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Why Are We Eating Up Downton Abbey?

All over Britain right now, the underemployed and job-insecure are hunkering down with spotted dick and Bakewell tart. That’s the finding, anyway, of a report this week in the Mail Online. Just in time for the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens, recession-weary Britons are making like Cratchits, donning fingerless gloves and gathering before meager coal fires (I totally made that up) to eat “steamed treacle pud” and apple crumble. The Mail even trots out a food historian who implies a parallel between our own times and the boom/bust era of Dickens’s England, where “irresponsible bankers and businessmen” spoiled everybody's fun. READ MORE

Slow Cooker Recipes

9 simple, hearty dishes for cold days, plus a cocktail! BROWSE RECIPE SLIDESHOW

How to Store Foie Gras

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If Russell Jackson, chef-owner of Lafitte in San Francisco, were stranded on a desert island, he would want just one thing: foie gras. If you share his passion, you can ... WATCH THE VIDEO

Self-Medicating Through Magical Food

It's hard not to be drawn in by extraordinary claims. When a company willingly raises the bar, it's you, the consumer, who gets to bitterly complain at length when the product falls flat. And if it doesn't, well, huzzah, you've enjoyed whatever extraordinary offering has been dangled in your direction.

Whole Foods is ground zero for some of the most interesting and extreme claims in the world of food—its customers have an interest in self-medicating through magical food, and said customers have the money to do so. And it was at Whole Foods that I stumbled upon the prominently displayed Green SuperFood Orange Dreamsicle Drink Powder. READ MORE

Fruit Juice: Bottled Hype

As a lot of kindergartners these days could tell you, fruit juice isn't the healthy substitute for soda that Mott's and Welch's would like you to think. It's sugar in a more wholesome package, as capable of passing along liquid calories as a can of Coke. Manufacturers of bottled juices have gone to increasingly hyperbolic lengths to disguise this inconvenient fact, embellishing labels with healthy buzzwords: "antioxidants," "electrolytes," "Omega-3s," and that old chestnut, "fiber." READ MORE

All That Menu Psychology Stuff Is Bull

For years, restaurant owners have hired specialists to design menus that exploit "menu psychology," the little mechanisms that entice customers to order more. But as the Huffington Post reported recently, at least one oft-repeated "fact" about the way diners read menus is nonsense. READ MORE

When Should Bartenders Cut You Off?

When Should Bartenders Cut You Off? The other night I was sitting at a bar catching up with my girlfriend, and this guy leaned over to listen to my conversation. He let out chuckles from time to time. Then he leaned over and abruptly told us that he thought we were "boring." He was clearly drunk, and the bartender could see he was bothering us. Was it the bartender's responsibility to cut him off? READ MORE

Weeknight Dinners That Freeze Well

Meals to make, portion, and freeze for low-stress dinners after work. BROWSE RECIPE SLIDESHOW

Does Capital Grille Discriminate?

Olive Garden and Red Lobster are in the news this week, and it's not because inexplicably vast numbers of people are planning to patronize them on Valentine's Day.

Restaurant Opportunities Center United (ROC-United) has filed an employee discrimination lawsuit against Darden Restaurants, the corporation that owns the chains, charging that nonwhite workers at Darden's upscale steakhouse chain Capital Grille are routinely placed in low-paying kitchen positions while white workers are given more lucrative jobs as waiters, hosts, and bartenders (pictured). READ MORE

Mark McClusky’s Go-To DIY American Cheese

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This episode of My Go-To Dish features Mark McClusky, special projects editor at Wired magazine and Wired.com. McClusky has reported on and learned about modernist cuisine from some of its ... WATCH THE VIDEO