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Our favorite products, gadgets, restaurants, bars, wine, beer, and food websites and blogs.
“You got gribenes in my chocolate.” “You got chocolate on my gribenes!” Are chocolate and chicken skin the legendary “Two great tastes that taste great together”?
A decade ago it was Earl Grey-infused chocolates. Then it was chocolate with exotic spices.
Now, according to a report on the Paris Chocolate Show, chocolate-makers are getting vegetables and other savories into the act. Cheese-flavored chocolate is gaining ground, especially at cocktail hour—I imagine it would be a dynamite pairing with red wine.
But the real awe at the show was reserved for Belgium’s “Shock-o-latier” Dominique Persoone, who features treats like a ganache of white chocolate and fresh peas enrobed in dark chocolate on his website. The bad boy of confectionary seems to have made an impression on Paris Chocolate Show-goers with his chocolates flavored with cauliflower and his…wait for it…chocolate biscuits encrusted with chicken skin. Take that, you bacon-candy addicts.
Posted
on Friday, October 31st, 2008
by Miriam Wolf in Food Media |
More like this: cheese chocolate, chicken skin, chocolate, dominique persoone, gribenes, media, paris chocolate show, yahoo news
At last, a study that explains why so many people develop crushes on their baristas. Time magazine reports that psychologists have shown that social relationships can be affected by drink temperature. In short: warm drinks stimulate warm feelings, while cold drinks can stimulate distrust.
If it’s true, this is one of those insights that shows just how simple human beings are. The study involved two experiments. In one, undergraduates were asked to hold a research assistant’s drink while the researcher filled out a form on a clipboard. Later, the undergrads were asked to rate the researcher’s personality traits. Undergrads who had held a warm drink thought the researcher was warmer in nature than those who had held a cold drink.
In the second experiment, participants were asked to hold heated or frozen packs used to treat muscle aches (they were told it was a product evaluation test). Later, they were offered gift certificates, and told they could pick one for themselves or one for a friend. Those who held a warm pack were more likely to choose for a friend.
The practical take-away from this study? If you find yourself having to make an economic or trust decision, go with a cold drink that stimulates caution. If you’re looking to get that cute girl to go out on a date, buy her a latte. And nobody likes a room-temperature beverage.
Posted
on Friday, October 31st, 2008
by Traci Vogel in Food Media |
More like this: barista, cold drink, Food Media, hot drink, media, psychology, research, study, temperature, time magazine
Pity the poor new-millennium mom. She’s caught between wanting to make mealtime fun and trying to feed her kids a healthy diet to avoid childhood obesity.
Maybe that’s what drives people to try and healthify junk food. Or worse.
At the RiffTrax blog, they’ve created a roundup of disgusting looking—but healthy!—Halloween treats. While RiffTrax sees only pathos in a cookie sheet of cut-up veggies arranged to look like a skeleton, the up-to-date mom sees a clever toddler party snack that won’t have the other moms hag-riding her for feeding their kids sugar. And a sandwich made with crispy-fried yams cut up to look like bats? That’s the perfect Halloween lunch if I’ve ever seen one. Still, I have to draw the line at the vegan mummy dogs. That shit is just weird.
Posted
on Thursday, October 30th, 2008
by Miriam Wolf in Food Media |
More like this: Food and Cooking, halloween, healthy, media, snacks, treats
If one is amused to learn that the historic Election
Day cake was akin to fruitcake, does it betray a cynical sense of humor? Back at the beginning of our great nation, when only white men had the privilege of voting and they often had to travel long distances to get to a polling place, women would bake dense loaves to fuel their journey. Somewhere between a bread and a cake, the loaves could weigh up to 10 pounds. In a 2004 article, the Washington Post suggested that this tradition explains why baked goods are frequently offered at polling places to this day.
This year, the Culinary Institute of America has updated the recipe, making a version that’s a little lighter than its historic incarnation. Instructor Alison McLoughlin demonstrates how to make the cake on video. As with fruitcake, the recipe calls for dried fruit; McLoughlin uses cranberries, golden raisins, and blueberries for patriotic color. The frosting is flavored with American whiskey. Save a little of that whiskey though: Depending on whether your candidate wins or not, you may feel like downing a little.
