Earlier this evening, I made a pit stop at PriceRite for Ginger - a tiny piece of it that weighed less than a third of a pound. I think the ominous sign was when the cashier checking out my groceries pointed at the twisted little piece of root and asked me what it was.

Personally, I think no one on this planet should go through their life without getting acquainted with ginger. I was debating the pros and cons of telling her what an awesome seasoning the tiny root makes but I stopped mid-thought when I saw my total bill. I was expecting a bill of less than $10 but I got billed twice the amount:



I would have walked out without making a fuss about any of this but I felt really ridiculous paying $6.46 for a piece of ginger as big as my thumb! I asked her to re-check. She weighed it twice but the total didn't change. One of the managers ambled over and agreed that it was an unreasonable amount to pay for ginger. After what looked like some super-involved physics and computing research, they found that the scale added more than 2lb to everything.

At that point, I should have just left that ginger piece on the counter, asked them for a refund and walked out. Quite unfortunately, however, my frugal shopping senses kicked in. I noticed that I had paid $6.47 for 3 medium tomatoes. I asked them if they could reweigh the other produce on my list.

For some mysterious reason the manager told me: "I will do the tomatoes but I am definitely not doing the onions!" My mind started meandering toward possible reasons. Did he have a massive allergy to onions? Did the peeling and almost psoriatic red onion skins gross him out? Was he psychologically traumatized by the flavour of onions? Why single out onions? Was he French? I was almost ready to pay this extra $10 to know the answer to this conundrum.



Moral of the story: Ginger helps you get some refunds but it can't help you solve elemental mysteries.

The big confession is that this is my first time baking or even cooking with eggs. The results are surprisingly rather pleasant.



I really expected some kind of hard sedimentary rock - considering my former eggless ventures but this one sliced pretty easily and didn't stick to the glass.



Though the recipe called for a truckload of butter ( ), quite possibly, this might be the one of the more healthful cakes I have ever eaten.



I tossed in a granny smith, some almonds and peanuts in addition to the carrot so it is slightly on the more-moist side. Oh, and I freaked out last minute about using only oatmeal flour so I tossed in some toasted bulghur wheat - the fibre value might have gone up 50% because of that. Hehe



According to the label on the package, the hens were apparently running around in a carefree manner eating vegetarian organic poultry feed when they produced the light brown eggs that I bought.



The carrot-tag claimed that they were grown in an "certified" organic environment and the almond-pack says they are from a "green practices" farm. The butter is organic too. The Coop made a killing business out of me yesterday. Hahaha



The oats were packaged and sold by a ubiquitous brand that has a cheruby and probably gouty old man as its mascot. The bulghur wheat is from Lebanon.



The peanuts and apple, unfortunately, didn't have any special qualities listed. I am assuming the spices are pretty generic as well.



As usual, I had no sugar at hand so I used only honey. As a result the cake is very mildly sweet. One slice contains less than 1/2 a teaspoon of honey. If you are looking for a sugar-overload, this is not it.



I think I might be bringing it to the BBQ tonight (is it still on?)

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Notes:
(e:Terry): Less eggs
(e:leetee): More flour.
(e:Paul): Ripe bananas
(e:libertad): More honey
James (I think or was that Robert?): Dates as a binding agent

I love you all. :)

My Lemon and Coconut flavoured Green Lentil Power Dinner.

I have been keeping watch over what I eat for the past two days using the CRON-o-meter. It's an experiment to see if I am eating a balanced diet and where my macro and micro nutrients are coming from. The whole exercise is pretty involved. It's like maintaining a food diary but you get immediate nutrient data read-outs.

[box]On May 18 I had
1. Milk, nonfat, fluid, with added vitamin A (fat free or skim) 3 cups
2. Chickpeas (garbanzo beans, bengal gram), mature seeds, cooked, boiled, with salt 80g
3. Nuts, almonds 15
4. Apples, raw, with skin 1 large (3-1/4" dia)
5. Chewing gum, sugarless 1 piece 5.4
6. Water, tap, municipal 1.8 liter
7. Bananas, raw 1 medium (7" to 7-7/8"long)
8. Tea, brewed, prepared with tap water 3 cup (8 fl oz)
9. Oranges, raw, all commercial varieties 1 large (3-1/16" dia)
10. Bread, pita, whole-wheat 28.5 g
11. Peppers, sweet, green, raw 40 g
12. Onions, raw 30 g
13. Hummus,c ommercial 2 tbsp
14. Cereals ready-to-eat, GENERAL MILLS, CHEERIOS 5 g

