Today, the E. coli outbreak in Germany is dominating headlines: thousands of Europeans taken ill, hundreds in intensive care units and worse, 35 dead as of this writing—from eating raw bean sprouts.

Most strains of E. coli are benign. According to an article in The New York Times, our produce supply is very safe. Professor Gad Frankel, of Imperial College London, notes that the chance of getting E. coli poisoning from raw vegetables is about the same as winning the lottery. Yet, says Dr. Frankel, some people do win the lottery and some people do get sick from E. coli.

If you cook your food, E. coli isn’t a problem: Heating kills the bacteria, which sit on the surface of the food. That’s why the USDA recommends that hamburgers be cooked to medium. Hamburger and other ground meats are more susceptible to contamination since there are so many internal surfaces that aren’t directly exposed to the heat.

Similarly, cooking vegetables also kills the bacteria. But rinsing them prior to eating them raw does not. Salads, for example, can potentially harbor E. coli.

Don’t use this as an excuse to avoid eating salad. If you are concerned and still want to eat raw vegetables, here’s a tip:

 
There are expensive industrial testing kits, but even for the wealthy, the soap solution is faster.

Yellow and blue corn tortillas, handmade
from hand-ground corn by
HotBreadKitchen.org.

We whipped up homemade tortillas yesterday, inspired by this recipe from Hot Bread Kitchen.

Tortillas, a flatbread, are a staple in Mexico. As Mexican food continues to increase in popularity, more of us are buying them to make burritos, enchiladas and tacos at home.

The oldest-known tortillas date back to approximately 10,000 B.C.E., made of the local staple food, corn.*

Many thousands of years later, in 1519, Hernán Cortés and his Spanish troops arrived in the Aztec empire (modern-day Mexico) and noted that the locals ate “flat corn bread.” The Aztec name for the flatbread is tlaxcalli; the Mexicans used the name tortilla, “little cake.”

*The original varieties of corn, hybridized by the Aztecs, were far more nutritious than today’s corn, which has been bred over the years for yield rather than nutrition.

The original tortilla was made from nixtamalized† maize/corn flour. However, today’s tortillas are commonly made from less nutritious, less flavorful wheat flour. Wheat is easier to work with. While maize/corn tortillas have a heartier texture and flavor, the gluten in wheat flour tortillas enables them to be made larger and thinner without breaking.

†Nixtamalization is a process that prepares the maize/corn, in which the grain is soaked and cooked in an alkaline solution, usually limewater, and hulled.

For better flavor and nutrition, go for the corn tortillas (wheat tortillas also provide more flavor and nutrition). Another benefit of corn tortillas: they can be gluten free, depending on the manufacturer (Mission tortillas are gluten free). Check the package. Some brands add wheat gluten to corn tortillas to tackle the breaking problem.

Yet, nothing beats the flavor from homemade corn tortillas. Today’s commercial soft corn tortillas are made by stirring hot water into instant masa/corn flour, which is to regular masa what instant mashed potatoes are to the real thing, or what bouillon cubes are to homemade chicken stock.

If you want to make the best corn tortillas ever, buy artisan hominy from Anson Mills and make their tortilla recipe. Their hominy is to supermarket hominy as…well, you get the picture.

You won’t believe how good a tortilla can be until you make these. We like to make them on Saturday morning and enjoy them all weekend.

German Chocolate Cake has a coconut-pecan
filling and frosting. Photo © H.D. Connelly |
Fotolia.

German Chocolate Cake is a chocolate layer cake filled and topped with a coconut pecan frosting.

The cake has nothing to do with Germany. It is so named because it was originally made with German’s Chocolate, a semisweet-type chocolate created by a Brit, Sam German, who was working in the U.S. for Walter Baker & Co., manufacturer of Baker’s Chocolate.

See more of the history and a delicious three-layer German Chocolate Cake recipe.

We love the description of the honeybees on the farm and would like to share it with all honey lovers:

Well, we’re wrapping up spring in good stead here on the farm. I captured and hived a swarm of honey bees last week and this hive will be the start of a new bee yard over by the currant fields.

It was a robust swarm of about 8,000 bees (3,500 bees weigh 22 lbs) and they’re doing great in their new home. Within 2 days they had made propolis* from the resin of tree sap and sealed up any small cracks and covered over all the knots in the new hive body. They are making honey and storing pollen and her majesty is laying about 500 eggs a day. In about a month, she’ll be up to 2,000 eggs each day!!!

If all goes well, the population of the hive should be in excess of 30,000 bees going into the winter. Worker bees, all females, live for 4-6 weeks during the working season; but the queen can live up to 6 years. The males, called drones, serve only one function [to breed new bees] and pretty much hang around most of the time eating the honey the females make, so they’re pretty expendable. Often they’ll be kicked out of the hive in the fall, to save the honey for the working members of the community.

*BEEHIVE TRIVIA: Propolis is a resinous mixture that honey bees collect from tree buds, sap flows or other botanical sources. They use it as a sealant for unwanted open spaces in the hive—small gaps of a quarter-inch or smaller. Larger spaces are usually filled with beeswax.
 
Thanks, Greg!

But you do have time to read these 10 quick grilling tips from Smoke In Da Eye, an award-winning competitive grilling and barbecue team.

Take a look: Your fire will start faster and your grilled meats will be juicier, more tender and flavorful—and not overcooked.

Also check out Bobby Flay’s Grilling Tips.

What should you grill? Learn the different cuts of meat: