Book Review: Sweet & Savory Fat Bombs

    

Like I said in the title of my review of this book on Amazon, Martina Slajerova has outdone herself! Her first book, The KetoDiet Cookbook (which I reviewed on the blog a while back) is a great addition to any low-carb kitchen, but with Sweet and Savory Fat Bombs, she’s knocked it out of the park. I’m not kidding, kids. This one’s a keeper!

(Before I go on, in the interest of full disclosure: I received a courtesy copy of this book. Take that for what you will.)

Whether you prefer sweet or salty, chocolatey or fruity, this book delivers. Even if you have a nut allergy or dairy sensitivity, there are plenty of delicious fat bombs here for you to enjoy. It goes way beyond the usual fat bomb recipes: peanut butter, chocolate, coconut. (Not that there’s anything wrong with those!) There’s orange creamsicle, dulce de leche, green tea & lemon, gingerbread, pistachio, strawberry basil. A huge variety of out-of-the-ordinary flavors and textures to keep you going back to this book again and again.

Blast from the Past: Mardi Gras, a.k.a. Fat Tuesday!

Hey Everyone!

I’m falling a little behind in my blogging, but rather than keep you waiting for something new from the dark recesses of my mind, I thought it was time to resurrect a post from the past. An oldie but a goodie, as they say. This was originally posted November 6, 2012, making it one of my earliest posts, back when really, truly, no one was reading my blog. (All I've done is add some links to posts I've done since then.) I joke about having no readers now, but, based on page views these days compared to back in 2012, things have come a long way since those early days. I still have a [relatively] small audience, but I know you’re out there, and I am grateful for you! I tell people I have a small but loyal following. And, in my humble opinion, most of you are of above average intelligence. [Maybe you’re from Lake Wobegon? Any American who gets that reference, I am even more grateful for you, haha!] Frankly, I’d rather have a smaller audience of…how shall I say…”choice individuals,” versus catering to the great unwashed masses. ;D  I try to remind myself of that and be grateful for the few but meaningful comments my posts garner, as opposed to the flame wars, irrationally angry comments, and utter stupidity that abound on sites with a bigger reach. We’re a small, tight-knit group here, and I kinda like it that way.

I’ll try not to do these repeat posts very often. Right now, though, I’ve got nothing in the hopper, so I need to get crackin’ on some new posts. I think I’ve got a couple more to tack on to the insulin series, and yes, dear ones, I will be getting back to the cancer series. (Eventually.) I also have some epic-ish rants coming.

Okay, enough blathering. On with the show!

Mardi Gras! It means different things depending on where you live and what you believe. It could be a period of uninhibited eating, drinking, and general debauchery preceding Lent. Could be a time to make funny masks, eat traditional King cakes, and do…um…certain things to get lots of beaded necklaces.

On this blog, however, I’m gonna stick with the English translation: Fat Tuesday! What’s not to love about those two things? Fat is delicious and good for you (no, really, it is!), and Tuesday…well, it ain’t Friday, but it’s better than Monday! (And everyone knows Mondays suck. Disagree? Obviously you haven’t seen Office Space. And if that’s the case I have two questions for you:  what are you waiting for, and how big is the rock you’ve been living under?)   

So, Fat Tuesday. What’s that about? Where am I going with this?

Talk in West Virginia!

WEST VIRGINIA PEOPLE!

I’m giving a talk on Thursday, January 21^st at 6pm, at the Clarion Hotel in Shepherdstown. If you’re in the local area, come on out and say hello! There’s a $13.95 charge, but that covers your enjoyment of an all-you-can-eat low carb buffet. (I receive no speaking fee. Just doing this for fun and to help lots of low-carb newbies!)

The event is a meeting for a low-carb support group run by Mark Cucuzzella, MD. I reached out to Dr. Cucuzzella after hearing him on episode 1005 of Jimmy Moore’s Livin’ la Vida Low Carb Show. Listening to him talk with Jimmy, I felt like I was hearing a kindred spirit. Not only is he in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, but he’s a LCHF-fueled distance runner as well as a low-carb-friendly physician bringing the low-carb and real food message to the bigwigs who decide what recruits eat at basic training. Can you imagine the fighting force we’d have if more of these young people were eating low-carb? As if that weren’t enough to keep the guy busy, he’s also on a mission to transform the health of people in West Virginia (which has the sad distinction of being one of the most obese states in the nation).

