Category Archives: Culinary

Covid Life In LA

Our experience has been quite similar to Virginia Postrel’s, and we feel very fortunate. I can’t imagine how terrible it must be to be cramped in an apartment with too many people, or what a nightmare this has been for parents with children. I haven’t seen divorce statistics for the year, but I’m sure they must be record level.

McDonald’s Fries

A history, and a recipe. I disagree with this, though:

His cholesterol was over 300, comfortably in the danger zone for heart attacks. Lack of self-control aside, it was fatty foods that nearly killed him. Thus, when he emerged from the hospital, he did so on a one-man mission to fight Big Fat.

It was not the fat that nearly killed him. We now have abundant evidence that the problem with McDonald’s fries was not the tallow, but the potatoes themselves. I’ve long advocated that, given that the company is the largest cattle rancher in the world, it should go back to tallow, and get rid of the unhealthy seed oils.

What I don’t understand about the recipe is why it uses Crisco, with just a little tallow added, presumably for flavor. It would probably be much better, and certainly healthier, to simply fry them in pure tallow.

Intermittent Fasting

I’ve been doing this for quite a while. I don’t just skip breakfast; I don’t eat anything until late afternoon. But I don’t see the relevance of this study to me, even if valid, because I don’t do it to lose weight.

If I’m losing muscle (I’m not; I never had that much to begin with), it’s because I don’t work out as I should. If I did, I’d have to increase my food uptake (and I’d gain weight, but it would be in muscle). What the eating schedule for that would have to be, I don’t know. I suspect it would just mean that I’d eat more in the evening.

The Restaurant Industry

The pandemic (and often stupid response to it) is on the verge of destroying it.

I have to confess that I wouldn’t miss it all that much, except when I travel. I can prepare my own food much healthier, and much lower cost. The fact that so many young people thought they could afford to pay other people to cook for them is one of the reasons that generation is having a tough time financially.