Flash in the Pan

Review: Monty Python's Holy Grail Ale by Black Sheep Bottled Beers

2008-08-07T23:25:00.000-04:00

I was a bit surprised and tickled when a family friend brought over a couple of bottles of Monty Python's Holy Grail ale. The g and r are crossed out on the label, so you have Holy Ail as a result. Apparently the beer "was commissioned to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Pythons." If you're a Wickan, you may not appreciate the "tempered over burning witches" line at the bottom. Actually, I wasn't too crazy about it, but did like the rest of the label. The brew is a bit on the bitter side, but well rounded and enjoyable. I hear it's good with spam, spam, spam, eggs, and spam.

Review: 2005 Vale do Bomfim Reserva Douro DOC by Dow

2008-08-06T11:10:00.000-04:00

When a sample bottle of 2005 Vale do Bomfim Reserva Douro DOC, a Portuguese wine from Dow, came in, we decided to bring it along with us to some friends and test it there. Don't make the mistake we did of immediately pouring it into a glass and drinking, because the result was unpleasantly astringent. But given a few minutes to breathe, it's a dry, rich, pleasant red with lots of fruit (no more details there - I'm not an olafactory greengrocer). We had it with grilled food and the wine held up well. A bottle will run about $12.

Review: Barefoot Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon

2008-08-05T07:49:00.002-04:00

A brief review of great value wines: Barefoot Cellar's merlot and cabernet are worth getting. Don't let the oversized bottle and low price per volume ($13 in my area) fool you. These wines have great character and balance, and are pleasant even a few days after you opened one and popped the cork back in. I came across them by accident in a liquor store and, cheap person that I am, decided to give the merlot a shot. Because they are so drinkable, they become fabulous wines for cooking, as you get quality without feeling that you must carefully meter when you deglaze a pan or add some to a sauce. I haven't had any of their other wines (there's a good number), but given my experience so far, I'd try them with some degree of confidence.

Strange News from the Food Front (8/4/2008)

2008-08-04T06:21:00.013-04:00

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

Chinese Kugel For religious Jews visiting China during the Olympics, there is exactly one kosher restaurant. An hour after eating, you feel like doing a mitzvah. (Crispy on the Outside)

Chef Gorten A new restaurant trend: use frozen fish to lower global warming. (Washington Post)

Menu Groupthink A new raw foods restaurant looking to open in Washington, D.C. is using the "wisdom of crowds" to create the concept, look, and name. (Washington Post)

Am I Crispy Yet? A new alarm clock cooks a strip of bacon to wake you to the smell of breakfast. BYOE (bring your own eggs). (Geek.com)

Please Sir, May I Have Some More? Between 1970 and 2006, the average American was eating 1.8 more pounds of food per week. (NYT)

Why Are You Wearing Two Dresses? A Cleveland clothing store has opened a bar in the middle of its sales floor. (AP)

Take It Inside Beijing authorities are banning streaking, drinking, and sleeping outdoors during the Olympics. Could it be that the three activities are related? (Reuters)

McVroomManila police will power their squad cars with a mix of diesel and old McDonald's fry oil. Presumably officers will have the option to supersize their ride into an SUV. (AFP)

Well Aged Someone found the world's oldest surviving bottle of Veuve Cliquot in a sideboard inside a Scottish castle. (AFP)

Orwell's British Cookery Article

2008-08-01T05:34:00.002-04:00

While traipsing about my media intake, I came across the site for the Orwell Prize for political writing. On the site is an entire article, scanned or photographed from the original manuscript, that Orwell wrote about British cooking, and which includes some of his own recipes. The article was never published (a problem with the recipes not taking post-war food shortages into account), and includes some of his own recipes.

Serrano Chiles Join Do Not Eat List

2008-07-31T05:32:00.000-04:00

The Food and Drug Administration has found the rare Saintpaul strain of salmonella in some fresh serrano chiles from Mexico, and that the bacteria were in irrigation waters, and so is warning consumers not to eat them or raw jalapeno peppers from Mexico. That leaves me with the question of how to know for sure a pepper's country of origin.

Good Pancake Recipe

2008-07-30T16:30:00.000-04:00

I've been playing around on and off, trying to find a pancake recipe I liked. After making a number of changes here and there in what I saw, the family voted this one a keeper.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 tsp. salt
3 TBS. sugar (reduce to 2 TBS. if using a sweet syrup)
2 tsp. baking powder
2 eggs, separated
1 1/8 cup milk
2 TBS. butter
1 tsp. vanilla

Directions

Put butter and milk into microwave-safe container and heat until butter melts. Heat large pan or griddle over high heat.
In a large bowl, mix flour, salt, sugar, and baking powder.
In a medium bowl, beat egg whites until stiff. In another medium bowl, lightly beat egg yolks until mixed.
Add milk and butter mixture to egg yolks, mixing constantly.
Add milk and egg yolk mixture to flour mixture and gently mix until completely combined.
Folk egg whites into batter, taking care not to deflate the whites.

Cook the pancakes. Yields about 15 3-inch pancakes. (Definitely enough for four people.)

Red Espresso: Better Tea Than Coffee?

2008-07-29T06:20:00.001-04:00

I didn't think of Businessweek as a source of dining information, but it turns out to have an eating and drinking column. This week it covers red espresso, actually Rooibos tea made from a legume found only in South Africa [UDDATE - I originally had types America, showing that I should have had more of something before typing, and thanks to the person who wrote in pointing out the error]. Apparently it's being marketed as a non-coffee espresso, like the Postem of the latte crowd. According to David Kiley, stick with the real brew and save the Rooibos for actual tea, hot or, where it is exceptional, cold:

If you are a tea drinker, and you do not drink coffee because you don't care for the taste, red espresso may appeal to you. I drink a lot of tea and a considerable amount of espresso. I have no objection to coffee or caffeine. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say I need a cup of coffee a day. So, for me, red espresso brewed to take the place of espresso joins that list of stuff that doesn't hit my taste buds well, such as Postum, lite mayonnaise, Diet Coke, NutraSweet, Lactaid Milk, nonalcoholic beer, and "yogurt" made from tofu.

Supposedly the person who invented this did so because he found himself drinking six shots of espresso a day. Good lord.

If I were brewing tea, though, I'd probably stick to a fuller cut leaf and not something pulverized. That would be like using a cheap tea bag.

Strange News from the Food Front (7/28/2008)

2008-07-28T06:09:00.016-04:00

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

Professor of Pistachio One of the world's largest ice cream equipment manufacturers runs Gelato University outside Bologna, where it teaches 6,000 would-be professionals a year. (Financial Times)

Going Against the Whole Grain Sara Lee, General Mills, and others, get smacked for claiming "whole grain" when products are mostly refined white flour. (Businessweek)

Briber Works ... Ah, Worked An English school used chocolate bars as bribes for good behavior - and it worked. But higher officials chided him for not using healthy food. (Financial Times)

That Metallic Taste Coca-Cola lovers in Hong Kong will be getting 25ml less of the drink per can as the company is shrinking the size of the container to save money on the cost of aluminum. (MarketWatch)

The Big Eatsy For the first time since Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans Times-Picayune is again reviewing restaurants. (NYT)

Brain Food The head of the World Trade Organization has suggested to his staff members that they eat bananas to keep them going through difficult negotiation sessions. (Reuters)

Ho, Ho, Ho The 51st annual world Santa convention included a focus on exercising, not dieting, to get those jolly guys more easily down chimneys. (AFP)

Keeping His Sunny Side Up A French waiter who threw an egg at the car carrying Nicholas Sarkozy during his visit to Ireland said that he'll be ready with "more than a dozen" should the president of France return. (AFP)

Product Review: New Amsterdam Gin

2008-07-23T06:48:00.000-04:00

A bottle of New Amsterdam gin arrived from the company's PR firm for testing, claiming that it had "a taste so smooth you can drink it straight." So I tried it that way ... and have to agree. This gin is perhaps the most gentle on the palate of any that I've tried. The taste is not so explosively floral as Bombay Sapphire, but it's agreeable and balanced and would lend itself well to mixed drinks. It's certainly proven its worth in gin and tonics, one of my occasional pleasures during the summer months. A fifth runs about $14, with various other sizes available, and although I would never recommend a beverage based on the bottle design — and consider the industry's stressing of container aesthetics to be bordering on silly — this one is attractive, if that matters to you.

Passing on the Mold

2008-07-22T05:13:00.000-04:00

The New York Times science Q&A section has a question on mold: If there's some on the surface of food, has it permeated throughout? Their answer, quoting the US Department of Agriculture, is yes, it may well have. By the time you see the surface mold, root threads are embedded.

Some molds can cause strong allergic reactions, including respiratory problems, in susceptible people. And in some varieties, the threads produce toxic substances called mycotoxins, which can make people very sick.

Eww, not good. If you're really feeling adventurous, go for a "safe" mold: blue cheese.

