Today's Food For Thought panel discussion, "Re-Localizing Food," was interesting, yes, entertaining, for sure, but almost totally devoid of surprises. Did you know that Michael Pollan is in favor of using sustainable farming techniques and growing food closer to home? Why yes, actually. Did you also know that Winona LaDuke thinks people like those on her White Earth Indian Reservation deserve better access to fresh, local food? Yes, you probably did.

But underlying what might be characterized by the cynical as a one long choir-preach, we found a lovely surprise: These folks are funny. Sure, the humor is a little NPR-ish, but the zingers were not sparse among the four panelists as they rapped on their favorite issues, fielding questions and egging each other on.

Continue reading "SFN: Does The Fun Ever Stop? A Discussion On The Politics Of Local Food" »

So far in our slow food coverage we've brought you a telephone conversation with director Anya Fernald, a telephone conversation with Michael Pollan, and plenty of writing in italics. That's fine and everything, but this junk is actually starting! Let's get off the phone and into the field.

You can find updates throughout the day here. Meanwhile, you may be interested in some of the chatter going on elsewhere about the "largest celebration of American food."

• Eater SF has sneak-peak photos of the Taste Pavilions. These are the big free sample extravaganzas that also include the Green Kitchen demonstrations. Looks extravagant!

• Serious Eats posted an open letter from Ed Levine to Alice Waters and Slow Food Nation, in which he makes a good point about an important issue conspicuously absent from this weekend's hustle and bustle.

• Finally, the San Francisco Chronicle is all over this story, including a Slow Food-related cocktail roundup and a Michael Bauer blog account of last night's kickoff dinner.

Shoot, it's creeping up on lunchtime. I'm going to go eat.

• Remember the salad days of college, when all you could afford were burritos? [MP: Boston]

• It's a bittersweet week for our Chicago editor, as her little brother/party correspondent heads off to college. [MP: Chicago]

• Let it be known: The Wire is well-missed. [MP: Philadelphia]

• Aww. Mexico's president misses his momma's mole sauce. [MP: San Francisco]

• The entire MenuPages family misses instant messaging with our South Florida editor, who spent the week in Korea. Also, we are jealous. [MP: South Florida]

There are some lies happening in this video (there is NO WAY that cherry turnovers are better than PB&J, or apple pie for that matter), but these qualms aside, it's nice to see a slightly underdog pastry get some chops. After all, although tasty, the turnover is no danish, muffin, or even scone in terms of breakfast food popularity.

We've long been curious about how these national food holidays came to be, especially since there seems to be one for every day (for example, National Banana Lover's Day and National Whiskey Sour Day bookend National Cherry Turnover Day). Also, how is each specific date chosen to celebrate National [insert food in question] Day: what is it about August 28th that makes it oh-so-very-cherry-turnover, as opposed to August 29th?

After some digging, it turns out that each day is designated by Presidential decree. A food gets picked for a national day after lobbyists, trade associations, and a whole other host of special interests petition the President to sign off on a national food holiday. Surprise, surprise, this whole phenomenon seems to be a peculiarly American happening.

So, while you bite into your celebratory cherry turnover today (or not), you can once again thank your lucky stars for capitalism, without which we would never have national food holidays. Oh, and ps: today is also Dream Day, to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream," which seems timely for this week.

"Obscure Commercial Holidays" [Stay Free Magazine]

MP: San Francisco Editor Adam Martin is covering this weekend's Slow Food Nation conference in the city by the bay. Here's the latest!

With Slow Food Nation all around, a Civic Center marketplace of local, sustainable foods, and every retailer in the city jumping on the bandwagon, it could be easy to make all kinds of grand lifestyle decisions this weekend—“Who says it’s hard to be a locavore? Look at all this stuff”—but what about in January, long after the fruit stands are packed up, when school or work or whatever it is you do is in full swing, where will your new-found values get you then, in the face of Egg McMuffins and Pop Tarts?

I chatted on the phone with food politics whiz and general cage-rattler Michael Pollan yesterday about how to incorporate some slow-food values into one’s day-to-day life. How does one stay a responsible eater when one is busy as all hell? Can you still go to restaurants without ruining the planet? And what’s this all about, anyway?

“There’s been a lot of effort to complicate [the issues],” Pollan said, but in fact, the global effect of your food is simple. “In general, the closer your food is grown to where you eat it, and the less it is processed, the lighter its carbon footprint.”

“Sometimes the drive to complicate things is done in the interest to frustrate people’s desires to do the right thing,” Pollan told me.

Wait, that sounds awfully nefarious. Who would complicate important issues like this on purpose?

“The food industry is always trying to confuse the issue… If you have a sugary cereal and you slap a health claim on it, what are you doing but confusing the issue?”

Pollan pointed out that the highest-impact foods at the store, from an environmental and health point of view, are the highly processed ones, as well as meat, eggs, and dairy. In his most recent book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, he advocates shopping around the edge of the grocery store, where you find dairy, meat, produce, and bread, and avoiding the middle, where you find Hot Pockets, Pop Tarts, and Fruit Roll-Ups.

Pollan laid out three simple metrics by which to determine how damaging your food is to the planet, and yourself:

• Find out the animal’s feed. Grass-fed beef makes less of an impact than grain-fed. Most grass-fed or otherwise sustainably produced meats are labeled as such in gigantic letters.

• How processed is your food? The more that happens to it between the field and the table, the more resources it absorbs and the more nutrients are sapped. “In general, processed food like that [Pop Tart] takes 10 calories of fossil fuel energy for every one calorie of food energy," Pollan said.

• How far does it travel? The closer to you that your food is produced, the better.

Okay, that’s great and all, and most city-dwellers have access to some Berkeley Bowl equivalent, but dude, who shops for groceries? Many of us eat at restaurants almost all the time. And traveling? Hell, how are you supposed to stay responsible in an airport?

“When I’m on the road I tend to avoid meat unless I’m a place where I know where they get their meat,” Pollan said. “There’s one restaurant in every city these days that’s conceived in the spirit of Slow Foods and Chez Panisse, so I try to find out where that is, and, you know, just keep it simple.” God, he’s unflappable.

“If a restaurant offers grass-fed meat, I’ll order that. I want to support that industry and I really like it,” Pollan said. “I don’t order conventional meat that hasn’t been grown sustainably. I’d be much more likely to order fish, avoiding big, predator fish… those are the ones that are in most danger. Things like tuna and swordfish.”

But Pollan pointed out that there are sustainable fisheries, such as salmon in Alaska. “If it’s wild salmon from Alaska, they’ll usually tell you… More and more, restaurants will tell you where their food comes from and how they source it because it’s a selling point… that’s a very positive development.” You can print out a guide of sustainable seafood from the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Neat. So where do you eat out, Michael Pollan?

“I really like restaurants where the chefs are serious about sourcing their food and elevate quality of ingredients over technique. To me, that’s what I really like. And I like pretty simple food. I don’t like fussy food.”

Pollan mentioned Chez Pannisse Café right off the bat, of course. “I love Picante, Oliveto. In the city I like Zuni Cafe, Quince.” He also mentioned Kirala, Cesar, and Saul’s deli, in Berkeley, and the new Camino, Pizzaiolo, in Oakland.

Pollan naturally wouldn’t single out an event this weekend as the most important, but he made an interesting point about the planning: “The architects they recruited for this—people in the restaurant business should pay attention to the design.” So there you go, restaurateurs. Get those business cards.

As for the rest of you, hey, good luck getting in to hear Pollan speak this weekend. Most of his events are sold out. But you can check through the Slow Food Nation schedule just in case, and also keep up with the man via his own website. He speaks publicly all the time. Come next busy January, catching a lecture might help you stay off the Pop Tarts a little longer.

Slow Food Nation [Official Site]
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto [Amazon]
Chez Panisse [Official Site]
Seafood Watch [Monterey Bay Aquarium]
Michael Pollan [Official Site]

[Photo: via ">Ken Light/Michaelpollan.com]

Welcome to the first day of coverage of this weekend's Slow Food Nation event in San Francisco. I'll be at the event, snapping photos, talking to participants and stuffing my face, and you can attend vicariously through me by reading the coverage right here. It's going to be a tough job wandering around collecting edible samples, but with your support, I'll get through it. To find out just what this weekend is all about, I got on the phone with Anya Fernald, Slow Food Nation's executive director.

Hanging around, staring at that victory garden outside City Hall, waiting for Slow Food Nation to start, is like nibbling bread while you wait for your entrée.

In this case, that entrée is a local, grass-fed steak with a side of tomatoes from the garden. The bread is homemade from organic flour, and the butter was just churned yesterday at a farm in Marin County.

“Middle America, 30 years ago, this was the norm,” Anya Fernald, executive director of Slow Food Nation, told me, as we chatted about the upcoming Slow Food Nation event in San Francisco this weekend. Part festival, part conference, part exhibition, the four-day American food celebration will draw an expected 50,000 attendees overall, Fernald said.

The weekend includes tasting expos, a marketplace, workshops, panel discussions, special dinners, as well as things like hikes and farm tours, all to encourage attendees to take a second look at the way they—and we, as a society—eat.

The idea is to wean Americans off our current dependence on processed and fast foods, and to “build momentum and demand for an American food system that is safer, healthier and more socially just," according to Fernald’s press statement.

“We want 10 percent of the attendees of this event to make one change ever day, every week. We It might be a small step like I’m going to cook dinner for my family this week or plant a garden, it might be I’m going to learn about food politics or pack a bag lunch… We’re not talking about radical life changes. This is about realistic, doable every day changes that everybody can make,” Fernald told me.

Fernald was quick to address and dispel any charge of elitism. “When did making your own jam become a privilege of the elite? Up until 1950, really a sign of poverty was making your own jam, growing your own garden, and people strove to become part of the middle class by rejecting that,” she said. The slow food movement aims to return to those values.

“Looking at that presumption that this is an elitist movement, I think America has been bamboozled into thinking that fasts food is the food of the masses,” Fernald said. “We need to push back against that notion that fast food is American food.”

But how can a bunch of activists making a big noise about sustainable food in a city as “blue”—downright aquamarine—as San Francisco?

“We’re drinking American wine, beer, we’re making pickles, we’re having dinner with friends, we’re planting gardens,” Fernald said. “It’s really “red state”’ values we’re talking about but they happen to be about food and they’re somehow associated with the left.”

The weekend is packed with things to do, and participants will have the opportunity spend as much time and money as they want. Free activities and exhibitions such as the slow marketplace and slow hikes, compete with ticketed events including panel discussions, dinners, a concert, field trips, and tasting exhibitions, running from $10 to more than $100.

Of all the 115 or so events that comprise the weekend, Fernald pointed to the slow marketplace as a cornerstone. That’s where attendees can buy the produce, grain, and small-scale products central to the movement. It’s also adjacent to the victory garden at City Hall.

