
I met this guy at HOPE, and he was actually really interesting. I wish he would up some demos of some of his recipes online. He can make jello shots that you can nail to a wall!! What?!?! The book is actually quite interesting.
Most humans have evolved to have a large section of their digestive systems outside their body.
That section is sometimes called a kitchen.
And this prestomach is why we don't need as huge teeth, jaws or gizzards (plus grit) to eat certain foods, compared to other animals who don't have a prestomach. It also allows us to eat (and live on) a wider variety of foods than we would otherwise - the prestomach can help reduce toxicity, increase palatibility and nutrient uptake.
Because this prestomach is not attached to our body we are more mobile in some ways, and less mobile in other ways.
A human without a prestomach is a bit like a cow with one less stomach. The cow might still survive, but it is less likely to thrive (unless it has access to a special diet).
I guess I have an unbalanced diet for a geek then; since I don't drink beer...
Do not, under any circumstances, ever, use Worcestershire sauce as embalming fluid.
Currently there are a whole bunch of food web sites that are doing things like flavor matching, or other advanced food related search. I have been playing around with Yummly (www.yummly.com) and found that "taste" bars are interesting to play with if you want something like a briskit recipe on the sweeter side (http://www.yummly.com/recipes/#q=brisket&flavor.sweet.min=4&flavor.sweet.max=6).
NOTE: The Most Fundamental Particles in This Product Are Held Together by a "Gluing" Force About Which Little is Curr
Is there an e-edition? I'm not able to find it on Amazon.
And "Cooking for Geeks" should have an e-edition if any cookbook should.
Any geek who aspires to cook good food would do well to read the magazine, Cook's Illustrated and watch the PBS series America's Test Kitchen, that puts out the magazine. This is a nonprofit foundation, the magazine has no ads, like Consumer Reports. They perform scientific experiments on recipes. In a typical article, they will find a classic recipe, analyze the many variations, and explain what commonly goes wrong. They will then attempt to correct the flaws, turning to their food scientists for explanations of things like the Maillard reaction and why adding veal makes a meatloaf jucier (it's the gelatin in veal forming a matrix that keeps water from escaping.) They also perform unbiased reviews of equipment that will let you know, for instance, which cheap nonstick skillet outperforms all the expensive ones.
I've found the scientific approach helpful in my own cooking, not just when recreating the recipes given. Once you know how the Maillard reaction works, for instance, you know why searing meat first and then finishing is not as good as starting at a low temperature and finishing at a high one. Once you understand why Brassicas respond well to a high, dry heat you will never boil brussel sprouts or cauliflower again.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I like to feel my way when cooking and use my senses and instincts. It usually works out well. But a year ago I had to switch from gas to electric. What a pain in the arse. Gas is so adjustable and subtle compared to electric. Even after all of this time, cooking every day I find electric an impediment to the way I have been cooking for years. Maybe in a year or two it will seem natural to me. I do not own or need a microwave but if I had one I would probably put it to use for some basic re-heating or very simple cooking.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
How about just following the recipe?
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Eat Twinkies, Coke and palate-scorching Szechwan food.
So are THOSE recipes in there? I think not!
Note: Honestly, I think we have moved on to Thai and Indian but that may just be regional.
http://www.suslik.org/Humour/Computer/Langs/real_prog2.html
Is there an e-edition? I'm not able to find it on Amazon.
And "Cooking for Geeks" should have an e-edition if any cookbook should.
Not only is there an e-edition, but in true geek fashion, it is DRM-free. You can order it here
When my wife and I first got married, she was an awful cook. I mean, it was really bad, like she was trying to kill me and collect the life insurance. So one night, I analyzed her cooking technique. I discovered that for her, the stove was a boolean device. That is, it was either on (10) or off (0). All those numbers in between 0 and 10 were there for decoration. Luckily my wife was really smart, getting As in organic chemistry for example. So i started speaking a different language.
Cooking is all about heat transfer. Heat will conduct from the outside of food to the inside of food (microwaves aside) at the same rate, depending on the substance. If you turn the heat up, it won't simply cook faster. The outside will burn before enough heat has transferred to the inside. This was enough for her to have an epiphany, suddenly realizing what all those numbers between 0 and 10 were for.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
Following the affiliate link in the review will take you to Amazon. They don't provide a Kindle version. But if you go to O'Reilly's site you can get it in various DRM-free formats for your reader of choice. And yeah, I would prefer the paper version of a cookbook too. I just found it ironic that the only way to get a version for your Kindle was to NOT go to Amazon.
Not so much a sig as a lack of one.
