food museum blog

Pass the Percholate, Please...

Gotta love this headline in the WaPost:

Perchlorate Levels in Food Safe for Most, FDA Says

Huh?  Here's some background into this delightful inadvertent food additive from the FDA's own website:

"Most of the perchlorate manufactured in the United States is used as the primary ingredient of solid rocket propellant. Perchlorate is also used in pyrotechnics, such as fireworks, gun powder, explosives, and highway flares. In addition, perchlorate is used in a wide variety of industrial processes, including tanning and leather finishing, rubber manufacture, paint and enamel production, and additives in lubricating oils.

In recent years there has been increasing interest in perchlorate levels in soil, ground water, drinking water, and irrigation water around the country and what health effects these levels may have. Human exposure to sufficient doses of perchlorate can interfere with iodide uptake into the thyroid gland, disrupting its functions and potentially leading to a reduction in the production of thyroid hormones."

Today the FDA assures us that:

"Levels of a chemical used to make rocket fuel found in commonly consumed food are not high enough to pose a health risk to most people, including children and pregnant women, U.S. regulators said."

Woman Eats Six-Pound Hamburger

From Yahoo News and Associated Press comes this report:

CLEARFIELD, Pa. - Kate Stelnick may weigh only 100 pounds, but her appetite is remarkable. The college student from Princeton, N.J., is the first to meet a restaurant's challenge by downing its six-pound hamburger — and five pounds of fixins' — within three hours.

Stelnick didn't eat for two days to prepare for the challenge. "I felt very full, but I was too excited that I actually ate it to notice," Stelnick said.

Stelnick, 19, made the five-hour drive to Denny's Beer Barrel Pub with two friends from The College of New Jersey on Wednesday, after they saw pictures of the monster burger, dubbed the Ye Old 96er.

Denny Leigey Jr., the owner of the bar 35 miles northwest of State College, had offered a two-pound burger for years and conceived of the six-pounder after his daughter went to college and phoned him about a bar that sold a four-pounder.

But nobody had finished the big burger in the three-hour time limit since it was introduced on Super Bowl Sunday 1998. In addition to the meat, contestants much eat one large onion, two whole tomatoes, one half head of lettuce, 1 1/4 pounds of cheese, two buns, and a cup each of mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, relish, banana peppers and some pickles.

Stelnick did it all in two hours, 54 minutes.

Leigey said he was pretty sure somebody would meet his burger challenge, though he didn't have a petite woman in mind.

"I wouldn't have made it if I didn't think it was possible," Leigey said.

Turkey Dines Out on Its Slice of Luck

The Guardian ran this story December 10, 2004.  We are just getting around to mentioning it.   Seems that two vegetarians , Ray and Maura Stroud, from Somerset, UK won a church charity raffle's mystery prize which turned out to be a 7 kg. turkey.  The couple couldn't house the bird in their modest garden, so "Bert" now lives happily on a farm in Chepstow sponsored by "Viva" the animal rights campaign group. 

Ten million turkeys were slaughtered to meet demand for the UK Christmas feast. 

By the way, prices for a ten pound turkey cost on average over $40 in Britain and less than $15 in the USA.  We have been traveling in the UK and are finding prices for food and everything else just staggering.  The recent fall in the dollar which is worth about half a pound is a factor.  But food prices in the USA are really a bargain.

Norwegians Willing to Wage War Over Waffles

This headline appeared in a Miami Herald, December 4, 2004 story written by Nicholas Spangler. Who knew that the Norwegians are fond of waffles? And that there is a contest every year among various worldwide Seamen's Churches. The Miami branch won two years ago, but is trailing by 2000 votes to their counterpart in Dubai. Serving waffles and coffee is a basic act of hospitality among Norwegians, especially favored by seamen.

The contest underway this time of year is known as the Waffle World Cup. Miami's Seaman's Church is a doublewide trailer with couches. The cruise ships that call Miami home port are made up of Norwegian crews.

The Seamen's Church was set up in 1864 to minister to Norwegian sailors around the world. There are 40 of them. And each one serves waffles on demand topped with jam and butter or wrapped around a slice of cheese.

Revelers Wage Tomato War in Spain

La Tomatina, the infamous, tomato epic battle held annually in Bunol, Spain has colored the world's websites (including ours) with red. Click here to see the latest batch from Google images. The headline above comes from the AP via the NY Times.

Tomatina numbers:
--it began in 1940 with a teenage lunchtime food fight in the town square;
--1941 same guys met next year last Wed of Aug to pelt passersby with tomatoes;
--town provides 500 makeshift showers for revelers to clean up;
--10,000 pop of Bunol;
--36,000 record setting people participated this year;
--140 tons of ripe tomatoes.

The Food Museum's tomato exhibit is here.

The BBC has a saucy red photo gallery of the event.

Mike Wallace Gets His Meatloaf with Rhubarb

That's the unlikely headline winner...courtesy The Washington Post. Runner-up favorites are: Newsdays--"Wallace: I Was Only Protecting My Meatloaf, " and The New York Post's "We Have a Beef with this Meatloaf." (see below)

Do we need a separate category to deal with the legal problems of celebrities? First Martha Stewart now Mike Wallace. The full report is here. The part about his meatloaf is here:

It happened when he walked out of a restaurant with his food to go. He said he saw two Taxi and Limousine Commission inspectors asking his driver questions, who they said was double-parked. Wallace said he then asked what was going on and he said they kept telling him to get back in the car. Next thing, he was arrested and taken to the police station.

He was released after being issued a summons citing him with disorderly conduct. A court date's being set for October.

Wallace said his run-in began as he left a restaurant Tuesday night with a take-out order of meatloaf. He said at least the meat loaf was delicious.

Wallace said he taken to a police station in handcuffs, but released after an hour or so. "I went home, put the meatloaf in the microwave and it was superb," Wallace said.

The New York Post sent a reporter to Mike's meatloaf restaurant, here's their review:

"It's not bad, Mike — but it's not worth getting arrested for.
We sampled the meatloaf and mashed potatoes, the humble takeout dish from Luke's Bar & Grill, that's at the center of legendary 86-year-old newscaster Mike Wallace's arrest on Tuesday night.

While Luke's owner, Luigi Militello, wouldn't divulge his meatloaf recipe, he did say Wallace orders it often and has been a regular customer for "about 10 years."

The $10.95 comfort-food entree, consisting of three slabs of meatloaf and a dollop of mashed potatoes smothered in gravy, came out of the kitchen warm and moist with subtle hints of onion. But we found the meat to be mostly loafing on flavor, while the spuds and the gravy were equally bland. The dish, however, was greatly enhanced with a few smacks of the bottom of a ketchup bottle and a dosing from the salt shaker.

While there are at least a hundred meatloaf recipes — from a Mexican version stuffed with jalapeño peppers to Meatloaf Cordon Bleu with Swiss cheese, garlic and smoked ham — Wallace said he finds Luke's rendition to be "superb."

We imagine its subtle and not-so-spiced flavor sit well with his 86-year-old digestive tract. Luke's, a casual dining spot on the Upper East Side, features typical pub grub with average entrée prices hovering between $10 to $12."

About meatloaf with recipes are here.

Share some meatloaf memories here.