This is an actual shirt you can buy at Nordstrom’s for 85 bucks!. I suppose if you can spend $6 on a latte, what’s $85 for a shirt, right?
I’ll make you a deal. Go buy a white t-shirt for a couple of bucks, and I’ll throw my coffee at you from my car window. Should look about the same. I won’t even charge you for the coffee.
Fast Company knows you have a problem. And they want to help you. They want to help you turn your caffeine addiction into a superpower!
(I’m not so sure that’s really helping anything, frankly. And I’m not quitting coffee cold turkey for 10 days to find out, but thanks anyway, FC)
Just a quick one this week:
Lapham’s Quarterly features this map which traces the paths taken by three now-ubiquitous, but once rare, foods as they were “discovered” and spread by European explorers in the 16th Century: tomatoes, coffee beans, and black pepper. Here’s the full-sized image, where you can actually read the blurbs. Actually, in the case of black pepper, traders have bought and sold it since Roman times, if not earlier, but it was a rare and expensive spice up until the modern era. There’s also some interesting factoids about ketchup; apparently it was invented by the Chinese, but did not include tomatoes until some colonial New Englanders devised their own recipe about 100 years later.
Well, heaven forbid I miss out on this item going around: a New York Times blog post about the origin of the embossed design on Oreo cookies has been popping up on all my reads lately. Apparently the current design only dates back to the 1950s; the original design from 1912 is much plainer. That post inspired this post on The Atlantic’s food blog, which extends the idea to consider possible hidden meanings and mystical symbology in Oreos and other embossed cookies and crackers, and even gives a little “How It’s Made” lesson in the process used to make embossed cookies. Even showbiz blogger Mark Evanier weighed in on the Oreo posts and included his personal story about the Oreo-Hydrox rivalry. Now the latest twist is this link to an artist who lives in Somerville, MA and makes highly-detailed cameo portraits using Oreo cookie halves and the creme filling. Since NEXT year is the 100th anniversary of the Oreo cookie, I am wondering what PR flack from Nabisco got this ball rolling a year ahead of time and why.
These next two links speak volumes: This Mother Jones article (via MetaFilter) details a years-long struggle between processed-meat manufacturer Hormel and workers in the factory in Iowa where the company makes Spam. The workers claim that unsafe production processes exposed them to aerosolized pig brains which caused their bodies to develop an autoimmune disease that has left many of them crippled for life. The vivid descriptions of the carcass-processing floor are as evocative and unpalatable as “The Jungle”.
At the other end of the spectrum, our friend Chef Jo delights in telling us about a farm in Groton, MA that produces hand-raised, grass-fed beef and REAL free-range chickens. If you are in the Greater Boston area, here’s their schedule of farmer’s markets if you don’t want to drive all the way to Groton.
And I’ll leave you with a couple of infographics to help you in the kitchen:
This one illustrates the differences between the assorted knife cuts called for in preparing vegetables
And this one should help you understand the degrees of doneness when cooking steak:
The biggest drinkers of coffee on the planet are the Scandinavians:
(Full-size interactive infographic HERE)
While the Russians basically drink the entire world under the table when it comes to liquor:
(Larger version of that map and additional info in this Daily Mail article)
Which, come to think of it, might help explain why a third of people in Russia still believe the sun revolves around the Earth. Dear Russkies — it’s not the sun that’s spinning around, it’s your pickled brains.
And now you know.
Well here’s a seriously BAD idea:
This is an actual loudspeaker that has been placed in Tompkins Square Park in New York City as part of an art-and-technology festival being held there. Tomorrow, anyone can call the phone line it is connected to and publicly broadcast anything they want to say over the speaker. Hilarity is not likely to ensue.
On the other hand, THIS idea is so strikingly brilliant that it should replace every last one of those pressed-paper cup trays in the world:
(seen here, via The Daily Wh.at)
Can someone explain to me why iced coffee tastes so good, but hot coffee that has gone cold tastes so awful?
Kansas Whine
“Auntie Em, don’t let her take Toto!”
Vs.
If you must wear this cool swim cap, do remember to avoid zombies. (thanks, Gigi!)
Lately, as part of my systematic phase-out of the antidepressant I was taking, I’ve also been easing back on my caffeine consumption. The drug I was taking had me feeling so zombified that I was drinking a large iced coffee in the morning and then TWO 24-ounce Diet Pepsis in the afternoon, and sometimes some other caffeinated soda or other beverage in addition to that, just to give me the energy to move my ass from Point A to Point B. That’s three or four times as much caffeine as I used to consume prior to taking a medication that in theory was supposed to make me “feel better”. To no surprise at all, as I have been ramping down the med, I am finding that I don’t need so much go-juice. Which is not to say that I am going completely Sanka, I’m just returning to a level that isn’t somewhere north of TOTALLY FUCKING BUZZED just to have energy to get through the day.
I am generally not one to go for the decaffeinated versions of ordinarily caffeinated beverages; I gave Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi a go for a while, but there’s something off about it that I can’t quite put my finger on. And don’t even offer me decaf coffee. But some people do, and the question for them invariably becomes “did they give me decaf or not?”. Bridget, who actively avoids caffeine because she’s too sensitive to it, routinely finds herself wondering which she really got, and the harsh reality is that a lot of places lie to you and give you whatever they feel like giving you, so something like these caffeine detection strips might be a good stocking stuffer for her.
