Food and Drink

Alert the media, we have a real shocker here:

Every morning, millions of people perform an essential daily ritual - having their first cup of tea or coffee. It concentrates the mind and acts as a pick-me-up.

I have mixed feelings about this, but as long as it was a decision made by restaurant management and not the result of a government edict, it probably wouldn't affect my decision on whether or not to patronize a particular place:

Enough frivolity! Let's tackle a profound question:

Spice tolerance: Is it nature or nurture? As with most things, it’s a little bit of both.

[. . .]

One sign that the terrorists haven'n won yet:

McDonald’s is opening its eyes to breakfast by moonlight.

The Oak Book-based chain is testing a late-night value menu called “After Midnight” that lets customers mix and match its best-selling breakfast and lunch items like the Egg McMuffin or Big Mac, with hash browns or fries.

You've heard, I'm sure, the one about somebody being so clueless in the kitchen that he can't boil water. Apparently it is possible these days to screw up that simple task:

Hey, look at me, I'm mental!

We’ve all probably had that one coffee drink (or carbonated beverage) too many, at that point in a slog of a day where we’ve gone and imbibed a Red Bull or Grande coffee against our better judgment.

An interesting question:

Indiana is the only state that gives liquor stores a monopoly on retail cold beer sales. And with liquor stores closed on Sundays, people who want cold beer need to plan ahead or slip across the state line.

The insanity continues:

Forget the great outdoors.

The Department of Consumer Affairs has sent notice to 17 New York restaurants, telling them that that they will have to close their sidewalk seating areas unless they are willing to comply with the city’s zoning regulations.

Why don't they just go ahead and make it .00 -- that's what they'd really like to do:

WASHINGTON (AP) — States should cut their threshold for drunken driving by nearly half— from .08 blood alcohol level to .05_matching a standard that has substantially reduced highway deaths in other countries, a federal safety board recommended Tuesday. That's about one drink for a woman weighing less than 120 pounds, two for a 160-pound man.

"But the science is settled!" department:

An unusual medical brawl erupted on Tuesday when the influential Institute of Medicine issued a report questioning the basis of years of advice for Americans to cut their salt intake in half.