Flash in the Pan

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• Naked Chef Finds British Food - - Bland Jamie Oliver, the "Naked Chef," took swipes at his countrymen, the culture of alcohol, too many material goods, and bland food. Not, as he claims, like it used to be, when the televisions were small, the phones attached to the wall, and the food like Italian, only without pasta or risotto. Order up a slab of meat and some potatoes for the disillusioned and weary cook. (The Telegraph)


• But They All Taste Like Coke Coca-Cola is working on a new fountain machine that can dispense 100 flavors. Let's hope one of them isn't New Coke. (Atlanta Journal Constitution)


• Pest, Please As food prices have jumped internationally, the price of rat meat has quadrupled in Cambodia as poor people cannot afford any other type. (Reuters)


• Pizza on the House Pizzaioli - pizza chefs - in Naples gave away pizza last week to protest some competitors who, they claimed, used jumps in commodity prices to excuse permanent price jumps even when the commodity prices dropped again. (Reuters)


• Annual Tomato Fight Last week also brought the annual tomato fight, with an estimated 40,000 people pelting each other in Bunol, Spain. (AP)


• Stale Cake Sale A 27-year-old piece of the cake from the wedding of Princess Diana and Prince Charles sold for about $2,400. (AFP)

Labels: news, odd, weird

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• Blitzkreig on a Bun Los Angeles has classified bacon as a "harzardous food," and now has taken to the streets, sending police to confiscate and destroy the stands of street vendors that dared sell hot dogs with bacon. (Reason.com)


• Dregs'Den Some mischief maker conned Wine Spectator into giving out an award to a non-existent restaurant. Except for the very top category, the awards are based on reviewing a wine list and getting a check for the "examination" fee. Hopefully they actually taste the wines they rate. (NYT)


• Phoney Phish A couple of teenagers got samples of fish from restaurants and shops in New York City, had the DNA tested - and found that up to a quarter of the fish was mislabled, and always as a more expensive type than it actually was. (Reuters)


• Arrested for What?? A blind Frenchman was arrested and fined ... for diving drunk and without a license. How about for driving without being able to see? (AFP)


• Making Science Work for Religion Turkish Muslims can get patches to ease their hunger during the month of Ramadan, when they are suppoed to fast. (AFP)

Labels: news, odd, weird

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• Brain Food Some researchers think that the development of cooking may have been the springboard for a rapid increase in brain mass 2 million years ago. (LiveScience)


• No Litreing The owner of a Polish restaurant in England is in legal trouble because he serves Polish beer in .3 and .5 litre sizes instead of in pints. (Daily Mail)


• Domain Dispute Wine producers in St. Emilion are fighting with each other over whose products get to be called Bordeaux. (NYT)


• What Did You Call It? Chinese foods are often difficult to translate, as there may be no English equivalents, and a single region like Sichuan may have thousands of unique dishes. (Financial Times)


• No, He's Our Boxer Both Pepsi and Coke have erected promotional tents outside the home of an Olympic boxer from Thailand, where the athlete's father says both can stay as long as they don't start fighting. (Reuters)


• Vodka on the Rocky Sylvester Stallone is signed up to promote a Russian vodka. (Reuters)


• Barter Bar An English pub is bartering drink for ingredients that can be used on its menu. (AFP)


• Pricey Grapes The Japanese, again showing their proclivity for spending a bit too much on fruit, put Ruby Roman grapes on auction that fetched as much as $30 a single globe. (AFP)


• Way the Cookie Crumbles The company that owns Mrs. Fields, purveyor of cookies, as well as TCBY frozen yogurt has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Or, as a news report put it, the company says that it needs more dough. Sounds like someone without enough culture sporting a chip on his or her shoulder. (UPI)

Labels: news, odd, weird

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• PC Over Easy Someone has built a gizmo to plug into a computer's USB port and cook an egg in seven minutes. And people say I have too much time on my hands. (Engadget)


• Overtones of Electrons Spanish scientists create an electronic tongue to test wines. (Engadget)


• Nosh-a-Matic A company has created a line of vending machines specifically for kosher food. (NYT)


• Olympic Meals A number of the 40,000 restaurants in Beijing are creating sport-related dishes for the Olympics, including "abalone shaped like a rowing boat with asparagus oars." (Reuters)


• Barbecue Is Dangerous Two people were arrested for using barbecue equipment as a weapon. (AP)


• Killer Dish A U.K. celebrity chef apologized for recommending the use of the toxic and hallucinagenic henbane as a good ingredient for summer eating. Apparently he confused the names of two plants. (Reuters)


• Telltale Sign Teens accused of robbing a vending machine led police to themselves with a trail of Cheetos. (AP)


• The Crunchless Flick An increasing number of movie theaters in Britain are banning popcorn. (AFP)


• Where's the Bathroom? A 25-year-old man had twice the blood alcohol level considered lethal after 20 liters of beer. (AFP)

Labels: news, odd, weird

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• Chinese Kugel For religious Jews visiting China during the Olympics, there is exactly one kosher restaurant. An hour after eating, you feel like doing a mitzvah. (Crispy on the Outside)


• Chef Gorten A new restaurant trend: use frozen fish to lower global warming. (Washington Post)


• Menu Groupthink A new raw foods restaurant looking to open in Washington, D.C. is using the "wisdom of crowds" to create the concept, look, and name. (Washington Post)


• Am I Crispy Yet? A new alarm clock cooks a strip of bacon to wake you to the smell of breakfast. BYOE (bring your own eggs). (Geek.com)


• Please Sir, May I Have Some More? Between 1970 and 2006, the average American was eating 1.8 more pounds of food per week. (NYT)


• Why Are You Wearing Two Dresses? A Cleveland clothing store has opened a bar in the middle of its sales floor. (AP)


• Take It Inside Beijing authorities are banning streaking, drinking, and sleeping outdoors during the Olympics. Could it be that the three activities are related? (Reuters)


• McVroomManila police will power their squad cars with a mix of diesel and old McDonald's fry oil. Presumably officers will have the option to supersize their ride into an SUV. (AFP)


• Well Aged Someone found the world's oldest surviving bottle of Veuve Cliquot in a sideboard inside a Scottish castle. (AFP)

Labels: news, odd, weird

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• Professor of Pistachio One of the world's largest ice cream equipment manufacturers runs Gelato University outside Bologna, where it teaches 6,000 would-be professionals a year. (Financial Times)


• Going Against the Whole Grain Sara Lee, General Mills, and others, get smacked for claiming "whole grain" when products are mostly refined white flour. (Businessweek)


• Briber Works ... Ah, Worked An English school used chocolate bars as bribes for good behavior - and it worked. But higher officials chided him for not using healthy food. (Financial Times)


• That Metallic Taste Coca-Cola lovers in Hong Kong will be getting 25ml less of the drink per can as the company is shrinking the size of the container to save money on the cost of aluminum. (MarketWatch)


• The Big Eatsy For the first time since Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans Times-Picayune is again reviewing restaurants. (NYT)


• Brain Food The head of the World Trade Organization has suggested to his staff members that they eat bananas to keep them going through difficult negotiation sessions. (Reuters)


• Ho, Ho, Ho The 51st annual world Santa convention included a focus on exercising, not dieting, to get those jolly guys more easily down chimneys. (AFP)


• Keeping His Sunny Side Up A French waiter who threw an egg at the car carrying Nicholas Sarkozy during his visit to Ireland said that he'll be ready with "more than a dozen" should the president of France return. (AFP)

Labels: news, odd, weird

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• Bam - You're Insulted In a new British television show, Eating with the Enemy people prepare their favorite home dishes and food writers try to out-snark each other. (The Observer)


• The Naked Video Game Jamie Oliver is star of a cooking video game with recipes and as it runs on a portable Nintendo DS, you can bring it to the grocery store and have it manage your shopping list. All without calories. (Press release)


• No Take Out for You and You and You An anti-immigrant group in Italy is pushing for a law that would let cities bar ethnic restaurants "incompatible with the historical context." Is any part of Italy not historic? Oh, right, that's the idea. (Reuters)


• Self-Cutting Sandwich A New York man is claiming in a lawsuit that a Subway shop put a 7-inch knife into his sandwich. (Reuters)


• Good Thing He Didn't Ask for Doughnuts A Florida policeman was fired for trying to get free coffee and tea from a Starbucks. Didn't anyone tell him that it's over roasted? (AP)


• Golden Ticket A French woman found a candy wrapper in the trash and, with it, a winning number for a contest where the prize is a flight into space. (Reuters)


• Single-Handedly Keeping Breweries in Business An Australian man, convicted of a seventh DUI charge, was spending almost $1,000 weekly on beer. (Reuters)