Turns out, Dr. Cucuzzella heard me on Robb Wolf’s podcast, and had been planning to contact me as well. Go figure!

I’m told the group I’ll be addressing will be about 50/50 low-carb newbies and people who’ve already been doing it for a few months. So I’m planning to give a (funny and educational) general talk about why and how low-carb works. It'll be sort of the live version of my fuel partitioning series. (If you’ve read that, you’ll probably recognize some of my slides, hehheh.) So I probably won’t be saying anything you don’t already know, but if you’d like to come eat some yummy food, see me in person, and meet other low-carbers in your area, come join us! Plus, we’ll have a Q&A, so if you want to ask me something more advanced or off-topic from the talk, this is your chance.

See the flyer below, and if you’d like to attend, please RSVP to Melanie Miller, at melaniemillerconsulting@gmail.com.

Remember: Amy Berger, M.S., NTP, is not a physician and Tuit Nutrition, LLC, is not a medical practice. The information contained on this site is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition and is not to be used as a substitute for the care and guidance of a physician. Links in this post and all others may direct you to amazon.com, where I will receive a small amount of the purchase price of any items you buy through my affiliate links.

Podcast Interview: Real World Paleo

My third podcast interview is in the hopper and ready for you to go have a listen! First, it was Jimmy Moore’s Livin’ la Vida Low Carb Show, then it was Robb Wolf’s Paleo Solution Podcast, and now, I’m talking about real food, low-carb, and Alzheimer’s on the Real World Paleo Podcast. I’ve also recorded a fourth show, which I’m told will air sometime in December. (Details to follow.) Hey, it’s almost like I kinda-sorta know what I’m talking about! (Either that, or I’m doing a great job of fooling people into thinking I do!)

If you’ve never heard of the Real World Paleo Podcast, that’s probably because it’s pretty new. The first episode went live just this past September. The hosts are Christine Lehmann, MS, NTP, and Stephanie Ewals, NTP. Christine lives in Alexandria, VA, not far from me, and she and I met when we took the Nutritional Therapy Practitioner training together back in 2013. Christine is the “Reverse Diabetes Coach™,” and Stephanie practices nutritional therapy at Out of the Woods Nutrition, in Minnesota.

Both of these ladies know what they’re doing, and it was a privilege to be able to share my Alzheimer’s research with them and their audience. If you’ve read some of my past posts about Alzheimer’s disease, then most of what we discussed won’t be new to you, but hey, a little refresher never hurt anyone! (Unfortunately, there was a little bit of feedback on my mic again, but not as bad as when I recorded with the great Mr. Wolf.)

You can download the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, or listen directly through Christine’s website: http://www.reversediabetescoach.com/episode-11-how-you-can-delay-alzheimers-and-dementia/

The show notes in the link above include helpful links to some scientific papers that might be of interest to you if you’d like to delve into the metabolic and mitochondrial underpinnings of Alzheimer’s.

By the way: the Real World Paleo Podcast is a great show for any friends and family members who are new to LCHF, Paleo, Primal, and just plain real food. Stephanie and Christine do a great job of introducing complex concepts and explaining them in simple but informative ways, kind of like I aim to do on my blog. It might be old news if you’ve been eating this way for a while now, but for people who are just starting to dip their toes in these waters, this show is a down-to-earth, non-intimidating way to learn about healthy fats, the importance of good quality proteins, finding the right amount and types of carbohydrates for different goals, etc.

Remember: Amy Berger, M.S., NTP, is not a physician and Tuit Nutrition, LLC, is not a medical practice. The information contained on this site is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition.

Bacon Revelation

Hey Everyone!

It looks like it’s bacon week here at Tuit Nutrition. (And there ain’t nothin’ wrong with that!) As a follow-up to Monday’s post about bacon from “100% vegetarian fed” pigs, with no added nitrates, let’s dive a little deeper into this salty, smoky, sweet, and darn near intoxicating food.

