Flash in the Pan

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• Butter Statues - Every year, the Iowa State Fair has big statues made of butter. Making the public vote cut: 40th anniversary of the moon landing. What didn't? Michael Jackson, presumably doing the moon walk. (AP)


• Chilling Cattle - Heat waves in Veneto, Italy is driving farmers to try showers and fans to keep their cattle cool. (UPI)


• That's Mr. Cupcake to You - Guinness certified the world's largest cupcake at 150 pounds, 15 pounds of filling, and 60 pounds of icing. (UPI)


• Did He Spill A Drop? - A Vermont police officer pulled over a driver for drunk driving. What made him suspect? The glass of beer left on the trunk. (AP)


• No Hot Dogging - The Oscar Meyer Weinermobile crashed into a Wisconson home. Was it shaped like a bun? (AP)


• Laurent Ponsot, Wine Detective - Ponsot, a former vintner, tracks fake wine. (Financial Times)


• And Nabbing a Vintage Villain - French police arrested a man who allegedly stole 500 bottles of wine, worth millions of dollars, from top Parisian restaurants. (AFP)


• Making Lemonade - Seven Pennsylvania children got into trouble with the police for selling lemonade without a permit. (AP)


• Onion Juice - A new system converts onion juice into a different type of juice -- electricity. (Reuters)


• Sub Swiping - A serial robber in Florida seems to favor sub sandwich chain stores. (UPI)


• Jail B&B - A Missouri jail is raising money for new mattresses by letting people stay overnight in a new addition. Comes with snacks, mug shots, and shirts. But how about the cake with a file inside? (AP)


• Doesn't Melt In Your Hands - Swiss chocolate maker Barry Callebaut says it has a melt-resistant version of the treat. (UPI)


• Meatball Mania - A Chicago restaurant is prepping 200 pounds of beef for the American Meatball Eating Championship. (UPI)

Labels: news, odd, strange, weird

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• Eat It and Like It - A 71-year-old man complained to his 66-year-old common law wife about her bad cooking. She allegedly beat him and apparently told deputies, upon her arrest, that she had been drunk and burned the bread. Toast, anyone? (AP)


• Cops Own Doughnut Shop - Some Michigan police really wanted their doughnuts, so when the owners of the local shop were planning to close it, nine officers chipped in and bought it. (UPI)


• Have Cork, Will Travel - A service offering a select few consultations from top sommeliers has an entry fee of £50,000, or about $81,000, and that doesn't include the wine. Check the ins and outs of adding a temperature recorder to a case of wine to make sure it didn't get overheated. Alas, it did. (Financial Times)


• Here Comes the Orient Express - Some top British chefs are creating dishes for toddlers, hoping to get kids into restaurants. What are the chances that they still ask for grilled cheese and chicken fingers? (UPI)


• Pastel, Stale, and Coming for You - The first store devoted to selling Peeps is scheduled to open. It won't just be the marshmellow concoctions (whether dream or nightmare is up to you), but also such things as t-shirts, plush toys, and pillows. In a blind taste test, could anyone tell the difference? (Washington Post)


• Water into Wine - A German company claiming that its powerder turns water into Chianti is angering Italian farmers. I'm betting that the Catholic Church does not have a stake in the venture. (UPI)


• Dining the Parisian Way - You can get a great meal in Paris, but only when the restaurants are willing to give it to you. It seems that only recently has it been possible to find establishments open on weekends. (Financial Times)


• Egg Foo Young for Everyone - A crash between a truck and a car sent an estimated 9,000 pounds of Chinese food spilling onto a Chicago toll road. No one was seriously hurt, but no word on what the what the fortune cookies read. (UPI)


• Chicken Feet: Take a Hike - As part of a trade war, China is prohibiting the importing of U.S. chicken, about half of which is chicken feet. (Reuters)


• Mediterranean Britain? - Climate change is bringing some differences in British agriculture, including growing peaches, olives, and pecans. (Daily Telegraph)


• Burger Blooper - Burger King has to apologize for depicting in an ad a Hindu deity eating a beef burger, showing that the company had no regard for sacred cows. (UPI)


• Who Took the Cheese? - There has been such an upsurge in people stealing cheese from a British grocery chain that it is adding security tags to the product. (UPI)

Labels: news, odd, strange, weird

One problem I've found with making your own ice cream is having to plan ahead. Using a compressor-type machine like the Cuisinart Supreme I reviewed is that even so, you still need to make and chill the mix so you're not waiting forever for it to freeze. But here's a Philadelphia-style vanilla I improvised today that's pretty good -- no custard base, so not as rich as you'd get with eggs, but you don't even have to heat the liquid to dissolve the sugar. You go immediately from mixing to the freezer, so it's great for a whim.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream


• 1 cup half and half


• 1/2 cup granulated sugar


• 1/8 tsp. salt


• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Directions

1. In a bowl, mix the heavy cream, half and half, sugar, and salt until the sugar and salt are completely dissolved.


2. Stir in the vanilla extract until completely mixed in.


3. Freeze using ice cream freezer directions.

Makes about 3 cups of ice cream.

Labels: dessert, ice cream, recipes

In my writing day job, I often cover intellectual property issues, and something funny came up on one of my regular reading lists: a set of patent lawsuits over fish sticks. That's right, those frozen, breaded refugees from a grade school cafeteria. (Oh, am I probably going to get email from some overly earnest junior PR people working on one of the food accounts for that reference.)

Apparently, Alfred and Paul Fraser are co-owners of patent number 4,781,930, called Method of preparing a fish product. Here's what it covers:

A method of preparing a fish product comprising filleting a fish to appropriate thickness, immediately immersing the filleted fish in a vegetable oil for a period of 5 to 10 minutes at room temperature to effect absorption of the oil to a depth such as to inhibit excretion of the natural fluids from the fillet and prevent incursion of air and moisture, draining the excess oil from the surface, covering the surface with crumbs and then freezing the fillet.