• Uh ... Surprise Police say that a pizza restaurant clerk didn't know that her parents and her husband were planning to rob the establishment. (AP)


• He Deserves a Break Today A man who was convicted of robbing a McDonalds in 1994 is among the finalists in a contest to write a new jingle for the chain. (AP)


• Financial Decline of Wine Shrine A Napa Valley food and wine museum is in the financial dregs, and California citizens could get stuck with the tab. (Sacramento Bee)


• Free Willie Some Canadians are bidding to get a New Brunswick restaurant to free a 100-year-old lobster. (AFP)

Labels: news, odd, weird

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• The Stress of Dealing with a Food Crisis At the G8 summit, world leaders prepared themselves to deal with the issue of a food crisis by having a 19-course dinner prepared by 25 chefs. (The Guardian)


• Yes, We Have No Bow-wowersBeijing officials have called on restaurants and hotels to stop serving dishes containing dog during the Olympics. (Financial Times)


• Cocoa Chanel An Ivorian fashion designer makes outfits from jute sacks used to ship cocoa from the Ivory Coast. (Reuters)


• World's Hottest Curry Title? A London restaurant took at shot at serving the world's hottest curry and is waiting on the Guinness Book of World Records to confirm this. Every diner had to sign a disclaimer. (AFP)


• Iron-Rich Diet A Peruvian doctor had to pull 17 metal objects - including nails and a knife - from the body of a patient who ate them. (Reuters)


• Curdled Carriers Thousands of liters of sour milk, sent by farmers protesting low dairy prices, are clotting the EU's main sorting center. (Reuters)


• Cooler Armor A Connecticut man used his lunch cooler to protect himself from the gunfire of two would-be robbers. (AP)


• Some Strong Tea A Japanese calmed down a knife-wielding robber by serving him tea. (Reuters)

Labels: news, odd, weird

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• I'll Drink to That The Museum of the American Cocktail returns to its home in New Orleans on July 21. (Organization web site)


• Shaken, Not Whirred Japanese beer company Asahi unveiled its new robot bartender. (Engadget)


• Hops Go the Brewers Craft beer companies are facing "rapidly rising commodity prices, industry consolidation, and a slowing economy" and trying to figure out how they're going to make money. Oh, wait - we'll pay more. (Businessweek)


• Life's a Bowl of Cherry Pits A son out spat his father to take his seventh International Cherry Pit Spitting Championship. (AP)


• Battle of the Courses A restaurant in a part of Beirut controlled by Hezbollah is war-themed, with a bullet-shaped menu and chefs working in military fatigues. (Reuters)


• Hot Dogging An American successfully defended his world title in Nathan's annual hot dog eating competition. (Reuters)


• No Starch Decision A UK court ruled that Pringles are not a potato snack, and so not subject to a tax. (AP)


• Hope They Are Red An international body has adopted a standard for tomatoes. (AFP)


• No Restaurant for You Three retired family members have at least temporarily lost a 50 year battle for a top Paris restaurant valued at $110 million. (AFP)

Labels: news, odd, weird

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• Nineteenth Amendment? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Nineteenth Amendment Proving that dead ideas of the past are never far away, the Phoenix Country Club still has a men-only bar, with women relegated to some dump of a back room, crossing the line from "weird" news to pathetic. (New York Times)


• It's a Good Vintage For those, like me, who missed this story the first time around, Martha Stewart has lent her name to some $15 a bottle wines that I notice the other day in a local grocery store. It's probably the only wine that matures according to a strict calendar. (USA Today)


• Say Cheese A Wisconsin sculptor recreated John Trumbull's painting "Declaration of Independence" in a ton of cheddar. (AP)


• Peanuts ... Popcorn ... Kung Pao ... In time for the Olympics, Beijing is providing to restaurants official English translations of local menu items. "'Bean curd made by a pock-marked woman,' as the Beijing Youth Daily rendered the spicy Sichuanese dish, is now 'Mapo tofu.' And 'chicken without sexual life' becomes mere 'steamed pullet.'" (Reuters)


• Hold On There, Pardner The Naked Cowboy, a New York City street performer, is suing Mars for billboards depicting a blue M&M in the cowhand's signature outfit of boots, a hat, and white briefs. (Reuters)


• Maybe If They Call It Adult Grape Juice A burgeoning Finish wine industry is halted in its tracks as the European Union, which doesn't recognize Finland as a wine-producing country under EU rules, prohibits inhabitants from selling what they make.(New York Times)

Labels: news, odd, weird

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• Scratch and Sniff Lottery The Colorado lottery is selling scented scratch tickets, where you scratch the latex-covered area and release scented ink, including chocolate and coffee. (AP)


• Cold Crustacean A restaurant cook allegedly tried stealing frozen lobster tails by stuffing them down his pants. Will he end up in the cooler? (WABC)


• Begone, Thou Misshapen Fruit! The EU is having trouble ridding itself of regulation over the shape of fruits and vegetables sold there. (Reuters)


• One for Me, One for You An English farm has ended its pick-your-own strawberries program because people ate more than they bought. (The Press Assoc.)


