It got me wondering what other drinks involve open flames, because nothing seems smarter than playing with fire while drinking.
A well-known trick is flaming a citrus peel over a cocktail. This is a crucial component of a drink called the Flame of Love that the New York Times wrote about a while back. It’s a martini made with six parts vodka to one part sherry, and poured into a glass that has had several peels flamed over it to coat the glass with the essential oils. A final piece of peel is flamed over the drink, and “the spray of orange oil falls over the martini, giving that first sip a pronounced citrus zing.”
Over at the blog Cook & Eat, there is a recipe for a crème brûlée cocktail that sounds like a good alternative for eggnog-haters. It’s a warm drink made with cream, vanilla bean, vanilla vodka, and Frangelico. The kicker is serving it in a glass that has a caramelized-sugar rim. I imagine you probably want to do this on cheap tempered glassware, and not touch your glass for a while after you’ve taken a torch to it.
I also learned that there are hundreds of videos posted on YouTube of people lighting themselves, bars, friends, etc., on fire. Here’s a taste of what happens if you don’t leave this to a professional:
Photographic proof of the menorah is scarce on the Interwebs, so if someone would be kind enough to drop by and snap a few shots, the world would be ever so grateful.
If I could, I would cover my entire apartment with typeface and words. Here’s a place I’d start: bamboo coasters made out of a Baskerville font. At $45 for four, they aren’t exactly recession-friendly, but web window-shopping won’t cost you a penny.
Forget for a moment that the world is undergoing an economic contraction that may, in fact, be a collapse in disguise. Forget that food pantries are gettingtappedbeyondcapacity, or that the number of hungry people in the world grew to nearly 1 billion this year.
In the spirit of the holidays, here are two wacky, completely unrepresentative incidents featuring the less fortunate getting a little seasonal lift. The BBC reports that in Milan, an estimated $550,000 of beluga caviar was given to food banks and hospices to be distributed to the poor. Its point of origin: two smugglers traveling from Poland.
And in Toronto, the chief justice of Ontario whipped up a little something for 600 poor and homeless folks in his city: “lavish servings of filet mignon with fries, green beans and bread pudding” and a crisp new $10 bill, according to the Toronto Star.
Food styling is a big part of our adventures in the test kitchen. We spend at least one day a week getting our recipes camera-ready so readers can see how they are supposed to turn out. Styling is a precise and nitpicky process, but when done well, it helps our photographer make beautiful photos.
But sometimes no matter how much we fuss over a dish, things don’t go right. Take the other day: We were charging ahead on the shots for our Valentine’s Day menu and had just figured out the lighting and camera angle for our Pear-Ginger Trifle when all of a sudden Chris, our photographer, let out a yelp. Concerned he had hurt himself, we threw back the curtains of his studio to discover the nose of his camera in the trifle! It was frustrating, given the time we spent to make the dish look good, but then we took it as a compliment—his camera was so tempted by our food that it had to try some for itself!
In its latest advertising ploy, Burger King is scouring the planet for humans who have never eaten a burger. It appears that BK execs have determined that Whopper virgins are the key to settling the age old question: Which is better, the Big Mac or the Whopper?
The commercial has been ridiculed by many as being contrived and culturally insensitive, but I think that the critics have gotten it all wrong.
First of all, if this were a real taste test, they would’ve compared the Whopper to its true equivalent, the Quarter Pounder, not the Big Mac.
Second, those native outfits seem a bit too new and shiny. Are we supposed to believe the “filmmakers” really searched out people who literally didn’t know how to pick up a hamburger?
Third, do we really expect people to have a preference or even care? I’m sure that both burgers tasted equally as bad.
The point is, this whole thing is as big of a spoof on documentary filmmaking as Borat. Be that as it may, the concept is entertaining, and there’s an entire minidocumentary that is full of footage of horrified taste testers. I hope the subjects were paid well.
Since then, one helpful reader has entered all of the picks into Google Maps. He also noted the category they fell into from the magazine’s original story, like best beer shops, best bottle lists, best Irish pubs, etc. If you’re heading out of town for the holidays, it’s worth taking a look on the map to see if there’s good beer around your destination.
Legendsofbeer.com has rounded up a variety of beer-related myths and presented them in one handy, easy-to-use blog post. Dark beers aren’t necessarily stronger in alcohol, beer usually shouldn’t be served at ice cold temperatures, Corona isn’t made with urine, green bottles aren’t the best choice for skunk-proofing your beer; these are relatively elementary facts.
A telling point, however: Since the post’s original publication, two elementary typos in the “beer kills brain cells” myth were quietly repaired.
Can you imagine your fury if you ordered your kid a birthday cake and the bakery refused to write your three-year-old’s name on it? Readers might be thinking, “The bastards!” right about now. But maybe you should know one more thing: The tot’s name is Adolf Hitler.
Boing Boing has the details, writing, “Heath and Deborah Campbell of Greenwich, Pennsylvania are angry that the ShopRite supermarket refused to spell out their 3-year-old son’s name in frosting on his birthday cake. His name is Adolf Hitler Campbell. Poor kid. An area Wal-Mart later agreed to decorate the cake. Others who read the story in a local paper were apparently upset with Heath Campbell about choosing that name for his child. That made him even angrier.”
Um, yeah. Because someone who names his kid Adolf Hitler is bound to be sensitive.
Naomi Starkman is a food policy and media consultant who recently served as the communications and policy director for Slow Food Nation. Here she discusses the growing controversy surrounding Obama’s choice to be the next secretary of agriculture.
Barack Obama’s nomination of Tom Vilsack for head of the USDA has many worrying if it’s going to be agribusiness as usual when the new administration takes office. The former governor of Iowa, the top corn- and soybean-producing state, has backed ethanol and corn subsidies as well as agricultural biotechnology: He was named biotech governor of the year in 2001, and is closely tied to Monsanto. He will oversee one of the largest federal departments with 100,000 employees and a $95 billion annual budget.
“Don’t expect Vilsack, a consummate pragmatist, to turn America’s food system upside down anytime soon,” the Iowa Independent wrote, echoed by the Des Moines Register’s Philip Brasher, who said that Vilsack is “not likely to shift the U.S. Department of Agriculture in a radical new direction as many of Obama’s liberal supporters had hoped.” Vilsack was Obama’s “weakest selection so far,” said New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof.
Some other USDA critics are withholding judgment on Vilsack. Jean Halloran, who follows food policy for Consumers Union, said in the Des Moines Register that Vilsack “obviously comes from a state where conventional farming dominates. But we think it is way too early to make any judgments about how he will deal with food safety and sustainability issues.” As for Pollan, he said in an NPR interview, that he saw “reasons to be cautiously hopeful,” noting that Vilsack suggested capping subsidies and using the money saved for conservation efforts.
