Food and Drink

Getting drunk part of Australian culture, study finds. “The National Drug and Alcohol Research Council study of 1,500 Australians found that some 58 percent of people agreed that sometimes having too much to drink was ‘simply part of the Australian way of life.'”

Oh, sure, they’ve been thinking about the whole bird flu thing. But what about zombies?

“When it comes to defending ourselves against an army of reanimated human corpses, the officials in charge have fallen asleep at the wheel,” [Pittsburgh Mayor Tom] Murphy said. “Who’s in charge of sweep-and-burn missions to clear out infected areas? Who’s going to guard the cemeteries at night? If zombies were to arrive in the city tomorrow, we’d all be roaming the earth in search of human brains by Friday.”

I’m afraid it’s all too likely that zombie-preparedness has been neglected in New Orleans, especially given former FEMA head Brown’s focus on tasty food—other than human brains.

At 11:20 a.m. Aug. 31, Bahamonde e-mailed Brown, “Sir, I know that you know the situation is past critical . . . thousands gathering in the streets with no food or water . . . estimates are many will die within hours.”

At 2:27 p.m., however, Brown press secretary Sharon Worthy wrote colleagues to schedule an interview for Brown on MSNBC’s “Scarborough Country” and to give him more time to eat dinner because Baton Rouge restaurants were getting busy: “He needs much more that 20 or 30 minutes.”

I was born in Savannah, GA, and raised just outside the city; I spent many a happy childhood hour playing on the various above-ground crypts which enhance the picturesque nature of the city. You can bet your life we were armed to the teeth against possible zombie intrusions. Wait, maybe that was just the paranoia talking after my parents were in on that big shipment of DMT from out west when I was a kid. When my mom woke up still tripping on the third day, stuttering things like “wheels of fire…wheels within wheels…” I knew things were bad. But by then I could totally make pancakes and stuff, so me and my 3-year-old brother were fine. Wait, what was I saying? Yeah. Zombie preparedeness. Don’t rely on the government. Y’all are going to be on your own. Mmmmm, braaiins. It makes the pain go away. The pain of being dead.

Via Radley Balko, a rather nice BBC article about the crappy statistics behind the claim that the British are engaging in more binge drinking.

I’m back from a few days in Munich, which I’d recommend as excellent value to visit. (I suspect there’s an oversupply of hotel rooms in advance of next summer’s world cup.) It rained nearly the whole time I was there, but that didn’t stop me from visiting some excellent art galleries: the wonderful Alte Pinakothek , the goodish Neue Pinakotek and the sinister and intruiging Villa Stuck . Of course I also managed to consume a large number of excellent sausages and quantities of Dunkles Weißbier ! All of which brings me on to a less flattering observation on Germany and the Germans, namely, that the Germans may well be the worst dressed of the major industrial nations. Admittedly, the competition is stiff from us British and from the Americans, but I think the Germans may win on grounds of sheer uniformity. It is possible to sit and watch a string of people of all ages and sizes walk past all dressed as follows: dark denim jeans, dark denim jacket, trainers (sneakers). The monotony is hardly broken by the occasional deviant who leaves the denim jacket behind for a regulation black leather one. Since Jamie Oliver's Naked Chef is now dubbed into German — so much for Chirac joking with Schroeder about British cuisine — I can’t help wondering whether the Germans aren’t in line for some British or American clothing-and-lifestlye fascism TV: Trinny and Susannah or Queer Eye for the Straight Guy perhaps. But perhaps they already get those shows and are showing a laudable determination to resist.

[For Alex: here’s a link to a picture of Gabriel Cornelius von Max’s Monkeys as Judges of Art from the Neue Pinakothek.]

An interesting story in the Chronicle (link should work for 5 days or so) on the ethics of scientific research. The National Academy of Sciences has decided to publish a paper describing the vulnerability of the nation’s milk supply to terrorist attack (yes, it’s a serious paper), despite a letter from the Department of Health and Human Services saying that publication would provide”a road map for terrorists” and not be “in the interests of the United States.”

bq. In their paper, Mr. Wein and Mr. Liu describe how the milk industry is vulnerable because individual farmers send their product to central processing facilities, thereby allowing milk from many locations to mix. Terrorists could poison the supply by putting botulinum toxin into one of the 5,500-gallon trucks that picks up milk daily at farms or by dropping the toxin into raw-milk silos, which hold roughly 50,000 gallons each. Pasteurization would destroy some but not all of the toxin, and a millionth of a gram of toxin may be enough to kill a person.