• Swearing by Ramsey Australia's parliament is tightening rules on permissible on-air language, and all because of Gordon Ramsey. (Reuters)


• The McDonald's Diet A man in Virginia lost 80 pounds in six months by having nearly every meal at a McDonald's - salads, wraps, and apple dippers without the caramel sauce. Could he maybe have exercised a bit, as well?(AP)


• A Hair of the Dirty Dog An ex-cook was charged with putting hairs inside a steak that was served to a dissatisfied customer. (AP)

Labels: news, odd, weird

Get ready for your chocolate fix to be a little more dear. Cocoa prices have hit a 28-year high. According to a story in the Financial Times, the reason is concern "over the size and quality of this year’s crop from Ivory Coast, the world’s largest producer." This basic component of chocolate has climbed 52.3 percent this year alone:

The International Cocoa Organisation is forecasting a small supply surplus of 71,000 tonnes in 2008/09, but a poor crop in Ivory Coast could push the market into a supply deficit for a third year in a row.

Similarly, Brazil has reported that its sugal crop will be delayed and smaller because of rain, so sugar prices rose by 3.2 percent. Now here's the real interesting part, I think: prices for October sugar are 12.83 cents a pound. How much do you pay for a pound of sugar? Who gets the rest of that money, and what value do they add to justify their cuts?

In the meantime, in another Financial Times story, food prices are hitting hard enough in Mexico that the "center-right goverment" - which I take to mean on the conservative side - has put price controls into place on 150 basic items, including beans, cooking oil, canned tuna, and fruit juice. Prices will remain frozen from now until the end of the year. But given the hefty jumps we've been seeing in the underlying goods, what happens to the merchants and wholesellers? I understand that people with no money are hurting, but this seems to be a short-sighted approach of addressing a problem. The government shifts the burden onto businesses, which might end up losing money in the long run and possible start cutting jobs, because it wants to appear as though it's active toward the problem. But the dynamics don't change, and the effect is to sweep the pain under a carpet and out of site. The eventual price for this approach may be higher and longer-lasting, but, hey, maybe that will be for someone else to deal with.

Labels: chocolate, government, news, prices, sugar

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• What About the Free Eggs? Employees at a McDonalds finally captured a rogue chicken that had taken up residence and blocked the drive-through lane. (AP)


• They Also Make a Mean Burre Blanc Scientists find monkeys that fish. (AP)


• Restaurant Snaps Closed New York City inspectors shut down a restaurant after finding a snapping turtle in the sink. (AP)


• Did They Have to Clean the Glasses? A New Zealand restaurant got in trouble for accidentally serving dishwashing liquid as mulled wine. (AFP)


• Garlic Groveling In an attempt to keep yet another segment of the economy from protesting or striking, the Thai prime minister, a former television chef, used his weekly television address to promote cooking with local garlic. (AFP)

Labels: news, odd, weird

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• No Time For Oranges A survey suggests that Britons feel that they don't have time to peel oranges at lunch, so they opt for easier-to-peel citrus. (Reuters)


• Only $358.82 a Pound Someone in Japan paid $6100 for a 17-pound rare black-skinned Densuke watermellon. Hopefully it came with someone to spit out the seeds for the buyer. (AP)


• What Is that Flavor? An Arkansas corrections officer was allegedly caught smuggling syringes and pot hidden inside take-out TexMex food. (AP)


• What Weren't They Smoking? Some dorm workers at Indiana University got suspicious when they found green leafy material in some fudge they had been given. Turns out it was lavender. (AP)


• Serving Your Way to Heaven An Indian widow spent over $37,000 on a feast for a reputed 100,000 because she had no one to leave her money to. (Reuters)


• Do They Come in Coffin Shapes? The late inventor of the Pringles potato chip can had some of his cremated remains buried in one of them. (AP)


