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Does sugar kill/reduce/lower acidity?

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Howie Hart

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Re: Does sugar kill/reduce/lower acidity?

by Howie Hart » Sat Apr 29, 2006 11:05 pm

ChefCarey wrote:Yes, even paranoids have enemies.

We do? :?
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Re: Does sugar kill/reduce/lower acidity?

by ChefCarey » Sun Apr 30, 2006 8:58 am

ChefCarey wrote:I was not criticizing *you.* (Yes, even paranoids have enemies.) I have dwelled in many of those corridors myself. With a major in English literature and triple minors in history, comparative literature and philosophy, I had many undergraduate - and graduate - all-nighters. Socrates was always there, as were Buddha, Jesus Christ, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Hobbes, Locke, Kierkegaard, Joyce and Gerard Manley Hopkins. I cannot be bludgeoned by scholarship. :)


I forgot Foghorn Leghorn.
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Peter May

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Re: Does sugar kill/reduce/lower acidity?

by Peter May » Sun Apr 30, 2006 11:32 am

Jenise wrote:Patricia Wells says it does. She recommends a tablespoon of sugar to reduce the acidity in the tomatoes whose acidty will make it difficult for the potatoes to cook fully.


Forgetting the potatoes - how many recipes do you see involving tomatoes that do not add sugar?
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Re: Does sugar kill/reduce/lower acidity?

by ChefCarey » Sun Apr 30, 2006 2:44 pm

Peter May wrote:
Jenise wrote:Patricia Wells says it does. She recommends a tablespoon of sugar to reduce the acidity in the tomatoes whose acidty will make it difficult for the potatoes to cook fully.


Forgetting the potatoes - how many recipes do you see involving tomatoes that do not add sugar?


My recipes with tomatoes rarely contain sugar. I prefer using carrots to cut the acidity.
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Re: Does sugar kill/reduce/lower acidity?

by Peter May » Sun Apr 30, 2006 3:55 pm

ChefCarey wrote: My recipes with tomatoes rarely contain sugar. I prefer using carrots to cut the acidity.


Whats wrong with acidity; why shouldn't (for example) pasta tomato sauces have some acidity and bite?
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Re: Does sugar kill/reduce/lower acidity?

by ChefCarey » Sun Apr 30, 2006 7:16 pm

Peter May wrote:
ChefCarey wrote: My recipes with tomatoes rarely contain sugar. I prefer using carrots to cut the acidity.


Whats wrong with acidity; why shouldn't (for example) pasta tomato sauces have some acidity and bite?


cut v. tr. 14. To lessen the strength of; dilute: cut whiskey with distilled water.


The circles do not overlap. I said nothing about eliminating acidity, nor did I say anything was "wrong" with it. I said "cut" as in the sentence: "go in the back room and 'cut"'the cocaine; it's addling your brain at full strength."

Cut=reduce, modify, soften, dilute, if you will. And, if you won't, as well.

While I am not entirely opposed to declamatory confrontational statements, I do, however, think they should have some basis in logic and at least a tenuous relationship to the statement they are ostensibly confronting.

Ta.
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Re: Does sugar kill/reduce/lower acidity?

by Paul Winalski » Sun Apr 30, 2006 8:42 pm

Peter May wrote:Forgetting the potatoes - how many recipes do you see involving tomatoes that do not add sugar?


Apparently Patricia Wells is a tomato who adds sugar.

-Paul W. :)
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Re: Does sugar kill/reduce/lower acidity?

by Peter May » Mon May 01, 2006 11:34 am

ChefCarey wrote:
cut v. tr. 14. To lessen the strength of; dilute: cut whiskey with distilled water.


The circles do not overlap. I said nothing about eliminating acidity, nor did I say anything was "wrong" with it. I said "cut" as in the sentence: "go in the back room and 'cut"'the cocaine; it's addling your brain at full strength."



I know what 'cut' means but thanks for sharing your knowledge of cocaine and addled brains.
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Re: Does sugar kill/reduce/lower acidity?

by Jenise » Mon May 01, 2006 12:44 pm

ChefCarey wrote:Forgetting the potatoes - how many recipes do you see involving tomatoes that do not add sugar?


Peter, I would say most recipes I see involving tomatoes do not add sugar, and if they do it might be a pinch or two to brighten/deepen the tomato flavor. A quantity like the tablespoon suggested in this recipe is very out of the ordinary in my experience, and I distrusted it enough to plan to leave the sugar out from the getgo unless my sauce simply tasted too bland. But as it turned out, it was not, even using winter tomatoes. A tablespoon of sugar would have been most annoying.
My wine shopping and I have never had a problem. Just a perpetual race between the bankruptcy court and Hell.--Rogov
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Re: Does sugar kill/reduce/lower acidity?

by ChefCarey » Mon May 01, 2006 1:04 pm

Peter May wrote:
ChefCarey wrote:
cut v. tr. 14. To lessen the strength of; dilute: cut whiskey with distilled water.


The circles do not overlap. I said nothing about eliminating acidity, nor did I say anything was "wrong" with it. I said "cut" as in the sentence: "go in the back room and 'cut"'the cocaine; it's addling your brain at full strength."



I know what 'cut' means but thanks for sharing your knowledge of cocaine and addled brains.


You're quite welcome. Ask about anything, any time - there's a bunch of stuff going on outside Snorbens. You'd be amazed.
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Re: Does sugar kill/reduce/lower acidity?

by Hoke » Mon May 01, 2006 5:22 pm

So, Chef....with that background of pied beauty, when you're prepping your Truite Meuniere, do you count all the rose mole stipples? :)
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Re: Does sugar kill/reduce/lower acidity?

by ChefCarey » Mon May 01, 2006 6:07 pm

Hoke wrote:So, Chef....with that background of pied beauty, when you're prepping your Truite Meuniere, do you count all the rose mole stipples? :)


My trout - like myself (at least according to what Allen Ginbserg once said to me [We had been talking at a party. Wasn't getting what he wanted out of me. He stuck his head back in the door and spat at me "Goodnight inarticulate *prose* writer!" Think he was mad at me?) - tend not to be that articulate. :)
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Re: Does sugar kill/reduce/lower acidity?

by ChefCarey » Mon May 01, 2006 6:09 pm

Hoke wrote:So, Chef....with that background of pied beauty, when you're prepping your Truite Meuniere, do you count all the rose mole stipples? :)


I must say, though, I am impressed. Somebody *has* read Hopkins!
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Re: Does sugar kill/reduce/lower acidity?

by Hoke » Mon May 01, 2006 6:26 pm

Read him? Hell, I can recite him. :)

Of course the Education degree with a Broadfields English double major and several years teaching literature and directing drama might have warped me in some way. Or the serendipitous situation of having a stodgy old prof who was enraptured of both Romantic and Victorian poetry. So embedded in my brain and miraculously still in recall range after all these years are many poetic works, not least of them Gerard Manly and his sprung rhythm...all things counter, original, spare, strange indeed.

Heck, you might be the only guy I can think of that could engage in a drinking session over a good Creole dinner while vigorously debating the structure of Coleridge's systolic/diastolic poems. :D
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Re: Does sugar kill/reduce/lower acidity?

by ChefCarey » Mon May 01, 2006 7:31 pm

Hoke wrote:Read him? Hell, I can recite him. :)

Of course the Education degree with a Broadfields English double major and several years teaching literature and directing drama might have warped me in some way. Or the serendipitous situation of having a stodgy old prof who was enraptured of both Romantic and Victorian poetry. So embedded in my brain and miraculously still in recall range after all these years are many poetic works, not least of them Gerard Manly and his sprung rhythm...all things counter, original, spare, strange indeed.

Heck, you might be the only guy I can think of that could engage in a drinking session over a good Creole dinner while vigorously debating the structure of Coleridge's systolic/diastolic poems. :D


We'd probably just get interrupted by the person from Porlock. (12-year-old Dewar's, in case we ever get together. And any of a thousand red wines. :)
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Re: Does sugar kill/reduce/lower acidity?

by ChefCarey » Mon May 01, 2006 7:40 pm

>Read him? Hell, I can recite him.

My old college roommate, John Crowley (turned out to be a *very* good writer - check out some of his books) used to recite The Windhover endlessly - did I mention endlessly?
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Re: Does sugar kill/reduce/lower acidity?

by Hoke » Mon May 01, 2006 7:48 pm

Ayup, those buggers from Porlock do get around, don't they.

True story: I overheard a student of mine, who had experienced only the oral reading of Xanadu, explain it to a friend from another class. He thought the pleasure dome was a cool, and he liked the part about "where Ralph, the sacred river, ran".

(When the 12 year old runs out, we'd have to open the Redbreast. As a Celt of many colors, I'd need Scotch for argument and the Irish for loquacity. :wink: )
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Re: Does sugar kill/reduce/lower acidity?

by Hoke » Mon May 01, 2006 7:55 pm

ChefCarey wrote:>Read him? Hell, I can recite him.

My old college roommate, John Crowley (turned out to be a *very* good writer - check out some of his books) used to recite The Windhover endlessly - did I mention endlessly?


Crowley, huh? Awright!

As for the Windhover, it's a great poem, but my faves (to the point of disgusting all my friends) were Pied Beauty when I was manic, and poor Margaret at Goldengrove when I was at the other end of the pendular swing.
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Re: Does sugar kill/reduce/lower acidity?

by ChefCarey » Mon May 01, 2006 8:56 pm

Hoke wrote:Ayup, those buggers from Porlock do get around, don't they.

True story: I overheard a student of mine, who had experienced only the oral reading of Xanadu, explain it to a friend from another class. He thought the pleasure dome was a cool, and he liked the part about "where Ralph, the sacred river, ran".

(When the 12 year old runs out, we'd have to open the Redbreast. As a Celt of many colors, I'd need Scotch for argument and the Irish for loquacity. :wink: )


I have a Ralph story, too. Many, *many* years ago, an apprentice asked me the name of the mixture of paprika, black pepper and peanut oil with which I painted the steaks I cut for storage. Didn't miss a beat, I said, "Ralph." He passed it on and many years later in a galaxy far away somebody saw me making the mixture and said to me, "Oh, you're making Ralph." It's like that thing where you tell a joke in Hong Kong and it ends up in Tegeucigalpa.

You won't have to twist my Irish arm very hard for the Red Breast. Although, I've seldom found loquacity to be a problem - mine, that is. :)
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