Planted in July, the garden’s crops will be harvested and distributed by the San Francisco Food Bank over the weekend. The name comes from the World War II era, when individual families grew food on their own small plots.

Small-scale farming, small-scale food preparation, small, slow dinners with friends—these are the focuses of one massive event. It’s going to be a delicious weekend.

Slow Food Nation [Official Site]

[Photo: The City Hall victory garden, via Slow Food Nation Blog]

Umami -- that savory taste of meat -- gets all the press. Small wonder then that the two of the four other tastes (sweet, salty, sour and bitter) are so aptly named. Perhaps now's the chance for this flavor darling to get squeezed out of the limelight... at least for a little bit.

Fox News reports that scientists may have discovered a sixth taste. Celebrating this new discovery would be a bit premature, however, as (ta-da!) this is the taste of calcium. Yes, calcium: of broccoli, spinach, and collard greens.

You're probably not alone if you try to avoid these leafy veggies — but that may be precisely the fault of these new-found taste receptors: calcium in large quantities tends to have an unpleasantly bitter taste.

There may be reason to rejoice about this discovery, after all, according to Michael Tordoff, a behavioral geneticist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.

People don't consume as much calcium as nutritionists would like, and one reason for this is that foods high in calcium don't taste good to many people. Tweaking the taste could encourage a calcium-deficient population to consume more of this key nutrient.

That's um, great and everything, but in the meantime – pass the pork, would you?

Yes, MSG, the Secret Behind the Savor [NY Times]
Sixth (and Fifth) 'Taste' Possibly Discovered [Fox]

[Photo: via aquatone282/flickr]

Ando invented the pre-cooked, freeze-dried noodles in 1958, when he was 48 years old. When he was 61 he invented their kissing cousin, cup noodles. "In life," he was known to remark, "there is no such thing as too late."

This year, demand for his inventions is expected to surpass 100 billion servings. Staggering, yes, but surprising? No. As the man famously (and perhaps cryptically) said, "mankind is Noodlekind."

Iconic Noodle Celebrates 50th Anniversary [NPR]

[Photo: Ramen selection, via davidrmunson's Flickr]

Last week Miss Manners touched on the subject of correcting typos in retail store signage. Judith Martin took the nit-picking, though highly sympathetic, letter writer gently to task for the greatest etiquette infraction of all — correcting others — but then pointed out that it's not rude to inform the store's management of their public spelling mistakes. The letter-writer had alerted a salesperson who, Miss Manners pointed out, likely couldn't have cared less.

Same goes for restaurants, we would think. As a professional menu-dealer-with, we find typos everywhere, both at work and after. But does it do to correct these? It's a given your server won't care. In fact, unless you actually need to send something back or get more ketchup, your server probably won't even listen to you when you report on how the food is.

Back in June, Jane Black wrote a column in the Washington Post advocating an extremely passive-aggressive method of communicating menu typos: She describes a daydream wherein,

I enter a restaurant, order and sweetly ask the waiter if I can "hold on to the menu" during dinner. Then, using a distinctive purple pen, I discreetly copy-edit the descriptions of the dishes...

'Who was that anonymous proofreader?' chefs would whisper to one another. Correct-a-girl strikes again! Eliminating menu mistakes, one restaurant at a time.

But seriously, menu typos can be galling, and some obsessive types just can't see their way toward letting it rest. What's the best way to get the corrections to the menu-meister? Find out who that person is, and tell them. Most restaurants won't take it personally, just like they won't take constructive criticism of the food personally.

After the meal, if the typo seriously still bothers you, get up, ask the host who writes the menu, then either ask to speak to that person or convey a message via the host, indicating the typo. That's your best shot at getting your voice heard, but really, is it worth the trouble? (Sigh) Actually, yes. The restaurant, concerned for its reputation, probably does want to hear where it can improve, and the rest of us will dine easier, knowing Correct-a-girl (or boy) is out there, watching.

How to Proofread, Politely [Miss Manners/Washington Post]
The Art of Criticism [Table Manners/Chow]
Typos a la Carte, Ever A Specialty of the House [Washington Post]
White Problems — Typos on Menus [Stuff White People Like]

Photo: Via Aaron Gustafson/flickr]

The news hook on our earlier post came on the heels of a somewhat anachronistic decision by the FDA last week to allow food producers to irradiate spinach and lettuce, infusing them with just enough radioactivity to kill the micro-organisms that cause hazardous infections. From the Associated Press:

The Grocery Manufacturers Association had originally petitioned the FDA seeking to expand use of irradiation to many more types of produce several years ago. But in wake of the 2006 E. coli outbreak from spinach — which killed three people and sickened nearly 200 — plus a list of lettuce recalls, the industry group asked the FDA to rule on the leafy greens first.

The FDA still is considering what other types of produce might be OK to irradiate. Often mentioned as possible are tomatoes and peppers, which have been the focus of investigators trying to trace this summer's nationwide salmonella outbreak.

Remember when, a few hours ago, we said that just a modicum of forthcoming information could make the difference between a careful populace and a panic-inducing epidemic? Well, when big, faceless government organizations and big, faceless lobbying groups get together to talk about injecting scary technology into people's food, it helps to put out a bit of information on that plan. Otherwise, you get films like this:

FDA: Irradiating spinach, lettuce OK to kill germs [AP]
Search Results: Irradiation [FDA]

Is it just us or has this been a banner year for insane food-safety stories? First there was that gigantic meat recall, then the gigantic salmonella mystery, then just last week a Chicago man sued a restaurant where he claims he acquired a nine-food tapeworm in 2006. Also, Canada is in the middle of a deadly food poisoning outbreak.

