Florida Man Outdoes Florida Man

This Florida man broke into a restaurant, got naked
ate a meal he brought with him, and played the
bongos. He won't be criminally charged because
he didn't rob or damage the restaurant, and
put everything away neatly when he was finished.

You know Florida crime weirdness is bad, when cops there investigating one weird crime find something even more odd.  

But this is Florida, after all. It's the land of Florida Man. You know the headlines see all the time. It's every day "Florida Man Does (Insert Very Weird And Novel Thing Here)"

So it was that a St. Petersburg, Florida was reviewing surveillance video because he was investigating a burglary at The Chattaway restaurant in which the intruder broke in, ate a plate of chicken wings, ad grabbed a beer to enjoy.

By Florida standards, this kind of thing is pretty routine, for sure.

But then, the police officer found something unrelated, but much more interesting in the surveillance footage.

I'll let TampaBay.com pick it up from here:

"The video shows a man riding his bike up to the restaurant at 358 22nd Ave. S, pedaling around the parking lot for 10 minutes, then slipping in through the back gate. After wandering around a bit, he opens the door to a shed for storing odds and ends, and removes them one by one. 

Then the man gains access to a restaurant bathroom. And exits without his clothes." 

Well, I guess a little nudist burglary is a thing. Who knew?

TampaBay.com continues:

"He proceeds to sit naked at one of the restaurant's picnic tables and digs into a meal he brought with him - Maruchan Instant Lunch ramen."

I've got to hand it to the TampaBay.com reporter, McKenna Oxenden, who was able to get such detail on what the guy was eating. As if that was the most important part. Then again, it's good Naked Florida Man didn't steal the food from the restaurant.

The video also shows the man, still naked, playing bongo drums. Not sure what the neighbors thought of that.

The money quote comes from Chattaway waiter Chad Pearson: "He came in with pants on but he rode off on the bike without pants....I'm not sure if he took his pants with him, but we didn't find them. We still don't know where his pants are."

Maybe the other guy who broke in and ate chicken and drank the beer stole the pants. It's a theory, anyway.

Police figured out who the naked guy is, but did not release his name. The restaurant isn't pressing charges, because Naked Florida Guy caused no harm, and even put everything back neatly when he was finished.

The (presumably) clothed guy the cops were initially looking for has not yet been caught. Authorities and the restaurant DO want to press charges against the Florida Chicken Eater Burglar because he stole cash tips, a laptop, a tablet and a grocery bag full of beer, all collectively worth more than $500.

The Florida Chicken Eater Burglar also tried unsuccessfully to break into a safe.

I bet the cops want to review Chattaway surveillance video every day, just to see what they'd find next.

A Young Gardener Just Thrilled The Hell Out Of Me

Keynote speaker Ian McKenna wowed and
inspired us at the Gardener's Supply Company
annual meeting last month.

Last month, my employer, Gardener's Supply Company in Burlington, Vermont, held its annual meeting.

We're an employee-owned company. Everybody who works there, including me, has a stake in it. So the annual meeting is a great chance to look over our financials, see where we've been, learn where we're headed.  

Each annual meeting features a keynote speaker, almost always somebody from outside the company who gives us inspiration and information meant to propel us forward and keep doing what we're doing.  

This year's keynoter was, of all people, a 13-year-old kid named Ian McKenna from Austin, Texas. He was easily - by far- the best keynote speaker we've ever had at Gardener's Supply.

Some background: Gardener's Supply is big on giving back to the community. That's one of the reasons why I work there.

I know the following is a shameless plug, but bear with me. It's good. This year, we're promoting something called Garden To Give. We're inviting our customers - anyone from newbies to hard-core gardeners  -  to agree to give away some of their summer produce to food shelves and people who just need food. Many of us Gardener's Supply employees are taking the pledge, too.

So, back to our 13-year-old kid. His altruism started in 2012 when his younger sister, then in first grade, was in school talking about Christmas traditions around the world, but one girl in the class burst into tears.

The girl said, "Santa's never come to us, he hates us because we're poor."

Ugh.

When Ian heard that story, he and his family decided to show up on Christmas morning at the girl's house with a carload of toys and food.

That had such an effect that a few months later Ian found out a student at school only ate breakfast and lunch provided at school with no dinners because the family was too poor, he knew he had to act again.

So he started a garden at Oak Hill Elementary school, and that people who were hungry could come there and collect fresh produce. He also opened a garden at another school, and in the first year grew 750 pounds of vegetables.  The next year, it was over 1,000 pounds of food.

I'm as guilty as anyone in my garden. Sometimes I surprise myself with more produce than I can handle. I give some away, or live on a diet of, say, string beans for a week to get through the harvest. Or, sadly, some food gets thrown away.

I'm not sure I will grow a giving garden exactly like the one highlighted on the Gardener's Supply how-to website. (I'm not the biggest fan of kale)

But surely I can give something - produce, time, volunteer work, money.

If Ian can do that much good, maybe I could at least do a fraction of it. If Ian as a teenager pulled off this much good stuff, we can all do a little, right?

Here's a video from Laura, from her YouTube channel, Garden Answer, with more on Garden to Give:

Taco Trucks Will Dominate Our Lives If Hillary Wins

Trump's camp warns that if Hillary wins, we'd have
a taco truck on every corner. Sounds delicious! 

UPDATE:

In a brilliant move, a Denver city councilman parked a taco truck across the street from the city's Trump campaign headquarters.

The councilor then turned the taco truck into a voter registration booth.

Awesome!

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION:

Yesterday, we got this dark warning from a Donald Trump surrogate: If Hillary wins, there will be a taco truck on every corner.

The horror! Delicious tacos just feet away from any location you are anywhere in the United States. This is better than a chicken in every pot.

Ooops, sorry, I'm supposed ot be horrified. Tacos. Damn Mexicans. The Trump people say anything with a whiff of Hispanic culture is bad for America.

The warning about a taco truck on every corner was delivered by Latinos for Trump co-founder Marco Gutierrez.

Latinos for Trump? I bet there are a lot of empty seats at their meetings!

Anyway,  Gutierrez was on MSNBC when he said. "My culture is a very dominant culture.... And it's imposing, and it's causing problems. If you don't do something about it, you're gonna have taco trucks on every corner."

This just might be Hillary Clinton's new campaign logo. 

With that, we got the second big Trump-related Twitter hashtag of the week, #TacoTruckOnEveryCorner.

Frankly, I'd like to aim higher.  I think there should be a margarita truck on every corner. I was thinking Gutierrez is also afraid there might be a mariachi band on every corner. That would get a bit noisy, but what the hell.

I think Hillary Clinton should run with this. She's ahead in the polls, so if she promoted the idea her presidency would inspire a taco truck on every corner, she'd be a shoo-in.

Talk about a jobs program! All the unemployed people in the United States could get a job in the multitudes of street corner taco trucks.

And maybe margarita trucks, too!

Yum!!

Wood As An Ingredient In Cheese, And Other Wrong Things In Our Store Bought Food

Does the grated parmesan cheese you buy at the
supermarket have wood pulp in it? Probably.
This is another example of how the food
industry lies to us. 

If I eat prepackaged shredded parmesan cheese, will I get termites?

An odd question, yes, but maybe not so odd given the revelations this week that some grated cheeses have an unannounced ingredient: Wood.

Well,  it's cellulose, but most of that comes from ground up wood.

In 2012, it turns out the federal Food and Drug Administration raided a Pennsylvania cheese factory and found that Castle Cheese Inc. was doctoring its so-called 100 percent real parmesan cheese with substitutes like fillers and wood pulp, says Bloomberg News.

Castle's president, Michelle Myurter pleaded guilty recently to criminal charges. She could face up to a year in  jail and a $100,000 fine, Bloomberg says. 

It also looks like other producers of grated parmesan cheese fill it in with what is basically groud up wood.

This wood, or cellulose as regulators call it, is considered a safe additive and can comprise up to four percent of that can of parmesan you pick up at the local Piggly Wiggly or whatever.

Bloomberg had various paremsan cheese from grocery stores tested.  The results weren't great. Essential Everyday has what it calls 100% Grated Parmesan Cheese, but a sample from a Jewel-Osco store in Wisconsin showed it was actually 8.8 percent cellulose

I guess Essential Everyday thinks that wood chips are the exact same thing as cheese.

Other grated parmesan cheese came back with anything from 0.3 to 7.8 percent wood chips.

The worst part about all this is we can't trust food manufacturers to tell us what's really in the food they sell us. That's because marketing is more important than truth. And safety.

True, most of the lies they tell us are about ingredients that probably wouldn't harm most of us. But there are people allergic to certain things. Nobody would ever be able to trace things back because who knows exactly what you ate and when?

There's a lot of examples of inaccurate food claims:

Olive Oil:

Last year, we learned that extra virgin olive oil might be anything but. According to CNBC and numerous other media outlets, Italy's anti fraud investigators were probing whether seven well known olive oil brands were selling lesser quality olive oil as "extra virgin."

Again, the extra virgin olive oil that really isn't won't hurt you, but you're paying extra from a high quality product that is not high quality at all.

Extra virgin olive oil comes from the first press of olives, which is the best. Subsequent presses aren't as good, and are sold as either virgin olive oil or just olive oil.

Maple Syrup

Here where I live in Vermont, maple syrup is an important industry. Just last week, members of the Vermont Sugar Makers Association and other maple industry groups took the food industry to task for saying there's maple in their products when there is not, according to the Associated Press.

Again, the artificial ingredients and corn syrup that masquerades as maple syrup in such products as oatmeal and energy bars won't hurt you much, but they lead you to believe that you're getting wholesome maple syrup when you're really not.

Says the AP:

"Roger Brown, chairman of the Maple Industry Committee of the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association, said maple syrup - derived from heating sap from maple trees - is a premium product and sweetener and for that reason a number of companies imply that a product contains maple without the ingredient being present. 

He said the association has asked the FDA to investigate so that consumers get what they're looking for, and maple producers get compensated for their hard work."

Pet Food:

Even pet food is subject to ingredients that aren't there.

According to Poisonedpets.com, Blue Buffalo was forced to admit last year that it had chicken by-products in its pet food, like internal organs, renderings etc. That was contrary to what Blue Buffalo packaging and advertisements said.

This came to light only after pet food rival Purina, which grew suspicious, sued Blue Buffalo.

Assume They're All Lying.

I guess the bottom line here is many, if not most food manufacturers are lying to us about what is in the food they sell us.

The only way around it is to grow all of our own food, which of course is a huge challenge for most people.

The FDA says they focus more on food safety rather than ingredients, which makes sense. The FDA is too short staffed and underfunded to go after people who lie about what ingredients they put in our food.

Industry wins over our well-being again, I'm afraid.







 

Alabama School Kids To Fight Armed Intruders By Throwing Canned Food At Gunmen?

Most of us see these as a source of nutrition
or something to donate to the food shelf. A school
in Alabama thinks these are weapons school kids
can use against a school shooter.  

School shootings are right up there as the biggest tragedies this nation has faced.

One school in Alabama though, has taken the fear of such attacks to a ridiculous level. But at least there will be snacks.

W.F. Burns Middle School Principal Priscilla Holley in Valley, Alabama has instructed kids to bring canned food items to school, says television station WHNT.

Then, if a gunman barges into the school, the kids could throw their cans of food at the intruder, stunning him or even knocking him out until police arrive.

What could go wrong? The kids with the cans would be heroes.

Of course, I'm not sure a thrown can of Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup is much of a match for bullets, but the school district is going with this.

In a letter to parents reminding them to give their kids the weaponized food cans to bring to school, Holley wrote, "The canned food item will give the students a sense of empowerment to protect themselves and will make them feel more secure in case an intruder enters the classroom."

I'm all for teaching students to feel empowered, but I'm not sure the midst of a school shooting incident is the right moment for such lessons.

Maybe the kids should just get the hell out of there if they can when somebody with a gun shows up. The empowerment lessons can come later.

And if somebody pointed a gun at me and threatened to shoot, I'm not sure I'd feel that much more secure if I had a can of tuna to throw at him.

To be fair, the Alabama can throwing idea is part of a broader program called ALICE, for "Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate."

The ALICE program is used in a lot of schools, and much of it makes sense. It's good to have some sort of plan and training in case the worst happens.

Although a quick look at the ALICE, I didn't see anything about throwing cans at intruders, though.

I certainly hope there's never a school shooting in Valley, Alabama, or anywhere for that matter.

But let's just use the canned food for dinner, or for donating to your local food shelf.

Pastors, 90 Year Old Guy Arrested For Despicable Crime: They Fed Homeless People.

Arnold Abbott, 90, being arrested for the terrible crime
of feeding homeless people.  

Fort Lauderdale, Florida sure doesn't like homeless people all that much.  

Nor does it like people who try to help them.

Case in point: Fort Lauderdale Police arrested two pastors and a 90 year old man who defied a new city ordinance against feeding homeless people. The trio belong to a homeless advocacy group called Love Thy Neighbor.

Not only does Fort Lauderdale appear cruel to the homeless, they are So Bad at public relations. I mean really.

A 90 year old guy tries to feed homeless people and he gets arrested for his efforts?

Homeless advocate Jeff Weinberger gives the following account in the Broward Palm Beach Times:

"At least four police cruisers and a half dozen uniformed cops were ready and waiting for Love Thy Neighbor --not exactly the Clanton Gang-- when the group showed up at its spot adjacent to Stranahan Park as it does every sSunday at 1 p.m. in a white van armed with trays of food. The group's 90-year-old founder, Arnold Abbot, previously had announced that the new ordinance would not deter him from sharing food as he's done for the past 23 years."

Probably the saddest, oddest moment of the arrests when one of the cops allegedly yelled "Drop that plate!" as if the dinner for some homeless person was a gun.

Granted, homelessness is a sticky, complicated, practically impossible problem for cities, or anyone else for that matter, to solve.

I get the concerns some cities where a lot of charities have that  feed the homeless might attract more homeless people to their communities, straining services. But I'm not so sure a blanket ban on helping the homeless is effective.

Besides, don't you just feel a little, teensy, weensy bit bad for these people? They've been dealt a bad hand. Maybe they can't find a job. Or they have mental health issues. Or substance abuse problems. Or they're fleeing an abusive spouse. You never know what made any particular homeless person homeless.

They're not going to disappear off the face of the Earth if you try to drive them out of town and pretend they don't exist.

Some people are trying anyway.

According to NBC News, citing the National Coalition for the Homeless, at least 33 American cities have bans, or are considering bans on sharing food with the homeless, as those guys in Fort Lauderdale did.

What works better, says Robert Marbut, a national homeless consultant quoted by NBC is more nuanced. He said cities and charities should have comprehensive programs to deal with the three major causes of homelessness: a lack of jobs, mental illnesses and chronic substance abuse.

Granted, that's not easy. And not always effective with everyone. But Marbut says these programs reduce homeless populations by 80 percent.

That means cities save money in the long run because they cities don't have to devote so many resources of dealing with people in crisis on the street.  Or arresting people trying to feed the homeless.

A few cities do a hybrid law that doesn't ban feeding or otherwise helping the homeless, but combines restrictions with aid to people without homes.  In these cities charities must get permits to feed the homeless, and are restricted in the number of days and hours they can operate.

That helps prevent locations where the homeless are fed to become too overwhelmed by the activities.

According to an article in The Atlantic, feeding the homeless doesn't necessarily offer an incentive for people to stay on the streets, but Marbut says it does.

Who knows?  Like I said, it's complicated. Which means a simple solution, like just banning charitable members of the public from feeding homeless people, is the ultimate in stupidity. Yeah, everyone loves the sound of simple solutions, but they don't work.

Plus, you get the sad spectacle of police arresting some 90 year old guy for handing a plate of food to some homeless person. As if the 90 year guy was opening fire with an AK-47.  People, it's just a plate of food. Relax.

The 90 year old guy who's been committing the High Crime of feeding the homeless, Arnold Abbott, seems like an incredibly nice guy.

Says the Associated Press:

"Abbott, a World War II vetern and civil rights activist, told the Associated Press that he has been serving the homeless for more than two decades in honor of his late wife. He has several programs, including a culinary school to train the homeless and help find them jobs in local kitchens."

Maybe the fine leaders of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, could drop their guns and opposition to feeding the homeless. Maybe they could pick up a plate, and a spoon and serve a hungry guy or gal.

It's called paying it forward.

Vermont Man Saves, Promotes Apple Varieties That Actually Taste Good

Ezekiel Goodband of the Scott Farm in
Dummerston, Vermont is saving heirloom
apple varieties, thank goodness.  

NPR last week had a great profile of a guy named  Ezekiel Goodband, the apple orchard manager of Scott Farm in Dummerston, Vermont.   

He's fighting a (possibly winning) battle to stamp out those huge, perfect, beautifully red, but hideous tasting apples that are basically all you can buy in most supermarkets nowadays.

According to The Atlantic, Red Delicious has been the variety of apples most likely to appear on supermarket shelves in recent decades.

The problem with Red Delicious is they taste the opposite of delicious. They're gross.

Red Delicious became all about marketing, and not about how the fruit actually tasted.  They stayed pretty even after traveling across the country. They enticed people with their perfection as they languished on supermarket shelves.

The Atlantic discussed this with Tom Burford, 79, author of "Apples of North America."

"By the time selective breeding had taken its toll, according to Burford, a few big nurseries controlled the market, planting decisions were made from the remove of boardrooms, and consumers didn't have many varieties to choose from. The Red Delicious became 'the largest compost-maker in the country,' he said, as shoppers bought the apples and threw them away."

Red Delicious tastes as good as cardboard that's been sitting at the municipal landfill for a couple weeks. But who cares if large scale agribusiness can make lots of money by foisting this poor excuse for an apple on us, and giving us no tasty alternatives?

Goodband, the apple guy from Dummerston, Vermont,  is going backward in time to bring us the awesome apples our ancestors used to eat.  He has the gall to want to provide tasty fruit, even if it can only come in limited quantities.

His timing might be very good, as people are finally rejecting Red Delicious in America. (Growers are passing them off to foreign markets, and forcing these awful apples on unsuspecting people in Asia)

The apples Goodband breeds might be ugly, or spotted, or visually iffy, so maybe they're not great if you want to market a beautiful supermarket display of inedible apples.

However, these heirloom apples apparently taste AWESOME. After hearing the NPR story, I want to drive down to Dummerston and sample the apples on the Scott Farm.

Too bad Dummerston is on the exact opposite side of Vermont from me so it's a three hour drive. But knowing the organic, traditional, old fashioned foodie type experimentation a lot of Vermont farmers are into, I bet I can find something approximating the Scott Farm close to me.

I'll sure try.

Judging from the NPR report, Goodban seems like a really interesting guy. Says NPR:

"He's spent decades carefully grafting and tending historic varieties - some of which date back hundreds of years."

".....Goodband is helping to preserve historic varieties like the Knobbed Russet that have been handed down over the centuries. Like farmers for generations before him, he painstakingly collected cuttings and grafted them to root stock. That's the only way to do it, to keep the exact DNA of these apples alive.

'It's sort of like a chain letter, and I like that connection,' he says."

I'll also let Goodband and NPR explain why it's important to keep these heirloom apple varieties around.

".....He's not interested in apples designed to travel well for long distances. His is small-batch agriculture, sold locally. His apples cost more than conventional fruit, but Goodban only growns fruit that delights him.

'I've got to be dazzled,' he says, and, he wants his customers to be dazzled, too.

He hopes to reintroduce people to fruit that customers might remember their grandparents growing. Or to introduce them for the first time to fruit that doesn't make it to stores because it doesn't shop well or because it is only at its peak for a week or two. This, he says, is the experience he's looking for.

'When I give people one of these apples, they'll come back next week and say, 'Oh, that was the best apple I've ever had in my life. I didn't know apples could taste like that."

Maybe, just maybe, Goodband might help rid the world of the scourge named Red Delicious.

Then maybe we can start on other produce in grocery stores that's pretty, but disgusting to eat. Wouldn't that be cool.

What A Deal On Grapes!!

Buy a second set of grapeless grapes for free!!!

Mother Punished For Sending Kids To School With Nutritious Lunch

Kristen Bartkiw, a mom in Manitoba, Canada, thought she was sending her youngsters off to school with a pretty nutritious lunch. It consisted of leftover roast beef, some potatoes, carrots, an orange and milk.

A Manitoba parent
got this nastygram from her
kids' school.  

Sounds yummy. And I'm sure it would have sustained the kids for the rest of the day.

School officials were PISSED, though. School officials didn't think the lunch was nutritious enough. The poor kids. See, the lunch didn't include grains.

According to the web site Weighty Matters, the Manitoba Government Early Learning and Child Care lunch regulations insist that every meal include some sort of grain.
 
So the school gave the kids Ritz crackers, technically a grain but geez,  and they fined Bartkiw $10.   

A 16 gram serving of Ritz crackers has 79 calories,  four grams of fat and 1 gram of saturated fat. Not the worst in the world, but not exactly whole grain bread either.

According to Weighty Matters:

"As Kristen writes, had she sent along lunches consisting of, 'microwave Kraft Dinner and a hot dog, a package of fruit twists, a Cheestring, and a juice box' those lunches would have sailed right through this idiocy. But her whole food, homemade lunches? They lacked Ritz crackers."

I suppose if parents send their kids to school with junk food, something has to be done. You want kids to eat well so they do well in school. That's obvious, and that's clearly the motivation of Manitoba officials.

But like so many things, people got way too enthusiastic about the rules.  Talk about a nanny state! I wouldn't exactly call the lunch Bartkiw gave her kids child abuse.

Are schools up there in Manitoba required to paw through all the kids' lunches before they eat them? Drag the parents to a supermarket and order them to buy stuff the school wants them to buy? Will the schools have bonfire parties using Twinkies, potato chips and gooey fattening cookies as fuel for the fires?

The school had no way of knowing if the Bartkiw kids had whole grain cereal for breakfast, and were anticipating more grains for dinner that night. Are schools going to go to parents homes at breakfast and dinner and monitor what mommy and daddy are cooking for the little ones?

And since when are Ritz crackers the height of good nutrition?

On the bright side, Bartkiw said the school her kids go to now has a hot lunch program, which she describes as really good, so she doesn't have to make lunches for her kids and worry about the Food Police charging her with High Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Still, if you're a parent in Manitoba, you'd better watch what you pack in your kids lunches. If you slip in a cookie, you might become Public Enemy #1 in the eyes of provincial school officials.

Manly Vermont Man Fishes in Manly Way, Video Goes Viral In A Manly Way

It's nice to see a YouTube video by someone here in Vermont go viral, and it's doubly nice to see one that ensures we are keeping Vermont weird.

The video in question shows a Vermonter named Douglas Owen, looks like he lives around Morrisville, according to my research,  catching a fish for dinner. Sounds routine enough. Lots of people fish.

This guy doesn't use a fishing pole, though. Watch how he catches his trout: More commentary by me below the video, if you can stand it.





Yes, he caught the fish with his bare hands.

The video has been up for maybe a little more than a week, and as of late Tuesday afternoon already had nearly 700,000 views. It's among the most viral of Vermont based videos.

Owen sure has a sense of humor. Responding to comments on his video,  he said his wife "was not impressed 'cause I do this stuff all the time."

Some commenters said he faked the whole thing, or staged it but he said the trout was not in a cage or trap, was not hidden anywhere else and was not dead before he grabbed it.

The video was done in "first take, no real script, no editing; not smart enough."

As for his physique, which many commenters thought was masculine and sexy and made him look like a real manly man (I tend to agree) Owen said "Belly is real, developed in Vermont, USA"

Some of the comments left by people below his YouTube video are fun, too.

Examples:

"I was always wondering what Santa does 364 days a year. Now we've got the answer. He rocks."

"This guy needs to teach a fishing lesson. DAMN!"

"Poseidon, are you?"

Eat Mo' Bugs, Says UN. Vermont Mosquitoes, Anyone?

Well, I suppose this is one way to fight hunger, global warming and pollution, at least according to the United Nations: Eat bugs.

Doesn't sound appetizing, but that's what they're saying,. Apparently, eating bugs will solve a whole bunch of ills. According to the Associated Press:

 

 Could mosquitoes become the new Vermont cuisne

"Edible insects are being promoted as a low-fat, high-protein food for people, pets and livestock. According to the U.N., they come with appetizing side benefits: Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and livestock pollution, creating jobs in developing countries and feeding the millions of hungry people in the world."

Up in Vermont, we had more rain in one week in May than we usually get in two months. It's supposed to turn warm and humid. So the black flies and mosquitoes will be as thick as molasses.

We will be eaten alive by these awful things. But, if we take the UN report to heart, we can turn the tables and eat the mosquitoes.

I have questions, though, since I'm so inexperienced with the ways of bug eating. First of all, exactly how do you harvest them? It seems counter productive to catch them as they're biting you.  You're not the one that is supposed to be eaten.

Assuming you catch all the mosquitoes you need for a meal, how exactly do you prepare it. Fry them? Make a stew out of them? A pate?

What ingredients compliment the taste of mosquitoes? Or, probably more accurately, mask the taste of mosquitoes. I've never eaten mosquito, obviously, so I don't honestly don't know what to do.

Are there experts? Is there a mosquito cookbook? Does Rachel Ray have a whole book of mosquito recipes, full of quick, easy and tasty mosquito dinners?

Maybe they should use mosquitoes in the list of strange ingredients in the cooking competition show "Chopped." on the Food Network

The bottom line is, the field of insect and mosquito cuisine is still in its infancy. Any cooks out there want to experiement?

Agricultural Bounty in Greenland, of All Places

No this is not an April Fool's joke.

Greenland, that huge block of ice up in the Arctic northeast of Canada, is not such a block of ice anymore.

Global warming has hit there with more power than points south, so Greenland is now an agricultural producer of such items as potatoes, thyme, tomatoes, green peppers, and even a few strawberries, according to Scientific American.

Says the magazine, quoting a restaurant chef up there:

"Things are growing quicker," said Kim Ernst, the Danish chef of Roklubben restaurant, nestled by a frozen lake near a former Cold War-era U.S. military base.

"Every year we try new things,: said Ernst, who even managed to grow a handful of strawberries that he served to some surprised Scandinavian royals. "I first came here in 1999 and no one would have dreamed of doing this. But now the summer day seem warmer, and longer."

So, I guess there are some benefits to global warming. Yes, in a worst case scenario, we end up with inundated coastal cities, droughts, famine, wars over increasingly scarce resources and extreme storms that make today's tempests seem like a pleasant April shower.

These delicious looking strawberries are from Greenland 

But at least we'll have a nice supply of luscious strawberries from Greenland.

Not just strawberries. But all kinds of other stuff. And increasingly, plenty to go around. From the Scientific American article:

"There are now huge areas in southern Greenland where you can grow things," said Josephine Nymand, a scientist at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources in Nuuk. "Potatoes have most benefitted. Also, cabbage has been very successful."

Sten Eric Langstrup Pedersen, who runs an organic farm in a fjord near Nuuk, first grew potatoes in 1976. Now he can plant crops two weeks earlier in May and harvest three weeks later in October compared with more than a decade ago."

Bonus: Greenland need not worry about irrigating its new croplands. Oddly, dry weather has put a crimp in some crop growth in recent summers. But all those melting glaciers would provide plenty of water to keep that greenery growing, if they put in irrigation systems.. That ice sheet is going to be around for awhile. It's melting, but it's immense, and tens of thousand of feet thick, and would be relatively stable even if global warming intensifies.

Then again, that melting ice can be troublesome. That restaurant we talked about at the beginning of this post? The glaciers melted so fast last summer that meltwater caused a big flood that took out a bridge, which cut the restaurant off from the airport. So during tourist season in Greenland, nobody could get to the restaurant.

Even for its few beneficiaries, I guess climate change can be troublesome.

For Your Man, For Christmas: Bacon Shaving Cream

OK, ladies, a public opinion poll for you: Would you be hot for a guy that smells like bacon?

I ask, because there is now shaving cream on the market that smells like bacon, and will make any guy who uses it smell like that, too.

Yes, you can smell like bacon by buying this bacon
aroma shaving cream.

J&D Foods out of Florida  has an, um, stunning array of bacon related products, and this is their latest brainchild. There's limited quantities, so it might have sold out already.

I do see some drawbacks to bacon shaving cream.   Imagine a guy who just used the stuff walking down the street. He'll attract a very hungry pack of dogs in no time, wouldn't he?  Yeah, nothing says "sexy" like a guy being torn apart by the a pack of coyotes that came down from the woods.

Woof.

J&D Foods, as I mentioned, has other bacon products to buy if bacon shaving cream isn't your thing. They have baconnaise, basically mayonnaise that tastes like bacon, bacon popcorn and bacon lip balm, so you taste bacon if you kiss somebody who uses the balm.

One of the most intriguing of their products is something called "mmmvelopes." They're envelopes, and you taste bacon if you lick them to seal them.

I bet pigs know to stay far, far, far, away from J&D Food's headquarters.

Slightly related fun fact: J&D's initial funding came from the $5,000 one of the owners won on America's Funniest Home Videos of his toddler son hitting a ball with a bat and striking the dad in the face with the ball.

Anyway, I do like bacon, but this bacon enterprise might be going too far. Or maybe I'm just being closed minded. I bet I could be a marketing developer for these guys.

How about having planes strafe garbage dumps with bacon-scented mist. That would reduce complaints from the neighbors.

Maybe spritzers can be attached to iPhones, tablets and laptops, and when you go to certain web sites, the device will give you a give you a little spray of bacon aroma.

Or we can genetically engineer roses, so they smell like bacon instead. How about bacon themed weddings, where the bride throws a bouquet of bacon at the female guests during the reception?

The possibilities are endless. Maybe there is a future in this bacon theme after all. 

Authorities to Lunch Lady: Make Crummier Food

The stereotype is that school lunch ladies do not have a flair for, um, preparing lunch.

Well, there's one Swedish lunch  lady whose food was so good, she was ordered to make her dishes less appetizing.

A Swedish lunch lady got in trouble for making
lunch more appetizing than this one.

It seems Annica Eriksson made the mistake of serving 15 kinds of vegetables and offering fresh bread to the school's contingent of fourth graders.

Not good, according to municipal officials in the town of Falun, Sweden. Eriksson's cooking talents were unfair to students in other schools, who at lunches that weren't quite p to Eriksson's standards.

Um, why not just leave Eriksson alone and figure out how to make lunches at other schools better? Especially since Eriksson was staying within budget, so she wasn't throwing public money out the window. Or into kids' stomachs.

The town fathers and mothers also say that Ericsson's food doesn't meet new health standards. Since when are vegetables unhealthy? She's not serving french fries.

Well, now the town has changed its mind.  Ericksson can continue with her veggies and freshly baked bread after all.  The whole dispute was nothing but a misunderstanding, and the change of heart has nothing to do with all the negative publicity, they insist. Of course not!

Is Canada a Food Crime Hot Spot?

