A great Michael Pollan talk at Google, where he questions nutrition in the hacker way: boiling nutrition down to simple rules based on fact. The root philosophy?

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. –Unhappy Meals, NYT

His thesis is bigger than that, though, and his method of deconstructing what we believe about nutrition is interesting. Really, why do we believe what we hear about nutrition when it clearly isn’t working?

A good analysis and overview of types of cookware. The article dispels myths around coated bottoms, including engineering-geek data.

Here’s a quick food-geek comparison of various forms of basil:

• Freeze-dried (in bottles) - expensive, flat taste, not at all visually appealing
• Frozen, store-bought (cubes) - medium-priced, almost-fresh taste, fairly appealing
• Fresh, store-bought - expensive, vibrant, looks good
• Fresh, home-grown - cheap, vibrant, looks great, but a bit of effort
• Dried (in bags, not bulk) - cheap, tasty, looks better than freeze-dried

In most of my dishes I use dried basil, and a bit of cubed/frozen for garnish. Next year I’m hoping to start growing it again.

A longish (but spot-on) Yegge rant about why compilers matter.

A new way to think about carbohydrates, a clear summary of the different types of carbs and their effect on the body’s systems.

NutritionData.com has a nifty Firefox search plugin to search foods in their database. Very handy.

The Cook’s thesaurus, a veritable vernacular of vegetables and other edible vestiges. It sports an entirely useful (but retro web1.0) facade.

Okay, I’m a cheap bastard. I like the occasional iced coffee, but I can’t fathom spending CAD$5 per glass. This recipe costs about $3 in total and makes 8 tall glasses of the stuff (that’s about 40 cents per glass). The worst batch I’ve made tastes better than the instant supermarket stuff, and the best ones (like today’s) taste better the yuppy-priced specialty coffee shops.

My method

Makes 2L

1. Bring 1.5-2L of fresh cold water to a rolling boil.
2. Pour boiling water over 2cm (1 - 1.5 cups) of fresh, reasonable-quality dark roast coffee. Let sit for 5-10 minutes. The slurry should generate a thick foam at the top, if it doesn’t then either your water is too cold or your coffee grounds are crap.
3. Fill 1/3 of a 2L jug with something milk-like (and add chocolate syrup if you want mocha-ness).
4. Pour coffee and grounds through a sieve over the jug of milk and chocolage. Stir. Cool for 24 hours for better flavour.
5. Drink over ice.

Tastespotting, a slick photo-food blog. Inspiration is difficult to do, but these guys do it well.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Linked from all over this week, but about the best nutrition advice I’ve read.