Quotulatiousness

November 22, 2025

Ottawa is working hard … to keep beef prices high for consumers

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Economics, Food, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

It’s not your imagination, beef is still much more expensive than it used to be (we no longer buy any “good” cuts of meat, settling for ground beef and “stewing beef” when we do the shopping). But rest assured, the feds are working diligently … to prevent beef prices from falling:

We recently received information from a reliable industry source about how the federal government is administering beef import permits. If accurate, it raises serious concerns about whether Ottawa is knowingly sustaining an outdated and opaque system that keeps beef prices unnecessarily high. At a time when many families are struggling with food costs, this is more than a bureaucratic issue — it directly affects affordability.

Canada’s beef import rules operate under a tariff-rate quota system. A limited volume of beef can enter the country at a low tariff, but anything beyond that is slapped with a steep import charge. When supply tightens or when specialty products are required, supplemental import permits are meant to provide flexibility and help stabilize the market. For years, the system worked reasonably well.

But the structure behind the process has not kept pace with today’s realities. The committee originally created to provide guidance — the Beef and Veal Tariff Rate Quota Advisory Committee — has not met since 2015. For a decade, no formal mechanism has existed for importers, retailers, or independent distributors to participate in discussions with government about how permits are allocated. Instead, decisions have shifted informally toward a small group of influential players, including major domestic processors who have a vested interest in limiting imports. The transparency and balance once built into the system have eroded.

Adding to this complexity is the broader concentration of market power in the sector. Beef packing and processing in Canada is dominated by two foreign-owned private companies: Cargill, based in the United States, and JBS, headquartered in Brazil. Together, they control the overwhelming majority of beef slaughter and processing in this country. When a sector is this concentrated, and when a federal system restricts competition through import controls, the beneficiaries are obvious. Any policy that tightens import access — intentionally or not — further entrenches the dominance of these two multinational giants.

The consequences are no longer theoretical. Our source described a case where a long-established importer has beef sitting in bonded storage in Canada. The product is legally imported and properly documented. The importer applied for a supplemental permit to release it into the market at the regular tariff rate. The application was refused. The justification offered — that the beef had been purchased abroad at a price “too low” compared with U.S. prices — makes little economic sense. The product did not come from the U.S., and competitive pricing has never been grounds for rejecting a permit. With no permit, the importer must wait until the next quota year or pay the full over-quota tariff. Ironically, the only reason paying the tariff is even possible now is because beef prices have climbed so sharply. The federal government, of course, collects that tariff revenue.

Cases like this raise an uncomfortable question: does Ottawa actually want to keep beef prices high? If the goal were genuinely affordability, the government could issue supplemental permits when supply conditions justify them. It could restore a functioning advisory committee to ensure balanced input. It could provide clear and transparent criteria for permit decisions. Instead, legitimate requests are rejected, supply is restricted even when product is physically present in the country, and both processors and Ottawa benefit from elevated prices.

November 20, 2025

“Oh my God, the Conservatives support children starving at school”

Filed under: Cancon, Food, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In the National Post, Chris Selley profiles my local MP, Jamil Jivani:

A screengrab from MP Jamil Jivani’s video that is critical of the Liberals’ national school-lunches program. Photo by Jamil Jivani/X

A few eyebrows raised earlier this year when Toronto-area MP Jamil Jivani, long heralded as an essential younger voice in the Canadian conservative movement, wasn’t offered a critic role by party leader Pierre Poilievre. There are 74 official Opposition critics, which is more than half the Conservative caucus. And if Poilievre and Jivani don’t see eye to eye, one might still have thought Jivani’s relationship with U.S. Vice-President JD Vance would be a useful resource.

There’s also the fact that Jivani is rather good at defending conservative policy, especially on the social side — better, one might argue, than Poilievre. On Monday, Jivani posted a video of himself arguing that Canadian children should go hungry at school. Or at least, that’s how certain hysterics chose to interpret his opposition to the Liberals’ national school-lunches program.

“It should frighten us that there are parents who can’t buy their own kids lunch,” he tells a constituent in the video. “(But) the government shouldn’t be your daddy; the government shouldn’t be your mother. We have families, and families should be strong enough to provide for their children, and when they’re not that should break our hearts. … It should not be used as a justification for the government to have even more influence, even more input, even more control over our lives.”

The program is already underway, with $1 billion in funding over five years committed as transfers to the provinces in 2024 — three years after the Liberals first promised it. And the Liberals recently announced plans for more. “Permanent” funding of more than $200 million is set to kick in in 2029.

