Why don't you...

•...treat yourself to a nice dinner before the symphony? [MP: Boston]
•...speedily prepare a monkfish? [MP: Chicago]
•...shop at a posh new gourmet store? [MP: Philadelphia]
•...check out a new art exhibition? [MP: San Francisco]
•...jaunt off to Buenos Aires? [MP: South Florida]

Panic! Sunday is Mother's Day, and you said you'd take her to dinner on her special day! You didn't make a reservation yet, and everyone's got to be booked, right? Why oh why does Mother's Day come earlier every year?

Worry not, dear procrastinators. We've found you three terrific places to take her, so you can show her how well she raised you. All of them have tables available around 6pm on Sunday. There's only so much we can do, though - stop wasting time and call these places now!

•Located on the first floor of the Colonnade, Brasserie Jo looks just like some of our favorite restaurants in Paris, but on a larger scale, to accommodate the countless Francophilic diners of America. Go ahead, have the foie gras, served with braised oxtail and parsnips.
•Is Mom up for a little spice? Take her to one of our favorite Indian restaurants! Kashmir is located on the quieter side of ever-charming Newbury St., in an even more charming room downstairs. Make sure you try the Peshwary naan, which is stuffed with dried fruits, shredded coconut, and potatoes.
•The Mother's Day brunch at UpStairs on the Square might be booked solid, but why not go there for dinner? Try anything from the menu and be as touched by the whimsy as the decor. We would recommend the ravioli of sweet English peas.

Brasserie Jo [Official Site]
Kashmir [MenuPages]
Upstairs On the Square [Official Site]

[Photo: GameSpot]

If you're a regular visitor to these pages, you've probably seen a little of our coverage of the recent struggles to keep street food a part of the culture in Los Angeles. Though Menupages doesn't have a Los Angeles blog (yet), we pay attention because an attack on street food there could be a harbinger to other attacks on street food in the United States. And we love street food, be it tacos, bacon-wrapped hot dogs or just good old pretzels and roasted nuts.

That's why we were thrilled when Epicurious directed us to this lengthy article in Concierge.com: The World's Best Street Food. From safe stalwarts like Mexican tacos and Vietnamese Banh Mi to culinary adventures like Moroccan sheep's head, we found this in-depth guide to be some of the best in armchair traveling/eating.

Epi-Log's James Oliver Cury takes a shot at it for not including pizza or kebabs, but c'mon, the freaking Lonely Planet will direct you to those things. Guidebooks tend to skimp on things like tripe sandwiches, however, which is why we're thankful for the weird and subjective nature of this list.

World's Best Street Food [Concierge.com]
World's Best Street Food? [Epicurious]
Photo: Gerard Van der Leun [Flickr]

Cheese, glorious cheese!
The Dig's anxious to eat it!
Actually, us too.

At The Blarney Stone,
Nadeau finds mixed successes.
What's up with spag bol?

MC Slim JB
stops into Punjab Palace,
finds killer cuisine.

First visits Grezzo,
eats good, albeit odd, food,
with too many nuts.

At Esperia,
Cheap Eats finds authentic Greek
and awesome doughnuts.

Sauce has a good time
at DJs at the Garden.
The food is quite good!

Privus: B-.
Schaffer loves salsa maki
but not crazy rolls.

• Burma changes its mind about letting in foreign aid workers [NYTimes]
• After the junta was caught stealing supplies, WFP halts shipments [AP]
• Just as a reminder, most of Burma's farmland is under water [Bloomberg]
• New idea: lacking air power, the junta can't stop food drops [AFP]
• It's really Hate On Food Aid Day: WFP worker killed in N Kenya [Reuters]

Pabst Blue Ribbon, the beer that's somehow turned from a working class standby into a hipster fashion accessory, has made it into two separate news stories lately.

First: The PBR Coffin (shown above). Bill Bramanti, a 67-year-old beer fan in suburban Chicago, ordered a coffin shaped like a Pabst Blue Ribbon can to use when he dies "100 years" from now. To celebrate, Bramanti threw a party for his funeral home and his friends — a party centered around showing off his coffin. Of course, he also used the coffin to store the beer cans at the party:

"The silver coffin is laminated with the design of a red, white and blue PBR beer can. The inside contains a black liner to prevent seepage so Bramanti can store cold brews in it until he winds up inside. On Saturday, it was filled with ice and PBR. Bramanti thinks it can fit about 15 cases of beer and 150 pounds of ice.

"I wouldn't expect anything less for my dad," said Bramanti's daughter Cathy, who was one of about 25 people munching on roast beef sandwiches and sipping PBR inside a 2,000-square-foot barn Bramanti built in South Chicago Heights for parties. "He's a man that loves to entertain. He likes it when people are happy. This is what he does. There's all kinds of things in here."