The authors’ reasons for making these findings widely known (and the National Academy’s for publishing them) seem legit. There are safeguard measures that could be taken to make this kind of attack more difficult; for instance the simple step of locking milk trucks and tanks. While the government has issued voluntary guidelines recommending that milk suppliers take these precautions, it’s been unwilling to require them by law. In essence then, the government seems to be relying on voluntary compliance and security-through-obscurity, neither of which provide much protection as any system administrator worth his or her salt will tell you. As one of the paper’s authors notes, “Using Google, … it would take you all of 30 seconds to pull up these things.” It doesn’t seem at all unreasonable to raise a public stink about this, in the hope that it will provoke a serious response.

Learn the ways of the farm with the help of Ham Solo, Chewbroccoli, C3Peanuts, Tofu D2, Obi Wan Cannoli, Cuke Skywalker, Lord Tader and Princess Lettuce. [thanks]

Kieran’s recent analysis of Timberites’ blogging habits showed that one of my main contributions around here is in the area of trivia. (In a more generous or delusional moment one may call it the “other” or “interesting tidbits” category, but I digress.) So to live up to my role around here, I thought I would post an entry about the unfortunate downturn in the life of what used to be the wonderful Starbucks espresso brownie bar.

I don’t drink coffee so Starbucks holds limited appeal to me. I am also not fooled by most of their pastries, which tend to look good, but usually do not measure up in taste. There is one exception, however: their espresso brownie bar. It is great! Unfortunately, in the past few months they have added a nearly tasteless fudge on top. The bar in general seems to have gotten smaller and this may be a way to distract from that and put less quality chocolate in the product. Suffice it to say that it is a really bad innovation (if you can even call it that). They have pretty much ruined an extremely good pastry. Yes, I can get dramatic when it comes to chocolate. I do not like people messing with a good chocolate product.

It turns out that you can still get the fudgeless type in other markets, however. During my recent travels I noticed them at various airports. Maybe introducing the new version in some markets is their way of experimenting to see if the change holds up. If you would like to join my campaign [1] to help save a perfectly good pastry then please send the company a note by filling out this form on their Web site. Espresso brownie enthusiasts will thank you.

1. I will keep you posted regarding tax-deductible donations to the cause as the movement progresses.

Jared Diamond tells us more about rat by-product consumption in the Old West in Collapse:

In 1849, hungry gold miners crossing the Nevada desert noticed some glistening balls of a candy-like substance on a cliff, licked or ate the balls, and discovered them to be sweet-tasting, but then they developed nausea. Eventually it was realized that the balls were hardened deposits made by small rodents, called packrats. that protect themselves by building nests of sticks, plant fragments, and mammal dung gathered in the vicinity, plus food remains, discarded bones, and their own feces. Not being toilet-trained, the rats urinate in their nests, and sugar and other substances crystallize from their urine as it dries out, cementing the midden to a brick-like consistency. In effect, the hungry gold miners were eating dried rat urine laced with rat feces and rat garbage.

These middens are quite valuable to paleontologists interested in finding out about local vegetation in specific periods; they serve as rough-and-ready time capsules. Diamond seems to have an interest in rats as food sources; he also tells us in passing about recipes for laboratory rat that circulated among British scientists during the post-WW II period of food rationing.

Reading up on hometown blogs I came across the unfortunate news that rat poopie was found in a warehouse holding airplane snacks at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport (and you don’t have to live in Chicagoland to use that airport during your U.S. airtravel given how many transfers occur there). The article states that “inspectors discovered more than 1,000 rat droppings where pretzels, beer and other airline snacks and beverages are stored”. To this a Chicagoist reader responded with the following astute question: “who got stuck with that counting job?”.

Chris Brooke provides some anecdotal evidence that the Atkins diet may not be all it is cracked up to be. Pollard is not much thinner than before the diet and looks… well, considerably less cheerful. Or maybe, as Chris hints in a comment, this testimony followed his incredibly disappointing evening at a local restaraunt.

It’s my birthday so I’ll take this opportunity to talk about something dear to my heart: chocolate. A friend who clearly does not realize how little time I spend working out gave me two pounds of some very good quality chocolate for my birthday. (Maybe the idea was that this way even after sharing with him I’d still have enough left for me.:) Another friend – whose wife and I have a monthly ritual of giving each other Belgian truffles on random holidays – sent me a link to a New York Times article about some of the best places in Paris for quality chocolate. One of the most intriguing gifts I’ve gotten recently came from Paris and was chocolate related: chocolate perfume. The scent is very real, and I don’t mean of some cheapo imitation American candy bar. The aroma resembles very high quality chocolate. Surprising as it may be, smelling the perfume can have healthy repercussions. A whiff of that scent will nullify any craving for poor quality chocolate (the type most likely to be around one’s office where such cravings often arise). Before completely dismissing all American chocolate, I should note that at a chocolate party where the hosts had us guests sampling and rating unidentified milk and dark chocolates from all over the world, some American chocolates actually came out quite highly ranked (including something as generic as Hershey’s dark chocolate).