The response anywhere to Jivani’s intervention, anywhere to his left, in a nutshell: “Oh my God, the Conservatives support children starving at school”. Even among some conservatives we hear the traditional timid refrain: Is this a “winning issue”? Or is the party just making itself look callous? What will the media think? Jivani, unlike many more seasoned Conservatives, seems not to care so much about the potential blowback.

Lunches served at school — paid or subsidized — are hardly a brand-new statist invention. They’ve been around forever, although they’re more common in certain kinds of schools than others. A 2013 Queen’s University study looked at 436 Canadian schools and found only 53 per cent had a cafeteria. (When I was a kid, many of my friends walked home for lunch and back afterwards.) And Jivani concedes in the video that many Canadians will like the sound of a national school-lunch program. Who would argue against it? It’s obviously far more important that kids eat breakfast and lunch (and dinner) than it is who provides it.

But that assumes a national school-lunch program, or even a provincial or local school-lunch program, is the quickest and easiest way to make sure kids are fed. It obviously isn’t, but trust in government, somehow, is a tough nut to crack in this country. Mass pandemic-era supports like CERB weren’t unalloyed successes, but they proved governments at least know how to shovel money out the door when they feel it absolutely necessary.

Especially since so many Canadian schools don’t have cafeterias — 53 per cent of elementary schools in the Queen’s study, and 82 per cent of combined elementary-secondary schools — it would make much more sense just to mail every parent who needs one a subsidy and let them pack the lunch, or the lunch money, that their kids need.

I’ve mentioned many times that I’m not a Conservative, but I don’t mind Mr. Jivani as my Member of Parliament because he doesn’t seem to me to be a typical Canadian Conservative (I thought it was significant that the PPC chose not to run against him once he became the Conservative candidate). In my YouTube recommendations, this video appeared with some sensible views from the Deputy Leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, Melissa Lantsman:

The trouble, as always with parties in opposition, is that they can sound like they’ve got great ideas and will energetically address the problems they identify while not in government … but once they go into office, sound remarkably like the government they just defeated and little or nothing actually changes.

November 17, 2025

What did Cowboys Eat on the Open Range?

Filed under: Food, History, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 10 Jun 2025

Slow-cooked pinto beans and dense cast iron skillet cornbread

City/Region: United States of America
Time Period: 1896

The cook for a cattle drive, often called “cookie”, was usually a former cowboy himself, having aged out of the profession by 25. They’d wake up around 3:00 AM to get breakfast ready, then pack up and drive ahead about 15 miles to prepare supper.

These beans are very simple, and surprisingly delicious. Honestly, the garlic doesn’t do a whole lot (who only uses half a clove?), but they’re still very good. Feel free to use however hot a red pepper you like, and the beans are a perfect accompaniment to the Chuck Wagon Cornbread (below). Mighty fine, indeed.

    FRIJOLES.
    1 cup Mexican beans.
    1/2 clove garlic.
    1 long red pepper.
    1 thin small slice bacon.
    Soak beans over night; boil slowly until soft—from eight to ten hours. Add red pepper, garlic, and bacon, and bake.
    — Manual for Army Cooks, 1896

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November 14, 2025

QotD: A modest Utilitarian proposal

Filed under: Food, Humour, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I’m really into utilitarianism lately, especially reducing suffering, and two big numbers have stood out:

– An avg person eats ~3,500 animals/yr (including shrimp)
– A human body has ~125,000 calories of edible tissue

So you only have to eat six humans/yr to meet your calorie needs, assuming you’re a good cook and don’t waste too much. Maybe 5.5 with veggies and sauces. And this saves the lives of roughly 150,000 animals, assuming you can catch a 30-year-old. But even if you just prey on the old and infirm, you’re still at bodhisattva levels of reducing suffering.

Anyway, I’ve tallied up the units of suffering and the logic is unassailable. The single best thing you can do — for the climate, the environment and the end of suffering for all sentient beings — is to switch to an all homovore diet. I’m shopping for chest freezers right now and plan to phase out all animals by the end of the year. Who’s with me?

Vivid Void, Twitter, 2025-08-11.

November 10, 2025

Food in the Trenches of World War One

Filed under: Britain, Food, History, Military, WW1 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 3 Jun 2025

Mashed potatoes over a corned beef and onion filling with gravy

City/Region: United Kingdom
Time Period: 1914

Many of the young men headed to fight in World War I didn’t already know how to cook, so the British government set up army schools of cookery to teach some of them how to make the most of the rations they were given. Even that ancient army standby, hardtack (clack clack), is better when you can cook it into a stew or pudding.

