Savvy Eats

Recently, I’ve felt like I need to revisit my earliest blog posts. The first few recipes, the first few Brain Food 101 posts: they have good content, but the quality of the writing leaves something to be desired. So here we go: the types of wheat flour, revisited. Gluten is made up of two proteins, [...]

In October 2011, I wrote about the best way to store bread.  It is one of the few Brain Food 101 posts I’ve written based on food science & theory, rather than personal experimentation. In that post, I concluded that sandwich bread should be stored in a paper bag and eaten within a few days. [...]

I’m all about planning ahead for busy weeknights so we aren’t in the kitchen after work with no idea what to have for dinner or with an idea but the wrong ingredients.  But when I make my weekly menu plans, I usually only plan for Sunday through Thursday or Monday through Friday. The weekends are [...]

As some of you noticed, I made a major food scientist faux-pas a few weeks ago: I stored some tomatoes in the refrigerator. What was I thinking? Don’t feel bad if you didn’t know that storing the tomatoes in the fridge is generally a no-no: lots of people don’t! Like basil, tomatoes come from a [...]

It has been established that I have a basil ‘problem,’ but it isn’t going to last forever.  Basil will only be in season for a few more weeks, so I need to preserve as much of it as I can now! Basil gets its flavor from some very volatile aroma compounds that are easily lost, so [...]

Refrigerating washed lettuce in the salad spinner has been my go-to method for storing lettuce for months.  It is just so easy and convenient to spin the lettuce dry, pour out the water in the bottom bowl, and stick the whole thing in the refrigerator.  Then I can just grab handfuls for salads as I [...]

Throughout elementary school, my weekday breakfast was almost always a toasted frozen waffle topped with peanut butter.  Sometimes we had pancake syrup on top.  Sometimes it was sliced bananas.  Sometimes it was both.   In my efforts to stick with less processed foods, it has been a long time since I had a frozen waffle. [...]

Refrigerating: Eggs will keep for much longer if refrigerated than if kept at room temperature, as they often are in other parts of the world.  In the United States, eggs are typically washed much more thoroughly than those in Europe.  While this is fine from a hygienic standpoint, it also means that the eggs’ natural [...]