That's pretty much all of you, no? Does anyone really dislike olive oil? Perhaps not everyone is so fanatic about it that they'd go to the International Olive Oil Fest this weekend in Fort Lauderdale. We're not sure how large the event is, but we imagine that it's a good opportunity to sample some interesting olive oils from small producers around the world. The website also promises wine tastings and food samples.

In terms of entertainment, it sounds like there will be plenty, from flamenco guitars to belly dancers to opera singers. If you prefer dancing, the Havana Soul Orchestra will be there also to play some mambo, salsa and big band. Several movies will also be shown as part of the event inside Cinema Paradiso. We're intrigued by the olive pit spitting contest, in which Italian rules apply. If anyone can shed light on what exactly these Italian rules are, we'd very much appreciate it.

Tickets are $15 per day in advance or $20 on the day of the event. Children under 12 are free; teenagers will cost you $5.

International Olive Oil Fest [Official Site]

Photo: sweaty photos [Flickr]

The legal status of absinthe in this country is still kind of up in the air, but we now have two producers of the spirit: St. George's Distillery in Alameda, Calif., which began selling it last December, and now the newcomer Sirene Absinthe Verte from North Shore Distillery just north of Chicago. The latter hit the market just this month after debuting at WhiskyFest. Chicagoist has some tasting notes from the event:

The 110 proof white absinthe has a sharp, herbal bite to it. the 124 proof green absinthe is, oddly, smoother than the white. It also has an amazing mouthfeel. With absinthe shaping up as the year's new hot spirit, this should sell well.

Until just last year, the importation of absinthe was prohibited, and the only way to get it was to very carefully hide it away in your luggage and hope that no one in customs felt the need to verify your declaration. In 2007, a few brands were approved for sale, but they had to meet the FDA's ban of thujone in consumable products.

Thujone's the bad guy here, the one that's been blamed for all of the evils supposedly brought about by absinthe consumption. It can wreak havoc on your brain and nervous system if consumed in large quantities. But by the time you've drunk enough absinthe, which can be up to 75 percent alcohol, to experience any effects from the thujone, you're dead from alcohol poisoning.

We're not exactly running out immediately to try absinthe — we've never been particularly fond of anise-flavored foods — but we love the ceremony involved with drinking absinthe. The special spoons, the cube of sugar, and the precise way of pouring the ice cold water over it.

Introducing Sirene Absinthe Verte [North Shore Distillery]
St. George Spirits [Official Site]
Absinthe [Wikipedia]
Sorry, Absinthe Trippers: Scientists Say You're Just Really Drunk [Wired]
Chicagoist at WhiskeyFest [Chicagoist]

Photo: diana.lundin [Flickr]

It didn't take long, once the new Grand Theft Auto IV was released yesterday, for foodie/gamer/blogger Adam Kuban to take a virtual tour of the game's eateries. He found that many of the spots bear a striking resemblance to actual New York establishments. That's not surprising, as Liberty City is basically supposed to be a virtual New York.

What is surprising is the level of detail with which the game portrays its fictional Big Apple. Unlike previous versions, which included major landmarks, such as the Golden Gate Bridge and Capitol building in GTA: San Andreas, GTA IV gets right into the neighborhoods to portray actual local foodie faves. They've also got hilarious take-offs of other local institutions such as the musical Banging On Trashcan Lids For An Hour (Stomp) Check out the screenshots over on New York Eats.

It's just too bad the virtual world doesn't (yet) include smell and taste. Of course, that would make games such as Cooking Mama a lot more fun, too.

The Real-Life Restaurants in New York City from 'Grand Theft Auto 4' [New York Eats]
GTA: IV [Official Site]
Cooking Mama [Official Site]
Adam Kuban [Wikipedia]

Yes indeed, South Florida has wine country. They may not grow grapes, but Schnebly Redland's Winery bottles up the tropical essence of South Florida in an array of unique flavors. It’s well-known that tropical heat and humidity are death to the fragile chardonnay, pinot grigio or even the warmth-loving malbec, but they are just the thing when growing passionfruit, carambola, mango and guava.

