I’m short on food commentary to add this week, but I did write a blog about how I think Keurig won the single-serving coffee format war (click on my name)—tl;dr marketing through vending machine companies + creating a way to bypass the K-Cups = success. (On a closely related note, I am reviewing an insanely expensive espresso machine and trying to figure out how to say it’s a good machine without snarking at the people with too much money who will buy it.)

Also, just saw Ching-He Huang’s new show from San Francisco on the Cooking Channel—I knew Scripps was bringing some of the Canadian talent south of the border, but for some reason I’m surprised they’re doing the same with some of the Brits. Oh well, no complaints…

And I just like it better.

The best reason to eat anything.
Also, I didn’t quite catch if the zucchini/corn/beans thing was with cooked zucchini or corn?  (I know the beans were cooked, because, well.)

Amanda, you should use tarragon when you make a spaghetti sauce, it goes well with bell peppers and mushrooms as well.

It had zucchini, corn, and beans, IIRC.

Sorry I was unclear—what I mean is, did you cook the zucchini and/or corn before mixing it in with the beans?  Or did you use raw zucchini/corn, and then it cooked when the enchiladas baked?

I am just curious, is there non-vegan wine?

The vast majority of wines are made using animal products, so they would fall under the catagory of “non-vegan” wine.

Forgive my ignorance, but what animal products go into making wine?  (Please tell me that the microorganisms that create fermentation are not considered “animals” in this context. . .)

Soitanly:

Isinglass (play /ˈaɪzɪŋɡlæs/ or /ˈaɪzɪŋɡlɑːs/) is a substance obtained from the dried swim bladders of fish. It is a form of collagen used mainly for the clarification of wine and beer. It can also be cooked into a paste for specialized gluing purposes.

......................................................................................

Isinglass finings are widely used as a processing aid in the British brewing industry to accelerate the fining, or clarification, of beer. They are used particularly in the production of cask-conditioned beers, known as real ale, although there are a few cask ales available which are not fined using isinglass. The finings flocculate the live yeast in the beer into a jelly-like mass, which settles to the bottom of the cask. Left undisturbed, beer will clear naturally; however, the use of isinglass finings accelerates the process. Isinglass is sometimes used with an auxiliary fining, which further accelerates the process of sedimentation.

Non-cask beers that are destined for kegs, cans or bottles are often pasteurized and filtered. The yeast in these beers tends to settle to the bottom of the storage tank naturally, so the sediment from these beers can often be filtered without using isinglass.[citation needed] However, some breweries still use isinglass finings for non-cask beers, especially when attempting to repair bad batches.

Although very little isinglass remains in the beer when it is drunk, many vegetarians[1] consider beers that are processed with these finings (such as Guinness and most real ales[2]) to be unsuitable for vegetarian diets (although acceptable for pescetarians).[3] A beer-fining agent that is suitable for vegetarians is Irish moss, a type of red alga also known as carrageenan.[4] However, carrageenan-based products (used in both the boiling process and post-fermentation) primarily reduce hazes caused by proteins, but isinglass is used at the end of the brewing process, after fermentation, to remove yeast. Since the two fining agents act differently (on different haze-forming particles), they are not interchangeable, and some beers make use of both.

Isinglass finings are also used in the production of kosher wines, although for reasons of kashrut they are not derived from the Beluga sturgeon, as this fish is not kosher.[5] Whether the use of a non-kosher isinglass renders a beverage non-kosher is a matter of debate in Jewish law. Rabbi Yehezkel Landau, in Noda B’Yehuda, first edition, Jore Deah 26, for example, permits such beverages.[5] This is the position followed by many kashrut-observant Jews today.

Thank you, Dark Avenger G.C.M. - thanks to you, I am now a somewhat smarter person.  Very cool and interesting info!

I must in turn thank all the other Pandagonians who have enlarged my sphere of knowledge in many ways on many days here.

cendare ... I would assume she cooked it first. I make something similar, and we always cook it first. The corn might be okay without being cooked first, but I would worry about the zucchini being far too al dente for my taste.

And Dark Avenger, thanks, I learned something too. I was going to say that if you are really concerned about your wine being vegan, you could always go with kosher wine (of which there are some pretty good ones these days), but of course fish is not meat for the purposes of kashrut, and I didn’t realize fish byproducts were used in wine.

So ... I made something awesome this weekend with zucchini. It wasn’t vegan, though you probably could use some soy milk and a little vinegar or lemon juice to replace the buttermilk and some olive oil to replace the butter. It was adapted from a recipe in Not Your Mother’s Slowcooker Cookbook. You put diced zucchini and onions in a slow cooker on high for half an hour to sweat the vegetables, along with a few healthy pats of butter and 1/2 teaspoon of curry powder. Then you add broth, a few heaping teaspoons of rice, some herbs (I used basil and mint), salt and pepper and let it do its thing for 5-6 hours on low. Puree with an immersion blender and stir in one cup of buttermilk. (Recipe called for half-and-half, but I had buttermilk on hand from another recipe and I like the tang.) I served it with a dollop of plain yoghurt and some good bread. The kids liked it too (always a plus).

I didn’t cook the zucchini/corn, just the beans.

With fresh veggies like that, you really want to avoid overcooking. It was delicious the way I made it.

It’s delicious the way I make it too.

I’ll follow up with a Protip for all you home brewers out there:

Say, you want a yeast strain from your favorite microbrew to work with, but you have a problem, in that such strains are a proprietary asset of the company in question, and probably hard to obtain legally.

What you do is write a letter to the brewmaster asking for a sample of the strain, explaining that it’s for your own personal use, you aren’t planning to go into business or anything like that.

He or she will send you a letter back, telling you that your request can’t be granted.

You then take the letter, and using a camel’s hair brush, dust the letter onto a plate of agar enriched with dried malt extract. 

The brewmaster works with the yeast every day, so unless they have a shower and a change of clothing after they work with the yeast, they are going to have the yeast spores on them all the time, and they’ll shed enough spores on the letter they send to you denying your request.

This trick also has worked in the case of one lab that wanted a virus that another researcher was working on, they took the denial letter and were able to recover the virus they coveted without too much trouble.