How many of you guys here really, really enjoy cooking and planning meals?

[IslandTractor]

Yes the Government LOVES when you look at it this way and how "happy" it makes people feel, BUT if you took that same 44K and purchased Apple stock when it was $24.00 a share you could have purchase 1,833 shares. Today those 1,800 shares would be worth over 1,100,000.00. So now look at it the REAL way. SS prevented you from retiring an ACTUAL MILLIONAIRE, but doles out 16K a year and makes you FEEL LIKE A MILLIONAIRE - see the difference. You would need to live ANOTHER 68 years to collect what you LOST. But don't worry my friend, because the government is happy to give what you lost to our neighboring illegals who never paid a dime into SS and are collecting SS for breaking into this Country. Feel better now.

Great. He could also have bought Enron stock and then he'd be in the poor house.

 

[DFB]

Yellow Heirloom Tomato Bloody Mary
Buy the ugliest yellow tomatoes that you can find late in the day at the farmers market. Once they've been picked over, the farmers generally sell them to you at a lower price.

Grind the tomatoes in a blender with lemon, cayenne, prepared horseradish, grainy mustard and salt, then pour over ice.

Now THAT is a darn good recipe suggestion RobertN and I will have to give one that try...although my heirloom preference does run with those wonderfully rich tasting "black" tomatoes!

 

[TomSeller]

I don't have any expectation of being around 20 years from now, let alone 100...:laughing: How do you propose the world reduce the population growth? Shall be begin by reversing all the advances made in health care that enable people to live much longer lifespans than was formerly the norm? Yes, let's do that rather than have the geezers live past 70 years old...they are such a drain on the health care and Social Security systems.

Countries should start by taxing children. I know this sounds odd, but in the US the concept of tax breaks for children never made sense.

I was going to say forced castration of any male fathering a 3rd child but didn't think that would get anyone's attention.

 

[JDgreen227]

Countries should start by taxing children. I know this sounds odd, but in the US the concept of tax breaks for children never made sense.

Oh come on now, everybody knows that guys like me who have never had kids to feed, clothe, house, and send to college have a LOT more income to spend foolishly than guys with kids do. :laughing:

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Hey...this thread sure has gone off topic....shall I start another one about being lucky to have a secure retirement?

I HAVE NO IDEA WHY THE ORIGINAL THREAD ON THAT TOPIC WAS CLOSED !!!!!

That was a good yummie thread, but looks like some people wanted to spoil it by arguing. Shame a good thread has to go down the drain that way. Now I'm hungering for some more retirement advice. This is about food, right?

 

[RobertN]

Online, this is my favorite site for recipe; I really like cooking in camp Dutch ovens. Have had some epic breakfasts, dinners, and desserts while camping with Boy Scouts, and on personal camp trips. We use them at home too.

Byron's Dutch Oven Recipes

Mmmm Mountain Man Breakfast, Italian sausage with peppers and onion, Cherry Chocolate surprise... to name just a few!

 

[RobertN]

This is a recipe of my Grandmothers, God rest her soul. She learned to cook this on the ranch outside Yankton SD, in a wood fired stove. Funny looking at old recipes and seeing "Oleo" as ingredient.

Grandma’s Peanut Butter Brownies

Ingredients:
Mix in order:
1 cup flour
½ tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. salt
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons milk
½ cup shortening or oleo
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
½ cup dry cocoa
¼ cup peanut butter
1 cup chopped nuts

Mix and bake in a greased 8x8x2 pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes

 

[RobertN]

This rice pudding recipe looks to be worth trying
Rice Pudding | The Pioneer Woman Cooks | Ree Drummond

 

[DFB]

Italian sausage with peppers and onion,

Now you're reading my mind. I just cooked up a big pot of hot sausage and onions in my homemade tomato sauce with some xtra crushed red pepper of course . I add a bit cinnamon (allspice works too) into my sauce for a some xtra sweetness, a little trick I learned from an Greek restaurant owner I used to sell tomatoes too

I usually side with a homemade mac n cheese I do from scratch. Vermont Cheddar cheese and a light cream to make the sauce... just awesome!

 

[OldMcDonald]

How's it different? Selecting genes in a lab or selecting them in a field, its still manipulating one thing to get another thing.