USA Today has more.

Meanwhile, a certain Mr. Barack Obama has publicly declared his love for PBR. At a campaign appearance at the Raleigh Times pub in North Carolina, Obama proudly quaffed a Pabst — and thereby upstaged Hillary and the Boilermaker one last time.

Man plans to be buried in Pabst Blue Ribbon coffin [Southtown Star]
Illionis man designs beer can coffin [USA Today]
Obama woos blue collar voters with his beer taste [The Telegraph]

[Image via Southtown Star]

We are ashamed to say that for all the time we've lived in Boston, we didn't know that Food Not Bombs served strictly vegetarian (and a lot of vegan) food. All of the times we passed the volunteers in Copley Square, we assumed they had something simple and for omnivores, like chicken soup, in those giant buckets. As if the organization weren't positive enough! After taking this short video tour, we decided we may need to bike over to JP and help out someday.

Fresh Traveler (Boston) - Food Not Bombs [YouTube: FreshTraveler]

So here it is months after publication and you still haven't read Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food. Everybody else seems to have at least skimmed it, but you're still working on Omnivore's Dilemma (and haven't made a particularly impressive go at that, either).

Never fear. Those tech-savvy gluttons at Google got him to come by for a talk, and have posted said talk on their very own Youtube. It's about an hour long, so don't start it up in order to put off that next project for five more minutes. Maybe watch over lunch. That's what we're going to do because we've got a penchant for guilt.

Michael Pollan At Google [chayday Food Journal/Accidental Hedonist]

In honor of the birth of both Brahms and Tchaikovsky (they share a birthday this week!), we would like to offer some facts about the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Did you know that James Levine is its first American-born music director, or that the BSO recorded the score for both "Saving Private Ryan" and "Schindler's List" (both written and composed by former Pops conductor John Williams) at our very own Symphony Hall? Or that Symphony Hall is considered one of the top few finest concert halls in the entire world? A trip to our historically rich symphony is an experience every Bostonian should have once in their lives. Did you know there are lots of nearby places to eat right before you go? Of course you did. But here are some of our favorites - each in a different price range.

•$$: Pan Thai is often overlooked because of its location just beyond Tigerlily. While the prices are student-friendly, you will not find any scorpion bowl races here. Have a glass of plum wine with the beef mussamun curry, which is loaded with potatoes, onions, carrots, and peanuts.
•$$$: Betty's creates a fun atmosphere with good music and sake-based cocktails and sangria. You can't go wrong when you create your own noodle dish - they even let you try the sauces to find out which is right for you! A veggie bar allows the pickier eaters in your party the chance to eat healthily without performing surgery on their dinner.
•$$$$$: At the MFA, upstairs from that sun-drenched cafe at the left of the door, is Bravo. Home to the occasional wine tasting event, Bravo is a warm and inviting restaurant with a small menu of only the most delicious-sounding entrees. We are impressed with the seared pork loin with asparagus, fondant potatoes, and red wine demiglace. Bonus: two world-renowned Bostonian cultural institutions in one night.

Pan Thai [MenuPages]
Tigerlily [MenuPages]
Betty's Wok and Noodle [Official Site]
Bravo [Official Site]

[Photo: Bach Cantatas]

• With over 100k confirmed dead, Burma finally accepting food aid from...everyone [Yahoo]
• 2m people in Sadr City running out of food and other supplies no good for anyone [NYTimes]
• North Korea, as out of food as anyone, ended negotiations with US for aid "sincerely" [RadioAU]
• India's banned commodities trading of several foodstuffs, for all the good it'll do [Bloomberg]
• As drumbeat against ethanol intensifies, corn state senators keep plowing away [AO]

The hole that Burger King was in after the failure to agree to a penny-per-pound increase for tomato workers has just been getting deeper and deeper. Last week, we learned that a vice president in the company wrote some blog posts criticizing the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. There's also talk of some e-mails sent from the BK server that were sympathetic to the group.

And today we learned that Burger King actually hired someone to spy on another group, the Student/Farmworker Alliance, that works with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers:

In March, a woman named Cara Schaffer contacted the Student/Farmworker Alliance, saying she was a student at Broward Community College. Her eagerness aroused suspicions, but she was allowed to join two of the group’s planning sessions. Internet searches by the alliance revealed that she was not a college student.

Ms. Schaffer is the 25-year-old owner of a private security firm. Her company, Diplomatic Tactical Services, seems like the kind of security firm you’d find in one of Carl Hiaasen’s crime thrillers. Last year Ms. Schaffer was denied a private investigator’s license; she had failed to supply the Florida licensing division with proof of “lawfully gained, verifiable experience or training.” Even more unsettling, one of her former subcontractors, Guillermo Zarabozo, is now facing murder charges in United States District Court in Miami for his role in allegedly executing four crew members of a charter fishing boat, then dumping their bodies at sea.

