Quotulatiousness

July 16, 2010

Another round of anti-drug hysteria?

Filed under: Food, Law, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:00

In times of economic uncertainty, we seem to get more off-the-wall panics about other things. Things like kids trying to find legal ways to get high. Jon, my former virtual landlord, sent me this link saying “. . .this is not The Onion! But it is hard to tell. I think I’ll try it when I get home.”

It’s not even news. Nutmeg’s (very mild) hallucinogenic qualities have been known for centuries. As they allude to in the video, the required dosage is so high that it’s the equivalent of smoking a rope: there may be a benefit, but it’s not worth the effort.

Stock up on nutmeg for your ordinary cooking needs, as this inevitably will lead to hysteric calls to ban the substance, or to have it only sold in registered outlets with a log kept.

June 7, 2010

The worst drink in America is “Masochistic, but cheerful!”

Filed under: Cancon, Food, Health — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 16:18

Remember when I posted a short item about the worst beverage in America saying “Thank goodness this chain isn’t in operation anywhere near here”? According to Drew Halfnight, I’m not keeping up with the times — it’s apparently available in Canada.

But how does it feel to drink one? A spokesman for Tim Horton’s, which sells Cold Stone products in 40 locations across Canada, told me: “It’s apparently delicious.” But I know a thing or two about ice cream — I inherited a mean sweet tooth — I wanted to experience it for myself.

So, I zipped down to the nearest Cold Stone Creamery location — #2533 at Yonge and Eglinton in Toronto — and handed over $5.19 plus tax for a taste of death. The “Gotta Have It” size — 24.5 ounces — is not available in Canada, so I ordered the next best thing, a 20-ouncer.

The things people will do just to get a story . . .

The taste is intense: a saccharine blast of sugary chocolate, sugary peanut butter and just plain sugar, which engenders a third, chalky undertaste. But it only takes a few sips of the stuff before the sugar totally numbs my palate and I can’t really taste anything except richness. I’d liken the overall drinking experience to slurping up melted Ben & Jerry’s ice cream with a little homo milk thrown in. Masochistic, but cheerful!

May 22, 2010

The worst beverage in America

Filed under: Food, Health, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 20:10

Thank goodness this chain isn’t in operation anywhere near here:

May 19, 2010

Haute stoner cuisine

Filed under: Economics, Food, Randomness — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:00

There are so many restaurants now that some of them can even specialize to serve tiny demographics . . . like “restaurants created specially for the tastes of the slightly stoned, slightly drunk chef after work.”

Even preschool teachers unwind with a round of drinks now and then. But in professional kitchens, where the hours are long, the pace intense and the goal is to deliver pleasure, the need to blow off steam has long involved substances that are mind-altering and, often enough, illegal.

“Everybody smokes dope after work,” said Anthony Bourdain, the author and chef who made his name chronicling drugs and debauchery in professional kitchens. “People you would never imagine.”

So while it should not come as a surprise that some chefs get high, it’s less often noted that drug use in the kitchen can change the experience in the dining room.

In the 1980s, cocaine helped fuel the frenetic open kitchens and boisterous dining rooms that were the incubators of celebrity chef culture. Today, a small but influential band of cooks says both their chin-dripping, carbohydrate-heavy food and the accessible, feel-good mood in their dining rooms are influenced by the kind of herb that can get people arrested.

May 17, 2010

Artisanal bullshit, lovingly crafted and arranged for you

Filed under: Food, Randomness — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:14

Gerard Van der Leun has been to one too many “Farmers” market, and he’s reached his bullshit tolerance limit:

Everybody loves “Farmers” markets in America. They are everywhere now. They metastasize in our urban cores like eczema in a teenager’s armpits. Every snoburbia has to have one or more in order to be a bona-fide snoburbia. Where else, I ask you, can white people go to be reassured of the proposition that small, local, “sustainable,” and oh-so-organic farms can feed a nation of more than 300 million people for only three times to cost of current farming methods? Farmers Markets are malls for morons and we all love them. Pass the drool cup and the goat cheese samples, thank you.

I’m primed for the ordinary and established catechism of the Church of Eternal American Bullshit whenever I go to the “Farmers” markets, but I was unprepared for this fresh sign in an empty storefront on the hip Ballard side-street that supports merchants selling nut-butters at $50 a pound every Sunday. It promised levels of bullshit previously thought impossible [. . .]

Go read the whole thing. It’s worth the visit.

Back? Well, I’ve always had my doubts about “Farmers” markets . . . they all seem to sell a suspiciously large variety of foods that aren’t in season (yet are far too often advertised as “locally grown”). They’re not just selling lettuce and carrots, they’re selling modern-day indulgences: allowing city folks to buy themselves a bit of spiritual connection with the countryside. Except it’s usually not the countryside the buyers are thinking of . . .

I still remember the shocked look on the face of a co-worker, when Elizabeth pointed out to her that driving out to some farm gate and buying fruit and vegetables meant you were (usually) buying Californian or Mexican or even Chilean produce (except during those brief weeks when the local produce was in season). Most city and suburban dwellers have no idea about growing seasons.

