Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis. (The Guardian)

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government’s claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.

Shut up. Seriously. Just shut up.

Yes, We Will Have No Bananas. (NY Times)

ONCE you become accustomed to gas at $4 a gallon, brace yourself for the next shocking retail threshold: bananas reaching $1 a pound. At that price, Americans may stop thinking of bananas as a cheap staple, and then a strategy that has served the big banana companies for more than a century — enabling them to turn an exotic, tropical fruit into an everyday favorite — will begin to unravel.

Americans drive 1.4 billion fewer highway miles. (CNN)

Americans drove 1.4 billion fewer highway miles in April than they did in April 2007, the Department of Transportation said Wednesday.

Americans have driven 20 billion fewer miles overall this year, the Transportation Department says.

That marks the sixth consecutive monthly drop and coincides with record gas prices and an increase in transit ridership, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said.

April’s drop is more than three times larger than the drop from March 2007 to March of this year, which was 400 million fewer highway miles.

Hervé This: Salt doesn’t dissolve in oil, silly. (Globe and Mail)

The term “molecular gastronomy” is now associated with chefs like Ferran Adria, but you disagree with that usage. Why?

They are doing molecular cooking. The truth is that molecular gastronomy is science, molecular cooking is cooking, and chefs are not scientists.

…

You have assembled a list of 10 fundamental pieces of knowledge for cooks. It includes unexpected items like salt dissolves into water and salt does not dissolve into oil.

You see how silly it seems? It’s not obvious. Imagine that you take a glass of oil, you put some salt, even after one century the oil will not be salted. This, according to Pierre Gagnaire, is my main discovery.

Prison Calls It Food, Inmates Disagree. (Huffington Post)

When shooting suspect Christopher Williams acted up in prison, he was given nutraloaf _ a mixture of cubed whole wheat bread, nondairy cheese, raw carrots, spinach, seedless raisins, beans, vegetable oil, tomato paste, powdered milk and dehydrated potato flakes.

Prison officials call it a complete meal. Inmates say it’s so awful they’d rather go hungry.

On Monday, the Vermont Supreme Court will hear arguments in a class action suit brought by inmates who say it’s not food but punishment and that anyone subjected to it should get a formal disciplinary process first.

Prison officials see nutraloaf as a tool for behavior modification.

Costs Surge for Stocking the Pantry. (NY Times)

Mr. Newton’s pain is being felt in grocery checkout aisles across the country. Government figures released Friday showed that grocery costs had jumped 5.1 percent in 12 months, the latest in a string of increases. In fact, the nation is undergoing its worst grocery inflation since the early 1990s.

With a few exceptions, nearly every grocery category measured by the Labor Department, which compiles the official inflation numbers, has increased in the last year. Milk is up 17 percent, as are dried beans, peas and lentils. Cheese is up 15 percent, rice and pasta 13 percent, and bread 12 percent.

No food product has gone up as much as eggs, jumping 25 percent since February 2007 and 62 percent in the last two years.

Surging costs of groceries hit home. (Boston Globe)

After nearly two decades of low food inflation, prices for staples such as bread, milk, eggs, and flour are rising sharply, surging in the past year at double-digit rates, according to the Labor Department. Milk prices, for example, increased 26 percent over the year. Egg prices jumped 40 percent.

Escalating food costs could present a greater problem than soaring oil prices for the national economy because the average household spends three times as much for food as for gasoline. Food accounts for about 13 percent of household spending compared with about 4 percent for gas.

SobeWire: The 2008 Golden Clog Nominees Announced!. (Eater)

Michael Ruhlman and Tony Bourdain have concocted The Golden Clog Awards (Ruhlman has previously announced as much on his blog), a quirky little awards event born out of “too many beers and late night yakitori,” as Bourdain explained to Eater yesterday. The awards ceremony, or “awards ceremony,” will take place this Friday at 2:00 PM in Miami Beach, as part of the 2008 South Beach Wine & Food Festival, which does lend a certain, frightening air of credibility to the proceedings.

One of the awards, “The Mario”, goes to “the chef/restaurateur who best multi-tasked, multi-platformed, merchandised, whored himself, or opened multi-units (either while impaired–or not) and yet STILL managed to protect the quality of the mothership–while continuing to make valuable contributions to the restaurant landscape.” The nominees for the award? Tom Collichio, Thomas Keller, and Mario Batali.

It would be wonderfully ironic if he fails to win the award that is named in his honor. I would suspect nothing less from Tony Bourdain.

Snack to the Future: The Col-Pop, an All-in-One Chicken Nugget and Soda Cup. (Serious Eats)

The plucky ingenuity and sheer optimism of the human spirit never ceases to amaze. Yes We Can.

A List of Regional Pizza Styles. (Slice)

Nice rundown here.

Posts will be light around here for a while. HBO has chosen this month to premiere Norbit.

In the meantime, let us both hope your 401k still exists when we talk again.

The Invisible Ingredient in Every Kitchen.

Harold McGee turns up the heat.

101 Simple Appetizers in 20 Minutes or Less

Mark Bittman dishes in NY Times.

DIY cookbooks, Tastebook style.

Pretty damn cool.

Is the Entree Heading for Extinction? (NY Times).

THE entree, long the undisputed centerpiece of an American restaurant meal, is dead.

O.K., so maybe it’s not quite time to write the entree’s obituary. But in many major dining cities like New York, San Francisco and Chicago, the main course is under attack.

Although the entree’s ills were first diagnosed in the late 1990s, when the rise of small plates kicked off the tapafication of American menus, the attacks have become more serious lately.

Best Craigslist post I’ve read today.

Hamburger Buns

Reply to: sale-491749868@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-11-27, 8:45PM PST

Free 12 pack of hamburger buns. Had wayyyyy to many for our party. Never opened, ready to eat! No Mold! I actually have 2 12 packs, but 1 has a bun taken out of it. You can have that one too if you want it.

Location: 94th and Padden in the Couv
it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

Spread the love, buddy.

Unlocking the Benefits of Garlic. (NY Times)

In a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers show that eating garlic appears to boost our natural supply of hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is actually poisonous at high concentrations — it’s the same noxious byproduct of oil refining that smells like rotten eggs. But the body makes its own supply of the stuff, which acts as an antioxidant and transmits cellular signals that relax blood vessels and increase blood flow.

In the latest study, performed at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, researchers extracted juice from supermarket garlic and added small amounts to human red blood cells. The cells immediately began emitting hydrogen sulfide, the scientists found.

The power to boost hydrogen sulfide production may help explain why a garlic-rich diet appears to protect against various cancers, including breast, prostate and colon cancer, say the study authors. Higher hydrogen sulfide might also protect the heart, according to other experts. Although garlic has not consistently been shown to lower cholesterol levels, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine earlier this year found that injecting hydrogen sulfide into mice almost completely prevented the damage to heart muscle caused by a heart attack.

Food 2.0: Chefs as Chemists. (NY Times)

Chefs are using science not only to better understand their cooking, but also to create new ways of cooking. Elsewhere, chefs have played with lasers and liquid nitrogen. Restaurant kitchens are sometimes outfitted with equipment adapted from scientific laboratories. And then there are hydrocolloids that come in white bottles like chemicals.

Woman fined for hammer fit at Comcast. (Yahoo! News)

Shaw, 75, and her husband, Don, say they had an appointment in August for a Comcast technician to come to their Bristow home to install the company’s heavily advertised Triple Play phone, Internet and cable service.

The Shaws say no one came all day, and the technician who showed up two days later left without finishing the setup. Two days after that, Comcast cut off all their service.

At the Comcast office in Manassas later that day, they waited for a manager for two hours before being told the manager had left for the day, the Shaws say.

Shaw, a churchgoing secretary of the local AARP branch, returned the next Monday — with a hammer.

“I smashed a keyboard, knocked over a monitor … and I went to hit the telephone,” Shaw said. “I figured, ‘Hey, my telephone is screwed up, so is yours.’”

My new hero.

The Price of a Four-Star Rating. (Wall Street Journal)

As online food sites become increasingly influential in the restaurant business, chefs and owners are plying bloggers with free meals to get good write-ups. Some are also posting favorable reviews about themselves on popular Web sites or becoming Internet scribes.

Among those using the tactics are some of the biggest names in the business. Terrance Brennan, co-owner and chef of New York’s Artisanal Bistro and Picholine, hosted a cheese class for bloggers last year, waiving the usual $75-a-person fee. Bill Telepan, chef and co-owner of Telepan in New York, donated a $200, four-course meal to one influential blogger’s online contest. And in Washington, the Park Hyatt’s Blue Duck Tavern says it invited a customer back for a free Father’s Day meal after she posted a negative comment on the Washington Post’s Web site. (In a follow-up post, the diner wrote, “We will definitely return to Blue Duck Tavern,” not mentioning that she had been invited free.)

Food bloggers are so annoying.

Let the East Bloom Again. (NY Times).

The increasing demand for water in the Western United States in an era of diminishing supply has put America’s highly efficient agricultural system in jeopardy. At the same time, our nation’s energy demands have led President Bush and Congressional leaders from both parties to call for more domestic production of biofuels like corn ethanol. Some agricultural experts fear that the country does not have enough water and land to both replace the declining agricultural production in the arid West and expand the production of biofuels.

There is, however, a sustainable solution: a return to using the land and water of the East, which dominated agriculture in the United States into the 20th century.

Nutritionists: Soda making Americans drink themselves fat. (CNN)

If you’re searching for a villain in America’s obesity epidemic, most nutritionists tell you to put one picture on the wanted poster: a cold, bubbly glass of soda pop.

Full of sugar, soda adds calories without making a person feel full, nutritionists say.

“Liquid candy” to detractors, sweetened soft drinks are so ubiquitous that they contribute about 10 percent of the calories in the American diet, according to government data.

In fact, said Dr. David Ludwig, a Harvard endocrinologist whose 2001 paper in the Lancet is widely cited by obesity researchers, sweetened drinks are the only specific food that clinical research has directly linked to weight gain.

“Highly concentrated starches and sugars promote overeating, and the granddaddy of them all is sugar-sweetened beverages,” said Ludwig, who runs the Optimal Weight for Life Program at Children’s Hospital in Boston.

