http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-e4vu_wL-M
Oh, we’re doing this too? Okay.
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
A daily miasma of frivolity by two wanna-be cultural critics. Or: just, like, some good links, dude.
Tag Archives: food
It saddens me how fake the second commercial is in particular. Jackie Chan is approaching 60 after all, but still.
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
The Big Idea: Perennial Grains
The Big Idea: Perennial Grains
Robert Kunzig, National Geographic:
Humans made an unwitting but fateful choice 10,000 years ago as we started cultivating wild plants: We chose annuals. All the grains that feed billions of people today—wheat, rice, corn, and so on—come from annual plants, which sprout from seeds, produce new seeds, and die every year. “The whole world is mostly perennials,” says USDA geneticist Edward Buckler, who studies corn at Cornell University. “So why did we domesticate annuals?” Not because annuals were better, he says, but because Neolithic farmers rapidly made them better—enlarging their seeds, for instance, by replanting the ones from thriving plants, year after year. Perennials didn’t benefit from that kind of selective breeding, because they don’t need to be replanted. Their natural advantage became a handicap. They became the road not taken.
Today an enthusiastic band of scientists has gone back to that fork in the road: They’re trying to breed perennial wheat, rice, and other grains.
“The Real Third Rail of American Politics: Barbecue”
“The Real Third Rail of American Politics: Barbecue”
Robert F. Moss for the Los Angeles Times on the role of delicious, delicious barbecue in American politics:
… Rufus Edmisten, who ran for governor of North Carolina in 1984. Late in the campaign, after eating barbecue at rallies three times a day for almost a year, he broke down at a public feed in Raleigh. “We haven’t had any of the damnable barbecue,” he proclaimed. “I’ve eaten enough barbecue. I am not going to eat any more!” The quote ran in local newspapers, and Edmisten lost by almost 200,000 votes.
Andy Rooney on a bunch of random crap he found in his kitchen drawers.
I want to stress that 60 Minutes is a show on prime time television. This was aired nationally.
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
Overdone: Why are restaurant websites so horrifically bad?
Overdone: Why are restaurant websites so horrifically bad?
Farhad Manjoo for Slate:
The first thing that pops up when you visit the website of the San Francisco restaurant Fleur de Lys is a nearly full-screen animation of celebrity chef Hubert Keller’s autograph. That makes sense—when I’m choosing a restaurant, the first thing I want to know is, Can the chef sign his name?
He gives a few more examples of questionable site design too. Don’t miss Cavatore Italian Restaurant’s contact page.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grP6QeIjVjU
Here’s a TV spot for Diet Pepsi from 1987 starring Michael J. Fox.
Last month, I made a post about Just For Men’s terrible advertising. I wanted to include a link to this commercial in that post, but I decided not to because I could only find it in that low quality. I’m bringing it up now because it’s thematically similar to this Diet Pepsi ad. The differences that make this ad actually watchable include:
- This one is played for laughs, and successfully so,
- It’s well paced and shot, and
- “I’M ON THE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDGE, TONIGHT!”
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
The Man, The Can: Recipes Of The Real Chef Boyardee
The Man, The Can: Recipes Of The Real Chef Boyardee
Did you know that Chef Boyardee was a real person? Yeah, totally a real guy. Here’s All Things Considered:
Unlike the friendly but fictional food faces of Betty Crocker, Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben, Chef Boyardee — that jovial, mustachioed Italian chef — is real. Ettore “Hector” Boiardi (that’s how the family really spells it) founded the company with his brothers in 1928, after the family immigrated to America from Italy.
…
The family settled in Cleveland, where they thought they could open a successful Italian restaurant. “They had a real understanding of food,” Boiardi says. It was a generation of people who “grew up in kitchens, so food was really their education.”
Chef Boiardi’s Restaurant in Cleveland was a success, and customers expressed interest in learning how to make Italian dishes at home. So the Boiardis started sending people home with pasta, sauce and cheese and teaching them how to cook, heat and assemble the dishes themselves.
That’s what got the family thinking: ” ‘What if we started jarring our sauce and selling it? Would it sell?’ ” Boiardi says. “That was really this germ of an idea … that eventually turned into Chef Boyardee.”
He even appeared in television ads. After watching this, I’m now going to put the accent on the second syllable of “Boyardee” and see how long it takes people to figure out what I’m talking about.
Local ice cream makers face shutdown by state
Local ice cream makers face shutdown by state
Monica Eng and Chris Borrelli of the Chicago Tribune:
Today [Kris] Swanberg’s Nice Cream — on offer at local Whole Foods and farmers markets — is considered a star of Chicago’s rich and beloved artisanal ice cream scene, one that could be shut down entirely by state rules, she recently learned.
She says that a couple of weeks ago a representative from the Illinois Department of Public Health came to Logan Square Kitchen and informed her she’d have to shut down if she did not get something called “a dairy license.”
…
To get this license Swanberg wrote, in an email, she would have to:
- “Work out of our own space. Currently we work out of the Logan Square Kitchen.”
- “Have our product tested once a month for bacterial levels.”
- “Change all of our packaging and labels to meet state standards.”
- “Purchase a pasteurizer, which from what the state tells me will be about $40,000 or use a pre-made ice cream mix.”
Swanberg says that the IDPH officer who visited told her that her ice cream probably wouldn’t pass the bacteria tests if she continued to use fresh strawberries. Instead the officer suggested she use “strawberry syrup,” Swanberg said.
IDPH spokesperson Melanie Arnold said that it isn’t illegal to use real strawberries but that IDPH “does not encourage it simply because when you try and clean a strawberry to make sure it doesn’t have any bacteria, it kind of deteriorates.”
The department’s Dairy Equipment Specialist, Don Wilding, said that other ice cream producers use irradiated strawberries. He says look good but he can’t vouch for the taste.
Swanberg could continue to work without a license, Wilding said, if she used a premade ice cream mix that is usually formulated with stabilizers and other additives — the kind of thing typically used at Dairy Queens, Wilding noted.
On the plus side, food standards are nice. I generally approve of things that keep me from dying.
But when we get to the point where we can’t even make food with fresh ingredients, then maybe we should take a look at what exactly it is we’re trying to regulate in the first place. There has to be a way we can prevent E. coli outbreaks without forcing everyone to eat nothing but nutritive bean paste from a bag.
French baker builds vending machine for baguettes
French baker builds vending machine for baguettes
Jamey Keaten for the AP:
[Jean-Louis Hecht] from northeast France has rolled out a 24-hour automated baguette dispenser, promising warm bread for hungry night owls, shift workers or anyone else who didn’t have time to pick one up during their bakery’s opening hours.
…
He’s only operating two machines— one in Paris, another in the town of Hombourg-Haut in northeastern France — each next to his own bake shops. The vending machines take partially precooked loaves, bake them up and deliver them steaming within seconds to customers, all for €1 ($1.42).
The photo accompanying the article is something else.