Strange News from the Food Front (7/21/2008)

2008-07-21T05:43:00.002-04:00

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

Bam - You're Insulted In a new British television show, Eating with the Enemy people prepare their favorite home dishes and food writers try to out-snark each other. (The Observer)

The Naked Video Game Jamie Oliver is star of a cooking video game with recipes and as it runs on a portable Nintendo DS, you can bring it to the grocery store and have it manage your shopping list. All without calories. (Press release)

No Take Out for You and You and You An anti-immigrant group in Italy is pushing for a law that would let cities bar ethnic restaurants "incompatible with the historical context." Is any part of Italy not historic? Oh, right, that's the idea. (Reuters)

Self-Cutting Sandwich A New York man is claiming in a lawsuit that a Subway shop put a 7-inch knife into his sandwich. (Reuters)

Good Thing He Didn't Ask for Doughnuts A Florida policeman was fired for trying to get free coffee and tea from a Starbucks. Didn't anyone tell him that it's over roasted? (AP)

Golden Ticket A French woman found a candy wrapper in the trash and, with it, a winning number for a contest where the prize is a flight into space. (Reuters)

Single-Handedly Keeping Breweries in Business An Australian man, convicted of a seventh DUI charge, was spending almost $1,000 weekly on beer. (Reuters)

Uh ... Surprise Police say that a pizza restaurant clerk didn't know that her parents and her husband were planning to rob the establishment. (AP)

He Deserves a Break Today A man who was convicted of robbing a McDonalds in 1994 is among the finalists in a contest to write a new jingle for the chain. (AP)

Financial Decline of Wine Shrine A Napa Valley food and wine museum is in the financial dregs, and California citizens could get stuck with the tab. (Sacramento Bee)

Free Willie Some Canadians are bidding to get a New Brunswick restaurant to free a 100-year-old lobster. (AFP)

Product Review: The Bull BBQ Sauce

2008-07-17T17:34:00.000-04:00

A baseball star in the 1970s and 1980s, Greg "The Bull" Luzinski, has a barbecue sauce out under his name: The Bull BBQ Sauce. He was a great slugger, but I found his culinary exploits to fall short. The sauce tasted both overly-vinegary - without being a Carolina style - and too sweet as well. It may sound like a contradiction, but that's the results to the literally in-house testing panel. I also tend to write off products that include Liquid Smoke (on the ingredients label) because that isn't the job of the sauce. If you can't get smoke flavor from the grill, the meal is a loss anyway. And my wife noticed the high fructose corn syrup component in the listed Worcestershire sauce, which automatically put the product on her "do not buy" list. I'd say that if you're in the market for a good barbecue sauce, take another trip around the bases and keep looking.

Strange News from the Food Front (7/14/2008)

2008-07-14T06:43:00.000-04:00

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

The Stress of Dealing with a Food Crisis At the G8 summit, world leaders prepared themselves to deal with the issue of a food crisis by having a 19-course dinner prepared by 25 chefs. (The Guardian)

Yes, We Have No Bow-wowersBeijing officials have called on restaurants and hotels to stop serving dishes containing dog during the Olympics. (Financial Times)

Cocoa Chanel An Ivorian fashion designer makes outfits from jute sacks used to ship cocoa from the Ivory Coast. (Reuters)

World's Hottest Curry Title? A London restaurant took at shot at serving the world's hottest curry and is waiting on the Guinness Book of World Records to confirm this. Every diner had to sign a disclaimer. (AFP)

Iron-Rich Diet A Peruvian doctor had to pull 17 metal objects - including nails and a knife - from the body of a patient who ate them. (Reuters)

Curdled Carriers Thousands of liters of sour milk, sent by farmers protesting low dairy prices, are clotting the EU's main sorting center. (Reuters)

Cooler Armor A Connecticut man used his lunch cooler to protect himself from the gunfire of two would-be robbers. (AP)

Some Strong Tea A Japanese calmed down a knife-wielding robber by serving him tea. (Reuters)

Strange News from the Food Front (7/7/2008)

2008-07-07T05:28:00.001-04:00

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

I'll Drink to That The Museum of the American Cocktail returns to its home in New Orleans on July 21. (Organization web site)

Shaken, Not Whirred Japanese beer company Asahi unveiled its new robot bartender. (Engadget)

Hops Go the Brewers Craft beer companies are facing "rapidly rising commodity prices, industry consolidation, and a slowing economy" and trying to figure out how they're going to make money. Oh, wait - we'll pay more. (Businessweek)

Life's a Bowl of Cherry Pits A son out spat his father to take his seventh International Cherry Pit Spitting Championship. (AP)

Battle of the Courses A restaurant in a part of Beirut controlled by Hezbollah is war-themed, with a bullet-shaped menu and chefs working in military fatigues. (Reuters)

Hot Dogging An American successfully defended his world title in Nathan's annual hot dog eating competition. (Reuters)

No Starch Decision A UK court ruled that Pringles are not a potato snack, and so not subject to a tax. (AP)

Hope They Are Red An international body has adopted a standard for tomatoes. (AFP)

No Restaurant for You Three retired family members have at least temporarily lost a 50 year battle for a top Paris restaurant valued at $110 million. (AFP)

Technique: Using a Pommade in Burgers

2008-07-03T10:45:00.000-04:00

A recent grilling special issue of Cook's Illustrated (with which I have a love hate relationship - good tips, but an arrogant approach to the best way to do this, that, and the other) mentioned using a pommade in making well-done burgers. I had forgotten about this, even though I use the technique in meatballs and meatloaf. The French word means a cream or ointment. In a cooking context, it's a term for making a paste and adding it to another mixture so that, after cooking, the result remains moist.

In this case, a good pommade is simply bread (one slice per pound of meat) soaked in enough milk to make it soggy, then rubbed into a paste. Mix the pommade with the ground meat, add in salt and any other flavorings you like (a teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce per pound of meat is a touch I like), and then make patties without packing the meat in. Cook as you normally would, watching for over cooking.

If you're used to feeling the burgers on top for how well done they are, remember that the pommade will make them feel squishier, therefore less done. I'd use a thermometer the first time or two using this technique. At least, I would have, had I thought ahead. Last week I tried it and the burgers came out medium well, rather than the medium rare most of my family prefers. Guess I'll have to try it again - and not spare the digital readout.

Starbucks: We're Adding Products! Doing Great! Oh ... and Closing Stores

2008-07-02T06:32:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, Starbucks announced that it would be closing "600 underperforming company-operated stores in the U.S. market, which includes our previously announced plans to close 100 stores," according to A Message from Howard. He started with all the wonderful things that happened since becoming CEO again, and mentioned such upcoming things as the introduction of "healthy, good-for-you beverages" starting July 15. (Healthy? Good-for-you? Is this still a coffee spot?)

In addition, in Southern California, we will introduce a refreshing, indulgent cold iced beverage. Steeped in Italian heritage, it will be an exclusive product that our customers can only find at Starbucks.

Sure, other companies will probably call it something else once they lift the concept. But then came the bad news - under performing stores would close, full- and part-time employees would lose their jobs. At least they say they'll be offering employees either a position at a nearby store (though once you're out of major cities, heaven knows what "nearby" will mean) or some severance. And given how they have benefits even for many part-time workers, I can't fault them. The chain simply expanded faster than its audience.

I even have some sympathy for CEO Schultz. Clearly he's been torn between the business becoming enormous and wanting the atmosphere of a cafe with comfortable seats for deliberate loitering over a cup of coffee and the smell of freshly ground beans in the air. But you can't be big and neighborhood at the same time, which shows that even success doesn't mean that you'll be happy and free of conflict.

Now, if only they'd stop over-roasting their beans.

Don't Fear Mayonnaise - Unless You're a Water Spot

2008-07-01T22:15:00.000-04:00

The New York Times has a short science piece on whether mayonnaise increases the danger of food poisoning as the weather gets warmer. The good news: a number of studies suggest that commercial mayonnaise is not at fault, as the degree of acidic ingredients makes the substance pretty unpopular with the microbe crowd.

One prominent study published in The Journal of Food Protection found, for example, that in the presence of commercial mayonnaise, the growth of salmonella and staphylococcus bacteria in contaminated chicken and ham salad either slowed or stopped altogether. As the amount of mayonnaise increased, the rate of growth decreased. When temperatures rose to those of a hot summer day, the growth increased, but not as much as in samples that did not contain mayonnaise.

However, summer brings another danger - cold drinks and condensation that can leave water marks. Luckily, mayonnaise can bring a solution. You smear mayonnaise over the spot, leave it overnight (or even a day or more), wipe it off, and the spot is gone. There are a number of sites online that describe this technique; I know about it because my wife read it in some book, tried it, and was delighted to find that it worked. No, adding bacon, lettuce, and tomato is not necessary.

Strange News from the Food Front (6/30/2008)

2008-06-30T05:57:00.002-04:00

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

Nineteenth Amendment? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Nineteenth Amendment Proving that dead ideas of the past are never far away, the Phoenix Country Club still has a men-only bar, with women relegated to some dump of a back room, crossing the line from "weird" news to pathetic. (New York Times)

It's a Good Vintage For those, like me, who missed this story the first time around, Martha Stewart has lent her name to some $15 a bottle wines that I notice the other day in a local grocery store. It's probably the only wine that matures according to a strict calendar. (USA Today)

Say Cheese A Wisconsin sculptor recreated John Trumbull's painting "Declaration of Independence" in a ton of cheddar. (AP)

Peanuts ... Popcorn ... Kung Pao ... In time for the Olympics, Beijing is providing to restaurants official English translations of local menu items. "'Bean curd made by a pock-marked woman,' as the Beijing Youth Daily rendered the spicy Sichuanese dish, is now 'Mapo tofu.' And 'chicken without sexual life' becomes mere 'steamed pullet.'" (Reuters)

Hold On There, Pardner The Naked Cowboy, a New York City street performer, is suing Mars for billboards depicting a blue M&M in the cowhand's signature outfit of boots, a hat, and white briefs. (Reuters)

Maybe If They Call It Adult Grape Juice A burgeoning Finish wine industry is halted in its tracks as the European Union, which doesn't recognize Finland as a wine-producing country under EU rules, prohibits inhabitants from selling what they make.(New York Times)

Mars and IBM to Explore Chocolate Genome - for the Greenhouse

2008-06-26T07:45:00.001-04:00

When you're a big chocolate company like Mars, you think about cocoa, without which you cannot make a thing. You think about diseases and changing climate and other factors that could cut production and raise your costs - and the 6.5 million or so cocoa growers in the world, most of which work on small family farms, have as much attention on a "luxury." According to the New York Times, Mars is working with IBM to map the cocoa genome - not to create genetically modified plans (at least supposedly), but to be smarter and more efficient in how cross-breeding and plant development in the greenhouse work:

Computational biologists and supercomputers can drastically accelerate the pace at which promising new strains of cocoa trees come out of the greenhouse, from the traditional length of five to seven years down to 18 months or so, Dr. Shapiro said.

That is a huge time and money savings. It's easy to forget that it takes significant time to grow a tree, and that to avoid GM methods, you have to bring plants to maturity and work through a line of generations to get the eventual results that you want. If mapping the genome helps them move through the process more effectively, it takes some of the pressure off switching to more artificial and potentially risky approaches, like swapping genes around.

Product Review: Arico Natural Foods Cassava Chips and Cookies

2008-06-25T06:27:00.000-04:00

Arico Natural Foods sent an assortment of product for the crew (my wife, me, and whatever particular set of kids marching through the house at any give time) to test. The company apparently focuses on gluten- and casein-free snacks. They present the cassava chips as a lower-fat and higher-fiber alternative to potato chips. (Stressing gluten-free when potatoes don't have gluten doesn't get you far.) The chips, made out of the starchy roots of a South American plant, were pretty good. The taste was a bit different from potato chips in a way that I find difficult to describe - lighter, maybe - but was nevertheless pleasant. Everyone else seemed to like the chips as well.

On the cookie front, we were far more divided. The kids loved the chocolate chunk and triple berry, my wife liked them, and I found them on the dry and mealy side, though if you can't tolerate gluten, they are good to know about. However, they are far from cheap, at least if you are buying online. You buy by the case of six family packs, and each pack, in a reclosable pouch, weighs 4.8 ounces; the price is $29.94, and then you pay $5.95 on top of that for shipping. Even without the shipping, it's $16.63 per pound of cookie. Similarly, the chips are a case of one dozen 5 ounce bags for $41.88. Ouch. So I'd suggest holding off on trying the products unless you can find them in a store, and even then you might find them an over-priced novelty, unless you have to avoid casein and gluten, in which case you probably have limited choices.

Corn Refiners Association Tries HFCS PR

2008-06-24T05:56:00.000-04:00

The headline has a lot of letters, but what it comes down to is that the Corn Refiners Association - the people who make high fructose corn syrup - must be nervous because of all the bad press that the liquid sweetener has been receiving. They've created a site called HFCSfacts.com. Let's look at some of the statements in it:

HFCS, table sugar, honey, and several fruit juices all contain the same simple sugars.