I find the bacon fat milkshakes to be more of a problem, myself.

This website was so mesmerizing, I spent 20 minutes learning about a toilet.

This is the Cadillac Escalade of toilets. My anus deserves no less.

Via sparkrobot, beware the escolar, a cause of “Oily Orange Diarrhea”.

This has actually happened to me before. Like after most episodes of oily, brightly hued muck discharged from my anus, I chalked it up to a life experience, and felt like a better person as a result.

Is a “Next Food Network Star” contestant a liar? Appears so, and he’s in the final four.

Hell’s Kitchen. God this show sucks ass.

Creed’s blog, set up by Ryan with a fake address (but thankfully mirrored by NBC), is the gift that keeps on giving.

Creed has many food related items on his blog. Most, if not all, are strokes of pure genius. To wit:

Where’s Thousand Island? I’ve got some vacation time saved up and it sounds like a delicious place to visit.

Root beer floats. It does. I’ve tested it.

There’s a fat man that sits by me. He has some sort of jar of multi-colored power beans. I need those beans, man.

…

I’m thinking about buying a horse. Great for transportation and once you’re done with it, you’ve got about seven days worth of meals.

The worst part about Raisin Bran is the bran. Hands down.

Sometimes when I’m sick, or feeling blue, I drink vinegar. I like all kinds: balsamic, vodka, orange juice, leaves.

Acoustic Stove Could Aid Third World. (Discovery News)

An appliance being designed for developing communities in Africa and Asia not only generates electricity, but also cooks and cools using acoustic technology.

…

The efficiency comes from a technology known as thermoacoustics, which produces sound waves from heated gas and then converts them to electricity.

Here’s how it works: wood is placed inside the stove and burned. The fire heats compressed air that has been pumped into specially shaped pipes located inside the stove’s chimney and behind the stove.

The heated air begins to vibrate and produce sound waves. Inside the pipes, the noise is 100 times louder than a jet taking off. But because the pipes are stiff and do no vibrate, the sound waves have nowhere to go. So outside the pipe, people hear only a faint hum.

Tennessee teachers stage fake gunman attack. “Staged assault on 6th-graders unfolds on school trip; parents not amused” (MSNBC)

During the last night of the trip, staff members convinced the 69 students that there was a gunman on the loose. They were told to lie on the floor or hide underneath tables and stay quiet. A teacher, disguised in a hooded sweat shirt, even pulled on a locked door.

After the lights went out, about 20 kids started to cry, 11-year-old Shay Naylor said.

“I was like, ‘Oh My God,’ ” she said. “At first I thought I was going to die. We flipped out.”

Principal Catherine Stephens declined to say whether the staff members involved would face disciplinary action, but said the situation “involved poor judgment.”

Poor judgement is choosing the roast chicken over the ribeye steak when you’re out with the folks and they’re paying. Poor judgement is eating that second bear claw. Poor judgement is wearing a paisley shirt. Etc and so on.

James Dyson on living a life of failure. The brilliantly obsessed mind behind the inventor of the world’s best vacuum.

He should train his sights next on perfecting the microwaveable pizza.

Tainted feed little risk to humans, scientists say.

Consumers face little risk from eating pork, chicken and eggs from farm animals that ate feed mixed with pet food scraps contaminated by an industrial chemical, government scientists said Monday.

Mixing in material contaminated at low levels diluted it such that humans who eat the animals won’t be harmed, the scientists said.

“We literally found that the dilution is so minute, in fact in some cases you can’t even test and find melamine any more in that product,” Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said in Chicago, speaking to the Organic Trade Association.

Makes you feel all warm and tingly inside. Heckuva job, Johannsie.

Holy shit, George Tenet is pissed.

Oh yeah, fuck you Dick Cheney, and Rush Limbaugh is still a fat drug addict with erectile dysfunction.

Oregon governor Ted Kulongoski to eat on $3 day.

The suprising detail is that he’s doing it just to say “Fuck you, Rachel Ray”. Seems kinda petty, but who am I to question the political process.

The Red-Meat Miracle, and Other Tales From the Butcher Case. (NYTimes)

Then there’s the ongoing saga of nitrite and nitrate, which give hams, bacon, hot dogs, bologna and other salt-cured meats their special color and tang. Nitrite reacts in the meat tissue to form nitric oxide, which binds tightly to the iron in myoglobin and turns it a stable red. Nitrite is also toxic to many microbes, including the bacteria that cause botulism, so it’s a critical preservative in cured sausages. For centuries meats were treated with a liberal mixture of salt and saltpeter, or sodium nitrate, which bacteria on the meat converted into nitrite. Nowadays manufacturers generally use very small quantities of pure nitrite, or a mixture of nitrite and nitrate.

In the 1970s, the nitrite and nitrate in cured meats fell under the suspicion that they might cause cancer. Later research showed that we get far more of these chemicals from vegetables like celery, spinach and lettuce. Their abundant nitrate comes from the soil and is turned into nitrite by bacteria living in our mouths.

Fans Sour on Sweeter Version of Asia’s Smelliest Fruit. Mad scientists cross-breed the durian to temper it’s filthy stench. I still wouldn’t touch it.