You haver already had a couple of good replies and I hesitate to keep the thread off topic, but "genetic modification" which is what GM stands for, is a completely different thing to cross breeding. GM is manipulating. Having a male and female breeding is not. Nobody can "select" genes in the field. They can in the lab. I do not want to patronise you, and I know from other posts that you are an intelligent person, but you must really get to grips with the difference. Claiming there is none is playing right into the hands of all those who try to maninpulate you.

I eat GM food and feed it to my animals. I have no compunction in doing so.

 

[tcreeley]

Every single living thing on this planet has DNA mutations that were "never part of the original DNA sequence of that species". The whole "FrankenFoods" hysteria is a confabulation of concerns, some real and some just flat out ridiculous. Your great grandparents would think virtually ALL the produce in our supermarkets today was "FrankenFood"! The genetic manipulation of food has been going on for millennia. Have you ever seen what corn looked like when first cultivated? We have Neanderthal DNA in our own bodies. DNA is DNA. It's what the DNA codes for that counts, not where it came from.

....And have those mutations always been benign.... that we should embrace messing with the DNA sequence - then consuming it!

-DNA is DNA -- rather an over simplification.

We are just discovering genotyping.

Altering gene sequences is not an exact, quantifiable science - far from it! We are still unraveling a mystery. This same callous disregard for potential outcomes gave us our toxic chemical outcomes. You'd think we would learn from experience and not have to play catch up again.

Monsanto sees profit and they use hired guns to ensure it.


Look at all of the screwed up DNA gene sequences in humans and the related illnesses and you still think messing with DNA is harmless - if you know what it codes for! Its expression. Well there is the difficulty!

 

[IslandTractor]

....And have those mutations always been benign.... that we should embrace messing with the DNA sequence - then consuming it!

-DNA is DNA -- rather an over simplification.

We are just discovering genotyping.

Altering gene sequences is not an exact, quantifiable science - far from it! We are still unraveling a mystery. This same callous disregard for potential outcomes gave us our toxic chemical outcomes. You'd think we would learn from experience and not have to play catch up again.

Monsanto sees profit and they use hired guns to ensure it.


Look at all of the screwed up DNA gene sequences in humans and the related illnesses and you still think messing with DNA is harmless - if you know what it codes for! Its expression. Well there is the difficulty!

Actually, genetic manipulation of plants, fungi and bacteria is pretty darn precise these days. They don't just generally create mutations and screen for desirable qualities any more. It is perfectly possible and common to identify the exact gene you want in one species and then insert that gene into another. It isn't like building a house but there isn't a whole lot of "luck" involved these days. What takes time is all the testing afterwards.

I also despise Monsanto but there are so many potential uses for GM technology that you cannot just throw the baby out with the bath water. The Frankenfoods hysteria is exactly like the fears people had in the early 1970's when the first bacterial gene splicing projects were proposed. We now have many many important products available to us because of that technology and there hasn't been any "frankenbacteria" that has taken over the world.

 

[DFB]

An alternative product enhancement approach being used today is called tissue culture technology...different than artificial gene splicing it is the breaking down of a plant to the individual cell level, then multiple cells are reproduced, analyzed and then selected for desired traits research hope to achieve.

Cover story on the VGN this month issue

Vegetable Growers News » Magazine » Article »

 

[motownbrowne]

I love cooking. Grew up cooking and worked my first 7 years in kitchens. I cook dinner more than my wife does. She's a good cook, too, though. I get the same joy from cooking implements as other quality tools. I spent years building my collection at antique stores, goodwills, garage sales, etc. I have many nice All-Clad pans, a few Le Creusets, one very nice copper and stainless Mauviel, and many vintage cast iron pans. Also, I have many nice kitchen knives including one custom Japanese knife 11.5" long and razor sharp. It's made of Aogami Super Steel hardened to 61 Rockwell and sharpened with a 22 degree inclusive bevel. I certainly don't need all of these great tools, but they greatly increase the joy I get out of spending time in the kitchen. To that end, I usually bring my own kitchen stuff when I'm going to family gatherings. It's just better that way.

 

[motownbrowne]

Oh, guess I didn't realize that this had turned into a conversation about GMOs. GMOs are bad for the little guy. If they would just label the darned things and let the consumer decide whether or not to eat them we probably wouldn't even need to have this conversation. This is one situation where I'm confident the "invisible hand" of the market would sort things out... If only they'd label them.