A total of 963 calories, with 45g proteins, 172g carbohydrates and 16g lipids with around 90% vitamins and minerals.[/box]


[box]On May 19 I had
1. Nuts, almonds 18
2. Apples, raw, with skin 2 large (3-1/4" dia)
3. Apricots, dried, sulfured, uncooked 1 half
4. Dates, deglet noor 3 date, pitted
5. Cookies, oatmeal, prepared from recipe, with raisins 3 cookie (2-5/8" dia)
6. Cream, fluid, half and half 1 container, individual (.5 fl oz)
7. Coffee, brewed from grounds, prepared with tap water 1 cup (8 fl oz)
8. Milk, nonfat, fluid, with added vitamin A (fat free or skim) 2 cup
9. Peanuts, all types, raw 5 g
10. Milk, dry, nonfat, instant, with added vitamin A 4 tsp
11. Chewing gum, sugarless 1 piece
12. Bread, pita, whole-wheat 28.5 g
13. Macaroni, dry, enriched 16 g
14. Mustard Greens and Vegetable Saute 0.75 of full recipe
15. Cereals ready-to-eat, GENERAL MILLS, CHEERIOS 5 g
16. Water, tap, municipal 1.8 liter

A total of 1476 calories, with 65g proteins, 254g carbohydrates and 31g lipids with around 100% vitamins and minerals.[/box]

Strangely, I have begun to feel guilty every time I eat a random almond or down a cookie just because I am recording them all in the software. It will be really interesting to see whether my diet actually changes because I am watching it.

In other news, I am volunteering for a cancer prevention campaign called "Spit for the Cure" on June 13.



My department at Roswell is collaborating with Susan G. Komen's race for the cure on June 13, 2009 at Delaware Park Rose Gardens. We are hoping to recruit as many people from the community as possible to donate their spit (saliva) for cancer prevention research at this race.

If anyone is interested in participating and giving 15 minutes of your time and spit for a noble cause, this is a perfect opportunity! :) Swing by the Roswell Park Cancer Institute's Spit for the Cure tent on June 13 from 7:30 AM to 1:00PM.

Bufwiki is alive!

Someone (David Monroe) who came to Buffalo from Rochester started a Bufwiki. :)

Sign up and start wiki-ing your Buffalo experiences and reviews! I am so glad Bufwiki is finally here.

Though I am never ever going to be able to make myself use this much butter or finely milled flour in ANY of my cooking, I can't help but dream about making pastry and pie crusts.



Its a completely insane and impractical obsession.
Aaaargh.

It's bound to be amazing. :)

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• That's Strange. I think the Jem song is in the same key as "It's a beautiful life" by Ace of Base but at a slower tempo. Did anyone else pick up on that similarity?

Hatred - the single word that defines people who cannot see point of views other than their own.

I am not sure why we are still in a society that makes sections of people fight for their right to a life of their choice. When exactly did we decide that we needed to be homogeneous in our preferences? Have we learnt nothing - absolutely nothing from the sheer variety of life around us? Don't we know that the key to life on this planet is diversity - not just superficial skin-deep diversity, but diversity right up to the last single nucleotide in our DNA?

Surely, we are not that brainless? Or are we? Maybe I should stop seeing features that really dehydrate my faith.

I have been thinking about this topic a lot lately. (e:Jason)'s obesity Vs. smoking posts are not really "out there". These two diseases have more parallel atherosclerotic rotten little end-arteries in common than we can ever imagine.

Since its easier to examine oneself than generalize by poking into what a whole population is doing, I am going to be taking a microscope to my eating habits starting today. The idea is to take concepts from nutritional sciences and turn them on their head. Over my own head.

It's very fashionable to make resolutions to eat right. What is eating right, exactly? With the level of additives and ingredients in all kinds of food nowadays, does "eating right" mean the same thing as it did a few decades or even a few years back? Though the definition of "eating right" might have changed, the effect of "eating right" remains the same. The ultimate goal is to reach the peak of the human lifespan on this planet without diseases cutting short your stay or making it miserable in the last few years.

Can we attain this goal with the food that we consume? Is it the food alone or some kind of an additional psychological attitude that contributes to who ends up on what side of the hospital bed? All of them - fascinating questions with almost no definite answers.