DemonDuck's Xanga

KFC grilled chicken

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:04:45 GMT

I was wondering what sort of special fast food taste this stuff would have, but ...it tastes like grilled chicken... (surprise!).

I finally tried some today. I was a little disappointed that it didn't have a unique taste, but that was mitigated by the fact that it's actually quite good; juicy too, substantially juicer than what I'd normally believe could come off a high temp grill, so I have no qualms with their faux grilling method. I think it could've used slightly more seasoning, and I think there was something just a little off with their liquid smoke, but overall, quite tasty. You should go and try some.

Also tried Better than Bouillon chicken base, it really is far, far better than bouilloin cubes, better than boring canned broth too. I highly recommend it.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:58:29 GMT

Haha, an ever nerdier page on food. Has more or less everything that I wanted to know. Tosses in a heat diffusion equation and some model for reduction of bacteria.

http://amath.colorado.edu/~baldwind/sous-vide.html

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 20:14:40 GMT

Been doing the wrong kind of research this morning. But thought I'd save it for future reference. I was wondering why bbq recipes call for temperatures <= 250F when in the smoker/grill, but oven recipes seem to call for 300+F.

Lazy person (Executive) summary.
muscle fibers = rubber at 167F+ (well done)
fast (< 3 min) cooking times matter
if you want to be really anal, heat meat to internal temp of up to 55C using an immersion circulator and then cook meat quickly
higher temps for braising shouldn't matter since all the muscle fibers are already shortened, and collagen denatures faster at higher temps
Chicken at 160F should be safe. Also safe at 154F held for >1 min.

Main interesting things:
Contains figure showing relationship between temperature and muscle fiber length/width
Also shows relationship between time and length/width at a given temp
http://www.meatscience.org/Pubs/rmcarchv/print/showpdf.asp?vol=m671&page=0221

Measuring tenderness of beef
http://www.meatscience.org/Pubs/rmcarchv/print/showpdf.asp?vol=m581&page=0217

Meat temperature chart
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_(meat)

Salmonella Time-temperature tables
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OPPDE/rdad/FSISNotices/RTE_Poultry_Tables.pdf

summary:
muscle width flattens out at around 61C (142F) to 80% of original length.
length at 75C+ (167F) to 70% of orig len
starts to shorten at 55C (131F) (rare - medium rare) for width, 45C (113F) for length
midpoints at ~52C (125F) for width, 61C (142 F) for length

for width/time
Takes about 10 mins before muscles more or less fully shorten. holds at all temps
exponential-like curves.
Takes 3+ min before muscles shorten by half of final value

for length/time
1 min seems to be not enough time for muscle fibers to shorten due to temp
2 mins and at 69C+ (156F), muscles almost fully shortened
For temps < 69C, effect is more gradual

bottom round (cheap meat) braised at 85C (185F) for 25 mins is still tough, but not tough at 100C (212F).
Juiciness still lower at 100C

salmonella time-temperature safety charts different for diff meats (beef/chicken/turkey)
fat levels matter too but only minimally
Chicken at 160F for 16s gets safe 7 log_10 reduction in salmonella. Turkey 160F takes 27s
at 140F, 33 mins for both.
at 154F, 1.1 min for chicken

Of some interest, but not that much

Some beef info for laymen (main types of protein in meat)
http://www.beeffoodservice.com/PDF/04_BeefCookery.pdf

stuff more related to muscle fiber length/tenderness and butchering
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/oas/oas_pdf/v48/p243_250.pdf (for beef)
http://www.poultryscience.org/pba/1952-2003/2003/2003%20McKee.pdf (for poultry)
http://uwyo.edu/news/showrelease.asp?id=10503 (aging meat and wild game)

collagen denatures at around 37.5C/100F?
http://www.sltc.org/pdf/JSLTC%200106%20PDFs/Article%206/Physicochemical%20Properties%20of%20Collagen,%20Gelatin%20and%20Collagen%20Hydrolysate%20Derived%20from%20Bovine%20Limed%20Split%20Wastes.pdf
http://www.pnas.org/content/99/3/1314.full

Friday, May 01, 2009

Fri, 01 May 2009 07:19:53 GMT

Ctl-W

On Unix: the "cut" in cut & paste
On Windows: close the current tab/window

I'm going to quit using webmail for replying to emails.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 04:46:35 GMT

Why does xanga still not automatically save drafts?!?!

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 08:37:43 GMT

There's a moderately upscale restaurant, Bistro Liaison, in Berkeley which is serving an "economic stimulus meal" for $28. It's of a 4 course prix fixe menu with a glass of wine which is a pretty good deal for a place like this. Unfortunately, the food was underwhelming. Today, the menu was
1) Soppressatta (french salami) with marinated olives
2) Salad Mescal (or a cold beet soup)
3) Pork tenderloin nuggets with some kind of sauce
4) Cream puffs with ice cream and chocolate sauce
Choice of a glass of Bourdeaux or some white wine.

The wine was a good table wine. I don't think there was anything super special about it, but it was reasonably complex but easy to drink. The items were meh for the most part. The pork was very tender, but if one were paranoid about food safety, one might complain that it was undercooked. I didn't mind that though. What I didn't like was that, there was a smokiness to it that was a little too pungent (not a nice smooth hickory smoke but something a little bitter), that plus, it would've been nice to have a little more sauce. The ice cream in the cream puff was very good, but the cream puff itself didn't add anything. It just felt like a dense dough. Also, there was too much chocolate sauce. It didn't have good balance. The item I liked the most was the salami with olives, but I only liked one kind of olive. Well, at least it was much, much more filling than I expected it to be. Oh well, should've gone to la rose with my restaurant.com gc to try the duck confit and be a little hungry after the meal.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:03:27 GMT

Bugger. I forgot my password. It's not a new password, and it's one I use quite frequently. Every once in a while I forget something that I really should know. Usually it's my phone number. Once I forgot my zip code (which meant I couldn't get gas until George reminded me what it was ) At least I remember the root password on one machine, so I can access some stuff. Hopefully, I'll remember later. hmmm

edit: eh. turns out i didn't forget my password. They just disabled all password to force ppl to use new ones. They just didn't notify ppl beforehand about it...

Thursday, March 05, 2009

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 06:46:27 GMT

Thanks wii. My wii fit age is 39.

Friday, February 27, 2009

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:28:01 GMT

Yay! Rick Parry is resigning as the Liverpool chief exec. (In case you didn't know, Liverpool FC is an English soccer team.) He always seemed to drag his feet on contract negotiations and signings, and he almost lost Steven Gerrard with the somewhat perfunctory way he treated negotiations. Now maybe Daniel Agger's contract will get sorted out, and Liverpool won't get ripped off so often.

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=622870&sec=england&cc=5901

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 23:15:57 GMT

The Proshares Short ETFs kinda suck. I made some bets on convergence to the net asset value (NAV) of the some ETFs that basically mirror major indices and were trading at a discount. I bought a corresponding amount of the Proshares Ultrashort ETF QID which advertises that it should deliver twice the inverse daily return of the nasdaq. The problem with my hedge is that it doesn't do that. On high volatility days (seemingly almost every day now) it delivers consistently worse performance (eg. when the nasdaq went up 8%, qid went down a whopping 32%) On regular days, the etf just experiences greater volatility (which is also bad for returns but it's expected).

I tried to find out why this is the case, but I can't find any information about how the underlying portfolio is even constructed. Proshares offers both a leveraged ultra short Nasdaq etf and leveraged (not short) nasdaq etf. Unless there's some govt regulation forbidding it, the only position they need to hold is on the difference of the number of outstanding shares for each.

Most blogs about the failings of short and especially ultrashort etfs basically complain that they don't deliver long run performance that's twice that of the inverse index. Ie. they demonstrate that they don't understand compounding and log returns. But the short etfs simply do a relatively crappy job at inverse daily returns.

Here are some quick numbers to demonstrate:
mean log return
Nasdaq: -1.17e-3
Proshares Short Nasdaq: 0.3e-3
Since these are daily returns, they should be the negative of one another.

And a crappily labelled plot showing difference of Proshare ultrashort nasdaq (QID) from twice the inverse daily return vs daily return of the nasdaq. Note the incredible badness on days with high volatility.