28 June 2010 by pat.

This afternoon I finally removed the gummy bears from the refrigerator to see how they looked, and more importantly, how they tasted.

Here’s the line-up, in the same order as the before picture. You can see the changes (I’ve put both the before and after images in line so you can compare easily. Lots of expansion on the bears, not so much on the wine gums.

I really don’t like the look of the wine gums. They’ve gone pale and pastel, and make me think of waterlogged dead things. Not to be recommended.

The large gummy bears, next in line, fared better.

The fruit juice gummy bears, next two containers, both absorbed a lot of alcohol. But look how shiny and clear the ones at the end are: these are the ones soaking in rum.

I took them out of the alcohol and put them all on a plate to check that it wasn’t just the fact they were continuing to soak in the alcohol that made the visual difference: the gummies are arranged clockwise from top left, which means the rum-soaked bears are in the lower left.

Somehow, they’re more reflective and more refractive than the vodka ones.  So visually, the rum-soaked gummy bears are definitely the winners.

Next: how do they taste? The wine gums have a really awful texture. They’re slimy on the outside, and still overly chewy on the inside. The taste isn’t that great either. I give them a big Fail. I’m not quite sure how I’ll dispose of them… do they go in the compost, or flush?

The large gummi bears are sweet. The taste of alcohol does come through after a couple of chews. The texture has improved, and it’s more like some jello that’s a bit hard-set instead of overcooked squid. Meh. It works, but doesn’t thrill me.

The fruit juice gummi bears soaked in vodka first hit you with a fruity flavour (honestly, I couldn’t tell you what kind of fruit flavour it is, just that it’s fruity) and then, like with the large gummi bears, the alcohol hits. It’s a pretty intense taste of vodka.

The fruit juice gummi bears soaked in rum (ah! so pretty! They look like gems) also first hit me with the fruity taste, but I think I can distinguish between some of the flavours: the dark red ones are more berry-ish, the clear ones are almost lemonade. (I was only eating half of each, so I don’t think I had a significant amount to drink). The transition to rum flavour was better than the transition to vodka, I think.

So the winners are fruit juice gummi bears in Bacardi rum.

The last question to resolve is: how to serve them?

On a ceramic spoon?

With chopsticks?

Voodoo doll gummi bears impaled with cocktail picks?

Hmm. Gummi bears on toothpicks didn’t work so well. Less than 5 minutes after this shot, all the picks had canted over to one side or the other, and beheaded all the bears!

Sandra had another suggestion when we were having a beer at Stratenger’s last night: freeze them.

Unfortunately, because all the rum ones had been beheaded, I had to conduct the experiment with vodka ones. I took a few of the leftover ones and put them on a piece of parchment paper in the freezer for an hour.  I then tried mounting them on cocktail picks like lollipops. It works with the vodka ones, which are a bit firmer than the rum ones. And it’s kind of like gellied antifreeze! They’re cold, but not frozen.

Go ahead! do your own experiments and tell me what the results are!

Postscript:

 I repeated the experiment using some vegan gummi bears (also from the Bulk Barn). They’re made using tapioca starch instead of gelatin, and all the coloring is vegetable-based. They absorbed the rum more slowly… they were still quite tough after 3 days, so I let them continue to soak until the next Leslieville Patio Club meeting, which was 9 days. Stuck toothpicks in them (worked better than with the fruit-juice gummis) and took them to the Patio Club for sampling. Responses indicate that they work!

Posted in Food, processed, Food | 1 Comment »

28 June 2010 by pat.

The American Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) has come up with a new acronym — SoFAS — to describe foods that are bad for us. SoFAS are Solid Fats and Added Sugars.Marion Nestle is analysing the report (difficult challenge!) and you can read more about it on her website about Food Politics.You can also follow her on Twitter  (marionnestle).

Posted in Food | No Comments »

23 June 2010 by pat.

I never had gummy bears growing up, or even tasted them until today. The most exposure I had was from Nicole Vogelzang’s paintings and I loved the way they reflected and refracted light.

A few months ago, I read a blog posting about an experiment to create vodka-infused gummy bears. Cute.