 

[dave1949]

The issue I have with GM grains is that their supposed benefits are narrowly evaluated. The implementation of Roundup resistant grains has caused much more herbicide use and more strictly mono-culture fields. Neither of those is a good result. A diverse biome cannot be supported by vast sterile swathes of mono-culture crops.

A weed here and there is not the end of the world and is actually a necessity. As weeds have developed resistance to Roundup, substitute herbicides are being introduced. Is this really a good trade-off? Do the benefits justify the means? I cannot see how they would. Developing nations cannot afford the GM seeds without subsidies and they cannot be saved for planting next years crop. When they can afford them, the result is heavy use of herbicides which will eventually be replaced with other herbicides.

GM wheat is not yet a commercial crop. But look at the history below of heritage wheat grains, and their characteristics of more nutrition and more and distinct flavors, that were set aside for the sake of industrial flour milling years ago. Just like GM seeds, the narrow focus is on cheap production.

About Wheat | Anson Mills - Artisan Mill Goods from Organic Heirloom Grains
Roller milling, which was introduced to America in the early 19th century as a tool of mass production, brought about a revolution that took wheat production away from landrace farming. In New York’s Genesee Valley, farmers and bakers nearly rioted when operators of roller mills refused their wheat. This was the first time the industrialization of wheat met with resistance on a large scale. The uprising was ultimately quelled by military intervention, but American farmers as far away as Kansas continued to resist industrialization well into the 1870s. After that point, most of the landrace wheat production in America simply disappeared because mills would not accept the grain.

Roller milling involves rolling the outer bran layer off the kernel, scalping the germ (where all of the flavor and most of the nutritional oils reside), and then milling the starchy endosperm that remains into flour. The process punishes grains to such a degree that thin-branned kernels of traditional landrace wheats are destroyed by roller mills; only wheat varieties with extraordinarily thick bran layers—many of which are the product of scientific development—can survive the operation. Roller milling creates ultraprocessed, refined flour, drop-dead consistent for baking and totally stable for distribution and storage. In fact, roller-milled flour has itself dropped dead in a way, as it contains no nutrition except carbohydrates and must be fortified with synthetic vitamins to be classified as food.

And along with thick bran comes high tannin concentration. The red landrace varieties used to develop modern wheats derive their color from highly tannic pigment that resides in the bran; thick-branned modern wheats, then, contain large amounts of tannins. Tannins are extremely bitter, and the energy exchange between kernel and machine during bran and germ extraction is so massive that the milled flour is left with residual bitterness.

Common white flour is no exception to the rule—it, too, suffers from this residual bitterness. Though roller milling produces refined white flour as an end product, it is standard industrial process for wheat flour of any kind. To make what the industry calls whole wheat flour (as opposed to nutritionally intact whole grain flour), the scalped bran layer is ground up and mixed back into the milled, bolted white flour, without the flavorful and nutritious germ.

 

[dave1949]

Oh, guess I didn't realize that this had turned into a conversation about GMOs. GMOs are bad for the little guy. If they would just label the darned things and let the consumer decide whether or not to eat them we probably wouldn't even need to have this conversation. This is one situation where I'm confident the "invisible hand" of the market would sort things out... If only they'd label them.

We are what we eat, including Roundup.

To stay on track, I enjoy cooking. I baked a blueberry pie today, the crust was made using the recipe in my 1965 edition of the Betty Crocker Cookbook as usual. I also had a can of sweet cherries that was getting old, so I made some pie dough turnover things with the cherries.

The problem is, I don't need the calories. :laughing: The more I cook the fatter I get in winter.

 

[DFB]

We are what we eat, including Roundup.

As it stands now many people can't even pronounce most of the artificial ingredients listed on a processed food product let alone know what they are or if they are good or bad without extensive research

Honestly how many ingredients should peanut butter really have?

 

[RobertN]

I have a 1930's edition of this cookbook. Have made mostly desserts from it. Molasses pie was interesting...
Southern Cooking: S. R. Dull, Henrietta Dull: 9780877971511: Amazon.com: Books
Everyday Finesse: My new, old cookbook

 

[TomSeller]

Honestly how many ingredients should peanut butter really have?

I can think of one.