Eating the Bhut Jolokia: like having birth contractions – Salivation Station
Welcome to Salivation Station. Turn the channel to Internet food video bites, for your one-way ticket to endless salivation.
I love spicy food. I love spicy stuff so much that I’m starting to wonder if I’m some sort of masochist, sometimes chomping into tiny, raw hot peppers just to see how hot they are. Probably the hottest pepper I’ve ever eaten raw was a Habanero, which is something between 100-350k on the Scoville scale. Really freaking hot … or at least I thought, until I read about the notorious Naga Jolokia pepper (sometimes also called the “Bhut Jolokia” or “Ghost” pepper). That sucker weighs in at over 1 million Scovilles!
Why do so many chefs smoke? – Boiling It Down
There’s more to food than recipes. We’ll approach the answers to growing questions, and new ways of taking on tricks of the food trade, and Boil It Down for you.
I caught the first couple of seasons of FOX’s reality series, Hell’s Kitchen, but lost interest when I got sick of hearing chef Gordon Ramsay scream at the poor bastards every week; from what I hear, it hasn’t changed. One thing I’d noticed in nearly every episode was that EVERY one of the contestants smokes during the breaks outside. It’s well reported that smoking negatively affects one’s sense of smell, which in turn affects one’s sense of taste. Shouldn’t those senses be a chef’s greatest assets?
Accidental discovery: coconut water green tea
I think I may have stumbled onto a great discovery in healthy beverages, my friends. After a little treadmill walk at work, I was thirsty as all get-out for something invigorating. I was really jonesing for one of the Harvest Bay coconut waters I keep in the fridge, but I also wanted another cup of hot green tea to top off the afternoon. So as I held the Harvest Bay in one hand and the Rishi Emerald Lily in the other, I thought: why not do both at once?
So, that’s just what I did. The result: a caffeinated, mega anti-oxidant, electrolyte-replenishing super cocktail. And it tastes good!
How to flip food in a pan – Boiling It Down
There’s more to food than recipes. We’ll approach the answers to growing questions, and new ways of taking on tricks of the food trade, and Boil It Down for you.
Deb (and probably Bob) has mentioned on a few occasions already that her father is one hell of a cook. A few times when I’ve watched him cook, he’s done this fancy pan flipping food thing that I’d only previously seen on Food Network shows. Up until recently, I’d been mixing my veggies and such using a spatula or a spoon, e.g. the total wuss way. That’s because flipping food in a pan isn’t as hard as it looks.
Why does cilantro bolt so quickly? – Boiling It Down
There’s more to food than recipes. We’ll approach the answers to growing questions, and new ways of taking on tricks of the food trade, and Boil It Down for you.
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had some sort of vegetable garden in the yard. From my parents’ house and my father’s veins coursing with the blood of generations of farmers, to my own home, where I seem to have a lot of success with growing squash and tomatoes, but not much else. I tend to try to grow what we have a use for, and if you know my wife Deb personally or through this site, you’d know that saying she’s fond of cilantro is an understatement.
So, of course, I attempt to grow cilantro every year … and fail at it miserably. The reason: the damn stuff bolts, or flowers, way too quickly. No sooner will I have a small pot of cilantro planted in my 8′x8′ sorry excuse for a garden, when I’ll find it teeming with flowers.
Let me tell you something about cilantro: I think it tastes like soap. And when cilantro bolts, it’s soapy times ten. It’s like I took a dive into a vat of Irish Spring with my mouth open. It’s just not good for anyone. So how the heck do I stop cilantro from bolting? Short answer: you can’t. You can, however, do something to stop it from happening to quickly.
Do bamboo cutting boards dull knives? – Boiling It Down
There’s more to food than recipes. We’ll approach the answers to growing questions, and new ways of taking on tricks of the food trade, and Boil It Down for you.
For the past couple of years, we’ve been using a bamboo cutting board as our main chopping surface in the kitchen. It made a whole lot of sense at the time. Bamboo’s a green wood and replenishes itself quickly and abundantly; we’re not contributing to the deforestation of some ancient woodlands to prepare our meals.
So far the bamboo cutting boards have served their purpose well. However, I’ve noted that our knives seem to get dull more frequently than they had years ago. Are the knives getting old? Are we just cooking more? Is the bamboo bad for the knives?
Michelob Ultra Lime Cactus – Brew Review
If I wanted to try out a new beer, I could always head out to the local (and awesome) Julio’s Liquors and spend hours trying to decide what that new something will be. But sometimes the easiest place to find a new kind of beer is at someone else’s house. And who do doesn’t love free beer?
With summer comes parties, and with parties comes beer. Normally I just drink my usual stuff in the cooler, but seeing as I needed to have something to write about, I took one for the team and reached for something I’d never have considered sipping before: Michelob Ultra Lime Cactus.
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