• Last Stop for Tube Drinking Thousands took to the London Underground to celebrate the last day of legal drinking on the system - and when things got out of control, police arrested 17 and closed 6 subway stations. (Reuters)


• Shaken, Not Stirred Champagne manufacturer Louis Roederer is testing the results of letting sparkling wine age 50 under the surface of the ocean rather than in the traditional cellars. And after all that wave action shaking the carbonated contents, who gets to open the first bottle? (Reuters)


• Looks Good to Him An Israeli rabbi has declared giraffe meat and milk to be kosher. (AFP)


• Guess the Souffle Fell A 28-year-old trainee chef threatened to kill himself with a knife unless allowed to retake a test at Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in London. (London Telegraph)

Labels: news, odd, weird

A story in The Scientists discusses a devastating banana disease that virtually wiped out the Gros Michel - "by all accounts, bigger, tastier, and hardier than the variety we know and love, which is called the Cavendish" - that seems to be coming back. The only difference is that this time, the Cavendish doesn't seem immune from the new strain of what is called Panama disease:

Panama disease is so virulent that a single clump of dirt tracked in on a tire tread or a shoe can spark a country-wide outbreak. It isn't hard to imagine that a stray banana box from the Philippines, loaded into a Dole shipping container could be left unloaded at Long Beach, California, and continue on to Guatemala, where it could infect that nation's crop and tear through Latin America.

The big fruit companies seem to be living in denial and aren't publicly addressing the problem. Scientists are looking at genetic engineering as a solution. Great, from blight to GMO.

Labels: farming, fruit, news

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• I'm Going to Need Seconds Japanese scientists created a noodle bowl so small that you have to use a microscope to see it. (AP)


• Everyone's a Critic Police arrested a Hamptons gallery owner for serving wine and champagne at her gallery for the opening of an exhibit of photographs taken by Angelina Jolie, Madonna, and Justin Timberlake. (AP)


• Who Had Too Much Caffeine? Dunkin Donuts withdrew an ad featuring Rachel Ray when conservative bloggers went berserk over her wearing a scarf that they claimed was patterned like a traditional Arab headdress. (AP)


• Bridget Jones Blamed as Chardonnay Bane A wine expert blames the fictional character Bridget Jones's crying into a glass of chardonnay for making the wine less appealing. (London Telegraph)


• A Really Light Beer A Japanese company plans to make beer with barley descended from grains that spent five months on the International Space Station in 2006. The entire run, by Sapporo, will be 100 bottles. (AP)

Labels: news, odd, weird

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• $175 Hamburger The Wall Street Burger Shoppe, which likes having the most expensive hamburger in New York City, just raised its price from $150 to $175 because Daniel Boulud's DB Bistro Moderne had hiked its previous budget busting burger from $120 to $150.


• Cons Are Dining Pros An Italian maximum security prison runs a restaurant a few evenings a year, charging patrons about $55 a head for dinners cooked and served by inmates. (Reuters)


• Nothing Fancy Please A Spanish chef whose establishment has three Michelin stars, calls high tech cooking, such as using foams or gels, to be pretentious. (Reuters)

Labels: news, odd, weird

A report coming out from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) will say that biofuel demand and developing countries like China have pushed food prices onto a "higher plateau," according to a Financial Times report:

“Food prices would be considerably higher in nominal terms than in the past but below the current records,” said an official familiar with the report. Compared with average prices for 2005-07, the report forecasts that in 2017 the price of wheat, adjusted for inflation, will be 2 per cent higher, rice 1 per cent higher and corn 15 per cent higher. Oilseed prices are expected to be up 33 per cent.

In a separate report, the FAO said that people will have to get used to higher food prices, even though in the short term, prices will ease a bit from their record amounts. While the report acknowledges the current drop, it says that the overall cost increase won't go away any time soon. These reports do assume that the drive for biofuel won't be heading for a rest stop.

