I plan to take over New York and start expandin’
One of science’s most puzzling mysteries - the disappearance of the Neanderthals - may have been solved. Modern humans ate them, says a leading fossil expert.
food & drink category
Drop-on-demand device and the resulting collisions
A 16th-century lawyer, Hippolytus de Marsiliis, noticed how water slowly dripping onto a rock eventually created a hollow in the stone. It got him thinking: What would happen if a human being’s forehead was subjected to the same treatment?
Legend claims it eventually drives the person crazy. For reasons unclear, the procedure came to be known as “Chinese water torture.”
photo { Swimming Pools photographed by J Bennett Fitts | more }
Don’t you know there ain’t no devil, there’s just god when he’s drunk
Too often we drink white wine far too cold, which deprives us of tasting the nuanced aromas and flavors in a good bottle. A bad bottle benefits from being highly chilled. The cold masks imbalances and flabbiness. But a good bottle? The cold can hide all the qualities that make it a good bottle.
As with anything else, serving temperature can be a highly personal thing. I admit that I rarely like anything served icy cold – with the aforementioned exception of bad wine and bad beer, too. I don’t care much at all for ice cubes – I really hate it on the road when a restaurant serves a glass of orange or grapefruit juice filled with ice. Obviously in this country I’m in the minority on the ice cube issue.
But with white wine – good white wine — I really believe that the experience can be entirely different at a warmer serving temperature. By good white wine, I don’t mean expensive white wine. It can be a $13 bottle of Muscadet, for example. Try it for yourself. This will work best if you have two bottles of the same wine.
Chill two bottles in the refrigerator – let’s say over the course of a day. That evening, remove one bottle. Allow it to sit at room temperature for 45 minutes. Then take out the remaining bottle from the fridge. Open both and sample side-by-side. I think you’ll see that the warmer one will offer far more complexity than the colder one. (…)
The reverse is true of red wine.
Now I’m gonna continue walking, in the modern world
Chopsticks were developed about 5,000 years ago in China. It is likely that people cooked their food in large pots which retained heat well, and hasty eaters then broke twigs off trees to retrieve the food. By 400 BCE, a large population and dwindling resources forced people to conserve fuel. Food was chopped into small pieces so it could be cooked more rapidly, thus needing less fuel.
The pieces of food were small enough that they negated the need for knives at the dinner table, and chopsticks became staple utensils. It is also thought that Confucius, a vegetarian, advised people not to use knives at the table because knives would remind them of the slaughterhouse.
By 500 CE, chopstick use had spread from China to present-day Vietnam, Korea, and Japan. (…)
Traditionally, chopsticks have been made from a variety of materials. Bamboo has been the most popular because it is inexpensive, readily available, easy to split, resistant to heat, and has no perceptible odor or taste. Cedar, sandalwood, teak, pine, and bone have also been used. The wealthy, however, often had chopsticks made from jade, gold, bronze, brass, agate, coral, ivory, and silver. In fact, during dynastic times it was thought that silver chopsticks would turn black if they came into contact with poisoned food. It is now known that silver has no reaction to arsenic or cyanide, but if rotten eggs, onion, or garlic are used, the hydrogen sulfide they release might cause these chopsticks to change color.
related { How to use chopsticks }
Fragrant lemon trees, I can feel the speaking sky
Astronauts drink recycled urine. (…) “The taste is great,” American astronaut Michael Barratt said. (…)
Some people may find the idea of drinking recycled urine distasteful, but it is also done on Earth, but with a lot longer time between urine and tap.
For its advocates, it is a miraculous elixir that has replaced the morning coffee as their first drink of the day; for most other people, it is bodily waste that should strictly confined to the toilet bowl. But is drinking one’s own urine really as good for you as its fans believe? (…)
Contrary to popular perception, urine is not a by-product of the body’s waste disposal system but of blood filtration. Nutrient-filled blood passes through the liver, where toxins are removed and excreted as solid waste. The purified blood then goes through another filtering process via the kidneys, where components for which the body has no immediate use are collected in a sterile, watery solution. For that reason, it is highly sterile, consisting of 95 per cent water and five per cent nutrients, including vitamins, minerals, proteins, antibodies and other beneficial ingredients.
Advocates of auto-urine therapy believe that this combination can help cure everything from the common cold to cancer, boosting energy levels and sexual performance along the way.
{ The Independent | Continue reading }
Why does my urine smell funny after I’ve eaten asparagus?
It is said that in a venerable British men’s club there is a sign reading “DURING THE ASPARAGUS SEASON MEMBERS ARE REQUESTED NOT TO RELIEVE THEMSELVES IN THE HATSTAND.”
illustration { Carlo Giovani }
BBQ with Vittore Carpaccio
{ Check doneness by pressing a steak in the center. Then use your thumb, fingers, and the varying firmness of the base of your thumb as your guide. | Grill the best steak ever }
The hotel generater hums into the void. Of plastic & concrete. Plastic & concrete, baby.
Most are surprised to hear, for instance, that the big brands, which market their product as “pure” and “simple,” add flavor packs to their juice to make it fresh. (…)
Freshly squeezed orange juice tastes fresh naturally, and some supermarkets do sell it. However, “from concentrate” and most “not from concentrate” orange juice undergo processes that strip the flavor from the juice. The largest producers of “not from concentrate” or pasteurized orange juice keep their juice in million-gallon aseptic storage tanks to ensure a year round supply. Aseptic storage involves stripping the juice of oxygen, a process known as “deaeration,” so the juice doesn’t oxidize in the “tank farms” in which the juice sits, sometimes for as long as a year.
{ Alissa Hamilton interview | New Yorker | Continue reading }
artwork { Mark Rothko, Orange and Yellow, 1956 }
La-di-da-di all the way to ?
The lobster roll — “the lazy man’s lobster,” Mrs. Marotta said — traditionally consists of a toasted hot dog bun topped by pieces of fresh lobster meat and a little bit of something else. The something else is a subject of disagreement.
“Just a little mayo to hold it together, a little salt and pepper and that’s it,” said Rich Winterberg, a bartender at Alisson’s.
“No mayo,” insisted Larry Reed, a lobsterman from New Harbor, on the tip of the next peninsula east from Boothbay Harbor.
“I’m from Connecticut and down there, a lobster roll is hot and served with butter,” explained a Coast Guardsman aboard a ferry headed to Vinalhaven Island at the mouth of Penobscot Bay. “First time I had a lobster roll up here, I bit into it and said: ‘Whoa. This is cold.’ ”
related { Lobster Avocado Martini }
