Foodgoat

Chinese Dumplings, Inspired by Ching-He Huang

2012-02-15T16:09:00.002-05:00

These days, the TV has mostly been hijacked for Team Umi Zoomi. But there is one cooking show that I've been watching when I can:

Easy Chinese: San Francisco, on the Cooking Channel, hosted by Ching-He Huang. The Taiwanese-born British food writer, food entrepreneur and TV chef visits local restaurants, markets, and farms in my beloved hometown of San Francisco and Bay Area and cooks up quick Chinese-inspired dishes right on location.

I love that it's set in San Francisco, I love that Ching is so perky and that she has a British accent, but mostly I love that it's Chinese food. Because if there's a cuisine that I sorely miss on the Cleveland east side suburbs, it's Chinese.

Fortunately, a recent episode on dim sum inspired Foodgoat to try his hand at dumplings. Rather than following her recipe for steamed pork and mushroom dumplings, he winged it on his own as he usually does, using pork, ginger, hoisin sauce, and I don't know what else.

His faithful helper was also on hand to put them together, and even figured out her own way of sealing the wonton wrappers.

A variety of dipping sauces is half the fun!

All steamed up and delicious.

Princess Goat has her own set of pink chopsticks.

They came out wonderfully - very, very yummy. Gngery and moist and delicious and fun to eat. I'm plotting to buy some bamboo steamers and keep the fridge stocked with wonton wrappers in the hope that I see these dumplings again. And I'm going to keep that TV show on.

Valentine's Day Cookies

2012-02-14T10:53:00.001-05:00

We celebrated Valentine's Day with our first ever batch of sugar cookies: heart-shaped, pink-frosted, and sugar-sprinkled.

Making the cookies was fun, but the frosting - THAT was the good part. Not only did it involve "painting" the cookies, but nothing tastes as good to this toddler as straight up sugar.

And by the way, I was very surprised at the ease of making this frosting - powdered sugar mixed with a bit of milk and a drop of food coloring. Nope, there's no reason to ever, ever buy pre-made frosting for cookies.

Happy Valentine's Day!

The Health Risk of French Press Coffee: Increased Cholesterol

2012-02-09T14:01:00.003-05:00

Foodgoat loves his French press coffee. So he was surprised to the see health advice at work saying that a little coffee every day is okay, as long as it wasn't boiled or French press.

What? What difference would it make, health-wise, if the coffee was boiled or French pressed?

In the 1980s, Scandinavian doctors first noticed that coffee drinkers tended to suffer from high cholesterol more often than those who didn't drink coffee.

While caffeine is the chemical we usually associate with coffee, it's not the caffeine causing this effect. It is another of the many other other natural compounds in coffee - cafestol.

Cafestol, found in the flavorful coffee oils, is a terpene, a class of organic compound are the main component of essential oils and resin (from which turpentine is produced).

But, look what cafestol does:

Cafestol binds to a hormone receptor in the intestine where normally bile acids would bind.
Because this receptor has been hijacked, the breakdown of cholesterol into bile acids slows down.
Cholesterol then backs up.
Cholestoerol level goes up. This is largely an increase in low density lipoprotein (LDL) (the bad kind) levels and triglyceride levels. High density lipoproteins (HDL) do not appear to be affected.

The impact of cafestol on cholesterol is can be significant - cafestol is routinely described as the most potent cholesterol-elevating compound known in the human diet.

One study found that 10 milligrams of cafestol (or four 5-ounce cups of French-press coffee) may raise cholesterol by 8 to 10 percent in four weeks.

And of course, cholesterol can be deposited in artery walls, increasing the risk for heart disease.

Why Brewing Method Matters
Because cafestol is in the oils of coffee, though, using a paper filter (as in drip coffee brews) captures much of the oil and results in very low levels of cafestol. So cholesterol is unimpacted.

In unfiltered brewing methods, including French press, boiled methods such as Turkish coffee, and espresso, the oils remain in your coffee. It gives better flavor, but also leaves all the cafestol in it, so your cholestorol gets the full impact. (Note, in Scandanavia, where they first noticed the cafestol effect, the typical coffee brewing method is a boiled method). Cafetol is highest in Turkish coffee type brews, next highest is French press, followed by espresso.

So, does this mean French press coffee is unhealthy? I don't think so. The impact on cholesterol is significant, but still is less than the influence of other factors, including:

Eating foods high in saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol.
Being overweight.
Not being active every day.
Smoking.

Since I'm not concerned about my cholesterol level or overall risk of heart disease, I'm just going to go ahead and keep drinking my French press coffee.

Things I've Learned About Non-Dairy Creamer

2012-02-07T14:53:00.000-05:00

As I've said, I drink my coffee black.

Once, in an effort to improve upon a terrible cup of coffee provided to me somewhere, I tried adding the non-dairy creamer, Coffee Mate I think it was, to it. Big mistake. It made bad black coffee even worse.

It's called non-dairy whitener, or coffee whitener, in other parts of the world (such as the UK, it looks like) so that you don't think it's really cream. Really, it's artificial cream with vegetable oil.
They may not be completely non-dairy: most of them contain casein, which comes from milk, in order to make it, well, milky. Which matters if you're allergic to milk (rather than lactose intolerant) or vegan.
You can make a fireball with it! One of the ingredients can become flammable when dispersed. Tested and confirmed by Mythbusters.
It generally seems to be made up of things that are not food - edible, maybe, but not food. Basically, it's high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated vegetable fat, casein, artificial flavoring and colors, and phosphates. There are rundowns here and here.
It's not good for you. The worst offender in the ingredient list is the partially hydrogenated oil, also know as trans fat. The coffee creamer container may say "No trans fat!" on it, but labelling rules allow you to say a product as 0 grams of trans fat as long as it has 0.5 grams or less trans fat per serving. But if you end up using more than one serving of creamer, you could end up getting quite a lot of trans fat. And no amount of trans fat is good for you.
It comes in a lot of flavors. A LOT. International Delight alone has 22 flavors on their website. Is creaminess not enough of an addition to one's cup of coffee?
The worst sounding flavor: Cinnabon. I can't think of anything worse than adding the flavor of horrible, airport/mall cinnamon rolls into my coffee cup.

Why I Don't Like French Roast Coffee

2012-02-02T13:45:00.003-05:00

As a result of roasting our own coffee beans, I have learned more about coffee and the properties of the various roast types. For example, French roast. I have tried many versions and have never found one that I liked - one that I wanted to go back to and drink again. Why is that?

French roast is coffee has been roasted for longer time, well into the "second crack"stage, so what you get is a a very dark roast. At the French roast stage, the beans are very oily and almost black.

As you roast beans, the flavors change. At lighter roasts, the beans will have more of its "origin flavor" which result from its variety and growing conditions and locations. Here's where you can taste the differences between the Sumatran and Guatamalan and the Ethiopian beans.

Keep roasting them long enough, and the specific flavors of the bean are increasingly replaced by mostly carbony flavors. At the French roast stage, it doesn't matter so much where the beans came from and or what kind they were or how well they were grown, because all those distinctive elements are overpowered by the charcoal taste.

And so, French roasts tasted kind of burnt.

Turns out I am not the only one who prefers the lighter roasts.

My favorite part of this Wall Street Journal article comes at the end, because it echoes what Foodgoat complained about to me this very morning:

"Because quality beans, properly roasted retain more natural sweetness, Mr. Wells says that he won't offer sugar when he opens his first café in February. He adds he has served thousands of coffees at events and has never offered sugar, to the consternation of some consumers.

Many consumers erroneously associate dark-roasted coffee with "strong" coffee, Mr. Howell says. "Strength is a matter of how much coffee to water," he says. While some drinkers enjoy the flavorful jolt of a dark coffee, "light roast rewards waiting a little bit, like letting a wine open after it has been poured," and can taste even better as it cools, Mr. Howell says. Light roasts are best enjoyed without cream or sugar because they can be naturally sweet and not bitter, he adds."

Why do I know that French roasts tastes burnt? Because I drink coffee black. No sugar. No cream.

Lighter roasts don't need sugar or cream to taste good; they don't have the bitter, burnt flavor that needs to be covered up with sweeteners.

They let the coffee taste delicious just as they are.

Roasting Coffee at Home, FTW!

2012-02-01T01:30:00.000-05:00

Coffee around here is a necessity, not a luxury. The day really can't get started without it. Diapers can, if needed, get changed before the morning cup, but that's with some real concentration and effort.

But the really good roasted coffee beans, the kind that makes delicious coffee worth waking up to, are not cheap at all, and they seem to have been more expensive over the past year. Where once we were getting roasted coffee beans for $10 a pound, we would now pay $13 to $16 a pound at the local coffee shop.

I'm not opposed to coffee beans being expensive. The local coffee roasters and shops are nice people and have great products and I'm happy to support them. The coffee farms and cooperatives that the beans come from also produce lovely beans and I'm happy to support them too. But funds being what they are, alternatives had to be explored.

We've tried a range of coffee beans at various price points, in the quest to save some money. Some were better than others, but none were as good as what we gotten used to - high quality, single origin coffee beans roasted locally.

So for Christmas, Foodgoat got a coffee roaster. And it's been fabulous.

The process is simple: you put in some green (unroasted) coffee beans. You turn the roaster on. You watch the beans toss about, turning from greenish to brownish to dark brown, which takes about six minutes. You cool them down. You wait a day or so. And that's it!

The coffee we made was just as good as the coffee we had been buying - fresh, flavorful, and complex. And the green coffee beans only cost around $6 a pound if you buy enough - quite the cost savings. The green beans can also be stored for up to a year, so we can buy a big supply and roast as needed, which helps with our other coffee problem - running out of coffee beans and having run out to the coffee shop to get more, or horrors, having to go a morning or two drinking some instant stuff.

I bought the roasting machine, but it's basically a glorified air popcorn maker. Now that I've seen the roasting process in action I can see that the other DIY methods would work just as well. It's also kind of fun that the varieties of single origin coffees available to us is now wider, since the green coffee bean offerings online have a much larger selection that the roasted bean selection at the local shop. And so now, I'm learning a lot more about coffee production and flavors in general.

So the coffee roasting adventure has been a great success and is now part of our weekly routine. Excellent coffee, low cost, and convenient - totally recommended.

Stoves for the 1%

2012-01-25T00:30:00.000-05:00

On a recent stop at Williams-Sonoma, I saw this dreamy stove:

Made by La Cornue, a French company, the CornuFe features:

5 powerful gas burners, including a center burner that goes up to 17,500 BTU and one simmer burner adjustable from 600 BTU to 6,000 BTU
2 electric convection ovens with French side-swing doors (swing doors!); one with seven cooking modes, including convection and conventional baking/roasting options
4 oven racks

Nice, yes? Priced at $8,600 with $1,300 for delivery, it's definitely beyond my means.

But then I went to the La Cornue website, and found that the CornuFe is their affordable line - the stove for those with, as they say, "a more modest budget".

Their prestigious line is the hand crafted Chateau line of stoves, with their self-described crown jewel bring the Grand Palais 180. The range is almost 6 feet in length, has one grand vaulted gas oven and one grand vaulted electric oven, and six cooktop configurations, which can include a power burner of 22,000 BTU and a lava rock grill. And on the website, you can view the color configurations just like you can on car websites. It makes the CornuFe version look tiny.

I have no clue how much the Grand Palais 180 might cost. Certainly as much as a house in the Cleveland area, but which neighborhood in the Cleveland area, I'm afraid to guess.

Today's Menu, As Seen on Pinterest

2012-01-24T13:53:00.000-05:00

I'd like to say this is how it works in our house, but there's usually plain pasta in fridge as a backup.

Everyone Like Pizza

2012-01-17T15:06:00.001-05:00

Our favorite pizzas are from Valentino's - one cheese with a thin crust and one with a regular crust with pepperoni with extra cheese. Good for all ages, 6 months to 3 years to older!

It's the Little Things

2012-01-13T00:30:00.000-05:00

For years, I used this measuring spoon:

It's adjustable!

Because it's adjustable, so you don't need separate teaspoons and tablespoons measures. You save drawer space. It seemed like a good idea.

However, over time, I grew to hate it.

It was awful for liquids, since the adjusting part got loose and leaked. And it was actually inconvenient to have just one measuring spoon, since I often needed several measures and was constantly cleaning it out so I could use it for a different ingredient. It got to be very annoying.

It did work, though, although poorly, so I kept on using it. And then for my birthday I got these spoons.

Not adjustable, but it is accurate!

There's one of each size! Each size is clearly labelled! Each size is more or less accurate! Each one has two scoops - one rounded, and one oval for those narrow jars! They aren't bound by a ring, making them awkward to use! It's magnetic, so that all stick together in the drawer in a compact way!

In short, I now love my measuring spoons. It actually makes my life better in a quantifiable, albeit very, very small, way.

Welcome to Food, Goatling!

2012-01-12T00:30:00.000-05:00

The Goatling is now 6 months old, so it's time for some solids! We started off her sister with avocado, but she started with banana.