The now 21-year-old patent (which means it's expired) was for dunking fish in oil, draining the excess, and then covering it in crumbs and freezing it for later. Back in 2006, the Frazer boys decided to start suing pretty much everyone they could find in the fish stick business, including Gortons and Mrs. Paul's. The defendants ended up winning the fish fillet follies, getting a Massachusetts court to provide a summary judgment:

• Five defendants didn't even start with fresh fish and didn't soak what they had in oil.


• Two of the defendant companies had either filed for bankruptcy or been dissolved.


• The remaining two defendants who might have been sued were not properly served with the suit papers, as a "return of service merely noting delivery to 'girl at front disk'" apparently didn't meet comply with state rules.

Oops. Maybe the Frazers will go off and drown their sorrows -- hopefully not in oil and likely for longer than five to ten minutes.

Labels: humor, law, news, odd, weird

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• Cross-Species Competitive Eating - In the world of pigging out, it's animals 1, humans, zip. (AP)


• Big Value in Small Change - A pub customer paid for his pint and received as part of his change a 20 pence piece worth about $11,400 (£7,000). (Daily Telegraph)


• Wiener Winner- New York's Joey Chestnut retained his title in the annual Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest with a personal best of 68 hot dogs. (UPI)


• Buddy, Can You Bear a Sub? - A New Jersey man claims that a bear attacked him for his Italian sandwich. The animal probably got lost and thought it was in Manhattan, where no one would have blinked. (AP)


• Cheesy Wedding - A woman who is a professional cheese sculptor married a retired Navy commander that she met while working on a cheese version of a U.S. air craft carrier.(UPI)


• Maybe More Grill Time, Less Air Time? - Gordon Ramsey's restaurants saw profits fall by about 90 percent. (Daily Telegraph)


• Hot, Cold, or Embalmed?- A Canadian funeral home offers free coffee at a drive-through window. Please tell me that they don't take burial orders at the same time. (UPI)


• Pez Sues For Pause - Pez Candy, maker of the eponymous candy and dispensers is suing the Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia in California for infringing its trademark with a giant model Pez dispenser. (Courthouse News Service)


• Field of Diets - A Chicago Cubs fan says that he's going on a 500-calorie-a-day diet until the team can win five games in a row. (Chicago Sun-Times)


• Don't Touch That Grill - The city of Highland Park, Michigan, in its wisdom, outlawed outdoor barbecuing or grilling. (UPI)


• McDonald's Comes to Stop for Bicyclists - A McDonald's in the UK refused to serve a couple of bicyclists on a tandem bike at its drive-through window because of the potential danger to them by cars. What about the danger from what's inside the sack?(Daily Telegraph)


• Bug Weight Loss - Apparently, someone studied whether cockroaches would get fat on fast food. (They do.) (LiveScience.com)

Labels: news, odd, strange, weird

Giant Food has announced a recall of Giant Nonfat Dried Milk, 9.6 ounce size, UPC number 6-8826707833, code FEB 0511S.

The items were removed from store shelves because they were produced with nonfat dried milk that is part of a national recall by Plainview Milk and may have the potential to be contaminated with salmonella bacteria.


Customers who have purchased the product should discard any unused portions and bring their purchase receipt to any Giant Food for a full refund. To date, Giant Food has received no reports of illnesses associated with consumption of this product.

If you need more information, you can call Giant's corporate brands at 1-877-846-9949, M-F, 9 a.m. -1 p.m., or Giant's customer service line at 1-888-469-4426, M-F, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

Giant Food operates 182 supermarkets in Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and the District of Columbia, and employs approximately 22,000 associates. For more information, see www.giantfood.com.

Labels: dairy, food safety, recall

Biscuits and gravy is an old, and great, southern breakfast. This version adds a bit of bite through the chorizo sausage.

Ingredients

• 1 pound chorizo sausage
• 4 1/2 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
• 3 cups milk, heated until warm but not scalded
• 8 biscuits (I have a buttermilk biscuit recipe here)

Directions

1. Prepare four plates. For each, split two biscuits and place the halves, split-side up, on the plate.
2. Cut the chorizo into 1/4-inch slices. Don't worry if the sausage begins to crumble or the slices start to come apart.
3. Over high heat, place to sausage into a 10-inch fry pan. Cook for two minutes.
4. Sprinkle flour over sausage slices and cook another three minutes.
5. Add milk all at once and stir mixture until flour dissolves. Continue stiring until the mixture comes to a boil and the gravy is thickened.
6. Pour gravy over each set of biscuits.

Serves 4.

Labels: biscuits, breakfast, recipes

I've been fiddling with my biscuit recipe for years. Here's the latest, and best, version.

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose power
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. baking soda
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1 Tbsp. sugar
• 4 Tbsp. Sacco buttermilk powder (note, you can omit this, substituting buttermilk for the water when added in the recipe)
• 5 Tbsp. butter, cold

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Mix all dry ingredients in a large bowl.
3. Cut butter into dry ingredients until mixture resembles coarse meal.
4. Add water slowly, mixing until all dry ingredients are damp and dough loosely holds together. Dough should be wet.
5. Turn dough out onto well-floured board and knead for about 30 seconds. Instead of traditional bread kneading motion, fold dough in half, press flat, and repeat.
6. Roll dough out approximately 3/8-inch in thickness, then use biscuit cutter or cup. Take scraps, form into new ball, roll out to 3/8-inch thickness, and cut additional rounds. Place biscuit rounds on ungreased cookie sheet with at least 1-inch separation.
7. Bake biscuits for approximately 18 minutes or until golden brown.

Labels: biscuits, recipes