Normally I would welcome such an advance in technology that kills the foul odor that emanates from these Stegasarus testicles, but somehow it just feels wrong.

I’ve been grooving on Culinate, a new-ish entrant to the web food scene. Clean, user friendly and functional design, and great content. Portland’s own Jim Dixon is a contributor, spreading his olive oil wisdom and giving tips on how to feed your dog without killing it.

Via the incomparable TBogg.

I had the misfortune of catching a few seconds of this morning’s presser on the way in to work. The above photo captures the essence of this man. He is a petulant, snot-nosed brat with the mentality of a 10 year-old.

Ralph Wiggum at least has a good heart and would never send people off to die to placate his inordinate hubris.

Thrillist.com: Fresh Meats.

A dangerous new player in NYC’s underground gourmet scene, FM is a group of relentless carnophiles who provide dinner parties the absolute freshest meat possible. This involves bringing a soon-to-be-delicious animal to your apartment, then taking it through all stages of preparation, starting in your bathtub, and ending in your oven.

I have a lot of work to do, so here’s a post to tide all 1.7 readers of this blog over for the time being.

Blah blah blah factory farming blah blah blah foie gras rules blah blah blah best fig ever blah blah blah snooty waiter blah blah blah Russian River Valley Pinot blah blah blah Michael Pollan blah blah blah Kansas City BBQ blah blah blah sparkling vs still blah blah blah braised pork belly blah blah blah Adrià Achatz Blumenthal Cantu Dufresne blah blah blah west coast pizza sucks blah blah blah kumquat foam blah blah blah Tony Bourdain blah blah blah Fleur de Sel blah blah blah Nikon D70 blah blah blah bread recipe blah blah blah tacos and pho blah blah blah French Laundry blah blah blah fair trade coffee blah blah blah Flickr Youtube Technorati blah blah blah Rachael Ray sucks ass.

Start them early. What’s Next, Wine in Sippy Cups?.

Put this in a Chewbacca lunch pail with a Lunchables of Jamón serrano and Manchego cheese. Dessert can include shot of port and optional AA popup book.

Today I felt like getting a sandwich. I work in exurbia, and if I want to expand beyond our campus cafeteria my sandwich choices are corporately limited, i.e. Subway and Quiznos. I opt for the latter, as eating Subway is akin to listening to Phil Collin’s Sussudio (i.e. like Cabel Sasser claims, “…it’s like not eating anything at all!”). Plus, it’s been painful watching Jerrod devolve over the years into a sanctimonious, smug pig-fucker.

Quiznos, it should be mentioned, allows you to dress your sandwich with as many pickled peppers (3 kinds!), pickles, and dressings (3 kinds!) as you’d like. For an obsessively compulsive condiment and garnish hoarder like myself, that is like oxycontin.

So I headed over to Quiznos’ presence on the Interweb to see if there were any ground-breaking announcements that would sway my impending auto excursion to its friendly environs one way or another.

Nothing to see, outside of the odd choice in subject matter for the home page poll.

This type of Sophie’s Choice strikes me as a bit uneven for a corporate entity with a finely honed commercial image. A card-carrying member of the hoi polloi, such a myself, might even be given pause during his innocent search for a toasted sandwich. Perhaps the website poll editor today was stricken by a bout of existential suffering that manifests via deep ruminations of life’s ethical conundrums.

If so, here are a few other poll options I feel would capture the spirit of the moment:

Trans Fat Fight Claims Butter as a Victim.

The late inventor of instant noodles was symbolically blasted off into space at a funeral ceremony attended by thousands in Osaka, western Japan.

Rats Run Wild in KFC-Taco Bell in N.Y.

Not sure why this is a problem. That’s sustainable, free-range meat.

Drink’s big claim: It burns calories. “Skeptics don’t buy Coca-Cola, Nestlé green tea product.”

Sweet. Can’t wait to add it to my KFC, pork rinds and ranch dressing induction diet.

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Is Anna Nicole Smith still dead, Wolf?

BLITZER: Yes, we’re going to — updating our viewers coming up shortly on…

CAFFERTY: I can’t wait for that.

BLITZER: … the mysterious circumstances surrounding that, Jack. Thank you.

Our society has officially bottomed out.

The City of Boston collectively freaks the fuck out. Take a valium. Think happy thoughts. Marshmallows. Rainbows. Unicorns.

UPDATE: more from the AP.

Outside, they met reporters and television cameras and launched into a nonsensical discussion of hair styles of the 1970s. “What we really want to talk about today — it’s kind of important to some people — it’s haircuts of the 1970s,” Berdovsky said.

UPDATE II: Video of deliciously good agit-prop here.

Paraphrase: “Media…you are so lame.”

Want lies with your burger?. The befuddled history of the origins of the hamburger. For this author, White Castle gets the nod?

Thomas Keller admits he uses Sysco fries at Bouchon. Is the mango ketchup really just Jufran banana?

Quotes of the Morning: Homer J for the Rebuttal (again).

Homer Simpson channels our Leader. Via the talented and snarkilicious TBogg.

The Wandering Spoon’s illustrated guide to Vietnamese coffee.

Brilliant.

Houston Chronicle tries to make Texas gay.

Nice article on tofu and origins, including recipes that include soy milk pots de creme (so gay). Even a founding father was bi-curious.

Benjamin Franklin, who was briefly a vegetarian, mentioned “Tau fu” in a letter in 1770, writing in part of “the universal use of a cheese made of (soybeans) in China, which so excited my curiousity . . .”

Speaking of the gayfu spectre, the dude who started it all keeps going. I’m eagerly waiting for part three, which was promised almost a week ago. Let’s hope a WorldNetDaily editor hasn’t come to his senses (which, lucky for us, is unlikely).

Making Rice Noodles, originally uploaded by Dave and Bec.

Awesome photo on Flikr via this geotagged page.

R.I.P. James Brown. Faster, soul master.…memories of PWEI’s monumental ode.

Boss Hog (Rolling Stone). “Pork’s Dirty Secret: The nation’s top hog producer is also one of America’s worst polluters”.

Smithfield Foods, the largest and most profitable pork processor in the world, killed 27 million hogs last year. That’s a number worth considering. A slaughter-weight hog is fifty percent heavier than a person. The logistical challenge of processing that many pigs each year is roughly equivalent to butchering and boxing the entire human populations of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Detroit, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, San Francisco, Columbus, Austin, Memphis, Baltimore, Fort Worth, Charlotte, El Paso, Milwaukee, Seattle, Boston, Denver, Louisville, Washington, D.C., Nashville, Las Vegas, Portland, Oklahoma City and Tucson.

Has Politics Contaminated the Food Supply? Schlosser on food contamination and politics.

Run for the border…sprint to the toilet. E. coli in N.J. is linked to Taco Bell.

Those Crunch Wrap Supremes had one too many ingredients wrapped inside.

Borat to blame for destroying Pamela/Kid Rock marriage.

File under “Awesome”.

The nation’s abuzz about fast food, Vancouver-style.

“Nightline” ran a glowing profile of the Vancouver restaurant chain as the flip side to “Fast Food Nation,” a film that opened Friday.

The movie is based on Eric Schlosser’s best-seller, which criticizes the fast-food industry’s labor practices and environmental impact, as well as its food: It comes from factories, not farms, he says.

But Schlosser loves Burgerville’s burgers and fries. He discovered them when he ate at a Burgerville the night before a 2005 speech in Portland.

“I’m not a paid spokesman for Burgerville,” Schlosser told ABC’s Terry Moran. “I just like to see companies that do things the right way.”

…

In addition to spotlighting its food, ABC reported how Burgerville supports wind power, offers health care benefits and uses waste cooking oil for biodiesel fuel.

Good for them. Via Extra MSG.

Ed Bradley, RIP. A true legend and gentleman.

Bearded drinkers lose out.

Almost £500,000 worth of Ireland’s world famous stout is lost each year in the moustaches and beards of imbibers of the creamy headed black stuff.

Research carried out in the UK by Guinness reveals that an estimated 92,370 moustachioed drinkers of the Irish brew lose up to 162,719 pints each year.

Total party foul.

Seafood Population Depleted by 2048, Study Finds.

“We really see the end of the line now,” said lead author Boris Worm, a marine biologist at Canada’s Dalhousie University. “It’s within our lifetime. Our children will see a world without seafood if we don’t change things.”

Dear God. Time to expand the scope of that coy pond project in the back yard.

Wine extract keeps mice fat and healthy.

A wonderful adjunct to my KFC fried chicken diet…a box of red wine with each meal. Singularity, here I come!

P.W. Botha dies.

Stalin, Milosevic, et. all, will be waiting in hell for you.

KFC plans ‘important’ trans fat ‘milestone’.

That’s awesome. I can now return to that fried chicken diet that was all the rage a few years back.

Dogs are hyper-umami sensationalists.

Probably why my beagle considers cat shit to be foie gras.

An Epicurean Pilgrimage: Meals Worth the Price of a Plane Ticket.

R.W. Apple’s last submission to the NYT before his passing. A man who truly was an epicure nonpareil.

U.S. bans Vegemite.

In retaliation, Men at Work cancels stateside reunion tour.

But seriously. I have a jar of Marmite in my cupboard (given to me by Irish in-laws). I wonder what the street value will be once that’s invariably banned as well?

McCain jokes about suicide if Democrats win Senate.

Time to get the car running in the garage, St. Dickhead.

Is Eating Out Cheaper Than Eating In?

Of course not. But it does feature about 800% more fat and butter. Mmmmm. Fat. And butter. [Homer drooling]

Would Gandalf stay the course?
Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) explains the Iraq war by citing Lord of the Rings: “As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else,” Santorum told a newspaper editorial board. “It’s being drawn to Iraq and it’s not being drawn to the U.S. You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don’t want the Eye to come back here to the United States.”

Posted without comment.

Hey Apple, fix your shit.

And here’s an idea: when it’s sent in for Apple Care service, test your crap before sending it back out. You’ll save your customers a trip to Swan Island and a week without a laptop.

Your asshatery is starting to piss off your customers. If we wanted crap, we would have bought a Dell.

Go North, Young Grapes. The effect of global warming on the world’s vineyards.

This sets up Oregon nicely to be the next Napa or Sonoma. That is, if we’re not killing each other over scant resources in a post-apocalyptic war zone. One can only dream!

Author/Chef Anthony Bourdain: Five Questions from Eater.com’s Ben Leventhal.

BL: What restaurants and chefs are you excited about right now? Are there any new places you’re eager to try?
TB: I think Grant Achatz at Alinea in Chicago is doing really forward looking, exciting, high quality stuff. But most of the food that pleases me these days is casual, ethnic and free of the pomp and circumstance and potential exhaustion that comes with a fine dining tasting menu.

Yes.

Do androids dream of electric mutton? Chinese cookbot arrives, you are now obsolete.

No word on whether it possesses the necessary sentience for a “no MSG” option when cooking for elderly Jewish matrons.

Aerosol squirt cheese, deconstructed.

I would so eat about 37 of these.

Chillin’ with Trillin.

Living vicariously through The Amateur Gourmet as he goes on a culinary walking tour of NYC with the inestimable Calvin Trillin.

Better Drinking Through Chemistry.

Molecular gastronomy as applied to the cocktail. Here’s another drink recipe:

Scotching and Talking

1 eightball of Peruvian flake cocaine
1 1/2 jigger of scotch

Snort the cocaine. Drink the scotch. Lock yourself in a bathroom with a stranger and discuss politics for 3 hours.

R.I.P. R.W. Apple.

One of the greats. More about Apple here.

Smile, you’re on culinary candid camera!

A Dumpling Manifesto. “Why Americans must demand better.”

Erstwhile Chinese dumplings forces man to confront his anger management demons.

Candidate in Illinois accuses opponent of wanting to “Cut and Run” in Iraq.

Par for course, until you consider his opponent is a legless, double-amputee veteran of said Iraq war. Very classy, dude.

The Amateur Gourmet has a good post on fat in foods, which very closely mirrors my own views.

He even trots out that old axiom, one that has been so repeated by our elders so much that is almost cliche.

Cooking with fat, in many ways, is like sex. Sex in and of itself isn’t bad for you…But take it too far–meet a 70-year old hooker on the internet for a tantric orgy with the cast of “Eight Is Enough”–and you’ll be itching and burning ’til kingdom come.

Cabel at Panic (Portland-based Mac software shop who created “Transit “— my favorite FTP program) gets a great, random voicemail.

Update: From the comments, it seems like voicemailer and this guy could be one and the same. Best website EVER.

Via The Gastronaut, we see Rachel Ray being a bit flippant in the pages of Esquire vis-à-vis the anti-Ray backlash that invariably materializes once a phenomenon becomes full on pervasion (see Macarena, The).

Oooohhh, talk to dirty to me, you insouciant little vixen. Anybody have a link to those Maxim (FHM?) photos that she tried to destroy?

There’s a heady discussion at Portlandfood.org among the locals regarding whether Higgins or Paley’s truly deserves to place in the “Top 50.” Paley’s is more of a consensus, while Higgins…not so much. Many of the eateries that made the cut do seem to be sort of novelty picks, but of course any “Top…” is bound to be subjective and specious.

“Rachael Ray Show” potentially annoying.

I didn’t write that headline. If I had, it would have pared it down by one adverb.

Dodgers hit 4 in a row.

We got to 6-5 (after Marlon Anderson tripled and Betemit singled him home) and Vin said: “Boy is this a game, huh? And the crowd is loving it. From depression to euphoria and all the stops in between. It’s not Monday night here. No way, it is Mardi Gras, it is New Year’s Eve.”

Chillies aid Sumatra jail break.

Fuck fashioning a shiv from a bar of soap. Smuggle in some habaneros.

Prisoners at Pematang Siantar jail in Sumatra mixed hot chillies with water in plastic bottles to spray at guards.

The fiery liquid temporarily blinded the guards, allowing prisoners to grab their keys and make the break for freedom…

…A prison warder, Harianaja, told the Jakarta Post newspaper that the guards could not fight back because they were outnumbered.

“The is the first time chilli has been used to get out of this penitentiary,” the daily quoted him as saying.

King raps Jamie’s foul-mouthed rant.

Jamie Oliver chews out Brit parents for feeding their kids junk, and is called out by one of his sponsors. Bollocks. What a bunch of bloody arses. Here stateside, Patricia Heaton can claim to channel a woman with a liquified brain and call her husband a murderous monster, and Albertsons says nothing.

Hamptons $25 franks are a ‘hot dog’.

A restaurant in the Hamptons is serving a $25 hot dog made from Wagyu beef. No mention if lips and assholes are included.

The wieners come complete with a jumbo grilled bun (no charge for ketchup or mustard). With tax and the customary 20 percent tip, the hot dog actually costs $32.16 - but anyone who can afford dinner in East Hampton probably isn’t counting…

…The other day, Engle said, a group of diners ordered ribs, burgers and hot dogs — along with a $275 bottle of Krug champagne. “We have an eclectic menu,” he said. “Something for everybody.”

For the record, the hot dog costs more than the restaurant’s hamburger ($17) but less than the dry-aged prime steak roasted with Cipollini onions, thyme and cracked black pepper with a wild mushroom fricassee ($44).

This guy is what we call a fanatic.

