Archives for October 2008
This Week in Bacon
Though I may not be the most pumpkin-obsessed libertarian, pumpkin pie is one of my favorite foods. It’s one of those things that just cannot be improved upon. Or so I thought.
Prepare to have your mind blown. Which is what happens when “pumpkin pie cannot be improved upon” meets another truism: everything tastes better with bacon.
Joe’s Incredible Bacon Pumpkin Pie
“In the spirit of fall here in the Pacific Northwest, here is a recipe of my friend Joe’s own design! He sought to bring bacon to the dessert menu, and hunted for a pie media capable of sustaining a bacon infusion while retaining deliciousness. Pumpkin (perhaps rhubarb) is the only one he could think of. I offer this recipe to all you bacon lovers out there. Remember though, you might steal this recipe to publish it and make dirty millions, but the true bacon lover cares not for cash but only for cholesterol. Enjoy bacon lovers of America!”
Full recipe by Crawford at AllRecipes.com. Photo courtesy SunnyByrd.
Thanks to Kristina for the tip.
Shaken or Stirred? With Craig’s Bond, We’re Not There… Yet
Jacob–who knows more about mixology than either you or I–pointed to a post at Cold Mud alleging James Bond has switched from the shaken & stirred vodka martini to Sazerac in Quantum of Solace, the latest Bond vehicle. Cold Mud calls this a big scoop.
…we have big news to impart:
BOND NO LONGER DRINKS MARTINIS.
True? Yes and no, but mostly no.
I watched the Daniel Craig version of Casino Royale–rather than the 1960s Bond spoof of the same name–for about the fifth time last night. In it, the incandescent Eva Green plays Bond girl Vesper Lynd.
As anyone who follows Bond knows, this movie literally re-started the Bond franchise. The film begins with Bond getting his first 00-licensed kill. It’s as if Connery, Moore, Dalton, etc. never happened. For the most part, that’s a very good thing, for it began anew the Bond franchise without giving Craig’s character decades of baggage–or drinks preferences.
In one Casino Royale scene, for example, Bond makes up a drink–which he later calls the Vesper (after Green’s character). In another, he orders a martini without specifying either shaken or stirred. In yet another scene, Bond orders a martini and, when asked by the bartender whether he’d prefer it shaken or stirred, remarks that he really doesn’t give a damn.
That’s what you call a clean and clear break from the past.
In other words, Bond is re-evolving before our very eyes. At some point, Bond will likely come to adopt the shaken not stirred vodka martini. It’s just that it hasn’t happened yet.
Even the pre-Craig Bond didn’t always stick with the martini. He often dabbled in Campari (my favorite drink).
Journo Joe Killian had a good rundown on Bond and the Vesper at his short-lived Sips Blog.
Official Quantum of Solace site here. Review–it opens in the UK today–here. And every reason to believe Craig will be drinking vodka martinis by movie’s end here.
Edible Googly Eyes Made of Malted Milk, Atheism
The New York Times food section is always a joy, with its declarations that a $65 sushi prix fixe is “affordable” dining, its demands that we schlep to Brooklyn for the authentic experience of drinking beer made in Utica, and articles titled things like “Vinegars Hear Muses of Long Ago.” (All this, just in yesterday’s edition!)
But the good people at the NYT have let me (and Serious Eats) down. In an article about food-based science projects, they failed to property identify a flying spaghetti monster, captioning it: “Malted milk ball eyes atop a noodle monster.”
But some of us know anti-creationist humor when we see it. reason’s Jesse Walker explains:
Behold the Flying Spaghetti Monster, noodle-god of the Pastafarians….The monster was created—or revealed?—by Bobby Henderson when Kansas decided to teach “intelligent design” alongside evolution. “I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster,” he wrote to the state board of education in 2005, urging that this theory receive equal time.
For an brilliant, obsessive account of how to make your own edible googly eyes without a single drop of divine intervention, go here.
For a comprehensive source on flying spaghetti monster sightings, go here.
McDonald’s Gets a McMakeover
This week, McDonald’s revealed plans to revamp their product packaging to focus on the freshness and quality of their food.
The new packaging will feature pictures of products and ingredients accompanied by text aimed at “storytelling,” as Oak Brook-based McDonald’s executives put it.
For instance, the new Big Mac box is plastered with a prominent image of the burger, as well as pictures of a head of lettuce, an onion and other ingredients. “There is Only One Big Mac” proclaims a headline of sorts, with a block of text describing “what makes your Big Mac so unique.”
“With our new packaging, we are putting the focus on food,” McDonald’s Chief Marketing Officer Mary Dillon said at a press conference in Chicago. “It’s the essence of who we are.”
