Member Q&A — Amy Proulx
Tue, Mar 3, 2009
Amy Proulx
Dr. Amy Proulx is a happy-go-lucky food chemist and biologist, currently an NSERC research fellow with Agriculture and Agrifood Canada’s Guelph Food Research Centre. When she isn’t blowing up perfectly edible things in her lab, she is usually found cooking perfectly edible things for her family and friends.
What’s your weakness? Dessert or mains?
Mains, with lots of spices, or cheese. Unless it has chocolate.
Who or what got you interested in food?
I think my grandfather put me on the track that I am currently on. He was a passionate gardener, herbalist, experimenter, beekeeper, and gourmand. He introduced me to stinky cheese, backyard terroir, and basement wine making.
What inspires you?
Exploring the unknown. Making people healthier through good food.
What was your favourite dinner when you were a kid? Do you like it now?
I loved my grandmother’s pan fried, breaded pork tenderloin, with clove and cinnamon scented pickled peaches, and fluffy mashed potatoes. I’d eat it every day.
What’s the first dish you remember making?
I made cookies to enter in the county fair when I was three. My mom has a photo of my prize winning cookies, and still has parts of the prize sponsor package, children’s oven mitts, cookbooks, cookie cutters… I know I was active in helping around the kitchen from the time I could walk and respond to commands.
Proudest food-related moment?
Winning the Pan-American Food Science and Nutrition Prize. That was fun, and the prize sponsor made sure I had what seemed to be a lifetime supply of granola bars to go along with it.
Strangest food you’ve ever eaten?
Stinky Tofu (臭豆腐). That’s its name, and stinky it is.
Favourite sound in the kitchen?
The Kitchenaid mixer. It means something yummy is coming.
Favourite cooking smell?
Persian green herb stew (قرمه سبزی). When prepared right, the scent clings to the walls, your clothes, your breath, for days on end.
Quintessential Canadian dish?
Des ployes avec le sirop d’érable, ou des cretons. Ce sont des vrais mets d’antan. Ca fait du bien, les manger.
Molecular gastronomy — best thing ever or the unwearable haute couture of food?
I guess I help make molecular gastronomy by being a food chemist. At most, being a chemist helps me cook better.
Cilantro — can’t get enough or tastes like soap?
Yum!
What non-local foods can’t you live without?
Chocolate, mangoes, teff flour, and most of my spices.
What’s your greatest culinary extravagance?
Very good cheese. Cheap cheese is not worth the money.
Most over-rated kitchen gadget?
Bread machines. Bread making by hand is very therapeutic.
What’s the most treasured possession in your kitchen? Why?
My daughter. She’s still a wee one, but when she helps cook, it is so delightful.
Fill in the blank. If I never cooked / ate / heard about ______ again, I’d be happy.
Stinky tofu, but wait a minute, it’s in my job description to eat it.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
If you could cook for anyone, alive or dead, who would it be and why?
My late mother-in-law.
What would you prepare for him/her?
Everything and anything Persian. I wish I had the chance to meet her and learn her art.
What was the last thing you ate?
Balderson 6 year cheddar.
If you had to work outside the culinary field, what would you do?
Hmm, do I work in the culinary field? If I wasn’t a chemist, I’d be a chef-owner in a family-friendly corner bistro. I still have that dream in the back of my mind.
I love your answers Dr. Amy! I would agree, when the Kitchenaid mixer is going life is good!
50 calories difference over one meal equals 150 calories per day and 54, 750 calories over the course of a year and the equivalent of 15 pounds over a year assuming someone made the 50 few calories choice 3 times a day over the course of a year. While 50 calories less per meal at first seems unimportant, it adds up.
On the marketplace segment they did about calories in restaurant foods, people estimated the calorie content of foods significantly lower than the actual content. REstaurant food is richer and serving sizes are bigger so people incorrectly assume that the calorie levels they’ve seen on tools they might use at home or at the store are valid. They aren’t. While it is clear that sweeping changes are necessary to address obesity. It is wrong to suggest that informed choices won’t go a long way to alter the situation. Suggesting that 50 calories is the equivalent of walking an extra 10 minutes simplifies the problem to a one instance situation. We eat usually 3 times a day, if not more, so this seemingly innocent statement needs further digging.