6 years and thousands of dollars in ingredients and equipment later, he’s content to make a Neopolitan pizza of his own that he calls comparable to Patsy’s on 117th street in NYC. Ahab has killed his white whale. You can too, if you had an oven that can reach 825F (and takes 80 minutes to heat up).

Chow relaunches as online magazine.

FDA Issues Warning About Tainted Spinach.

Luckily, I skipped that 3 pound bagged spinach purchase from Costco last night. I usually eat the whole thing too.

Ann Richards, R.I.P..

Asian delicacies stir L.A. political pot.

Two Asian delicacies are the subject of a simmering debate pitting merchants who like to store them at room temperature for hours against food safety regulators who worry the practice could allow bacteria to build up.

One is a rice cake filled with fatty pork and beans, wrapped in banana leaves and served during the Lunar New Year. Another is a baked pastry consisting of lotus paste and a duck egg yolk.

If this had been Chicago, they would have simply outlawed it altogether without debate and just out of spite declared Tet a threat to public safety. But give credit to Orange and Los Angeles County, which are taking a more methodical approach before deciding a potential public health nuisance.

This week, state lawmakers came to the aid of the delicacies by ordering state health officials to determine whether the treats can be safely kept at room temperature for much longer than four hours. When the tests are completed, officials would set new standards.

“The contention … is, ‘We’ve been eating these foods for thousands of years, and nobody is getting sick. Why the stringent requirements, then?’” said Assemblyman Van Tran, who proposed the legislation which won overwhelming approval in the state Senate and Assembly.

“You have to find a balance between public health and history and culture. It’s a classic American story,” said Tran, a Republican who represents Little Saigon, a large Vietnamese enclave in Orange County.

I think that’s a telling statement. Whereas Chicago (or any American city for that matter) doesn’t necessarily enumerate foie gras worshippers in amounts to effect a groundswell of opposition, the Vietnamese population in Southern California is huge.

When my sister was in town in May, she picked up a Bánh Chưng (the aforementioned rice cake with fatty pork) from Phat Hung and it sat on our counter for hours after it had sat at room temperature at the market. And she ate only half of it, wrapped it back in the banana leaf and saran wrap, and I think finished the rest the next day. Maybe she stuck it in the fridge, I dunno, but my point is the same as Van Tran - people have been doing this shit for years and the legislation of personal behavior has gotten out of control. Though, Mr. Tran is a Republican, and I assume is for strong drug laws and penalties?

Virgin Mary Spotted In Foreman Grill Tray.

A St. Louis man claims to have seen an image of the Virgin Mary, but you’re not going to believe where he says her face appears.

John Milanos was cooking a hamburger on his George Foreman Grill last week in Missouri.

After he was done, he said the Holy Mother’s face appeared in the leftover grease.

The grease was in a small plastic drip pan that catches the grease and other fluids that run off the grill.

That’s nothing. I once created a corned beef sandwich in my panini press that looked like Burt Reynolds circa Smokey and the Bandit. How come I don’t get my name in the news?

Are you fucking kidding me?

This is like an Onion article, only The Onion would never be so pathetically cruel. It would be funny, I guess, if it wasn’t so very, very sad.

Insatiable appetite for gastronomy fuels weblogs.

USA Today provides a run-down of the food blog and food porn phenomena.

Good: Highlighting some of the best food blogs on the Interwebs and providing links to their respective homes.

Bad (and immeasurably tacky): Tying up the Tubes of the Internets with the preposterous notion that one must register in order TO CLICK ON A LINK and follow said link to its logical conclusion. Thanks for vasectomizing the spirit of the web in order to satiate your blood-thirsty data mining operatives, USATODAY.com. I almost forgot how to CUT AND PASTE.

I don’t care who you are or where you stand ideologically. If you think Islamofascism is the threat of our generation, if you’re a soccer mom or a NASCAR dad, or even if you believe supply-side economics is inherently flawed. I think we can all agree on one thing: A monkey riding a dog is good times.

Good-bye grits, hello quinoa.

Creative chefs across the country are reinterpreting the greasy spoon. Sleek interiors and inventive cuisine define a new crop of diners.

How come no toro tuna casserole made with cream of truffle soup, topped with crushed taro chips?

CNN tells you how to round out your faux haute trash experience with a stay in a vintage Airstream trailer, whereupon you’ll sip MD 20-20 cosmopolitans and beat your mistress while watching an episode of Project Runway.

Alien tomato

What is part tomato, part strawberry, and 100% bizarre? If H.R. Giger designed fruit while listening to Apples in Stereo, this would be the result.

Be an Expert on Anything

Stephen Colbert describes to Wired the ascension from chattering class to pundit. I intend on applying these techniques to food.

Few people know that the food coloring listed as cochineal extract comes from female beetles. Food activists want to spread the word.

When you dig into a strawberry Yoplait yogurt, take a moment to contemplate where the beautiful pink color comes from. Strawberries? Think again. It comes from crushed bugs. Specifically, from the female cochineal beetles and their eggs. And it’s not just yogurt. The bugs are also used to give red coloring to Hershey (HSY) Good & Plenty candies, Tropicana grapefruit juice, and other common foods.

