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P.B.R.I.P.
Small-Time Big Eating
There’s nothing sexier than a guy gorging himself on six pounds of custard.
It’s Saturday afternoon at BR Frozen Custard & Sweets, a small store tucked behind a Woodbridge strip mall. Ian “The Invader” Hickman takes swigs of Powerade, preparing to down as many pounds of frozen vanilla custard as he can in six minutes (”In these contests you sweat, you put your body though a lot of stress,” Hickman said. “It’s like running a marathon, but different.”)
Hickman, 25, of Herndon, is one of four professional eaters about to compete for a grand prize of $250. He’s not worried about his competition, nor is he jittery about the build up during the kids and amateur competitions before the main event.
He’s worried about farting. With so much dairy, a custard-eating contest could quickly turn into that classic scene from “Blazing Saddles.” You know the one—all those cowboys sitting around the campfire, eating beans and, well, you get the idea.
He’s had gastrointestinal problems before, eating rice curry in Japan on Nippon Television last December.
OK, so there are lots of things sexier than this guy. Or any guy. Farting. While gorging on custard. But it’s still pretty cool. Contest results at the BR Frozen Custard & Sweets site here.
04/20/09
So it didn’t occur to me how great it would be if I were to write a completely serious piece on pairing food with 4/20 until yesterday–a day late. That’s when I read this in the Chicago Tribune:
One 39-year-old Chicago professional, who didn’t want his named used for obvious reasons, said he’s all set to host his fourth annual 420 party.
“We serve pizza rolls, Lit’l Smokies, all kinds of candy bars—the munchies-food I guess you’d expect,” he said.
So I’m totally on the ball for next year. Reminder to self.
Read my 2004 interview with then-High Times editor (formerly one of People magazine’s 50 most beautiful people) John Buffalo Mailer here.
Can a Bacon Mag Be Far Off?
Booze mags abound. Imbibe. Modern Drunkard. Stuff about wine. Food mags are dime a dozen, too. But never has there been a magazine solely devoted to meat. Until now, reports the Washington Post.
…Meatpaper is not the kind of practical magazine that’s likely to publish a story called “10 Hot New BBQ Tips for Sizzlin’ Summer Cookouts!!” It’s the kind of arty, cheeky, ironic magazine that just published a story called “Sweat Sock: The Other White Meat.”
Meatpaper isn’t really about meat, it’s about “the idea of meat,” the editors explained in the first issue last fall. “Half the people who pick up Meatpaper assume it’s some kind of vegan hate letter addressed to their salami sandwich. The other half wonder if we’re subsidized by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. That’s how we know we’re on to something.”
I would follow up that quote by noting that they are on to something, but I shouldn’t, unless I put it in quotes, since that’s what the Post wrote. More here. Meatpaper online (meatweb?) here.
Urbanite Baltimore calls the most recent issue of Meatpaper “a smorgasbord of carnivorous delights” here.
Starbucks Gets Back to Basics and Wins
Starbucks today unveiled what it hopes will be a new black gold. And it looks and tastes a hell of a lot like what made the company vital and famous in the first place: a new, served-everyday, drip-brewed coffee.
It’s Pike Place Roast–not Pike Place Blend (pictured). Though it’s unclear from where the beans hail, the coffee’s got more in common with a fuller-bodied Starbucks cup like Sumatra or Sulawesi than it does with some of the company’s lighter-bodied Latin American roasts. The chocolatey undertones, though, are to me unmistakably reminiscent of its Colombian coffee. I don’t taste Africa in the cup.
Anecdotally, the coffee is a huge hit. I love it. And some guy in my Property class loves it, too.
The company also ditched its censored logo–at least for the time being–in favor of the good ole nude siren. Anecdotally–again, with a sample size of two people, including my positive review and a bad one from some girl in my Animal Law class–reviews on the what’s-old-is-what’s new cup are split right down the middle.
Can I afford a $2 cup of coffee every day? Probably not. But will I pick up a cup, in colder months, 2-3 days a week? You bet. And will I buy whole-bean Pike Place Roast in stores, in order to brew at home? Absolutely.
More here. What Seattle thinks here. Crispy previously on Starbucks here.
This Little Piggy Was Subsidized, But Now He Goes to Market
Newsweek has a great piece up on European farmers’ newfound embrace of the free market. Why the dramatic shift from their earlier support of subsidies? I guess most EU farmers–though not all–finally herd that subsidies and protectionism don’t work.
Not all that long ago, it was hard to use “European farmers” and “markets” in a single sentence, unless perhaps you included the words “dumping” or “distorted.” Now, thanks to the global surge in the price of food and farm products (buoyed by a new emerging-market middle class), plus a series of important reforms to Europe’s 50-year-old subsidy system, market forces that haven’t been felt in ages are stirring in the continent’s fields, barns and meadows.
[…]
Thanks to a new crop of muckraking European NGOs, more and more EU voters are also starting to see through the shroud of myth surrounding agricultural aid. Transparency groups like UK-based Farmsubsidy.org have dug up lists of subsidy recipients, showing that the biggest profiteers are actually corporate and aristocratic landowners such as Nestlé, Unilever, and the queen of England. In a sign of the changing public mood, Dutch EU Agriculture Minister Cees Veerman barely escaped having to resign in 2005 after his undisclosed subsidy income showed up on the list. New figures also show that 80 percent of the aid goes to the largest 20 percent of farms, exposing as a sham the argument that the system is needed to support small, traditional farmers. A fresh wave of outrage will likely come in 2009, when transparency holdouts Germany and France will be forced to finally publish their lists, thanks to a new directive from Brussels.
Though EU policies are hardly perfect, the Bush administration could learn a thing or two about the free market from Europe–which says as much about how terrible Bush is as it does about how far Europe has come.
