I saw a packet of triple chocolate cookies and I wondered, “Triple chocolate?”. I googled and found several recipes, all of which used cocoa powder with either a couple of varieties of chocolate chips, say semisweet and white, or a couple of varieties of chocolate, such as dark chocolate and milk chocolate, often melted.

The Keebler's cookie was un­mem­o­rable. The recipes sounded better.

Last week I made my Christmas Cake, a week after I made my Christmas Puddings. Tonight I decorated it with marzipan and royal icing.

I spent a couple of hours this evening making Christmas Puddings. I soaked several pounds of dried fruit overnight in hot water with a little whiskey. The fruit plumped up con­sid­er­ably. I let it drain throughout the day.

The photo shows the puddings in their bowls just before I sealed them and put them into the oven for four hours of steaming. They'll get another four or five hours tomorrow. When we're ready to eat one, it'll get another hour of steaming to heat it up. We decant it from the bowl, stick a sprig of holly in the top, heat a tablespoon of whiskey until it catches fire, and pour the …continue.

I walked past this truck at Second and Pike on Monday and did a double-take. Eric was intrigued too when I showed him a photo later, and we went back to in­ves­ti­gate yesterday.

They only opened a few weeks ago. As yet, the menu is limited. The Maximus is a pulled pork sandwich with a hot sauce, while the Minimus has a tangy sauce. They have a vegetarian sandwich, chips made from potatoes and vegetables, and hibiscus and ginger lemonades.

I don't much care for barbecue as a rule. The Minimus with a sprinkling of Beecher's cheese was good, but not out­stand­ing. The pork was flavorful and not over­whelmed by the …continue.

A good piece in yes­ter­day's New York Times about sugar in the American diet:

How sweet it is! The American diet, that is. While the current rec­om­men­da­tion is a maximum intake of eight teaspoons of sugars a day, one 12-ounce can of regular soda (or a 20-ounce bottle of Vi­t­a­m­in­Wa­ter) delivers eight or nine teaspoons. That means you are at or over the limit before you’ve eaten a single cookie or container of fruit-flavored yogurt, or even some commercial tomato soups or salad dressings with added sugars. The result is an average daily intake of more than 20 teaspoons of sweet calories.

Marshall Brain demon­strat­ed the amount of sugar in …continue.

Salumi's has the best selection of char­cu­terie in Seattle. The range and quality of their cured meats is truly impressive. The flavor, excellent. Their counter staff, friendly and family-like. The line goes out the door.

But. But. But.

Their service is wretched. That line moves at a glacial pace. I've never taken less than 20 minutes to get a sandwich; sometimes twice that. The staff are slow and in­ef­fi­cient. Their stations are badly laid out and they have to fumble around each other in their pokey little store.

Every time I watch them at work—and I always have plenty of time to watch them work—I want to drag them over to Jimmy John's or Bakeman's. Jimmy John's …continue.

I made my Christmas Cake back in November, but am only now getting around to putting on the icing. I've kept it moist with several ap­pli­ca­tions of whiskey.

Last year, I made marzipan from scratch. Never again! It was a huge amount of work to blanch the almonds and the stiff mixture of sugar and almonds caused the food processor to seize up more than once.

I didn't use up all the marzipan that I made that time. I put the remainder into a sealed container, placed it in the fridge, and forgot all about it. When I took it out of the fridge yesterday, it was still good. Oh, the top half-inch …continue.

Herewith several articles that I've read lately for which I'm not going to write individual posts.

• Bruce Schneier has railed for years against security theater, ostensible security measures that have little real effect, but are performed to be seen as doing something — airline security being the most wretched example. Patrick Smith wrote a good piece on airport security follies at the NYT airline blog. We should all be protesting loudly at this nonsense, but no-one does because of the fear of ending up on a no-fly list.

• Also in the NYT, Harold McGee wrote a par­tic­u­lar­ly in­ter­est­ing article on the hidden ingredient in cooking, heat.

  That’s the basic challenge: We’re often aiming …continue.

Michael Pollan, in a long article in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine, writes about Nu­tri­tion­ism

In the case of nu­tri­tion­ism [an ideology], the widely shared but unexamined assumption is that the key to un­der­stand­ing food is indeed the nutrient. From this basic premise flow several others. Since nutrients, as compared with foods, are invisible and therefore slightly mysterious, it falls to the scientists (and to the jour­nal­ists through whom the scientists speak) to explain the hidden reality of foods to us. To enter a world in which you dine on unseen nutrients, you need lots of expert help.

...-

Another po­ten­tial­ly serious weakness of nu­tri­tion­ist ideology is that it has trouble …continue.

At work, we're having a Christmas party every day this week at 4pm. Each day, a different team is re­spon­si­ble for providing food and drink. Yesterday, my team provided Caipir­in­has and some Brazilian food. Today, we had Scotch and savory cheese­cakes!

I'm so used to cheese­cakes being sweet that it's never occurred to me that they could come any other way, but I have to say that mushroom, pepper & pesto, and brie &hazelnut cheese­cakes are all quite tasty.