Does chocolate improve work performance?

For some time now, I’ve had a fascination with chocolate. It all started six years ago when I first spotted a 10-pound bar of semi-sweet Ghirardelli chocolate on sale at Trader Joe’s in South Pasadena, California. As soon as I laid eyes on it, I knew I had to buy it. But how does one go about consuming such a large quantity of chocolate? I started off making chocolate truffles, learning the ins and outs of tempering, and discovering that basically any dessert can be coated with chocolate and turned into tasty bite-sized candies which I foisted upon friends and co-workers. I went through about three 10-lb bars in this fashion.

The next step came when I organized a chocolate tasting for MIT graduate students and postdocs in 2007. As with many of my endeavors, I went a little overboard with the concept. In my quest to find all of the best chocolates to offer tasters, I read several books on chocolate, visited every shop that sold chocolate in the Boston area as well as the major online retailers, and created a 40-page guidebook detailing the chocolates for the event.

In the ensuing period since that first fateful 10-pound bar, I’ve gained a serious chocolate habit. Although I’m not someone who takes a daily coffee or tea, I started eating dark chocolate on a semi-regular basis on presumptions of “researching” new varieties. I started noticing that I felt more focused and more productive on days when I ate chocolate, and at times turned to chocolate as a mental aid when I needed to pound out some thesis work.

According to recent reports from Slate and Nature (here and here), I’m not alone in using drugs to increase my mental capacity. According to an informal poll by Nature, one in five respondents admitted to using prescription drugs such as Ritalin for mental enhancement purposes, signs of a growing trend toward “brain doping” by students, academics, and other nerds.

At present, chocolate is about as far as I’ll go to increase my research productivity, and although its effects are mild, chocolate does contain a variety of pharmacologically active substances. But was the boost in mental ability real, or was I just imagining the effect to justify my growing chocoholism? In order to find out, I conducted a semi-scientific trial last winter. It wasn’t hard to recruit volunteers (two words: free chocolate), and I ended up finding 12 people who participated in the two-week experiment. I monitored their work habits and randomly assigned them to either eat or not eat chocolate on a daily basis for a two-week period.

Unfortunately, the results show that if anything, chocolate has a negative effect on productivity! Here are the full details.

Methods

In November of 2008, I recruited 12 volunteers, mostly among MIT students and staff. The sample was composed of six women and six men, ages 21-29. I conducted a pre-experiment survey to gauge their pre-existing habits and attitudes toward chocolate and caffeine. In the survey, 2 subjects reported eating chocolate on a daily basis, 9 reported eating it at least once per week, while one reported eating it only rarely (see figure). On a scale from 1 to 5, all participants rated their enjoyment of chocolate consumption at either 4 or 5.

Each subject was assigned one of three types of chocolate: dark, bittersweet, and peanut butter cups (all purchased at Trader Joe’s). Five people were assigned to bittersweet, five to dark, and five to peanut butter cups. The different types of chocolate were meant to both validate that the observed effects were due to chocolate and to differentiate the effect of simply eating a sweet candy from the ingredients particular to cocoa. As previous studies have shown, chocolate contains many active ingredients such as caffeine and theobromine which can actively affect mood and mental concentration, and these compounds are present in higher concentrations in darker, higher-cacao-content chocolate. While the peanut butter cups contain some milk chocolate, the quantity of cocoa is much lower than that of the dark chocolates while mimicking their sugar and fat contents, so the peanut butter cup subjects essentially acted as controls.

Before the experiment began, I gave each subject a zipper bag with 5-7 servings of their assigned chocolate. Each serving contained three squares / cups, equal to approximately 1.4 ounces, the recommended serving size. In addition, they installed the software program RescueTime, which monitors the amount of time they spend working on the computer and the applications they were using. On each day they were assigned to eat chocolate, they received an email around 10am informing them to consume a serving of chocolate between 10am and 2pm. Another email was sent at the end of the day to verify that they ate the chocolate.