Sandy was recently talking about jello shooters, and it put me in mind of the blog posting, so I decided to try to replicate the experiment, with a few variations: no worms, no fish; no sugar-free gummy bears in the bulk barn, so I’m using fruit juice ones; trying some wine gums, since it sounds to me like something that should work with alcohol. Also going to try some rum with fruit juice gummy bears, since rum seems to go with sweet things.

To start, I tried one of each of the gummy bears (wine gums I know). Interesting. Very sweet. Texture is chewy. Given the texture, though, I’d generally prefer to eat squid or cuttlefish sashimi

I laid out the four different containers.  From left to right, they are:

• wine gums
• large gummy bears
• small fruit juice gummy bears
• small fruit juice gummy bears

Aren’t they cute? I arranged the bears like they’re in a hot tub. But I didn’t realize until I was looking at the photos that the orange gummy bear in vodka’s upside down. Oops. Guess he had too much already.

Then I added vodka to the first three dishes, enough to submerge the gums. To the fourth dish, some white Bacardi rum.

Here are the photos. This is the wine gums. Am a bit concerned, because there seemed to be some dissolving of the gums immediately, resulting in some floaty stuff. We’ll see what happens.

 These are the large regular type of gummy bears. Look at the way the green feet seem to glow! Oh, I just love that. Does the fact I’ve submerged them mean I’ve drowned them? Oh dear.

 These are the little fruit juice gummy bears in vodka. As you can see, the orange one (on the right) is upside down.

 Here are six more fruit juice gummy bears, but this time they’re in Bacardi rum. Since rum is used as a base with so many fruity drinks, I thought it might be more interesting than vodka, which is neutral.

We’ll see what happens! I’ve covered the dishes with plastic wrap and put them in the fridge. I’ll keep my eyes open to see when it looks like they’ve absorbed as much alcohol as they are likely to. We’ll see what the experiment differences are:

• Do wine gums fare better than fishies?
• Do fruit juice gummy bears do as well as, better, or worse than sugar-free gummys? (I didn’t see any sugar free ones at bulk barn).
• What happens to the large size gummy bears? Do they muscle their way out of my fridge?

Stay tuned for the results!

Posted in Food, processed, Food | 1 Comment »

21 June 2010 by pat.

Before and after pictures of my back garden today.

I removed weeds from all three beds, whacked the weeds between the flagstones, and pruned both the sandcherry (purple leaves) and elderberry (pale green leaves). I got started at a reasonable time this morning, and was done shortly after noon. I think I took this photo around 1:30.

The photo also demonstrates why early morning or late evening light is kinder to photographing growing things: the colors aren’t as blue, and places where the sun hits aren’t as contrasty.

I now have a huge pile of branches that I need to break down into sizes that the city will accept in the garden waste category.

Posted in Home gardens, Gardening, Photography - documentary, Photography | 4 Comments »

20 June 2010 by pat.

The fourth of my series of garden articles has now been posted to BlogTO. I took the GO train to the Burlington Aldershot station, and a bus from there to RBG. Read all about it. More pictures over on Flickr (and more to come, together with detailed text).

Posted in Urban nature, Gardening, Photography - documentary | No Comments »

19 June 2010 by pat.

Mmm. I bought another cheese two to three weeks ago. Have slowly nibbled at it.

Tonight, after not eating any for about a week, I decided it was time to have some on crackers to go along with some Argentinian rosé. It’s gotten wonderfully runny: I had a half a cheese left, and it pretty much collapsed on itself. The flavour is excellent. I love the combination of cow/goat/sheep flavours, and agree with the reviewers who find it mushroomy and a little like creme fraiche. There’s still some left for tomorrow.

I’ll have to take some to the next party I attend.

Posted in Food - farmers' market, Food | No Comments »

17 June 2010 by pat.

Got the blog set now as a subdomain: http://blog.patanderson.netSo I’m back to having the other webpages as well as the blog.

Posted in Food | No Comments »

16 June 2010 by pat.

I’ve managed to collate all three blogs and move them over here, and find a WordPress theme that seems to work.Am still trying to figure out (I’ve emailed my provider) why the creation of this blog has meant the loss of my other webpages to the sight of anyone but me. I can see them through FTP in DreamWeaver, so I know they’re still there, but seem to have lost the domain www.patanderson.net to the blog.Spent yesterday at RBG taking photos for another item at BlogTO.  Am now choosing which 10-12 of the over 200 images will accompany the article.

Posted in Food, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »