Cheap Beer

Why is it that cheap beer holds such nostalgia for grown men? When involved in a discussion of the beers men grew up on, there is such fondness, nay, celebration of the poor quality beer we drank. Is it the pivitol role it played in so many coming of age experiences, its accessibility, its unmistakable smell from old dorm rooms and apartments? I think its definitely a combination of those with one other factor. Cheap beer is one of the last conglomerate owned consumable products that maintains a strong sense of place.

Slate lists America's greatest cheap beers by region, who owns them and how they got there. Find your favorites here.

Long live Grain Belt, Milwaukee's Best, Olympia, Old Milwaukee, Blatz and Hamm's.

Celebrity sighting of the day 8.11.08

Don't know Antonia? Click here.

Thanks pmo!

The Hungriest of Cats

One of my favorite restaurants in LA happens to be within walking distance of my house, tucked away in the corner of a new but rather comely strip mall/condo development sharing a small patch of concrete with the most unoriginal of retail outlets, Borders.

Its a fantastic place focused on seafood (a great raw bar) and small portioned, incredibly tasty morsels. Running a close second to the tasty eats is the unique and brilliant bar. The spirits are all from lesser known (even to my Riley's Wines of the World honed knowledge) bottlers, many are organic and/or all natural, the mixers are as well and the juices are all fresh squeezed.

I was pleased to see that Angeleno Magazine just recently ranked it LA's restaurant of the year. What was a special treat (it's expensive), especially before its expansion, is now going to be booked solid!

Cheers to The Hungry Cat!

Chili nanotubes

Thanks to the beauty of carbon nanotubes, they can now objectively measure the hotness or certain chili peppers. It used to be decided by some random group of people's taste buds.

Professor Richard Compton of the University of Oxford has been experimenting with the world's hottest pepper sauces. Given their fiery pungency, he's careful not to taste undiluted. Instead, thanks to carbon nanotubes and adsorptive stripping voltammetry, he's developed an objective method to measure that intense heat.
The heat level in chillies is usually measured using the Scoville organoleptic (sensory) test. Developed by American scientist Wilbur Scoville in 1912, it uses a series of dilutions with taste volunteers - a mild chilli pepper has a rating of 2,500-8,000 Scoville units. How we feel the "heat" is also well understood: compounds known as capsaicinoids trigger chemoreceptor nerve endings in the skin.
Compton's academic expertise lies in electrochemistry and sensors. Why does he use carbon nanotubes for sensing chilli heat? "It's as trivial as having a huge surface area for conductivity," says Compton. A carbon nanotube is an arrangement of carbon atoms in a hollow tube 50,000 times thinner than a human hair. The multi-walled nanotubes used by Compton are like tubes within tubes to give the right surface area.

Find the rest of the story here.

Beverages Bonanza

Mostly I drink water as my beverage of choice throughout the day, but sometimes at lunch I'll grab a vitamin water or a suicide fountain soda (yesterday it was sprite, fanta orange and raspberry ice tea) and when I'm feeling spendy (or traveling on the company dime) I grab one of these. Suffice it to say I was surprised to see this story from Men's Health that addresses some of the most unhealthy drinks in the market and this blog that shows the health differences between similar drinks. There were some definite surprises.

Worst "Healthy" Drink

Glaceau VitaminWater (any flavor; 20 oz bottle) 130 calories 33 grams sugar

(who knew! I'm not drinking this stuff anymore-sorry Josh!)

Beer

Drink This: Guinness 126 calories10 g carbohydrates
Not That: Sierra Nevada Pale Ale 200 calories12 g carbohydrates

Iced Tea

Drink This: Honest Green Dragon Tea (16 oz) 60 calories10 g sugar

Not That: Arizona Iced Tea (16 oz) 200 calories 25 g sugar

Dice an Onion

Im going to start doing this from now on.

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Eat Food, mostly plants

Here's how to eat. Courtesy of the author of "In Defense of Food" Michale Pollan and Google. It all revolves around a central tenant - eat food, mostly plants, not too much.

Nerd Alert

Is it wrong that I want this?

Eat locally

So I bought into this community garden so I could try my hand at growing some of my own food and relieve a bit of my dependence on supermarkets (not that I have been frequenting them that much lately). It's definitely helped me be more attentive and focused on alternative ways to get food. Plus its brought me into more contact with stories about local food in LA. I've read and posted about some previously here. Today brought me a Wired story about eating locally and how to take it up a step from just shopping at your local farmers market to actually finding out where it comes from and how you can take it even a step more local with farm co-ops and helpful websites. Its a pretty good introduction for some easy steps to take. I haven't taken them yet, but if you want to, here's where to find them.

Galactic Pizza

College rulez. I met so many awesome people in a little city in the midwest (Madison) and they continue to do amazing things. Pete, who I met through my friend Andy, started Galactic Pizza in Minneapolis with a killer one-two punch of super hero hilarity and super-conscious social responsibility. I eat there every time I'm back home. Amazingly, I saw that he was featured on CNN Money! Here's the quick breakdown: his restaurant makes really good pizza with locally grown organic ingredients (even vegan!) and donates a portion of profits to charitable causes. The tasty pizzas are available for delivery by crazy costumed super hero delivery drivers who use electric or human powered vehicles. The costumes are made by a local seamstress and delivery people are able to create and develop their own super hero identities. They also have quite a compelling Vision of the Future.

Check out CNN for more info and pics and if you're ever in Minneapolis, head to 29th and Lyndale, uptown for "pizza with a conscious."

Thanks Erin!

UPDATE: Thanks to Cara's comment, not only do they deliver pizza but they also foil robberies. This makes my day! Hilarious.

Organic conglomerates?

Good magazine put together this educational chart that shows the parent companies behind some of the most popular organic food brands. Im all for organic products, but sometimes its easy to forget that just because it is organic, doesn't mean that its from a local farmer, independant producer or in any way better for the environment than regular food (better for your body, yes, but not necessarily anything else). A chef from one of LA's top resaturants made news recently by complaining that produce from the local farmers markets was getting bought up in advance by larger distributors. I imagine there is a lot of this type of stuff happening all over. I know that I have gone to different farmers markets in LA and seen the same companies supplying to multiple, almost like mini-distributors.

There's a lot of in and outs to organic food, most of it I don't know. Hopefully the business will become more transparent in the near future. In the meantime, its probably best to buy as local and organic as you can, cause you never know where that money is going.