April 20, 2010

QotD: Food porn and subversive humour

Filed under: Food, Humour, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:08

The KFC Double Down makes me despair. Not because of the “sandwich” itself but because of the predictable reaction; in general, if you didn’t know that the thing was made of chicken, bacon, and processed cheese, you would get the impression that it was lovingly constructed from scorpions and poison. [. . .]

But which side in the war between soulless conglomerates and food puritans has irony on its side? KFC has literally rearranged the same ingredients that go into most every other grab-and-go entrée it serves, and gotten rid of the bread, which, guess what, might not be that good for you anyway. The sinister Elders of Tricon, who were surely lit unflatteringly from above in an austere modernist boardroom when they made the decision to create the Double Down, knew perfectly well that it would create panic and horror for no other reason than its configuration. The Double Down is, explicitly and unapologetically, a piece of food comedy.

And all the horrible people — for it seems virtually impossible to talk about food without being horrible — are reacting exactly as planned. The unapologetically paternalistic healthitarians, the grease-sweating Warcraft-playing fast-food reverse-snobs, the one-idea-in-their-whole-head theorists of food salvation, the paleos and the Pollanites, the narcissistic Nietzscheans who look at cheese as though it was about to go critical any second but will buy whatever’s new on the shelves at the GNC without so much as looking at the label . . . all the people, in short, who routinely insist on adulterating the pleasure of eating, and that includes, most of all, the types who’ve imbibed too much M.F.K. Fisher and who write pornographically about the “pleasure of eating” as if they were zooming a powerful camera in on an open mouth furiously masticating a mouthful of gnocchi.

Colby Cosh, “The Double Down: your move, America”, Macleans, 2010-04-20

April 13, 2010

QotD: Bugs in the DNA

Filed under: Africa, Food, Quotations, Science — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:09

Desmond Morris is a zoologist and the author of The Naked Ape. It is his idea that many of the otherwise inexplicable quirks we see in ourselves are leftovers, the result of our evolutionary heritage. Take that business with the bugs, for instance. Any time our higher cognitive processes get shut down, by panic, fatigue, or simply boredom, we humans have a tendency to revert to earlier, prehuman behavior.

Our early ancestors in Africa were arboreal troop-monkeys, living on a diet of fruit (to quote Yogi Bear, “Nut and berries! Nuts and berries! Yech!”) and insects. When you wander around the house, not particularly hungry, but looking for something to munch on idly, what you are most likely seeking unconsciously are bugs. Most of our most popular snack foods (Fiddle-Faddle comes to mind, and small pretzels) resemble and have the same “mouth feel” as bugs. You can take the monkey out of the trees, but you can’t take the tree monkey out of humanity.

L. Neil Smith, “Back to the Trees!”, Libertarian Enterprise, 2010-04-11

April 1, 2010

Blast from the past: “Panorama” looks at spaghetti farming

Filed under: Europe, Food, Humour, Media — Tags: — Nicholas @ 07:55

March 26, 2010

The case against Jamie Oliver

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Food, Health, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 15:59

March 16, 2010

This is taking nostalgia too far

Filed under: Britain, Food, History, WW2 — Nicholas @ 07:18

Britain survived the second world war partly through the early introduction of rationing — there were too many people to be directly supported from British farms, so food importation was critical. My mother told me that rationing was actually an improvement in basic nutrition for a lot of working class families: they got a wider variety of foods, even if it wasn’t of high quality. George Orwell’s pre-war writing solidly confirms this for miners and their families (probably the best known example is The Road to Wigan Pier).

All this being said, I still think that this is taking nostalgia too far:

I’m intrigued by this Time Out review of Kitchen Front, a restaurant at London’s Imperial War museum that serves accurate re-creations of the (mostly horrible) food eaten in Britain during WWII’s rationing period. Time Out gave it two star for food quality and full marks for accuracy (in the print edition, at least — they haven’t recreated this online). It sounds like a uniquely wonderful and horrible dining experience, especially as the food is prepared by a well-loved firm of caterers who’ve really gotten into the spirit of things.

March 11, 2010

Food follies: the pinNaCle of idiocy?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Food, Health, Law — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:15

The food police are after your salt:

Some New York City chefs and restaurant owners are taking aim at a bill introduced in the New York Legislature that, if passed, would ban the use of salt in restaurant cooking.

“No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food for consumption by customers of such restaurant, including food prepared to be consumed on the premises of such restaurant or off of such premises,” the bill, A. 10129, states in part.

The legislation, which Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, D-Brooklyn, introduced on March 5, would fine restaurants $1,000 for each violation.

I can only assume that Rep. Ortiz has no tastebuds, as the diet he’s prescribing would be bland, bland, bland. There’s also little chance that it’ll be passed into law, but you can consider it a shot across the bows of the restaurant trade . . . or a ranging round for the next salvo.

Researchers say that fat may actually be a flavour

Filed under: Food, Health — Tags: — Nicholas @ 07:13

This may provide some clues to obesity, as tests show that some people can detect fat at much lower concentrations . . . and therefore consume less:

It’s a theory set to confirm why humans are so fond of fatty foods such as chips and chocolate cake: in addition to the five tastes already identified lurks another detectable by the palate — fat.

