Gluten Free Lemon Yogurt Banana Cake

4 cups gluten free flour blend

3 teaspoons gluten free baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoons xanthan gum

2 Meyer lemons, zest only

1 1/2 cups sucanat or coconut sugar

1 cup room temperature salted grass fed butter, cut into cubes

1 cup plain yogurt 

1 cup milk

4 eggs, room temperature

4 large ripe bananas, mashed

1 tablespoon lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, lemon zest, and xanthan gum. Combine milk, yogurt, lemon juice, and mashed bananas. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy on medium speed. Add eggs one at a time beating well in between. Lower speed and add half the flour mixture, followed by the milk mixture. Lastly add the rest of the flour.

Pour batter into large, lined, square cake pan. Bake for 60 to 90 minutes or until a stick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.

Remove from the oven. 

Cooked Food Allowed Evolution Of Primates' Big Brains

www.huffingtonpost.com - December 19th, 2012

That's because humans would have to spend more than 9 hours a day eating to get enough energy from unprocessed raw food alone to support our large brains, according to a new study that calculates the energetic costs of growing a bigger brain or body in primates. But our ancestors managed to get enough energy to grow brains that have three times as many neurons as those in apes such as gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans. How did they do it? They got cooking, according to a study published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"If you eat only raw food, there are not enough hours in the day to get enough calories to build such a large brain," says Suzana Herculano-Houzel, a neuroscientist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil who is co-author of the report. "We can afford more neurons, thanks to cooking." 

Humans have more brain neurons than any other primate—about 86 billion, on average, compared with about 33 billion neurons in gorillas and 28 billion in chimpanzees. While these extra neurons endow us with many benefits, they come at a price—our brains consume 20% of our body's energy when resting, compared with 9% in other primates. So a long-standing riddle has been where did our ancestors get that extra energy to expand their minds as they evolved from animals with brains and bodies the size of chimpanzees?

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Crispy Beef and Aged Cheddar Spring Rolls

Sauce Ingredients:

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

1/4 cup cranberry sauce

Whisk all the ingredients to fully combine. Simmer on low heat until it thickens and reduces (about 10 minutes).

Rolls:

10 Vietnamese spring roll sheets

1/2 cup cooked ground beef

1/4 cup aged cheddar cheese

1 teaspoon fresh sage

Sea salt and black pepper

Combine cooked ground beef, cheese, and sage. Season to taste with sea salt and black pepper. Set aside. Fill a large bowl with warm water (not hot) Dip one wrapper at a time to soften (about 2 seconds).  Wrapper will get softer by the time you roll it.

Lay wrapper flat. Leaving about 2 inches uncovered on each side. In a row across the center, place meat mixture. Fold uncovered sides inward, then tightly roll the wrapper. Heat a deep sided frying pan with enough pure vegetable oil to cover the bottom of the pan (about 4 tablespoons) on medium heat until oil is ready for frying. Add 4 rolls at a time so as not to overcrowd the pan. Fry until crispy and brown (about 8 minutes on each side). Remove from the oil and drain on paper towels. Season with salt and black pepper.

Serve immediately with extra dipping sauce on the side.

Beef Investigation Uncovers Fecal Contamination

www.huffingtonpost.com - December 17th, 2012

This is the origin myth of the food safety system in the United States: The beef industry was a mess, led to awful practices by the profit motives of a few major processing companies, until investigative journalist Upton Sinclair exposed many of the atrocities of the packing plants in his 1906 novel "The Jungle," which spurred the establishment of federal meat inspections, improving safety forever. Today, beef and other meat sold in the U.S. is safer than ever.  

This is the true state of affairs, according to a yearlong investigation of the beef industry concluded by the Kansas City Star this week: just four companies process more than 87 percent of the beef packed in the U.S., and take advantage of novel, money-saving techniques that significantly increase the risk of contamination by foodborne pathogens, leading to hundreds of preventable illnesses every year.

The investigation spans dozens of articles, tens of thousands of words and graphic illustrations galore, and is worth browsing around in depth on the Kansas City Star website.

Here are a few of the paper's staggering findings:

The investigators found ample evidence of serious problems with fecal contamination in beef at major plants, despite industry claims that beef was safer than ever. Fecal contamination is obviously the most disgusting kind of contamination on earth -- but it also vastly increases the risk that beef will spread E. coli bacteria, which lives in the intestines of cows.

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