Free Republic

The U.S. fast food giant opened its first chain in Moscow on this day 30 years ago, in the final months of the Soviet Union. McDonald’s opened the doors of its first restaurant in Russia 30 years ago, on Jan. 31, 1990. With 900 seats, it was the largest McDonald’s in the world at the time. Muscovites started queuing at 4:30 a.m. for their chance to get a taste of the famous American fast food. McDonald’s sold 34,000 burgers on its first day — smashing the burger chain’s previous first-day record of 9,100. Around 27,000 Russians applied to work at...

A photographer in the U.K. snapped pictures of what's been described as possibly "the fattest squirrel in the U.K." And the minuscule mammal can't stop eating. David Hoztaby, from Bingley West Yorks, was walking one afternoon when he spotted the sizable squirrel, unfazed by Hoztaby, British news agency SWNS reports. It was then that the part-time photographer realized that he needed to take the photos. “I’ve never seen such a big squirrel before so I got my camera out," Hoztaby told SWNS. “It caught my eye immediately because it was just so large. I thought ‘look at the size of...

No, the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV), is not related to the popular refreshing Mexican beer brand called Corona. But that’s not stopping people from searching Google to apparently try to double check. Google Trends released data showing that around late January, there was a marked spike in searches for the terms “beer virus” and “corona beer virus.” Jan. 25 showed the height of the spike in searches for the term “beer virus,” as searches rose to a value of 100 on Google Trends indicating a peak in popularity. For the term “corona beer virus,” it peaked at a value of...

... China is the planet’s premier incubator of new flu strains, blamed for the 1918-19 “Spanish” flu, 1957’s Asian flu, the Hong Kong flu of 1968, and the “Russian” flu of 1977. Yet the story is one of progress. China’s backyard agriculture, where ducks and pigs are raised in close proximity, was long considered a key culprit in generating new strains. With this year’s Wuhan outbreak and 2003’s SARS outbreak, suspicion has shifted to urban “wet” markets where affluent Chinese indulge an increasingly atavistic taste for wild and exotic animals slaughtered on the spot. Notice that such issues with meat...

Sad news for salad fans who enjoy the peppery bite of arugula over other lettuces: there's a national shortage. The shortfall is due to the "unexpectedly cold and wet winter weather facing growers throughout the Southwest," according to the New Food Economy. Those harsh conditions "paved the way for the spread of a fungal disease called downy mildew," which has made it difficult to produce healthy crops, the article further explained. The shortage has already been felt by shoppers, purveyors and and diners across the country. In New York, the fast casual Mediterranean restaurant chain Cava posted signs Monday saying...

The vegan diet is low in – or, in some cases, entirely devoid of – several important brain nutrients. Could these shortcomings be affecting vegans' abilities to think? Others are found in vegan foods, but only in meagre amounts; to get the minimum amount of vitamin B6 required each day (1.3 mg) from one of the richest plant sources, potatoes, you’d have to eat about five cups’ worth (equivalent to roughly 750g or 1.6lb). Delicious, but not particularly practical.

Jeremy Clemetson has owned his East of Chicago Pizza restaurant for 14 years after having been affiliated with the chain since 1995. Over the last year, he has started weaving humor into his outdoor advertising. Some of the slogan’s he has used included: “Now Hiring, Must Show Up”, “If it’s not there in 30 minutes, move closer”, “Free Box with Every Pizza”, “Our Deep Dish Pizza is as big as a pothole”, and “Tammy, you need to show up to work” after one of his dedicated employees with a sense of humor took extended medical leave. “I scour the internet...

If you’ve never heard of jackfruit, keep your eyes open: You’ll start noticing it everywhere. Jackfruit is a very large tropical fruit often used as a meat substitute. It packs some nutritional wallop, and the fact that you can cook, chunk or shred it like chicken or pork makes it a go-to main ingredient in many vegetarian and vegan dishes. Its flavor is neutral, and it takes to all kinds of seasonings. Jackfruit is native to India, and also grows in Southeast Asia, Mexico, the Caribbean and South America. It ranges from 15 pounds to a whopping 70. For cooking,...

Like most restaurants, buffets operate on extremely thin margins: For every $20 in revenue, $19 might go toward overhead, leaving $1 (5%) in net profit. Larry’s got a reputation around town for being a gourmand. He’s got an appetite that puts Homer Simpson to shame — and on this particular day, he’s ready to do some serious damage. Larry pays his $20 and proceeds to eat 5 servings of steak and chicken, far more than the average customer. The cost of this food to the buffet amounts to $16.90. This means that after factoring in other expenses, Larry has handed...

