Month: October 2003

The Perils of Earl Grey Tea

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

I was reading this Metafilter thread on tea and I came across this MedALERT synopsis of a patient who ran into problems from drinkng too much Earl Grey:

A man aged 44 years reported muscle cramps to his doctor. He had consumed up to four litres of black tea daily for 25 years and had recently switched to Earl Grey tea, believing it would be less harmful to his stomach. Within a week, he developed muscle cramps and other unusual symptoms, including a feeling of pressure in his eyes. He also had blurred vision, particularly in darkness. After five months, the patient switched from Earl Grey back to pure black tea and his symptoms completely disappeared within a week. […] He also found they did not recur as long as he consumed no more than one litre of Earl Grey tea daily. [emphasis mine]

As an Earl Grey drinker, I’m not terribly worried. After all, it’s not likely that I’d be drinking over a liter a day. Checking the online unit converter, I see that a liter would be about 34 fl oz. Let’s see… At maybe 8 oz per glass, I could have four full glasses of Earl Grey. Hmm, yeah, I should be able to make that ;).

Low Carb Ketchup from Heinz

Ashley Bischoff4 Comments

Reuters reports that Heinz is introducing a low-carb ketchup:

The new “One Carb” ketchup is the latest in a string of variations within Heinz’s $1.2 billion ketchup business in recent years. […] The new ketchup has only one gram of carbohydrates, 75 percent fewer than Heinz’ regular ketchup, the company said. […]

I’m not on Atkins, though I am going with The Zone (which has a reduction in some carbohydrates). And, since reducing my sugar intake, some foods with sugar now taste sweet to me.

In particular, both ketchup and barbecue sauce have plenty of sugar (or, even worse, corn syrup). And, these days, my sensitivity to the taste of sugar is high enough that regular ketchup just tastes oddly sweet to me (almost like sugared-tomatoes, which isn’t far from the truth).

So, it’ll be nice to make use of this upcoming One Carb ketchup from Heinz. If nothing else, I’m looking forward to it for the improved taste over regular ketchup :).

PDFCreator

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

I heard about PDFCreator from the Slashdot story yesterday on the OpenOffice.org 1.1 release. PDFCreator is a free/GPL PDF creator for win32 that simulates a printer driver — so, you can use it to create PDFs from any application that can print.

There were other apps prior to PDFCreator that could also create PDFs in Windows, but they required several steps chained together (which was a bit cumbersome). However, PDFCreator appears to be just as good as Adobe Distiller — it has a fully-automated install program and configures itself as a virtual printer. So, it’s just a matter of selecting it from the list of printers.

Then again, I don’t have much need for such a utility these days since I just use the PDF-export features that are built in to OpenOffice.org :). And, from what I’ve read, the native OpenOffice.org-export can result in smaller PDFs anyway, since OpenOffice.org has an understanding of the structure behind the document as opposed to the printer-driver which just receives a big pile of printer data.

A New Take on Tuna Burgers

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

I heard about an interesting recipe for tuna burgers from the AllRecipes.com Recipes Notes newsletter. Sure, even Food 911 has featured a tuna burger recipe, but that episode was almost a farce — a daycare center writes to the show to ask about how to make tuna more appetizing for the kids, and Tyler proceeds to make them tuna burgers made from diced tuna filets (not exactly an affordable solution for a daycare center).

Anyhow, back to the tuna burgers on AllRecipes. What struck me about these is that not only are these burgers tasty (“My husband … loves these tasty tuna burgers.”), but this recipe calls for regular called tuna (aha, that’s much more affordable).

The only downside, perhaps, is that the recipe calls for an extensive ingredient list. From bread crumbs, to onion, to red pepper, to dill weed and Worcestershire sauce, there’s a lot that go into these. Nonetheless, I’m quite tempted to try them sometime.

Tasty Tuna Burgers

Makes: 4 servings
Prep Time: 22 Minutes
Cook Time: 8 Minutes
Ready in: 30 Minutes

Ingredients:

  • 1 (6 ounce) can tuna, drained
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs [Atkins people might be able to omit this]
  • 1/3 cup minced onion
  • 1/4 cup minced celery
  • 1/4 cup minced red bell pepper
  • 1/4 cup mayonnaise
  • 2 tablespoons chili sauce
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried dill weed [I don’t even know what dill weed looks like. Yeesh.]
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
  • 1 dash hot pepper sauce
  • 1 dash Worcestershire sauce
  • 4 hamburger buns
  • 1 tomato, sliced
  • 4 leaves of lettuce (optional)

Directions:

  1. Combine tuna, egg, bread crumbs, onion, celery, red bell pepper, mayonnaise, hot chili sauce, chili sauce, dill, salt, pepper, hot pepper sauce and Worcestershire sauce. Mix well. Shape into 4 patties (mixture will be very soft and delicate). Refrigerate for 30 minutes to make the patties easier to handle, if desired.
  2. Coat a non-stick skillet with cooking spray; fry tuna patties for about 3 to 4 minutes per side, or until cooked through. These are fragile, so be careful when turning them.
  3. Serve on buns with tomato slices and lettuce leaves, if desired.