This potato pie, kind of a simplified preserved meat version of shepherd’s pie, isn’t half bad. If I were to make changes, I would leave out the additional salt (canned corned beef is plenty salty on its own) and add some more onions. While relatively tasty as-is, if you have any HP Sauce lying around, it makes this pie delicious, and many troops would have had access to it during World War I. Delicious and historically accurate: a win-win!

    Potato Pie.
    16 1/2 lbs. meat, 20 lbs. potatoes, 1 lb. onions, 3 ozs. salt, 1/2 oz. of pepper.
    Cut up and stew the onions with jelly from the meat added; boil or steam the potatoes; when cooked mash them. Line the sides of the dish with one-third of the mashed potatoes; place the meat and cooked onions in the centre; season with pepper and salt; cover over the remainder of the mashed potatoes, and bake till the potato cover is brown. As the mashed potatoes absorb the moisture of the meat and render it dry, about 2 pints of gravy prepared from the liquor in which the onions were cooked, should be poured into the pie before serving.
    — Manual of Military Cooking. Prepared at the Army School of Cookery, 1914

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November 6, 2025

Reactions to Tuesday’s budget announcement

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Economics, Food, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Mark Carney’s government finally got around to releasing their 2025 budget and lots of folks have thoughts and concerns about what is in it and what isn’t in it. After all, it could be the best possible budget, but it would still not satisfy all concerns … and nobody is pretending that this is anything close to “best possible” territory. Sylvain Charlebois says that the budget ignores the food insecurity issues and grocery prices for ordinary Canadians:

Graphic stolen from Small Dead Animals.

For a government that often talks about food affordability and insecurity, Budget 2025 offers surprisingly little that directly addresses either. There’s no bold food strategy, no affordability roadmap, and no new incentives for domestic food production. Yet, in between the lines, Ottawa has quietly set the stage for some indirect relief — not through grocery subsidies or consumer-facing policies, but through infrastructure, trade, and administrative reforms that could make the food system work a little more efficiently.

The largest signal comes from the government’s $115 billion infrastructure plan, one of its so-called “generational investments”. The new Trade Diversification Corridors Fund aims to modernize ports, railways, and airports — all chronic weak points in Canada’s food supply chain. When bottlenecks ease, goods move faster, and perishable products arrive fresher and cheaper. While no one in Ottawa framed this as a food-price measure, logistics efficiency has long been one of the most effective — and least visible — forms of price control.

[…]

Still, the absence of a broader vision for food affordability stands out. After years of grocery price volatility and public debate about “greedflation”, Canadians might have expected a more direct focus on food resilience — investments in innovation, local processing, or retail transparency. Instead, the government seems to have opted for a quieter, systemic approach: strengthen the arteries of trade and logistics, and trust that efficiency will trickle down to the dinner table.

The budget forecasts a $78.3 billion deficit for the 2025-26 fiscal year, which is significantly higher than notorious spendthrift Justin Trudeau’s last budget number. This adds to an already staggering $1.27 trillion debt load, which is nearly double what it was just before the pandemic. In the lead-up to the budget release Mark Carney had hinted at major sacrifices to be made, and while there wasn’t a lot in the document directly corresponding to sacrifice, the need to service that long-term debt will do the job quite adequately.

In the National Post, John Robson says that the budget is “elbows up, IQs down”:

Since I was last propelled years ago into the purgatory known as “the lockup”, where journalists spend budget day, have either process or contents improved? No. Instead they now insert a false stolen-land “acknowledgement” before even getting to the same old same old labeled bold and new. Which is especially troubling at this supposedly critical juncture.

The document is the familiar brick, 406 paper pages and 493 digitally with no explanation for the discrepancy and no excuse for the length. (Or for being called “Canada Strong” with an inexplicable picture of a ship.) Especially as the Finance Minister gabbled “This is a budget that talks to everyday Canadians,” and its purpose is to state plainly how much the government intends to spend, where it hopes to get the money and how far short it already knows it will fall, you shouldn’t have to wade through 248 pages of sludge to find out.

As P.J. O’Rourke said, “beyond a certain point, complexity is fraud”. Though we “privileged” insiders search “Summary Statement of Transactions” and voila, submerged on p. 249 (all references digital) is a $78.3 billion deficit next year if all goes well, and the national debt increasing $80.5 billion so it already didn’t.

Much commentary, and special-interest attention, focuses on trivial fiddles. But what matters is that Leviathan is in hock up to its horns, with interest payments projected at $55.6 billion next year, soaring to $76.1 billion by 2029-30. If the Lord is willing and the creek don’t rise, both forlorn hopes. NDP MP Leah Gazan, who would jail you for “downplaying” residential schools, snarled about not supporting an “austerity budget” but she won’t get the chance.

Some may bleat that times are tough. Indeed the finance minister’s campaign-speech “Foreword, Budget” gasses “The world is changing, profoundly and in real time; we are no longer living in an era of calm, but of significant change”.

The projected deficits are clearly hallucinatory, as the Liberals never seem to get deficit spending to go down, running deficits every year since 2015:

However, on the ludicrous side, the feds want to spend money to “investigate” Canada taking part in the freaking Eurovision contest:

On the slightly less ludicrous side, Noah considers the military aspects of the budget:

Budget 2025 outlines the government’s generational investment to quote, “defend Canada’s people and values, secure its sovereignty, and position the nation as a strong, reliable partner to its allies“. This starts by initiating a process of rebuilding, rearming, and reinvesting in the DND, CCG, and CAF to provide everyone with the necessary tools and equipment to protect sovereignty and bolster security.

Budget 2025 starts by outlining the government’s previous commitment to accelerate investments to meet NATO’s 2 per cent defence-spending target this year, which is five years ahead of schedule.

Budget 2025 goes a step further by setting Canada on a path to meet NATO’s 5 per cent Defence Investment Pledge by 2035. This will be broken down into two categories, 3.5 per cent of GDP by 2035 in core military needs, including supporting the CAF, modernising equipment and technology, and building up defence industries, and 1.5 per cent on security-related infrastructure and investments.

This reinvestment in defence and security is the largest in decades, totaling $30 billion over a five-year horizon on an accrual basis. This funding is allocated across three main pillars: $20 billion for capabilities, $5 billion for infrastructure and equipment, and $5 billion for industrial support.

On a cash basis, Budget 2025 proposes to provide $81.8 billion over five years, starting in 2025-26, to rebuild, rearm, and reinvest in the CAF. This figure includes over $9 billion in 2025-26 that was previously announced in June 2025. This is the funding previously set out for Canada to reach the 2 per cent NATO target.

Key investments from this $81.8 billion fund include $20.4 billion over five years to recruit and retain a strong fighting force, which incorporates the previously announced updates to pay and support for CAF health care.

An additional $19.0 billion over five years is allocated to repair and sustain CAF capabilities and invest in defence infrastructure, including the expansion of ammunition and training infrastructure. Upgrades to digital infrastructure for the Department of National Defence, CAF, and the Communications Security Establishment, particularly for cyber defence, are funded with $10.5 billion over five years.

Finally, $17.9 billion over five years is designated to expand Canada’s military capabilities, with investments in logistics, utility, and armoured vehicles, as well as counter-drone, long-range precision strike capabilities, and domestic ammunition production.

This is a serious chunk of change, although sadly, and as you will see, we don’t get a major breakdown of what this looks like. What we are left with are general piles of money, which isn’t always a bad thing. It’s also expected. The budget is set for a timeline before many critical capabilities will be delivered, so they won’t be included. Almost everything comes after 2030.

November 2, 2025

Biryani from 16th Century India

Filed under: Food, History, India — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 27 May 2025

Basmati rice cooked with spiced ghee, lamb, onions, and chickpeas

City/Region: Mughal Empire | India
Time Period: 16th Century

It’s likely that the word biryani comes from Persian, which would have made its way to India with the Mughal court of the emperor Babur in the 16th century. The actual dish of rice and meat cooked with ghee, however, had been around for hundreds of years before that, appearing sometime in the Vedic Period (1500 B.C.E. – 500 B.C.E.).

Whatever its true origins may be, biryani carries influences of Indian and Mughal (and thus Persian) cuisine and is delicious. The spices make the whole house smell amazing, and the rice is simultaneously fluffy and has the richness of fried rice thanks to the spiced ghee. It’s a bit of work, but it is so, so good.

    10 seer meat, 3 1/2 seer rice; 2 seer ghi; 1 seer gram; 2 seer onions; 1/4 seer salt; 1/4 seer fresh ginger; 2 dam garlic, and round pepper, cinnamon, cardamoms, cloves, 1 dam of each: this gives six dishes.

