Batch of links

I took a little time off for the holidays, but I’m back with the batch of links this week! The first entry is comprised of the items we ate at Christmas, since I’ve decided not to do a whole post about them.

- Christmas dinner (which we had on Christmas Eve): Bon Appétit’s Simple Roast Turkey with soy and mirin glaze (adapted for a turkey breast, since there were only four of us), my go-to cranberry sauce, saffron mashed potatoes, and broccoli slaw. For Christmas brunch, I tried Bon Appétit’s Pigs in Sleeping Bags (with the recommended Dufour puff pastry too, and they were great; if anyone knows what to do with a bunch of sauerkraut, let me know), along with apple, bacon and caramelized onion turnovers and crustless zucchini and basil mini-quiches, plus leftovers from the previous night.

- A great post using Harold and his purple crayon as a metaphor to take control of your life this year.

- Should I tell my host she’s making a cooking mistake? The general consensus seems to be no, unless food safety is involved or the host is immediate family.

- Will Travel For Food’s roundup of the best Montreal restaurants of 2012, which made me a little homesick. And also made me want steamed pork buns.

- The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has proposed two new rules aimed at reducing contamination of produce and processed foods. These would include simple, but necessary changes such as roasting peanuts at a temperature high enough to kill salmonella bacteria sometimes found in peanut butter, and providing portable toilets to workers in fields, thereby reducing the risk of E. coli contamination of produce. Let’s hope the FDA gets funding for these long overdue rules!

- A quick note about Instagram: everyone was outraged when they rephrased their terms of use in a way that made it sound like they would sell your pictures and keep the money, prompting posts about how to download your Instagram photos and kill your account, but now they’ve backpedaled and said it was a misunderstanding due to poor phrasing, so the backlash has died down.

- Looking for new books to read? This site will give you suggestions based on what you’ve enjoyed previously.

- A great article titled Snowfall – The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek, which I’m sharing for two reasons. One, it’s a good example of how a large group of experts can disregard safety rules as well as their gut feelings, just because no one wants to be a party pooper. And two, the article itself is a wonderful example of what you can achieve with a multimedia platform like the web!

- A series titled My Better Half, which presents couples, what they like and how they met. Cute!

- A California man is arguing that he can drive in the carpool lane with his corporation papers. For the record, he is actually trying to point out that California law is flawed in that it considers corporations to be people, even in the Vehicle Code. Another stupid California law I found out about is that rapists who attack unmarried men or women by impersonating their significant other are protected under state law (if the victim is married, then the rapist is not protected).

- Americans are far more likely to suffer a violent death that any of their peers from wealthy countries, in part because of gun ownership. Did you know that the second most likely cause of death for people 15 to 24 years old is homicide? On a related note, here’s a great CNN article detailing how guns could be made “smart” thanks to technological advances. I really do hope these ideas are implemented!

- And to end on a funny note: Batman running away from sh*t.