Other surprises: Wild salmon is pink because it eats krill - a luxury farm-raised salmon don’t have. So they are fed chemicals that lend them their color. And Betty Crocker icing is not white because of egg whites or cream or even Peruvian flake cocaine - its lustre is only achieved with the same titanium dioxide you used to paint your utility room.

Fine Fast Food Is Just ‘Gourmeh’

I blame Subway. What the fuck is sweet onion teriyaki sauce?

Middle East erupts into chaos; Bush concerned with some good eats.

Whole roast wild boar…who can blame him?

With the world’s most perplexing problems weighing on him, President Bush has sought comic relief in a certain pig.

This is the wild game boar that German chef Olaf Micheel bagged for Bush and served Thursday evening at a barbecue in Trinwillershagen, a tiny town on the Baltic Sea.

“I understand I may have the honor of slicing the pig,” Bush said at a news conference earlier in the day punctuated with questions about spreading violence in the Middle East and an intensifying standoff with Iran about nuclear power.

The president’s host, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, started a serious ball rolling at this news conference in the 13th-century town hall on the cobblestone square of Stralsund. But Bush seemed more focused on “the feast” promised later. “Thanks for having me,” Bush told the chancellor. “I’m looking forward to that pig tonight.”

Ha ha ha, ha ha, bwah ha. Ahem. Ummm…

Rep. King Designs Electrified Fence For Southern Border: ‘We Do This With Livestock All The Time’

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) went on the House floor on Tuesday to discuss a fence that he “designed” for the southern boarder. (King constructed a model of the fence as he was speaking.) King’s design features a wire electrified “with the kind of current that would not kill somebody.” King noted that “we do this with livestock all the time.”

What’s the hope for sustainable, free-range livestock when we can’t even apply the same precepts to human beings? This guy gets an “A” for this science fair show and tell. His model, with all its detachable, form-fitting parts, is the mark of a future engineer. I think it’s to scale, even. Did he do this all by himself, or did daddy help him with his homework?

Watch it in all its glory.

For Natural Dogs, a Growing Appetite (NY Times)

Organic, grass-fed franks, nitrate-free and cured with…celery juice. Where do I sign up?

Cooking as if Punjab Were Part of Canada

Oh, why can’t Vancouver, BC, be 5 1/2 hours closer to Portland?

Mattbites Durian; Durian bites back.

As someone who grew up in a household where my sister and mother enjoyed Durian to the displeasure of the rest of the family, I must say the foul stench that emanates from these Stegasaurus testicles warrants all the scorn and disgust that is heaped upon this fruit. And then some.

In Northeast Thailand, a Cuisine Based on Bugs (NY Times)

The creatures that haven’t already been skewered and grilled or deep-fried lie in semiconscious states on banana leaves or in bowls and bags. These still-wriggling results of last night’s catch might upset those of us who don’t cull our food from nearby trees, rivers and rice paddies, but their intermittent signs of life reassure potential purchasers that no pesticides were used in the capture.

A Sip, a Smile, a Cheery Fizz (NY Times)

Prosecco, ersatz Champagne? I think not. The perfect summer drink for celebrating that the sun exists.

Lunch confidential with Anthony Bourdain ( San Jose Mercury News).

Highlights include:

On Rachael Ray…

“I find her relentless good cheer terrifying and distrust anyone who could stand in front of a camera and eat mediocre food and say it’s good.”

On foie gras…

“I see the future, and it doesn’t include foie gras. They shrewdly picked the right issue with a small constituency in America. I’m unhappy about it, I’m angry about it. The thought that someone could be worried about that or about lobsters in tanks when you see what’s going on in Darfu… I’d like to see the courage of their convictions. I’d like to see them go into the inner city of Oakland or Mexico or Brazil and stop a dog fight.”

On vegetarians…

“Joyless, angry, frightened, anti-human, and just plain rude. How can you travel and be a vegetarian? I don’t like my grandma’s cooking, but at least I try it.”

In Oregon, a Cherry Jubilee

Cherry picking in Oregon’s Hood River Valley. (From the New York Times via Megnut).

United States Department of Agriculture’s directory of farmer’s markets, by state.

Who says big government can’t deliver? Grover Norquist, eat your heart out.

Shopper’s Guide to Pesticide in Produce.

Handy wallet guide to let you know what icky stuff you’re getting with that bell pepper from Safeway.

I wonder what extra-terrestial foods might we humans subjugate and cultivate in solar systems elsewhere?

The survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there’s an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy the Earth, world-renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking said Tuesday.

He added that if humans can avoid killing themselves in the next 100 years, they should have space settlements that can continue without support from Earth.

That’s quite a leap of faith. Perhaps there exists an animal more tasty than the cow. Zagat’s would need to hire a thousand Arthur Dents.

The Amateur Gourmet, who is becoming my favorite food blogger, drags his boyfriend to an old-skool chophouse in NYC for some 26 ounce mutton chops. Notice the throwback “amuse-buche” of olives, carrot and celery sticks on ice with blue cheese dressing. Takes you back to day when the industrial military complex was yet a sparkle in America’s eyes.

New Alton Brown Show on Food Network: Feasting on Asphalt – “Brown embarks on a transient mission to find tasty edibles on the go.” Premiers July 29th.