Even simple cooking (spaghetti, pancakes, burgers, et cetera) can save you so much trouble, but I've already figured *that* out
I don't see the need for fancy cooking much like I don't see the need for fancy clothes or something like that.
Nevertheless, the alternative approach described may still interest me.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I was going to go into that -- NPR Science Friday had a segment on this issue about a year ago.
"So long that we've physically adapted to it" is a pretty good indication that humans have been cooking their food for a very long time indeed.
To properly assert one's "geek"ness and intellectual understanding of the subject matter, you must get the definitions right!
"sous vide - cooking food in a temperature-controlled water bath"
Sous-vide is NOT cooking in a water bath but rather cooking in a vacuum enclosed containter often immersed in a water bath.
A bain marie on the other hand, is specifically a method of cooking in a water bath. Often for the preparation of whole poached fish or other foods. :| Far too much time spent watching Alton....
When I was growing up, cooking was "womens' work" -- no self-respecting "man" would cook, certainly not when there was a woman around. Barbequing was not considered "cooking". Professional chefs (generally men) were appreciated for their output, but rarely seen performing their craft and therefore not subject to effeminate ridicule over it.
I cook. I like to cook... mostly because I like to eat and I'll be damned if the lack of a woman to cook for me means I'm condemned to starve or be at the mercy of what fast food I can afford to buy, But, still the questionable "manliness" (or not?) of cooking haunts me to this day, particularly if I produce something "dainty", like a desert. I therefore consider what kind of cooking might be worthy of the "manly" label, and have come up with the following:
1. Crude cooking. You know, barbecuing: meat, raw heat and flame, and an estimate of when it's done.
2. Extreme cooking. Searing a steak on a surface (cast iron pan at red heat), to the point where a drop of rendered fat will flare up. That super spicy chile, or curry.
3. Difficult cooking. A paper-thin omelet rolled around yummy ingredients is damn difficult to pull off. This ain't your moma's "set the eggs, shove on plate, fill, and flip one half over" omelet. Bonus points for flipping the omelet to evenly cook the other side. Practice with flapjacks.
4. Sauces. Hollandaise, Bearnaise, etc. Anything with eggs or butter that mustn't curdle. This is a subset of (4), above. The trouble is, to get it right, you have to coddle the food, and that looks, well, wimpy. It just has to taste soooo good, that people will forgive the wimpy coddling.
5. Expensive. If it has saffron, truffles, or even vanilla, where a screwup will cost much money. It's the financial risk that makes it manly,
6. Alcohol. And flame. I'm not talking about cooking with wine. That's soooo metrosexual. I'm talking cooking with booze and setting things on fire.
7. Deserts. This is tricky. The idea is to come off as the one person who can provide what everyone wants at the end of a meal by giving the impression he pulled off the impossible to make it. Think creme brulee, not "Dunkin Hines". Caramelize the sugar with a damn blow-torch, not a wimpy culinary one that the "girls" use.
8. Physical Effort. So, you wanna make a meringue. Better beat the sh*t out of those egg whites by hand and work up a sweat.
9. Improvisation. Related to (7). Oh no! You are out of butter! No problem, shove a cup of heavy cream in the mixer, whip till it breaks, and strain off the buttermilk. This only works if you can pull off that you averted a major crises with quick thinking.
10. Multitasking. Making more dishes at once to all be ready at the same time than seems possible. Last second special requests while the food is being prepared fall into this category as well.
That actually covers a lot of culinary territory, but do note that baking and simple pasta dishes just don't cut it.
In Liberty, Rene
No matter how many gadgets exist in the kitchen I have always found that the answer is the basic equipment, good knives, good pans and very few other "bits".
Who actually needs an electrical juicer? I used to have one and spent half of my life cleaning the thing, a simple juicer uses some effort in pushing and twisting and a fraction of the time cleaning. Electric whisk, OK nice but DIY burns some of the calories in the whipped cream before you eat it.
Baking is wonderful! It's like science for hungry people!
And cooking is the geekiest of hobbies, if you do it right. My wife and I collect tools. The geekiest? An immersion circulator. This device maintains a water bath at a precise temperature (+/- .1 Celsius). You vacuum seal your food, and cook it in this water bath. It's fascinating, because you have such precise control of temperature. For example: food safety standards were developed to be idiot proof. You cook pork to 160 F because nothing will survive 160 for more than a second or two. However, you can achieve the same effect by taking food to 130 F and leaving it there for two hours. It will still kill everything, and it is still safe to eat, but you haven't affected the proteins in the same way. If you have never had truly medium rare pork, you are really missing out. Plus, it has the added bonus of being impossible to overcook something. Your food will be 130 F now, and hour from now, 10 hours from now. I played with cooking eggs at different temperatures - you get creamy whites, and liquid yolks, then bump the temp two degrees, and the yolks go solid. Much fun. :)
We also invested in a propane wok burner. Commercial ranges don't put out the BTUs you need to do real Chinese cooking, and this thing is 10 times as powerful as our stove. We also have a Zoku Quick Pop - a device that makes popsicles in 10 minutes, on your kitchen table. Why is that important? Because the faster you freeze something, the smaller the ice crystal, and the smoother the texture. This is why those Dipping Dots ice creams are so creamy.
