Seth's Blog

I completely agree with Ray Bradbury about libraries:

“Libraries raised me,” Mr. Bradbury said. “I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”

Here’s what he says about a similar source of free knowledge:

“The Internet is a big distraction,” Mr. Bradbury barked . . . “Yahoo called me eight weeks ago,” he said, voice rising. “They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? ‘To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.’

“It’s distracting,” he continued. “It’s meaningless; it’s not real. It’s in the air somewhere.”

When I was in college (at Caltech), I didn’t find classes or books very helpful. I liked reading old New Yorker articles. Which then I got from the library but now I’d get online.

Michael Bowerman writes from Kenya:

First, I’ve made a point of eating yogurt daily and have had no stomach problems in a month of eating here. May be coincidence as I haven’t eaten at risker spots, but most others I know here have had some problem during their stay. I did drink one yogurt which tasted foul, and realised it was past expiration. I wonder if my perception that it was foul was culturally indoctrinated, or a useful rejection of spoiled food. What is the relationship between fermentation and true spoilage?

Second, reading Nelson Mandela’s autobiography he talks about a traditional drink of his tribe, the Xhosa, called amasi – feremented milk. He writes about how much he loves the taste during an anecdote where fermenting the milk on his window ledge while staying at a safehouse in a white neighbourhood draws the attention of passing Africans who are wondering why “their” milk is in the window. I wonder if he would have liked my “spoiled(?)” yogurt? I haven’t looked for commercial versions yet, but will.

Third, a Sudanese friend told me that the Sudanese have a drink made from cow’s blood, urine, and fermented milk. The only part I was incredulous about was the urine but it seems cow and camel urine have been drank by other cultures — there is a urine-based soft-drink being released in India called Gau Jai. I found this site which documents the extensive fermentation in Sudanese culture — meat, milk, urine — including “…mish, which is made by prolonged fermentation to the extent that maggots thrive in it. The product is consumed whole, with the maggots included. These two products are closely related to Egyptian mish (1).”

A year ago I told students at my friend’s Mohamed Ibrahim‘s school that a student of Allen Neuringer’s had gone on a camping trip and found that her acne went away. At first she thought it was the sunshine; but then, by self-experimentation, she discovered that the crucial change was that she had stopped using soap to wash her face.

Now Mohamed writes:

I told my classes about your friend who went camping without her face products only to discover that the face products were contributing to her acne, and that from that point on she only washed her face with water. It turns out that two of my students wash their faces with water! And their skin looks great! I started “washing” my face with water about a month ago, and [now] my face is acne free and soft as a pair of brand new UGG boots. [He had had acne for years.] The only additional thing I do is wipe my face with a napkin throughout the day to remove any excess oil.

So one cause of acne is using soap to wash your face.

Acne really matters. And it’s common. It now turns out that it has a pathetically easy solution, in at least some cases. Dermatologists don’t know this. Apparently hardly anyone knows it. Somehow the entire healthcare establishment, to whom we entrust our health in many ways, missed this. Dennis Mangan’s discovery that niacin can cure restless-leg syndrome is another example of a pathetically easy solution missed by experts. Likewise, the Shangri-La Diet is very different than anything an obesity expert has ever proposed.

What else has been missed?

More Imagine a med student in a dermatology class. The student raises his hand and asks a question. “I read in a blog that acne goes away if you stop using soap. What do you think about that?” What would the instructor say — after telling the student not to believe everything he reads on the Web?

From his blog:

Recently I lost my sense of smell thanks to, I assume, some allergy meds I’ve been snorting. . .  .My wife, Shelly, kept asking versions of the question “Do you smell that? It’s awful!” But I never smelled that. . .  I think I also gave up something in the food tasting department thanks to my lack of a functional sniffer, but I’m okay with that too. I’ve dropped about eight pounds in the last two months because lately I’m not attracted to the taste of food, just its utility.

Thanks to David Cramer

More In related news, a popular cold remedy causes anosmia. Thanks to Marian Lizzi.

Years ago I made yogurt using a recipe from Saul Sternberg. I still use the same ingredients — the basic point is to add about 1/2 cup powdered milk per quart of regular milk at the start — but I implement the temperature changes differently. Since I became interested in fermented foods, I’ve made yogurt a dozen times. Here’s what I’ve learned.

1. Makes a great condiment. I blogged about this. Store-bought yogurt, even the plain stuff, is too runny — not thick enough — nor sour enough to make this clear. The addition of powdered milk makes the yogurt thick enough to easily eat with anything, including meat. It improves the flavor of just about anything, especially if the yogurt is really sour. This might be the most important lesson since it means you can eat it at every meal and it makes cooking easier. I use spices much less now. The yogurt supplies complexity.

2. You can incubate it for days. I want it as strong as possible — not only because more sour (food writers euphemistically say tart) is better but also because the longer it ferments the more bacteria there will be. After a while it stops getting more sour and I stop. I routinely let it incubate one or two days, much longer than any recipe I’ve seen.

3. Preheating helps. Most recipes say you should heat the milk before you add the cultures. Some say this kills “bad” bacteria, which could compete with the bacteria you add. According to Harold McGee, the preheating denatures the milk proteins, which helps them trap liquid (whey). I did a little experiment in which I didn’t preheat some of the batches. Without preheating, the yogurt was much less solid. Supporting McGee.

4. Strauss yogurt better than Pavel yogurt. (Two popular Bay Area brands.) When I make a new batch I start it with store-bought yogurt; that works better than using what I have left. Side-by-side tasting showed that Strauss yogurt is more sour than Pavel yogurt. I made yogurt using each as the starter; the Strauss-started yogurt was clearly more sour than the Pavel-started yogurt.

5. Slow cooker works great. It is very easy to do the preheating via a crockpot (also called a slow cooker). I put it on high and wait 3-4 hours. This heats the milk to about 185 degrees F. Then I cool it down, add the cultures, and put the whole crockpot in the oven (set very low) to keep it warm for a few days. No spillage. I use a food thermometer to track the temperature. I got the idea from the Shangri-La Diet Forums.

6. Whole milk better than low-fat milk. Whole tasted better.

Harold McGee’s recommendations.