    OF BREAD
    … Bread is made in the pantry. There is a large kind, baked in an oven, made of 10 s. flour; 5 s. milk; 1 1/2 s. g’hí; 1/4 s. salt. They make also smaller ones. The thin kind is baked on an iron plate. On sér will give fifteen, or even more. There are various ways of making it: one kind is called chapáti, which is sometimes made of khushkah; it tastes very well, when served hot …
    — Ain-i akbari by Abu’l-Fazl ‘Allami, 16th century

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November 1, 2025

EBTpocalypse imminent?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Food, Government, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The US government’s extended “shutdown” may trigger the loss of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to around 10% of America as of Saturday. A few years ago, Nathan Mayo pointed out that despite the good intentions of the SNAP program, it isn’t actually doing the job it is meant to be performing:

A recent administrative action has permanently increased benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by 25 percent. Unfortunately, this historic boost fails to address the structural problems that plague this nearly 60-year-old program.

The official Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) webpage proudly proclaims that, “SNAP provides nutrition benefits to supplement the food budget of needy families so they can purchase healthy food …”

To that admirable end, the program formerly known as food stamps distributed $79 billion to 40 million people last year. Yet this desire to provide wholesome food to needy families conflicts with clear evidence that wholesome food is not what they think they need. Whether they play by the rules or not, people receiving SNAP benefits currently spend between 70-100 percent of that benefit on things other than healthy food.

Government researchers determined that average SNAP recipients increase their food expenditure by only 30 percent of the value of their benefits. In other words, a person previously spending $300 on food a month who qualifies for $100 of food stamp benefits will start spending $330 on food and shift the $70 from his existing budget to other purposes. This surprisingly low percentage suggests that food is not recipients’ top priority, as people who were in dire need of food would be expected to boost their food budget by the full value of the benefits.

What of the hope that needy families will buy nutritious food? According to a study of a major retailer, recipients spend about 20 percent of their total grocery budget on junk food, with soft drinks as the top purchase—enough to supply a family of four with 20 two-liters of soda per month. Given the marginal amount of SNAP spent on food and the typical benefits for a family, SNAP literally expands the grocery budget by the exact amount needed to cover the junk food. SNAP recipients also spend about 27 percent less on fruits and vegetables than non-SNAP households. This difference cannot be attributed to a lack of access because around 85 percent of SNAP purchases are made at large chain grocery stores with vast produce selections. However, one factor in these choices is likely smaller grocery budgets and the fact that fresh produce is more expensive.

A less savory contributor to this poor nutrition may be that SNAP encourages unhealthy purchases through the “house money” effect. When gamblers win money, they are less careful with their winnings since they view the “house money” as more disposable than their own cash. Similarly, when people receive SNAP dollars, they are sometimes less careful about their purchases than they would be with their hard-earned dollars.

On the one hand, the lack of SNAP benefits might be lower impact than expected, or it might mean most major American cities go “full Mad Max“:

There are 41.7 million Americans slurping up Supplemental Nachos And Porkrinds (SNAP) benefits. That’s an amazing number, and it shows just how far down the bread and circuses route that we’ve gone. I was surprised at the number, but I can now surmise that the only people voting for Democrats are single white women and freeloaders. But I repeat myself.

The federal government shutdown is, as I write this, dragging into its fourth week. I’m generally pretty happy about that since the impact to almost everyone I know is … zero. However, that may soon change. EBT cards, (EBT stands for Entitled Bums Treats) are about to have a zero balance.

The Democrats in the Senate have voted a dozen times as I write this to not fund the SNAP (Socialist Nourishment And Pampering) program. The reason? This is one of their key weapons against Trump. They want to blame Trump for not having a budget because it won’t fund the SNAP (Scam Network for Appetite Pandering) program. Since people who use EBT (Endless Bailout for Takers) aren’t generally the ones who pay attention to anything that takes longer than 17 seconds, they’ll buy it.

Some states (Virginia, for one) realize that the place will look like Mad Max in by Monday if the pizza rolls stop flowing, and have found some cash in the couch cushions to kick the can down the road. New Jersey doesn’t even own a couch, so they have no money, and Connecticut has mobilized their National Guard for emergency ramen drops.

No more swiping for that purple drank or Hot Pockets®. When the EBT (Everyone But Taxpayers) card goes dry, life may get … interesting.

