1. Is Coca-Cola extending itself to help others this holiday season? Or are they just pulling the long con and slowly sipping up one of East Africa’s major natural resources? Coke announced this week a partnership with Central Kenyan passion fruit and mango farmers, in Murang’a, as well as farmers in Uganda, solidified with the intent of increasing Coca-Cola revenue through juice sales and simultaneously allowing small-scale farmers to reap the full benefits of their often-idle surplus yield. One point worth considering: in place of direct purchase, from the farmers themselves, specifically chosen middlemen will manage Coke’s acquisition.
2. Possibly tainted with a deadly bacterium, a milk-based powdered baby formula bought at a Walmart in Lebanon, MO, is suspected to have killed a ten-day-old infant Sunday. However, a spokesperson for the producers of Enfamil said they test all ingredients for the very same bacterium — C. sakazakii, which infects the blood and central nervous system — and that the batch from which the Cornett family’s cans came had tested negative. To be safe, Walmart pulled the entire batch of Enfamil from their shelves anyway. The real cause of death has yet to be determined.
3. Hey, White Castle patron, need a refreshing beverage to wash down those self-evidently swallow-friendly miniature burgers, and soda’s not cutting it? No fear. The chain, before nationalizing the concept, is now serving alcohol at a select location, in Lafayette, IN, to see if offering beer and wine alongside food could in some bizarre turn of events not entice people.
4. Reuters spoke with comedian and celebrity-culture junkie Frank DeCaro, a regular on “John Stewart,” who recently whipped up a paradoxically irreverent homage to the stars of yore — The Dead Celebrity Cookbook — that compiles 150 personal, home recipes from the kitchens of famous stiffs. Let us at Liberace’s sticky buns! More of Warhol’s Ghoulish Goulash! Ol’ Blue Eyes’s barbecue lamb!
5. More culinary reading made recently available, currently on the press for the second time: the deceased husband of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg could purportedly put together a powerful plate of poutine or two, in his day, leaving behind a slew of spot-on concoctions carefully documented and collected in Chef Supreme: Martin Ginsburg. The chicken liver pate with apple brandy rules, definitively.
6. If you live in Chicago, take some time out to visit these food joints. New City dropped an ambitious but concise Top 5 of Everything list Wednesday, doing a lot of the leg-work that goes along with exploring an enormous city filled to the nooks with culinary golden nuggets. Oh, Hot Doug’s, how we love thee.
7. Notoriously edgy Dutch television show “Proefkonijnen,” or, roughly, “Guinea Pigs,” aired an extremely controversial episode Wednesday, featuring two presenters apparently munching on pieces of the other’s buttock and abdomen, excised and cooked for all to see. People were shocked. According to a British tabloid, the network, BNN, came out saying it was a hoax (which BNN denies) intended to raise awareness of the dire need for organ donation, but other sources maintain the hosts, Valerio Zeno and Dennis Storm, actually did it, just to see what it tasted like, quoting them collaborating the cannibalism. Out with it already. Did they eat each other’s flesh or didn’t they?
8. The third most popular cereal grain in the country and likely the least recognizable, sorghum, is replacing the barley base in Dogfish Head’s newest and most socially sensitive brew, Tweason’ale. The strawberry and buckwheat honey beer was concocted on behalf of everyone’s token gluten-intolerant buddy — for all those with Celiac disease. Available in stores and bars by the end of January, and henceforth four times a year.
9. Roman scientists, in a study published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Monday, show a calorie-restricted diet — one that eliminates 30% or more of normal daily intake — engages a protein molecule, CREB1, associated with memory, learning, and anxiety and aggression control. CREB1 degenerates with age, and the researchers’ hope is that studying the link between this protein and cutting back on food will aid in the discovery of a retardant for late-life dementia.
10. Not sure if this piece of news qualifies as Eat the Week–worthy, because it happened overseas and because nothing edible, technically, was involved; but here it goes. And rest assured, something was most certainly eaten. (Plus, it’s too bizarre to pass up reporting.) This week, gastroenterologists at England’s Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital Foundation Trust, performed tests on an elderly woman complaining of weight loss, diarrhea, and stomach pain. The scans showed in the 76-year-old’s intestinal tract a foreign object, which, upon further investigation, proved to be a felt-tip pen. When questioned about the pen, the woman had only this to offer as explanation: she’d been poking her tonsils with the pen, back in 1986, and it just sort of slipped down her throat. Astoundingly, the pen still worked after being surgically extracted, and the woman suffered no damages as a result of ingesting a writing utensil and harboring it inside of her for a quarter of a century.
Photo: geishaboy500
