Feeding Your Body: News to Chew On

Today’s lunchtime news chum post has to do, quite appropriately, with food:

• Tea is In? I’ll Believe It When I See It. All food fads come in cycles. Cupcakes are in, then they are out. FroYo is in, then out, then in. According to this article, coffee is on its way out and fancy tea is in. At least, that is, in the beverage industry. As a tea drinker, I’ll believe this one when I see it. I still see far too many coffee houses with only bagged tea, too many places that use concentrated iced tea, too many conferences that use coffee pots to make tea water, and too many places that don’t even bother to put out hot water for tea. I agree that tea is a better beverage — you can drink it hot or cold, and it doesn’t require any doctoring to drink. I still stand by my adage that coffee only belongs in ice cream or covered in dark chocolate.
• Don’t Eat This. Alton Brown led me to this article, enumerating 7 foods a nutritionist will never eat. What’s on the list? Rice cakes, fat-free salad dressing, seitan, shark, refined and refortified grains, grits, sugar sweetened beverages. See that last one? That’s why I drink tea. No sugar required — it is perfect black. Try that with most coffees!
• Book ‘Em. We’re seeing electronic books everywhere. One place electronic books shouldn’t be is the kitchen. Want to know why? This article explains the value of a printed cookbook quite well. I’ve always felt that anything electronic doesn’t belong in a place where there is water and heat, but the article gives a myriad of even more reasons to stick with print.
• Date Conjunction. This last piece comes courtesy of mail.jewish. It appears that 2013 will be the first year in a long time — and it will be an even longer time until it occurs again — that Thanksgiving coincides with the first night of Chanukkah. Let’s see if my sister-in-law reads this — we’re going to need to figure out where to do things this year as we normally split T-day and C-day. Oh, and think of the menu: Turkey, latkes, mashed potatoes, donuts. Of course, this is the perfect year to try a deep-fried turkey!