Posted
on Thursday, October 30th, 2008
by Traci Vogel in Food Media |
More like this: alison mclouglin, american, bundt, culinary institute of america, election day cake, fruitcake, media, polling, recipe, voting, whiskey, whiskey rebellion
Kentucky Fried Chicken is really, really down with the video game generation. So down is it that it has released a special box meal to coincide with the launch of Guitar Hero: World Tour, specially designed to provide beige, carbohydrate-laden food to fuel your furious plastic musical instrument playing. The $8 meal includes a 32-ounce soda in a collector’s cup, two chicken strips, choice of drumstick or thigh, a chicken sandwich KFC calls a “snacker,” two sides, and a biscuit, all packed in a cardboard box like the kind nachos come in at the movie theater.
Tim Agne from Michigan’s MLive.com video game blog unpacks a box on video—we’re not quite sure why—and Kotaku, another game blog, warns that the meal “packs 59 grams of fat and 1210 calories.” And that’s not even counting the calories in the gigantic soda.
OK, everyone has to eat, even while gaming, and Guitar Hero is the rare video game that actually involves a little physical exertion, but is fast-food chicken in three different finger-greasing forms really the best option? CHOW was way ahead of the curve on this one, providing a Wii Night menu back in May that could easily be adapted to Guitar Hero, and at a fraction of the grease quotient.
If you’re really gung-ho on the KFC Guitar Hero box meal, however, you should be aware that the company’s running a KFC Rocks contest. The prize: a year’s supply of box meals, plus $2,500 (presumably just enough to cover a heart transplant).
Posted
on Thursday, October 30th, 2008
by Traci Vogel in Food Media |
More like this: box meal, fast food, Food Media, giant bomb, guitar hero, kentucky fried chicken, kfc, kotaku, media, mlive, tim agne, video game, world tour
When Jonathan Gold, the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Falstaffian restaurant critic for LA Weekly, recently published a diary of dining out in Seoul, he called his first taste of whale meat “delicious, leaner than beef, with a rich, mineral taste and a haunting, almost waxy aftertaste that I can’t quite place.” Then he added, fatefully: “I am already anticipating the nasty glare I will inevitably get from my marine-scientist brother, Mark, who as the leader of Heal the Bay has dedicated his life to pretty much the opposite of this.”
But in the age of the interwebs, all sibling feuds can be public. Over on his own blog, Mark Gold promptly acknowledged their blood ties and then accused his brother of spending “his adult life chowing down on the marine critters I’ve spent over 20 years trying to protect.” He asks plaintively, “If only Jonathan focused on sustainable seafood for a year, imagine the positive impact he’d have on local restaurants and the dietary choices of the food obsessed.”
Problem is, you really shouldn’t pick a blog fight with someone who can write like Jonathan Gold, a man who once described a Hunan fish dish as “a mammoth, silvery head, jaws agape, eyes frosted in death, a half-inch of chopped chiles troweled over the skull like a layer of Christmas-y scarlet-and-green asphalt.” He took to the comment section of Mark Gold’s blog; here’s the first line alone: “The purity of my diet cannot be said to approach your daily menu of beef, diet root beer and pre-shredded cheese, although it does have its consolations.” Ah, family.
Posted
on Thursday, October 30th, 2008
by Nicholas Day in Food Media |
More like this: heal the bay, jonathan gold, la weekly, media, seoul, whale meat
In my parenting circle, there seems to be two schools of thought on Halloween candy. There are those who favor letting the little nippers have a debauched couple of days on Halloween and the day after, then swooping in, confiscating the rest the candy, and sending it wherever you send a pillowcase stuffed with Smarties and American milk chocolate. Then there are people like us, who slowly dole it all out. Our daughter is still eating last year’s Halloween candy, a piece every couple of days in her lunchbox or after dinner, staleness be damned.
For the swoopers, NPR has just posted a useful batch of recipes. Instead of sending those fun-sized Snickers to the landfill, in “Grown-Up Tricks for Treats,” Susan Russo advocates using them in the extremely decadent-sounding Snickers Bar Bread Pudding. Want something less rustic and more elegant? How about the coconutty Mounds Of Joy Custards With Mounds Chocolate Sauce? Because, apparently, sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t.