Now comes news from the Tulsa World that one person has died and at least another 11 — and possibly as many as 20 &mdash were apparently infected with E. coli bacteria after eating at a "local restaurant" in Locust Grove (Mayes County), Oklahoma.

It is rather amazing that the newspaper shied away from naming the restaurant, or explaining its reason for omitting the name. Though in the wake of the reporting on that that salmonella scare, maybe it shouldn't be that surprising. In that incident, federal authorities took months to determine that the culprit in the scare was not tomatoes, but rather serrano and jalepeno peppers imported from Mexico. They only uncovered the truth after Minnesota scientists put them on the scent. Meanwhile, tomato growers lost around a quarter-billion dollars.

The tomato industry will survive that scare, but unless it is part of a huge chain, one restaurant in one small town in Oklahoma will probably not survive the death of a patron. So it's understandable that either Mayes County health officials or the World's editorial board withheld the name, pending confirmation of the infection source.

Isn't it scary that you could be put at risk of a serious illness to save the reputation of a business? On the other hand, wouldn't it be unfair for a restaurant to be associated with a deadly E. coli outbreak if it is later cleared? Unfortunately, there seems to be no universally good way to handle a health threat such as this.

It seems, however, that a good rule of thumb for public health officials would be to provide as much information as possible, as early as possible, occasionally omitting a detail that may be incriminating. For example, if health officials had reported earlier in the week that a trend may be afoot, perhaps that one fatal case would have avoided dining out. Of course, it may have taken all week to identify the trend.

In the end, restaurant patrons just have to accept that there will always be some small risk in having others cook for them. Risks can be reduced by ordering cooked food over raw and checking out health inspection scores, but they can never be fully eliminated.

One dead, 11 sickened in possible E. coli outbreak [Tulsa World]
Canadian Officials Link 4th Death to Food-Poisoning Outbreak [Bloomberg]
Food Safety [USDA]

[Photo: Via Meepocity/flickr]

• "Where can I get a slice of pizza at 2AM?" [MP: Boston]

• "Is there any more vodka?" [MP: Chicago]

• "Why is this butter sculpture of Shawn Johnson so toothy?" [MP: Philadelphia]

• "Maybe we should all go to a tiki bar." [MP: San Francisco]

• "Why are Thursdays always so thirsty?" [MP: South Florida]

As a New Englander, we grew up thinking certain words were totally normal, only to have illusions shattered when we got to college. For example, a traffic circle is a "rotary" and a water fountain a "bubbler," and we honestly didn't know otherwise. Although we betray our Massachusetts roots with these words, our most pronounced regional words are definitely food terms, and the soda vs. pop vs. coke map that has been circulating this week has only fed into our latent stubbornness about the correct names for different foods.

First, this map. It shows "pop" dominating the Northwest and Midwest, "coke" being the preferred moniker in the South, and "soda" as the fave nomenclature in the Northeast and on the West Coast. (Soda is also the name of choice in all of the MenuPages cities. Fancy that!) The soft drink issue gets even fuzzier in the face of more obscure regional names. Supposedly, some people in New England call it "tonic" although we've never heard this. Ever. The Wikipedia page for soft drink naming conventions says that Southerners also call soda "drink" or "cold drink," which just seems confusing.

We're pretty sure that we're right about soda being soda, but that's hardly the last word in regional food names. New Englanders seem to be the most persnickety about their words, but the differences exist everywhere. One person's milkshake is another one's frappe, Floridians call Mahi Mahi "dolphin," and some people put sprinkles on their ice cream while others go for jimmies. Aside from soft drinks, the sandwich naming divide seems to be the biggest of all, with hoagie vs. sub duking it out for top dog. Again though, a Wikipedia page exists for the Submarine sandwich category, and it is all over the place. Hero, grinder, po' boy, Italian... and the list just goes on and on.

By the by, one last bit on the subject of the soft drink map: we're super curious about what's going on in sections of the map where one name is a complete outlier. What's going on with that one northwestern corner of Nebraska where they call it soda in a sea of pops? Why is it that the two opposing coasts are both holding down the "soda" fort? (And can we turn this political?)

[Photo: via sx70manipulator/Flickr]

A new Burger King ad campaign seems to have struck a chord of resentment with at least one critic, as it portrays a cow apparently furious to have not been turned into food. From AdFreak (Via Coldmud):

[T]his new BK ad falls flat by failing to address why a cow would be mad at someone for not killing and eating it. That's the kind of relationship I'd want broken if I were the cow. But then, what this guy does with livestock in his private life is none of our business.

Cows desperate to become BK hamburgers [AdFreak]

Do you have a spare $250 lying around? How about a decent knowledge of wines? Apparently that's all you need to get an Award of Excellence from Wine Spectator. No actual restaurant necessary. Robin Goldstein, author of The Wine Trials, made up a restaurant and sent in an application to the magazine, in a sort of experiment to see exactly how they come up with these awards.

As part of the research for an academic paper I’m currently working on about standards for wine awards, I submitted an application for a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence. I named the restaurant “Osteria L’Intrepido” (a play on the name of a restaurant guide series that I founded, Fearless Critic). I submitted the fee ($250), a cover letter, a copy of the restaurant’s menu (a fun amalgamation of somewhat bumbling nouvelle-Italian recipes), and a wine list.