Not exactly, as I remember my high school chemistry. There are a number of relatively basic sugars, including fructose (fruit sugar), sucrose (the table sugar we use), lactose (a sugar found in milk), maltose (malt sugar found in beer and malt whiskey), and glucose (also called dextrose, found in plant saps and fruits). They are similar, but not exactly the same.

HFCS is safe and no different from other common sweeteners like table sugar and honey.

Now we're entering some real word twisting, so far as I can tell. Suddenly they are trying to pretend that the sugars are equivalent, and they aren't necessarily. Some people are "lactose intolerant," meaning that the particular form of sugar called lactose is something their bodies do not digest.

HFCS is equal in sweetness to table sugar.

Interesting, as I've always heard that industries like HFCS because 1) it's cheaper than regular sugar, and 2) it's sweeter, so they don't need as much.

Instead of just listening to these people, how about some nutritional information from the MayoClinic.com?

Strange News from the Food Front (6/23/2008)

2008-06-23T08:10:00.001-04:00

A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:

Scratch and Sniff Lottery The Colorado lottery is selling scented scratch tickets, where you scratch the latex-covered area and release scented ink, including chocolate and coffee. (AP)

Cold Crustacean A restaurant cook allegedly tried stealing frozen lobster tails by stuffing them down his pants. Will he end up in the cooler? (WABC)

Begone, Thou Misshapen Fruit! The EU is having trouble ridding itself of regulation over the shape of fruits and vegetables sold there. (Reuters)

One for Me, One for You An English farm has ended its pick-your-own strawberries program because people ate more than they bought. (The Press Assoc.)

Swearing by Ramsey Australia's parliament is tightening rules on permissible on-air language, and all because of Gordon Ramsey. (Reuters)

The McDonald's Diet A man in Virginia lost 80 pounds in six months by having nearly every meal at a McDonald's - salads, wraps, and apple dippers without the caramel sauce. Could he maybe have exercised a bit, as well?(AP)

A Hair of the Dirty Dog An ex-cook was charged with putting hairs inside a steak that was served to a dissatisfied customer. (AP)

Cocoa Surges While Mexico Controls Food Prices

2008-06-19T08:15:00.001-04:00

Get ready for your chocolate fix to be a little more dear. Cocoa prices have hit a 28-year high. According to a story in the Financial Times, the reason is concern "over the size and quality of this year’s crop from Ivory Coast, the world’s largest producer." This basic component of chocolate has climbed 52.3 percent this year alone:

The International Cocoa Organisation is forecasting a small supply surplus of 71,000 tonnes in 2008/09, but a poor crop in Ivory Coast could push the market into a supply deficit for a third year in a row.

Similarly, Brazil has reported that its sugal crop will be delayed and smaller because of rain, so sugar prices rose by 3.2 percent. Now here's the real interesting part, I think: prices for October sugar are 12.83 cents a pound. How much do you pay for a pound of sugar? Who gets the rest of that money, and what value do they add to justify their cuts?

In the meantime, in another Financial Times story, food prices are hitting hard enough in Mexico that the "center-right goverment" - which I take to mean on the conservative side - has put price controls into place on 150 basic items, including beans, cooking oil, canned tuna, and fruit juice. Prices will remain frozen from now until the end of the year. But given the hefty jumps we've been seeing in the underlying goods, what happens to the merchants and wholesellers? I understand that people with no money are hurting, but this seems to be a short-sighted approach of addressing a problem. The government shifts the burden onto businesses, which might end up losing money in the long run and possible start cutting jobs, because it wants to appear as though it's active toward the problem. But the dynamics don't change, and the effect is to sweep the pain under a carpet and out of site. The eventual price for this approach may be higher and longer-lasting, but, hey, maybe that will be for someone else to deal with.

Review: IKEA as Food Stop

2008-06-18T08:35:00.000-04:00

When my wife came back home after a trip with a friend to an IKEA, I didn't expect food. But that's what she brought: lingonberry jam and drink concentrate, several types of herring, frozen meatballs, and crackers. I had never been to one of the stores before, but on a recent trip to New York and New Jersey, I stopped at a location off I-95 in Connecticut. Why? First, dinner. I was hungry and remembered an interview with the former head of the company in the US, who mentioned the in-store restaurants. A reasonable plate of Swedish meatballs, mashed potatoes, gravy, and some lingonberry jelly (served like a cranberry jelly) was only about $5. Certainly one of the cheaper non-fast-food meals I remember having in a long time, and far from the worst. Then it was down to the food section to see a nice assortment of products that you are unlikely to find anywhere else near you, at least if you live in the US. IKEA: it's not just for boxed furniture.