What is it about Canada, that crime in general seems to be less sordid than in the United States. And lately, Canadian crime seems particularly centered around food.

In today's Burlington (Vt.) Free Press, I wrote about a major heist in August of Quebec's strategic maple syrup reserve. There really is such a thing. Apparently, they have stockpiles of syrup in Quebec to get them through lean years when not much syrup is produced because of bad weather. Kind of like the United States has a strategic oil reserve to get us through shortages.

Maple syrup: Now a major factor in Canadian crime?

Anyway, somebody stole something like $30 million worth of the stuff from a Quebec warehouse. Apparently, a lot of it was recently found in New Brunswick but as far as I know, there've been no arrests.

Luckily, the maple heist seems to have had no major effect on maple syrup availability or prices. Which is good, since I could live without maple syrup about as well as I could live without air. And at prices that are around $40 per gallon,  maple syrup could definitely push the budget.

This isn't the only major Canadian food crime recently. Earlier this month, Canadian investigators made arrests in a cheese smuggling ring that involved Canadian police.

That's right, cheese smuggling. Not drug smuggling. Not human trafficking. Cheese.

It seems cheese from the United States is much less expensive than cheese from Canada. So, cheese was smuggled across the border, at which taxes and duties were evaded, and brought into the Great White North.

According to a press release from Niagara Regional Police,   the two suspects were police officers who made about $165,000 from the enterprise.

Is this another scary subject of international
smuggling?

Who'd of thought cheese smuggling could be so lucrative. I wonder what other products could be smuggled across the Canadian border for fun and profit?

Hmm. I could use a pay boost. Maybe I'll become a cheese smuggler. Or something like that. I live only 10 minutes south of the Canadian border, so my location is good.

While I'm at it, I can take a crack at the Canadian Strategic Maple Reserve, too. Because there's nothing better than maple syrup for breakfast, and some nice sharp cheddar for a midday snack.

Roadkill Cafe Found Not Appetizing

A Kentucky Chinese restaurant is apparently in trouble because its employees brought in roadkill for to satisfy their appetite.

Restaurant personnel insist the roadkill wasn't meant for customers. It was meant for familyt.  But some customers were alarmed by what appeared to be a bloody carcass being brought into the kitchen in a bin, dripping blood on the floor behind it.

Health officials say there will be no roadkill
on this restaurant's menu

The name of the eatery is "Red Flower Chinese Restaurant." I wonder if they should change the name to "Red, Icky Smears on the Kitchen Floor Restaurant."

Meat is expensive these days, and one way to save money, I suppose, is to see what's been run over out on the highway.

The people who run the restaurant say they didn't know they were doing anything illegal.

Still, didn't they worry about getting sick off the meat? How long had the animal been out there, squished by a truck or something and baking on the pavement in the sun?

What else are they finding out there they consider "edible?"  I hope they don't make dinner out of whatever the dog finds in the woods and drags home.

I always hear of people feasting on road kill, or donating it to somebody who needs food. I suppose it might be OK if the meat is immediately refrigerated upon the animal's death. Then thoroughly cooked afterward.

I really hope this is an isolated incident, and we're not eating roadkill at our favorite diner.

Health officials said the Red Flower could reopen after a thorough sanitizing. Several patrons said they wouldn't eat there, though. I guess they weren't enthused by daily special, "Smeared Bambi with Car Tire Glaze."

Just kidding, people.

Giant Food Line in Vermont? Great Depression or Burritos?

A huge line formed in downtown Burlington, Vermont today, full of starving people waiting for a free food handout.

Actually, most of them probably weren't starving. Or destitute.

A long line of people wait for free burritos
Wednesday in downtown Burlington, Vermont

Boloco, a burrito restaurant with stores in Boston, Hanover, N.H. and Burlington, was giving away free burritos to mark its 15th anniversary.

Boloco definitely makes tasty burritos, but would you wait in a line as long as that in the photo I took, just for a burrito? Personally, I begged off. As poor as I am, I'd rather not wait in line and instead pay for a burrito when Boloco isn't particularly busy.

There were similar scenes in Burlington yesterday, when Ben & Jerry's was giving away free ice cream cones.

I wonder: Has everyone internalized the lousy economy so deeply that they'd wait in line for hours for free food?  True, the restaurant was also soliciting donations for charity, so that might have motivated some people in line.

I'm sure most of the people in line today had time to kill because they didn't have to be at work around noontime, when the photo was taken. On the other hand, time is money. Had I waited in line for a free burrito, how much money could I have theoretically lost, by waiting in line instead of actually working?