Here is an interesting Chinese vegetarian dish made of bamboo shoots. Unlike the typical non-vegetarian items usually found in Chinese restaurants, this is a nice variety.

Ingredients are:

3/4 pounds or 350 grams of good quality winter bamboo shoots
2 1/2 ounces or 75 grams of preserved mustard green
1 1/2 cups or 350 milliliter of vegetable oil for deep-frying
1/2 teaspoon MSG, only if you like the taste

Directions to cook:

Remove the husks from the bamboo shoots. Then, roll-cut them into diamond-shaped pieces. Dip the preserved mustard in water for approximately 5 minutes time so as to decrease its saltiness. Squeeze away the surplus water and cut it in to 1 1/2 inch or 3 1/2 centimeter pieces.

Heat the oil in a wok to about 400 degree Fahrenheit or 205 degree Celsius, or until a piece of scallion green or ginger browns pretty fast when tossed into the oil and a haze rises above the oil surface. Add the preserved mustard and deep-fry it for another 30 seconds. Remove from oil and drain it. Now, add the bamboo shoots and reduce the heat to low. Deep-fry the bamboo shoots for another 30 seconds more, then increase the heat to high level and deep-fry for another 3 minutes more, or until the shoots become brown outside and tender inside. Remove from oil and drain them. Add the preserved mustard in to the oil and deep-fry for another 5 minutes more. Remove from oil and drain it.

Pour all of the oil out of the wok. Add the preserved mustard and bamboo shoots in to the wok. Stir-fry so as to blend every thing well, then sprinkle some of the MSG. Remove in to a serving dish and serve.

The original slogan for crock pots at its inception, way back in the sixties, was “It cooks all day while the cook is away”. Those words were potent enough to get a few million people to start using them in the seventies. Later the popularity of crock pots started to diminish in the early eighties. Right now, it is resurgence time for these utensils. If you join the enthusiastic bunch of crock potters, you can also be cooking your dinner while working at your office, during your kids soccer practice, during a thorough yard cleaning etc. As you have the option to throw most of stuff in to the pot and do not have to worry about every step of cooking, crock pot cooking can reduce the stress associated with routine cooking. Young adults who are starting to live and cook on their own love this a lot.

If you use crock pot, even less expensive cuts of meat also will become really tender and tasty. Thus crock potting is especially good for this recession time as it saves you money. Many a times, there will be a lot of leftovers from this type of cooking and those can be used in the next few days. As cooking many meals at a single time is economical in time spent and monetary terms, this is an appropriate cooking method for the current times. Retired people struggling to make a living on their meager income are also going back to this electric gadget they are familiar from their past use during younger days.

Many families are enjoying the aroma of dinner in all areas of their home when they arrive in the evening! And this rejuvenating smell is going to linger in your home all through the afternoon. These and other factors have added to the increase in the sales of crock pots to an amazing number at 8.9 million in 2008.

The current bunch of crock pots are much more attractive than their older counterparts. Some of them look pretty much like some of your cool gadgets with their stainless steel bodies. They have multiple heat settings and cooking time settings, making it much more easier for ladies to manipulate the appliance better.

In the seventies, there were a lot of complaints about the quality of the food cooked in crock pots. This was to be understood as it was a new invention and there were no recipes prepared exclusively with crock pot in mind. There were people who complained about the same taste found for any thing and every thing cooked in crock pots. There were complaints about the food being too dry even I the closed cooking environment. Even some others felt that the food created looked ugly.

But in the recent years, recipes created solely with crock pots in mind are coming in to the public domain. Endorsements from TV chefs, celebrity chefs etc have added flavor to new crock pot cooked food items.

Every person on earth relies on some other people for some portion of the food they consume. This is true for at least one item like salt used by every one. How safe are the food we eat or How good is the food supplied to you? The food grains are manufactured in some distant farms, processed in plants some where else, transported by some others, sold to you by a wholesaler like Sams club or retailer like WalMart or your corner store. Is your food cultivated, processed, transported, stored and sold to you in a healthy way so as to protect your interests? Can you rely on all these players to follow high ethical standards in each step of this process until you get to eat finally? All these years, we were hoping that they all are following these. If not, we assumed the FDA or Department of Agriculture would make sure that the culprits would be held responsible for this and keep us thinking as to how safe are the food we eat.

Recent developments in cases like those involved Peanut Corp of America and Chinese pet food items have highlighted the problems arising when even a single player in these long chain of events do not stick to food safety standards. And there are questions about the quality of poultry products exported from China. China has recently approached the World Trade Organization about this US attempts to ban Chinese poultry products. Even when Americans are trying to block the Chinese food items for lack of safety standards, there are no clear guidelines on American food standards. Food products manufactured in US are not totally clear of adulteration and similar problems. Nicholas D Kristof of New York Times has recently brought to light some of the problems associated with American Hog industry.

The recent investigations in to the cause of problems related to tainted peanuts which was the reason for the recall of a vast number of salmonella tainted products manufactured by Kellogg Co, King Nut Corp and Vitamin Cottage Natural Food Markets Inc have brought light to some astounding facts. Peanut Corp of America and AIB, the third party auditors who were in charge of auditing them, were conspiring together to gain perfect scores. Unlike these companies, Nestle conducted an auditing on its own and found out that the premises of Peanut Corp of America were not sanitary enough and hence refused to use their products.

Thus, we can see instances where the industry safeguards are working perfectly for the general public’s health and then there are instances where the companies and auditors are acting in tandem to circumvent the auditing process. Now we can ask for the formation of a governmental agency to do the auditing. But how can we be sure that they won’t act like the auditors and help the companies out? There are no easy solutions for this problem. Honesty of people who are in charge of the companies, auditors, government agencies etc only can prevent the risk of food born problems to our health.