The subjects complied during 6% of the trial days, and I drop the days in which total computer use was less than 2 hours. I use two measures of productivity: the total number of hours worked at the computer during the day, and the percentage of each day spent on work-related applications (i.e. not counting email, news sites, etc.).

Results

In nearly all of the comparisons, the days which were treated had lower productivity than the days that weren’t, although there were not enough observations for statistical significance.

Despite this initial null / negative result, I’m still convinced there’s something to the idea that chocolate can enhance mental performance. Maybe with a more clever setup, next time I’ll come up with some the evidence. But in the meantime, I’m still conducting unscientific research on myself.

Previous research

Chocolate contains several hundred active chemicals including caffeine, theobromine, anandamide, phenylethylamine, and others. Here is the previous work I have found looking into its effects

• Chocolate Consumption in Pregnancy and Reduced Likelihood of Preeclampsia
  Triche, Elizabeth W.; Grosso, Laura M.; Belanger, Kathleen; Darefsky, Amy S.; Benowitz, Neal L.; Bracken, Michael B.
  Epidemiology:
  May 2008 - Volume 19 - Issue 3 - pp 459-464
  
• Intake of Flavonoid-Rich Wine, Tea, and Chocolate by Elderly Men and Women Is Associated with Better Cognitive Test Performance
  Eha Nurk, Helga Refsum, Christian A. Drevon, Grethe S. Tell, Harald A. Nygaard, Knut Engedal and A. David Smith,
  Journal of Nutrition, Vol. 139, No. 1, 120-127, January 2009
• Brain cannabinoids in chocolate
  E. di Tomaso, M. Beltramo, D. Piomelli, Nature, 382, 677-8 (1996).
  
  
  

Boston Markets Update: Bazaar Russian Market and Watertown Armenian Bakeries

Patrick and I must be getting in good shape, because in the past few weeks we've walked all the way from our home in Cambridge to Allston and Watertown in search of grocery adventure. Having lived in Boston for five years, I thought I've become pretty familiar with the ethnic food landscape, so I was eager to try out some new places.

On our way to Bazaar Russian market, I was astounded at the number and variety of shops and restaurants around Brighton Ave. in the Allston Village area. On the Saturday evening we went, the streets were buzzing with cheery crowds. We passed by a few intriguing places on our way including a couple of generic-looking Korean bakeries. On our way through Allston we also passed the Super 88 that used to be the flagship store for the local Chinese grocery chain. The food court was full, but as typical in the past year or so, the store was sadly empty with widely-spaced aisles lined by empty shelves. I couldn't even find canned coconut cream and water chestnuts. It looks like Super 88 is on its way out - perhaps through overexpansion or competition from C Mart?

In any case, our real destination was Bazaar, a Russian / Eastern European market inside what looks to be an old car repair shop - if you're not looking for it, it's easy to miss from the outside. Inside however, is a clean and spacious shop filled with exotic goodies. The shop is stocked with what I imagine to be the stables of the eastern bloc, cheeses from Ukraine, Bulgaria, and beyond, a huge selection of pickles and smoked fish products, grains, spices, honey, syrups, and jams. It also features fresh-looking produce, and bakery, deli, and prepared foods counter.

I agonized over getting some Ukrainian Linden honey which looked delicious, but balked since I already have about five different honeys going. We did purchase some Russian-style pickles, which turned out to be crisp, flavorful, and spicy. But what I really swooned over were the bulk candy bins. At the far corner of the store, there are a couple of displays with brimming bins of sweets emblazoned with images of birds, babies, and squirrels. You just have to love a store that sells candy by the pound, and I didn't hesitate to grab a few handfuls despite having no idea what lay within those gleaming wrappers. They turned out to be Ruzanna "soufflé" bars, dark chocolate wrapped around delicate marshmallow fillings with fruit, cream, and jelly flavors. The fillings are only lightly sweet with a wonderful pillowly texture and unique flavors - absolutely delicious and more than enough reason to visit Bazaar again in the near future.

