1/28 DAN WHALEN, STUFFED: THE ULTIMATE COMFORT FOOD COOKBOOK, PROFESSOR TONY VALDEVIT, STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, FUMBLE-RIFFIC SUPERBOWL GAME

DAN WHALEN – AUTHOR, STUFFED: THE ULTIMATE COMFORT FOOD COOKBOOK

Our favorite comfort foods are often considered tried and true recipes.  But how can you take favorite comfort foods like macaroni and cheese, a hamburger, or even ravioli and make them even more comforting, more filling, even more delicious? Blogger and author Dan Whalen knows how and by following his recipes home cooks will learn how to turn their favorite comfort foods into new and exciting dishes.

Whalen, the master behind the wildly popular food blog, The Food in my Beard, and the mad scientist of comfort food, is the author of the new book, STUFFED: THE ULTIMATE COMFORT FOOD COOKBOOK [Page Street Publishing, January 2014, $19.99 US]. The book is packed with recipes designed to take our favorite comfort foods to the next level.  Readers will discover how to take a full-sized cheeseburger, stuff it into ravioli and call it dinner. Another recipe puts pineapple and bacon into jalapeño peppers to create a spicy appetizer.

Each chapter covers a delicious category of recipes: Stuffed Breads; Stuffed Meats; Stuffed Pasta and Rice; Stuffed Veggies and Fruits; and Stuffed Sweets.

About the Author:  Dan Whalen is the founder and creator of the popular food site The Food in my Beard, chef for Café Burrito in Boston, and freelance food writer for General Mills. His site gets over 10,000 visitors a day and his recipes have been viewed over 6 million times. Dan has been featured in Saveur, Fine Cooking and Bon Appetit magazine, as well as The Huffington Post, The Boston Globe, and on MSNBC and The Today Show blog. Dan resides in Boston, Massachusetts.

www.thefoodinmybeard.com


PROFESSOR TONY VALDEVIT - STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY - FUMBLE-RIFFIC SUPERBOWL GAME? MAYBE!

Cold temperatures could play a small part in a player’s ability to hold onto the football as temperatures dip during the February 2 NFL Championship game in northern New Jersey. That's the conclusion of Stevens Institute of Technology researcher Dr. Antonio Valdevit, an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering.

"It's reasonable to suppose that the cold might affect the hands' grip pressure in the big game," Valdevit said. "We wanted to learn more." Working with graduate students Constance Maglaras and Rebecca Chung, Dr. Valdevit wired special sensors to his own middle finger and thumb — the two fingers most involved in gripping a ball. The Stevens team then measured grip strength on a regulation football against a pushing force (a tackler attempting to "strip" the ball away with constant force) at three significantly different temperatures: with the ballcarrier's hands at 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degree Celsius); 41 degrees Fahrenheit (5C); and 4 degrees Fahrenheit (-20 C). The team ran the experiment eight times at each temperature.

Conclusion? Thumb-gripping power was unaffected, even at near-zero temperatures, said the Stevens researchers. But the middle finger did lose significant power as temperatures dropped. In fact, it required almost three times as much force to hold onto the football at 4 degrees Fahrenheit as it did at more pleasant, dome-like temperatures.

"We can't say for certain fumbling or bobbling will increase in the game," concluded Valdevit. "Players will likely adjust their grip under colder temperatures — reposition their fingers, wear gloves. "But given what we found in one of the fingers, it's also possible the cold will have at least some effect."

www.stevens.edu