A new ESPN campaign spoofs soap operas. Is that a good thing?

The Spot: A man lies comatose in a hospital bed. His anguished lover asks the doctors if there's anything she can do. Despair is taking hold when suddenly the man's eyes open, and he begins to talk. "My team ... it's a keeper league," he says, spitting out the words in his last throes. "Don't. Trade. Prince. Fielder!" With that, his vitals go dead, the doctors bring in defibrillator paddles, and the woman starts to wail. An announcer intones: "Join the endless drama. Play fantasy baseball on ESPN." (Click here to watch the spots.)

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How to fix the U.S. military.

The next president will inherit a military in strange shambles. Its soldiers fight extremely well, but its army is on the brink of breaking. Its budget is enormous, but most of the money goes to weapons that have little to do with promoting real security. Some official documents detail the problems and outline solutions, but too often they aren't translated into action. The principal task, therefore, is to do just that—in the face of enormous bureaucratic resistance.

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Germaine Greer's Shakespeare's Wife.

One of the very few things we know for sure about Shakespeare is that a stone slab lies over his grave site in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, inscribed with an epitaph:

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Sadr calls on his supporters to lay down their weapons.

The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal's world-wide newsbox all lead with Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr calling on his followers to put down their weapons and bring to an end six days of clashes with Iraqi and U.S. forces. In exchange, Sadr demanded that the Iraqi government stop "illegal and haphazard raids," and free his followers who are now imprisoned but haven't been convicted of any crimes. Sadr also demanded the government help bring back "the displaced people who have fled their homes as a result of military operations." The LAT says the six days of fighting have killed more than 350 people.

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Lewis and Clark whiskey trivia

Filed under: Spirits

Today was one of the first nice Spring days here in St. Louis and I went for a guided hike at Fort Belle Fontaine. The site was important for many reasons which you can read about on the St. Louis County Parks website, but the part that caught my attention was our guide's story about Lewis and Clark and whiskey.

Our guide told us that when Lewis and Clark's men were at the site, they were served whiskey in tin cups (one cup each). After they drank it, they had to stick out their tongues to allow for verfication that they had swallowed all the whiskey. Apparently, some of the men would try to save the whiskey so that they could have a double portion another day and actually get drunk.

I could not find any verification of this story on the Internet. However, I did find a story on PBS that described one of the Lewis and Clark men, Pvt. Hall, who had more than his share of the communal whiskey and received 100 lashes for it!

What do you do to deter your troops from drinking more than their fair share of your alcohol stash?

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An easier way to buy in bulk

Filed under: Stores & Shopping, How To, America

Awesome: the idea behind bulk food. Cheaper, more control over the quantity, easy.

Not-so-awesome: the collection and storing of bulk food. Most supermarkets provide plastic bags, which are not only bad for the environment, but are messy to store, can break or leak easily, and typically result in a pile of unusable crumbs.

But a friend of mine has come up with an easy solution that I'm jealous I didn't think of first: she bought a few of these Droppar storage jars (at left) from IKEA (although any small metal or glass jar with a lid would do), and brought them to her local Whole Foods store. The cashier first weighed the jar itself, which she wrote on a piece of tape and placed on the jar lid.

Each time my friend buys in bulk, she simply brings her jar with her, writes the checkout code on a sticker which she keeps on the jar, and brings it to the cashier, who subtracts the weight of the jar and charges her for just the food. Easy, environmentally-friendly, and easy to store when she gets home. (Another idea? Just wash out peanut butter or pasta sauce jars, place stickers on the sides, and reuse those).

Warning: this should work at Whole Foods and Wild Oats, or other similarly-minded food stores, but I don't know if other stores would agree - you'd have to call your local supermarket out find out.

