April 23, 2011
Bacon mania refers to passionate bacon enthusiasm in the US, Canada, and the UK. The movement (sometimes called ‘Bacon Nation’) has been traced to the 1980s and 1990s when high-protein foods became a more prominent diet focus due in part to the Atkins diet. Bacon possesses six ingredient types of umami, which elicits an addictive neurochemical response. Newer bacon creations have joined more traditional foods like the BLT and Cobb salad, including bacon bubble gum, bacon band-aids, sizzling bacon flavored rolling papers, and bacon air freshener.
The growing popularity of bacon has also encouraged product introductions such as bacon salt, maple bacon donuts, and baconnaise. Other bacon food oddities include the bacon explosion (a bacon-wrapped loaf of pork sausage), chicken fried bacon, bacon ice cream, and chocolate covered bacon, all popularized over the internet. A bacon alarm clock that wakes people up with the smell of cooking bacon has also been announced. The increased interest in bacon has led to Bacon-of-the-month clubs, bacon recipe contests, blogs, and even ‘bacon camps.’
Posted in Food, Humor, Language |
Leave a Comment »
April 23, 2011
Proteins are large molecules built from peptides: chains of amino acids held together with peptide bonds. A polypeptide is a single linear chain of two or more amino acids. Protein molecules consist of one or more polypeptides put together typically in a biologically functional way. The shortest peptides are dipeptides, consisting of two amino acids joined by a single peptide bond. There can also be tripeptides, tetrapeptides, pentapeptides, etc.
Proteins are used to make new tissue and cells, as enzymes (catalysts that accelerate chemical reactions in the body), hormones (chemical messengers), or antibodies (immunological agents).
read more »
Posted in Food, Health, Science |
Leave a Comment »
April 20, 2011
Chef Ra (1950 – 2006), born Jim Wilson, Jr., was an marijuana advocate, author, and cook in the United States. After gaining notoriety as a ganja gourmet, he began writing his High Times column, ‘Chef Ra’s Psychedelic Kitchen,’ in 1988 at the request of editor Steve Hager.
Ra was a fixture of Ann Arbor’s Hash Bash, speaking out about the benefits of cannabis for 19 consecutive years.
Posted in Drugs, Food, Politics |
Leave a Comment »
April 19, 2011
Icing is a drinking game in which players are required to bend down on one knee and chug a bottle of Smirnoff Ice. Participants are encouraged to come up with elaborate ways to present the Ice to their targets by hiding bottles in inconspicuous locations, or in situations where drinking it would be dangerous or embarrassing (e.g. before they drive somewhere, attend a meeting, etc.). Failure to drink, no matter the circumstance, results in the humiliation of the victim, and players are encouraged to mistreat those who refuse to play.
The target of an Icing can perform an ‘ice block’ by grabbing a Smirnoff Ice within arms reach (e.g. on his person). An ice block can be in the form of any size Smirnoff Ice, thus upping the stakes for the challenger. Once the player presents this ice block to the original player, the original player must drink both ices. You can ice block an ice block, even though this would lead to back and forth infinite ice blocks. Refusal to consume an Ice results in excommunication, meaning that that player can no longer ice anyone or get iced. Furthermore, you cannot pour it into any other drinking container to mimic another liquid. This is punishable by drinking that said ice.
Posted in Food, Games, Humor |
Leave a Comment »
April 18, 2011
Detroit-style pizza is a square pizza similar to Sicilian-style pizza that has a thick deep-dish crust, cooked toppings such as pepperoni and olives, andis served with the marinara pizza sauce on the top of the pizza. It is known within Detroit as Square pizza. The crust of a Detroit-style pizza is noteworthy because in addition to occasionally being twice-baked, it is usually baked to a chewy medium-well-done state, and many parlors will apply melted butter with a soft brush prior to baking. Some chains, such as Hungry Howie’s (founded in Taylor, Michigan), are also known for their flavored crusts. Popular crust flavors include sesame, butter, garlic and onion.
Southeast Michigan is also known as the headquarters of some of the largest pizza chains in the United States including Domino’s Pizza (Ann Arbor), Little Caesars (Detroit) and Hungry Howie’s (Madison Heights). Although none of those chains specializes in Detroit-style pizza, Little Caesars does sell a square deep dish pizza and offers sauce with it that can be applied on top of the pizza by the customer for the traditional Detroit-style. The origins of ‘Detroit-style’ pizza are from local Detroit pizzeria, Cloverleaf Pizza, which developed and began serving their signature pizza in 1946.
Posted in Food |
Leave a Comment »
April 13, 2011
Zentsūji is a town in Japan notable for producing square watermelons by growing the fruits in glass boxes and letting them naturally assume the shape of the receptacle.