According to the company, the spying was done for security purposes in an effort to prevent any violent acts and ensure the safety of its employees and assets. Which would be justified if the group had a history of violence, which it does not. At all.

So, this could be fun. Sit back, relax, and watch the corporate backpedaling.

Burger King probes e-posts [Miami Herald]
Burger with a Side of Spies [New York Times]
Coalition of Immokalee Workers March Today On BK Headquarters [MP: South Florida]
Burger King [Official Site]

Monday, May 12
• The owner of Petit Robert Bistro is teaching a master class at the French Library on Marlborough from 6:30=8:30pm. Tickets are $65 if you are a member of the Alliance Francaise, and $85 if you are not. The class will be conducted in both French and English. Formidable! [Alliance Francaise]

Tuesday, May 13
• A Tuesday Tasting at Legal Sea Foods sound like your kind of Tuesday? Head over to the Copley Place location, from 6-8pm. $19 in advance, $29 at the door. [Boston Event Guide]
• Meet the winemakers of Bordeaux's Left Bank at 6:30pm at UpStairs on the Square. It'll be in the Jewel Box for $95. [Upstairs On the Square]
• We plan to attend the World Cocktail Day at Green Street Grill (as it is our professional responsibility). $35 at 7pm - try five classic cocktails made by some rather famous bartenders! [Drink Boston]

Wednesday, May 14
• The night to be a fashionable philanthropist is surely Fashion Wednesday at Sel de la Terre. $25 a person between 12 and 2pm at the Natick location, this event benefits Dress for Success. [Sel de la Terre]

Thank goodness nobody was hurt so we can make jokes like that. Seriously, though, the thought of hundreds of thousands of chili peppers going up in flames is kind of awesome (in the traditional sense, meaning awe-inspiring, not the slang sense meaning good). Here's the story:

HYDERABAD, India - A fire has broken out at one of India’s largest chili markets, burning hundreds of thousands of pounds of chili peppers.

Residents and officials say the burning chili smoke is stinging the eyes and throats of people in Guntur in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.

One local official says 150,000 bags of chilies have been destroyed across a 20-hectare area in Saturday’s blaze.

Officials have evacuated nearby residents, and firefighters are still trying to control the flames.

No casualities have been reported. It remains unclear what started the fire.

• Two of the founding fathers of our country, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, are both known to have grown chiles.

• Capsaicin is a colorless, pungent, crystalline compound, C18,H27NO3.

• The shorter the molecular chain, the hotter the pepper.

• One fresh medium sized green chile pod has as much Vitamin C as six oranges.

• One teaspoon of dried red chile powder has the daily requirements of Vitamin A.

• The heat from a chile pepper is concentrated in the interior veins or ribs near the seed heart, not in the seeds as is commonly believed (the seeds taste extra hot because they are in close contact with the hot veins).

• If, when a chile pepper is cut open, the veins have a yellowish orange color in that area, it usually indicates the pepper will be a potent one.

• To date, the hottest chile pepper in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records is the "Red Savina" habanero. It measured an amazing 577,000 Scoville Units.

Giant chili market catches fire in India [Hot Sauce Blog]
Chile Pepper Facts [Cosmic Chile]
Chile Facts [The Chile Pepper Institute, University of New Mexico]
Image: Cosmic Chile

You may well ask: why pair baking, of all things, with a breast cancer-related fundraiser? In the case of this event, the answer is clear: to honor the mother and grandmother of Finale 's executive pastry chef, Nicole Coady. These remarkable women have been successfully treated for breast cancer, and we have to agree that there is no more appropriate celebration than raising money for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute via a city-wide bake sale.

This week, from the 5th through the 11th, proceeds from over 100 selected bakeries and restaurants throughout the city of Boston will be donated to cancer research. In the last eight years this event has raised nearly $190,000, all of which has gone directly to the cause.

So do some good for the world by treating yourself to a number of desserts in the area. Did we mention that each restaurant has a Boston Bakes for Breast Cancer-specific dessert? With so many places to choose from, each with desserts that sound so good, we don't know where to start our philanthropic sugar binge.

Boston Bakes for Breast Cancer [Official Site]

[Photo: Boston Bakes for Breast Cancer]

• UN finally starts moving food to Burmese cyclone victims [ET]
• WFP: let's rebrand it as a "global hunger emergency" [VOA]
• Have you noticed ingredient shifts at your local diner? [AP]
• Attention urban vacant lots: you will be farmland [NYT]
• Ghrelin's role in eating more pervasive than ever! [SD]