Osteria L’Intrepido won the Award of Excellence, as published in print in the August 2008 issue of Wine Spectator. (Not surprisingly, the Osteria’s listing has been removed from Wine Spectator’s website since I posted this.) I presented this result at the meeting of the American Association of Wine Economists in Portland, Oregon, on Friday, August 15.

It’s troubling, of course, that a restaurant that doesn’t exist could win an Award of Excellence. But it’s also troubling that the award doesn’t seem to be particularly tied to the quality of the supposed restaurant’s “reserve wine list,” even by Wine Spectator’s own standards. Although the main wine list that I submitted was a perfectly decent selection from around Italy meeting the magazine’s numerical criteria, Osteria L’Intrepido’s “reserve wine list” was largely chosen from among some of the lowest-scoring Italian wines in Wine Spectator over the past few decades.

It's a busy morning here at MenuPages headquarters as we prepare to move our Rube Goldberg-style menu-updating contraption over to our new corporate home, New York magazine. You heard about that, right? They bought the company. We're actually really stoked.

But things are probably going to be in a bit of a tizzy around here for the rest of the week as we disassemble Bunsen burners, put the little bag over the chicken's head, pack up the golf-ball track, wind up the string, etc. The Magic Menu Machine will stay top secret because it has 1 million moving parts, which change every day.

As we curse ourselves for not labeling the 45-lb. bag of screws that holds our Magic Menu Machine together, we look forward to more communication from readers, restaurateurs, and other bloggers. In addition to the most complicated mechanical contraption in the world, what makes MenuPages special is your input, including ratings, reviews, comments, and tips. Thanks for your participation so far. We look forward to a future as a five-star (or 30-point, or 10-mustache) resource for all your dining-out needs.

[Photo: via Freshwater 2006]

Happy 115th birthday, awesome summer beverage! The root beer float was invented on this date in 1893 by Frank Wisner, owner of Cripple Creek Brewing Company in Colorado. Legend has it that one moonlight night, he looked out over Cow Mountain and, to him, the scene reminded him of a big scoop of vanilla ice cream “floating on top of a black, Cow Mountain.” The name of the drink was shortened to "black cow," and the rest was history.

In honor of its quindecentennial (real word!), a bevy of information on all things root-beer-float-tastic:

• Step aside, William Carlos Williams. Three methods for eating a root beer float. The Melting method, the Half-Melted With Spoon method, and the Backwards method. [WikiHow]

• On June 19, 1999, the A&W Root Beer stand in Lodi, California became set the world record for the Largest Root Beer Float at 2562.5 Gallons. [A&W]

• In 2003, Coca-Cola launched Barq's Floatz, a vanilla-spiked offshoot of their Barq's root beer brand, that was supposed to mimic the experience of a soda fountain float. It's no longer available, even though it apparently tasted pretty darn good. [BevNet]

• There are over 2500 brands of commercially produced root beer. This page lists the vast majority of them. [Root Beer World]

• In the late 1800s, The Women's Christian Temperance Union launched a campaign against root beer because it had the word "beer" in it. Root beer magnate Charles Hires had an independent laboratory confirm that "beer" was purely a descriptive term, and the ladies were mollified. [Eat Your History]

• Probably the best homemade making-a-root-bear-float music video of all time, to Tone Loc's Funky Cold Medina. Not that it's a crowded field. [YouTube]

• The Fizz Cup is a plastic thingaroo that you attach to the top of your bottle of root beer (or other soda) and fill with ice cream, in order to make every sip a perfect combo of float flavors. [Gizmodo]

• The "cream" part of the ice cream loves to foam up, so it is advised that makers of root beer floats (and any other type of ice cream soda) add the ice cream last. [We Figured This Out Ourself As A Child]

A 1939 L.A. Times article urging parents to try the novel dessert idea of a root beer float. "Children, especially, are fond of these "floats" which may be concocted in many flavors"!!!!! [L.A. Times (sub req'd)]

[Photo: Root beer float, via jonolist's Flickr]

Have you noticed your grocery bills reaching skyward along with your gas bills? In these tough economic times you've got to economize, and that means eating more lobster. Sorry, but you'll have to buckle down and do it.

An article yesterday in Slate takes a look at why lobster, one of the classic luxury goods, is in the middle of a price slump, especially compared to staples such as grain, meat and olive tapenade. Turns out — at least for coastal denizens — the ugly, delicious sea-cockroaches are kind of the original locavore food:

What explains this crustacean mystery? Food inflation derives from several sources. The price of food can be driven upward by consumer and commercial demand, by speculation in the futures markets, and by producers successfully passing on the higher costs they incur (for gas, fertilizer, labor, processing, packaging, distribution) to buyers. The longer and more complex the supply chain (i.e., olives that are picked in Tunisia, shipped to Italy to be turned into tapenade, and then shipped to Dean & DeLuca to be turned into hors d'oeuvres for yuppies), the greater the opportunities for marking up prices and passing along costs.

Ok, so we don't all live in New England, or even near an ocean, but the economic logic driving this anomaly may just transfer over to other hyper-local products. In San Francisco this winter, barring another oil spill, Dungeness fans could be in relatively flush shape, financially, as could stone crab fans in Florida. Inland cities, obviously, don't have the luxury of dockside seafood sales, but according to this article in the Chicago Tribune, they have fun playing at lobster fishing anyway.