Owners Peter and Denisse Schnebly met while working in the fruit import/export business. Looking to take advantage of all the b-fruits (fruits that due to some cosmetic blemish never make it to retail markets), the Schneblys decided to try their hand at making wine. The result is a unique South Florida product. The winery currently offers tastings ($5) seven days a week and tours ($7) on Saturday and Sunday. Although the winery started out in a double-wide trailer, today it has expanded into a sprawling complex of interconnected chickees interspersed with waterfalls and pavilions crafted out of the limestone bedrock. Following the Schneblys’ philosophy of utilizing natural and organic processes, the ponds and limestone waterfalls are built using local materials and labor. The tropical fruit wines can be served as table wines, especially the oak-aged carambola wine or the lychee wine, or after dinner drinks, like the fragrant guava and mango. The Schneblys tropical fruit wines can be found at grocery stores throughout South Florida, but for the full experience you have to walk through the bee-humming passion fruit vines and see the fermenting process at work.

Schnebly Redland's Winery [Official Site]

You know what marginal group of tens of millions of people are being put at risk for poor nutrition by the global surge in food prices? American's school children! Back in the salad days of 2006 when money grew on houses, glowing accounts abounded on plans to revamp the way kids eat at school, trading the fattening and soulless frozen pizzas and burgers that fueled the childhood obesity crisis (remember that?) for the new religion of local/seasonal/organic.

Now that reality has set in, schools are swapping fresh for canned, seeing higher demand for subsidized lunches, and wondering how they'll cope with 30% to 50% cost increases while the federal per-meal subsidy remains static at an unrealistic 23 cents. Probably not all that well! Our youngest citizens have been historically poor budgetary advocates for themselves, so when their slice of the pie shrinks, that's generally the end of the story. Federal law will see to it that students are provided with a minimum number of calories each day, but that's also true for prisoners.

In this rapidly shifting environment for school meals, you have to wonder, just what are the children eating? Thanks to the wonders of the internet, hundreds of cafeteria menus are available for our inspection. Here's a sampling from around the country of what's being served for lunch today:

• Wicomico County, Maryland — Pork dippers with dipping sauce and dinner roll or hot dog on bun and potato rounds, cole slaw, pears

• Fulton County, Illinois — tortellini, pork tenderloin/bun, baked potato, salad bar, uncrustable PBJ, garlic bread, tossed salad, pineapple chunks, shape up in cup

• Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin — Grilled cheese, chicken noodle soup, raw vegetables and dip, mandarin oranges

• Pinellas County, Florida — Cheeseburger, Cuban pork with yellow rice, cheese stick munch and dip, potato wedges, beans, broccoli, Cuban toast

• Tate County, Mississippi — Salisbury Steak w/Gravy, Baked Chicken Nuggets, Fruit and Yogurt Salad, Ham & Cheese on Bun, Black-Eyed Peas, Straight Cut French Fries, Seasoned Cabbage, Chilled Peach Slices, Mixed Fruit, Fruit Juice, Central MS Cornbread, Rice, Saltine Crackers.

Illuminating! Almost everyone is eating pig products for lunch, and there also seems to be a preponderance of dippable items. Regional themes are clearly in play, like the Cuban toast in Florida and the intriguing "Central MS Cornbread" in Mississippi. It's heartening to see that, however unhealthy the dishes and low quality the ingredients, there's still a nod to culinary heterogeneity. Every school seems to be offering fruit and vegetables in some (unexciting) form, but that's a legal mandate; and besides, one of the articles mentioned that broccoli is now cost-competitive with flour!

But even as our school lunch program is stymied by high costs and crappy product, at least we don't have massive food poisoning outbreaks at our nation's cafeterias! For now, anyway.