“We know that the human tongue can detect five tastes — sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami (a savoury, protein-rich taste contained in foods such as soy sauce and chicken stock),” Russell Keast, from Deakin University, said Monday.

“Through our study we can conclude that humans have a sixth taste — fat.”

Researchers tested 30 people’s ability to taste a range of fatty acids in otherwise plain solutions and found that all were able to determine the taste — though some required higher concentrations than others.

[. . .]

The results, published in the British Journal of Nutrition, have not definitively classified fat as a taste but Keast says the evidence is strong and mounting.

For something to be classified as a taste there needed to be proven receptor mechanisms on taste cells in the mouth, he said.

March 9, 2010

If persuasion doesn’t work, raise the taxes

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Food, Law, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:12

New York City is moving ahead in their war on junk food, with a new proposal to add a significant tax to the sales of carbonated pop:

[Mayor Michael Bloomberg] described the soda tax — equivalent to an extra eight pence on a can — as “a fix that just makes sense”, saving lives and cutting rising health care costs.

“An extra 12 cents on a can of soda would raise nearly $1 billion (£663 million), allowing us to keep community health services open and teachers in the classroom,” he said on his weekly radio programme on Sunday.

“And, at the same time, it would help us fight a major problem plaguing our children: obesity.”

David Paterson, the mayor of New York state, has already proposed a soda tax but it was dropped last year following a public outcry.

H/T to Chris Greaves for the link, who said “Let’s see now, prohibition didn’t work, so let’s try something different!”

Of course, the proposed tax would be very popular in some areas: all the retailers outside NYC who would be able to reap significant additional sales to New Yorkers who didn’t want to pay the sin tax.

March 4, 2010

Teenagers: Mom was right about your need for a good night’s sleep

Filed under: Education, Food, Health — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:02

I know, you stopped listening to your parents around age 12, but every now and again, they do have useful advice for you:

Only 5% of high school seniors get eight hours of sleep a night. Children get an hour less than they did 30 years ago, which subtracts IQ points and adds body weight.

Until age 21, the circuitry of a child’s brain is being completed. Bronson and Merryman report research on grade schoolers showing that “the performance gap caused by an hour’s difference in sleep was bigger than the gap between a normal fourth-grader and a normal sixth-grader.” In high school there is a steep decline in sleep hours, and a striking correlation of sleep and grades.

Tired children have trouble retaining learning “because neurons lose their plasticity, becoming incapable of forming the new synaptic connections necessary to encode a memory. … The more you learned during the day, the more you need to sleep that night.”

The school day starts too early because that is convenient for parents and teachers. Awakened at dawn, teenage brains are still releasing melatonin, which makes them sleepy. This is one reason why young adults are responsible for half the 100,000 annual “fall asleep” automobile crashes. When Edina, Minn., changed its high school start from 7:25 a.m. to 8:30 a.m., math/verbal SAT scores rose substantially.

Furthermore, sleep loss increases the hormone that stimulates hunger and decreases the one that suppresses appetite. Hence the correlation between less sleep and more obesity.

So, even though the temptation is to stay up as late as you possibly can . . . don’t. You’ll actually notice the difference the next day.

January 7, 2010

Marmite versus Vegemite

Filed under: Australia, Britain, Food, Humour, Randomness — Tags: — Nicholas @ 07:25

Charles Stross has run out of things to post that will rile up the reader base, so he finds another way to get the chattering masses chattering — by declaring his unnatural love for Marmite and Vegemite:

Note to American readers: Marmite is what I (being a Brit) grew up with. If you brew beer on a commercial scale, when you drain the fermenting vessel you end up with a scum of dead and dying yeast cells on the side. Some time in the late 19th century, rather than treating this as waste, some nameless genius had the idea of tasting it. It turns out that brewer’s yeast, once you lyse the cells by adding salt, tastes remarkably savoury — somewhat like soy sauce, only thicker (with much the same consistency as non-set honey). Marmite, the product, is mostly yeast extract, combined with salt and a few additional spices. It’s what belongs on toast, or cheese, or in gravy and sauces to add body to them. And the stuff’s addictive. I get through it in catering-tub quantities, alas: it’s my one real high sodium vice.

Vegemite . . . it’s the antipodean antithesis. Invented in 1922 by Dr Cyril P. Callister in Australia, it was designed to plug the strategic gap opened by unrestricted U-boat warfare against the vital British Marmite convoys that had kept the colonies supplied during wartime — or something like that. Kraft popularized it, pushed it into military rations during the second world war, and over a decade clawed back sales from Marmite until it’s now the favourite toast topping down under. The recipe differs somewhat from Marmite, as does the flavour — just enough that if you’re used to one, the other tastes slightly “off” — too flat, or too astringent.

If you want to really liven up a party, pour a small jar of Marmite into the fruit punch — or add Vegemite to the dog’s bowl (as long as you don’t mind being asked to clean up afterwards). Hours of friendly discussion and informed debate can be provoked by discussing the relative merits of the two products! And it’s always a good idea to introduce visiting American guests to what they’ve been missing all these years, by exhorting them to spread it on their bread “just like peanut butter”.

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress