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have natural antibacterial properties and ability to over-takepathogens. Moreover, our bodies use a variety of wild flora fordigestion, development and immune systems).Unfortunately, mass food manufacturers have run relentless campaigns over the previous few generations to causeconsumers to conclude (beyond their 9,000 years of wisdom)that plasticy looking bright-colored food-like substances withhomogenous texture, in a vacuum-pack and big brand logoequal controlled/safe products. Anything moldy, rustic, irregular, inconsistent, or natural equals unsanitary conditions,primitive family farming, or uncontrolled production. Today,we understand that this is not the case as we go back to traditional and artisan foods . . . and stay away from highly processed industrial food replacements.Blue Molds have a particularly unique effect on cheese.They accelerate two processes dramatically: Proteolysis(breakdown of proteins), which causes the cheese to takeon extra-creamy texture (especially in proximity to the bluemold veins), and lipolysis (breakdown of fats), which makesup the tangy, spicy, sharp and strong flavor. The creamy texture stand up to the sharp flavor and together they bring uponan exciting flavor/texture/aroma profile, which is often further balanced against sweet/nutty milk and lots of salt (bluecheeses typically contain twice the salt of other cheeses). Thiscombination is so unique; it is unlike any other food!The ProcessBefore going into the second part of the question (“Can one"bleu-ify" other cheeses at home?”) let's just understand theprocess in a nutshell: Blue mold grows only during a specific time frame withinthe aging period. It needs a balanced acidity, so it can'tgrow on the cheese if is too young and still acidic. It alsorelies on nutrients that are still readily available in thecheese, so it can't be too late when the cheese is alreadyaged. The mold spores are highly contagious to other cheeses,so blue cheeses typically would not share aging space withother cheeses during this sensitive period.16

The cheese is usually pierced with a thick needle first sothat oxygen will flow into its crevices and kickstart thegrowth. The cheesemaker would repeat this process everyseven to fourteen days until sufficient growth of blue hastaken place. At this point, the cheese is wrapped in foil to prevent theblue from growing out of control. The cheese is then immediately moved to cooler temperature and aged for theremaining period, allowing the processes of proteolysisand lipolysis to take place and develop deep and complextexture, flavor, and aroma. In some cases, this last stagecould take up several months past the development andstoppage of the blue mold.Bluing Cheese at HomeTrying to blue an unsuspecting cheese at home may provedifficult. The cheese you purchase is often already aged, ripe,and stable. It lacks sufficient nutrients to support the growthof new blue mold. Competition from other well-establishedmolds and yeasts in the rind may be too much for the blue toovercome at such late stage.Having said that, this is not an impossible experiment.One just needs to find a cheese that is very young and has little or no rind. It must be moist enough to support the growthof this mold, yet it firm enough to enable the puncture a holethrough it with a knitting needle. To "blue" it, one would needblue mold (can be purchased or scraped off moldy rye breador another blue cheese, or simply pulverize a piece of bluecheese in a blender with a little bit of water and a pinch ofsalt). The procedure would be to sanitize a knitting needleor metal skewer and dip it in the mold to "contaminate" itwith blue. Use it to pierce the cheese through from both endsto assure ample mold seeding and clear air passages. Set thecheese on its side so air can flow through it. It is best to startit at about 55 F or 13 C (temperature of a wine cooler) withhigh humidity (90%–95%). When the growth of blue is sufficient (one to three weeks) wrap with foil and move to thefridge for a few more weeks or months. In theory this shouldwork but blue cheese are finicky and tricky to get right. Many17

