Category: Food & Drink

It’s a guy thing.

Stuffed Camel!

I wonder if it would be better brined. Or, perhaps, deep-fried …

(via JWalk)

Mmmmm. Thanksgiving is coming …

Ah … English Breakfast. Good English Breakfast. Even better, English Breakfast Buffet (meaning I can skip over the beans and tomatoes). Eggs … bacon … bangers … mushrooms … potatoes …

And plenty of grapefruit juice and tea.

I enjoy breakfast food, anyway, but that was just too scrumptious.

Absinthe is making a comeback. After a century of being illegal in most countries (including the US), due to a “Reefer Madness” reputation, Switzerland, the drink’s original home, is going to legalize its production again.

For Swiss distillers like Mr. Bugnon, the goal is to produce top quality, high-octane, government-approved absinthe produced from Artemisia absinthium, or wormwood, a plant native to the Val-de-Travers, the region in western Switzerland where the drink was invented.

If all goes well the distillers hope to obtain an official governmental “appellation” declaring that the region produces the only real absinthe in the world. Legalization will help the Swiss cash in on the rising global market for absinthe, which can be bought easily, and often illegally, over the Internet. There are Internet sites offering absinthe recipes and sources for wormwood seed.

In addition to prodigious amounts of alcohol, absinthe contains thujone, a toxic chemical found in wormwood that was used to treat stomach ailments as far back as ancient times but can cause tremors, hallucinations, paralysis and brain damage in large enough doses.

Some countries never banned it, and others have recently legalized the sale of low-thujone absinthe, including including Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Austria, Japan, Sweden, Italy, the Netherlands, and Britain (hmmmm).

Of course, given the shadowy ambience surrounding absinthe, making it legal is removing some of its illicit panache.

Not everyone in the Val-de-Travers is sanguine about legalization in Switzerland. For Pierre André Delachaux, a high school teacher and author of several books on absinthe, the move will destroy the mystique that came with the ban.

“I want to preserve the myth that comes with keeping absinthe forbidden and clandestine,” said Mr. Delachaux, who is also the curator of a small museum in Môtiers with a special absinthe section.

“The myth is the thrill of breaking the law and not getting caught,” he said. “The myth is offering as much money as you can and maybe still not finding what you’re looking for. Next year you’ll find absinthe in all the supermarkets.”

(via Hit & Run)

Of all the innovations one might hope for in the food industry, colored salt does not seem high on my list …

We couldn’t see how much salt we were sprinkling on our food, so we introduced What’s Shakin! Colored Table Salt.

Unless it’s an unfamiliar salt shaker, I’m usually pretty sure how much salt I’ve put on things. And since I do it to taste, seeing the amount is a lot less important than taking a bite to see if I have it right.

Since you can see it you use less – and it looks great on food too!

That’s what parsley is for.

(via J-Walk)

Certainly a worthy cause I can get behind:

The Founding Chapter of Ladies United for the Preservation of Endangered Cocktails (LUPEC) welcomes you!

This site is dedicated to the Gin Fizz, the Widow’s Kiss, and the Singapore Sling ? the drinks our mothers and grandmothers drank, the drinks we strive to save from extinction as a small measure of remembering those great women and their great cocktail parties.

Here you can find information about those cocktails, as well as their history and the rituals, barware and hors d’oeuvres that accompanied them.

So, remove the pineapple chunk from your cocktail, raise your glass, and drink to their memory! Up in ya!

I wonder if they have a Gentlemen’s Auxiliary?

(via J-Walk)

Everything you ever wanted to know about Medieval feasts, but knew that the Excalibur Hotel had never asked …

(via Julia)

One of the nifty things about cleaning up the whole house (or the ground floor at least) for a big dinner party is that when you come down in the morning, the house is still soooooooo clean. Uncluttered. All the stuff that’s usually festooned in stacks hither and thither all put away and tidy.

Can’t last, of course, any more than Margie’s incredibly yummy gnocchi can. But I can enjoy both while they do last.

Mmmmmm. Wings …

Food packaged, not by weight, but by caloric content: 100 calorie packs of snack food from Nabisco.

Not for everyone, of course, but, frankly, (some) folks would rather, I think, buy X calories of cookies/snacks than Y ounces (or Z cents). Folks, at least, who are watching their calories.

Brilliant.

My folks are out for the weekend. We’ve done a number of fun things (the Children’s Museum, etc.), but we’ve also eaten. A lot. An unusual amount. And that on top of the food-fest last weekend out in California.

Thursday night: 240 Union. Faboo eats, as usual. We had the creole garlic shrimp for starters. I had a marvelous strip steak. I eschewed dessert, but had a calvados brandy.

Friday night: Beer after the golf game. Wine with dinner. Margie cooked up chorizo-pork burgers. Ate one and a half. Jackie backed oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Ate too many of them.

Saturday night: Brunch at Le Peep. Trail Dust Steakhouse. Fried mushrooms. A big steak. A large margarita. Minimal number of calories burned dancing with Katherine on the dance floor.

I think it was the cookies that did me in.

We’re golfing 18 regulation tomorrow. Assuming I fit into my pants, I am frelling walking the course.