The square shape is designed to make the melons easier to stack and store, but the square watermelons are often more than double the price of normal ones. Pyramid shaped watermelons have also been developed.
Posted in Food, Technology, World |
1 Comment »
April 7, 2011
The Martini is a cocktail made with gin (or vodka) and vermouth. All ingredients are poured into a mixer with ice cubes. The ingredients are mixed then strained and served ‘straight up’ (without ice) in a chilled cocktail glass and garnished with either a green olive or a twist of lemon (a strip of the peel, usually squeezed or twisted to express volatile oils onto the surface of the drink).
Garnishing with a pickled onion instead makes it a Gibson. The dryness of a martini refers to the amount of vermouth used in the drink, with a very dry Martini having little or no Vermouth.
read more »
Posted in Drugs, Food, Language |
Leave a Comment »
March 30, 2011
In Italy, pizza al taglio (‘by the cut’) is a variety of pizza baked in large rectangular trays, and generally sold in rectangular slices by weight, with prices marked per kilogram. The simplest varieties include Pizza Margherita (tomato sauce and cheese), Pizza bianca (olive oil & salt), and Pizza rossa (tomato sauce only). Other typical toppings include artichokes, asparagus, eggplant, ground meat and onions, potatoes, prosciutto, salami, sausage, ground truffles, zucchini, olive oil sundried tomatoes, rocket, gorgonzola, anchovies, and black olives.
Posted in Food, Money, World |
Leave a Comment »
March 29, 2011
Minuteman Salsa was a brand of salsa made in the United States. The brand was founded by Ryan Lambert, along with four associates during the summer of 2006 in reference to the illegal immigration debate. According to the company’s Web site, it is America’s only 100% United States-made salsa. Minuteman Salsa donates a portion of its profits to the Minuteman Project, a group of American citizens whose goal is to deter illegal crossings of the United States–Mexico border. The salsa’s slogan was ‘Deport Bad Taste.’
Posted in Food, Money, Politics |
Leave a Comment »
March 29, 2011
The ketogenic [kee-toh-jen-ik] diet is a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate diet that in medicine is used primarily to treat difficult-to-control epilepsy in children. The diet mimics aspects of starvation by forcing the body to burn fats rather than carbohydrates.
Normally, the carbohydrates contained in food are converted into glucose, which is then transported around the body and is particularly important in fuelling brain function. However, if there is very little carbohydrate in the diet, the liver converts fat into fatty acids and ketone bodies. The ketone bodies pass into the brain and replace glucose as an energy source. An elevated level of ketone bodies in the blood, a state known as ketosis, leads to a reduction in the frequency of epileptic seizures.
read more »
Posted in Food, Health, Science |
Leave a Comment »
March 25, 2011
The Four Pests campaign was one of the first actions taken in the Great Leap Forward, a series of reforms in China from 1958 to 1962. The pests to be eliminated were rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows. The masses of China were mobilized to eradicate the birds, and citizens took to banging pots and pans or beating drums to scare the birds from landing, forcing them to fly until they fell from the sky in exhaustion. Nests were torn down, eggs were broken, and nestlings were killed, resulting in the near-extinction of the birds in China. Non-material rewards and recognition were offered to schools, work units and government agencies in accordance with the volume of pests they had killed.
By April 1960, Chinese leaders realized that sparrows ate more insects than grains. Mao ordered the end of the campaign against sparrows, replacing them with bedbugs in the ongoing campaign against the Four Pests. By this time, however, it was too late. With no sparrows to eat them, locust populations ballooned, swarming the country and compounding the ecological problems already caused by the Great Leap Forward, including widespread deforestation and misuse of poisons and pesticides. Ecological imbalance is credited with exacerbating the Great Chinese Famine in which upwards of 30 million people died of starvation.
Posted in Food, Politics, World |
Leave a Comment »
March 24, 2011
A buffalo jump is a cliff formation which North American Indians historically used in mass killings of plains bison. Hunters herded the bison and drove them over the cliff, breaking their legs and rendering them immobile. Tribe members waiting below closed in with spears and bows to finish the kills. The Blackfeet Indians called the buffalo jumps ‘pishkun,’ which loosely translates as ‘deep blood kettle.’
This type of hunting was a communal event which occurred as early as 12,000 years ago and lasted until at least 1500 CE, around the time of the introduction of horses. Buffalo jump sites are often identified by rock cairns, which were markers designating ‘drive lanes,’ by which bison would be funneled over the cliff. These drive lanes would often stretch for several miles.
Posted in Death, Food, Technology |
Leave a Comment »
The Daily Omnivore 