I also purchased three Russian dark chocolate bars, which from some Internet research came from Babaev and Red October, two of the small handful of Moscow confectionary concerns. Although Russia isn't known to be a chocolatemaking capital, there's something about Russian chocolate I enjoy, a particular bitter kick, and I liked the 80% bar from Red October the best for having a distinct peanut butter note. Flavorwise, the bars were just ok, but fun to try.

Bazaar on Cambridge
Neighborhood: Allston/Brighton
424 Cambridge St
(between Denby Rd & Rugg Rd)
Allston, MA 02134
(617) 787-1511

The quandary of ethical and sustainable seafood

I've been reconnecting with my longtime love of all things ocean lately, which I detailed recently in an extensive post on my other blog. But I wanted to reprint some of the material here because even for a self-purported ocean-lover like me, most of the time I have thought about the sea, it's been followed by the word food. I'm sure this is true for many of us. But my biggest revelation from reading a series of books and articles about the sea lately is how ignorant most of us are about the oceans from a scientific perspective and as consumers. It amazes me that when it comes to mapping the ocean depths, the age of exploration is far from over - only a tiny percentage of the ocean floor has been surveyed in detail by geographers or sampled by biologists.

Another shocker was how weakly regulated the seafood industry is. While there have been a number of exposes about the evils of factory farming, seafood typically comes off with a healthy patina. But because fishing occurs even further from our daily consciousness (as well as the prying eyes of regulators) than farming, and even more because the most waters fall under international juristiction, creating incentives for every fisherman to maximize his haul at the expense of the long-term sustainability of fisheries. Thus, the continuing abundance of inexpensive fish at our local supermarkets belies the imminent collapse of many important populations as well as the greed and wastefulness of an industry at sea.

With all the reading I’ve been doing, perhaps the biggest thing that has changed is my view of seafood. Although I’ve been quasi-vegetarian for nearly fifteen years now, a big fraction of that time I’ve felt fine about indulging in the occasional seafood meal. One thing that has always struck me as funny about the vegetarian movement is the inconsistency of the distinction between animal flesh and foods derived from animals, namely milk and eggs. Although most vegetarians consider seafood verboten, eggs and dairy are staples of the standard (ovo-lacto-)vegetarian diet as most people understand it. But does the distinction make sense on a moral or ecological level? It doesn’t seem obvious that chickens and dairy cows suffer any less than fish or shellfish. Furthermore, the negative impact of large-scale farming on the environment has been well-documented. In fact, many farm animals living in industrial farms seem to suffer more cruelty and contribute even more to environmental degradation than wild seafood. I don't know the answer to the question of whether seafood or dairy exacts a hire price on animals or the environment, but I do think that consciencious omnivores should push for greater understanding of the true impacts of our food instead of sticking with traditional categories.

In any case, although I have largely avoided milk and egg products, until recently I’ve been more accepting of eating seafood because of my perception that that fish suffer less pain than livestock and that livestock practices were particularly cruel and polluting. But that view has gradually changed over the years. First of all, the characterization of sea life as cold and unfeeling is clearly incorrect, especially for two particular species I used to enjoy: squid and octopus. Although much is still unknown about the intellectual capacities of these mollusks, what is clear is that they are far from the mindless blobs that we typically think of invertebrates as. Scientists estimate that octopuses might be more intelligent than dogs, and recent reports of octopuses who escape from their cages and taunt their caretakers hint at a mischievous intellect beneath those alien-looking eyes. When I think about a dish of squid or octopus, I no longer imagine the briny sweetness and delicate texture of their flesh, but picture sensitive, intelligent creatures jetting about in the twilight depths, whose mysteries we have barely begun to fathom.

The second reason I’m much more hesitant about purchasing seafood is that fishing is vastly under-regulated, with destructive and inhumane practices still rampant (see this damning report by the Economist). The seas still represent the most devastating tragedy of the commons on the planet, and it breaks my heart to learn of how little respect for life is reflected in our fishing practices. Trawlers bulldoze whole ecosystems before they are even described by science. Many common food fishes can live for decades – orange roughy up to a century or more, and as this Nature paper documents, stocks of large predatory fish have already declined 90% relative to pre-industrial levels. We have but the faintest idea of what kind of awareness and memories that these fish have, yet we thoughtlessly plunder them – along with thousands of tons of “bycatch”, which are dumped back dead into the ocean or used for low-grade fish meal or fertilizer. In general, I try not to be a bleeding heart when it comes to animal rights, but something about our callousness toward sea creatures truly stokes my ire. Perhaps humans, after all, are the most cold-blooded creatures to roam the sea.

