Conch Salad was one of my most favorite things to eat during our trip to Grand Bahama. I shot the above video while visiting Big Daddy Brown’s Conch Stand in the Port Lucaya Marketplace, as well as at Barbara Walker’s Conch Stand in the Freeport Vendor Market.
I found another really great video by Frank and Meg, who unlike myself, clearly know what they are doing when it comes to video editing (and own superior video equipment) and who apparently visited Freeport only a few weeks before we did.
Rachel and I have been spending the last several days in the Bahamas. This is a particularly miserable predicament because we are missing the wonderful bracing New York weather. But mostly it is miserable because it’s Chanukah, and in the Bahamas, there are no Latkes to be found.
However, despite the Bahamian Latke shortage, there is an abundance of Conch — which is served in a myriad of ways in the Bahamas. In fact, I would go as far to say that it is a primary food source. How much Conch conch do they eat in the Bahamas? Well, have a look at just one of the many “Conch Killing Fields” that you’ll find along the West End shoreline of Grand Bahama Island.
This is one of the many conch shell dumping grounds on Grand Bahama Island. There are literally tens of thousands of shells here in this one pile.
In the Bahamas, it’s all about the Conch. Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.
Here’s an oldie, but a goodie. Happy Chanukah — Jason and Rachel
This last Sunday, Rachel’s family got together and had a Hanukkah party, a week early. We were given the task of making the latkes, the venerable Ashkenazi-Jewish pan fried potato pancakes.
Although I tend to favor Sephardic-style cuisine, Latkes are among my favorite things from Ashkenazi (European) Jewish culture, and I hold them in extremely high regard. Hanukkah isn’t a particularly important Jewish holiday but I look forward to the annual latke frying ritual with great anticipation. I didn’t grow up on homemade latkes — my mother wasn’t much of a cook and she wouldn’t use oil of any kind in the house because she hated the smell of grease and fried food. Frankly, I can’t blame her. The act of frying latkes will create odors that will linger in your kitchen for several days, and even with the best ventilation will require that your entire house get aired out in order to completely rid your home of the powerful chickeny/potatoey/oniony odor. Don’t let this deter you, however — the rewards are well worth it.
From a pure technical achievement, openSUSE 11.1 is at package parity with the best Linux distributions available — such as Fedora 10 and Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex 8.10. In many ways it’s more polished, as clearly it has a lot of customization work that went into it to make it well-integrated, but at the same time, the distribution still feels like it was designed for people who know what they are doing, not for regular end-users. By trying to be a Server, Developer, and end-user Desktop platform at the same time, its target audience remains unfocused and its scope is too big. It’s now the Linux equivalent of the Swiss Army knife with 50 separate tools in it.
I admit, I love it when people send me product samples. I’m a junkie for trying new foods and products. So when the folks over at Real Wasabi asked me if I’d like to take 1/4lb of wasabi rhizomes for a spin, I said… SURE!
Most people have probably never eaten real wasabi. Most of the wasabi that you get in sushi restaurants or that is used as a flavoring for snacks and other products is really just white horseradish that is colored green. From a botanical perspective, Wasabi (Wasabia japonica) has little or no relation to white horseradish, and in terms of actual flavor, its really a lot different.
An apt comparison would be how most people perceive the cinnamon used on their French toast or as a common spice as real cinnamon, but in most cases it isn’t — real cinnamon comes from the rare bark of a tree that grows in Ceylon, as opposed to the bark of the Vietnamese cassia tree, the most common substitute.
Similarily, real Wasabi is grated wasabi rhizome, not white horseradish which most common wasabi powder comes from. Although both plants are from the crucifer family, they really taste very different. Wasabi has almost an “electric” taste with a very distinctive tingling sensation produced, which horseradish does not. What it does have in common with horseradish is its incredible pungency, although it is much more fleeting in effect.
One of the reasons why white horseradish is substituted for wasabi is that up until very recently, it only grew in Japan, and importing it was unbelievably expensive. In the last 10 years, two companies have started cultivating it in the US. One company is Pacific Farms FreshWasabi.com, which is based out of Oregon, distributes its product primarily in paste form and until recently did sell fresh wasabi rhizome.
RealWasabi.com is one of the few and I think the only company in the US that actually sells rhizome and grows domestically and ships to anyone who wants them. The company has its own farm based in the mountain region of western North Carolina, where the altitude and the temperate climate has proven to be good for growing Wasabia japonica.
Even domestically grown wasabi is a rare treat, and should be used sparingly. Wasabi Rhizome from RealWasabi.com costs $100 per pound and $55.00 per half pound. The fresh rhizomes have a shelf life of approximately 30 days in the refrigerator, if wrapped in a damp paper towel and kept in a plastic Zip-Lock bag.
I began my relationship with Linux Magazine in the Summer of 1999. My, what a long strange trip it has been.
In 1999, Linux and Open Source’s position in the computer industry was very different. Hell, the entire world was different — Bill Clinton was nearing the end of his presidency, and Windows 2000 was nearing the end of its beta cycle, marking the beginning of the full transition from the old DOS-based PC paradigm on the corporate desktop to the mass-adoption of the Windows NT kernel, which would complete a year later with the release of Windows XP in the consumer space.
More than 35 million Americans, including 12 million children, either live with or are on the verge of hunger. In New Jersey alone, an estimated 250,000 new clients will be seeking sustenance this year from the state’s food banks. But recently, as requests for food assistance have risen, food donations are on the decline, leaving food bank shelves almost empty and hungry families waiting for something to eat.
The situation is dire, no more so than at the Community FoodBank of New Jersey (CFBNJ), the largest food bank in the state, where requests for food have gone up 30 percent, but donations are down by 25 percent. Warehouse shelves that are typically stocked with food are bare and supplies have gotten so low that, for the first time in its 25 year history, the food bank is developing a rationing mechanism.
The situation at CFBNJ is dire. Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.
Diabetics of course can’t eat a lot of sugar, and we have to be very careful about foods that are high on the glycemic index. For all practical purposes, I’ve cut out all processed sugar from my diet. But that doesn’t mean I can’t still have the occasional treat. So If I’m going to have chocolate, it had better be the good stuff. And for me, that’s very high grade dark chocolate, with a very high proportion of cocoa solids in it. It has to be so intense that even a small portion will stop all cravings pretty much instantly.
And so it was on a rainy, cold night in December that I was walking down Wall Street and sighted the downtown New York City branch of La Maison Du Chocolat, one of the world’s finest European chocolatiers. I looked in the window and stopped dead in my tracks.
You want dark chocolate? I’ll give you dark chocolate. Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.
It’s that wonderful time of year again. Got any serious violations you’d like to show us? Send your jpeg files to jperlow AT gmail.com. — Jason
Having been brought up Jewish, Rachel and I never had the opportunity to actually decorate our homes with holiday lights. That being said, we appreciate a nice display, and have come to think of ourselves as connoisseurs and critics of the very best (and worst) in holiday light entertainment. Over the years, we’ve developed a set of guidelines for holiday lights. This year, we decided to codify them and to distribute citations (click to download PDF file, if you’d like to issue them too!) to local residences for exceptionally good (and
Posted by offthebroiler 
Posted by offthebroiler 
Posted by offthebroiler 
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=4ac70e2e-089d-4090-b253-55a512f713c8)
