So I’ll make it short and sweet this Monday.

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MUST READ

If you like food blogs, this one is a definitely a Must Read: 80 Breakfasts, written by a woman based in the Philippines, is a great food blog of very unique and tasty recipes that go beyond breakfast. One of the recent recipes posted was quinoa pudding with mango and pineapple, preceded by a recipe for fried eggplant with sumac and garlic yogurt dip. How can you go wrong with that? While the titles sometimes sound complicated, the author breaks down the recipes with simple explanations and fascinating stories about food.

Other recipes I really want to try? The Greek-style patani/lima beans, salmon and salsa verde pasta, the chocolate and fig preserve cupcakes, and the creamy mushroom and onion omelette.

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MUST SEE

Ellen Degeneres caused a little bit of a stir with Apple for poking fun at the iPhone. I love my iPhone and think it’s wonderful, but after seeing the satirical advertisement she did on her show, I don’t think it was much to get in a tizzy about. Ellen apologized — she really didn’t need to, if you as kme — and I suppose Apple is satisfied now.

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MUST HEAR

I saw the Gorillaz play Coachella in April (I know, post still forthcoming!) and one of my favorite tracks was “Stylo” from the new album Plastic Beach. The music video is pretty great — Bruce Willis! — and the beat is catchy. Plastic Beach is certainly growing on me.

The official YouTube videos for “”Stylo” are disabled for embedding, but you can check out the video at the WBRU blog.

It started when I was eight or nine. I think it was my spring break. We were having lunch while on the road in Nebraska, headed out east somewhere (as always), and one of the menu items caught my eye. Buffalo burger, it read. Eight ounces of buffalo meat grilled to your preference with swiss cheese, mushrooms, onions, and bacon. Or something like that.

“Buffalo burger?” I asked my dad. Why on earth would one name a burger after a city in New York? (Seriously.)

“Yeah,” he said. “Made out of buffalo.”

I was flabbergasted. Made out of buffalo? Like Ralphie?

“Like Ralphie,” my dad said.

If you aren’t from Colorado, chances are you don’t necessarily know about Ralphie, the University of Colorado mascot that is, yes, a live buffalo that gets bustled along the perimeter of Folsom Field before CU football home games. She has handlers who are student athletes (you bet it takes an athletic program to handle her), and when she has seen enough days on the football field, she is retired to a ranch somewhere in the Rocky Mountains to graze to her heart’s content. You could say I’m rather fond of Ralphie — she was the first thing I knew about the school that would one day become my alma mater.

Yeah, you try telling a fourth-grader that she’s eating a Ralphie burger.

Over the years, I became more and more resistant to the idea of meat on the dinner table. I’ve never been a big fan of ham; in fact my family still makes fun of me for being absolutely insolent at the idea of having a Christmas ham. As a teenager, besides being weight-conscious, I ordered salads when we went out, or at the very least, avoided getting a burger (who knows if it could’ve been a Ralphie burger?). And I usually picked at my serving of the Thanksgiving turkey, woefully unsatisfied that the only way it tasted decent to me was if it was slathered with gravy.

And I’ll be honest: I’m just not that into bacon. (Save your mud-slinging for someone else — it’s useless on me!)

On the other hand, I’ve also been raised in two rather meat-loving cultures. My mother is Filipina, and I’ve seen more than my fair share of lechon (roast pig) parties, cooked more than enough chicken adobo, and been totally excited for some kare-kare (a stew made with beef and/or oxtail). My father comes from German stock, which means that our church had krautburger sales and bratwurst for dinner was a regular occurrence.

Throughout all of this, I’m still mostly a carnivore.

Lately, the same child in me that lamented the idea of a buffalo burger has taken another look at the whole idea of eating meat. I realize that our food industry is far too powerful, that the food in our grocery stores is not necessarily ethically produced nor made in the best interest of health, and that sustainability is in question every single time I pull out my wallet to purchase meat. Things I know first-hand having been born in Greeley, Colorado — home to one of the largest meat-packing plants in the nation — have cropped up here and there in documentaries like Food, Inc. or in books like Fast Food Nation. There has rarely been a single day that has gone by in the last few months in which these issues have not plagued me as I sit down at the dinner table.

