Ask TracyFood: about my granola 9 September 2008 10:10 am
Posted by Tracy in : Morning Glory, breakfast, ingredients, baking, advice, restaurants, health, cooking , add a commentSo a few weeks ago, I got an email:
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Hi, Tracy.
I heard that Padnah’s Pit BBQ is now serving Tracy’s Granola.
First, is this your granola?
If so, is it gluten free? (i.e. no wheat products, rye or barley … and are the oats from a dedicated, wheat-free source, such as Bob’s Red Mill?)
Many of us are gluten intolerant or have full-blown Celiac disease, and most granola uses oats that share process facilities with wheat flour manufacturing, so every grain of oats has a small amount of flour on it, making it dangerous.
If you’re the one making this granola people are raving about and you have not been processing it with gluten free ingredients, your market would increase HUGELY if you began doing so and labeled the packaging with “GLUTEN FREE”.
I appreciate your time and hope to hear from you …. I miss granola!
Sincerely,
Carolyn
Portland, OR
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Here’s what I wrote back: (more…)
Monkey Monday: food irradiation, breakfast cereal, and more! 8 September 2008 1:46 pm
Posted by Tracy in : geekery, breakfast, food safety, good news, New York, random, monkeys, politics, Marion Nestle, books, school, news, milk, restaurants , add a commentUm, not necessarily in that order. Breakfast first, right? Right. Here goes. I had cereal for breakfast for the first time in a very long time today. Not oatmeal (it’s still way too hot for that), Tracy granola with yogurt, like I love, but something more in the muesli genre (hand-me-down free food from my parents) with milk. Turns out this was a bad idea, one which reminded me why I quit eating cold breakfast cereal. I’m just not a big fan of milk, unless it’s transformed in combination with something delicious, like tea or ice cream ingredients. (I’ll make an exception in the case of hot and fresh chocolatey baked goods, and tomato soup. For some reason I really love the contrast between a glass of cold milk and the savory acidity of hot tomato soup. But I digress.) If grains are going to be soggy, I want them warm, and soaked in delicious stir-fry sauce or something — old milk doesn’t count. So I was still hungry after forcing myself to finish the sad little bowl of milk-soaked oats and whatever. All told, cold breakfast cereal is still not my favorite: anything besides granola leaves much to be desired.
In other news of the disappointing, today the Ethicurean reminded me that the FDA now allows irradiation of spinach and lettuce. (more…)
Do me a favor, readers. 4 September 2008 4:52 pm
Posted by Tracy in : geekery, not even vegetarian, history, meat, politics, eating, vegetarian, people , 1 comment so farI need your help.
Together, we can destroy the myth that Hitler was a vegetarian.
Seriously. I know it’s a funny thing to talk about and all — even Eddie Izzard gave it a go in the otherwise entirely brilliant Dress to Kill — but it’s not true. Hitler was no more vegetarian than I am, which is to say he was maybe a picky meat eater, but he definitely ate the flesh of dead animals. There is plenty of documentation of this fact (more on that in a bit). Please, everybody spread this idea far and wide, because I am entirely sick of hearing people snicker about the idea of a genocidal maniac who wouldn’t eat anything that involved killing animals.
I’m bringing this up now because (more…)
Happy birthday to me! 28 August 2008 11:18 am
Posted by Tracy in : good news, health, books, eating , 4 commentsHere’s some good news from the browser tabs I should’ve closed a week ago: for the past more than a month, the New York Times health blog, Well, has been reporting about researchers finally publishing some common sense about diets, weight, and health. I hope you all have read about this already, but it’s important enough (and makes me happy enough) that it seems well worth repeating. So here, some birthday gifts of good news: (more…)
Quick hit: More Wordle. 26 August 2008 12:29 pm
Posted by Tracy in : pictures, work, school, meta , add a commentThis one’s based on my del.icio.us tags, and judging by its contents, I think I may need to create a webcomics about food politics and culture. The more I think about it, the more I convince myself that this is an awesome idea. The visuals will be the hard part, but there are some awesome photocomics out there, and hey, maybe I’ll find out for myself whether collage really is the greatest of all the arts. (more…)