I could go on for a while - I am a geek after all.
Great cooking, like great coding, involves intuition; there's more to it than specs and training.
As in programming, slavishly following a recipe, down to scraping the extra salt off the teaspoon measure, will get you acceptable results. It will only rarely give you spectacular results.
Great cooking involves (1) using the best ingredients, which may mean paying more for them, (2) understanding how the ingredients each cook, how they cook together, and how the flavors combine, and (3) having a reasonable idea of what you want the outcome to be. A recipe can help with this. But if it could substitute for it, then food out of a can would be as great as the real thing. But canned food is like the product of waterfall development, which regards coding as a clerical skill. It may get the job done, but it doesn't inspire.
------
Real men eat anything they like. Including quiche.
Cooking for engineers has quite nicely displayed recipes, and there's a post about classifying baking in terms of wet/dry, butter, and egg content here.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZGgeGHU1Bs
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPiR9VcuVWw
http://books.google.com/books?id=CX8huSU0n8AC
http://www.drfuhrman.com/
http://www.diseaseproof.com/
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/diet-myths-the-food-pyramid-of-the-insane.html
And this site has some great videos to improve your knife skills for using wicked sharp knives to cut up your veggies:
http://www.kitchenonfire.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RhfAE6McrM
And don't forget your vitamin D, which you almost certainly won't get enough of from food:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
More than if I had to microwave myself. It's been a long steady pressure cooking and now at times I actually feel quite tender.
As with regards to taste, my wife assures me I always had exceptional taste.
Eugh. I hope you're joking.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
to instruct a geek how to heat-up a Hot Pocket? there'd better be 399 pages on building a fusion-powered microwave out of a rusted-out ford pinto in there.
For real food geeks the bible is http://www.amazon.co.uk/McGee-Food-Cooking-Encyclopedia-Kitchen/dp/0340831499/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1283989944&sr=8-1 And they will have their eye on htttp://modernistcuisine.com/
Here's a link to this book on eBay - check out the tear on the front cover in the picture and the number of copies for sale - also the very high price. Slashdot as advertising?
sudo mount --milk --sugar
I'm a computer geek. Been so since I got my first C64 ,learned C64 basic on it. I know know more programming languages then I can remember to list. Despite that I'm a chef by profession ,and told by many that I'm a damn good one... so why the Geeks != Chefs bias?
Did you even google it? Here's the book I found on one of the first result pages.. There were some other interesting-sounding pages about microwave cooking too.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0882894560
I have no idea if it's a good book, didn't even read the Amazon reviews.
IMO the ultimate geek book on this topic is On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, by McGee.
Find free books.
Geeks are the guys in the circus sideshow who bite heads off chickens:
geek
S: (n) geek (a carnival performer who does disgusting acts)
S: (n) eccentric, eccentric person, flake, oddball, geek (a person with an unusual or odd personality)
If it's a live chicken, what do you need cooking for?
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Microwaves suck. I just recently bought a combination microwave/convection oven and it's much better than a microwave (although not as fast) and still faster than using the regular gas oven and gets pretty similar results.
fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork();
Jeez, that's 8192 processes (2^13). Are you specializing in parallel cooking algorithms? Do you have a (highly) multicore stove?
Don't geeks learn to cook from comics?
you speak.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
he was.
You can't handle the truth.
You're probably measuring weight, not mass :-) But still, you really measure liquids by weight, not volume? Weird.
And yes, most illegal drugs over here are sold by weight, not volume (except LSD, which is usually blotter paper, and nobody's really sure how big a dose they're selling.) Cannabis is usually sold retail in ounces (1/8 or multiples), as are mushrooms, but wholesale is kilos, and the other drugs are generally in grams.
Most dry cooking spices are sold by weight, but used by volume.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Butter is sold by weight here in the US, normally in 1-pound packages which contain four 1/4-pound sticks, which are 1/2 cup by volume.
In the East, the sticks are usually long and thin, while in the West they're short and fat, so the shapes of the 1-pound packages are different...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks