Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

Verify the Veracity of Advice You Receive by Email — Even When It Comes from Trusted Sources

Bad infor­ma­tion flows around any­where, even within net­works of emer­gency man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­als. Just yes­ter­day, there was an arti­cle cred­ited to Doug Coup fly­ing around the email sys­tem. It came to me from an indi­vid­ual in my branch, who got it from some­one at another branch with a lot of emer­gency response expe­ri­ence, who got it from some­one at the fed­eral level and also has exten­sive emer­gency man­age­ment expe­ri­ence. The entire chain of peo­ple who had touched and for­warded the email was credible.

Unfor­tu­nately, nobody had both­ered to ver­ify the facts and advice espoused by the article.

In the for­warded arti­cle, Doug Copp talks about his expe­ri­ence with the Amer­i­can Res­cue Team Inter­na­tional but does not note that it is a pri­vate com­pany and that his expe­ri­ence is pri­mar­ily in coun­tries abroad, such as in Mex­ico and Turkey. He advo­cate the “Tri­an­gle of Life” rather than the “Duck & Cover” advice that the Amer­i­can Red Cross and FEMA pro­mote in the United States. His jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is that in his expe­ri­ence, build­ings col­lapse and “pan­cake” on the objects within them. There­fore, duck­ing under cover means get­ting crushed under the fur­ni­ture in ques­tion, while those who lie down next to the objects have a chance to sur­vive in the tri­an­gu­lar gap cre­ated by the floor above break­ing on the object and cre­at­ing a tri­an­gu­lar “lean-to” kind of space for survival.

How­ever, after only 15 min­utes of light research, I found a few cred­i­ble sources that refute the Tri­an­gle of Life advice.

Snopes.com is a good source for ver­i­fy­ing a lot of the stuff that goes around by email. Though it is not an aca­d­e­mic or author­i­ta­tive site, the Snopes folks typ­i­cally do a good job of inves­ti­gat­ing and assess­ing the valid­ity of com­mon chain emails or viral mes­sages going around social net­works. Their assess­ment is that the jury is still out on the Tri­an­gle of Life, but that it leans towards being crap advice.

Earth­quake Solu­tions is another pri­vate com­pany, in this case a con­sult­ing com­pany help­ing clients assess risks and develop mit­i­ga­tion and response plans. They cite that in their expe­ri­ence in the United States, Copp’s advice is wrong and down­right dangerous.

How­ever, the most author­i­ta­tive source is the Amer­i­can Red Cross itself. Cit­ing num­bers and spe­cific data from their expe­ri­ence with earth­quake response, the Red Cross pro­vides solid rea­sons why the “Drop, Cover, Hold On” is still the best course of action in an earth­quake sit­u­a­tion. The key points in their response are:

• “Drop, cover, and hold on!” is a U.S.-based rec­om­men­da­tion based on U.S. Build­ing Codes and con­struc­tion standards.
• Engi­neer­ing researchers have demon­strated that very few build­ings col­lapse or “pan­cake” in the U.S. as they might do in other countries.
• Most injuries hap­pened as a result of the col­lapse of [a street sec­tion, or] from falls caused by peo­ple try­ing to get out of their homes, or seri­ous cuts and bro­ken bones when peo­ple ran, bare­footed, over bro­ken glass.
• The Amer­i­can Red Cross has not rec­om­mended use of a door­way for earth­quake pro­tec­tion for more than a decade. The prob­lem is that many door­ways are not built into the struc­tural integrity of a build­ing, and may not offer protection.
• [Try not] to move (that is, escape) dur­ing the shak­ing of an earth­quake. The more and the longer dis­tance that some­one tries to move, the more likely they are to become injured by falling or fly­ing debris, or by trip­ping, falling, or get­ting cut by dam­aged floors, walls, and items in the path of escape.

The Red Cross is not say­ing that iden­ti­fy­ing poten­tial voids is wrong or inap­pro­pri­ate. What we are say­ing is that “Drop, Cover, and Hold On!” is NOT wrong — in the United States. The Amer­i­can Red Cross, being a U.S.-based orga­ni­za­tion, does not extend its rec­om­men­da­tions to apply in other coun­tries. What works here may not work else­where, so there is no dis­pute that the “void iden­ti­fi­ca­tion method” or the “Tri­an­gle of Life” may indeed be the best thing to teach in other coun­tries where the risk of build­ing col­lapse, even in mod­er­ate earth­quakes, is great.

I made the mis­take of for­ward­ing on the orig­i­nal Tri­an­gle of Life arti­cle to close friends because it seemed cred­i­ble and came from peo­ple whom I trust. I am glad that some­thing tick­led the back of my brain and prod­ded me to check up on the infor­ma­tion. After just a bit of cur­sory research, I found enough con­trary advice from other sources that I trust — most notably the Amer­i­can Red Cross response — that I had to quickly write back to my friends to tell them to dis­re­gard the prior infor­ma­tion I’d just sent to them. I was even care­ful to look for attempts to dis­credit Doug Copp’s the­ory by dis­cred­it­ing him alone, but this was not the case. His advice, at least in an Amer­i­can and Cana­dian con­text and based on prior expe­ri­ence and data from the field, is wrong and dangerous.

Even when infor­ma­tion comes from trusted sources, it is very much worth your while to do some per­sonal research to ver­ify it — par­tic­u­larly when it’s about sav­ing lives.

I Don’t Suffer From A Knife Addiction

I love good cook­ing knives. Some say I suf­fer from a knife addic­tion, but I’m not so sure about it. Yes, I have strong desires for more knives, dif­fer­ent knives, all in a quest to expe­ri­ence what else the arti­sans and crafts­men of steel have cre­ated to make cook­ing more enjoy­able, more ele­gant, and flat-out bet­ter. I don’t suf­fer from it, though. Not at all. I do, how­ever, suf­fer from my inabil­ity to share this pas­sion with those around me.

Yes, it hurts when those you care about think you’re stark rav­ing mad for think­ing about get­ting a $280 slicer (300mm suji­hiki, actu­ally) because it’s being dis­con­tin­ued and won’t be made any more. It is dis­con­cert­ing when I lose to an eBay sniper my $400 bid for a 40-year-old set of hand­made honyaki knives (a 300mm yanagi and 165mm deba made by Kei­jiri Doi) worth $1000. It stings even more when, out of a desire to share the joy of cut­ting and cook­ing, one ends up rebuked strongly for plan­ning to buy knives for the other person.

Few peo­ple would under­stand why an entire online com­mu­nity of knife knuts is excited about a $375 knife that is being her­alded as “the best sub-$1000 gyuto you can get”. Few peo­ple would under­stand why I have paid sev­eral hun­dred dol­lars for hand­made chi­nese cleavers (chuka bocho from Japan­ese knife maker Mr. Shosui Takeda actu­ally) when you can get Chi­na­town spe­cials for about $20 or less.

Yet, occa­sion­ally the main­stream world, such as the Globe & Mail news­pa­per, peers into this world of rav­ing fans enam­ored with high-performance steel.

“I draw the blade effort­lessly through a tomato, cre­at­ing a per­fect slice, then another. The knife is light, the stroke is smooth and silky — I’m hooked.”

“Knife enthu­si­asts are drawn to the pure pre­ci­sion that comes with sharper Japan­ese blades.”

“These knives are nice, but actu­ally learn­ing how they should be used, per­fect­ing the Japan­ese tech­nique and hand con­trol of these knives, is what’s amazing.”

I must admit that I con­tinue to strive to improve my knife skills. I con­tinue to strive to per­fect my tech­nique. I con­tinue to strive to live up to the level of artistry and per­for­mance that my knives embody.

There is an incred­i­ble thrill from using a knife that cuts effort­lessly as you dice an onion with­out your eyes tear­ing up. There is phys­i­cal joy from chop­ping a pile of veg­eta­bles quickly into a pile of perfectly-formed pieces ready for the heat of the stove or oven. There is sub­lime appre­ci­a­tion for visual and gus­ta­tory per­fec­tion when one slices fish into perfectly-textured sashimi, or a quickly-seared steak into paper-thin slices of beef sashimi.

I can’t share these joys or thrills with any­one I know in per­son. I do not suf­fer from a knife addic­tion. I suf­fer from being unable to share my joy and excitement.

I sup­pose that is sim­ply the way things are for knife knuts, knife knerds, and those hooked on any­thing not mainstream.

The Chinese Multi-Tool That Will Conquer the World!

Leave it to China to pro­duce a rous­ing video com­plete with patri­otic music to show you the multi-tool that will enable the People’s Lib­er­a­tion Army to “lib­er­ate” the rest of the world!

It slices, it dices, it chops, it filets, it juli­ennes, it peels, it swims, it flies, it bur­rows, it does any­thing and every­thing you can think of and put into words!

Yes, my friends, it is the invin­ci­ble Chi­nese mil­i­tary shovel!

If it wasn’t so damn cheesy and if I wasn’t so curi­ous to see just how many dif­fer­ent uses they could film, there’s no way I would have sat through 8 min­utes of footage about a shovel.

Chicken Should Taste Like Chicken

Enjoy­ing food is about fla­vor, tex­ture, aroma, and visual appeal. And yeah, okay, nutri­tional value too. If any of those ele­ments isn’t up to snuff, the food isn’t good. Unfor­tu­nately, the food indus­try today is about pro­duc­ing vol­ume, not about pro­duc­ing food that’s actu­ally good. It’s about quan­tity, not quality.

Feed­lot beef has no bee­fi­ness to it. Mass-produced pork has no taste. Chicken cranked out by ver­i­ta­ble fac­to­ries is bland — the per­fectly safe choice for peo­ple who have no idea what they like to eat.

I had the great plea­sure last night of cook­ing up two pasture-raised, organic chick­ens cour­tesy of Kawartha Eco­log­i­cal Grow­ers. These were young chick­ens, tech­ni­cally poussins. I have to tell you that these naturally-raised chick­ens were real chick­ens, through and through, putting the super­mar­ket fare — yes, even the pricey Maple Leaf Prime chick­ens — to shame.

These were about 2.5lb birds, and I had in mind a dish for them that would be sim­ple and clean to let the actual chicken fla­vor come out. I didn’t want to mask the innate qual­i­ties of the chicken with strong spices. I elected to make a sim­ple chicken toscana with pep­pers. I would por­tion each chicken into 8 pieces, on the bone, brown the pieces, add some gar­lic and diced proscuitto, deglaze with white wine, then sim­mer and braise for 20 min­utes with chopped toma­toes. Sautee some sweet pep­pers to the point of brown­ing them, deglaze with a bit of water, and add the whole she­bang to the sim­mer­ing chicken & toma­toes. Add a bit of salt and pep­per, serve with a side of rice, and that’s it.

Right off the bat, I knew some­thing good was going on. These lit­tle chick­ens had no fat. Super­mar­ket chick­ens usu­ally have a fair bit of fat under the skin, and even the so-called nicer stuff like Prime chicken has a fair bit of fat within the mus­cle which is par­tic­u­larly easy to see in the thighs. Not these pasture-raised chick­ens, though. Hav­ing fed nat­u­rally on what chick­ens are sup­posed to eat, and hav­ing had to walk around and hunt for it all day long meant these chick­ens were incred­i­bly lean. That’s a good thing already.

The real test was, of course, in the eat­ing. I have to admit that my great­est fear dur­ing the entire process was that I might, in some way, ruin the chicken. I haven’t browned meats in my pans for quite some time, and I didn’t want to over­cook the chicken or worse, burn it. I wasn’t sure if the recipe, as sim­ple as it is, would over­power the chicken or just not have enough fla­vor to be enjoy­able. Thank­fully, the end result was one of the most enjoy­able chicken dishes I’ve had in a long time.

The chicken tasted of chicken! It was moist, smooth, and had an intrin­sic chicken fla­vor to it. I don’t know how to stress that enough. Run-of-the-mill mass-produced chicken is bland. It has lit­tle or no fla­vor to it. These naturally-raised chick­ens, how­ever, had a light yet sus­tained meat taste to them. The sauce was equally tasty, hav­ing picked up fla­vor­ful good­ness from the chicken, from the pan, and from the fresh, local toma­toes and gen­uine proscuitto di Parma.

Sim­ple dishes rely entirely on the fresh­ness and the qual­ity of the ingre­di­ents used to make them. The flip side, how­ever, is that they also enable qual­ity ingre­di­ents to really show them­selves and shine.

Chicken should taste like chicken. Reg­u­lar super­mar­ket chicken does not taste like chicken. For chicken that tastes the way it’s sup­posed to taste, you’ll need to spend a lit­tle more and buy free-range, naturally-raised chick­ens. Maybe you can’t do that every time, and maybe not every dish needs that — if you’re going to mask the intrin­sic taste of the meat with lots of herbs and spices any­ways, it won’t mat­ter what qual­ity chicken you use. If you enjoy good food, if you truly enjoy what meat of each kind is sup­posed to taste like, please treat your­self at least once in a while to good, qual­ity chicken raised the way chick­ens are sup­posed to be raised. Get your hands on some qual­ity free-range, pasture-raised chick­ens that ran around, pecked every­where, scratched the earth, breathed fresh air and freely flapped their wings around.

You will taste the difference!

Why So Many Knives?

I am often asked by friends and fam­ily why I have so many knives. The belief is that all knives are the same — they are sharp­ened slabs of metal with a sharp edge to cut your food. Many good homes make do with 1 or 2 knives. Really, even I would sug­gest to most friends to avoid buy­ing knife sets and sim­ply buy a good chef’s knife and a good par­ing knife. That’s all you really need.

So really, the answer about why so many knives in my kitchen really isn’t about neces­sity. It’s about per­fec­tion and enjoy­ment. Per­fec­tion is never a neces­sity, espe­cially when it comes to food. Enjoy­ment isn’t a neces­sity either when it comes to cook­ing… for most peo­ple, anyway.

I came upon an inter­est­ing quote today that I think sheds light on this issue:

“The Japan­ese are famous for their acutely overde­vel­oped sense of spe­cial­iza­tion. They are the world’s fore­most per­fec­tion­ists, even more so than Germans.”

Knives are tools used to pre­pare food. They are the same as saws to a car­pen­ter, dance shoes to a dancer, and brushes to a painter. Why does a car­pen­ter need dif­fer­ent kinds of saws? Because each is made to cut wood dif­fer­ently to suit the pur­pose of the cut. Why does a dancer need dif­fer­ent pairs of dance shoes? Because, other than visu­ally match­ing what­ever out­fits the dancer may be wear­ing, a lower and higher heel height actu­ally suits dif­fer­ent dance styles bet­ter. Why does a painter need dif­fer­ent brushes? Because to cre­ate dif­fer­ent effects, the painter needs dif­fer­ent brush sizes and textures.

Does the car­pen­ter need many dif­fer­ent kinds of saws? No, unless he wants to do the job per­fectly. Does a dancer need dif­fer­ent kinds of shoes? No, unless he or she wants to look and move per­fectly. Does an artist need dif­fer­ent kinds of brushes? No, unless the artist wants to trans­fer what he or she sees in the mind’s eye to the paper or can­vas perfectly.

Does a home chef need mul­ti­ple knives? Do I need 5 chef knives & gyu­tos of dif­fer­ent sizes & geome­tries, a deba (fish butcher­ing & fil­let­ing knife), 2 yanag­iba (fish slicers) of dif­fer­ent lengths, a gara­suki (chicken bon­ing knife), 3 Chi­nese cleavers (all slicers) of dif­fer­ent sizes, 2 nakiri (double-edged veg­etable knives), a usuba (single-edged veg­etable knife), 3 petty knives (large par­ing knives, essen­tially), 2 san­toku, a par­ing knife, and a bread knife? No, but I want to cre­ate not just good food, but per­fect food, and I want to enjoy the entire process for a per­fect experience.

Knives are spe­cial­ized tools. Each knife is designed with a par­tic­u­lar pro­file (what you see from the side) and geom­e­try (what you’d see if you cut it and looked at its cross-section) to suit a par­tic­u­lar task. Yes, some knives are pretty much gen­er­al­ists, and other knives are def­i­nitely spe­cial­ists. The gen­er­al­ists like the gyu­tos and Chi­nese cleavers can be pressed into ser­vice for almost any­thing you want. The ques­tion is, though, will they be the best tool for the job? If you want the clean­est tex­ture to your food, or the fastest, most enjoy­able prep ses­sion, then maybe not.

“Good enough is good enough” is, I imag­ine, how most of us approach most of what we do.

“Only per­fec­tion is good enough” is how those who take real pride approach what they do.

My friend’s fam­ily base­ment was fin­ished roughly by an eco­nom­i­cal con­trac­tor and car­pen­ter. It’s good enough for fam­ily use, but very evi­dently not a mas­ter­ful job even to their own layper­sons’ eyes. Good enough is good enough.

My danc­ing friend who is also an instruc­tor wears soft street shoes when teach­ing casu­ally, but he would never wear them to a com­pe­ti­tion. He would wear only the shoes that allow him to per­form his best. Only per­fec­tion is good enough.

If I wanted to cre­ate food that’s just pass­able, I could make do with just 2 knives. But if I want to cre­ate food that’s absolutely fan­tas­tic, and remain happy while doing so, I need spe­cial­ized tools. I need far more than just 2 knives.

Many of my knives are Japan­ese. They are spe­cial­ized knives, and they were cre­ated to an exact­ing stan­dard. The Japan­ese cul­tural obses­sion with per­fec­tion is a com­mend­able thing and one that ought to be adopted in many fields of prac­tice. Cook­ing, I believe, should be one of those fields.

Food is not just fuel. Food is adven­ture, food is plea­sure, food is fam­ily, food is friend­ship, food is love, food is fun.

Food is a reflec­tion of how one lives life. It begins not with the first bite, but from the very selec­tion of ingre­di­ents and con­tin­ues through the prepa­ra­tion of the food and through the enjoy­ment of the food. Per­fec­tion may never be achieved, but surely it is worth­while to strive for it at every step along the way.