Evoflux

Cakes made from Threadless T-Shirt Designs

There are niches and there are niches. This niche in particular takes designs from popular Threadless T-Shirt designs and makes them into wonder cakes. Behold the beauty and inspiration.

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Eat Slowly

In this study there is a correlation between the time it takes to eat and the obesity of different countries. Hey USA, drop the fast food habit. Anyone up for a multiple course 3 hour dinner?

Painfully obvious? Yes. But Catherine Rampbell has a graph to back it up. It looks like there’s a pretty real correlation between the time people in various countries spend eating and the rate of obesity in that country. That is, the more time people spend eating, the lower the rate of obesity. There’s a slow food endorsement if I’ve ever seen one.

Link (via Marginal Revolution)

The Caffeinated Geek’s Guide to Storing Coffee Beans

Storing coffee beans for the long-term can mean very little kick in the taste and the caffeination effect for those of us who know the power of a good cup of joe. This is the reason why this article is so damn informative.

Once you have your coffee beans at home, the best indicator of freshness is aroma (at room temperature) and taste. A visual indicator is the amount of “bloom” when you pour the water over the coffee. Coffee roasting creates significant amounts of carbon dioxide within the bean. Grinding releases the CO2, which carries the aroma into the room. (Smells great, doesn’t it?) The remaining gas will be liberated as foam during brewing. Generally, the more bloom there is, the fresher the beans. (Geek note: the volume of CO2 varies among varieties. The range is three to 20 times the bean volume.)

All coffee is fresh when it comes out of the roaster. What happens later changes the freshness profile profoundly. The very best practice, of course, is to buy your beans weekly at a reputable shop that carefully monitors its inventories and refuses to sell beans past several days out of the roaster.

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Big breakfast ‘aids weight loss’

Get fit, eat healthy, and stop complaining that its impossible. What is impossible is a person unable to get over themselves because they lack the motivation to do so on their own. Enough of me ranting about common weight loss complaints I hear. This info is some nice supporting evidence to proper dieting. If someone still thinks the Atkins diet works in the long term needs to try different diets. 

Breakfast really could be the most important meal of the day when it comes to losing weight, claims a researcher.
Over several months, obese women who ate half their daily calories first thing fared better than those eating a much smaller amount.

US researcher Dr Daniela Jakubowicz told a San Francisco conference having a small breakfast could actually boost food cravings.
A UK expert said a big breakfast diet might simply be less boring.

Dr Jakubowicz, from Virginia Commonwealth University, has been recommending a hearty breakfast to her patients for 15 years.
She tested it against a low carbohydrate diet in a study of 96 obese and physically inactive women.

This diet involved 1,085 calories a day - the majority of these coming from protein and fat.
Breakfast here was the smallest meal of the day - just 290 calories, with just seven grams of carbohydrates.

Her “big breakfast” diet involved more calories - 1,240 - with a lower proportion of fat and more carbohydrates and protein.
Breakfast here was 610 calories, with 58 grams of carbohydrates, while lunch and dinner were 395 and 235 calories respectively.

Four months on, the low-carb dieters appeared to be doing better, losing an average of 28 pounds to the 23 shed on the “big breakfast” diet.

However, after eight months, the situation had reversed, with the low-carb dieters putting an average of 18 of those pounds back on, while the big breakfasters continued to lose weight, on average 16.5 pounds each.

They lost a fifth of their total body weight on average, compared with less than 5% for the low-carb dieters.

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Save Money by Being Your Own Butcher

Thanks to the rebalancing of the world economy (or the hyperinflation correcting itself, you be the judge) people everywhere are cutting out the middleman to save money where possible. This can easily be seen in the kitchen. A recent article points out the benefits of being your own butcher. Anything to get people to enjoy the culinary arts is a great thing.

You want to save money on food? Start here: stop paying the butcher for nothing. The more he does, the less you get yet the more you pay. Become your own butcher with two investments: some education about simple butchering (readily available online) and a couple of decent knives (not a big expense, and, if you take care of them, a lifetime purchase).

Here’s the deal: I’ve been in supermarkets where a couple of skinless, boneless chicken breasts cost MORE than a whole chicken. Wouldn’t it make sense to buy the whole bird, trim out the breasts (30 seconds, once you’ve done it a couple of times) and throw the rest away if it will cost less than buying two cutlets? For the adventurer in the kitchen, there are endless possibilities for using the other parts of the chicken like making stock, wings, and even black bean, chipotle and chicken chili!

You can be your own butcher every night of the week. Does your family like nice boneless centercut porkchops? Buy a whole boneless pork loin and cut into 1” slices. You can even wrap them in plastic film and freeze them for use later.

By being your own butcher, you’ll enjoy great quality meat at probably two-thirds the price of anything you would buy pre-cut.

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Honey and the Bee

The District Domestic blog has a good article about common sense things a person can do to help bees. Since we’re still unsure why they’re dying off in such huge numbers every little bit helps. Here are just a few tidbits of the advice.

• Plant native species, which bees love - for example: mint, daisies, strawberries, raspberries, lavender, salvia, asters, sunflowers and verbena.
• Choose plants that flower at different stages in the growing season to provide a constant supply of food for the bees.

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