Meanwhile, if you're lucky enough to live in an area where these crustaceans are cheap and plentiful, you've got to get to work. We're nearing the end of both cookout season and New England lobster season, so if you haven't thrown some lobster on the grill, maybe this weekend is the time to do so. We found a really easy recipe on Barbecue Web if you want to give it a shot.

The Great Lobster Mystery [Slate]
Lobster is meaty subject [Chicago Tribune]
Lobster Clam Shrimp Recipe

[Photo: Lobsters for sale at Woodman's, of Essex, Mass. via Paul Keleher/flickr]

According to Jane McEwen, the executive director of International Packaged Ice Association, ice is water’s “sister product.”

As a sibling, ice is both mutable and fickle. “There are different forms of ice,” Ms. McEwen explained, and while every cube of ice has the same essential end point — and a purpose little understood in countries like, say, England or France — its use can be manipulated, ice experts say, to improve the quality of the drink it cools. Thus, there is fragmented ice (soda fountain drinks), nugget and cube ice (mixed drinks) and ice that is shaved. There is ice with dimpled ends that is ideal for chewing. There is ice manufactured using patented Japanese methods for eliminating the air bubbles that cloud a cocktail, inhibiting it from becoming a beautiful elixir, frigid and mystically clear.

If you happen to be in the Big Apple, you may want to sample Tailor’s two-inch cubes, which fit perfectly inside a rocks glass and look like miniature works of art. They can be purchased at a mere $15. (Firewater is, of course, included.) Eben Freeman, the bartender at Tailor, is an old pro at re-inventing the quotidian, even the very ordinary and unremarkable icicle.

I Like My Ice Chilled Just So [New York Times]
Drink: Eben Freeman is a Magical Mixologist [New York Post]
Tailor [MenuPages]
Tailor [Official Site]

[Photo: Via Tailor Official Site]

Remember some time ago when we wondered here about eating penguin meat? Turns out it's illegal and, according to the couple of accounts within easy reach of a Google search, disgusting. But it turns out another animal you've probably seen most often in zoos and picture books might actually be a promising new food source, if you can get past the idea of dining on Kanga and/or Roo.

Serious Eats yesterday linked to a BBC story about an Australian scientist making the case for farming kangaroos as a type of environmentally sustainable livestock:

The methane gas produced by sheep and cows through belching and flatulence is more potent than carbon dioxide in the damage it can cause to the environment.

But kangaroos produce virtually no methane because their digestive systems are different.

MenuPages' very own Carolina Bolado said she tried the meat once at a game dinner, "served rare, with a mild curry sauce. it was my favorite of the night... gamey, but not tough. Very smooth."

But some on the Serious Eats comments board seemed creeped out. One commenter said that from an Australian perspective, eating kangaroo would be like, "an American tucking into a nice roast Bald Eagle." They raised an interesting point, noting that many other meats have names different from the animal (like beef, venison, pork), but kangaroo does not.

Most of the animals we eat regularly don't appear too often in zoos, books, cartoon shows or as stuffed toys. Since kangaroos do, it may be a tough task to get past the cuteness, mentally. Imagine having to explain to your 5-year-old that the meat on the table comes from the same animals as those beloved Winnie the Pooh characters. But the solution does make a lot of sense, darn it! Sometimes practicality can be a tough sell.

Eat Kangaroo, Save The Earth? [Serious Eats]
Eat kangaroo to 'save the planet' [BBC]

[Photos: Fresh pasta with kangaroo and semi-sundried tomatoes via Lachlan Hardy/flickr; Kangaroos via spaceodissey/flickr]

Talk about late to the party! Well, let's just call ourselves fashionable. We found this post from last March (!) on the North by Northwestern website, which is like 1,000 years old in blog time, but it's so perfect, we have to link it here. Check it out, at least one person's (perfectly reasonable) list of the Top 10 Food-Centric Videos. We'll give you no. 5, the California Raisins doing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, cause it's really weird and you probably haven't thought about these guys for a while. If you want the rest, click the link.

The top ten food-centric music videos [North By Northwestern]

• We're awfully sweet on martinis these days [MP: Boston]

• Ice cream made with liquid nitrogen sounds like it might be more fun to talk about than to eat. [MP: Chicago]

• Hitachino Owl beer: sweet! Its increasing scarcity: not so sweet. [MP: Philadelphia]

• Go nuts for doughnuts! [MP: San Francisco]

• A collection of 4000 plus menus from around the world must be some pretty good reading. [MP: South Florida]

Exciting news, America (specifically Chicago-region)! As MP Chicago reported, Kanye West is opening a Fatburger franchise in Chicago and environs. The first KW Foods LLC-owned Fatburger is slated to open next month, and will be the first of ten.

We are happy for Chicago (by all accounts, Fatburger tastes awesome), but even happier for Kanye who gets to join a vaunted rank occupied by Jay-Z, Ludacris, P. Diddy, among others. We're not talking about album sales here, or Grammys, sneaker endorsements, or novelty Christmas albums. No. We mean that of rappers who own dining establishments.

As it turns out, Kanye is not the first hip-hop celebrity to own a Fatburger. Alledgedly, rappers E-40 and Queen Latifah both own franchises here in the US, and Pharrell owns one in China. After the jump, more rapper restaurateurs.

Continue reading "Kanye West To Join Rarefied League Of Hip Hop FatBurger Owners" »

We got a little over-excited during this morning's FYI when we discovered that Julia Child had been a spy for the United States' Office of Secret Services — the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency — during World War II. Come to find out that's old news, but what's new is the opening of her service record, along with the identities and records of her OSS colleagues:

The OSS files offer details about other agents, including Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, baseball player Moe Berg, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and film actor Sterling Hayden.