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All you need is a plastic bag

Filed under: Vegetables, Fish, Magazines, Trends

I'm always up for experimenting in the kitchen, and one of techniques that interests me most is Sous-vide, a cooking method in which ingredients are placed in a plastic bag and cooked in water at controlled temperatures. Recently, Wired Magazine published a short article about it that has only furthered my intrigue. The article features former Microsoft Chief Technical Officer Nathan Myhrvold, who has become the Sous-vide expert within the online culinary community eGullet. Myhrvold gives some tips for Sous-vide cooking, and hints that he may release a book about it "someday."

The article inspired me to seek out other Sous-vide resources on the web. I found this Sous-vide blog, and this thread on Cooks Illustrated. If anyone has any experience or tips for cooking this way, please please share!

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Capturing meat in a bottle?

Filed under: Beef, Food Oddities, Meat

Chewing taking up too much of your time? Wish you could find a way to get that vital, meaty protein in a gem-colored translucent beverage? Sadly, you're going to have to wait a little longer, as the appealingly packaged Meatwater, featured on the aptly named website "Dinner in a Bottle" is nothing more than a glossy prank. It rides the coattails of VitaminWater and does a masterful job of populating the website with near-convincing copy.

If you saw Meatwater before this post, were you momentarily convinced that it was a real product (I realize the severed arm on the front page is sort of a giveaway)?

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Ingredient Spotlight: Sorghum syrup

Filed under: Condiments, America, Sugar, Ingredient Spotlight

One of the great treats I had while driving through Kentucky last spring were the biscuits with sorghum-butter spread at a Louisville diner. The sweet, whipped spread melted on the hot fluffy biscuits, tasting lightly of honey. I'd heard of sorghum before, but I wasn't sure exactly what it was.

Sorghum syrup is made from the juice of the sweet sorghum cane, which grows all over the southeastern United States. African slaves introduced sorghum cane to the country in the early 17th century, and it rapidly became popular across the Midwest and, later, the South. A drought-resistant, heat-tolerant crop, it was hoped that sorghum could be used as a substitute for sugar cane, but extracting dry sugar from the syrup proved too difficult.

Sorghum syrup, which tends to be a medium brown in color, can often be used as a substitute for honey or corn syrup. Check out this site for a variety of sorghum recipes, including baked beans, shoo-fly pie, and old-fashioned sorghum cake.

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Cheetos Cracker Trax

Filed under: Snacks, Cheese, Raves & Reviews, Stores & Shopping, New Products

The new Cracker Trax crackers from Cheetos advertises itself as "dangerously cheesy." I'm here to tell you that isn't true.

The new crackers come in two flavors: Cheesy Cheddar and Spicy Cheddar. My supermarket didn't have any of the spicy variety, but I did buy the cheesy, and they leave a lot to be desired. Oh, they aren't bad, but they just aren't cheesy enough. They smell really cheesy (it will hit you once you open the bag) and they look and feel cheesy, but once you put them in your mouth, the cheese taste seems to evaporate instantly, and you're left with the taste of a plain cracker.

I don't know, I really love cheese and maybe I'm just a person that looks for a lot of cheese taste in their foods (especially when they are labeled as "dangerous"), but these just didn't do it for me. I'll stick with other Cheetos snacks.

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Top Chef goes Project Runway

Filed under: Television/Film

Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert!

Oh Bravo. Let's not kid ourselves: The Elimination Challenge from this week's Top Chef episode was about as Project Runway as it gets. The contestants worked in pairs to create dishes inspired by their favorite movies, and it felt almost like Tom Colicchio was channeling Michael Kors in his criticism ("They talked about vibrant colors -- I didn't see vibrant colors there").

Continue reading Top Chef goes Project Runway

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Banana-chocolate chip biscotti

Filed under: Dessert, Recipes, Fruit, Baking

So it was a lazy Sunday afternoon and I had one rotten banana in the cupboard. I'd been staring at the banana for a few days, watching it grow from spotted to brown to nearly black. I could have thrown it away, but for some reason I felt that that 15 cents worth of fruit had a nobler destiny. But one mushy banana isn't enough for banana bread or cake or muffins. What to do?

Googling "what to do with one rotten banana," I discovered a message board on the topic of leftover bananas, where, scrolling down, I discovered this recipe for banana biscotti. I didn't have any nuts so I smashed a dark chocolate bar with a hammer and tossed the fragments into the dough. These unusual biscotti came out very nicely indeed - they remind me of Banana Nut Crunch cereal. Next time I'll give them an egg wash and sprinkle them with coarse sugar, then serve them with coffee and vanilla ice cream.

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Missed Top Chef? Watch it here!

Filed under: Television/Film

Did you miss Top Chef on Wednesday night? DVR or Tivo on the fritz? Have no fear!

Here at Slashfood, we're always looking for ways to help our readers out, and now we've found a way to be able to embed the latest episode of Top Chef directly onto our site, soon after it airs. Just plug your headphones on and spend your lunch hour catching up with Padma and the rest of the Top Chef gang.

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Tales of the Cocktail 2008

Filed under: Beer, Cocktails, Raves & Reviews, On the Blogs, Southern States, America, Spirits, Festivals, Raising the Bar

Love cocktails? Spirits? Want to know how to make your own bitters, infused syrups or tinctures? Interested in bartending techniques or the history of the craft? Or, heck, do you like to drink? Brothers and sisters, have I got an event for you. . .

Tales Of The Cocktail is the only event of its kind. From July 16-20th bartenders, spirit representatives, notable authors, mixologists and enthusiastic barflies will gather in New Orleans to celebrate, attend seminars and drink a whole bunch of hooch. Tickets are available on the TOTC site. Hope to see you there.

Additionally, I've been invited to be a participating writer for the all-star blog site that they are putting together for the event, Talesblog.com. In the coming months, we will be previewing the events, seminars and notable participants of this wonderful event. I guarantee you won't find a giddier bunch.

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Food Porn Daily: Black rice noodle salad

Filed under: Food Porn Daily, On the Blogs

I have a weakness for noodles, especially when they play a role in a chilled salad (I like them warm too, but there's just nothing in the world that can beat a really good cold soba with toasted sesame seeds). I've never tried black rice noodles, but Rachel has never led me astray before, so I'm confident that they will be delicious (sadly, they'll have to wait awhile, as I'm still adhering to the South Beach diet, where noodles come few and far between). If you want to make this salad, the recipe is up on her blog.

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A kebab shop in the Arctic Circle? Talk about frozen food

Filed under: Northern Europe, Newspapers, Comfort Food

I hate the cold, so I have a hard time seeing why anyone would want to move to the island of Spitsbergen, about 300 miles from the northern tip of Norway. However, that is exactly what Kazem Ariaiwand did, and he had a very good reason for making the move.

Mr. Ariaiwand is an Iranian who had been seeking asylum in Norway. His family had been accepted, however, he was denied. As it turns out, Spitsbergen, in the Svalbard archipelago, doesn't require pesky paperwork or residency status to live there. So Mr. Ariaiwand moved there as a temporary solution and promptly opened his kebab shop. It's become so popular that it has challenged traditional foods, like whale meat and seal meat, for superiority.

I can understand this man's motives, and I certainly see why a kebab shop would be so popular in the arctic circle. I've never had the pleasure of seal or whale meat, but it seems like a kebab would win me over pretty quickly!

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Instant and fresh, two words that sound great when it comes to tea

Filed under: Teas, Business, Asia, Trends, On the Blogs

There is a new product out in Japan that I would love to get a hold of. It's an instant, fresh matcha tea, two words that usually aren't paired together when talking about tea, especially the bottled kind. The unique bottle design allows the tea to be both.

The design makes it so that when you twist the air tight cap a portion of matcha tea is released into mineral water. All you have to do is shake it up. Matcha is a traditional Kyoto (Japan) green tea that is very green and is usually the go-to flavoring for anything "green tea". It's made from leaves that have been covered so that it grows more slowly, which makes it a little sweeter.

As a big fan of tea, I would really like to be able to try an instant, fresh matcha tea. Does anyone know if this is available in the US?

[Via Trends in Japan]

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