Generally speaking, I like to think I'm a pretty intelligent gal. I recognize, however, that there are some subjects that render me a complete eejit. All mathematics beyond your basic algebra comes immediately to mind, as does anything you might find in a high school physics textbook. I am not at all above admitting that I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer. However, on subjects about which I am truly passionate, I’d like to think what I know exceeds that which I do not know. Until recently, I had thought this was true regarding my knowledge of bacon. But I was wrong! I had a revelation about bacon a few days ago, and at the risk of exposing what a total moron I am, I thought I’d share it here on the blog, in case anyone out there is even slower than I am, and hasn’t yet had this epiphany. (Good thing there are only four people reading. Chances are, all four of you learned this long ago, and the only useful thing you’ll gain from this post is a hearty guffaw, at my expense.)

Okay. Maybe I’m late to this party, and if so, I’ll just don my dunce cap and head off to go sit in the corner. But really, if it’s taken me this long to realize something pretty neat about bacon, then I have to figure there are others wandering around out there, ignorant of this very cool thing.

Podcast Interview!

Hey folks! If this is your first visit to my blog after hearing me on Jimmy Moore’s Livin’ la Vida Low Carb Podcast, here are some links to past posts I’ve done regarding Alzheimer’s disease:

• Announcement about my e-book, The Alzheimer’s Antidote
• Rant About the American Academy of Neurology’s Brain Health Fair
• Alzheimer’s Disease: Type 3 Diabetes
• Follow-up Q&A about certain dietary principles and Alzheimer's

And here’s a link to a guest post I wrote for Robb Wolf’s site, about carbs, Alzheimer's, and more, after the first interview he did with Dr. Perlmutter, after the release of the book, Grain Brain.

If you’d like to learn more about me, check out the About Me page here on this site. In the podcast, I touched only briefly on how I found low carb, so if you’re interested in all the gory details of how “eating less and moving more” failed me for most of my adolescence and young adult life, you can read about that here.  (You might also want to wait until you have an hour to spare. You will see from today’s post, or by looking through the archives, that brevity is not my strong suit.)

And now, on to the post!

Thoughts on the Brain Fair (Rant Warning!)

Greetings, Earthlings!

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, on April 18^th I had a table at the American Academy of Neurology’s Brain Health Fair, which was part of their annual convention. The event was free and open to the public, and as far as I could tell, it was mostly the public that came through the exhibit hall, since I didn’t get any doctors sidling up to my little corner of this shindig. (None that I know of, anyway.) My presence at this thing coincided with the launch of my e-book on Alzheimer’s disease. I am pleased to report that I had people coming up to me all day. People were very interested in hearing about the influence of food and nutrition on brain health. I don’t expect a lot of book sales to come from it, but I think I’ll be hearing from a few new clients. (And I made an Indian woman very happy when I told her it was okay to eat ghee again!)

There were some encouraging moments, and I think I dropped more than a few “knowledge bombs,” as Sean Croxton likes to say. But there were many discouraging moments, too. In fact, my main feeling on the event can be summed up in two words:

Holy, and crap.

Book Review - Extra Virginity

Olive oil has a bit of a unique place in nutrition science. It’s one of the only single foods all the warring factions agree is good for us: Paleos, vegans, vegetarians, low-carbers -- we've all got a bottle of it in the kitchen. It’s lower in saturated fatty acids than most animal fats, which pleases the veg-heads (and the ignoramuses who think saturated fat is “bad” for us), and it’s loaded with monounsaturated fatty acids, which seems to please everyone else—doctors, nutritionists, chefs, and newspaper journalists who think they know anything about biochemistry. Olive oil has been anointed (pun intended) with the magical powers to do just about everything from preventing heart disease to making your salad delicious. (The latter, I agree with; the former, I don’t think we can say for sure. Prevent heart disease, maybe, maybe not. But biochemically and physiologically speaking, it’s sure less likely to cause cardiovascular problems than, say, soybean and cottonseed oils.)

I love reading about the science of nutrition, but I also love reading about cooking, culinary culture, and, if I’m especially enamored with something, individual ingredients. Since olive oil figures heavily into my diet—and probably yours, too—when I heard there was a book called Extra Virginity, which covers some of the historical, cultural, gastronomic, and economic significance of this palate- and health-pleasing oil, I got my keister to the bookstore to get a copy. And with a subtitle like, “The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil,” I knew I’d be in for some serious eye-opening.

