I think I’ve settled on “Linkapalooza” as a generic name for these posts. Today, it’s food links.

• Somewhere recently I read a post on some food blog about how to properly store cheese (though I didn’t save the link), and it kept talking about using “cheese paper” to wrap the leftovers. I had never heard of “cheese paper”, but apparently they knew what they were talking about because this morning bookofjoe had a link to this site, which sells it. Cheese paper, it turns out, is basically wax paper with a gas-permeable film on the inside that lets the cheese breathe, extending its shelf life better than plastic wrap or even conventional wax paper. Zabar’s sells it for less than Formaticum does, but there’s no indication if Zabar’s sells it in the same quantity/size, so I don’t know if it’s a better deal or not. Here’s a link to a cheese blog (hey, why not?) with some alternate storing suggestions. If any of you have personal experience using real cheese paper, do tell.
• My friend Jo pointed me to a blog about food safety (charmingly, if aptly, named BarfBlog), which in turn pointed to this USA Today article about the latest on the tomato salmonella panic. Turns out more than 10% 4% of the cases tied to this particular outbreak are people who all ate at the same fast food outlet. Big surprise there…NOT. Both the BarfBlog guy and the USA Today article point out that due to the rural nature of the population where the first outbreak was found, investigators had to do a lot of pavement-pounding and personal interviews to find out the sort of things they want to know, like where people had been eating out, so it took longer than it might in an urban area to dig up the necessary clues. And what exactly causes these salmonella outbreaks, you ask? Well, the migrant farm workers who pick the tomatoes are very often not given bathroom breaks or adequate sanitation facilities, and so they shit in the field, don’t wash afterwards, and go right back to picking tomatoes (or whatever).
• A couple of weeks ago I ran across this Village Voice article about an “anti-energy” drink called “Drank”. Energy drinks are the new killer category in the beverage business, and it seems like there’s a new one every other day. I’ve only tried a couple of them, but have found those to be nasty tasting, horrible things, but the appeal to the youngsters is to mix them with alcohol and get the dual effect of being buzzed from caffeine and hammered from booze at the same time. Well, at least they’re not mainlining heroin, so that’s something, I guess. Anyway, while energy drinks are loaded with such bizarre ingredients as guarana (a highly-caffeinated seed) and taurine (which apparently has no energy-giving properties at all but is in Red Bull, so all the energy drinks *have* to have it), this “Drank” beverage has melatonin, valerian root, and rose hips, all of which are traditional sleep-inducing or relaxation-inducing substances. The marketing tag for “Drank” is “slow your roll”, and it sounds like this would do just that. In the process of chasing links for “Drank”, I learned that it takes its name from a homemade intoxicant that is made with codeine-based cough syrup and is popular among the Houston, TX hip-hop scene (which, not surprisingly, is where the soft drink is primarily sold). I guess if they can sell an energy drink called “Cocaine”, why not one called “Drank”.
• One of the highlights of our trip to Montral last weekend was having lunch at the famed Schwartz’s Deli on Rue St. Laurent. The deli is about as tightly packed a space as any you might encounter: there is a line of tables along one wall, each of which seats five or six people, there’s also a service counter with stools, and a take-out area, all of which leaves not quite enough room for the waiters to squeeze down the middle with the plates. Plus, there is usually a line out the door and down the block, and the place is never empty. While we were waiting for our lunch on Sunday, I read a couple of newspaper articles from 2004 that were posted on the wall. Apparently at that time the owners were considering opening a second location in a different part of downtown Montreal, but ultimately rejected the idea, much to the disappointment of many Montrealers. Now there’s news that they are going to acquire the empty storefront next door to them and expand the original store. (via) That’s probably a better plan anyway, and I will definitely look forward to having a little more elbow room the next time I visit.
• This Mother Jones article talks about how market speculators are already swooping in for a big score by buying up food commodity futures and waiting for the inevitable global food shortage to set in hard. Caiptalism destroys everything, my friends, and cares not a whit for the consequences. Who cares if millions of people starve, as long as somebody made a buck on it. Fuckers.

CORRECTION: I’ve corrected the figure of the number of people who caught salmonella from one particular fast food chain. I misremembered the figure, but have since found the NYT citation. Thanks for the heads-up, Shelley! — BK