Adventures in Tech

Lunches at work are usually nothing to write about, however every now and then, we get an external restaurant that makes a memorable dish. A couple of weeks ago, that was the Cajun shrimp po’boy. The sandwich was relatively simple: a toasted baguette, a big of mayonnaise, some shredded lettuce, and seasoned Cajun shrimp, however the taste was amazing. I had an inkling about the origin of the name po’boy, but the price of the sandwich betrayed that thinking. A bit of research on the web revealed a couple of origin stories. The most plausible and heartwarming was on Wikipedia : that during a 1929 street car workers’ strike, restaurant owners served the sandwich to their striking colleagues for free, jokingly referring to the strikers as poor boys, after which the sandwiches took the name, and in the Louisiana dialect shortened to po’boy.

I watched a video interview with the 10 th heir of Twinings Tea Company, that has been merchandising tea for over 300 years. In the interview, among talking about the family history, and the story behind their bestselling tea flavor—Earl Grey—he talked about the best way to brew tea, whether using loose leaves, or a tea bag. To extract the most flavor out of tea, he recommended bringing cold water to a boil, and removing the kettle off the stove once the water starts boiling. His theory is that the flavor is extracted through the air in the water, and continuing to boil the water further, will reduce the amount of air in it. For green teas, he recommends letting the kettle set for 5 mins, then pouring the hot water over the tea, and for black teas, he recommends pouring the hot water immediately over the tea. The heir advised against removing the bag, or repeatedly dunking it in the water during brewing, because that only changes the color of the water, and makes the tea bit...

Over the weekend I watched "Fat, sick, and nearly dead", a documentary on Netflix about how a sick and overweight Australian regained his health by following a strict juice diet for about 6 months augmented by moderate exercise. The documentary tracks his progress over the 6 months period, as he travels throughout the US from coast to coast, talking to people about the health benefits of the juice diet, and showing them how it affected his health. The documentary also shows how toward the end of his diet, he started evangelizing it, and helping other people reverse their heavily medicated health problems by following a similar diet and moderate exercise. The documentary was very well made, and the author is quite likable. It was also very educational about the types of foods people consume, and the nutrients they get out of them: micro-nutrients--those that come from plant sources, and macro-nutrients--those that come from animal sources. The documentary's thesis is th...

Documentaries about food and health are almost always controversial, especially if they include a view on dieting and weight loss. They end up espousing a myopic view of how to lose weight and be healthy, and lose the viewer who is a long time skeptic after seeing a lot of fad diets come and go. The documentary "Hungry for Change" was a pleasant change. It focused on giving out balanced information on how the US as a nation has a high percentage of obese individuals, despite all the health awareness, and diets in circulations. The premise of the documentary is that we have strayed from eating the foods our bodies evolved with through million of years to consuming highly processed foods, and if we change that by eating less processed foods, we'd have a better health. The documentary starts with some eye-opening highlights: Supermarket foods are engineered to have a long shelf life, to be appealing and addictive, and be not fulfilling so that we buy more The proto...