Ranting aside, sustainable fishing does exist, but it’s incredibly hard to find trustworthy indicators of such practices when making purchases. The Monterey Bay Aquarium produces an excellent guide to sustainable seafood, but even as a knowledgeable consumer who has spent quite a bit of time doing research and examining labels, I find it nearly impossible to find seafood I can feel good about purchasing. Although I’ve been encouraged by the trend toward consumer awareness of food systems and practices, it seems that labeling and regulation of seafood has fallen far behind that of landfood, and the clean image of seafood among conscientious consumers seems to make it a particularly worrisome blind spot.

Adventures in whole grain baking: taro coffee bread

I've never been much of a bread baker. Largely, it's because I don't eat a lot of bread. But there's something I love about scooping up the remnants of a bowl of soup or plate of sauce with a good piece of bread, so I usually keep some on hand.

When I do eat bread, I love to go for whole grains. Not only are they healthier, but I just love the rich flavor, toothsome texture, and touch of bitterness that whole grains impart. Lately I had been making no-knead bread in the microwave, but the taste and texture was pretty lacking, especially after being in the stored in the fridge. So naturally, I couldn't wait to try out some recipes from my new King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking cookbook, which was given to me on a recent trip to KAF headquarters.



I started off with "continental coffee bread". I had some taro paste in the freezer that I wanted to use, so I thought I might try using the coffee bread recipe to make a whole-grain adaptation of the delicious taro-filled breads you can find in Chinese bakeries, which are inevitably made with such highly-processed white flour that the bread turns to sugar in your mouth. It's a good place to start, as it requires no kneading by hand. Also, I substituted Bob's Red Mill egg substitute for the egg and peanut oil for the butter to make it a vegan recipe, and omitted the fruit and nuts. And finally, since I don't keep orange juice around (and the book likes to add it to whole wheat recipes), I used the zest I keep in the freezer and some water.

The recipe took almost 24 hours total to finish, because it called for an overnight pre-ferment which helps develop the yeast (I pre-fermented for 18 hours since my apartment's pretty drafty). My final twist was baking it in a beautiful ridged bundt pan which I think I actually purchased at the KAF store a few years ago. It's hard to get cakes out of it in one piece, but for bread, it worked beautifully. I had a lot of taro filling (about 2-3 cups), but since the pan was large enough to accommodate, I just dumped it all in in between two layers of the bread dough and hoped for the best.

Anyway, the results were spectacular. The bread had the distinct yeasty flavor and flakey texture of coffee cake and the incredible aroma of whole wheat, and it expanded enough to nicely encase the taro filling.



This week, I was worrying over my overabundance of homemade hummus, so I made the hummus bread recipe from the cookbook. I only had about 10 minutes for the second rise, but it turned out wonderfully anyway. The toasted sesame seeds were a particularly nice touch - bringing out the tahini flavor from the hummus. And the bread itself is incredibly moist and savory - I just want to break off chunks of it by hand and stuff my face.

As is clear from this site, in baking I gravitate toward cakes and cookies. But now I think I've finally caught the bug for bread. And I can't wait to try more recipes from the book, especially the ones involving more exotic grains like spelt and barley. Going along with the fermentation theme, I've also recently been on a homemade soy yogurt kick - I've had a live yogurt culture going for 2 months!

