The Daily Mail tells us that a distilling company called Scottish Spirits is launching a product bound to be a smash hit: whisky in a can The 12-ounce cans have come under fire from Scotch manufacturers in the U.K. for false labelling because the alcohol is not real Scotch whisky, nor even made in Scotland (the maker is located in Panama). But, at the end of the day, if you’re the sort of person who would drink a 12-ounce can of whisky, you’re probably not all that concerned about the authenticity of your drink. I hear it goes great with a bag of those haggis-flavored potato chips.
Sriracha chili-garlic sauce is one of the world’s greatest condiments. I cannot imagine a bowl of pho without a big squirt of sriracha, and in Southeast Asia they use the original version of this product the way my daughter uses Heinz Ketchup: on everything. In fact, Charlotte herself likes a drop or two of sriracha in her pho or her ramen noodles. Still, my mental image of chili-garlic sauce has it firmly seated as something added to a dish as a little kick. But now there’s a whole cookbook featuring the red hot cock sauce as a main ingredient. A quick look indicates that the recipes aren’t necessarily Thai/Vietnamese/Cambodian dishes, many are a bit more “American”, and just use the sauce in place of other hot sauce options, but that might be a good way to get accustomed to it if you’re not already a fan.
Recently, Fast Company profiled an iPhone app called “Consume Within” that helps the user track the expiration dates of foods in their fridge, both fresh and prepared. The FC article and this short review at the food blog The Kitchn both point out that the app doesn’t really do anything remarkable or that you couldn’t manage on your own with a piece of paper and a pencil, but if you’re a gadget person it would probably incent you to do a better job of keeping track of just how old that unmarked container of leftover soup is BEFORE it grows legs and walks out of your fridge. Plus, for only $2.99, it’s a lot cheaper than those smart refrigerators that were being shown off at CES.
I enjoyed this post from The History Chef about the love-hate relationship between Civil War soldiers and hard tack. Hard tack is simply a very durable cracker that was a staple of military diets for centuries; it was cheap to make, resisted spoilage, and was easy to transport, so it was used as one of the basic rations for soldiers and sailors from the 18th century right up until recent times. Because it was so durable, it was often mostly inedible in its original form, but inventive minds found ways to recombine it with other typical rations like dried peas or salted beef into more palatable forms. The development of MREs and the more recent practice of outsourcing military cafeteria operations to fast food corporations means that American troops will probably never again have to resort to hard tack.
Good News/Bad News: According to this GOOD article, scientists who monitor fishing stocks believe that a sustainable balance has finally been achieved in the North Atlantic, where the remaining fishing fleet now draws a catch lower than the replacement rate of the fish stocks. It will still take years for the depleted species to repopulate, and they will probably never return to the levels of yore, but it seems less likely that the fishermen will destroy themselves and their livelihood entirely.
Of more concern, though, is a global increase in food prices that could have severe repercussions in poor nations, but is equally likely to cause difficulties in affluent nations still trying to rebound from the economic shocks of the last several years. This Foreign Policy article outlines a number of pressures on global food supplies that have already resulted in all-time high food prices in the U.S. and U.K., food riots in India and Algeria, and have forced the Russian government to import grain just to feed its livestock through the winter. The author of the article, Earth Policy Institute president Lester R. Brown, lays the bulk of the blame squarely on American policies of diverting grain to the production of ethanol for use as fuel: over a quarter of all the grain harvested in the U.S. is used to manufacture ethanol, and world grain consumption has doubled in the last five years because of the increased demand for ethanol.
Related Posts:
