Day forty seven and forty eight

A courtesy of

Is brown sugar good for you?

My apologies, for not posting anything yesterday. I had to drive to SF to give food and medicine to the cat yesterday evening and today in the early morning. I woke up at 4:10 and yesterday I was tired after school and driving. Will try to keep posts on regular basis.

Thursday and Friday were quite similar. Yesterday we got results for the mid term quiz on Math (100%). We started new chapter - recipes costing, food costs for the operation, and just touched total costs. What was surprising that some operations (restaurants, cafes) try to keep food cost at certain percentage on every single item, and some places even pay bonuses to chefs if they have achieved that level. Another example was a restaurant in a golf club.Their food costs are around 65%,
extremely high. The question is how they are making profit? Answer is, that they are not making profit. But, the golf club charge membership around 5 grands a year and they are working to attract new members, by providing all services for convenience and pleasure of members. So the restaurant suppose to provide good quality food and do not worry about profit.

Gastronomy yesterday was a continuation of cooking methods. We spoke about Maillard reaction (browning on steak and other protein) and caramelization (browning sugars). So yes, when we want a steak with good brown color outside, this is Maillard reaction. If we are cooking French onion soup and  we want our onion to become brown after long cooking time, this is caramelization, because there is not proteins in onion and brown color achieved by slowly brining sugar in onion to a certain temperature.
Today we spoke about digestion.

First year Seminar we had quiz yesterday. Hope I did ok, frankly speaking was too busy to open book...

And we have nutrition yesterday and today. Mainly we spoke about carbohydrates and especially sugar. It seems we have a new obsession with sugars. Mark Bitman recently wrote an article that sugar is toxic. So many voices about sugar and that we should not use it at all. The problem seems to be easy. We need sugar to have brain working, but we do not need so much sugar. If you drink 2 liters of coca-cola every day, this is way too much sugar and it does not matter what kind of sugar in that product. If you drink five cups of coffe daily and use a teaspoon every time, this is five teaspoon clear sugar a day... What was disappointing is that almost all brown sugar is artificial (refined sugar with addition of molases). So there is no benefit of using brown sugar (and pay extra). Do it only if you like the taste of molases.

Today I went to DMV regarding my California driving license. All documents were submitted again and in a few weeks I should receive something. Hope that time it will be a California Driving License.