The movie trailer guy.
Posted by Escoofield on 1 October, 2008
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Cheese unlocks your wildest dreams, says study
Posted by Escoofield on 29 September, 2008
This item was filled under [ Health ]
By Chris Mercer
Eating cheese before you go to bed will not give you nightmares but different varieties could help you choose the dreams you do want to have, says a study by the British Cheese Board.
Not one of the 200 volunteers who took part in the Cheese+Board”>British Cheese Board’s ‘cheese & dreams’ study reported having nightmares after eating 20g of cheese 30 minutes before bed.
The industry body said 72 per cent of participants slept very well and 67 per cent remembered their dreams.
The study, believed to be the first of its kind, serves to dispel the old wives’ tale that eating cheese before bed means a restless night in-store. It was endorsed by Neil Stanley of the Sleep Research HPRU Medical Research Centre at the University of Surrey.
Dr. Judith Bryans, a nutrition scientist at Britain’s Dairy Council, added the science bit: “One of the amino acids in cheese - tryptophan - has been shown to reduce stress and induce sleep.”
The research, in an intriguing twist, also found that different cheeses appeared to give participants different kinds of dreams.
Cheddar, officially Britain’s most popular cheese with 55 per cent of the market, enhanced dreams about celebrities. One girl said she dreamt of helping to form a human pyramid under the supervision of film star Johnny Depp.
Stilton was the wild card, especially for women. Around 85 per cent of women experienced bizarre dreams after eating Britain’s iconic blue cheese, including talking soft toys, dinner party guests being traded for camels and a vegetarian crocodile upset because it could not eat children.
Of the others, Red Leicester is likely to have you dwelling on the past and Lancashire will get you focused on the future.
The boring award goes to crumbly Cheshire, which gave more than half its consumers dreamless nights. Cheshire and Red Leicester, however, gave the best nights’ sleep.
So there it is, although with more than 700 varieties of British cheese it seems there is much left to discover.
The British Cheese Board said it hoped to use the results to encourage more cheese eating before bed. Britons currently eat 30g of cheese every day on average, yet continental Europeans eat twice as much.
The Cheese Board says 30g of cheddar contains around 30 per cent of the recommended daily calcium intake for adults.
Easy Butter
Posted by Escoofield on 26 September, 2008
This item was filled under [ Kitchen ]
One of my best kept kitchen secrets. Well, obviously up until now. Do you know how ridiculously easy it is to make your own butter?
Not saying I bought a cow, tied a red bandana around my head and got up in the wee hours of the morning to milk the animal and churn the butter. No, no, no. Even I have my limits. But really, all you need to quickly whip up a genuine, fantastic home-made butter is heavy cream and a food processor. That’s it.
I don’t use butter in large quantities -never have and never will- but not even I can pass up a warm, toasty piece of bread smeared with a little bit of heaven.
The flavor is so light, delicate and fresh (so unlike anything store bought) I promise you’ll be hooked after just one bite. It’s quite an experience. When serving this at get-togethers I’m constantly asked where on earth I buy my butter. I just mumble some vague non-existing company name, throw in a charming smile, take another bite and keep them guessing. That’s the fun part!
Ingredients:
2 cups heavy cream
salt
pepper
Optional flavors:
red chili pepper
spring onion
chives
garlic
Directions:
Pour 2 cups of heavy cream in your food processor. The fresher the cream, the better the butter will turn out.
Pop the lid on, blitz, sit back and watch the show. It’s quite entertaining, really, but then again, I’m easily amused
The cream will go through different stages. Left you see it turning into a soft, silky whipped cream. A little later it’s turning into a really firm cream. In the photo on the right you can tell where we’re slowly heading towards, the structure and color is changing.
Then all of a sudden it happens. You hear a ‘slosh‘ and the grainy, yellow butter has separated itself from, what is now, nothing but buttermilk. This is what we wanted! Eureka!
All that’s left to do is drain the buttermilk and there you have it. Butter.
Press it down with a spoon and stir it to get the excess liquid out. Told you it was easy!
While the butter is draining I grated the garlic, chopped the chives, spring onions and chili pepper. When it comes to flavored butters, the sky is the limit in my kitchen. I often go crazy. You can literally add any herb you like, spike it with lime or orange zest, add some ginger, a pinch of ground cumin. Anything goes. Just play around with ingredients a bit, you can’t go wrong.
Once the butter has drained, transfer it to a bowl, add your chopped ingredients, a good pinch of salt and pepper and mix everything up. I just love how this looks, I really do. You make it, so you know exactly what goes into it. No artificial ingredients, no E-G-Z numbers whatsoever. Pure food.
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