I think a sophisticated chocolate enthusiast has cravings for specific types of chocolate, not just chocolate in general. So sometimes it is that M-azing candy bar you crave while other times only a Cote d’Or hazelnut dark chocolate bar, a Ritter Sport Marzipan bar or a Sport falat will do (just to name some of my favorites).

For those in the Chicagoland area, I highly recommend the Belgian chocolatier Piron in Evanston (the source of my monthly chocolate truffle ritual mentioned above). I welcome pointers to other great chocolate stores wherever they may be.

My dear, dear, deluded fellow Timberteers. Pumpkin pie is not replusive. Pumpkin pie is a silken cloud of holiday deliciousness. Last night I served the full Thanksgiving dinner to 16 people, many of whom, being British or Australian or Spanish or some such nonsense, had never eaten pumpkin pie before, though they had heard of this fabled treat. To a man and woman, they all thought it was delicious. Delicious, I say! Of course, it was a totally unorthodox pie actually made of kabocha squash. I adapted this recipe from the NYT and let me tell you, it will knock your socks off.

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The election, kid’s birthday party, and work in general, have delayed my Christmas Cake making to the coming weekend. Still, I’m now on track for Saturday morning. Making Christmas Cake generates several challenges. The first is the absence of edible glace cherries (which tend to be way too sweet here, if you can manage to find them) and appropriate chopped peel (can’t get the Whitworth’s kind, just candied muck). I overcame these problems last year rather well, by substituting dried cherries and dried strawberries. Expensive, but worth it. The second is keeping it moist enough. I’ve finally acknowledged that our oven overcooks everything, so am just doing everything at 50 degrees lower, and a bit longer — hope it will work. I’m also going to add more butter than my recipe says (I use Katie Stewart’s from the 1975 edition of the Times Calendar Cookery Book). But the unsolved problem is how to get it boozy enough. She demands just two tablespoons of brandy, which is nowhere near enough for a 3lb cake; so I have been doubling it the past couple of years, as well as sprinkling it over the cake sporadically in the weeks before Christmas. Still not enough. Should I be soaking the fruit in brandy beforehand? Should I be using even more brandy? Does anyone have experience of adding Port? While I am in my non-cake eating life all-but-a-teetotaller, I like boozy cake, but am constrained by the fact that I don’t want it to be so boozy that my kids will reject it. Advice? (And if anyone can tell me an easy way of getting edible glace cherries and Whitworth mixed peel in the Midwest that’d be great too).

Update: here’s the recipe (as modified by me from Katie Stewart):

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I can still recall my surprise when I happened upon a volume in a second-hand bookshop by Maurice Maeterlinck, author of Pelleas et Mellisande and one of history’s most famous Belgians, only to discover that it was all about the natural history of bees. If James Meek's piece in the latest LRB is anything to go on, I’m in good company:

bq. Not long after the First World War, the movie baron Samuel Goldwyn set up a stable of Eminent Authors in an attempt to give silent screenplays more literary weight. One of the recruits was the Nobel Prize-winning Belgian writer Maurice Maeterlinck. Initially, neither party seems to have been troubled that Maeterlinck spoke no English, and the great Belgian set to work on a screen version of his novel La Vie des abeilles. When the script was translated Goldwyn read it with increasing consternation until he could no longer deny the evidence of his senses. ‘My God!’ he cried. ‘The hero is a bee!’

Further on in Meek’s review of Bee Wilson’s _The Hive_ [1] he claims that Jean-Jacques Rousseau asserts somewhere that nations which eat honey are natural democracies but those which use sugar as a sweetener are fit only for tyranny. I guess I can see what the argument might be — something about honey-gathering being a suitable activity for free citizens whereas sugar came from large plantations worked by slaves — but does JJR _really_ say it anywhere?[2]

fn1. One of the names we canvassed for this blog before we launched was “The Grumbling Hive”, I’m glad I lost that argument.

fn2. Montesquieu makes explit the link between sugar and black slavery at _Spirit of the Laws_ I.15.v.