Labels: food, news, prices

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• Bad Tips Are the Least of Worries A new Georgia law allows those with permits to carry concealed weapons the right to bring firearms into various places, including restaurants that serve alcohol. Note to wait staff: don't forget the bread. (AP)


• But ... Is The Lager OK? An Australian was fined for buckling his beer into a seat belt but not his child. (AP)


• How Much Is A Six-Pack? At an Oregon charity auction, one bottle of beer went for $707, while the cheapest ran $478. (Internet Broadcasting Systems)


• Watch the Moguls A couple of Belgians have developed some video games to be installed at urinals. (Reuters)


• Make Them Eat The Mystery Meat Two cafeteria managers resign after allegations that they stole thousands of dollars from their schools. (WFTV)


• That's a Lot of Relatives A Girl Scout sold more than 17,000 boxes of cookies. The formerly shy girl and her troop will be going to Europe on the strength of the proceeds - and we're waiting for corporate sales department scouts to come recruiting. (AP)


• After All, They're Just Sitting Around Alabama Sheriffs feed prisoners on $1.75 a day and pocket anything left over. (AP)


• Are You Sure This Guy Wasn't In Alabama? An Austrian prisoner escaped his cell by squeezing through the door's food hatch. (Reuters)

Labels: news, odd, weird

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• Vodka Tickles My Nose A British inventor, obviously never having heard of club soda, spent two years to create a sparkling (read that as carbonation) vodka. (Press release)


• Caffeine Chips Someone has apparently decided to add caffeine to chips. Now snackers will not only have an urge to drink something, they'll want cream and two sugars. But then, who calls a product "the love child of caffeine and snack chips?" (Press release)


• Never Again a Boston Harbor Apparently, the British government in the mid-1950s was worried about the impact atomic warfare would have on the availability of tea. (London Telegraph)


• No Such Thing as Free Doughnut A Canadian woman was fired from the Tim Horton chain after giving a 16-cent doughnut treat to a child. After bad press, the chain said that firing her was a mistake. (Reuters)


• And See What You Get If They're Overcooked Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay is quoted as saying that restaurants should be fined for serving out of season vegetables and fruit, and that all the produce should be home grown. Guess his cooking is strictly meat and potatoes during the winter. (Reuters)

Labels: news, odd, weird

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• No Drinking; We're Indian India's health minister is asking actors in that country's film industry not to smoke or drink alcohol on screen. (AP)


• Or Germans on Father's Day The German family minister is urging men not to head into the fields on Father's Day to drink beer and schnapps. (AFP)


• Or Living in Tisbury A small town on Cape Cod remains dry when a referendum on the subject ended in a dead heat. (AP)


• Or Drinking in a Romanian Bar A Romanian man complained that a single can of beer that he consumed in a bar get him so drunk that he nearly passed out. (New Zealand Herald)


• Forget Feeding Pigeons in the Piazza It's now officially illegal to feed pigeons in St. Mark's Square in Venice. (Reuters)


• And Don't Even Think of Calling Your Sausage Cumberland A food industry group in Cumbria, off in the northwest of England, is trying to get protected status for its sausage, which would have to be coiled (no links here) and contain at least 80 percent meat. The other 20 percent? If you have to ask, you don't want to know. (AFP)


• But Aluminum Cans Are OK on PEI Prince Edward Island, Canada has lifted a 35-year-old ban on selling beer and soda in aluminum cans. (AFP)

Labels: news, odd, weird

Tyson Foods, which, I think, is the world's largest chicken producer, was advertising that some of its products were raised without antibiotics. Au contraire, said two huge competitors that went to court to challenge the statements. As it turns out, "raised without antibiotics" might have been right had they been talking about the drugs as neighbors. But according to the Washington Post story about Tyson's loss on appeal, there was a type of antibiotic in the chicken feed and before hatching, eggs got an injection of antibiotics:

Dave Hogberg, Tyson's senior vice president for consumer products, said it is a common industry practice.

Hogberg said injecting eggs with antibiotics did not undermine the "raised without antibiotic" label because the term "raised" is understood to cover the period that begins with hatching.

Guess "raised" doesn't count food, either. Unfortunately, some large companies are willing to capitalize on consumer concerns about food without going to the length of actually doing anything about their practices. Guess they've been listening to the concept of marketing being about perception for a bit too long.

Labels: chicken, marketing, news, Tyson

Mars, the major US chocolate force that isn't named Hershey, is buying over a century of chewing gum independence called Wrigley, which is apparently the world's largest purveyor of jaw exercise. (Financial Times story is here.) Actually, it's a combination of Mars, which will own 81 percent, and Berkshire Hathaway, otherwise known as Warren Buffet. At $23 billion, that has to be a record for an expensive pack of gum.