What am I, in my own capacity and as a single person responsible for my own actions, planning to contribute to the struggle? I honestly don’t know for sure. One thing that wasn’t necessarily prominent in Food, Inc., for instance, is the idea itself of strict vegetarianism; instead, the documentary promoted conscientious buying practices more than anything else. In order to adhere to that, I’d definitely have to go mostly vegetarian anyhow — the money it takes to purchase locally when it comes to meat isn’t something I have at the moment.

I can’t necessarily say if I could really pull off becoming a vegetarian. I do love my kare-kare, and In-n-Out calls my name once in a while. Plus, I’m a pretty adamant eater of eggs. If anything, I could probably stick with being pescetarian — excluding mammals and birds while keeping fish in the diet — and maybe having to deal with meat on a ‘family events only’ basis. (On that note, even eating fish comes with lots of questions of ethics; this I learned while living in Sweden, while others are seeing slivers of opposition in such forms as the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove.)

It still nags at me, though. For now? I’m avoiding meat, especially what has been packaged and sold cheaply at some big-box Vons/Food 4 Less/Albertson’s. Swearing it off? Well, hesitating. After all, going cold turkey (pun… intended?) would probably not be a good idea, anyways. There’s a lot more to becoming vegetarian than meets the eye — trust me, I’ve been doing my research — and the stepping-off point takes a bit of tip-toeing at first. What about veganism? Well, not anytime soon.

I’d be happy to hear any of your suggestions, thoughts, or experiences about delving into vegetarianism or veganism. Are you vegetarian or vegan? Why? If you aren’t either, why not?

So have at it. Tell me what you think. And I’d also be curious to hear if anyone else was utterly terrified at the idea of a buffalo burger.

So with that, I present to you… a revival of this series, and hopefully a kickstart for far more to come!

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MUST READ

“Ghost of Forsberg skates on,” a commentary by Denver Post sports columnist Mark Kiszla. I still follow hockey a bit — not like I used to — but with the Olympics going on, it’s hard not to. Swedish star Peter Forsberg is competing for his home country in the Olympics and the team, Tre Kronor (“Three Crowns,” the Swedish name for the national team) is on track to be one of the biggest competitors; they won gold in 2006 and look very strong this year, especially against last year’s silver-medal-winning Finnish team. Forsberg is one of my all-time favorite athletes, and while I have always enjoyed watching him play, it really feels like this is his big goodbye to hockey and I’m okay with that.

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MUST SEE

The trailer for Food, Inc. It’s a documentary about the food industry in the United States, and one heck of an eye-opener. At least see the trailer, because you might just be intrigued enough to watch the entire thing; however, after watching the film, I definitely feel a bit uneasy about most of the food I consume.

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MUST HEAR

“As Tall As Cliffs” by Margot and the Nuclear So & So’s. I had heard about this band before, and even tried to make it to one of their shows, but I never put in enough effort to actually give them a good listen or see them play. Next time I get the chance to see them I will not pass it up — their music is amazing, and this song is quickly becoming a favorite. Are they a bit “indie”? Sure. Does that mean they aren’t very mainstream? Pretty much. Is the music still good? Even better, if you ask me.

This is no less than 1/8 of the blue Pyrex dish that exploded when I tried to add water to it while it was still very hot from continuous, direct heat.

See, I should’ve learned my lesson a few years ago when I witnessed how a mere touch of cool air made the glass door of my parents’ oven explode all over the kitchen. My dad taught me this, and I learned it in physics class: tempered glass shatters entirely and abruptly when breaking, unlike regular glass, which will break in shards and more gradually.

Extreme temperatures or stress can shatter and entire object made of tempered glass. At least, that’s what I learned. Contrary to what I did tonight, you’re not supposed to use it on the stovetop or in the broiler. The funny thing is that I knew this — but I completely forgot while using a makeshift system to steam my puto (no, not like the Spanish profanity, but the Filipino cake). See, I knew better — I knew I was doing something wrong — but it didn’t strike me that I was supposed to use a tin, not a Pyrex dish, on the stove top when improvising a steamer. Instead, I watched the dishes carefully, up until the water ran out of the Pyrex dish and I tried to add more water — as soon as I tipped the Pyrex measuring cup and began to pour water, I knew I’d made a mistake. Before I could do anything about it, the Pyrex dish burst.

I was really, really lucky I didn’t get hurt. I was really lucky that my face was not injured. I was really lucky that although I found glass shards in my shirt and cardigan, none of it had hurt me.

As my housemate and I were cleaning it up, I explained to him what I’d learned. He didn’t seem to understand what I had said, so I was nearly convinced that maybe I was wrong about the vaguely scientific explanation I’d blurted out. But like any good modern-day researcher, I turned to Google.

After the cleanup, I hopped online to see just what I could turn up about exploding Pyrex dishes. I remember that after my parents’ oven door exploded, I learned from my dad that even though tempered glass is technically stronger than regular glass, it can still be rather dangerous. Was I wrong? After a bit of searching, I found one poorly-written Consumerist article that blamed an exploding Pyrex dish on what type of material is now being used for Pyrex; I’m not sure I buy that as the sole reason for a Pyrex dish to explode, and I’m sure it could be a contributing factor, but I believe that it’s more about how tempered glass reacts to temperature, not the kind of material used in making it. Furthermore, according to this source, colored dishes are more susceptible to breaking than clear Pyrex dishes. Okay, maybe. But if we believed everything we found on the Internet, then Jeff Goldblum and George Clooney both died in tragic falls in New Zealand while filming on location…

Unsatisfied, I dug around a bit more and found a better explanation that did not include the soda-lime factor in why Pyrex dishes break. (On top of that, it jives with what I vaguely remember from physics class and my dad’s little lesson tempered glass: extreme temperature change can cause Pyrex to ‘explode’.) I’m inclined to go with that one. I’m no scientist, and while I did well in Advanced High School Physics, I can’t say for sure that it’s what happened. However, I’m pretty confident that this is the closest and most accurate explanation.

Have you seen Pyrex explode? What were you doing that caused it to explode? And why do you think it explodes?

Personally, I think it’s a bullshit excuse to blame the manufacturer entirely when something like this happens. They tell us not to use it on a stove top. They warn not to use it in a broiler. If people paid attention in physics, maybe they’d understand the properties of tempered glass. (Hey, there are a lot of “if people paid attention…” lines out there, mind you.) I’m not saying that Pyrex is made perfectly — it certainly isn’t, and I’m sure apparent cheap manufacturing contributes — but if you do something you’ve been warned should not be done, don’t you dare think it wasn’t your own stupid fault.

Anyhow, my roommate took a trip to the Asian market a while ago and picked up some sweet rice for me. I had been meaning to make a Filipino dessert called bibingka for quite a while. There are different kinds of bibingka, if I recall correctly, because it means “rice cake” and that can mean any number of things when it comes to Filipino cuisine.

I really wasn’t too sure how to make bibingka myself since it had been a long time. The last time I had any part in making it was when my lola (grandmother) made some for my high school graduation party. I had never learned how to make the excellent coconut topping, so I never bothered to do it myself. This time, I looked it up, and found several recipes, this one being the closest to how I remember my lola making it. Instead of making it with rice flour, like some versions call for, she makes hers with full rice grains and a syrupy, sugary coconut paste concoction — and it turns out that it is merely dark brown sugar melted together with coconut milk, poured over freshly-cooked sweet rice and then topped off with condensed milk for it all to set pleasantly. (It’s a ton of sugar, really.) Then it is baked for around 15 minutes at 350° F.