Fat Tuesday: World's Simplest Tallow

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you’ve probably realized by now that there are few things I like talking about more than fat. Especially delicious animal fat, and even more especially, that of ruminant animals, such as cows and sheep. These fats are predominantly saturated and monounsaturated, which makes them stable for high-heat cooking, and of course, there’s the most important point: they’re delicious!

I have written in detail about beef tallow before. To people who are new to the traditional food scene—and sometimes even to us old hands—rendering tallow and lard at home can seem like a daunting prospect. The good news is, you don’t have to do it all that often to get a supply that will last you a while. If you make a big batch of stock, depending on the types of bones you use, you could end up with lots and lots of tallow, which you can store in the freezer for a long time. (In addition to the “boney bones,” you’ll want some meaty bits, too. They’ll give the stock more flavor, and if you choose fatty shanks, maybe some short ribs, and other fatty pieces, all that gorgeous fat will render out during the simmering process and you’ll be left with lots of golden delicious fat. And you thought that phrase was only for apples!)

And the even better news is, if you’re not of a mind to do it yourself, more and more small, family-owned, grass-based farms are selling lard and tallow on the farmstead and also at farmers’ markets. (With more and more people getting into this kind of thing these days, you can even order the good stuff online now.) So being skittish about the DIY process is no excuse to keep cooking with soybean or corn oil.

But here’s the best news of all: getting your hands on good ruminant tallow is as simple as cooking some gound beef or lamb in a skillet, and reserving the fat in a separate container, rather than throwing it away, the way fifty years of “fat-is-bad” propaganda have conditioned us to do. (Remember: fat isn’t bat. Not even saturated fat.)

I’m not kidding! It really is that simple. Here’s how it works:

Book Review: The Big Fat Surprise

“It would be hard to imagine a greater set of unintended consequences than those resulting from the vast, uncontrolled experiment that the United States and the entire Western world have undergone by adopting a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet over the past half-century.” (p.333)

“Measured just by death and disease, and not including the millions of lives derailed by excess weight and obesity, it’s very possible that the course of nutrition advice over the past sixty years has taken an unparalleled toll on human history.” (p.330)

“It now appears that since 1961, the entire American population has…been subjected to a mass experiment, and the results have clearly been a failure.” (p.330)

  

Since the earliest days of this blog (back when I had just three readers, as opposed to the five I have now), I have been talking about dietary fat. Specifically, I have been trying to shed some light on the chemistry of fats and oils, so that we, as buyers, home cooks, and maybe most important—eaters—of these things, can make informed choices.

More than just fats and oils overall, I have been trying to provide a little non-scary education regarding saturated fats, in particular, because while we have been generally advised to follow a diet that’s low in total fat from all sources, saturated fats, specifically, have been targeted as being especially detrimental to good health.

Better than 80/20 - Diet, Pt.2

In part 1 of this update on my diet, I talked about when and why I eat what I do. This time, I’ll cover the what. As I have mentioned many times on this blog, I am more low-carb than I am Paleo. I eat some foods that are not considered “Paleo,” and I sleep without fear that the food police are going to come take me away in the night. That said, I stick mostly to whole, real, non-processed foods, with a little wiggle room for occasional exceptions. (I say this to distinguish the way I eat now from how I ate years ago, when I first started learning about all this, and would eat any ol’ low carb shake/bar/food-like thing, as long as it was low carb. So I’m still low-carb, but now it’s real food, for the most part.)

Like I explained last time, I am putting only the smallest amount of thought and effort into what I’m doing and I’m getting satisfactory results. This is not to say I put no thought or effort into my diet, only that planning and preparing my food doesn’t rule my life, I can generally throw together a meal in about twenty minutes, and I’ve never found myself at a restaurant where there was “nothing” I could order and consume without worry.

So the way I eat these days isn’t entirely effortless, but it’s certainly not difficult. And yes, I could probably be “cut,” “ripped,” or “shredded” if I wanted to micromanage my diet and exercise to the exclusion of all other aspects of life on planet Earth, but call me crazy, I just think there are more worthwhile things to experience than bouncing a quarter off my abs.

Better than 80/20 - Diet, Pt.1

(Warning: That pledge I made to write shorter posts? Yeah, not happening today. Not happening for the next 2-3 posts, in fact. But once we get past me talking about my food & exercise, I really am going to try to keep things more succinct and reader-friendly. Just don’t hold it against me if that doesn’t occur.)

Well, here we are. The post you may or may not have been waiting for, but here it is nonetheless. Today I’ll give you the rundown on what I’m doing with my diet that I think is helping me feel (and maybe look) better than I did a few months ago, when I posted about feeling like a fraud. To bring you up to speed, last time, I covered my supplements. And assuming at least some of the page hits on that one are legitimate and not all of them are coming from automated search engines in Russia and China (although there is a freakish amount of those), there are a couple of people out there who are curious about what I’m doing these days. Oddly enough, my posts about beef shanks and beef hearts have way more hits, but on the off chance that someone out there finds something new or interesting here, I’ll yammer on for a bit about what I’m eating.

It’s hard for me to imagine that anyone really wants to know what I put down my piehole, but I said I would share, and I don’t want to renege on that. I’m no rock star, but people seem to be fairly curious about what nutrition and health-minded professionals eat. Since I am technically in that latter category, even though my influence is small at the moment, it couldn’t hurt to give you a glimpse into what’s on my plate and in my fridge.

So I’ll talk about my chow for a post or two, then my exercise habits, and then we’ll get back to the blog’s regularly scheduled programming. (For a look at what’s coming up, see this post.)

Book Review: Food Politics

Here I go with my book learnin’ again! I reviewed Dr. Marion Nestle’s Food Politics for the spring 2014 issue of Wise Traditions, the journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation. You can read it here, or feel free to hop on over to their site and read it there. (I recommend staying here, though. I think they edited it a tiny bit. Plus, their site doesn't have the nifty links I’ve included.)

Before we get into it, let me just say that I am probably the only person on the planet who’s read this book for fun. (Well, maybe not for fun, but not for school, either. Let’s chalk it up to personal education.) This book is probably required reading in many university nutrition and dietetics programs. I’m glad I wasn’t forced to read it, because that would have made this dense tome that much more of a struggle to get through. It was difficult enough doing it for my own reasons. That being said, it was educational. I learned a lot about the devious back-door deals that are what ultimately drive the U.S. government's national dietary recommendations. (I assure you, they have almost nothing to do with actual human physiology and biochemistry.) And I also learned that even the most impressively-credentialed professional (i.e., the author of this book) can completely ignore scientific facts in favor of the political games and sweeping generalizations she claims to abhor.

If my review hadn’t been intended for the WAPF journal, there would have been lots of sarcasm and possibly a few swear words scattered throughout it. Where the book is good, it’s great, but where it’s bad, it sucks the big one. Frankly, at times I just wanted to shove Dr. Nestle’s face in a biochem textbook. (Note: she has no relation to the mega-huge food corporation of the same spelling. Her name rhymes with trestle, like train trestle, not like the Crunch candy bar or Toll House cookies.)

And with that, on with the show!

Fat Tuesday: The Big Fat Surprise Preview

I’m going to do something I’ve never done before. I’m going to recommend a book I haven’t even read yet. The reason I feel confident recommending this book is because it has received out-freaking standing reviews from several people whose opinions I highly respect and trust when it comes to nutrition. And not just “nutrition” with a little n, but rather the big, bad, mamma-jamma, capital-N, Nutrition. The kind of nutrition that isn’t only about what we should and shouldn’t eat, but that also includes the politics and economics behind how and why the U.S. government (and, by proxy—and to their great detriment—many other governments of the “industrialized world”) and our most respected medical and dietetics organizations came to recommend diets that are low in cholesterol, total fat, and saturated fat in particular, while encouraging everyone, across the board—whether young or old, healthy or chronically ill, active or sedentary, insulin resistant or not—to consume the majority of their total calories from grains and other starchy carbohydrates. And what little, teeny tiny, scant bits of fat we do allow ourselves should come from vegetable and seed oils. (Remember what I said about those? It wasn't positive. Check out here and here for a refresher.)

When a book is called The Big Fat Surprise, and has the subtitle Why Butter, Meat & Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet, you know this is a book I've gotta read.

And when the following three people say something, I sit up and take notice.

Book Review: Eat the Yolks

“Processed food, conventional wisdom, and calorie restriction wage war on health and hormonal balance.” 

