From a Search to a Seed: How a Search Engine is Saving The Rain Forest

Making Green by Making Green

It's common knowledge that big businesses like Nestle are trying to destroy the world, and it's up to startups, Ma & Pa shops, trendy West-Coasters, and selfless techies to stop them. But how? Well, seeing that the big picture is comprised of many brushstrokes, it comes down to that old cliché, "Every little bit counts." Take Ecosia as example, a new search engine that uses clicks to generate funds to offset deforestation in the Amazon... 

The Atlantic Forest, Brazil. Can you believe this Eden is highly threatened by deforestation? Can you believe if you search "Atlantic Forest" with Ecosia you can help save it?

Beer and the Science of Sweetness and Spice

  

I Drank in College so I'd Avoid Science

It has since been heralded the Craft Beer Revolution – the cult following of microbrews blossoming, overflowing into the mainstream throughout the last decade. Its popularization comes along with that of gourmet gastropubs; incidentally, these new style eateries feature an array of craft beers, while some craft breweries offer an eclectic gourmet food menu.  With the climbing interest in flavorful beers nation wide, that beer pairs as richly and complexly with food as wine does is substantive, and restaurants, wholesalers, even roaming food trucks are capitalizing on this truth.

 

However, be it gastropub-hosted beer pairings or to-the-source Internet research, recommendations for honing your pairing palate may leave you baffled. Why does one gastropub pair its spicy curry chicken skewers with an IPA, while another opts for a porter? Fundamentally, the beers are completely different. Baffling, indeed. But the answer is simple, perhaps overly simple: food (and beer) is all about taste – your taste. And your taste preferences vary from the chef’s and the brewer’s and your date’s and your mates’. Not to mention, your tastes can change. There is, however one unchanging, invariable constant when it comes to pairing beer with food. Science.

While preferences vary between individuals, tastes and flavors – and the combinations thereof – don’t. Much of this has to do with chemical reactions (that science stuff I mentioned earlier). For instance, bitterness and alcohol both, individually and collaboratively, enhance the caustic quality of spices, while the sweetness of malts counters that heat. So, why would a chef pair a bitter IPA with a spicy curry dish? Either he’s a sadist, or he wants to accentuate the spices in his dish. Oppositely, the chef pairing her dish with a porter might worry about that enhancing the spiciness with an astringent and characteristically ABV-generous IPA may overpower the other, perhaps more subtle flavors in her recipe. It all depends on the characteristics you want to home your palate.

A Homerun Match*

The Dish: The Dubliner’s Beef Curry Stew. A simple, yet delicious, and definitively spicy curry featuring tender pieces of beef and flavorful vegetables.

The Beer: Breckenridge Vanilla Porter. I love curry, and I like it with a  kick. Anticipating just that, I ordered this dish with Breckenridge Brewery’s Vanilla Porter. The natural sweetnes of malts, accompanied with this porter’s light vanilla tones and low ABV (4.0%), balances and calms spiciness without detracting from the aromas and flavor of this curry. Additionally, the malts’ light roasted flavor harmonizes with the wholesomeness of the beef chunks, working with the fat to create a filling meal.

The Outcome: This turned out to be a great combo, perfect for that particular night: warm, with outside seating. Not ideal for a super-spice meal; I didn’t particularly want my forehead to start breaking out in sweat, tears to start pooling in my eyes, and mucus to conspicuously drip from my nose – in front of my girlfriend.   

The But: I’m a hophead; IPAs are my favorite. If there had been a refreshing chill in the air, an IPA would have been a stellar choice to heighten the heat of this stew. And still, I could have taken it two ways: a somewhat carbonated IPA with the fruitiness of cintra hops (like Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA) would have turned on the heat, while the carbonation would have cut through the beef fat. Alternatively, I could have got the same kick, but with the satiation of wholesome meal with a smoother IPA like Ballast Point’s Big Eye IPA, or a super-smooth nitro-infused brew.

Of course, there’s more to beer than just hops and malts, more to food than just spice and fat. There are a plethora of taste and flavor characteristics in both beer and food that work wonders (or plunders) with each other. But it all depends on your specific tastes. With all the scientific rules out there regarding beer and food pairings (Sweet increases Salt, Acid calms Salt, Roast counters Sweet… it’s like an elaborate, quasi-arbitrary game of rock-paper-scissors), the only rule you should definitely follow happens to be a rule both of science and of thumb: experiment. Enjoy both what you’re eating and what you’re drinking. If the combination works out, great. If not, just order another beer. That always does the trick.

* Homerun is the actual term designated for a truly great beer-food match.

Eat Big Before Turkey Day - and other healthy tips for Thanksgiving

Tips for a Healthy Thanksgiving. Heard Them All, Have You?

A Google search of "Healthy Thanksgiving Tips" will pull up roughly 144,000,000 results in a matter of 0.17 seconds. It's safe to say there's a hellova lot out there for making Turkey Day both satisfying and slimming. But those tips are all the same; seriously, go look at them: Ease off the butter; skip the stuffing; rethink going for thirds; each glass of wine is an extra 100 calories... Makes you less and less thankful the more you read about it. So, here are some tips for a healthy Thanksgiving that you won't find on the first page of Google (hey, no one reads past the first page anyway. True story.) and that won't have you holding off on that next glass of wine. (What the hell kind of advice was that anyway, Health Living!) 