What will happen? “Mostly peaceful” flash mobs looting grocery stores. These flash mobs will make the 2020 riots look like a church picnic gone wrong because someone demanded gluten-free tofu.

Because SNAP (Subsidized Nuggets for Apathetic Parasites) isn’t just a program: it’s the duct tape holding urban America’s powder keg together. As mentioned, there are 41.7 million people, about 12.3% of the U.S. population, who rely on those cards for daily food.

H/T to Clayton Barnett for that link.

Oh, but wait … yet another judge has issued a ruling directing the federal government to ignore the lack of congressional approval or funding:

An order today from a federal judge in Massachusetts requires the Trump administration to pay SNAP benefits even though Congress hasn’t funded the current operation of the program.

Judge Indira Talwani, an Obama appointee, concludes that people will be harmed if SNAP benefits are not provided, and Congress previously appropriated contingency funds for emergencies in the SNAP program, so there’s no need for current appropriations — the executive branch must use emergency and contingency funds to pay for current operations despite the absence of current appropriations.

[…]

Defendants — the Trump administration — are required to use contingency funds to pay for current operations, whether or not Congress has funded current operations. A court has just concluded that a federal program must operate in the absence of current appropriations. That’s … an interesting choice.

Update, 3 November: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.

October 30, 2025

Unlabelled cloned meat – coming soon to Canadian grocery stores

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Food, Government — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Dr. Sylvain Charlebois on a recent Health Canada decision to allow cloned meat to be sold in Canada with no label to differentiate it from ordinary meat:

Sometimes the most significant food-policy changes happen not with a bang, but with a bureaucratic whisper.

According to Health Canada’s own consultation documents, Ottawa intends to remove foods derived from cloned cattle and swine from its “novel foods” list — the very process that requires a pre-market safety review and triggers public disclosure. Once this policy takes effect, cloned-animal products could enter the Canadian food supply without announcement, notice, or label.

From a regulatory standpoint, this looks like an efficiency measure. From a consumer-trust standpoint, it’s a miscalculation.

Health Canada’s rationale is familiar: cloned animals and their offspring are, by composition, indistinguishable from conventional ones. Therefore, the logic goes, they should be treated the same. The problem isn’t the science — it’s the silence.

Canadians are not being told that the rules governing a deeply controversial technology are about to change. No press release, no public statement, just a quiet update on a government website most citizens will never read.

Cloning, after all, is not about making food cheaper or more nutritious. It’s a genetic management tool for breeders and biotech firms — a way to reproduce elite animals with prized traits. The clones themselves rarely end up on the dinner plate; their offspring do. The benefits, if any, are indirect: perhaps steadier production, fewer losses from disease, or marginally more uniform quality.

But the consumer sees no gain at checkout. Cloning is costly and yields no visible improvement in taste, nutrition, or price. The average shopper might one day unknowingly buy steak from the offspring of a cloned cow — and pay the same, if not more, for it.

And without labels, any potential efficiencies or cost savings stay hidden upstream. When products born from new technologies are mixed with conventional ones, consumers lose their ability to differentiate, reward innovation, or make an informed choice. In the end, industry keeps the savings, while shoppers see none.

October 24, 2025

The Picnic at the Battle of Bull Run

Filed under: Food, History, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 20 May 2025

Nutmeg and brandy pound cake with roast beef sandwiches, lemonade, and berries

City/Region: United States of America
Time Period: 1824

In the beginning of the American Civil War, no one expected the fighting to go on for very long. Not wanting to miss out on any of the action, a crowd of spectators gathered a couple of miles from the battlefield at the First Battle of Bull Run. They enjoyed the boom of cannon fire and picnic lunches of sandwiches, pies, and cakes, before fleeing for their lives in a mad dash when the battle turned against the Union.

This pound cake is denser than modern versions because it contains no chemical leavener, but it’s not stodgy and is delicious. The nutmeg comes through and you get the flavor of the brandy without it being boozy.

To complete your picnic and recreate some simple sandwiches from 1857, butter slices of white bread, layer on sliced roast beef and Dijon mustard, then trim off the crusts. I don’t usually put butter on my sandwiches, but it was really nice.

    Pound Cake.
    Wash the salt from a pound of butter and rub it till it is soft as cream, have ready a pound of flour sifted, one of powdered sugar, and twelve eggs well beaten; put alternately into the butter, sugar, flour and the froth from the eggs; continuing to beat them together till all the ingredients are in, and the cake quite light; add some grated lemon peel, a nutmeg, and a gill of brandy; butter the pans and bake them.
    — The Virginia House-Wife by Mary Randolph, 1824    .