Economic crunch seen in school lunch rooms [Bradenton Herald]
Food Crisis Forcing Cafeteria Managers To Try New Menus [AHN]
Food prices take bite out of school lunch menus [Star-Ledger]

[Photo: pingnews/flickr]

• Jennifer Aniston and John Mayer were spotted sharing food recently at Michael's Genuine Food & Drink. We're inclined to agree with cJ that sharing food there doesn't necessarily mean "date." [consumableJoy]

• In case you were looking for a British food market in South Florida, here are a few ideas. [Chowhound]

• Artfish on the Mile gets a couple of rave reviews. [Chowhound]

• Here's an idea for Mother's Day: strawberry squares. Those look so tasty! [Daily Cocaine]

With grain prices skyrocketing, corn doing double duty between the gas tank and the table, and beef still reeling from that gigantic recall back in February, the American food industry seems strained, to put it lightly. This might be a good time for a new, more streamlined meat product to start making inroads in the market.

And, according to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article re-printed in Restaurants and Institutions, that's just what's happening with goat meat. Would you call it the soccer of meats? Maybe:

"It's the No. 1 consumed meat in the world," said Scott Hollis, a goat specialist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "It's very popular — except here."

Goat is especially popular with Muslim, Hispanic and some Asian communities, particularly around certain holidays, such as Greek Easter, which was Sunday, Cinco de Mayo, and the end of Ramadan, which comes in the fall.

Until recently, though, it was difficult to find American goat meat. If shoppers found goat in stores, it was likely to be imported frozen from New Zealand or Australia, the world's largest exporter of goat meat.

That is starting to change as American farmers get into the meat goat biz — which, as it turns out, doesn't require all that much.

Goats aren't expensive to buy and don't need nearly the land that larger livestock does. That means more small-scale "hobby farmers" have gotten into the business as word of new demand has spread.

While goat meat burgers may not appear on the menu at McDonalds anytime soon, we're glad to see a more worldly, eco-friendly meat treat gaining popularity. A brief internal poll revealed MP staffers overall like the stuff in curries, Jamaican jerk-style, in burritos and whole on the bone. MP Chicago editor Adam Peltz remembered a particularly transcendent cut he ate in Lima: "so i got this amazing leg of kid — so succulent and flavorful for juvenile meat."

As for us, eight years of vegetarianism stunted our meat discovery growth, but just as it is gaining fans in the American marketplace, goat is on its way to the top of our meats-to-try list. Now, if we could just find a local restaurant that serves the stuff...

THE OTHER RED MEAT? Goats find way to U.S. plates [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]
The American Meat Goat Association [Official Site]
Largest Recall of Ground Beef is Ordered [NY Times]
Photo: Mark Verner [Flickr]

Baleen at Grove Isle is known for fine dining and spectacular views of Biscayne Bay. For those looking for a nice place to see and be seen after work on Friday nights, the Monkey Bar is just the thing. The well-stocked bar offers a variety of top-shelf and harder-to-find gins, vodkas, and shares the restaurant’s cellars. We ordered drinks at the bar then took them outside to enjoy the view. The waitress brought out wasabi peas, mixed nuts and red chili peanuts as we sipped our beverages by the fire pit and scoped out the Macarthur Causeway. She also brought out a bar menu with an array of seafood and land lubber offerings. The Kobe beef sliders, three mouth-watering mini-burgers with griddled onions and boursin cheese, are definitely a better deal for your money than the shrimp tempura basket, although the avocado wasabi dipping sauce is surprisingly delicious. The Baleen Burger (pictured) is a sophisticated take on the bacon cheeseburger, bringing together applewood smoked bacon, American cheddar and Black Angus beef.

