A 900-year-old Song dynasty ceramic dish has sold at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong for $26.7 million. Now that’s an expensive bowl of cereal.
Or cup of tea, as what we consider bowls were often used for beverages in China. Or maybe it’ s neither, as The Washington Post called it a dish first, then a “flower-shaped bowl.” Ah, semantics when you’re dealing with $26.7 million dollars of history.
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“Pink slime” has long been in plenty of things we’ve eaten over the decades (fast food burgers, most grocery store lean ground beef). Now the meat product made from processed beef trimmings has suddenly been facing online outcries typically reserved for presidential candidates. [Actually, that sounds pretty much how every political firestorm (candidate?) evolves over the years. Case in point: When pink slips recently became the outcome at beef processing plants, Rick Perry offered up his pink slime support.] But we were talking about pink slime history.
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03 Apr 2012, Posted by admin in MEET, 0 Comments
A few months ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Lowell Novy, a veterinarian who owns Novy Ranches. At his Northern California ranch, he produces grass-fed beef at fantastic prices (he recently turned the retail corner). As we chatted, he offered up some fantastic nuggets about the grass-fed beef industry, the commercial side of the cattle industry equation, and what approaching a food business the old fashioned way has meant for him:
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It’s hardly revolutionary to hear that the owner of a building holds most, if not all (time to make friends with your city councilman), of a building’s historic preservation cards. But what happens when the building itself is not up for a Corinthian column debate, and instead the 45-year-old Happy Hour *ambiance* is about to fall victim to another corporate retailer’s Spring fashion must-haves?
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Because food history doesn’t have to be boring. A few of this week’s interesting food history news bytes. Fine. At least they’re more interesting than most.
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Your computer crashes, rather severely, and for a very long time in online relevancy terms. And you find yourself without internet access, without the ability to do even ten minutes of work, without a reason to log onto Facebook (that last one you know shouldn’t even be in the realm of computer crash rationality, and yet it is).
In theory, an ideal time to ferret out some nostalgic recipes you haven’t made in years, to decide — once and for all — whether the stained note cards and magazine clippings should remain in your current lasagna verde lifestyle or forever be delegated to your cheesecake-swirl brownie past.
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25 Feb 2012, Posted by admin in MEET, 0 Comments
Story evolution is a curious thing. There’s the compulsion, as with any good recipe that could be better, to constantly tweak them. And then there’s the I’m-ready-to-eat side of you that just wants to leave well enough alone. Sometimes, there’s even a homebrew side.
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President’s Day morning I popped open a new bag of coffee that happened to have the political campaign-worthy slogan “Responsibility, Quality & Solidarity” (just add $35,800 fundraising dinners). This morning CNN’s Eatocray has a blog about Shrove Tuesday with a generous side of food history and a few old recipes (photocopied versions… hey, it’s a start). And guess what? It really *is* Shrove Tuesday, a.k.a. Pancake Day, the last sugar-fat-flour-egg hurrah before Lent. Coincidental wonders never cease with second-tier holidays.
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On first read, yeah, The Lodge Cast Iron Cookbook is just another promotional cookbook. This time, from a cast-iron skillet maker. And The World in a Skillet is a hybrid cookbook/anthology from an academic publisher (now *that* sounds interesting, though hopefully not overly dry).
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The Wednesday word of the day. In which we (fine, only here in this odd little head) explore various words from our culinary past, starting with “macaroni.” Imagine all the fun to be had with “extinct” words (Maccare!) and almost extinct phrases (“Be that as it may”).
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