I’m all for upscale deliciousness with downmarket ingredients, but what if your little kids cherry-pick all the passable chocolate out of their stash and all you’re left with is vile, filling-destroying Tootsie Rolls? If life gives you Tootsies, I always say, make cheesecake.
Posted
on Thursday, October 30th, 2008
by Miriam Wolf in Food Media |
More like this: almond joy, candy, custards, halloween, media, mounds, recipes, snickers bar bread pudding, trick or treat
As a vote nears on California’s controversial Proposition 2, which would mandate larger cages for some farm animals and ban battery cages for hens, the Christian Science Monitor takes a critical look at the different humane labels on grocery shelves.
In short, they’re a mess. The story’s tied to a new report by the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), which categorized the relative worth of different humane claims and then surveyed the number of humanely labeled products available at the top 25 supermarket companies in the United States. Whole Foods ranks first, with nearly double the product selection of second-place Wegman’s. Trader Joe’s scores a lower-than-expected ninth and Wal-Mart falls to the penultimate spot.
It’s a smart survey: It doesn’t give points for saying “no hormones” on poultry or pork products since, well, using hormones on either would be illegal.
The most significant humane labels—Certified Humane, American Humane Certified, Animal Welfare Approved—are all accredited by the USDA’s Agriculture Marketing Service (AMS); in the near future, it looks likely that all humane labels may be federally regulated. An official with the WSPA “anticipates future collaboration with AMS on the part of the three humane labeling groups, hoping that national standards can be set, and a single label be overseen by AMS, as has been done with the National Organic Program.” Whether consumers would trust a humane label that’s exclusively overseen by the USDA is another story.
Posted
on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
by Nicholas Day in Food Media |
More like this: animal welfare, cage free, california, christian science monitor, Green, humanely raised, media, proposition 2, usda, world society for the protection of animals
It’s official: Local food wins. According to a new survey by the Hartman Group that’s cited by USA Today, 52 percent of consumers think it’s important to buy locally grown foods whenever possible, while only 23 percent think it’s important to buy organic.
But what constitutes “locally grown”? As CHOW readers know, the definition is unregulated and squishy. The Eat Local Challenge defines it as food grown within a 100-mile radius of where you live, and the Hartman Group poll shows that about half of consumers agree with that definition. However, 37 percent think it means grown “within my state,” 4 percent think it means grown “in my region,” and 4 percent think it means grown “in the U.S.A.”
The way stores use the term is equally confusing. For example, Wal-Mart defines it as anything grown within the same state it’s sold, Whole Foods considers it to be anything grown within a seven-hour transportation radius, and Seattle’s PCC Natural Markets considers it anything within a tristate radius.
The survey also showed that people tend to think that food marketed as locally grown is fresher, safer, and comes from small producers, but none of that is necessarily true about the food sold as local at grocery stores, according to USA Today.
Is this a case of another seemingly common-sense term being nonsensically co-opted by marketing? Or do we need to officially define local?
Posted
on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
by Traci Vogel in Food Media |
More like this: Green, hartman group, local food, locally grown, locavore, media, pcc natural markets, poll, survey, usa today, whole foods
An Australian study reveals that while smokers smoke to cope, (moderate) drinkers drink to celebrate. The survey, which interviewed 2,000 Australians in April, found that respondents who consumed up to three drinks a day were happier than those who never drank.
Naturally, this sort of thing raises a bunch of correlation/causation, chicken/egg questions. For example, it’s entirely possible that happy, well-adjusted people have lots of friends and therefore lots of opportunities to hang out and drink moderately.
Also revealed by this survey, now among my personal favorites: Exercise is good stuff, but there’s no need to go hog-wild with it. Survey author and Deakin University professor Bob Cummins said that “those who did a moderate amount of exercise—three times a week—had enhanced wellbeing, but there was no added benefit to more frequent exercise.”
There you go, folks: Bust out the Kwak and the shuffleboard, and get happy.
Posted
on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
by James Norton in Food Media |
More like this: australia, deakin university, drinking, exercise, happiness, media, study, survey
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