Food and Drink

If you go to the supermarket every week, you're probably wondering what all this "inflation still low" talk is. I don't pay that much attention to the price of individual items, but I generally buy the same things, so it's easy to notice that my total bill has been creeping ever upward for about a year now. And there is even hidden inflation (or at least something that has the same effect):

Beets. Is there anything they can't do? Oh, wait. That's chocolate. Or bacon. But anyway:

With most Salmonella outbreaks, I read the stories carefully to see what foods I need to be cautious about. Here's one I can completely ignore, though:

INDIANAPOLIS (WANE) - Indiana State Department of Health officials are acting on a advisory from the Food and Drug Administration regarding a Salmonella outbreak involving alfalfa sprouts.

[. . .]

I've made fun of Newsweek more than once here for being a bible of leftist orthodoxy. But I've also linked to articles from it -- once in a while, it publishes something both interesting and provocative.

In the preposterous analogy of the day, Aaron Sorkin notes Sarah Palin's killing of a caribou on her TLC travelouge and goes ballistic. Sorkin admits to enjoying meat but thinks it unseemly that Palin seems to enjoy the hunt:

Today's "Well, duh" story:

If you've ever wondered why it's hard to stay on a diet, consider this observation from Ralph DiLeone, a brain scientist at Yale University: "The motivation to take cocaine in the case of a drug addict is probably engaging similar circuits that the motivation to eat is in a hungry person."

It just wouldn't be a normal Thanksgiving season without an insufferably pretentious food essay, and Newsweek comes through this year:

Seven things from American that are insanely popular overseas, including Pabst Blue Ribbon in China, Kit-Kat candy bars in Japan, 7-Eleven in Taiwan, David Hasselhoff in Germany and my favorite, Spam in Guam:

For the "learning something new every day" file:

Why is it so challenging to properly roast a turkey?

I had cereal for breakfast this morning. Yesterday, I had eggs and bacon. Before that, I had sausage gravy and biscuits, and before that, pancakes swimming in Log Cabin syrup. (And some of you suspected I wasn't capable of having an adventurous vacation!) Alas, only today's breakfast would win approval in San Francisco: