Not the most significant, but certainly one of the most amusing major-media corrections for 2006, courtesy of The New York Times:

"Because of an editing error, a recipe last Wednesday for meatballs with an article about foods to serve during the Super Bowl misstated the amount of chipotle chilies in adobo to be used. It is one or two canned chilies, not one or two cans. Click here for the correct recipe."

I think my friends would be willing to try it as written…

They’re off to a nice start, but I think some more of these slogans would be improved by replacing words with “sprinkle”.

Pardon me while I point and laugh:

High water intake reduces fat deposits and rids the body of toxins. Simply drinking eight 16 oz. glasses of water throughout the day, cooled to 40 Fahrenheit, will burn 200 calories; that's equivalent to running 3 miles!

I have no words.

A leftover steak!
Kosher salt, black pepper, and
a really hot fire...

In the hornet nest,
an oppressive heat begins.
Hey, it's my grill, guys.

I haven’t blogged about the specifics of why my doctor ordered me to work out more, but when that information is combined with his other order to cut way back on sugar (and, to a lesser extent, all carbs), it should be pretty obvious.

Mind you, I’d already cut back a lot on sugared soda a few years ago, just as part of a general desire to lose some weight and get in shape, and I’d found a few low- and zero-calorie drinks I could tolerate, but I didn’t go cold turkey. Now I have. [and things are going quite well, by the way; down from an average 250 mg/dL to ~125]

Not long before the doctor forcibly changed my lifestyle, I had acquired a taste for Arizona Iced Tea’s Arnold Palmer. While this is significantly lower in calories than the Lemon Tea we used to buy in massive quantities, it’s still filled with sugar. (I’ve never seen their Splenda-sweetened diet drinks in stores…)

So, armed with my New Best Friend Splenda (note: unless you’re a biochemist, please don’t send me any links about “the dangers of Splenda”; I’ll just point and laugh), here’s a pretty decent “zero-calorie” Arnold Palmer:

• 1 cup Granular Splenda
• 1 0.23-ounce package of Kool-Aid Lemonade Mix
• 2 tablespoons Lipton Unsweetened Iced Tea Mix
• 2 quarts water

Mix, chill, serve.

Note that I’ve put “zero-calorie” in quotes because I cannot determine how many digestible calories are actually present. All three of the powdered ingredients contain maltodextrin, but the serving sizes used allow them to round the calories down to 0 on the Nutrition Facts label. (see update below)

Basically, if each of the three powdered ingredients contains the maximum amount of maltodextrin that can still be rounded down to 0 calories, then an eight-ounce serving of this “zero-calorie” drink could contain as much as 31 calories, or nearly 8 grams of sugar. I’d like to think it has less, but I honestly can’t tell. The USDA Nutrient Database has data for Splenda packets (which also contain dextrose), but not the granular variety, and they’ve got nothing on the Lipton mix. The Kool-Aid mix is fine, at only 0.6 calories per serving, but it’s by far the smallest contributor. I think I’ll cut the Splenda in half for the next batch and see how it turns out.

While I’m on the subject, Lipton Iced Tea To Go is sweetened with Splenda (and maltodextrin…), and the Lemon flavor is pretty good. I don’t know who thought Green Tea with Mandarin and Mango was a good idea, but it’s at least drinkable, unlike the incredibly nasty Green Tea with Honey and Lemon. The other three flavors are apparently too new to be in wide distribution, but I’m not interested.

By the way, it would be nice to try sweetening with pure sucralose, the truly-zero-calorie active ingredient in Splenda, but I can’t. Unless your middle name is “Pepsico”, it’s unlikely that you can afford one of the 10 kilogram cartons that they ship the stuff in. Why not? Because the stuff is so ridiculously sweet that a carton is equivalent to more than six tons of sugar (if I’ve calculated correctly…), and priced accordingly. They cut it with maltodextrin and dextrose to bulk it up to a size that can be divided into consumer-friendly portions. There are some syrups available that are sweetened with the pure stuff, but they’re either expensive or a bit dodgy.

Update: ah, Google; the amount of maltodextrin in granular Splenda adds up to a total of 96 calories per cup, reducing the maximum possible calorie count per glass from 31 to 15.6, and establishing a lower bound of 12.7. Not bad at all.

This looked like a reasonable introduction to Japanese-style curry, until I hit this “basic tip”:

Scoop lye on the surface.

I guess I wasn’t paying attention during those school field trips to Mostly Faithful Recreation Of How People Used To Live Town, because the only things that come to mind when I hear the word lye are “harsh soap” and “drain cleaner”. As a way of finishing off your curry, it strikes me as a way of finishing off your guests.

I’m not a beer drinker. When I drink at all, it’s usually single-malt scotch or sake, and not often. About ten years ago, though, I stumbled across one I liked, and would like to find again. Online reviews are all over the map; it seems to be a brew that is either adored or despised, without much middle ground. It doesn’t age well, by most reports, which makes the 1996-dated bottle in my hands worthless as anything but a reminder (and a source for a picture later…).

Last time I asked at Beltramo’s, they remembered it but didn’t stock it any more. That was a long time ago, though, so it’s worth asking again.

Sadly, the defining booze of my college days seems to have disappeared from the market, remembered only in mixed-drink recipes: Hot Shot Tropical Fruit Schnapps, from the Hot Shot Distillery in Owensboro, Kentucky. I suspect that these days I’d find it cloyingly sweet, something I may test someday with the almost-empty bottle on my shelves. Still, I wouldn’t mind having a few bottles around for a reunion.

I needed to restock the pantry, so I made a late-night run to the local Safeway last night. I was passing through the canned-fruit section when something peculiar caught my eye:

These California peaches, canned by Kikkoman for a Japanese audience, somehow ended up on the shelves of a California grocery store that serves a largely Hispanic community.