Baleen [MenuPages]
Baleen [Official Site]

• Rice: food crisis caused by 1) demand 2) distribution difficulties/costs 3) biofuels [IndiaTImes]
• UN: don't forget about commodities speculators! (and the craptastic dollar) [CanadianPress]
• Senate wants to add $200m to the $350m already requisitioned for food aid [NYTimes]
• Following Mars-Wrigley's megadeal, small candy members disheartened [Tribune]
• PM of Thailand, a former cooking show host, to personally make dinner for PM of Myanmar [AP]

It's time, folks: Take a long lunch, get your car/bus/train fare together, buy a magazine or two for the wait. Ben and Jerry's Free Cone Day is tomorrow, and the lines will be phoenomenal!

Nah, we're just being dramatic. It's great. Ben and Jerry's feel-good ice cream company has been giving out free cones since it's one-year anniversary in 1979. Now, on it's dirty 30th birthday, the secret has somehow gotten out. Expect a bit of a wait, but it just may be worth it. You can find participating stores here, and a fun little B&J history lesson here.

No, they're not bribing us with any more free ice cream than you get.

Ben and Jerry's [Official Site]
Photo: Cresny [Flickr] Free Cone Day 2007

Add this shocker to the list of things we have in common with Drew Carey: A love of bacon-wrapped hot dogs. During our long tenure in San Francisco, we developed a late-night affection for the singular street-treats while stumbling home from bars in the Mission district.

The pork masterpieces are available from carts in many U.S. cities, as well as all over Mexico, so we know it's not just a local cuisine. Who wouldn't want a grilled, bacon-wrapped hot dog smothered in grilled peppers, onions, salsa, crema and sometimes even guacamole?

For starters, the Los Angeles Health Department, according to this fine piece of reporting by Drew Carey for Reason.tv. Take a look at the saga of an intrepid street vendor and her struggle to give the people what they want. And then try to walk away from this and not stop for a package of hot dogs and one of bacon on the way home. Bet you can't eat just one!

Food Fight: Battle of the Bacon Dogs [Reason.tv]
In Videos: Drew Carey in 'Food Fight: Battle of the Bacon Dogs' [Required Eating]

At the Fruit and Spice Park in Homestead, six dollars gets you a trip around the world and a taste of the freshest possible exotic fruit. Located at the corner of 248th street and 187th avenue, the county owned park was founded in 1944 by the Miami-Dade County Parks and Recreation Department to promote knowledge of local and exotic produce that grows in tropical climates. The result is a 35-acre property that offers a feast for the eyes and the taste buds. Friendly and knowledgeable park staff takes guests on a guided tram tour through sections of African, South Asian, and Caribbean botanicals. Guests can roam the parks on their own, but without much knowledge about the Dr. Seuss-like flora, we opted for the 45-minute tour. While on the tour, our guide explained the life-cycle of bananas, the growing season for Thai garlic, and the secrets of the calabash. She also showed us how to harvest mulberries, jaboticaba, wild Everglades tomatoes, Key apples, and even nasturtium flowers. By the mid-point of the tour, we were well over our five-a-day quota. We particularly loved the super sweet mulberries, the creamy jaboticaba that grows off the branches of the tree (pictured at left), and the spicy nasturtium flowers. The Australian section can be reached on foot, just beyond the baobab trees in Africa, but we decided to continue our adventure at the gift shop where samples of all the parks produce are free for the tasting and locally made jams, jellies, and spreads are available for purchase. If the trip inspires you to plant a little bit of Africa, Australia or the Caribbean in your backyard, the Fruit and Spice Park offers a list of nurseries that carry these exotics.