Yes, Goatling, that's FOOD! Your desire to grab things and stuff them in your mouth will serve you well. New textures, new tastes, new ways to fill up your belly! Enjoy!

TSA Clarifes Its Cupcake Policy

2012-01-11T05:00:00.000-05:00

The TSA Blog: Cupcakegate

See the difference here? Normal cupcake, okay to bring to the airport, cupcake in a jar, not so much.

At issue is the cupcake icing, which is considered a gel.

I would think that if the woman had gulped down all the icing from her cupcake in a jar, she would have been allowed to bring it - just as you can bring an empty bottle onto a plane, but not one full of liquid.

That being said, gulping down icing sounds disgusting. Also, no one sells icing inside the airport, so then you're left with just the cake part, which would be fine by me but not to a lot of people.

Also, I don't think the terrorists are messing around with cupcakes in jars. I feel like once they started working with cupcakes so much, the hate would just flow right out of them. I mean, who doesn't get happier when they have a cupcake?

Now I want to make some cakes in jars. I'm starting with these.

V8 Fusion

2012-01-10T14:48:00.000-05:00

I feel the V8 Fusion drinks are marketed directly at me. Why yes, Campbell's, I am an adult female, between ages 25 and 55. Yes, I do have children. Yes, I am often on-the-go, and I do look for healthful beverage options for my whole family. Oh, and yes, I would indeed like to see Jackie Chan in a commercial.

Actually, they really don't need to make more commercials for V8 Fusion juices for me, because it's already a staple in our household. I'm going to guess that it is for others too, since when they are on sale, I find myself in the company of several other women standing in front of the V8 Fusion drinks, scanning the various flavors to find the one that our kids like the best/are most likely to drink. The drink says each serving contains ½ cup of vegetables and ½ cup of fruit, with no added sugar - it's got to be good for you, right? It will make up for the fact that our child won't eat carrots today, right? It's a good alternative to the Brussels sprouts I meant to make as a side for dinner, but forgot about, right? Right? Well, maybe not, but it tastes good.

Princess Goat's preferred flavor is the Peach Mango, or what we refer to as Yellow Juice. She loves the stuff.

Back to the French Press

2012-01-10T11:42:00.002-05:00

Several months ago, our electric vacuum coffee maker, the Bodum Santos, died.

Three and a half years of daily use, I suppose, is a pretty good run for a kitchen appliance.

The Santos made good coffee, entertainingly, and I liked it, but towards the end it got quite inconsistent. At one point I had a difficult time finding a replacement filter. Being made of plastic, it got scratched up and cloudy.

So instead of replacing it, we have gone back to using the French press and an electric kettle. I bought the biggest one I could find - a 12 cup, 51-ounces Bodum Chambord. The more popular sizes, the ones that are most easily available at the stores, are 4 to 8 cups, but this one is big enough for a cup of coffee for each of us in the morning, plus a Thermos full of coffee for Foodgoat to take to work, which is perfect.

It's simple to use, doesn't take up much space, and it also makes excellent coffee - better than the electric vacuum coffee maker. The only real downside is that it won't keep coffee warm if you don't drink it right away, but a Thermos will take care of that, so it's still my favorite way to make coffee.

It's such a simple, low tech, and effective means of making really good coffee that I wonder why everyone doesn't use it. Instead everyone has a drip machine. Which needs electricity, requires you to buy filters on a regular basis, takes up more counter space, is less intuitive to use, and worst of all, the coffee doesn't even taste as good.

What My True Love Gave to Me

2012-01-04T11:54:00.000-05:00

For Christmas, I got a wheel of cheese. Almost seven pounds of delicious Applewood Cheddar cheese.

It's my favorite cheddar - flavorful, intense, and creamy. We have only been able to find at the West Side Market around here, and it isn't not inexpensive, so we don't get to have it as often as we like. So to have a whole block of it just sitting in the fridge to eat any time I want is truly a treat.

Oh, I also got a big box of tuna cans. And Foodgoat's pledge to make me tuna melts ANY TIME I WANT.

Christmas for the Next Generation Foodie

2011-12-25T13:42:00.000-05:00

The now 3 year old Princess Goat had been asking Santa every day for a month before Christmas for a cooking room. He was happy to deliver. After all, a girl needs the proper setting for making her Daddy the pizza, pasta, and corned beef she has been making.

The Pig Shaped Grill

2011-11-03T13:04:00.000-04:00

There's really no good reason for spending $300 on a hibachi grill. Even if it is on sale (down from $470!). Except that it is shaped like a pig. I'd be slapping some bacon all the time on this thing!

In fact, where are the rest of cute grilling supplies? Too girly?

Dried Fruit, The Busy Mom's Back Up Fruit Plan

2011-10-19T14:53:00.003-04:00

I try to do my due diligence and make sure the Princess Goat gets her daily servings of fruit. Usually it's bananas and apples, though grapes, strawberries, blueberries, and mangoes get regularly served as well.

But sometimes I just don't have any fresh fruit in the house - either because it was so hot this summer everything went to over-ripe in a nanosecond, because I didn't get a chance to get to the grocery store, or because fresh fruit wasn't quite convenient at the moment.

That's when I pull out my back up fruit plan - dried fruit.

Dried fruit has been incredibly helpful to keep around the house. It keeps well, it's in conveniently sized pieces that don't require cutting, it's colorful, and it's generally well received. Dried mango is the big favorite with the Princess Goat, but I also have dried strawberries (very yummy), dried pineapple, dried kiwi, dried blueberries, and raisins on hand.

Honeycrisp Apples, A Delicious Case of Mistaken Paternity

2011-10-18T12:47:00.001-04:00

It's fall, which means it's apple season, when many, many more varieties of apples show up in the store. I've come a long way since the days when the only varieties I knew about were Granny Smiths and Red Delicious. I've tried many other varieties in the past few years. And my current favorite by far for eating fresh is the Honeycrisps, which are wonderfully sweet and crunchy and tart. The "crunchy" is the key, because the absolute worst is biting into an apple and getting a big mouthful of mushy. First released in 1991, Honeycrisps have become increasingly popular. Growers everywhere are planting Honeycrisps to keep up with demand. It's now the Minnesota state fruit.

Where did the Honeycrisp come from? They were developed at the University of Minnesota (which has been breeding apples since the 1920s). Based on their written records from the 1960s, the presumed parents of "Honeycrisp" were "Honeygold" and "Macoun".

But wait! Some noticed that Honeycrisp was dissimilar from its reported parents (Honeycrisp stays firm! Honeygold and Macoun get soft!). Suspicious!

So of course a genetic analysis for paternity was done. OMG! Neither Honeygold nor Macoun are the parents! Instead, Keepsake looks like it is one of Honeycrisp's parents. And the other ... still unknown! We may never know - that particular apple strain may have been lost or discarded since then.

I don't know about you, but having its origins shrouded in mystery kind of makes the Honeycrisp apple even more appealing.

White Flower Cupcakes

2011-10-13T14:47:00.003-04:00

When the Goatling was born, someone brought us a box of cupcakes from White Flower Cake Shoppe, and we've been addicted ever since.

Cake isn't usually my favorite dessert, and it's because of the frosting. Frosting is often too much, too sweet. But the frosting on the White Flower cupcakes is sweet enough without being overwhelming. The cakes are delicious. And, they're pretty. Really, they're gorgeous cakes.

The Princess Goat is partial to the white cake cupcake, and Foodgoat likes the chocolate, but I really, really love the red velvet cupcake, with the cream cheese frosting. YUMMY.

Meet the Goatling!

2011-10-12T10:33:00.001-04:00

Another little girl!

Shish Kebob

2011-05-18T10:32:00.000-04:00

We made shish kebobs last week, when the weather was warmer, for the sole reason that when we went to to the grocery store, GoatSpawn would NOT STOP STARING at the premade shish kebobs in the meat department. Even when I tried to move on to the next section she made me turn back so she could keep on looking at them.

Shish kebob is Turkish for ... “pieces of meat roasted on a spit or skewers.” While they say shish kebab was invented by soldiers of the Turk tribes using their swords to grill meat over their military campfires, surely meat cooked on a stick over fire has to date back a lot farther than that. Even marinated meat cooked on a stick must be an ancient technique.

The red onions on the shish kebob came out really, really onion-y, but everything else was delicious. And grilled corn on the cob is always a winner for everyone.

Uh Oh! Spaghetti-O's, Filipino Style

2011-05-12T11:41:00.000-04:00

Despite Foodgoat's great skill at making all kinds of delicious, and authentically Italian, pasta dishes, sometimes the pasta dish I feel like isn't Italian at all. It's Filipino-style!

Filipino style spaghetti is spaghetti with a sweet meat sauce and hot dogs. Trust me, it's good.

The sauce can be sweetened by using banana sauce or banana ketchup or with sugar, or both. Don't know what banana ketchup is? Banana ketchup is a Filipino condiment that is just ketchup made with some bananas (banana ketchup was made when there was a shortage of tomato ketchup during World War II, due to lack of tomatoes and a comparatively high production of bananas). It's sweeter than regular ketchup.

Can't get any banana ketchup? You can substitute regular ketchup or regular tomato sauce, with a little more sugar to make it sweeter.

The hot dogs are the other key part of this dish, and the part people might question. But I actually think they provide a nice meaty, salty balance to the sweet tomato sauce. They should, however, be sliced diagonally, in my opinion. Why? Because that's how my mom does it, and it just seems better.

I decided to use pasta shaped like little rings instead of the usual spaghetti shape, because GoatSpawn picked it out at the store (we always let her pick out the pasta at the store) and because it seemed like it might be easier for her to eat. So my Filipino spaghetti really actually turned out to be Filipino SpaghettiO's!

I don't recall every having SpaghettiO's as a kid, and I don't remember wanting it. It never looked good, coming out of a can like that. I didn't know that they were specifically marketed to parents as 'less messy' than regular spaghetti ("The neat round spaghetti you can eat with a spoon!"), and also use a sweetened tomato sauce.

My homemade Filipino version turned out to be a hit with GoatSpawn, and even Foodgoat.

This recipe is adapted from Cook Mobile's recipe for Filipino-Style Spaghetti. Check out the original!

1 lb anelli (ring-shaped) pasta, or any other pasta shape you like

1 lb ground beef

2 to 3 hot dogs, sliced diagonally

1 cup banana ketchup (can't find banana ketchup/sauce? use regular ketchup, or tomato sauce)

2 1/2 cups tomato sauce (this can be a mix of sauce and paste, depending on how thick and tomato-y you like it)

1/2 medium onion, peeled and diced

1 to 2 minced garlic cloves

1 spoonful sugar to taste (smaller spoon if you use banana ketchup or regular ketchup, more if you use regular tomato sauce)

salt and pepper to taste

In a pan, saute hotdogs until lightly brown. Remove from pan and set aside. Saute onions and garlic. Add ground beef, and cook until browned.

Pour in tomato sauce and ketchup. Stir the sugar. Season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and then simmer, uncovered, until meat is fully cooked and sauce is thickened, about 30 minutes. Add broth or water if it gets too thick for you. Stir in the hotdogs to heat through.

Meanwhile, cook your pasta!

Once the pasta is done and the sauce is done, mix all together. Top with grated Parmesan cheese if you like and serve!

Beet It: A Review of Biotta Beet Juice

2011-05-11T15:19:00.000-04:00

I like beets. Beets are messy to make but a perfectly nice tasting vegetable when made fresh and roasted. Beet juice is one of the ingredients in the very tasty Naked Berry Veggie smoothie, so I decided to try the Biotta Beet Juice, which is straight up,100% beet juice. Beets are sweet, so I figured the juice would be pretty good.

As you can see, beet juice is pretty intense in color. But in terms of taste ... it's even more intense. It's extremely - vegetable-y. It really does seem like you are taking in a very concentrated beet.

I thought it might help to mix it with something instead of drinking it straight. But also, I had heard you are not supposed to drink beet juice all by itself - beet juice can, according to some sources (none of which can provide me with acceptable sources or citations) can detox your liver and blood and kidneys so quickly that the release of all the toxins from your system can make you pass out or temporarily paralyze your vocal chords or something. Is this true? I myself did not pass out at all. I did not feel particularly detoxified. And my vocal chords worked well enough for me to say to Foodgoat, "Oh, jeez, you've got to taste this horrible thing."

But anyway, since I had a whole bottle of the stuff, I thought I'd try mixing it with something very sweet and light. Like Sprite. I'm sure this negates any health benefits beet juice might confer. Alas, I found it didn't help the taste at all. It just made the vegetable-y taste bubbly.

So, despite the fact that I enjoy fresh roasted beets, I will not be partaking in the juiced version again any time soon. Biotta also makes a couple of other vegetable juices, but none of them sound remotely appealing. Potato juice? Sauerkraut juice? I don't think so.

A Sequence of Photos to Explain Why GoatSpawn Got an Early Bath

2011-05-10T09:32:00.001-04:00

Honestly, I think the photos really speak for themselves.

That's an ice cream pie from Mitchell's, by the way, made with Belgian dark chocolate ice cream. Delicious!!