Author: Ashley Bischoff

Food 911

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I've recently discovered — and have been enjoying — Food 911 on the Food Network. In case you haven’t seen the show, the basic idea is that chef Tyler Florence helps ordinary people with preparing foods that they just can’t seem to get right. For instance, in one show, he helped someone cook pork chops, and in other he helped someone with rice.

I quite enjoy the show because it doesn’t concentrate on complicated foods — I could actually see myself preparing many of these foods. So, as opposed to other cooking shows, there’s not so much the effort of trying to remember specific recipes, as most of the show is just general tips for the dish.

From show on rice, I was intrigued by the brown rice with apples recipe. The name may not be very inventive, but it looked quite tasty: brown rice + apples + green pepper + walnuts + chicken + olive oil (and a few other ingredients). Were it not for the high carbs of the rice, I would be tempted to try the recipe quite soon. Nonetheless, I may still try it sometime.

The air times for the show are listed right on the show’s main page.

PGA Championship

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The PGA Championship is this weekend at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minn. And, as golf’s final major this year, I look forward to it. As I write this, Fred Funk is in the lead with -7, followed four guys at -6 (including Justin Leonard, Mark Calcavecchia, and Retief Goosen).

Here's the PGA Championship’s Leaderboard, which should remain current. As of this morning (Friday morning) Jim Furyk was in the lead, but now he’s at -3 overall. I was really hoping that he might win this one, as he’s one of the best players in the game that hasn’t won a major yet.

With any luck, I’ll be able to watch some of it this weekend.

Fuddruckers

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I had lunch at Fuddruckers with some old co-workers. I hadn’t been to Fuddruckers before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I knew they had hamburgers, but that was about the extent of my knowledge.

I soon discovered that they have many sizes of burgers and specialty burgers as well. I finally settled on the 1/2 pound version of their Southwest Burger — consisting of guacamole, bacon and monterey jack cheese. Really, as soon as I read “guacamole”, I knew that this burger was for me (I’m a real sucker for avocado).

The made-to-order burger was hot and very tasty. And, I hadn’t had burger with guacamole before, but I look forward to having many more :).

Office Rage

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From This is London is this story on Office Rage:

More than half of all office staff in the UK have become so angry at work they have nearly punched a colleague, according the results of a survey today.

Some 53% of workers have been brought to the brink of violence by “office rage”, with loud-mouthed colleagues cited as the main cause. […]

Man, what I wouldn’t give to have that again (HHOS?). Really, most of the problems are things we can all relate to, though hopefully they’re only rare occurances:

The study, based on research among 450 office workers across Britain, found that 64% of those surveyed get angry at colleagues shouting across the office and talking over people at meetings.

IT problems caused 53% to lose their temper, followed by excessive workloads (51%) and interruptions while on the phone (37%). […]

This was my favorite part of the article, though:

Asked how they coped with anger, nearly a third of respondents (31%) said they ignored the person responsible.

Twenty per cent, the majority of whom were women, made a cup of tea [&hellip]

Those wacky Brits ;). How British Are You?

Tuna Sandwiches

Ashley Bischoff4 Comments

I have a tuna sandwich for breakfast and lunch every day. And, each day I use a 12 oz can, which is the equivalent of two “normal size” 6 oz cans of tuna. So, that gives me 32g protein per sandwich.

In the past, I used to add sliced tomato and sometimes even avocado to the sandwiches as well, but I’ve stopped doing that for now. So, my sandwich creation is fairly simple: tuna + low-fat mayo + rye bread.

Just yesterday, Julie offered a suggestion that she had read in a magazine. According to the magazine, by mixing tuna with mayo, the saturated fat of the mayo tends to counteract the good effects of the omega-3 fats in the tuna. As a substitute, the article recommended trying a mustard-based vinaigrette instead.

Why they recommend a mustard-based vinaigrette, I have no idea. Maybe the authors just happen to like mustard-based vinaigrettes and wanted to pass along the suggestion. At any rate, the important part is that the dressing contains monounsaturated fats (such as olive or canola oils). So, in that sense, I suppose that any dressing would be just as good (assuming that it also had no saturated fat).

As I mentioned, I use low-fat mayo and, of its 2g fat per serving, only 0.5g of that is saturated fat. So, in my case, I’m not sure how large the benefit would be. However, there’s a chance that using a vinaigrette may be even more tasty than mayo anyway. So, next time I go out for groceries, I may just pick some up.

Come to think of it, I have some Wish-Bone “Just 2 Good” Blue Cheese dressing in fridge (with just 2g fat per serving, as the name implies). And, sure enough, it has no saturated fat per serving. Mmm — tuna sandwich combined with the power of blue cheese…