Vegan taro coffee bread
(adapted from King Arthur Flour's Whole Grain Baking)

pre-ferment
1 cup traditional whole wheat flour
1/2 cup cool water
pinch of instant yeast

dough
The pre-ferment
1/3 cup lukewarm water
1 tbs orange zest
1 tbs egg replacer
1/2 cup water
4 tbs peanut or vegetable oil
1 1/3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats, ground in the food processor
1 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 1/4 tsp salt
2 tbs browh sugar
2 tsp instant yeast

Taro paste
1-2 lbs of small taro
~1 cup sugar
~2 cups soy milk or water

• Mix the pre-ferment ingredients in the same bowl you'll use for mixing the bread dough (the bowl for your electric mixer, if you're using one), and let it rest at room temperature overnight
• Combine the pre-ferment and the dough ingredients. Mix with an electric mixer until the dough is very soft and smooth. Cover and allow the dough to rise until nearly doubled in bulk.
• Lightly grease a large bundt pan with oil
• Divide the dough in half, gently deflating, and shape the first half into a ring, placing it into the pan. Spread the taro filling over the dough, and place the second half of the dough on top in a ring.
• Cover the pan with a large lid or plastic wrap, and allow it to rise until it reaches the top of the pan, 1-2 hours.
• Bake at 350F for about 35 minutes
• Let it cool in the pan for about 10 minutes before gently turning it out to cool completely.

To make the taro paste:
Cook the unpeeled taro in boiling water for about 20 minutes or until completely tender. Remove the peels and mash with the sugar and liquid until smooth and the paste reaches about the consistency of peanut butter

Eating Las Vegas

I recently, went on a trip to Las Vegas to visit family, and in addition to providing a welcome dose of southwestern sunshine, it was a great way to further hone our frugal travel technique:

• Do your research
  
  Much of the fun of travel lies in the anticipation - imagining and planning all the fun things you're going to do. I try to take a balanced approach to pre-travel research - I don't want to have every second planned out, but I do quite a bit of scouting beforehand so I have a sense of the major things I want to do, where they are, and what the constraints are (hours, costs, transportation, etc). That way, I don't overlook things and am not taken by surprise on the last day of my trip when I discover my number one destination is closed on Sundays. When I'm there, I plan my days around the big destinations I definitely don't want to miss, and then use my research to guide me toward other interesting places along the way. Nowadays I also always take my laptop with me to do more detailed research as my plans unfold.
  
  My favorite way to do research is through blogs. City commerce sites are ok for getting a general sense of where things are, but they're not good for evaluating what's actually worth visiting and what's a mediocre tourist trap. It's local blogs that help you find the hidden gems and remove the chaff. Sites like Yelp and Chowhound are also helpful, but the detailed posts and pictures on blogs both provide tips and context for deciding whether a particular suggestion matches with your own preferences. Also helpful is checking out local independent newspapers for views and reviews - in this case the Las Vegas Weekly.
  
  The best blogs I found for Las Vegas are:
• Living Las Vegas
  This blog from several different contributors contains a wealth of information on the fun and interesting things locals do in Las Vegas.
• Vegas Musings
  Lots of restaurant and bakery reviews with plenty of pictures
  
• One frugal foodie
  This is mainly a cooking-oriented site with a frugal / vegan sensibility much like this blog. So there aren't a lot of Vegas-specific material, but it contains a few good local tips.
  
• Eating Las Vegas
  Another restaurant blog with detailed posts and lots of pictures.
  


• Travel out of season
  
  The end of January (when we went) is a great time to visit Vegas. The crush of drunken Midwesterners was much less severe than the last time I was there - although there was a noticeable glut of well-heeled Chinese, perhaps in town for the New Year. Furthermore, the hotels and restaurants were offering great deals to lure in the off-season crowd. Although the flight to Vegas was quite cramped, the red-eye back to Boston on Friday night was comfortably roomy.
  
  
• Grocery tourism
  
  One of my favorite things to do while traveling is to visit local grocery stores. They contain very few tourists, they give you a taste of local cuisine at very low costs, and you never know when you'll find an exciting new food or an obscure old favorite.
  
  Overall, I was duly impressed by the Vegas grocery scene. I have no idea why, but I found both ethnic and conventional grocery stores there to be a step above those in Boston and even LA in terms of cleanliness, product quality, and selection. Folks in Vegas just do good retail. As was quickly apparent from my aforementioned food blog search, THE grocery destination in town was the International Marketplace.
  
  
  
  I will have to write an entire post about it later - suffice to say that if I could only visit one place in Vegas, this would be it. International Marketplace is essentially 20 different ethnic groceries stores under one roof (except with even better stuff at equal or lower prices), in the space of a large warehouse store. Yes, it IS as good as it sounds, even for a jaded ethnic-grocery goer like me.
  
  Other nice shops I visited were:
  
  • Ethnic markets
    
    • Mariana's market
    A great Mexican supermarket chain with several locations. The one we went to was clean and organized with a decent bakery and a wonderful selection of fresh chiles.
    
    • Jones Market
    In the same shopping center as Diho, the Jones market is another well-stocked ethnic market boasting goods from all over Eastern Europe (although it seems to be run by Russians). It has an extensive meat and cheese counter, bakery, and greek-style take-out counter, and the aisles contain large arrays of honey, grains, spices, pickles, candies, and chocolates, among other staples. In addition, they have a fine selection of fresh produce.
    
    • 168 Supermarket (FKA Diho)
    The best Chinese supermarket in town. While it's not huge, it is one of the best Chinese markets I've seen anywhere. It's much cleaners and better-organized than most Asian markets, and the goods are of generally higher quality. It has an excellent fresh seafood section with very good prices. Best of all, I was able to find an ingredient I've been searching for for about 8 years ... Konjaku jelly powder, the ingredient used to make those little jelly snacks in small plastic cups.
  • Conventional grocery chains:
    
    • Sunflower market
      Your average neighborhood "healthy-food" grocery store.
      
    • Fresh n Easy
      A branch of the British retail company Tesco, Fresh n Easy's dot the Las Vegas landscape. It's a little bit like a mix between Trader Joe's and a conventional grocery store, but without TJs' unique items. If you haven't been to one before, stop in to check out the cheery design and the well-priced goods.
      
    • Rainbow market
      
    • Trader Joe's
• Eat out off the Strip
  Vegas is famously home to outposts of many international restaurant empires, but also has a burgeoning local food culture. We opted to bypass fancy restaurants to visit a few moderately-priced local spots.
  
  • Merkato Ethiopian Cafe
    
  
  
  I had never had Ethiopian food before, and food blogs lead me to Mercat, located in a strip mall not far from the airport. I can't say I'm a huge fan of the somewhat-bland array of vegetarian dishes on the traditional teff yeasted flatbread, but the food certainly wasn't bad, but the prices were very moderate and the meat dish Patrick had was reportedly delicious.
  
  • Sushi Loca
    
    We hadn't eaten sushi in several years, and we were looking for a special restaurant to indulge our dormant cravings. Sushi Loca is quite a ways from the Strip on the outskirts of town (about 20-30 minutes by car), but it is very much worth seeking out. It reminded us of our favorite local sushi place Z Sushi in Pasadena, although not quite as good. However, their large menu of unorthodox rolls (with wacky names) definitely hit the spot.
    
    My favorite was the "No pain no gain", a roll with spicy soft-shell crab and cucumber on the inside with tuna and baked scallop on the outside, all smothered in a sweet, mayonnaisey sauce.
    
  • L'elysee Bakery
    We visited every single Asian bakery in town, including Diamond, Sunville, and Provence. L'elysee was by far the best, with superb Chinese-style buns, cakes, and breads with a touch of French influence. And having checked - their prices aren't any higher than any of the lesser bakeries. It's also in the same shopping center as the 168 market and Jones market.

During the trip we also found ourselves in need of chocolate molds, and so we took a trip out to Henderson to a little shop called Tempting Treasures. It's a very well-stocked shop for serious bakers and candymakers, and the selection of plastic chocolate/candy molds was stupendous. I picked up several candy-bar-shaped ones for myself, and I could definitely imagine visiting the store regularly if I lived in Vegas.