No Wheat No Worries

"What does gluten-free mean?"
"It means it's good for you."

Above: Probably the most incorrect statement you'll ever hear whilst wandering through Whole Foods. Gluten Free has transformed from dietary necessity to public paradigm. Gluten-free diets are a necessity and relief for those suffering from celiac disease, something comedian Kelly Maclean would call "a rich, white-person problem." Funny, but statistically accurate. As most of the monetary wealth in America is owned by the top 1%, only "about 1% of Americans have celiac disease," explains WebMD. Incidentally, because of the expanding social indifference between "gluten free" and "healthy" most purchasers of gluten-free products don't and won't have a sensitivity to wheat. "Unless people are very careful," Dr. Peter Green, director of Columbia University's Celiac Disease Center told WebMD, who told me, "a gluten-free diet can lack vitamins, minerals, and fiber." 

Essentially, unless toast gives you diarrhea, anemia, bone pains, and the severe rash known as dermatitis herpetiformis, abstaining from wheat products is not healthy, because, even though gluten isn't healthy for you in and of itself, whole grain products that contain gluten are rich in proteins, minerals, and B-Vitimens. But mainly, if you're gluten free for no good reason, you can't drink beer.

But if you are a sufferer of celiac disease, you still have options. Awareness over the disease has incited a call to action for brewers big and small, far and wide. While some gluten-free beers can hardly be considered beer – let alone palatable – some breweries are taking this pop-pandemic seriously. And for good reason. No one should have to eschew from brew, by choice or by chance. I recently tried Dogfish Head's Tweason'ale, and was pleasantly surprised. Here's what I have to say:

Image courtesy of lefthandhorrors.com

Wheat-beer color, sans the wheat! A sweet aroma, followed by distinct strawberry and honey tastes. Full up-front flavor that finishes nicely. Does a good job of hiding its gluten-freeness. A stiff 6%, difficult to quaff but easy to enjoy – if you don't mind a little (but not over-powering) sweetness in your beer. Regardless, quite nice on a sunny day. 

So, unlike Red Bridge, Budweiser's pathetic excuse for a GF beer (yes, I understand singling out any one variety by Bud and calling it bad is an oxymoron), Dogfish Head's is quite palatable. But, it definitely differs from your typical strong ale, which was the brewers' intent. "While there are a few well-made examples that mirror traditional beer styles, there arent [sic] any off-centered offerings," explains Sam Calagione, the brewery's founder. This was my first GF beer, and if you're likewise looking to explore, New Planet, Bards, and Lakefront Brewery's New Grist would each be a fine starting line. 

15 Funny, Witty, Sad GMO Cartoons

There's something to be said for saying it with sketch. In honor of No-To-GMO Month (October), here are fourteen politically poignant cartoons about Genetically Modified Organisms and the hands that spin the wheel. 

This one's just plain sad.

OMGMO

Jeremy Seifert's documentary, GMO OMG, explores just WTF is in the food we eat.

To say that the debate over GMOs is hot right now is putting it lightly. It's scalding. Touch it with a whisper and someone's going to get burned. Unless you don't so much as skim magazine headlines in the checkout line or watch TV, or unless your Twitter feed is down, or your Facebook has been so ingeniously hacked that all politically unstable content is somehow totally blocked (which means your "social" life consists of Instagram food-porn, viral videos of adorable animals doing adorable things really adorably, and some dude you met once with the uncontrollable desire to tell the world that he's "just chillin with some ramen noodles watching my fav shows #Liveisgreat.") then you've undoubtably heard of GMOs, Genetically Modified Organisms. You may even know what they are, maybe even why they are bad for you. Wait, are they bad for you? Well, scientifically, we're not even sure.

Fructose-Glucose Gullible

ZOIKS! Scooby! It's not a ghost, it's High-Fructose!

Despite its geo-political proximity to the Florida, as well as its economical dependancy on U.S. imports, and an ever-adopting of American culture, The Bahamas' exposure to the outside world is not exclusively American. Our history ties us to Britain, Europe, and Africa; Brazilian and Chinese immigrants are on the rise; and our children return from studies abroad in countries such as Canada. But, our exposure to American news and media leaves Bahamians subject to American food/health jargon, which can compromise our health, because nutritional labelling is so varying.

We're all aware (or should be) of the hazards of High-Fructose Corn Syrup. Those who read nutrition labels know to steer clear of it; but High-Fructose Corn Syrup by any other name -- is still High-Fructose Corn Syrup. Next time you're in Super Value or Fresh Market buying jellies and jams, err away from those containing Glucose-Fructose Syrup: the British alias to the infamous High-Fructose Corn Syrup. Canadian products will label it Glucose/Fructose Syrup. Different name, same bad stuff.

Courtesy of Wikipedia