Fruit and Spice Park [Official Site]

• UN calls meeting with 20 organizations to strategize about food crisis [BBCNews]
• Rice rationing in Vietnam much more serious than Costco's fake rationing [Reuters]
• Sweetened up by Warren Buffett, Mars buys Wrigley's for $23 billion [NYTimes]
• Fat activists working to pass size non-discrimination laws [Tribune]
• 400 lb man slims to 300 lbs in jail; files lawsuit claiming malnutrition [AP]

•The new Clover machines make sure that Starbucks coffee doesn't taste like soil. [MP: Boston]
•The last paragraph of this post contains probably the raunchiest joke ever made on MenuPages. [MP: Chicago]
•No matter how much you love Obama, it's probably unsanitary to purchase his half-eaten breakfast. [MP: Philadelphia]
•OMG, San Francisco has a chain called Pizza Orgasmica! [MP: San Francisco]
•Eating on the sand seems precarious. What if the wind blew it into your food? [MP: South Florida]

America's most exclusive restaurant? It's not what you think. Not Le Cirque or Momofuku Ko or the French Laundry. Nope, the single-table Talula's Table, in tiny, historic Kennett Square, PA, about an hour outside Philadelphia, only accepts reservations one year in advance, and you have to be damned lucky to get one at all.

An upscale market by day, they convert to a restaurant after hours and do one seating a night for their renowned tasting menu. NPR reporter Alex Chadwick visited recently and reports:

A single farm table becomes center stage for one of the country's most exclusive dining experiences. A dozen lucky people gather around it to share an eight-course meal that runs from egg custard with Jonah crab to osso bucco made from pork, all prepared with local ingredients by husband-and-wife proprietors Bryan Sikora and Aimee Olexy.

Because of the restaurant's popularity and its single nightly seating, [proprietor Aimee] Olexy has devised a special system for selecting diners. Though the phone often begins ringing with requests at sunrise, she does not pick it up until 7 a.m. on the dot. The caller is then offered a reservation exactly one year later. Requests for earlier or later are denied, as are attempts to play the VIP card to skirt the procedure entirely.

Talula's: The Toughest Reservation in the U.S.? [NPR: Day to Day]
One restaurant, one table, and a year-long waiting list [Slashfood]
Talula's Table [Official Site]
Photo lifted from Hypsography

We were first introduced to lomo saltado by a Peruvian-Japanese woman who gave us a wonderful recipe for it. The dish, popular all over Peru, is a stir fry of beef, garlic, onions and peppers topped with French fries. The particular version of the dish featured above is from Aromas del Peru. Here are a few other places where you can try it:

• Chalan on the Beach comes well-recommended by MenuPages users. The menu is very seafood-heavy, but the restaurant features a $10 lomo saltado entree. Pair that with a ceviche, and that could be a pretty satisfying meal.

• Las Totoritas on NW 36th St serves a $8.85 lomo saltado. They also have an appetizer of "leche de tigre," which is described as a glass of ceviche juice. We're intrigued.

• At La Granja Parrilla in Hollywood, you can get a single portion of lomo saltado for $11.95 or a family-sized portion for $29.

Aromas del Peru [Official Site]
Chalan on the Beach [MenuPages]
Las Totoritas [MenuPages]
La Granja Parrilla [MenuPages]

Photo: Masala Cha [Flickr]

• The new Raja's Indian Cuisine location inside the Flagler Street Food Court features the same owners and the same food, just a slightly larger homeless population. [Chowhound]

• Sara tells us about the $22 lunch at China Grill. [All Purpose Dark]

• Dining with kids can be an adventure! L2M had success with the under-4 set at Oasis Cafe, Jaguar and Havana Harry's. [Spangdish]

• If you're looking for good recommendations for Key Biscayne, here's a good place to start. [Chowhound]

• Ban Ki-moon laments global food crisis for the bazillionth time [AP]
• The stalled farm bill contains much-needed relief for poor families [Tribune]
• Reuters has two detailed writeups on the food crisis that review the causes and recount the latest woes, of which there are many [Reuters, Reuters]
• Our pretend cousin Nelson Peltz just bought Wendy's for $2.3b [NYTimes]

Psst. Ever wanted to have you own hot dog cart? Maybe you've entertained dreams of making your own dirty water dogs. Maybe you've read A Confederacy of Dunces one time too many. Or maybe you're just a rich person with too much free time on your hands.