Labels: candy, news

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• Two Great Tastes in One The manager of an Arkansas pizza place is alleged to have sold marijuana through the establishment's drive-through window. A wicked case of the munchies solving itself. (AP)


• Nearer to God, But Who's Buying? A western Ohio church holds services in a bar. (AP)


• Really Big Catch Three fishermen just sold a giant rare fish for HK$20,000. The buyer turned around and sold it to a restaurant for HK$580,000. And the restaurant sold it to a buyer on the Chinese mainland for HK$1 million. That final take was over $128,000 in US currency. Who says that the fresher the fish, the higher the price? (Reuters)


• How Much Was the Bill? A man who cannot pay his restaurant tab faked a heart attack. (WFTV.com)


• Please Don't Try This at Home People in the UK are apparently inujing themselves as they try to duplicate the feats of onscreen chefs. (The Press Association)


• This Slop Isn't Fit For Prisoners A 300-pound inmate is complaining that he's lost 110 pounds on the jail's fare, and so is suing. Wait, I can see it now: the newest diet craze, the Stir and Save. (AP)

Labels: news, odd, weird

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• Coffee Immersion The Roasting Plant Coffee Company in New York is a coffee shopt that is the coffee brewer, and patrons literally walk through the works. (Gizmag.com)


• Museum Drinks to That The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has two concurrent exhibitions on drinking vessels: The Art of Drinking and Elizabethan Flagons from St. Mary Woolnoth. (Victoria and Albert Museum)


• Food as Art If art in food doesn't take you, how about food in art? Prudence Emma Staite is an artist who makes custom sculpture, paintings, games, and life-sized rooms out of food. She currently has a display of famous artworks made out of a name-brand candy. (BBC)


• Forked An Iowa couple, known for their practical jokes, returned from an out-of-town wedding to find 3,000 white plastic forks stuck in their lawn and dangling from the house and fence. (AP)


• Feeling No Pain - Literally A Russian electrician got so drunk that when he slept it off, he hadn't noticed that there was a knife in his back. (Reuters)

Labels: news, odd, weird

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• Absolutely Terrible PR Absolut Vodka raised ire, not a glass, in the US when its Mexican ad campaign included a map of Mexico that included California, Arizona, and other US states, all of which were part of that country until 1848. (NPR)


• Sazerac Sinks The Louisiana Senate scuttled an attempt to make the sazerac the state cocktail because it would be inappropriate. A tough-minded decision for a state that has drive-through daiquiri stands.(AP)


• Noodle Schmoozing Apparently we all missed the World Ramen Summit. (Reuters)


• Taxes Require Drink A New Jersey CPA brings his tax services to bars on weekday nights and week-end afternoons. (Reuters)


• Shellfish Stuffing The winner of the Acme World Oyster Eating championship downed 35 dozen in 8 minutes. (AP)


• Crying Into Your Noodles South Korea's Black Day is a commisseration of people without love interests who wear black and eat black food. (Reuters)

Labels: news, odd, weird

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• Good Time Charlie Britain's Prince Charles is asking the UK government to help the closing of British country pubs. (IANS)


• Cheetos, Mary, and Joseph Oh, however could I have missed this in March: a church youth worker found a cheese curl that he thought looked like Jesus, and so decided to share it with the world. Someone at his church nicknamed it Cheesus. (KTRK)


• Repent, Satanic Bar Code! A Russian doomsday group has claimed that food packaging bar codes and credit cards are satanic. Well, one out of two ain't bad. (Reuters)


• Goat Power A wine and cheese estate in South Africa has harnessed its 700 Saanen goats by having them walk on treadmills connected to generators. (Cape Argus & Independent Online)


• Job Didn't Pan Out A worker at an Oklahoma Pizza Hut was accused of stealing every pizza pan in the establishment to sell them to scrap metal dealers. (AP)


• What's in a Champagne Name? A Swiss wine-growing region called Champagne is fighting to keep using its regional name although international trade rules restrict it to the French region. (Reuters)

Labels: news, odd, weird

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• Bugged By Low Tab A Dubai restaurant took 25 percent off the bill of a birthday dinner party because seven insects found bugs crawling in their food. Sorry, the house has a firm policy: it takes 8 bug-infested dinners for the 50 percent discount.(Reuters)


• And What's For Dessert? Before dining with the Queen of England, French President Nicolas Sarkozy asked to see the wine list. (The Sun)


• Shave and a Haircut - Two Pints The Michigan attorney general told a barbershop owner in Grand Rapids, MI that he couldn't hand out a beer with each haircut without a liquor license. (AP)


