DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

This is a work of brilliant investigative journalism. I had no idea of the corruption and greed that drives the fast food industry. I am frightened by the apparent degree to which these large restaurant corporations control my government.

Schlosser’s expose is a fascinating, fast read. The facts roll in like waves against the shoreline, relentless and never-ending, building a case against the industry that could fuel a Congressional investigation for weeks. The book’s “Notes” and index constitute 60 pages — about one-quarter as much as the narrative.

Still, for all the rapid-fire detail, the text is engaging, even compelling. Schlosser describes the industry’s origins and evolution, paints a frightening picture of the current status, and concludes with some pointed recommendations on how to fix the things that are very badly broken.

I stopped eating at fast-food restaurants in 1994, and so before I read this book I thought that, as evil as the industry might be, it didn’t affect me. I was wrong. It is impossible to live in this world and not be (adversely) affected by the fast-food industry. For example: fast-food companies target advertising at children, to addict them to the high-fat diet that will keep them coming back for the rest of their lives. (Think about the costs of healthcare for a nation of obese people, e.g. America in 2001.) Another example: fast-food lobbying prevents the government from instituting any reasonable health-safety laws; therefore, meat and poultry processing plants, on average, are infested, unhealthy, disgusting places, and the meat and poultry you eat is likely to be contaminated.

Whether or not you eat at these restaurants, you should read this book. It will open your eyes. And change your diet.

Patronize these links, man:

• Jon Carroll's review
• Amazon (hardback)
• Amazon (paperback)
• Powell's Books (paperback)

Wondering what’s wrong with America? Several of the answers to this question are right here.

Like seismic pressure built up over decades, my urge to bake has grown for days… and when I finally erupted, out came a large loaf of Gravenstein sourdough and 12 lbs of bagels.

The apple-sourdough recipe is truly weird. To begin, chop up a Gravenstein apple and let it ferment in sugared water for 10 days, then add some flour and elaborate it into a bread dough. My previous experiences with this recipe have all been disappointing — yielding slow-to-rise loaves of unremarkable character. This time, the resulting levain was surprisingly fast and strong, easily leavening my doughs in less time than is predicted by the recipe (which is from Joe Ortiz’ The Village Baker). The finished loaf lacked the irregular sourdough-style crumb I was hoping for, because I manhandled it during shaping. But the crust was excellent, and the bread had a mild and unusual apple-cider flavor.

My main sourdough bagel recipe is from Peter Reinhart’s Crust & Crumb, and it is great. I usually make extra for friends and neighbors, but sometimes I make extra and keep them all for myself. Heh.

Today I also invented my own bagel recipe, using a whole-wheat variation on the apple-sourdough starter. In baker’s percentages, I used 100% levain (that’s a lot), about 60% water, 2% salt (not quite enough), and a dash of dark malt. The resulting bagels are classic: dense and chewy, with a moist crumb and a hint of apple cider as in the loaf bread.

Looks like Matt Haughey had my kind of vacation.

Eeeek!

Scanning my logs, I was shocked to see that Code Red (or variants thereof) continues to hammer my server, attempting to infect it. There are a lot of infected IIS servers out there… debris.com has been hit over 300 times in the past 5 days.

If you’re running a webserver with PHP, you can easily send a warning email to administrators of infected machines. The code goes into your 404 (“document not found”) handler, so unless you do have a file called default.ida, this should work for you.

The source code is here: PHP Code Red Warning Generator