This marketing move comes just a few days after McDonald’s announced that they would be taking the double cheeseburger off the dollar menu, replacing it with a new “McDouble” – a double cheeseburger, but with only one slice of cheese. It’ll now cost you nineteen extra cents to get that extra slice on the double cheeseburger.
Tough times call for tough measures. The new packaging doesn’t look so bad – but who looks at the packaging anymore? It’s what’s inside that counts. Let’s just call a spade a spade. McDonald’s is not healthy, nor would I describe it as fresh, or “quality food”. We all know that – snazzy packaging with pictures of tomatoes and onions aren’t going to fool us. Still, it won’t stop me from eating it. Healthy or not, new packaging or old, I’m lovin’ it.
Bilingual Thai Menu Board
The shrimp! It buuuurrrrrnnnsss! Via Ectoplasmosis.
Hardcore Meat Photography
Flickr groups are a wonderful thing, allowing users to share images related to a theme and often hosting some excellent discussions. There’s everything from the wacky Stick Figures in Peril group, to the narcissistically inspirational Wardrobe Remix, to the genuinely artistic, like Low Light Lowlife.
So I was happy to discover the Hardcore Meat Photography group. It’s name is a send-up of a notoriously snooty Flickr group called Hardcore Street Photography, but the group is no joke to its 193 members. With 350 photos of different kinds of meat they almost have enough for a calendar. Check it out, and by all means contribute. Tell ‘em Crispy sent you.
We Who Are About to Eat Salute You
The latest Archaeology has a story sure to horrify the WHO, CDC, MeMe Roth, and food nannies everywhere. Roman gladiators, it turns out, were not the lean, mean Djimon Hounsous of cinema but rather tubby tubby two-by-fours:
Gladiators, it seems, were fat. Consuming a lot of simple carbohydrates, such as barley, and legumes, like beans, was designed for survival in the arena. Packing in the carbs also packed on the pounds. “Gladiators needed subcutaneous fat,” Grossschmidt explains. “A fat cushion protects you from cut wounds and shields nerves and blood vessels in a fight.”
Grossschmidt and Kanz’s isotopic analysis underscores what archaeologists and classicists have suspected for a while: spectacle and theatricality in the arena were emphasized over martial prowess. Gladiators’ carb-loading and minimal animal-protein intake suggests they lived to fight another day through bulk and endurance over technical strength and speed. Audiences, according to contemporary reports, would turn angry if fights ended too quickly, and attempts to recruit gladiators into the military were disastrous because of their incompetence in actual battles.
I recently wrote an article for Dig on the gladiators’ graveyard at Ephesus and how the various head wounds suffered by its residents correlate to historical records.
This Week in Bacon
From the makers of bacon salt comes “the next big thing” in bacon: baconnaise, a spreadable bacon-flavored mayonnaise. Dave Lefkow and business partner Justin Esch explain:
“We get a lot of customer e-mails with a lot of crazy suggestions for new ways to come up with bacon flavors, like lip balm,” Lefkow said. “Spreadable bacon was one such suggestion.” So, the two talked to friends in the food industry to determine the feasibility of a bacon-flavored mayonnaise. “It had to be true-bacon flavored,” Lefkow said. “I didn’t want ‘mayocan.’” So, the product went to research and development. And Lefkow said he figures he had nothing but bacon and mayonnaise for breakfast for the next six months. “I’d literally, every day, have a bite of real bacon, then a taste of the Baconnaise to see if they’d gotten it just right yet,” Lefkow said. “My cholesterol must have gone through the roof and I must have gained 10 pounds.” He was willing to make the sacrifice, knowing they were upon the precipice of “the next big thing.” Finally, last month, perfection was achieved. They made a regular and light Baconnaise.
The product launches on October 30th. For those in Seattle, a launch party is being held at Heaven Night Club in Pioneer Square, where two semi-professional wrestlers (one dressed up as a strip of bacon, the other as a jug of mayonnaise) will have a “death match” – just in time for Halloween!
Who needs candy, when you’ve got bacon-flavored mayonnaise? So, mark your calendars and don’t forget to purchase some baconnaise starting October 30th. What will these geniuses think of next?
Bring on the Frankenbrew
Ron Bailey’s one of my favorite science writers and I’m completely on board with his complaints about alarmist reactions against genetically modified food. Yet in this post of his about a newly passed Hawaiian ban on growing GM coffee, I’m sympathetic to the coffee farmers who supported it. They’ve succeeded in creating an immensely popular brand — rather above its actual quality, in my experience — and their livelihood depends on keeping it intact and protecting their organic certification. Their fears of losing certification in US markets are likely overblown, but I can understand why they have them. (Even so, as Ron has previously written, it’s not at all obvious that organic farmers deserve legal protection against potential contamination.)
If there’s anyone to blame here it’s the USDA’s and Europe’s organic certification programs and the consumers who demand products bearing their labels. It’s weird that certification, which depends mostly on the farming techniques used in production, also addresses the genetic composition of the plants at issue. It would be nice if we could decouple these standards because right now there’s no convenient way to convey to consumers that a product is GM yet otherwise grown under organic conditions. This is especially problematic given that a major aim of genetically modified crops is to make it easier to avoid the pesticide use that drives many people to prefer organics.
Is there a future for GM coffee? Maybe. Trials for pest-resistant varietals have been successful despite attacks from vandals hoping to derail the project. Coffee is an incredibly complex crop though, and it’s hard to predict how a new varietal will taste under different growing conditions. If scientists do create a GM bean that tastes great and makes it easier for farmers to work without pesticides, coffee lovers should welcome it with open arms. Under current regulations, however, we won’t be able to market it as organic no matter how naturally it’s grown.
Food Blogger Slips on Banana Peel, Recounts
Yesterday, I did something putatively commonplace that was, at the same time, a thing I was convinced I never would do.
At age 36, I finally slipped on a banana peel. The one pictured at right, specifically.
Heel met peel as I exited my car on the way to school. The peel had been sitting in the road, lurking silently next to where I parked, just underfoot my driver’s side door.
Luckily, as I stepped on the banana and lurched backwards, my car broke what might have been my fall. (As you can see by the dark streak trailing the peel, my heel dragged it about a foot; my equal and opposite reaction sent me back the same.) I instantly thought that I’d stepped in dog crap–something I’ve done (unintentionally) countless times.
But no. I looked down. It was a banana peel. Left there by someone. Tossed, perhaps. Browned, and bereft of fruit.
If you’re like me, you see banana peels lying in wait for you from time to time. Maybe once every couple of years. When I see them I smile and walk around them, or over. They are there as if to gain our acknowledgment, to register something with us, and to be avoided. With less berth warranted than, say, a poisonous jellyfish on beach sands.
And so, a warning: banana peels are slippery; do not step on one.
Wikipedia describes banana slippage in pop-culture-historical terms here.
Wondering about how many people have actually slipped on a banana? A recent, small, unscientific message board poll found that 10% of respondents had slipped on a peel. Other (even) less formal message board polling here and here.
How about you? Ever slipped on a banana? Or seen someone else do so?
Raw milk martyr
Much has been written this year about the government crackdowns on raw milk, but the US isn’t the only country denying people to drink what they choose. Canada bans the sale of raw milk entirely. Owen Sound farmer Michael Schmidt is boldly standing up for the rights of himself and his customers:
Last month Schmidt went on trial after the Region of York filed a contempt charge against him for failing to obey a May 2007 court order not to distribute raw milk within its borders.
Schmidt runs a co-operative venture near Owen Sound with about 150 cow-share members. He said he does not sell or distribute, but simply provides the raw milk to the cows’ owners, who pay to board the 300 cows at his farm…
Justice R. Cary Boswell found Schmidt in contempt, but reserved sentencing for a later date.
In his decision, Boswell said his ruling was not on whether people have the right to consume raw milk, but whether Schmidt intentionally defied the court order to stop selling it.
Dan Kuzmyk, lawyer for the region, suggested a $5,000 fine and payment of the region’s $53,000 legal bill.
“I think that Mr. Schmidt should be given the opportunity to purge his contempt,” said Kuzmyk.
“We asked specifically that the court consider incarcerating him for four to six months. (But) in the meantime, give him a chance to comply to the order, get legal counsel …”
The fight over raw milk is an esoteric conflict, but I have nothing but respect for men like Schmidt who are willing to put their freedom on the line for a cause they believe in — and nothing but contempt for people like Kuzmyk who would put him in jail.
I wrote about the raw milk controversy in a May Reason article and documented my own delightful visit to a raw milk dairy here.
Free Beer in an Unfree World
For those who are feeling bleak about the economy and downright suicidal about how dumb the election has become, cheer up. Science—and better still, science with commercial applications—continues apace, making the world a better place. Popular Science reports that a bunch of college students and professors at Rice are working on genetically modified beer that lowers the risk of heart disease.
To create their BioBeer, the students are attempting to genetically alter a strain of yeast so that it produces resveratrol [a chemical present in wine that lowers the risk of heart disease and cancer] while also fermenting beer.
They plan to enter their brew, based on Houston’s Saint Arnold wheat beer, in the world’s largest synthetic biology competition: International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM), taking place November 8th and 9th in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
We should count ourselves lucky that these guys haven’t taken their suds and gone gulching, since they’re certainly laboring in an unfree world. To wit: 1) Most of the team is under 21, and therefore can’t legally consume their scientific breakthrough, and 2) “Don’t start dreaming of BioBeer-filled games of beer pong or flip cup anytime soon. Until this team of young researchers eliminates all the additive “marker” chemicals in their brew and the FDA approves, no one will be drinking a drop.”
Via Instapundit
Sick of It All
Your kids not feeling well? Could be bubonic plague, flu, or a food allergy. They’re all one and the same to the Centers for Disease Control:
Food allergies in American children seem to be on the rise, now affecting about 3 million kids, according to the first federal study of the problem.
…
About 1 in 26 children had food allergies last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday. That’s up from 1 in 29 kids in 1997.
Sounds serious. But I’m curious about the study’s methodology. Here it is, buried deep in the article:
The CDC results came from an in-person, door-to-door survey in 2007 of the households of 9,500 U.S. children under age 18.
When asked if a child in the house had any kind of food allergy in the previous 12 months, about 4 percent said yes. The parents were not asked if a doctor had made the diagnosis, and no medical records were checked. Some parents may not know the difference between immune system-based food allergies and digestive disorders like lactose intolerance, so it’s possible the study’s findings are a bit off, Branum said.
That’s not a study; that’s a poll. And while I’m skeptical of the abundance of food allergies — particularly the idea of airborne nut molecules killing kids (really? funny no one ever drops dead in midtown Manhattan from the nut roasters) — I do believe such allergies exist and some children have them. In most cases allergies can be diagnosed through objective measures, diagnoses which the CDC could anonymously gather from pediatricians and allergists and collate. Relying on anecdotal polling to create a “study” which will doubtlessly be used to implement policies (such as blanket institution-wide bans on nuts and peanuts like the one at my youngest’s school) is worse than worthless. It confuses the issue for those with allergies and restricts the behavior of those without.
But I’m not a doctor:
However, the study’s results mirror older national estimates that were extrapolated from smaller, more intensive studies, said Dr. Hugh Sampson, a food allergy researcher at the Mount Sinai School of medicine.
“This tells us those earlier extrapolations were fairly close,” Sampson said.
Translation: This latest poll jibes with other polls we’ve taken in the past.
Article here. CDC report here.
Newsweek Writer’s Silly ‘Starbucks Theory of International Economics’
There have been lots of cockeyed pop-food theories to emerge recently. I’m talking to you Morning Banana Diet, and a little less so to proponents of the Bugs Will Save Us All worldview.
But those schemes are nothing compared to Newsweek writer Daniel Gross’s Starbucks Theory of International Economics.
…I propose the Starbucks Theory of International Economics. The higher the concentration of expensive, nautical-themed faux-Italian branded frappuccino joints in a country’s financial capital, the more likely the country is to have suffered catastrophic financial losses.
Gross goes on to list several economically souring countries that have tons of Starbucks, and several economically sound (or mediocre) countries that have very few Starbucks.
Presto! Theory affirmed. Sort of. Because while Gross does admit the “theory isn’t foolproof,” he calls it “close enough.”
Close enough to what or, specifically, where?
How about to Iceland, a country with exactly zero Starbucks, but whose bizarre banking system has wreck(ya-vick)ed the country’s economy faster than an Albanian pyramid scheme? Or how about North Korea? No Starbucks there. No economy (or food), either.
So the theory’s corollary is untrue. The number of Starbucks in a country (or its capital) doesn’t have much to do with the country’s economic situation.
But there may be something to a Starbucks Theory of International Economics. It’s just not what Gross thinks it is. And so I’m stealing the theory named by Gross, and re-defining it thusly:
Globalized countries, many of which have multiple Starbucks locations, are currently caught up in a global economic downturn.
That’s it. That’s my concise, cautious, correlative, and causational-folly-free cappuccino theory.
[Flickr snap taken from Colin Purrington.]
Let Them Eat Candy
Last week, Crispy blogger Katherine blogged about some concerns people have with allowing children to consume too much Halloween candy because it encourages or contributes to child obesity. Well, in recent news, Minnesota dentists have joined the crusade against allowing children to have fun by launching a candy buy-back program:
“[W]e’re sponsoring a day-after Halloween party and candy buy-back program. It’s our opportunity to encourage children and their families to exercise smile-friendly habits all year long — especially as we kick off the holiday season.”
Who: Kids and their families from all over the Twin Cities are invited
What: Turn left over candy into cash. Participating Metro Dentalcare practices are offering to pay $1 per pound of candy to children 12 and under (up to five pounds each child). Kids and their families will be treated to healthy snacks, a free toothbrush, and other games and prizes. Don’t forget to wear your Halloween costume. There will be special prizes for the best costumes too.
What happened to, oh I don’t know, disciplining your child and making him brush his teeth?And what do you think these kids are going to do with their $5 – probably buy some chocolate bars to make up for the ones that they were forced to give up.