• Worms Are Easier to Get Into the Bottle A Texas man is in legal trouble for selling bottles of vodka with dead baby rattlesnakes in them. (Reuters)


• Didn't They Like the Food? Cajun chef Paul Prudhomme was grazed by a bullet as he cooked at a New Orleans golf event. (AP)


• Dumping Tea in the Harbor Always Worked for Us Disgruntled Brits on the Internet are gaining traction with a campaign to ban Britain's chancellor of the exchequer from pubs because of a new tax on beer. (AP)


• Can't Hold Their Soda Wausau, Wisconsin police broke up a high school keg party. How embarrassing that the liquid was actually root bear. (AP)

Labels: news, odd, weird

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• Taco Bars A man got 30 days in jail for scamming a taco shop out of food and then posting the escapade on YouTube. Wonder what the sentence would have been for a burrito? (AP)


• Jailhouse Slop Vermont prisoners have undertaken a class action suit in protest of such dishes as 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." (AP)


• Some Schnoz Lloyd's of London has insured a winemaker's nose for close to $8 million. (Reuters)


• Illinois for $1,350 on eBay Two sisters sold a corn flake shaped like the state of Illinois for $1,350 on eBay. Is that with milk, or without? (AP)


• In the Bag Patrons of Atlantic City's Irish Pub celebrate a holiday, invented by bar staff that worked through St. Patrick's day one year, by wearing paper bags on March 18. (AP)

Labels: news, odd, weird

The New York Times has a funny article - well, at least I was amused - about a negative correlation between the amount of beer scientists drink and the amount of successful papers they publish:

According to the study, published in February in Oikos, a highly respected scientific journal, the more beer a scientist drinks, the less likely the scientist is to publish a paper or to have a paper cited by another researcher, a measure of a paper’s quality and importance.

The results were not, however, a matter of a few scientists having had too many brews to be able to stumble back to the lab. Publication did not simply drop off among the heaviest drinkers. Instead, scientific performance steadily declined with increasing beer consumption across the board, from scientists who primly sip at two or three beers over a year to the sort who average knocking back more than two a day.

But, as one source pointed out, there's a difference between correlation and causality. Two things happening at the same time are not necessarily linked by one causing the other. And it would be possible to get this completely backwards. Maybe, instead of beer drinking causing lack of publishing productivity, it is low spirits over being at the back of the pack that pushes some scientists to seek consolation with barley and hops.

Labels: beer, news, science

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• Now That's Crabby Guinness World Records has certified the world's biggest fishcake - a crab cake of 235 pounds. (AP)


• Chew On This Peru lawmakers criticize a UN recommendation to criminalize all uses of the coca plant. (Reuters)


• Jenny Craig, Meet King Kong Zoos try to keep their charges from putting on too much weight. (AP)
gorilla

• Pass the Biscuits A 27 year old man who lived on biscuits (cookies in the UK) became a chef to fight his addiction. (BBC)


• Meals by Mail The Thailand post office has announced a new food delivery service with meals coming from famous restaurants. (AFP)


• Ham Bone Connects to the Thief Bone A Massachusetts restaurateur drove off a would-be robber with a frozen ham. (AP)

Labels: news, odd, weird

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

• Keep Pouring... The Utah legislature has decided to loosen up a bit, and allow restaurants and bars to serve up to 1.5 ounces of liquor in a single drink - up from the previous 1 ounce limit. Can the lampshade hats be far away?(AP)


• ... But Not Here Teetotaling members of the Swedish legislature want only alcohol-free drinks at official parliamentary functions. Next thing - wet blankets for everyone(AFP)


• Don't Eat the White Snow Research has shown that many snowflakes coalesce around a core of bacteria. (AP)


• Steel Cage Birthday Parties Two mothers got into fight at a Chuck E. Cheese when one, there for her son's birthday, thought the other was allowing her child to hog an arcade game. (AP)


• First, We'll Puff at All the Lawyers Minnesota has a ban on all smoking in restaurants and bars - unless you're an actor in a theatrical performance. Some bars are avoiding the ban by declaring all patrons to be actors. Ah, but did they ever eat with one? (AP)


• Way the Cookie Crumbles Oklahoma police arrested a man for allegedly breaking into Chinese restaurants. The giveaway? The fortune cookies in his pocket. (AP)


• Alas, Poor Triffle New research indicates that steak and kidney pie, spotted dick and sherry trifle may become extinct by 2021. (Press Assoc)

Labels: news, odd, weird