Harold McGee (think “Alton Brown before there was Alton Brown”) writes what would seem a blasphemous article about cooking pasta using less water, a change which he estimates would result in “saving 250,000 to 500,000 barrels of oil.”

I’ve chided relations on occassion for not using enough cooking water for pasta, without ever really knowing why (other than I tend to be a somewhat bossy and annoying backseat cook). But I have always wondered what would happen if you used less water or started with cold. 

That’s the difference between me and these other guys: I just wondered. McGee actually tried it!

(via Rebecca Blood)

Thoughtful review of the new Starbucks VIA instant coffee from Dan Benjamin:

Hivelogic – Starbucks VIA Review: Just Stir and Enjoy?.

Despite my joking around about it, I agree with Dan. It’s pretty good. Not the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had, but so much better than the instant coffee I remember my parents used to make.

I really like Cat Cora, so seeing her name in a headline would typically grab my attention. Seeing her name in a headline like the following definitely grabs my attention:

Iron Chef Cat Cora And Wife Both Pregnant.

Good on ya, ladies.

As reported in The Economist, Harvard’s Richard Wrangham has a theory that “cooking and other forms of preparing food are humanity’s ‘killer app’”:

Cooking is a human universal. No society is without it. No one other than a few faddists tries to survive on raw food alone. And the consumption of a cooked meal in the evening, usually in the company of family and friends, is normal in every known society. Moreover, without cooking, the human brain (which consumes 20-25% of the body’s energy) could not keep running. Dr Wrangham thus believes that cooking and humanity are coeval.

In fact, as he outlined to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), in Chicago, he thinks that cooking and other forms of preparing food are humanity’s “killer app”: the evolutionary change that underpins all of the other—and subsequent—changes that have made people such unusual animals.

Must. Buy. Bought.

Mark Bittman’s revolutionary “Food Matters” is both a cookbook and a manifesto that shows us how to eat better — and save the planet.