We keep Charlotte caffeine-free. It was our desire to do this that led me to the knowledge that Sunkist orange soda has caffeine. That’s a bummer, because it’s also the best orange soda, in my opinion, but luckily it’s the only national brand that does. Charlotte has made it to the advanced age of 8 without becoming one of those kids who craves Coke/Pepsi. In fact, she actively dislikes the taste of cola, and we do nothing to dissuade her of that. Once, when being babysat at someone else’s home, she was given some Mountain Dew and she *LOVED* it, but it wound her up for three days. Charlotte tends to confuse sugar-free and caffeine-free, since we try to have it both ways on that score, and, again, we’re not exactly rushing to clear that up for her. Meanwhile, she has developed a taste for Fresca, which I also like a lot, which fits both categories.
As the cooler weather starts to arrive, I’m also transitioning back from iced coffee to hot coffee, and that almost always results in me drinking less of it. Iced coffee is too easy to suck back, while hot coffee forces you to sip and linger over the drink. Indeed, I am often likely to drink only half of my standard morning mug. I don’t know why hot coffee gone cold is so unappealing, but it is. Since the caffeine content of coffee is so much greater than that of cola, that has a bigger impact than dropping that second giant Diet Pepsi.
And lo! On the Sixth Day there were links to post! And Jeebus looked down and said [this is good].
We begin with “A Mystery Solved”: For several years now, the valiant citizenry of New York have been driven to distraction by the occasional but powerful aroma of maple syrup wafting through Manhattan’s concrete canyons. The times being what they are, the initial reaction of many Gothamites was to lose their freaking shit that it might be a bioterrorist attack cleverly concealed by a delectable aroma. That’s what you get for living in a city that smells like a sewer — the immediate assumption that anything that smells good MUST be evil. (One can only imagine the level of shit-freaking that would happen in Boston, which smells like a sewer AND low tide, AND went ballistic over those LED signs a couple of years ago). But this very morning, sayeth the Gray Lady, the source of the smell of mapley jihad has been identified: a processing plant that makes additives for food and fragrance products, which has been processing fenugreek seeds for the perfume industry. Fenugreek is well known to anyone who cooks Indian cuisine, and is apparently a significant ingredient in artificial maple syrup flavorings (who knew?). It also has a variety of beneficial health effects, and is recommended to breastfeeding mothers to increase milk supply. Expect Michale Bloomberg to take credit for improving the health of New Yorkers in 3…2…1…
Next, we ask the musical question “Coffee, Is There Anything It Can’t Do?”: If you’re like me (and if you’re not, you really should be), every morning you have to dump the previous morning’s used coffee grounds prior to making your daily pot of America’s Favorite Drug. Wouldn’t it be great, you think (okay, you probably don’t, but play along with me), if there were some planet-friendly thing you could do with coffee grounds other than make compost. Via Slashfood comes a link to this product concept that was submitted to a conference on “greener gadgets” being held later this month in New York City (presumably WITHOUT the death-wielding maple aroma). You put your coffee grounds into a little cartridge doo-dad that connects to the top of the printer, then wiggle the doo-dad back and forth as the paper feeds through the device, and the day-old coffee is magically transformed into “ink”. Anyone who has ever dumped their morning joe on their shirt can speak to the near-indelibility of coffee stains, so it’s a perfect medium for quick, cheap, environmentally-conscious printing. Plus, your documents will have the rich, luxurious aroma of freshly-brewed coffee…although this may mean that they will be classified as Weapons of Mass Destruction in New York City.
Speaking of the Devil’s Brew, the United States Army takes its coffee pretty damn seriously, maggot! American military action in the 20th Century was fueled on nothing but strong black coffee and unfiltered cigarettes, because that’s how fucking tough we were back then. Hitler didn’t stand a chance against the G.I.s and their cuppa joe. The blog Entropic Memes recently offered this excellent post about the Army’s 1951 in-depth analysis of the essential facts about coffee: it’s preparation, it’s storage, the type of beans to purchase, anything and everything about it. Illustrated with many of the tables and graphs from the report, the post tells us that the Army bought 8.5 million pounds of coffee per month back then, and that’s a lotta beans to count.
Our next subject is one last “fuck you” to France from George W. Bush: Among the assorted last-minute bits of fuckwittery enacted by the outgoing Bushies was the imposition of punitive tariffs on a variety of imported food products as retribution for the banning of American beef, particularly in the EU. The most outrageous imposition was increasing the tariff on Roquefort cheese to 300%, essentially destroying the market for Roquefort in the United States. Luckily for the makers of Roquefort, exports to the U.S. only account for about 450 tons out of an annual export market of about 3,700 tons, but still represents more than 10% of the total exports. I am a total fanatic for blue cheeses in general, and I adore Roquefort, though on a daily basis I am much more likely to buy the locally-produced Great Hill blue, but I do love me some Roquefort. Thanks again, George.
Finally, in Tuesday’s Food & Wine section of the New York Times there was this article which almost reads like a bulletin from the Department of Duh: Americans don’t know how to cook for themselves, which contributes to the national epidemic of obesity. Nowhere is this more evident, says Julia Moskin, the article’s author, than on the NBS series “The Biggest Loser”, where obese people compete to see who can lose the most weight, but have to be shown from the ground up not only how to incorporate exercise into their lives, but how to prepare basic, nutritionally sound meals. Not surprisingly, they also need to be taught WHAT to eat. Oh, and, quel suprise!, many of the participants on the show balloon right back up just as soon as they don’t have someone forcing the broccoli down their throats.
Of course, you can’t generalize too far. Speaking as someone who loves to cook but also loves to eat and as such passes a pretty good resemblance to the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, I can attest to the counter-argument that knowing how to cook doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not going to overeat. Indeed, knowing how to cook is a pretty good way to insure that you WILL overeat. Nevertheless, the trend away from regular meal preparation to more and more consumption of restaurant food (primarily fast food, but not entirely) and the lack of awareness of basic nutrition go hand-in-hand with the excessive weight gain that is so prevalent in this country and in the U.K.
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