FunnyJohn

"A radical "˜artificial egg' backed by Paypal billionaire Peter Thiel and Bill Gates goes on sale in US supermarkets for the first time today. Made from plants, it can replace eggs in everything from cakes to mayonnaise - without a chicken ever coming close to the production process." Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2416808/Artificial-egg-PLANTS-backed-Bill-Gates-set-revolutionize-cooking-goes-sale-Whole-Foods.html#ixzz2eaKxCyY3

Thanks Don...(d'oh!) I swear that is the way the Tasting Table had it spelled. I simply cutted and pasted...

Ok this probably -- no definitely -- predates Australian wine coming into vogue but it's a good nugget: Monty Python's Flying Circus - "Australian Table Wines" [ from the album Monty Python's Previous Record, 1972 ] The Players: Eric Idle - Wine Expert; The Scene: Soft introduction music plays ..... WINE EXPERT: A lot of people in this country pooh-pooh Australian table wines. This is a pity as many fine Australian wines appeal not only to the Australian palate but also to the cognoscenti of Great Britain. Black Stump Bordeaux is rightly praised as a peppermint flavoured Burgundy, whilst a good Sydney Syrup can rank with any of the world's best sugary wines. Cháteau Blue, too, has won many prizes; not least for its taste, and its lingering afterburn. Old Smokey 1968 has been compared favourably to a Welsh claret, whilst the Australian Wino Society thoroughly recommends a 1970 Coq du Rod Laver, which, believe me, has a kick on it like a mule: eight bottles of this and you're really finished. At the opening of the Sydney Bridge Club, they were fishing them out of the main sewers every half an hour. Of the sparkling wines, the most famous is Perth Pink. This is a bottle with a message in, and the message is 'beware'. This is not a wine for drinking, this is a wine for laying down and avoiding. Another good fighting wine is Melbourne Old-and-Yellow, which is particularly heavy and should be used only for hand-to-hand combat. Quite the reverse is true of Cháteau Chunder, which is an appellation contrí´lée, specially grown for those keen on regurgitation; a fine wine which really opens up the sluices at both ends. Real emetic fans will also go for a Hobart Muddy, and a prize winning Cuivre Reserve Cháteau Bottled Nuit San Wogga Wogga, which has a bouquet like an aborigine's armpit.

This sentence caught my eye in the Tasting Table e-mail featuring a Fall Preview of food related events that arrived in my in box this morning: WASHINGTON, DC:From the Toki Underground guys, Marketto is a partially crowd-funded Asian marketplace and street food space. No further info and a Google search provides nada. Anyone know anything about this?

This is an important point -- when you cook at home you are much more in control of the overall healthiness of what you consume than when dining out, and of course the consequences of unhealthy eating are a major driver of health care costs.

Here's the answer: "Studies have shown that people prefer inexpensive wines in blind taste tests, but that they actually get more pleasure from drinking wine they are told is expensive. If lobster were priced like chicken, we might enjoy it less...."

If you can't find it at a Brick and Mortar shop: http://www.mohotta.com/?gclid=CIz5k6-Um7kCFRGg4Aoda3MAgA Dave's Insanity Sauce

Put me Down as Doubtful "The study came via the finance website Gobankingrates.com. This particular piece of content contended, among other things, that the cost of a meal at a mid-scale chain restaurant is less than that of a comparable meal cooked at home "“ only by $2 or $3, mind you, but still."

Anyone know the status of the remodeling of the old Teatro Goldoni? Articles from last year suggest that the new Look was supposed to open last November.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/readcommentbackwards/42-clever-food-hacks-that-will-change-your-life-dmjk Not sure if "life-changing" isn't a bit of an exaggeration but... How to make salad in a jar for lunch:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/reviews/better-with-bacon-10-products-for-the-bacon-lover?click=pp#slide-7 I'm not going to tease this, but some of these are mind-blowing [ok, I guess that's a tease ]

Which one is used for Hari Kari? Then, lest we forget

cost/nutritional content: The greatest food in human history In terms of cost-per-calorie, no locavore, organic veggie can compete with the McDoubleBy KYLE SMITH Last Updated: 8:35 PM, July 29, 2013 Posted: 10:35 PM, July 27, 2013 Kyle Smith Blog: Movies What is "the cheapest, most nutritious and bountiful food that has ever existed in human history" Hint: It has 390 calories. It contains 23g, or half a daily serving, of protein, plus 7% of daily fiber, 20% of daily calcium and so on. Also, you can get it in 14,000 locations in the US and it usually costs $1. Presenting one of the unsung wonders of modern life, the McDonald's McDouble cheeseburger. The argument above was made by a commenter on the Freakonomics blog run by economics writer Stephen Dubner and professor Steven Levitt, who co-wrote the million-selling books on the hidden side of everything. Mcdonalds mcdouble

The Senate Dining Room

I note the date of the last post in this thread. Coming SOON TO YOUR KITCHEN TA-DAH "...To appreciate sous vide’s odds of catching on as an everyday cooking method, consider the last cutting-edge cooking machine to conquer the American kitchen: the microwave. In 1955, the Tappan Stove company began marketing a dazzling new technology to American home cooks. At $1,300 a pop—$11,273 in today's dollars—the first microwave ovens were an outrageous luxury, not to mention space hogs roughly the height andweight of their users. By 1967, microwave technology had improved enough to allow Amana to introduce the first countertop model, a $495 unit (the equivalent of $3,446 today). In 1971, 16 years after its introduction, the microwave was a miserable failure: Less than 1 percent of American households owned one. "...In 2009,SousVide Supreme introduced its breadmaker-sized home unit for $449. Polyscience responded, in 2010, by releasing its first unit targeted specifically at home cooks, and then followed up last year with an even sleeker $499.95 device whose slender profile would garner a grudging nod of approval from even the most austere Scandinavian design snob. (Polyscience and SousVide Supreme provided me with free review models of these machines.) And the market's about to get more crowded. A recent Kickstarter appeal to fund a mass market thermal immersion circulator drew almost $600,000 in funding despite the inventors’ request for only a third of that. When it arrives later this summer, the Nomiku's target price of $359 will once again lower the price barrier." So instead of buying pre-sous vided meals, you'll be able to prepare your own.

I had a collection of mini-magnets, each of which contained a politically related phrase, so you could construct your own random political rhetoric on the fridge. Meanwhile... The 1863 Cabernet from Acme Vineyards merges robust cilantro overtones with a easy-to-misconstrue clam flavor.

http://phrasegenerator.com/wine

Furstenberg's main complaint seems to be the priceness of the kinds of food experiences he counts as good, and in and around DC, that is a fair point -- up to a point. If he expanded his horizon to the close-in suburbs he would find places like Great Wall and all the other Asian stores that sell exotic produce at reasonable prices, the numerous Indian, Latino and other grocery stores that cater to particular ethnic gorups (some of which can be found in the District itself). But he has always been a contrarian and has made great contributions to the food culture of DC, and I suggest that this article was written to stimulate some debate and raise consciousness, so I will give him some credit even if there is a lot to argue with in his piece. Unlike the other cities that Furstenberg cites for their good food cultures, today's Washington is a relatively recent creation -- something that developed during the past 40 years or so. Also we have a much smaller population than most of those other cities which can therefore support more "Central Markets" or similar ventures. Given those relative disadvantages, the Washington food scene ain't so bad and it keeps improving.

News You Can Use "If the most-influential voices in our food culture today get their way, we will achieve a genuine food revolution. Too bad it would be one tailored to the dubious health fantasies of a small, elite minority. And too bad it would largely exclude the obese masses, who would continue to sicken and die early. Despite the best efforts of a small army of wholesome-food heroes, there is no reasonable scenario under which these foods could become cheap and plentiful enough to serve as the core diet for most of the obese population—even in the unlikely case that your typical junk-food eater would be willing and able to break lifelong habits to embrace kale and yellow beets. And many of the dishes glorified by the wholesome-food movement are, in any case, as caloric and obesogenic as anything served in a Burger King. "Through its growing sway over health-conscious consumers and policy makers, the wholesome-food movement is impeding the progress of the one segment of the food world that is actually positioned to take effective, near-term steps to reverse the obesity trend: the processed-food industry. Popular food producers, fast-food chains among them, are already applying various tricks and technologies to create less caloric and more satiating versions of their junky fare that nonetheless retain much of the appeal of the originals, and could be induced to go much further. In fact, these roundly demonized companies could do far more for the public’s health in five years than the wholesome-food movement is likely to accomplish in the next 50. But will the wholesome-food advocates let them?" Let the debate begin...

List pretty DC-centric [congrats to Scot Harlan though]

Lyon Hall, ScrewTop and Willow have WiFi -- and for those fortunate enough to be able to eat in the cafeteria at the State Dept. [Harry S Truman bldg] WiFi will be coming soon

Anyone got some G-2 on this spot? Just found out that my brother, Tym, is working behind the bar there a couple of nights a week. Here's a Young & Hungry piece I found through Google:

http://reason.com/reasontv/2013/06/21/cheese-lovers-fight-idiotic-fda-ban-on-m With immigration reform in the news, here's another tale of the federal government telling foreigners that they're not welcome in the United States: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is holding thousands of pounds of mimolette cheese captive in a New Jersey compound because the regulators say the orange-hued, gouda-like fromage has too many mites on its rind.... The result, explains Jill Erber, the owner of Cheestique in Alexandria, Virginia, is that once American cheese shops sell out whatever supplies they have left, the United States will be a mimolette-free zone.

Went to Leek last night to cash in the Living Social Coupon I purchased. First on a positive note -- the food here is very good. My wife started with the shortribs app and I had leek and fennel soup which featured morsels of lobster in a very tast broth. The shortribs were prepared perfectly and were beefy and flavorful. For our mains, she had the strip steak. She forgot to mention that she wanted it rare, but it came out pretty much that way and was just great. I had"falafel crusted" salmon in some kind of garbanzo based sauce, also perfectly prepared. Now the negative: they completely altered the Living Social deal I thought I had bought. The deal as advertised made no mention of being limited in what could be selected from the menu, but when we got there and presented the coupon, we were told that for our apps we could select from a soup or a salad, and for the mains we were limited to the chicken, salmon or tofu entrees. Now they did give us an app each which was better than advertised, but the limitation on the entrees was a significant departure from the deal as promised. When I raised this with out waiter, and asked to speak with a manager, the waiter came back and said we could get any entree and just pay the difference, ditto for the apps. Did anyone else encounter this and what do you think should be done when a Living Social or Groupon deal is altered after the fact? All-in-all, we were satisfied with the way things turned out, and I would definitely give Leek another chance -- they need some business -- only a few tables were occupied on Saturday night and it's a big place

I see they are now open for lunch, although their website still says "Coming Soon". Anyone seen a lunch menu?