And the Stupidity Continues:
Last month, at Tales of the Cocktail, a week-long convention for the spirits industry in New Orleans, Eben Freeman, best known as the creator of smoked Coke and "solid" cocktails at the now-defunct Tailor in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood, gave a seminar on protecting one's intellectual property as a bartender. The panelists, Sheila Morrison from the Trademark Office, and Riley Lagesen, who has a private business law practice with a niche focus on the restaurant ind...
Because I have been reminded how much I love good brittle, I figured I should share the moment with y'all.
Alarm at 4:30. In car at 6:00. Flight at 9:30. First layover at 6:00. Second layover at 7 the next day. Arrive at destination at 11:30. Hotel at 1.
I am finding the process of travel interesting. I'm not talking about "traveling", which, to most of us, means being someplace else for an extended period of time, other than where we typically lay our heads . No, I'm talking about the actual act of "travel", known as the time between leaving the house and officially arriving at your planned destin...
(NOTE: Most of this post will have very little to do with candy, but it's still an important bridge between when we last saw sugar - in India, roughly between 500 BC to 500 AD - and how it ended up in Europe in around the eighth century)
If ever you want to demonstrate how little you know about history, by all means, use the phrase "the Dark Ages". This terminology that is meant to represent the period of time from the fall of Rome to roughly the start of the Renaissance. It is called the "dar...
I am, officially, old, at least when it comes to the world of food blogging. What this means is that I get to play Ouiser Boudreaux against the next crop of Annelle Dupuy Desotos that come along.
In that veine, let me present a list of Questions that I feel should be sent out to anyone who wishes to fire up wordpress and start the next big food blog.
Know why you are writing: This is the first question you should ask yourself. What do you hope to get out of committing to a food blog? "Fun" ...
First, a hit of backstory - A few months back, at the IACP conference in Portland, Michael Ruhlman called "Bullshit" on the claim made by Karen Page and others that we're getting too busy to cook.
Afterwards, a mini-storm brewed on twitter, one which annoyed me to no end. A fair amount of the food fans out there became exceedingly self-congratulatory on how they home cooked six or seven nights out of the week, and implied that those who did not were not only missing out, but were somehow missi...
Typically when an American thinks of nougat, if they think about it at all, it's thought of as the soft filling of the 3 Musketeers or Milky Way. This is a tad unfortunate, as well as close to being an improper definition of the word. It is unfortunate, because, as far as candy is concerned, nougat has likely been around for at least two millennia, while chocolate candy bars have only been here for about one hundred and sixty years. It is almost an improper definition, as nougat is really a r...
Before going to deep into this discussion, I recommend either clicking here or clicking on the graphic above, to fully appreciate the scope of the information provided. Don't worry. I'll wait.
(tapping foot. Humming a happy tune)
Good! You're back!
There's a lot of information in there, and even more if you wandered over to Philip H. Howard's full article on just how little variety there is in the beverage industry. You can get a full idea on what he's trying to say right up front in "back...
I generally try to resist these stories, because they are so damned many of them, and I'll get burned out on the depression that they always instill.
But in this case, the number is so huge, and the problem is so widespread, that it is worth getting the information out.
The problem? From the FDA:
Working closely with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state public health partners, the FDA reviewed epidemiologic and environmental investigation documents and identified 3 ...
In noting the famous people surrounding candy, most will be specific to candy itself. This is unsurprising, I know. But Aelius Galenus really should be considered famous for every bit of Western Food history between 100 AD and 1800 AD, not just for candy. For it was he who helped create a typology of human temperaments, expanding upon the work of Hippocrates.
I've talked about the work of Galen before. I'm bringing him up again because, quite frankly, candy would be quite different without his ...
I am posting this because defending Coca-Cola makes me feel all dirty, and this reminds me of all that is good in the food world.
I have a follow-up to my recent post about VitaminWater. Apparently Coca-Cola is feeling some of the heat that has come from the pushback of their claims, to the point where lawyers for Coke have stated:
...no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitaminwater was a healthy beverage.
What an outstanding example of corporate doublespeak. Seriously, let's review it again, and appreciate its aesthetic value.
...no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitaminwater was a h...
I'm taking the week off to celebrate my birthday and to relax a bit. I'll be back on Aug 16th.
WHat with yesterday being International Beer Day, I'd thought I'd a brief moment to reflect upon how far the American beer industry has come during my generation, and then reflect the state of it currently. Both of these graphs comes from Biodesic.
First, how far have we come in thirty years?
Pretty damn far apparently. The number of craft beers plus industrial beers have put us as a point that just exceeds where we were at in 1909. This itself demonstrates to me a substantial point. A lot c...
You may have seen this graphic from the folks at Term Life Insurance, but it's still worth reviewing again.
I'm kinda-sorta jumping ahead in history here, bypassing the exceptionally intriguing confections of Ancient India and their influence on India's food culture of today. Instead, I jumped directly into the path that is know of as "Halvah" (or halwah, or halva, or halava, or a plethora of other naming options that all relate to the same basic sort of confection).
Before chocolate candy took the Western world by storm in the late 1800's, it is quite likely that the most popular confection on the...
When returning from my overseas journeys, I make it a habit to bring back some souvenir or foodstuff from where I've been, and then share this bounty amongst friends and co-workers. It's no surprise that I brought back candy from the last trip, but what I didn't expect was the response to it. Several friends sought me out to mention that many of the candies brought them back to their childhood.
In the back of my mind, I thought back to the other recent trips to Europe, when various types of cho...
Truer words are rarely spoken.
Right, so where were we on the whole "History of Candy" thing? Oh, yes. Right. Sugar cane had been domesticated in New Guinea, and through trading routes and human migration, it ended up in what is present day India. This would be around 500 BC or so.
So how did we get from the sugar cane to granulated sugar? This is where we start getting some evidence of what people were eating, and we can actually point at written records and say "hey, look at what they were talking about."
With sugar, the ...
It is food such as the above that make me want to dance. Which is a fine, fine counter to the politics behind food marketing.
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Sep. 8, 2010 (12:43 PM EST) 