Either way, Hammacher Schlemmer is here to help. We just got word that their catalog now features an "Authentic New York Hot Dog Vendor Cart. Here's the word from HM:

"Made of durable food-grade 18-gauge stainless steel, the cart rolls on two 20" pneumatic wheels and a locking caster with two handles that provide easy maneuvering. It has three removable 360" cu. stainless steel steamer trays that can each hold up to 20 hot dogs or sausages. The front of the cart has a storage ring and hook-up for a propane tank (not included); propane provides fuel for the dual burner assembly housed in the rear interior of the cart directly under the three steamers; burners may be individually controlled by knobs in the cart's rear. A top-loading 3,000" cu. ice cooler keeps your beverages and meats cold; a drain plug on the bottom of the chassis allows you to drain meltwater. The front of the cart houses a two shelf storage or display area for drinks, buns, or condiments; additional storage area is located underneath."

The best part? The cart can be used to make Chicago-style dogs as well.

The Authentic New York Hot Dog Vendor Cart [Hammacher Schlemmer]

With the scorching Miami summer just around the corner, now is the time to take advantage of the fine Miami establishments that offer outdoor seating. The evening lows are still in the high-60s to mid-70s, and a fresh breeze keeps the mosquitoes at bay. Here’s a quick round-up of some downtown South Miami establishments where you can grab a drink or dinner

Bougainvillea’s Old Florida Tavern: strictly a watering hole, the bar encourages patrons to B.Y.O.F. (bring your own food) and enjoy the shade of their towering oak trees.

Town Kitchen & Bar: Lounge-style seating and cozy tables on a lower-traffic corner of South Miami’s downtown make this a comfortable place for pizza and bellinis after work.

Casa Larios: Their outside terrace can comfortably seat large groups and the ceiling fans ensure there is always a breeze over your bistec de palomilla.

Martini Bar: Not just a hoppin’ night club, Martini Bar is perfectly located inside Sunset Place for people watching.

Some others to keep in mind: Dan Marino's, Deli Lane Cafe & Tavern

Bougainvillea's Old Florida Tavern [Official Site]
Town Kitchen & Bar [MenuPages]
Town Kitchen & Bar [Official Site]
Casa Larios [MenuPages]
Martini Bar [MenuPages]
Martini Bar [Official Site]

There's a very enticingly titled post from Tuesday on Bon Appetit's editor's blog. It's called How To Start A Cooking Club. That sounds like a great idea. We (densely) never even thought of it before, but it's a club where a bunch of friends get together and cook interesting stuff. Fun, right?

While the body of this particular blog entry doesn't specifically outline instructions on cooking club formation — rather a series of jealousy-inducing photos of the author's own cooking club's latest accomplishments — the author sends readers to the extremely handy Bon Appetite Cooking Club page, which does feature pdf downloads on the basics of starting and organizing a cooking club, as well as monthly menus, including recipes and a game plan.

This is definitely the season for getting out of the house, sipping wine on the fire escape, lollygagging with your friends in the park and destroying the kitchen with way-too-ambitious recipes. Get out there and do it, folks!

How To Start A Cooking Club [Epicurious/BA Blog]
The Bon Appetit Cooking Club [Epicurious/BA]
Photo: Aftermath, by Dishevld [Flickr]

• Most of the Cuban staples at Sazon Cuban Cuisine are merely OK. [Miami Herald]

• Looking to impress a date? Take her to Vita, unless you think she might be offended by getting a menu with no prices on it. [Miami New Times]

• A Fork on the Road stops at Raja's Indian Cuisine for some North Indian specialties. [Miami Herald]

• We don't quite get the reason for the accent on the o in Saffrón. Not like that's a Spanish word. And we're still going to pronounce it as its supposed to be in English. No matter how the name is pronounced, the food sounds wonderful. [Miami Herald]