Other notables identified in the files include John Hemingway, son of author Ernest Hemingway; Kermit Roosevelt, son of President Theodore Roosevelt; and Miles Copeland, father of Stewart Copeland, drummer for the band The Police.

She started out at OSS Headquarters in Washington, working directly for General William J. Donovan, the leader of OSS. Working as a research assistant in the Secret Intelligence division, Julia typed up thousands of names on little white note cards, a system that was needed to keep track of officers during the days before computers. Although her encounters with the General were minor, she recalled later in life that his “aura” always remained with her.

Julia then worked with the OSS Emergency Sea Rescue Equipment Section, where she helped develop shark repellent. The repellent was a critical tool during WWII, and was coated on explosives that were targeting German U-boats. Before the introduction of the shark repellent, curious sharks would sometimes set off the explosives when they bumped into them.

From 1944-1945, Julia was sent overseas and worked in Ceylon, present day Sri Lanka, and Kunming, China. During these last two years in the OSS, Julia served as Chief of the OSS Registry. Julia -- having top security clearances -- knew every incoming and outgoing message that passed throughout her office, as her Registry was serving all the intelligence branches. During her time in Ceylon, Julia handled highly classified papers that dealt with the invasion of the Malay Peninsula. Julia was fascinated with the work, even when there were moments of danger.

The Lady Was a Spy [NPR]
A Look Back ... Julia Child: Life Before French Cuisine [CIA]
Julia Child, spy? [Chicago Tribune/wire report]

[Photo: via Wikimedia]

Insane. I cannot fathom putting away that much food on a daily basis. The man is eating for four (or more) adults, which naturally makes him a legend in Ann Arbor restaurants. Just imagine the terror in a restaurateur's eyes as he watches Phelps approach an all-you-can-eat buffet. Or perhaps those have been quietly removed from menus in Ann Arbor since his arrival.

If you care to see his daily diet in more detail, check out the graphic from today's New York Post after the jump:

Continue reading "What It Takes To Feed An Olympic Champion" »

It's nice when an organization blows off its embarrassing stereotype. You know who could use a little of that jelly? People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. They don't like fur and they don't like meat and they have this reputation for being the kind of people that will get offended by just about anything that once had a face and now does not. Who wants those people around?

But this nice little story about a recent PETA campaign against cockroach eating at Six Flags amusement parks sounds so polite and good-hearted, it definitely deserves some coverage. Granted, we got the story from the PETA website, and Six Flags wasn't available to corroborate it this morning, but it seems reliable enough, and so polite:

After receiving a letter and several e-mails from PETA, the company has decided not to repeat last year's live-cockroach-eating challenge as part of its Halloween "Fright Fest." PETA explained that encouraging teens and others to cause pain and death to even the smallest life form as part of a promotion can desensitize them to suffering in general.

"We're on to other Fright Fest events that do not include any living creatures!" wrote Six Flags Public Relations Manager Sue Carpenter...

To show its thanks, PETA has sent Carpenter a box of vegan chocolate roaches.

Six Flags Scraps 'Fright Fest' Live-Cockroach-Eating Challenge After PETA Plea [PETA]

[Photo: via University of California at Davis, Department of Entomology]

If you think back to long ago, when the only thing sweeter than a cherry Icee was an afternoon of Rampage and ski-ball, you'll probably find some memories forged in the hellish din of a Chuck E. Cheese or Showbiz Pizza Place.

While you may not have known it then, your parents were suffering; SUFFERING, for most of that time. It was not just the rubbery pie and the chaotic frenzy of children hepped up on sugar and video games that tortured them. There was also the cloying animatronic stage show that probably stood neck hairs on end and drove pupils unnaturally large with budding insanity. You didn't know, though, you were, what, 6? You probably liked that stupid furry robot band.

And you know what? You still can. Because some brilliant nut-job (actually a group of nut-jobs, it seems) has bought up a whole band's worth of the old Rock-afire Explosion animatronics and reprogrammed them to sing a bunch of not-for-kids tunes, including Usher's Love In This Club and Crash Test Dummies' Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm (worst. title. EVER, btw, but a pretty good cover).

Seems there's actually going to be a documentary about this phenomenon airing soon, so we'll think about keeping you posted. In the meantime, the Program Blue videos are great, especially Love in This Club. Check this out:

Program Blue [Official Site]
Chuck E. Cheese [Official Site]
Showbiz Pizza Place [Official Site]

Remember a little while ago when we got all huffy about the trend of bacon in and on everything? There was that bacon bra that Serious Eats got all gaga over, and of course there is Hats of Meat, which doesn't confine itself to bacon.

Well, all pork products aside, there is something really fun about edible clothing, probably because it's so gross, but, you know, right there, just begging for you to taste it and get body hairs stuck between your teeth. And today, Serious Eats came back on itself and showed us the tofu bra, for the vegetarians.

So we thought this would be a good time to see what other food clothes are out there, underwear and otherwise. We found a bunch of good stuff, including this cupcake dress (via Picture This):

More after the jump...

Continue reading "Eat The Fall Fashions" »

A marginally scientific story on Forbes.com last week ranked the United States' 15 hardest-drinking cities. MenuPages is proud to boast two markets in the top five: San Francisco, at number three, and Chicago, at number five.

