Category: Food and Drink
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I am not an observant Jew. To put it more succinctly, I am not Jewish at all. Yet I look forward to Passover each year for one gastronomic reason – kosher Coca-Cola. I am not much of a soft drink lover either, tea and water being my beverages of choice. But when I do drink…
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H2OM - a blessed beverage, Intentional Chocolate – a snack that is "imbued" with a monk's meditation, Creo Mundi - a protein mix that has been praised loudly. How much will you pay for these "good feeling" (not just feel good) foods? An article in the latest issue of Time magazine reports that some are shelling out generously for foods which are embedded /…
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There may be many a slip between the cup and the lip. But do you know that the drinking cup is etymologically a close cousin of the skull? I did but that knowledge is tucked away in a distant enough corner of the brain that it doesn't color the way I look at my tea cup. I am an avid tea drinker. I…
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so bad, that it's good! "Look at this Richard. Just look at it: [see image 1, above]. I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind as were racing through mine on that fateful day. What is this? Why have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, which…
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During my Ph.D. program, there were two important premises that kept recurring throughout the 7 year process: 1) There is no thought outside narrative — rather than escape a mythical way of thinking to truly "see reality," we can only move from one "prison-house of language" to another. 2) Stay away from the cheap wine…
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(In which we look again at the prevalence of melamine in various food chains, now confirmed to include human babies of practically all countries that use infant formulas from multinational companies like Nestle and Bristol-Meyers Squibb.)
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Every few months, along with the water bill, I receive a little brochure from the water company that assures me that the level of coliform and fecal bacteria in the water that flows through the taps has been tested at well below required levels. Ditto for the amounts of lead and other heavy metals and…
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If you are, like me, bemoaning the costs of your regular groceries due to the uptick in oil and gasoline prices, be prepared for worse this coming fall. Driving through rural Illinois and Iowa over the Memorial Day weekend, I was shocked to see vast stretches of unplanted corn fields. Very few had a faint…
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Food personality Andrew Zimmern was recently in Delhi – to eat, eat and eat! He ate a lot, at a lot of different places – glittering dining destinations in posh New Delhi restaurants, traditional eateries in the dingy alley ways of Old Delhi, roadside stalls and confectionery and even sacred temple offerings in a Gurdwara.…
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As I noted in an earlier post, there is widespread speculation in the media about the link between rising food prices and diverting food grains for the manufacture of biofuels. The Washington Post has begun a series to examine the various posssible causes that have triggered the recent world food crisis. Wednesday’s featured article takes…
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In recent days we have repeatedly heard news reports of the rising cost of food and food shortage. The effects have been mild to moderate in wealthy, developed nations like the US, more worrisome in Asia and severe in some poorer parts of the world. Namibia and Haiti have already seen food riots. The cause…
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What would Easter Sunday be without a suitable Peep Show? Check out the prize-winning entries in the WaPo’s contest. ————————————- NASA goes gaga over goo – now there’s a headline that practically wrote itself! The goo was good. NASA mission managers were ebullient over a test late on Thursday of techniques to repair delicate tiles…
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I approach food writing with caution, if not dread. Too often a writer’s musings about the culinary arts turn out unappetizingly precious or pretentious. Restaurant reviewers have to work hard to avoid saying pretty much the same thing about this week’s carbonnara as they remarked of last week’s polenta. The sappiness and off-putting wordplay can…
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A recall of 143 million pounds of beef, one of the largest in U.S. history was made recently, affecting thousands of school districts supplied by a California plant under the National School Lunch program. This stemmed from an undercover investigation of practices at the plant, complete with a disturbing video shot of animals being forced…
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Anna sent me a link to this article in LA Weekly from food critic Jonathan Gold, about what he claims is a rise in regional specialization among the Southern Indian restaurants in Artesia (a suburb of Los Angeles): Gold, who won the Pulitzer Prize this year for criticism, made his mark enthusiastically opting to report…
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