Friday, September 10, 2010

Friday Food & Wine Finds: September 10, 2010

Happy Friday! I'm currently writing this dispatch from the glamorous Des Moines airport, where the vast food and beverage choices would make your head spin. OK, I'm kidding. There's a coffee shop, and that's about all I can say. But luckily, I'm off to San Antonio today and looking forward to some excellent Tex-Mex food. Anyone have recommendations for me? Leave them in the comments!

On to the food and wine finds...

This NY Times article describes the recent rise of boozy ice cream drinks. Um, with all due respect to the Times, I'm pretty sure my roommates and I invented boozy ice cream drinks back in college. Captain Morgan ice cream floats, anyone?

I'm a big fan of food trucks. In fact, my family and I spent much of the Labor Day weekend discussing my desire to own and run a food truck. However, this is just ridiculous. Now Sizzler wants in on the game. Really. A chain restaurant food truck? Eye roll.

Also a topic of conversation over the Labor Day weekend: screaming children in restaurants and the various ways in which their parents react (or, more to the point, sometimes fail to react). Now a restaurant in North Carolina has decided to ban screaming children entirely, and several people are objecting. What people? Probably bad parents who would rather ignore their children than discipline them. Just kidding. (But not really.)

I'm intrigued by this entertaining post on Cookistry which describes a method for making bread where the dough is left to rise in a bucket of water. When the dough floats to the top, it's ready to bake. This method comes from a Russian cookbook written in the 1800s and, as you'll see from the pictures, may have lost something in translation. Perhaps the problem is that the original recipe called for "water that is the temperature of the river in summer...?"

On Tuesday, a record was set for the World's Longest Sushi Roll. What really amazed me about this article wasn't the length (422 feet), the quantity of crab that was used (200 pounds), or how much soy sauce was consumed (five gallons). No, what really struck me about this article was the somewhat casual mention of sushi being a popular dish in the UMass dining hall. They have sushi in dining halls now?? I think I went to the wrong college.

An entire Friday Food & Wine finds without a Top Chef reference isn't possible with the finale imminent, but I don't really have any special links or news to post. Instead, I'll just share that I'm dubious about the whole concept of Top Chef Desserts, but excited for Top Chef All Stars - especially now that it appears Jamie Lauren is among the contestants. I can't explain why, but I just really like her. "It's Top Chef, not Top Scallop!" I bet people say that to her all the time. (I would.)

That's it for now! Happy weekend, everyone!

2 comments:

  1. See, look at this blog post:

    http://www.reallybadparentingadvice.com/rule-31-ignore-your-childs-crying/

    Those parents at Taco House were definitely doing the right thing by ignoring their 5 year old's tantrum.

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