Tag: food

The gluten prayer

God, you sent gluten into this world as you sent your own Son, to save us, not to torment us with vague and possibly imaginary physical symptoms. Gluten knows perfectly well that Exodus 14:14 says, “The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent,” but gluten has been silent for centuries, God, and guess what: it’s not working. Therefore, gracious Lord, gluten would like you to know that it has recently met with an attorney regarding a potential defamation claim.

Mother of the Sea

In 1948, with Tokyo still largely in ruins and the reins of government still in the hands of an occupying army, the nori harvest completely failed. And it kept failing. No one knew why. Years and decades and a world war passed and Kathleen discovered something that no one suspected: Porphyra and another seaweed called Conchocelis rosea weren’t actually 2 different organisms. They were actually 2 different phases of nori’s lifecycle. Conchocelis rosea was a tiny spore-like thing that clung to tiny particles of seashell adrift in the water. The shell fragments were essentially life preservers for the nori-spores, which would otherwise sink to the bottom and be swallowed by the sediments. The nori fishers didn’t know that their harvest was dependent on another harvest, that of the shellfish along the same shores, and the shoals of discarded shells. The nori fishers of Ariake Bay, the producers of over half of Japan’s nori harvest, raised their small shrine to Kathleen. This coming April, they will mark the 51st anniversary of their small festival celebrating a woman that they never met, but whom they call “the mother of the sea.”

Omnivores

In case you forgot who the top predator on the planet is.

Ever wonder what do people in other countries eat? What could be totally weird for us to eat could be a luxurious delicacy for others — and the other way around. Here are 101 of the strangest foods around the world and maybe after reading this list, you can agree that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Cooking Alinea

Allen Hemberger cooked his way through one of the most complex cookbooks out there, the Alinea cookbook. Aside from the chefs who work in the kitchen there, Hemberger’s probably the only person to have made every single recipe. These recipes aren’t easy

Creating healthy cravings

a new form of gentrification! just kidding, this could be awesome if it works. color me skeptical though, it looks more like a design school “concept” than a real thing.

A start-up will contribute an interesting answer to the million-dollar food-policy question: If healthy food was as easy as junk food, would we eat more of it? The salads are made from high-end ingredients like blueberries, kale, fennel, and pineapple. Each one comes out in a plastic mason jar, its elements all glistening in neat layers, the way fossils might look if the Earth had been created by meticulous vegans. They cost $1. The salad machine goal is to offer workers a fast, healthy lunch option in areas where there’s a dearth of restaurants. Instead of popping into McDonalds out of desperation, they can simply grab salads from their buildings’ lobbies and eat them back at their desks.

Taste Spoon

If they can make healthy foods taste good, that would be something.

If Dinner is missing some zing, a spoon studded with electrodes could help. It creates tastes on your tongue with a pulse of electricity. The utensil may add some extra flavour for people who shouldn’t eat certain foods.

Different frequencies and magnitudes of current through the electrodes can create the impression of saltiness, sourness or bitterness. By boosting the flavour of plain foods, a tool like this could be useful for people with diabetes or heart issues who have been ordered to cut down on salt and sugar.

To see how well the electric utensils could fool diners, 30 people tried them out in a taste test with plain water and porridge. The spoon and bottle were judged 40-83% successful at recreating the tastes, depending on which one they were aiming for. Bitter was the hardest sensation to get right. Some testers were distracted by the metallic taste of the electrodes.

China GMO Progress

China is building a storehouse of genetically modified crop strains for future use. Large-scale field trials are going on all over the country, but public data is scant. A number of test fields of wheat have recently been harvested. Work includes planting drought-resistant varieties of wheat. Other institutions are making similar progress on drought-resistant corn. But the scientists feel that they must hide the locations of the trials. (They have reason to worry. 3 years ago Australian Greenpeace activists destroyed a field of GM wheat plants; last year, activists in the Philippines destroyed a test plot of golden rice.) While there is no central public repository of field trial data, it is safe to assume that the plantings are widespread—and productive.