Broke Food: Ramen Sandwich

The blog of the NPR radio show Wait Wait Don't Tell Me today posted a feature on a rather odd food stuff: The Ramen Sandwich. It uses blocks of ramen instead of bread, which the commentators describe as "weirdly tasty if you're able to get it in your mouth."

The Relativity of Rising Food Prices

Welcome to the new food economics of 2011: Prices are climbing, but the impact is not at all being felt equally. For Americans, who spend less than one-tenth of their income in the supermarket, the soaring food prices we've seen so far this year are an annoyance, not a calamity. But for the planet's poorest 2 billion people, who spend 50 to 70 percent of their income on food, these soaring prices may mean going from two meals a day to one. Those who are barely hanging on to the lower rungs of the global economic ladder risk losing their grip entirely. This can contribute -- and it has -- to revolutions and upheaval.

-From the article The New Geopolitics of Food by Lester Brown in Foreign Policy Magazine

Broke and Beautiful Person of the Day: Jorge Munoz

CNN today featured a man who finds more wealth in giving than in lining his pocket:

Jorge Munoz is a bus driver in New York City who started feeding the hungry in Queens five years ago, using food that would otherwise have been thrown away. And that's how he discovered a secret -- the power of sharing.


"People are telling me, 'Jorge, you have no money, you do all this and get nothing back.' And I say I have a checking account full of smiles."

Read the full story at CNN.

Idea of the Day: Neighbor Dining

Vattenfall - Neighbor Dining from Luong Lu on Vimeo.

How to Eat: Weeds, Yum!

Video of the Day: Redneck Rocket Stove

Hurry Up and Eat!

If you start to feel like an under-achiever, and to go over your to do list, when you drive past the golden arches researchers say you are not alone. Here's the skinny (as it were) as reported in healthzone.ca:

...according to new research from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, the very sight of the McDonald's logo might make him hurry up.

When people are exposed to fast-food logos, even momentarily, they're reminded of the need to save time, says Chen-Bo Zhong, a professor of organizational behaviour and the paper's co-author. In three experiments, participants were found to be more impatient and hasty after seeing logos such as McDonald's, Subway, KFC or Wendy's.

"It's the goals that you associate with these symbols," says Zhong. "They really are a very prevalent part of our culture that (remind us) we need to be time-efficient, we need to be able to save time."

Another Ramen Noodle Recipe

Culinary Creations and the Resourcefulness of Poverty

Most of our favorite traditional dishes owe their existence to a combination of creativity and scant resources. The BBC today has a story on the origin of the humble and ubiquitous British food, fish and chips.

"Oddly enough," the article says, "the chip may have been invented as a substitute for fish, rather than an accompaniment. When the rivers froze over and nothing could be caught, resourceful housewives began cutting potatoes into fishy shapes and frying them as an alternative."

Read the entire article here.

Poorman's Feast

Another video from Great Depression Cooking with Clara

How Do You Like Them Apples?

Dinner in a Dumpster

Video of the Day: Great Depression Cooking with Clara

How to Turn Cheap Vodka into the Good Stuff

The New York Times reports that thanks to the recession, Grey Goose is sitting there on the top shelf but sales of bottom shelf vodka brand Popov have been soaring. The good news is that you can improve the quality of your cheap vodka by filtering it at home. The more you filter it, the smoother it tastes. If you mix your vodka into cocktails it may not make much difference, but if you drink it straight it might be worth a try.

The catch? Figuring in the value of your time and the cost of water filters, it may not be much cheaper to filter it at home than to spend and extra $5 or 10 to begin with.

Epilogues of Rare Suppers

Revisiting The Frugal Life: A Paradox:



Apparently back in the 1500s, as translated in the 1600s and reprinted in 1899, people were already harkening back to the simpler times when people were not as gluttunous and wasteful as they are today. (Today in this case being 1534 and 1899).

The Stay of Flukes, Freedom from Dishonest Belchings and The Clearing and Draining of Ill Humours

The historic quotation in praise of thrift for the day comes from an 1899 reprinting of a 1634 translation of a 1534 writing (they "modernized" the spelling)entitled "Hygiasticon," a treatise on dietetics: "A discourse translated out of Italian that a spare diet is better than a splendid and sumptuous."

"And to speak freely it would seem to me very uncouth that any man that makes a profession of more understanding than a beast should open his mouth to the contrary or make any scruple at all of readily subscribing to the truth and evidence of this position that a frugal and simple diet is much better than a full and dainty. Tell me you that seem to demur on the business whether a sober and austere diet serves not without further help to chase away that racking humour of the gout which by all other helps that can be used scarce receives any mitigation at all but do what can be done lies tormenting the body till it have spent itself. Tell me whether this holy medicine serve not to the driving away of headache to the cure of dizziness to the stopping of rheums to the stay of flukes to the getting away of loathsome diseases to the freedom from dishonest belchings to the prevention of agues and in a word to the clearing and draining of all ill humours whatsoever in the body Nor do the benefits thereof stay only in the body but ascend likewise to the perfecting of the soul itself for how manifest is it that through a sober and strict diet the mind and all the faculties thereof become waking quick and cheerful how is the wit sharpened the understanding solidated the affections tempered and in a word the whole soul and spirit of a man freed from encumbrances and made apt and expedite for the apprehension of wisdom and the embracement of virtue?"

You can read the entire book at Google Books.

Idea of the Day: Yard Sharing

Slow Food

-Health Magazine, 1904

*http://www.flickr.com/photos/travelingmcmahans/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Is it Red or White with Pork Rinds?

Ok, so we talked about the Box O Wine and the Tube O Wine. How about the Big Wine Gulp?

Following the news that Wal Mart is getting into the casket business, comes the story that 7-Eleven is going to start selling its own brand of wine.

Yosemite Road is quite the bargain: Says the press release, both the Chardonnay and a Cabernet Sauvignon will sell for $3.99 a bottle. 7-Eleven is hoping, some how, some way, you will not come to the conclusion that the convenience store is peddling "cheap wine."

"We prefer to think of it as value," 7-Eleven spokesperson Carole Davidson, told the Dallas Observer.

NPR Features Gourmet Ramen

National Public Radio's All Things Considered recently ran a feature on David Chang, a New York chef whose signature dish is a hearty ramen stew. A few days before he was featured on Weekend Edition.

Chang's broth recipe requires pounds of meat and takes hours to prepare- the recipe, which appears in his new cookbook runs about 20 pages.

You can listen to both segments, even download them if you're so inclined, by following the links above.