This is the first in a new category which you may or may not have noticed, named Taste Tests where I pit two or more products head to head to see which is really the best. I've been doing this off and on for the last few years. My goal is to save money on no-name brands where taste makes no difference but spend the big bucks where it really does. Like when you buy butter instead of margarine, or shiitake mushrooms instead of button mushrooms. On with the show!

Yesterday I tried out a new (to me) recipe for tortilla soup. It turned out quite delicious by the way, despite my initial fears that it was lacking in the seasonings department. The calls for 4 cups of chicken stock or broth. We were at the dreaded Walmart picking up supplies and I couldn't decide whether to get the Swanson's or the Great Value (cheap Walmart brand). Since I needed two 14.5 ounce cans, I grabbed one of each.

To test I poured small amounts (since I needed the rest for the soup) into two small glasses. One had cute flowers on it so they were easy to differentiate. My wife warmed them up in the microwave since generally (always?) chicken broth will be eaten warm. I closed my eyes and she gave me the glasses one at a time.

The first one had a nice round taste. Not too much of anything, and certainly not too salty which was my primary fear. I probably could have enjoyed a bowl of that with some noodles and called it lunch.

The second had some good flavors, don't get me wrong, but my first reaction upon taste was "gimme the other one back". I took a few sips but couldn't identify what it was that I didn't like. It wasn't salt, that would have been too easy. The flavors just didn't marry well. The only way I can think to describe it is with music. Go play a nice C chord. That was the first sample. Now add an F#. That's the second one. You can still pick out the nice sound, but you would much rather it stop.

The result? The second was Great Value. I should have (and did) guess based on the package. Swanson's is just so much more appetizing. And we all know that old story about a book and its cover. "Don't eat a book or its cover. Have some Swanson's chicken broth instead."

Over the course of the last few years, but this most recent one especially, I've been pondering the question of eating healthy. For one, I'm getting to be middle aged. Had to happen sometime, unless I died first, and I suppose this is a better option. I figure sooner or later (although luckily it appears to be later) my metabolism is going to give out and I better be ready. Joseph's recent post about health food prompted me to finally put my theory down in words.

Something Alton Brown once said, I think it was in his slashdot interview, really caught my attention. Somebody asked about low and non-fat foods. He said that if it didn't affect the taste, sure why not. But sometimes there's just no substitute for cream. Oh boy, is he ever right. Ever put cream on your cereal? Were's that sound clip of Homer drooling...

If people would worry more about how well something tastes rather than following some diet of the week, they would feel more satisfied with their meal. They wouldn't need to double up their portions to get a hint of the taste. Going back to my cream on cereal reference, I tell you what, you'd be hard pressed to eat two bowls of that. But I could go through 3 or 4 bowls of cereal with just milk, no problem. Which one will really make me fatter?

Consider the low-fat craze that we're currently in. Most people I know like to poke fun at the Atkins diet, or the South Beach diet, or the Mayo and Peanut Butter diet (it must exist somewhere). But is the low-fat diet really much different? First margarine was in because it was low in saturated fats, now it's out because it's high in trans fats. Well who cares? Butter actually tastes good and doesn't make your popcorn all soggy. If we'd been following our tongues and noses, we could have avoided that whole mess.

People don't stick to their diets because it's not a lifestyle for them. In a safety meeting one time our instructor ingrained in our head how safety can't be a priority. There are just too many priorities to worry about, you can't think about safety when you're juggling all those. Safety has to be a value. How many times do you actually have to think about whether to put pants on? It's a value your mom taught you when you were small (and I bet you enjoyed tormenting her by running around butt naked).

Treat yourself right. Fix a meal that tastes good. Try some foods you've never had before. Just this week I made mac & cheese (no, not from a box) with shiitake mushrooms. Delicious! Mushrooms haven't really ever been my thing, but I think when I finally get home tonight I'll make a mushroom and jalapeno quesadilla, followed by some peaches and ice cream (made with real vanilla. And I won't feel guilty about it.

Did you know that "shish kabob" is Turkish for "meat on a stick"? Surprisingly "kabob" is the "meat" part. So the next time somebody offers you some chicken kabobs or veggie kabobs, you can point out that useless bit of trivia. I'm sure you'll get all the same blank stares and hushed whispers that I do.

But shish kabobs are yummy. These ones are round steak, mushrooms, olives, onion, green pepper and pineapple. You may notice that olives and pineapple are not pictures. That's because those are nasty. We marinated the meat in Yoshida's Gourmet Sauce, and we used some more to baste all over as the kabobs cook.

The rice was dead simple. I sauted onions and green pepper in butter, browned the rice and dumped a can of vegetable stock in. Not quite a risotto, but not too different either. I used basmati rice. Not sure if that added anything in particular, but it was good.

In my Exim logs this morning I noticed a new tactic spammers have started using.

2006-06-14 14:19:24 SMTP protocol violation: synchronization error (next input sent too soon: pipelining was not advertised): rejected "To: tensai@joanna.zmonkey.org" H=(tensai) [202.1.206.213] next input="..."

I get these every now and again because I don't support pipelining and I have a 4 second delay on my SMTP greeting, but that's not what I'm showing you. The curious part is "H=(tensai)". For quite a while spammers have been using a strange technique of passing a HELO name of the host they connect to. The logic of that really is beyond me, but I really don't care since the way to defeat it is easy. Now they've mutated and the solution to this one is just as simple:

acl_check_rcpt:
  ...
  drop    message = but that's my name
          condition = ${if eq {$sender_helo_name}{$local_part} {yes}{no}}

That config will drop any message where the sender identifies itself as one of my users. There's a small danger that some server's name will actually have the same name as me, but I'm kinda doubtful. Most hosts will use fully qualified names, I would think.

A friend of mine described this delectably spicy dish. I started with neufchatel cheese which we had sitting around in the fridge. I mixed in a bit of garlic powder (garlic salt is evil!) and dried chopped onion. I think I tossed in a pinch of kosher salt as well. Mixed that around real good. It was pretty good by itself. I'm considering making a sandwich with the leftovers.

The hard part was getting the guts out of the peppers. I wanted to stuff them whole, rather than in halves as I saw a few recipes call for. The trick is to split them just enough to cut to dig the innards out. I used a combination of a paring knife and a small spoon.

Originally I figured I would secure the pepper together with a toothpick but it turned out the cheese made a great glue and the toothpick was unnecessary. I grilled them over medium heat for 5-7 minutes rotating every once in a while.

The first bite I had was spicy. I modified my eating pattern to get a bigger bite of cheese and that balanced it out. Still, not for the faint of heart.