Food and Drink

I hope you were paying attention when I warned you about French fries a couple of days ago. Otherwise, you have to keep worrying about the salt you put on them, too. I'm probably in real trouble, because I like salt on a variety of things, like apples, and watermelon.

Was it just yesterday when I wrote about people whose mission in life was to remove all the fun from your diet? The food nannies never sleep.

Such a brilliant idea: With all the pubs closing at 11 p.m., all the drunks start for home at once, so let's allow the pubs stay open longer, thereby, um, staggering the drunks. Now, British officials aren't so sure about the idea:

The Bush White House has done a wonderful job of giving responsible positions to qualified women, including the person many of us would like to see run for Bush's job. But this is an astonishing breakthrough -- a woman in the kitchen! It was discouraging to see the menu she won the job with, a meal for the Indian prime minister led off with -- eeuu!

With another school year coming up, watch for lots of stories about the terrible food in cafeterias. Here's one from Newsweek about the movement to improve what students eat. That's fine, I suppose, but salad bars? Skim milk? Childhood obesity is a problem, acknowledged; turn off the TVs and the video games, and run the kids around the block a few times, and make sure school includes gym class. But don't try to take away every morsel of junk food that makes childhood worthwhile.

A lot of people will be making fun of this family, but can you imagine the anguish, the trauma, the sheer horror: "The suit said until the incident, green beans had been the Douglass family's favorite vegetable. Now, it said, 'they have lost the desire to ever eat green beans again.' " That ought to be worth at least a million bucks.

If you hear something and wonder if it's true or just an urban legend, snopes.com is the place to check it out. But the folks there get some questions they admit they can't answer. Furthermore, they wonder just what circumstances led people to ask such questions in the first place. I enjoyed the question from the person who observed that "they say that if a person dies . . . the cat . . . will eat the dead person's face off . . ." True, too true, I'm afraid.