Better than Bouillon

Like salt, pepper, and soy sauce, stock is a general-purpose flavoring that brings savor and depth to a wide variety of dishes. Risotto, stuffed peppers, tofu dishes, vegetable stir-frys, and of course most soups all rely on stock as a basic flavoring. While most recipes call for chicken stock, you can usually substitute mushroom or vegetable instead with good results. Stronger-flavored stocks such as seafood and beef, however, should be used with caution.

But the need for stock is a non-trivial problem. From-scratch stocks don't keep for long in the fridge, and seasoning and simmering meat or veggies for the long hours it takes to make good stock is a tall order even for avid home cooks (especially on top of making the original recipe which may only call for a cup or two of stock). Furthermore, stocks take up a lot of room in the freezer and don't always taste fresh once their defrosted. Packaged solutions are usually not much better. Canned and packaged soups are bulky and often either low-quality or expensive, and standard bouillon cubes are highly-processed chemical concoctions which take effort to properly dissolve.

But now I rely on Better than Bouillon, which resolves all of my stock dilemmas in its line of stock bases which come in compact 8-oz jars and can now be found in most supermarkets. It's concentrated, keeps indefinitely, and can be used in any quantity. Most importantly, it's made with natural ingredients and yields high-quality, full-bodied flavor.

For a few years now BtB's organic vegetable base has been my go-to stock of choice, and I usually hoard it when it goes on sale because I steadily go through a whole jar every 1-2 months. But recently, Better than Bouillon has also come out with "no-chicken" and "no-beef" bases, which mimic the flavors of chicken and beef stock with combinations of vegetables and natural flavors that contain no animal products. Intrigued, I tried them both last time they were on sale at Shaw's. Although I'm not a huge fan of beef flavor, the beef stock works very well in a broccoli stir-fry or other dishes you would put meat in. The no-chicken stock has largely supplanted the vegetable base as my stock of choice. Its light and mildly sweet flavor is perfect with a little miso and some napa cabbage for a delicious winter soup - and yes, it does actually taste like chicken.

The organic mushroom base is the one BtB base which needs tweaking - it has a strange garlicy flavor that lacks the woodsy goodness of mushrooms, and unless they change the recipe I wouldn't buy it again. However, it's serviceable in a well-seasoned dish with other ingredients. Strangely enough, their non-organic mushroom base does not seem to suffer from the same flaws.

All-in-all, Better than Bouillon has earned a permanent place in my pantry. I have yet to try their more exotic flavors like ham, lobster, and chilli and can only assume their regular beef and chicken are as good as the "no-beef" and "no-chicken", but I'm confident in saying that Better than Bouillon's full line should well satisfy any stock needs you'll ever have.

Stuffed peppers made with Better than Bouillon vegetable base:

Boston markets update

Now that I don't live in Chinatown anymore, I'm not as in tune with the detailed goings-on at the Chinatown markets. But I do still make it up there once every couple of weeks to buy my favorite products: Vitasoy silken tofu, coconut cream, and lotus root starch.

Lotus root starch is little known to non-Chinese people, but it is a Chinese supermarket staple in Boston, even at smaller markets like Sun Sun. However, I seem to remember it being hard to find in markets in LA. It is just the dried starch made from lotus roots, and when mixed with some water or milk and heated to boiling either in the stove or in the microwave, it makes a deliciously sticky porridge which is perfect with a little brown sugar for breakfast in the winter. It's the northern Chinese equivalent of oatmeal or cream of wheat, I suppose. In any case, buy West Lake brand - other brands just aren't as good.

• The Super 88 on Essex street is currently closed for renovation (see my two reviews here and here). Will it ever reopen?
• Perhaps as a result of the Super 88 closure, the C Mart on Washington Street where I usually get groceries has been packed all the time lately, even in the middle of the day when I usually go.
• As a result, I've been going to the C Mart on Lincoln street by the freeway. It's very close to the other Chinatown markets, but the lines are much shorter and the selection is a bit better too. Today, I spotted one of my favorite snacks there - vegetarian mushroom strips! In the past the only place I had seen them was Kam Man way out in Quincy, but now I can get them close to home. If you're interested - they're on the tall rack next to the tofu.