                                                                   —Liz Wolfe, Eat the Yolks

It seems you can’t turn around these days without a new book being released by someone in the Paleo, Primal, and real food worlds. Mostly, this is a good thing, but I do wonder if the market isn’t going to be saturated at some point—and honestly, we might already be there. Many of the books that have come out in the past couple of years explain the exact same things, just using slightly different words and with different colored packaging. This doesn’t mean these books aren’t valuable, or that whoever decides to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) doesn’t have a right to contribute to the conversation. It just means that we get a lot of repetition. Same thing, different day.

The good news is, there are also books coming out that step outside those lines and bring something slightly different to the table. Eat the Yolks, by Liz Wolfe, is one of them.

Fat Tuesday: Eat the Yolks Preview

“Margarine is the greatest culinary and dietary atrocity ever to be inflicted upon our society.”

You’ve got to love a book with a line like that!

I’m almost done with Eat the Yolks, a brand-spankin’ new book by Liz Wolfe, the non-Diane half of the Balanced Bites podcast and the gal behind the RealFoodLiz site (formerly CaveGirlEats). I’ll post a full review of the book soon, but in the meantime, I couldn’t help wanting to share some of the great quotes about fat. It is Tuesday, after all, and you know what that means...

  

Fat Tuesday: More Saturated Fat Vindication Fun!

  





Hey Everyone! After my last post was mostly a linkfest, I’m hesitant to do something similar right away, but I found something the other day that I think is worth passing along. If you’ve been following me for any length of time (and I know there are at least two of you out there who have, hehheh), then it won’t surprise you when I say that a significant amount of the dietary and nutritional advice we’ve been given by the mainstream medical establishment (not to mention the supermarket tabloids, but I’m pretty sure all of us put more stock in the former than the latter) for the last sixty years is wrong. Not merely misguided, or a little off the mark, but straight-up, flat-out wrong. Now, it’s bad enough when, say, your mechanic gets something wrong. Maybe the tires get misaligned just a bit and your car pulls to the left or right. Or he thinks he’s fixed the problem, but that pesky check engine light comes back on the next day. But when doctors, nurses, dietitians, and nutritionists get it wrong, people die. Maybe not right away, but certainly over time. Remember: just because something doesn’t kill you immediately doesn’t mean it isn’t poisonous. (Lead, anyone? Arsenic? Too much sugar? Too much soybean oil? Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself...)

Fat Tuesday: Tall-ow Tales

Welcome to another installment of Fat Tuesday, the series where I drop some knowledge bombs about fats and oils. In previous posts, I’ve mentioned beef tallow. If you’re confused about tallow, what it is, where to get it, and, most important of all, what to do with it and how to use it to make some seriously delicious eats, wait no more. It's time to bring this traditional, favorite fat back into the American kitchen!

Saturated Fat Vindicated: Confounders

It’s that day of the week again, y’all! (Sorry, all this talk about saturated fat and butter has me channeling Paula Deen and her southern accent.) It’s Tuesday, and you know what that means:  a new post that drops a couple more knowledge bombs on the war zone that is the last sixty years of official government and medical community recommendations about dietary fats. Last week I introduced you to a paper whose author—a PhD professor of chemistry and biochemistry—concluded that maybe, perhaps, the fear mongering about saturated fat has been misguided, and heart disease might be caused by things other than butter, bacon, red meat, cheese, and similar delicious morsels.

I promised I would devote a couple of Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday posts to dissecting the paper in more detail, so here goes.

Recipe: Compound Butter

So now that we’ve established that saturated fat is not the root of all evil (and, in fact, might be the root of all good), I thought it would be nice to post a recipe that celebrates the beauty of butter. Actually, it’s not so much a recipe as a guide, because even though there are “recipes” for different compound butters, my philosophy when it comes to things like this is, “Everything to taste.” This kind of cooking drives some people crazy, since it completely omits measuring. No exact number of teaspoons, grams, or ounces. But you know what they say: baking is a science; cooking is an art. Exact measurements are more important when it comes to baked goods rising, staying moist, or otherwise turning out the way they’re supposed to. To steal a line from a novel I sort of finished writing a few years ago, “A cook’s best tools are clean hands and a sense of adventure.” The sense of adventure comes in handy with recipes like this, where you just have to trust your eyes, your nose, and your taste buds.