• Apparently you're not supposed to eat oysters in months without an 'r,' which we did not know. So hurry before May arrives! Except, after what Gail Shepherd wrote about the oysters at The Whale Raw Bar and Fish House, you might not want to try the ones there. She did, however, enjoy the pizza at Giovanni's Coal Fire Pizza across the plaza. [Broward-Palm Beach New Times]

• Two good Mediterranean options with a focus on seafood on Miami Beach: La Marea and Maison D'Azur. [Miami New Times]

• It's "Nantucket meets Key West" at Jeff's Beach House & Grill. [Sun-Sentinel]

• Greenfield's on Atlantic offers a good value for the money. [Sun-Sentinel]

• Our little Sam's Club rice sales limit tagged as "food rationing" [Guardian]
• Japan's butter shortage initiated by dairy cow cull two years ago [Salon]
• More countries (Uganda this time) telling their citizens to garden [AllAfrica]
• FDA to animal feed manufacturers: no more mad cow prions in the mix [Reuters]
• Farm bill, still unresolved, is increasingly out of step with reality [NYTimes]

Eat out on Thursday, May 1 and without spending an extra penny, help raise money for those in the local community affected by HIV/AIDS through Dining Out for Life. Almost 50 restaurants in Miami-Dade and Broward counties are participating in the event; each is donating either a set amount of money or a percentage of the revenue from that night — for most, it'll be 25 percent. So check out the list of participating restaurants and make reservations!

Dining Out For Life South Florida [Official Site]

Just as the country has finally re-embraced carbs after the whole Atkins nightmare, now we're all going to be forced onto low-carb diets by rising food prices. First, wheat. There's the worldwide rice shortage that will soon be seriously affecting us. Now beer prices are increasing because of the scarcity of hops and barley.

Two ingredients — hops and malted barley — are behind much of the price increases.

Hops produce the chemicals that give beer its distinct flavor. Some varieties are used to bitter the drink. Others impart its floral aromas. Most commercially grown domestic hops come from Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

After water, malted barely is the next-biggest ingredient in beer. It provides the sugars that turns into alcohol when the beer is fermented.

Barley prices have risen because of worldwide demand for grains, including wheat, corn and rice. Philip Sutton, owner of Skyscraper Brewing Co., a small brewery in El Monte, said the price of a 50-pound bag of malted barley had jumped to $22, or 57% higher than a year ago.

Hops prices are soaring even more. Sutton paid $3.40 to $4.70 a pound for hops a year ago. The least expensive hops he has found this year were $12.63 a pound, and he's paid all the way up to $22.45. But that's only if he can find them.

"The hops that we like to use just aren't available," Sutton said. That has forced him to substitute other hops in some of his beer recipes "and that makes a different beer. It's still good but isn't what we would ideally have," said Sutton, who has raised his prices 20% to 30%.

Rising beer prices hard to swallow [Los Angeles Times]
Asia limits rice exports as prices and uncertainty rise [Christian Science Monitor]

Photo, of barley: Shandchem [Flickr]

After reading yesterday's item in trade mag Restaurants and Institutions about a drive-through dispute that resulted in a double stabbing in Texas (!?), we got just curious enough to Google the term "fast-food rage" (but without the quotes).

Turns out there are all kinds of examples of idiots wailing on one another while in line or in the parking lots of fast food restaurants. Usually, it seems to have to do with vehicular disputes, more like road rage that happens to be taking place in the parking lot of a McDonalds, though there is this one case in Georgia back in August where a woman got so mad at perceived line-jumping inside the store that she tried to run down a couple outside. Yikes!

But none of these fights seem to stem from the one behavior in fast food restaurants that makes us seriously consider throwing a punch: the jerk who takes too long at the self-serve coffee machine. Seriously, if you don't drop that cream in and mix it as you're walking away so the rest of us can get our fix, we think manhandling you out of there should be a viable option.

But a Google search for "coffee rage" (with and without quotes) turned up only this incident in Boston, to speak of, when a couple of customers got into it in the drive-through of a Dunkin Donuts. Again: road rage, not coffee rage.

