That’s either insane … or brilliant.

That cup of coffee just not getting it done anymore? How about a Buzz Donut or a Buzzed Bagel? That’s what Doctor Robert Bohannon, a Durham, North Carolina, molecular scientist, has come up with. Bohannon says he’s developed a way to add caffeine to baked goods, without the bitter taste of caffeine. Each piece of pastry is the equivalent of about two cups of coffee.

Thinking about it, I’m leaning towards insane. But I’ve been wrong before.

Yesterday, while I was up on campus at an all-day class thing (ugh), Scott met with our friend Katie to plan out the menu for Thanksgiving. I won’t be doing much for the festivities other than acting as Scott’s prep cook, but I will be making the stuffing as well as an appetizer.

I originally found this recipe on, of all places, the now-defunct webvan.com site back in the fall of 2000, when Scott and I were getting ready to cook our first big Thanksgiving dinner. I’ve made it pretty much every year since then. It’s tasty and not at all difficult; the biggest challenge is the prep time, which can take a while what with all the chopping and bread drying.

Anyway, here it is. I’d be happy to e-mail a file with the recipe on request:

Cornbread and Sage Dressing

Ingredients:
1 9″ x 9″ cornbread
1 16-ounce loaf sourdough bread
2 cups diced bacon
1 cup diced onion
1 cup diced carrot
2 tablespoons fresh sage chiffonade
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 cup half-and-half
1 cup chicken stock

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 375° F. Cut the cornbread and the sourdough bread into 1/2 inch cubes. Spread onto baking trays and bake for 15 minutes or until the bread has dried out. Set aside in a large mixing bowl.

Cook the bacon in a large frying pan over medium heat until it begins to crisp. Add the onions and carrots. Cook until the onions soften and start to turn translucent (about 5 minutes). Add the sage, salt and pepper. Turn heat to low and cook an additional 10 minutes.

Add the contents of the pan to the mixing bowl and gently mix with the bread cubes. Add the stock and the half-and-half, continue mixing until the dressing is moist and well blended. I usually use my hands for this but a large wooden spoon is good too.

Put the mixture into a 13″ x 9″ x 2″ greased baking pan. Cover with tin foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove cover and bake an additional 15 minutes or until the top is crispy.

Substitutions:

If you want to add more turkey flavor, use turkey stock instead of chicken and/or spoon some turkey pan drippings onto the dressing.

Use 1 teaspoon dried sage instead of fresh sage if you can’t get fresh.

If you can’t get sourdough bread, then nice peasant bread would work too.

Notes:

This is dressing, not stuffing, and should not be cooked inside the bird.

I use a cornbread mix to make the cornbread, but if you want to save time, buy one from a store.

Prepping the bread can be done the day before and the bread kept, loosely covered, overnight. Use day-old bread for faster drying.

I usually use beef bacon instead of pork due to having been raised in a somewhat kosher home, although given that there’s also half-and-half in the mix, this recipe is in no way kosher. If you used all kosher ingredients and replaced the half-and-half with more stock, it could be easily made so.

Couldn’t sleep, so I was browsing the news sites this morning. I came across this gem from Salt Lake City: No-Carb Eating Couple Booted From Buffet.

Roast beef was the issue. As Reuters put it, “when [customer] Amaama went up for his 12th slice, the manager asked Amaama to stop.” Chaos ensued.

What rational person is going to think they’re controlling their weight by eating that much food? ‘Oh, but it’s low carb!’ you hear the cry. ‘Cut out the carbs and you can eat anything you want and still lose weight!’.

I call bullshit.

If each slice of roast beef averaged a mere 2 ounces, that’s just under a pound and a half of meat eaten. Let’s look at the calories in that (you remember calories, right?). According to the handy guide at http://www.calorie-count.com/, 3 ounces of cooked beef, all fat removed, has 232 calories. So those 11 slices of roast beef contained approximately 1700 calories – more if my estimate of a 2-ounce slice is too small or if all the fat had not been trimmed off.

It passes my understanding how people can think this is a good way to lose weight. The FDA recommends consuming approximately 2000 calories a day, depending on a person’s age and activity level. You can bet dollars to doughnuts (if you’ll pardon the carb-laden expression) that this goober ate much more than just 11 slices of roast beef that day. Whether he was exercising regularly or had an active lifestyle wasn’t mentioned in the article, so perhaps I’m doing the guy a disservice. Maybe he mountain bikes to work every day and rarely sits down on the job. But somehow, I suspect that’s not the case.

You want to lose weight? It’s simple but it’s not easy. Burn more calories than you consume. How you do that is up to you. Exercise or don’t, eat carbs or not – it doesn’t matter, as long as your net calorie count is negative, you’ll get lighter.

Maybe I should write my own diet manual. Call it “The Sanity Plan.” I’d make millions, quit my job, and spend my days doing book tours and being pampered. With merchandising tie-ins (I see ‘I want sanity’ t-shirts, maybe kitchen products), perhaps a chain of Sanity fitness centers, I’d be set for life.

Unfortunately, most of America is not ready for sanity. And people (I do not exclude myself) are generally lazy. They really want the magic fix-it that’s going to let them do as little as possible and still shed pounds. Sanity is too hard.

Ah well. Time to brew some coffee and get ready for work.

$200 million dollars to NPR, courtesy of the late Joan B. Kroc (the widow of McDonald’s restaurant founder Ray Kroc).

Personally I think McDonald’s sucks, but Mrs Kroc did a very cool thing with her money, so maybe I’ll actually go buy some McNuggets for lunch tomorrow.

Or maybe not. Their food still sucks.