The Big Waste | Review

by dez on January 12, 2012 · 2 comments

in Personal

On Sunday night I watched “The Big Waste” on Food Network. I was Appalled.

Here’s the description from the page for those that don’t like to click on links:

First class chefs Bobby Flay, Michael Symon, Anne Burrell and Alex Guarnaschelli tackle one of the most massive problems in food today – waste! Divided into two teams, with only 48 hours on the clock, they are challenged to create a multi course gourmet banquet worthy of their great reputations, but with a big twist; they can only use food that is on its way to the trash. The chefs’ hunt takes them from grocery aisles to produce farms, and orchard lines to garbage piles, as they attempt to source enough ingredients to feed a gathering crowd. Bobby and Michael square off against Anne and Alex, as they challenge their views of food waste and how and why it is created.

Don’t get the description wrong. They weren’t pulling rotten looking food out and feeding it to people. They were taking food that wasn’t perfect (usually visual only) to the consumer and saving it from the trash. This included vegetables, fruits, meat, baked goods, ingredients and other things. They used a food safety inspector to make sure that temperatures were good from a safety perspective which was a nice touch.

How is it possible that we have become so needy as people that we can’t handle anything less than perfection in the way that our food looks? I’m just as guilty of this as anyone else.

Apple has a little bit of a bruise on it? Not for my apple pie/cut up apple/in my mouth usage of this.

One of the farms reported 40% of the food they grow goes to waste (compost). WTF?!?!? The images they showed of the compost pile looked like what a “perfectly fine to eat” produce section in the super market would be. I can’t remember correctly if the show also said that America wastes ~40% of the food in this country as well, but it was mentioned a few times.

I did learn a few things though. When a tomato gets too much water it splits and heals giving it a scarred outside texture. However, this makes it better to eat, but harder to look at. Put it in sauce. I learned a lot about tomatoes from Bill’s post on tomatoes and this adds even more to it.

Sadly I had just been grocery shopping before watching this. So I’ll have to wait until next time to pick out the vegetables/fruit that are just as good as the others but just don’t look as nice. I’ll be applying this rule when I go to the farmers’ market as well. Insert “It’s what’s on the inside that counts analogy” here.

Hopefully this spring I can get a good garden going and not waste 40% of my food.

Thank you for reading.

</rant>

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Dogs and Laser Pointers

by dez on January 10, 2012 · 0 comments

in Personal

When we first got Jeff we thought it would be funny to show him the laser pointer. However, he just scratched at the carpet.

Lately we tried it again (after finding the laser pointer). He no longer scratches at the carpet, but he is obsessed with it and now I have video to prove it.  Sorry about the overlaid music on the second one, but there was a cialis commercial on in the background.

link to video

Look at how fast his tail moves in this one.

link to video

He’s obsessed with the pointer and when he comes back in from outside immediately starts looking for the light  and now that he’s figured out where it comes from (and that we control it) he just stares at us.

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13 weeks

January 7, 2012

Dear Readers, I am proud to announce that i’m going to be a dad. Sometime around 7/17/2012. Also, this baby is blog fodder (obviously) and you can see updates as they happen at http://bambino.iamdez.com

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What is Trustiness | A Tester Perspective

December 21, 2011

Seth Godin put up a good post about the difference between trust and trustiness. He mostly pointed at corporations that showed their trustiness through PR campaigns and made a pretty strong comment about it in the last few paragraphs: The difference should be obvious. Trust experienced is remarkable, trustiness once discovered leaves a bad taste [...]

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