A Russian court has cleared the way for the government to sell off land used by a world-renowned fruit research center outside St. Petersburg. Scientists say losing the facility means losing seeds and plants that exist nowhere else. But a Russian agency says much of the research center occupies weed-choked fields that would be the perfect spot for new houses.
We've got a couple of suggestions for a nice drink to go along with Sunday night's awards ceremony.
Chesapeake oysters are a succulent treat that for centuries have been loved almost to extinction. But some scientists and business people are making headway in bringing back the bivalve, for the sake of oyster lovers and the bay.
One of the toughest dinner reservations in Los Angeles this summer is at a tiny café in a dingy corner of the fashion district. But the hot-spot will shut down in a few weeks. That's because LudoBites is what's known as a "pop-up" restaurant.
More than 550 million eggs from the two farms were recalled this month after they were linked to as many as 1,300 cases of salmonella poisoning. The FDA said tests indicate that contaminated feed is a source of the outbreak but possibly not the only source.
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Simple Salmon with Roasted Vegetables
This is a simple weeknight meal that we’ve made a couple of times in the past few weeks. It’s flexible, easy, and since most of the time for this recipe is the cooking time, which is largely unattended, it’s the perfect dish for busy nights when you need to do some work or house cleaning (or baseball game watching) while dinner cooks.
A few words about the ingredients for this dish. The must-haves are the salmon, the olive oil, and the cherry tomatoes. Everything else is optional and you should feel free to add other vegetables depending on your preferences. Do you like roasted beets? Add them (but be prepared for a very reddish dish). Hate fennel? Leave it out. Carrots, potatoes, turnips, parsnips, rutabagas, garlic… all good. You could probably even make this dish with extra firm tofu instead of salmon. This dish takes about 10 minutes of active work and 40 minutes for cooking. It’s a one dish, one spoon, and one knife meal, making cleanup a breeze.
Salmon with Roasted Vegetables
Notes: This is such a versatile dish. You can use pretty much any vegetables you have on hand, but I urge you not to skip the cherry tomatoes. They soften and infuse the whole dish with such a fantastic sweetness. You could use full sized tomatoes, but sometimes the skin on them is a bit too thick to be palatable. The flavor of the fennel softens so if you don’t much care for fennel in salads, give it a try here. This dish would be great with tofu if you’re looking for a vegan alternative.
One last tip about salmon: when cooking, if you see the white stuff that oozes out the top and sides of salmon, don’t panic. That white stuff is called albumin and it’s a protein that you see when a piece of salmon has exceeded the perfect level of doneness. It’s edible. In theory, a piece of salmon should be cooked until just before the albumin becomes visible. But, for those of you new to cooking salmon, or those who like their salmon a tad bit more done, just cook it until you start to see some albumin. It’s an easy visual cue that lets you know when to take your salmon out of the oven. As you can see from the photographs, I let our salmon cook just about 2 minutes too long. However, since the center was so thick, that made for a very moist piece of fish with just a tad bit less moisture towards the edges. Since you have a good amount of roasting liquid from the vegetables though, you don’t have to worry about drying out your fish.
Trader Joe's is one of the most popular grocery chains in the U.S., yet it is incredibly secretive about its products and business model. A 'Fortune' magazine writer profiled the company.
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Wednesday night, I tried a little experiment. I live-tweeted the dinner I made. I did this for a few reasons, but one of them was that I wanted to show that while I don’t believe that everyone can cook every night, I do believe that anyone can cook any night. I know, that’s a little confusing. You see, now and then around the Interwebs, I see folks discussing whether it is possible to cook dinner every night. Some people feel that it is simply a matter of priorities. If you make it a priority to cook healthy delicious meals for your family every day, then you’ll be able to do it. Other people feel that the ability to do this limited to folks with plenty of resources (money and/or time) or those for whom an adult member of the family doesn’t work outside the home. I’m really in a camp halfway between the two.
You see, I’m super busy. I work a full time job (albeit one that allows me to work from home when I want to) and I run a business. Sure, my business is cooking related, but it is very much a second job as I spend anywhere from 8-20 hours a week on it outside of the actual cooking processes. My husband works full time as well. We also work out for between 60 and 90 minutes five days a week and between 2 and 3 hours on day 6. In short, we’re swamped most of the time. Our clean laundry sits in the laundry basket for a week. Our parking strip is full of dandelions. I have a knitting box full of yarn and no time to knit. But on a busy day, one where we arrived home at 6:15pm, I had a healthy, local, and delicious dinner on the table at 7:30, and had plenty of time in between to clean my stove, clean out part of the fridge, harvest some food from our garden, and work for about 20 minutes searching for canning recipes for this coming weekend.
Can I do this every night? Absolutely not. Tomorrow’s dinner is likely going to be leftovers from Tuesday. Reheating will take 10 minutes. Friday, since I’ll be canning in the late afternoon, I’m betting we’re getting takeout. I still haven’t put that laundry away and I have an iPhone development book staring me in the face and mocking me. But given the following assumptions, I can cook a local meal at least 4 days a week.
So, no, I don’t think it’s feasible to cook a fresh meal every night, even for me, an experienced cook. Partially because the cooking process isn’t all you have to think about.
You have planning, and shopping, and making sure that the dishes are done so there’s empty counter space for prep, and making sure that you have the necessary pots, pans, and dishes. Then there’s the prep work, and the actual cooking, and then the cleaning up afterwards. So cooking a single meal requires a lot more time than just the time you spend cooking. If you’re not a confident cook, or have dietary restrictions, or your family hates most vegetables, this can be a daunting task.
In order to help folks become comfortable with some easy, healthy, local meals, over the next few months, I’m going to be live tweeting a meal every couple of weeks. This time it was done on a whim, but next time I’ll give you a few days warning and an ingredient list if you want to play along at home. I’ll tweet the steps in real time, with photos. The recipe will be posted the next day. All meals will have a start-to-finish time of less than an hour and will include at least a protein and significant vegetable component. We’ll get to the recipe in the next post, but for now, here’s the twitter stream from Wednesday’s event.
Live-Tweeting Dinner
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