variables may still fail it.http://www.quora.com/l/boq-yoav-perryFood IndustryHow do supermarkets dispose ofexpired food?Brian Lee, StudentDuring my time working in both management and part-timecapacities at a large supermarket, I can tell you that the evolution of what happens with food past its sell by date has beenpretty fascinating. There is a distinction to note that there aregenerally several dates associated with food. There is a sell bydate, a best by date, and an expiration date.The short answer to your question is, yes, a lot of food getsthrown out.The long answer is that most supermarkets do a verygood job of minimizing this waste. Almost all departments,especially ones with perishable items, order to sell out andshould come very close to running out before their next order arrives. Think about that the next time your supermarketis out of fresh wild salmon. Would they really bring in oneextra twenty pound case just to sell you an eight ounce filletat 8PM the night before fresh fish arrives? Depends on themarket and how aggressively the store wants to capture sales,but mostly, no.The blanket rule for food past its expiration date is this:if it is unsafe in any way, shape, or form, it gets thrown out.They find a way to use almost everything else.Produce – Fruits and vegetables don't come with clear expiration dates. I will tell you that you will probably never see a banana that's turning brown on the racks in the produce department. If some produce isn't sell-able, it usually gets shoppedaround the store. A department that handles any type of prepared foods will use these items to make items for hot bars,18

salad bars, soups, etc. The same goes for meat and seafoodthat is past its sell by date but still within its best by date.Composting seems like the natural answer for all the other produce that can't be used. This issue has been exploredand explored at our supermarket, and there are two majorroadblocks to seeing it in action.1.Storage – Most farms are generally further away from urbanized (or suburbanized) stores. Because produce deteriorates rather quickly farms would have to pick up compostable produce on a daily basis. Storage at the market isnot an option because a large, rotting pile of fruit wouldattract all sorts of unwanted pests to the store. Daily pickup is difficult, and would the extra monetary and greencost of the freight and labor make up for the produce thatwould be picked up? The logistics of the operation aremore involved than one might initially think.2.Recalls – Unfortunately, recalls due to contaminated fruitsand vegetables do happen. Many of them happen after theproduce has been in the store for some time. If the storecomposts melons, and those same melons are recalled twodays later due to a possible salmonella contamination,then you have potentially deadly compost making its wayaround your local farms. I am neither an expert in foodborne illness nor composting, so I don't know if there isany validity to this concern, but I do know it sounds scary.And that's enough to put the issue on the back burner.Bakery – Almost all old baked goods get donated to the local food bank, which disperses it to not for profit agencies inthe area. Every morning, a big shopping cart of old muffins,donuts, and bread makes its way to the back dock, and everymorning at 10AM, a van rolls around and picks it up.Meat and Seafood – Lately, within the past couple of months,they've been testing out freezing meats that have just passedsell by date and donating these to the local soup kitchens.Again, this is still in its infancy, and some issues have arisenthat have taken the logistics of this back to the drawing board.The main issue becomes, and always comes back to, safety.Just because a product makes it to its final consumer in a19

frozen state doesn't mean it's 100% safe. What happened tothe product in the mean time? Traceability is of paramountimportance until it gets to the store, but the cost involvedwith continuing that traceability until it reaches donations iseconomically unfeasible.Grocery and Dairy – Unfortunately, for the same reasonsMeat and Seafood can't be donated, many refrigerated, expired dairy products don't make the list. The good news isthat very few items get thrown out. Longer shelf lives, higherdemand, and tight orders ensure that the only dairy productsthat really get thrown out are the damaged ones that aren'tsafe for consumption anyways.Grocery items are given to food banks. I'm sure somesmaller markets donate directly. At our store, everythingexpired is packed and freighted to headquarters, and theydistribute the goods evenly among the communities that oursupermarkets are located in. The extra freight may seemwasteful, but I am assuming they record their donations fortax deduction purposes.I've had the good fortune to spend some time volunteering at food banks. They have different expiration dates forproducts, which I assume are regulated by some sort of government agency. For example, (I'm just using an arbitrary example, I don't remember the exact dates and figures) cannedbeans may be okay for two years past the date on the can,whereas boxed pasta is good for six months past the date onthe box. The majority of my volunteer time at the food bankswas spent sorting through the mountains of canned goodsand checking expiration dates to see what was still deemedsafe and what wasn't.So basically, if it's safe, it gets donated. If it's not, it getsthrown out. Definitely some food for thought.http://www.quora.com/l/boq-brian-lee20