People, hear this now: You're spinning your wheels fighting each other over French fries and drive-through windows. If a state of terror existed around the self-serve coffee dispenser, the world would be a better place.

Fast food drive-through rage leads to double-stabbing [Restaurants and Institutions]
Fast food flare-up: Possible road-rage at McDonald's [KTVB Idaho]
Angry Woman Gets Revenge At McDonald's [Associated Press]
Food Fights Across Boston [Universal Hub]
Photo: Coffee Rage album cover, lifted from Mad Blasts of Chaos

• PETA offers paltry $1m for construction of artificial meat lab [AP]
• Bad press forces meat industry to support banning downer cows [PE]
• Another cause of the food crisis: structural adj. programs [AllAfrica]
• Congress mad at USDA for sucking, in wake of herapin scandal [VOA]
• In sign of times, McD int'l sales way up, US sales way down [Tribune]

The Business Improvement District of Coral Gables is launching a restaurant week beginning Monday, June 2. We don't have too many details yet, but we do know that the following restaurants are participating: Cacao Restaurant, Caffe Abbracci, California Pizza Kitchen, Fleming's Prime Steakhouse, La Cofradia, La Dorada, Ortanique on the Mile, Caramelo, Tarpon Bend, Sushi Maki, Benihana, Artfish on the Mile, Two Sisters, Fritz & Franz Bierhaus, Hoja Nueva, John Martin's and Por Fin Restaurant.

We also learned that the Morton's that's coming to Miracle Mile will be opening sometime during restaurant week, although the restaurant won't be participating.

Business Improvement District of Coral Gables [Official Site]
Morton's [Official Site]

A torrent of articles from around the country have made certain what we noticed anecdotally the other day at the supermarket: America is in the grips of a severe matzo shortage. While there was just enough to go around for seders on Saturday and Sunday nights, observant Jews are scrambling to find supplies of the unleavened bread to sustain them for the rest of Passover, another five or six days of dietary restriction.

Theories for why this is happening this year abound, but are ultimately limited in scope. The aforementioned articles have pointed to recalcitrant retailers like Trader Joe's who have declined to carry matzo this year, stymied suppliers like Manischewitz that couldn't make Tam Tam mini-matzos because of equipment failures, and cantankerous consumers who didn't plan ahead and rushed to buy the limited cache of matzo all at once.

But these explanations ignore the reality that, while matzo is certainly a niche product, what this amounts to, more or less, is a bread shortage. As people around the globe are increasingly — and for many, painfully — aware, the price of wheat has DOUBLED in the past year. Matzo, as you may or may not know, is made of NOTHING BUT wheat! So it costs more to make, and less was made. We're merely implying causality here, but let's put aside our lack of hard evidence and consider the following:

All of a sudden, the people of the developing world are rapidly increasing their average daily calorie intake while the land, water, and energy resources used to grow food products are rapidly diminishing in quantity and quality. The wealthiest ten percent of the world has been materially unaffected by this imbalance, but billions are forced to sacrifice and hundreds of millions are on the brink of starvation. It is unfortunate that the richest decile of the world's population — the people who are in the best positions, politically and economically, to address the food crisis — have little in the way of structural incentives to make the sort of wholesale systemic changes to the global food/energy system that is necessary to ensure sufficient, reliable and equitable supplies of foodstuffs.

Earth Day and Passover are just the kinds of navel-gazing opportunities we need to encourage us to consider how to go about feeding ourselves in this new era of unprecedented high demand and low supply. While many await a technological panacea to rescue us from our present conundrum, no real solution is possible without a shift in attitude by the world's producing class (that, or we could start eating a hell of a lot less meat). The matzo shortage story may not exactly be a warning shot across the bow, but it's certainly a sign that no one's entirely immune to global commodities turmoil.

It’s Passover. Who’s Hiding the Matzo? [NYTimes]
Matzo in short supply for Bay Area Passover [SFGate]