However, as glad as we are to have brought home a couple of "Lushies" (MP Chicago's imaginary award, not Forbes'), we have issues with the process by which the team at Forbes arrived at its results:

The remaining 33 cities were then ranked based on their residents' responses to three different questions on the [Center for Disease Control's 2007 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Survey]: whether they had at least one drink of alcohol within the past 30 days; whether men had more than two drinks per day or women one drink per day; and whether they had five or more drinks on one occasion. In each case, higher-ranking cities reported larger percentages of their population answering in the affirmative.

To determine the 15 hardest-drinking cities, we added up the rankings from each category, counting the "five or more drinks on one occasion" question twice, since it most directly addresses the question of problem drinking. We then sorted that sum into our final ranks.

Basically, according to this one set of fuzzy research, San Francisco is not as boozy as first-place winner Austin or runner-up Milwaukee, but it is more sauced than honorable mention Providence (fourth) or Chicago. Boston came in ninth after a three-way tie for eighth between Seattle, Cleveland and St. Louis. Philadelphia and South Florida didn't make the list, though Florida was represented by Jacksonville (14th) and Pennsylvania got on the board with Pittsburgh (11th).

America's Hard-Drinking Cities [Forbes.com]

[Photo: Manhattans at San Francisco's Vesuvio via bradleyjames/flickr]

So, you want to eat better, do you? More fruits and vegetables, more whole grains, and less fat, oil, sugar, and salt, right? Well, that's going to mean discipline, and learning to appreciate and crave the flavor of a ripe apple or a bowl of museli over that pile of disco fries.

Yeah, freaking right. That's why there's science. We don't need to change our behavior through such outmoded methods as willpower and strength of character. According to the Telegraph UK (Via Coldmud,) we'll soon be able to use chemicals to do it for us:

The new research is focused on compounds called flavour modulators which, when added to food in tiny amounts, stimulate specific pathways into the brain that trigger a response normally associated with eating tasty food.

Most humans are genetically disposed to crave fattening food because, for millions of years, it was in short supply. But the current over-abundance of calorie-laden food puts current generations at risk of obesity.

But seriously, these additives are really creepy. The Telegraph compares the effort, with a straight face, to, "cruder attempts to change eating patterns by adding child-friendly flavourings such as chocolate to unpopular vegetables." Give it a second thought and imagine just how it might feel to chomp on a piece of fatty, rich broccoli. Ugh, it might be pretty darned gross.

Maybe the answer isn't to change the flavor of broccoli and friends, but to use those veggies in concert with less saintly ingredients, giving the veggies first chair; like our old pal broccoli dressed up with a shred or two of cheddar. Perhaps healthy eating is less about discipline and more about variety. And that doesn't mean the variety of flavors with which you can impregnate leafy greens. We'll say it again: Gross.

Healthier eating tastes better thanks to a clever trick [Telegraph UK]

[Photo: Romanescue broccoli via Moria/flickr]

Apparently there is some sporting event getting underway over in China that is so popular, NBC is covering it.

But before the Olympic athletes can get started with their sweating and huffing, there must first be a whole mess of pomp and circumstance. You'll probably watch the opening ceremony tonight, or else you'll Tivo it and keep it in your DVR forever because you are an uncultured boor if you erase it.

In addition to the big public ceremony, of course, there's one hell of a party for the heads of state. Unlike the recent G8 conference (perhaps because of it?) the menu for China's kickoff banquet hasn't made the rounds of the internet yet, but Xinhua News has the summary (all spellings [sic]):

The "royal lantern" assorted cold dishes, including crystal shrimp, beancurd sheet fish rolls, goose liver pate, leafmustard boiled with oil, and a thousand-layer beancurd cake, were served on a traditional Chinese royal lantern-shaped plate.

Specially-designed "Bird's Nest" seasonal vegetables have been served due to the special moment of Olympics, and the steak on lotus leaf and cod in soy sauce have combined Chinese and Western characteristics together.

Also on the banquet menu was the matsutake soup in "melon cup".

The guests were also served with a refreshment and fruit icecream.

Chinese-style food served to dignitaries for Beijing Olympics [Xinghua]
Athletes Fear Chinese Food Will Spoil Olympic Run [ABC News]

[Photo: topgold/flickr]

• Nothing hits the spot on a muggy August night like a good margarita. [MP: Boston]

• Fresh or frozen, fish is the best. [MP: Chicago]

• It's the most wonderful time of the year for farms. [MP: Philadelphia]

• Are you counting calories and pennies? A farmers market could be your new best friend. [MP: San Francisco]

• Limoncello popsicle martinis? YES. [MP: South Florida]

We finally gave in to the massive hype surrounding Mad Men and watched all of season one over the course of last weekend. Although we were stubborn to the end, it turns out that everything we'd read about it is true. The acting is superlative, the sets, costumes, and historical references completely impeccable, and the whole tone of the show really captures the tense, feverish excitement of the advertising industry in 1960.

What we weren't expecting, but were totally taken with, was the incredible attention to food and dining in 1960. Once it hit us that food comes up constantly on the show, we started scribbling down notes about everything they put in their mouths. (Dirty! But true.) After the jump, the Mad Men diet.

Continue reading "The Food of Mad Men" »

You may not actually kill for fried chicken, but at least one guy was willing to take a murder rap for, among other things, a big pile of KFC and Popeye's.

An AP story on CNN today reports that Tremayne Durham, 33, of New York City, confessed to killing a former employee of an ice cream company after the company wouldn't give Durham a refun