    Sandwiches for travelling may be made of the lean of cold beef, (roast or boiled,) cut very thin, seasoned with French mustard, and laid between two slices of bread and butter.
    — Miss Leslie’s New Cookery Book, 1857

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October 17, 2025

The Original Kaiserschmarrn of the Austrian Empire

Filed under: Europe, Food, History — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 13 May 2025

Scrambled pancake with raisins and plum compote

City/Region: Austria
Time Period: 1858

Like many food origin stories, the ones for kaiserschmarrn are varied and no one knows which, if any, are true. What is true is that Kaiser Franz Joseph I did really enjoy this dish, and as a result kaiserschmarrn became popular throughout the Austrian Empire and is still served in many restaurants today.

This kaiserschmarrn isn’t as sweet as modern versions I’ve had, but it’s still delicious. The vanilla sugar caramelizes and adds a pleasant bit of crunch, the cream makes for a richer pancake, and the plum compote is a lovely addition.

    Kaiser-Schmarren.
    Whisk 4 decilitres of sweet cream with 4 egg yolks, 2 decilitres flour, and a little salt, add 4 egg whites, beaten to snow, and raisins. Pour the whole thing into hot beef fat or butter, let it get nicely brown like Mehl-Schmarren, prepare it in the dish and sprinkle it with vanilla sugar.
    Mehl-Schmarren.
    … Place it in the oven so it rises nicely. Then remove it and place it on a rapid heat. When it’s stiff and browned on the bottom, you turn it over with the pancake spatula, let it brown again on the bottom, then tear it into large pieces with a fork and serve it quickly so it doesn’t dry out.
    Plum Compote.
    Plums are either halved or left whole and peeled. They are placed in hot water where the skin can easily come off. They are then simmered with a little sugar, water, and cinnamon.
    — Die Süddeutsche Küche by Katharina Prato, 1858

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October 10, 2025

Feeding the Papal Conclave

Filed under: Food, History, Italy, Religion — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 6 May 2025

Marinated baby back ribs served with a garlic and sapa sauce and roasted onions

City/Region: Italy
Time Period: 1570

We actually know a fair bit about what was served at the 1549 papal conclave thanks to one of the first celebrity chefs, Bartolomeo Scappi, who was in charge of the food. In his incredible book, Opera dell’arte del cucinare, or Opera di Bartolomeo Scappi, he includes not only recipes that would have been served to the cardinals, but illustrations showing the many steps for preparing and transporting the food.

Dishes like these ribs would have been tested for poison, inspected for secret messages, put in special containers, and delivered via a sort of turntable.

A lot of hassle, but these ribs would be worth it. They’re so tender and the flavors of the rub and sauce are complex and delicious. It’s not as sweet as a modern barbecue sauce, but strikes a lovely balance between the sweetness of the sapa (reduced grape must) and the sharp and savory flavors of the vinegar, garlic, and coriander seeds. You could certainly make more sauce, but I think this amount is really nice.

    Different ways to cook the back ribs of a domestic pig
    If the pig is young, the ribs can be roasted on the spit with the rind, or without, and with onions split in the pan, which are cooked with the fat that drips from the meat as it cooks … and before it is put on the spit, it is sprinkled with salt and ground coriander seed. You could also let the ribs stand in a marinade of vinegar, grape must syrup, garlic cloves and coriander, and then cook it on the spit in the above way, serving it hot with a sauce on top made of the same seasoning …”
    — Opera di Bartolomeo Scappi, 1570

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October 3, 2025

Mulligan “Hobo” Stew from the Great Depression

Filed under: Food, History, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 29 Apr 2025

Soup with canned peas, canned corned beef, onion, and ketchup

City/Region: United States of America
Time Period: 1940

Today the word “hobo” is usually used in a derogatory manner, but back in the time between the end of the Civil War and the end of the Great Depression, it referred to a specific group of migrant workers and their culture.

Part of that culture was mulligan stew, which was basically a stew of any meat and vegetables that were thrown together. The ingredients would be made up of things that keep well, mostly food that was canned or bottled.

The flavor of this soup is surprisingly good, but it’s maybe a little too sweet, even for me. The prodigious amount of ketchup is the dominant flavor, and maybe 1940 ketchup was less sweet than modern versions.

    Mulligan Stew (Serves 6)
    1 medium size can corned beef — minced
    1 onion — minced fine
    1 No. 2 can peas with liquid
    1 medium size bottle tomato catsup
    1 cup water
    Salt and pepper to taste

    Put all ingredients in saucepan and simmer gently over low flame for about one hour. The flavor improves with the length of cooking time.

    — The Brookshire Times, August 2, 1940

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September 26, 2025

School Cafeteria Sloppy Joe from the 1980s & ’90s

Filed under: Education, Food, History, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 22 Apr 2025

Ground beef in a delicious tomato-based sauce on a hamburger bun, part of a classic 90s American school lunch

City/Region: United States of America
Time Period: 1988

Today we know sloppy joes as a saucy ground beef sandwich, but the term sloppy joe has referred to many things over the years. A sloppy joe could be other kinds of sandwiches, a nickname for a messy friend, or women’s fashion from the 1940s and 50s that included pants and looser fitting styles.

For me, though, it is this style of sandwich. Really, it is this version of this sandwich. Sloppy joes were a larger part of my adolescent diet than was healthy, and these taste exactly like the ones I remember from middle school.

Be sure to get the cheapest hamburger buns possible to authentically recreate this nostalgic lunchtime favorite.

    Sloppy Joe on a Roll (50 servings)
    Raw ground beef (no more than 24% fat) … 17 lb 4 oz
    Dehydrated onions … 2 1/4 oz … 2/3 cup
    OR Fresh onions, chopped … 1 lb 2 oz … 3 cups
    Garlic powder … 2 Tbsp
    Tomato paste … 3 lb 8 oz … 1/2 No. 10 can
    Catsup … 3 lb 9 oz … 1/2 No. 10 can
    Water … 2 qt 3 1/2 cups
    Vinegar … 2 1/4 cups
    Dry mustard … 1/4 cup
    Black pepper … 2 tsp
    Brown sugar, packed … 5 1/2 oz … 3/4 cup
    Hamburger rolls…100
    — Quantity Recipes for School Food Service by the United States Department of Agriculture, 1988

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September 22, 2025

The Liberals fervently believe that saying something is the same as doing something

Filed under: Cancon, Food, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

One of the most irritating aspects of Justin Trudeau’s long reign of error was his evident joy in making announcements about this or that topic. It got to the point that even the pro-Liberal media started to notice that the same policy would be announced several times over a few months but no actual progress was made (except where they could start setting up a new government program … they’d hire the staff very quickly, but little or nothing would get done beyond that). Mark Carney was supposed to be a clean break from the Trudeau years — even though most of his ministers were Trudeau retreads — but Carney may actually be worse than Trudeau in that he just loves photo ops with pretty props for the cameras. As Dr. Sylvain Charlebois notes, we need a lot fewer photogenic Potemkin Villages in how our federal government operates:

In recent weeks, we have witnessed politicians lean on powerful visuals to make their case on food and trade. But these staged moments rarely serve the public interest. Worse, they often deepen food illiteracy in a country where understanding how our system works is already fragile.

Take Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s stunt. Upset with Diageo’s decision to close its bottling plant in Ontario, he theatrically dumped a bottle of Crown Royal and urged Ontarians to boycott the brand. What he didn’t mention is that the bottle in question was made in Manitoba and bottled in Quebec by unionized Canadian workers — jobs unaffected by the Ontario closure. The Windsor facility mainly serviced the U.S. market, and Diageo’s decision was years in the making. Ironically, the boycott risks punishing Canadian workers who will continue producing Crown Royal for Canadians. And for future investors, the message is chilling: why put capital into Ontario if a government will trash your brand on television for a corporate restructuring decision?

The federal stage brought us another head-scratcher. During a trade visit to Mexico, Prime Minister Mark Carney posed with bags of Canadian wheat stamped with a maple leaf. The problem? Canada doesn’t export wheat in bags. We are among the most efficient bulk grain exporters in the world, shipping millions of tonnes through rail networks and ocean vessels designed for efficiency, safety, and traceability. Bagged wheat is a relic of less mechanized economies. For Canada to present itself this way trivializes our status as a modern agri-food powerhouse. Beyond being misleading, the image suggests to global partners that our system is less advanced than it truly is — a dangerous misrepresentation for a nation that depends on reputation as much as price.

Even I didn’t realize how bad it got until the feds paid contractors to put up a fake building site for Mark Carney to pose in front of, then tore it all down:

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