CookingIf there were ten commandmentsin cooking what would they be?Jonas M Luster, trimethylxanthine addict1.Honor what you use. For every piece of food, every ingredient, every vegetable, slice of meat, herb, or spice,someone had to work, an animal had to die, trucks, vans,trains, and boats had to move. Every celery stalk and everypork loin has made a permanent impression on this planet. Honor the men and women who worked for your food,the animals who had to die for it, by giving everything thebest treatment, thinking about how you can make it better, and by not wasting or throwing away food items.2.Don't lose touch with your food. Tongs and other contraptions only serve to keep you away from it. Losing touch,figuratively and literally, yields worse dishes. Touch yoursteaks, your salad, everything. Learn how it feels, smells,looks, and tastes.3.Try something new every month. Follow foreign culturesand preparations. Your life will be richer and your foodbetter, even when you're preparing common staples.4.Before you use the tool, learn to do it with your ownhands. Buying a julienne peeler is nice and can save youhours over the course of a lifetime. But only by learninghow to cut, mash, grind, sear, saute, and whisk with yourhands will you keep touch with your food and get the bestresults.5.Cook for others. Enough said.6.Use fresh where possible, canned where necessary, andfrozen when desperate.7.Taste everything. Repeatedly.8.Let your food items come to room temperature beforethrowing them into pans.21

9.Work clean and clean as you go.10. When cooking, taste. When baking, ineWhy do American winemakersproduce mostly varietals, whileFrench winemakers produceblends?Madeline Puckette, Certified Sommelier at winefolly.comThis is not true. This is a marketing misconception.There are a lot of well-known blended varietals in Francesuch as Cotes du Rhone and Bordeaux wines. However, thereis also a ton-load of 100% chardonnay, pinot noir, sauvignonblanc, and mourvedre that pours out of France as well.In America, single varietal wines are extremely well marketed, and the drinking public is more familiar with buyinga wine called "merlot" than buying a wine called "CaliforniaRed Wine," however, red blends are extremely successful inthe American Market as well. Here's how I suppose this argument: In the American AVA system, a minimum of 75% of thatsingle varietal, which allows a huge amount of wiggleroom to perfect a blend, is named after a varietal. You canbet wineries are doing this, especially if it adds dynamicflavor (which it usually does, in the case of a pinot noir/syrah blend) and it's also CHEAPER. That's why there isa huge variable of range between producers. In Washington State, winemakers have been championing red blends and rightly so, the blend such as a GSM(grenache syrah mourvedre) and a CMS (cab, merlot,syrah) have been growing in popularity.22

Entry level wines are almost always a blended wine. Visualize these labels "mad housewife" or "apothic red" or"house wine," and now you see how common this is.To conclude, the American public will have to get moreeducated about what's in their wine, possibly through stricterlabeling laws, more readily available information about winein general, and most importantly . . . they'll need to drink moreand pay attention!See a neat infographic on the majority of wine that comesout of the Burgundy region here 100% Chardonnay: ocolateWhy are the chocolate chips inchocolate chip ice cream generally“chocolate-flavored chips”?Andrew Roberts, Food ScientistChocolate chips for many frozen applications might be 'chocolate flavored' products.The amazing property of cocoa butter, which makes chocolate melt in your mouth (not your ), is the very steepmelting profile. Since all fatty foods are made up of a varietyof fatty acids, they melt over a temperature range, as eachclass of molecules has its own melting point. Think about butter melting on a hot day: there is always a pool of liquid (theshortest/most unsaturated fatty acids, with the lowest meltingpoints) and some soft, solid butter (the longer ones), holdingonto its shape. These two phases represent the different melting points of the fatty acids which make up butter.Cocoa butter behaves differently. Think about the caseswhere chocolate looks solid, but is very soft. In this case, noneof it has started to drip or pool even though it is dangerouslyclose to its melting point. This is a reason real chocolate is so23

great and pleasurable, it all melts at once, intensifying themelting experience.Freezing real chocolate somewhat screws up the meltingexperience. Freezing it in ice cream really screws up this experience.Frozen chocolate chips will be very cold, and thereforetake time to heat up and melt in your mouth. They will feelchalky at first, but eventually melt if you have a nice warmmouth, providing you with that great sensation. When youhave a mouthful of ice cream, your mouth will not be warmenough to melt these chips. They will feel chalky and not meltuntil well after all the ice cream is gone, which most peoplewon't wait for. When you bite into them, they will crack andtaste/feel chalky, brittle, and generally bad.So, some ingredient company realized there is a marketfor specialty frozen applications chocolate chips. They solvedthis problem by adding some lower melting point fats and oilsto their product. These might be hydrogenated vegetable oils,but now are probably palm oil or fractionated (separated bymelting point) palm. Lower melting point oils are generallyhealthier, if that is any consolation. What they have achievedis a chip that acts somewhat like chocolate when you eat itwith a relatively cold mouth, full of ice-cream, because it willmelt at a lower temperature than chocolate.Luckily, someone is out there protecting us from foodfraud. In many countries, government enforced standardsexist for foods. These are basically minimum requirementsthat must be met before you can use a name like Chocolate,Bacon, Fruit Juice, etc.These products are likely outside of the Chocolate standard because they are no longer 35% cocoa solids after thesugar and added oils. After this, it is just up to the firm making them to choose a non-misleading name for their product.Voila, chocolate-flavored chips. This also applies to the liquidused for dipped-cones at Dairy Queen and most other frozenchocolate you have as part of a commercially produced icecream oberts24

educationMedical SchoolWhat is one thing that you regretlearning in medical school?Jae Won Joh, sleepy medical student Where to begin . . .1. How colossally broken the U.S. healthcare system is. How monumentally undereducated/misguided abouthealth/medicine/ethics the people legislating healthcareare. How desperately most physicians avoid thinking about theproblem; indeed, how many actively contribute to it in order to chase "patient satisfaction," the end-all-be-all thesedays in the highly political hospital world. How mercilessly this hurts patients, particularly the underserved.2. How uninvested most patients are in their own health. How lazily most people would rather take a pill to controltheir obesity or cholesterol instead of watching less TVand getting up to go do some exercise. How massively undereducated people are about basic nutrition facts that didn't have to be explained to their ancestors just a few generations ago.27

3. How uncertain the practice of "the standard of care" is. How traditionally defined practices that legitimately maynegatively affect patient care still survive. "This is how Iwas taught" is something I've heard way too often. How forcefully evidence-based medicine struggles to makethe rounds, as many have relatively little experience analyzing a study and how it should or should not affect theirpractice. How tremendously difficult it really is to actually provesomething of clinical value, namely due to the fact thatethically, experimentation on humans is seen as horrifyingly unethical . . . but at a certain point, you have to wonder if it's not just as unethical to keep up practices thatwe're not really sure are beneficial to the patient.4. How minimally the process of educating a clinician haschanged to adapt to modern times. Indeed, one wonders ifwe aren't going backwards somewhat. How ancient the system is, expecting every medical student to take the same courses/rotations for three yearsand then somehow differentiate themselves into the onehundred and forty five different medical specialties. Thisoriginates from a time when it was legitimately possibleto know just about everything in the field of medicine withenough time/study. How favoring the system is to subservience, now that wehave the hierarchy of attending physician, fellow, resident, medical student. How frightening it is that we emphasize memorizing andspewing out answers on tests instead of looking at ways totest actual clinical competence. How poorly the art of the physical exam is taught, in favorof far more expensive tests and imaging.All that said, I still love what I do. There is much I wouldchange if I had the power, but simply put, I do not; nor, I suspect, will I ever. So I do what good I can, whe

122 What is so great about Jane Austen? 124 Toward the end of Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix, why don't the kids just gang up on and overpower Umbridge? 126 Is The Hunger Games a pro-girl / pro-woman story, the way Brave is? 131 Does race or ethnicity play a role in The Hunger Games series? If so, how? music 139 What is so great about Jay-Z?