As for the specifics to the recipe… I never really measure when it comes to Filipino recipes. I think I’ve mentioned that before in my adobo post. I’ll give you this guide for a smaller serving, however:

Shopping List
1 can (12 oz.) coconut milk
No less than 1 lb. dark brown sugar
No less than 1 lb. sweet rice
1 can (8 oz.) condensed milk

Cooking the sweet rice*
2 cups sweet rice
2 cups water

• Wash rice if you wish. I do not generally wash sweet rice. I’m sure some purists would wash their rice. If this sounds strange to you in the first place, it is common practice to wash rice prior to cooking to remove some of the starch. It is a slow process and one must rinse the rice and empty the bowl (without losing the rice) several times until the water is clear. If you’re impatient, don’t really bother. It also adds more water to the rice when you are cooking it, so adjust approximately less water when you ultimately cook it.
• Put rice and water in a pot (I prefer deep glass saucepans since it is easier to use without having to grease the pot, which I dislike for a multitude of reasons) , cover, and put on the hot stovetop until water boils. Let it boil for a few minutes, then turn off the heat, leaving the pot on the stovetop.
• Let steam for quite a while. By “quite a while,” I mean probably half an hour or even as little as twenty minutes. Better safe than sorry, right?
• After cooked, mix in no more than 1/4 cup coconut milk. Spoon about 3/4 of the rice into a 1-inch-deep pan. Spread evenly.

*please note this: I am at a rather high elevation (~1645 m or 5400 ft), I regularly cook rice and this is without a rice cooker. This can be done with a rice cooker if you are uncomfortable doing it on the stovetop, because it is tough to cook rice to perfection if you are not accustomed to it.

Making the syrup
The rest of the 12 oz. can of coconut milk
A few handfuls (probably 2 cups) of dark brown sugar

• Melt the dark brown sugar and coconut milk together over low to medium heat for no less than fifteen minutes, or until it thickens, while stirring constantly. If it doesn’t thicken much, I gradually add a little bit of corn starch and stir for another five minutes. If you must add corn starch, definitely do not let any of it clump up.
• Using about half of the syrup, mix it in with the remaining quarter of the rice and then spread the rice/syrup mixture over what you have in the pan. Spread evenly.
• Using the rest of the syrup, mix it with about half of the condensed milk and then pour it over the rice in the pan. Spread evenly. If you prefer, just put the syrup over the rice and then the condensed milk. This is one of those kinds of preferences you learn after making it several times. If I’m tired of washing dishes, I just put the syrup over and then the condensed milk.

Voilà! Now you can just pop it into the oven at 350° F and wait 15-20 minutes. Pull it out, let it stop bubbling, then serve rather warm (not hot, however). Some people prefer it to cool quite a bit.

Also, some people do not like using condensed milk at all. I will switch between using it and not using it, or just lessening how much I use. If you have not as much of a sweet tooth as some, don’t use the condensed milk – it’s pretty sweet! If using dark brown sugar is far too sweet for you as well, then use light brown sugar. If you find the whole dish is just too sweet, well… what kind of Filipino are you?!

Adobo is a staple of Filipino food. It is usually made of chicken or pork, and I prefer to use chicken with some small slices of pork. There’s no absolute recipe for adobo, but the basic parameters are that it is chicken or pork marinated in soy sauce and vinegar. Although I usually guess when it comes to the portions, I tend to use what results in the following ingredients:

Marinade:
2 cups water
3/4 cup vinegar
1/2 cup soy sauce
3-4 teaspoons sugar
1-2 medium-sized cloves of garlic, mashed
1-2 bay leaves, broken up
A few cranks of freshly-ground pepper
A few shakes of paprika

Before making the marinade, I cut up the chicken and put it in a sturdy re-zippable bag. I make sure there are no sharp edges on the bones, but I never remove the bones; I think it’s better if you leave the bones on. If I’m not serving anyone who objects to pork, I get a pork cutlet and slice it up into bite-sized pieces and put it in along with the chicken. I also like to leave the skin on the chicken.

When I make the marinade, I start with vinegar, water and soy sauce, and then dissolve the sugar before adding everything else.

After marinading overnight, I get out a 1- or 2-inch-deep casserole dish and put in it all of the ingredients of the bag — including every bit of the marinade. I add some diced white or yellow onion.

When it comes to cooking it, I prefer to take a while; around an hour at 350° F. If you keep the skin on the chicken, I cook it until the skin is brown and almost crunchy. I tend to turn the pieces over a few times during the duration of its time in the oven as well.

Chicken adobo is best served on rice. I also like to serve with some tomato slices in balsamic vinegar with a dash of pepper.