Day 103 Experiment

Life can be a bit of an experiment. As humans we are wired with a little gland called the amygdala. It governs our flight or fight response and it is a quick learner. It has to be - it's job is protection.

Some experiments teach us. Remember putting the lit candle under the jar in science class?

The flame extinguished because it ran out of oxygen. We learn knives are sharp and stoves are hot and ice is slippery. Those were life experiences that the amygdala registered and stored. When we enter a potentially dangerous situation, the amygdala goes into action, pops up the appropriate expected reaction based on those past life experiments/experiences and instantly preps us to run for the hills or fight for the victory.

So, I did a little experiment and my amygdala isn't going to soon let me forget the result. A couple of folks asked about the Paleo Brownies. I made them and don't foresee doing them again anytime soon.  My amygdala has said that cacao doesn't taste very good.


Before I totally throw the idea away, I intend to contact the author of the recipe and ask what went wrong. I followed the instructions and my brownies never looked like the photograph.

It's actually a little worse than not looking like the photograph.  I combined the ingredients as instructed, but I didn't really get a batter.  It was rather clumpy and more like a dry cookie dough than a batter.  Maybe if I'd "melted" the almond butter that would have made a difference.

There just didn't seem to be any moisture to bake into the cacao to make it "do" anything. I didn't get a shiny top and the brownies fell apart after plenty of cooling (over two hours).

C and I each tried a bite and had pretty much the same reaction. The cacao is bitter and didn't seem to infuse the almond butter. Almond butter, however, does taste pretty good, so there is a hint that maybe something more could become of the recipe if I could figure out just what.

Almond butter isn't exactly cheap. I suppose it takes a lot of almonds ground down to make it.  A small jar, about the size of a small jar of peanut butter is $12.99. How many almonds, how many trees?  While I'm sure almond butter is better for me on several different levels, how sustainable is it? How long does it take a crop of almonds to grow? How much water do the trees need? How many crops of almonds can you get from a tree in a season?

Being sustainable is about more than whether or not we use pesticides on our food.  We are arrogant to think that growing something and making a healthier food choice from it doesn't still impact the world.  My mind still reels from the idea of how much stuff we grow and raise - the sheer volume of food that is needed in population areas.

It does behoove us to pay attention to what we throw away when it comes to our food.  There is a thing happening on the FoodNetwork right now where they are really pushing the idea of food wastefulness. If the commercials are to be believed we throw away more than 40% of our food. YIKES!

Think about this too - when you dine out - do you really need that much food?  A smaller portion has a better chance of being fully eaten, rather than scraped into the garbage, or taken home in a doggy bag to be forgotten. What if restaurants cut the portion size along with the price? We'd all be saving.

I just read an article that suggests restaurants are going to cut down on menu size to save money.  McDonald's pay attention - don't make your menu bigger, shrink it.  If you think about all the stuff that a restaurant has on its menu that means it has to have all those ingredients on hand, just in case someone orders something that isn't made often.  If the menu is smaller there is likely to be less kitchen waste.

Here is part of what the article said:

To be on the safe side, it might be best to consider going out and eating your favorite restaurant meal sooner rather than later. If your go-to local eatery follows the example of the big fast-casual chains and advice from the restaurant-management service Upserve, it will dramatically scale back the number items offered on its menu. How dramatically? By around 70 percent.

That’s because, according to data compiled by Upserve, only 16 percent of the items on a typical restaurant menu account for a startling 80 percent of its sales, Eater reports.

Consequently, a bigger menu may not be better for a restaurant’s bottom line, Rosie Atkins, Upserve’s vice president for product told Eater. She recommends that restaurateurs, in the name of efficiency, assess each menu item’s popularity and experiment with eliminating those that are neither big sellers nor essential to the restaurant’s brand.

Read more at: http://blog.foodnetwork.com/fn-dish/2017/05/should-restaurants-start-giving-us-fewer-choices/?oc=linkback

I think some of us may need to retrain our amygdalas.  Some of us may need to rethink food waste.  Some of us may need to experiment with using leftovers in creative ways so we don't thrown out so much food and waste so much money.

I spent a few dollars on my brownie experiment. I'm laid off. I don't have money to toss down the disposal.  So now I have this cacao and almond butter and a recipe I'm less than happy with.  I either improve the recipe somehow, or I find other ways to use the things I've bought.

It would be easy to throw them out because this experiment didn't work. As Edison said when creating the light bulb. "I have not failed, I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

The quest to eat better, with lower glycemic foods is still on. This recipe didn't work. I've found one out of the thousands out there that didn't work according to plan. I'm not giving up.  I've put a little sad face next to this recipe and I'm moving forward.