A Trump administration “loophole” in school lunch rules will allow for certain types of pasta to qualify as vegetables as well as for students to get more burgers and fries. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s proposals will continue to erode Michelle Obama’s legacy by easing restrictions on the types and quantities on fruit and vegetables put on the table. “Pasta made of vegetable flour(s) may credit as a vegetable, even if the pasta is not served with another recognizable vegetable,” the new guidelines say. The department said the changes will help to reduce food waste, because students were often given...

In a small step for man but a giant leap for baked goods, chocolate chip cookies have become the first food to be baked in space. The round biscuits were prepared in a special oven on board the International Space Station (ISS), led by commander Luca Parmitano and astronaut Christina Koch. The process was a real mission and it took several long days for the crew to experiment with different methods....

In some towns, it’s getting harder to pick up your blood-pressure pills with that gallon of milk and rotisserie chicken. Hundreds of regional grocery stores in cities from Minneapolis to Seattle are closing or selling pharmacy counters, which have been struggling as consumers make fewer trips to fill prescriptions and big drugstore chains tighten their grip on the U.S. market. Grocery pharmacies are getting hit on several fronts, analysts and the companies say. They are too small to wrest competitive reimbursement rates on drugs, they aren’t connected to big medical networks or insurers, and they generally lack walk-in clinics and...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. If you have specific question about a plant/problem you are having, please remember to state the Growing Zone where you are located. This thread is non-political respite. No matter what, you won’t be flamed, and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the...

A pizza delivery driver shot three of four suspects who tried to rob him during a late-night delivery, police in North Carolina said. The man said he was delivering a pizza at an apartment complex in east Charlotte late Monday night when he was approached by four suspects who pointed what appeared to be an assault rifle at his head, according to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. The driver then pulled out his own pistol and fired at the suspects, causing them to flee the scene, CBS affiliate WBTV reported. WBTV News ✔ @WBTV_News #BREAKING UPDATE: Three people were shot during...

The cabernet sauvignon, enough to fill eight large tanker trucks, spilled at the Rodney Strong Vineyards in Healdsburg Wednesday after a door near the bottom of a large blending tank popped open, spilling all of the wine it was holding into a sanitary sewer system on the property, the Press Democrat reported. The wine spilled into a drainage ditch that feeds into Reiman Creek and eventually made its way to the Russian River. According to the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, which was notified of the accident on Wednesday, about 20% of the 97,112 gallons spilled were contained. Estimates showed...

Footage purporting to show a Chinese woman eating a whole bat at a fancy restaurant has gone viral as the country is ravaged by a new deadly virus believed to have come from the flying mammals. A separate trending video purports to show Cantonese-speaking diners preparing to eat soup made with the nocturnal animal. The new strain of coronavirus, which emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan last month, has killed at least 17 people, sickened more than 590 and caused the city of 11million to be in lockdown. The virus, which can cause pneumonia, is poorly understood. Scientists...

Mr. Peanut has passed away at the age of 104, Planters announced on Wednesday. "It is with heavy hearts that we confirm that Mr. Peanut has died at 104," the announcement post reads.

A man in South Wales was shut down by Facebook for appreciating a butcher's faggots and posting a review of it on the platform. “If you're not buying Thomas's Of Morriston the butchers on Morriston Cross' faggots on a Tuesday are you even a monkey?” wrote Paul Lynch, a 55-year-old resident of the Morriston area of Swansea, South Wales. While the comment posted by Lynch was merely a compliment that was intended to encourage the community residents to visit the butchers, Facebook misinterpreted the comment as a rather offensive one and banned his account stating that his post went against...

Snickers bigwigs just went nuts. On Thursday in Waco, Texas, confectioner Mars, Inc. unveiled the largest Snickers bar ever created. Tipping the scales at a gargantuan 4,700 pounds and measuring two feet high and 26 inches wide, the Guinness Book of World Records declared it a world champ. “This is incredibly impressive,” Guinesses judge Michael Empiric told Waco TV station KWKT. “Some of my favorite record categories are big food because it has to be edible and it is also an engineering feat, so to get a 5,000-pound bar of chocolate to stay together is really challenging.”

Ander Mendez and his friends were hoping they'd struck it rich when they came up with the idea of selling alcohol-infused gummy bears -- until they found themselves in the sights of sweet giant Haribo. Now, these three Spaniards say they're afraid of being shut down by the German confectionery king, which is famed for its vast array of jelly sweets and was founded 100 years ago in the western city of Bonn. In a not-so-sweetly worded legal letter, Haribo has accused their startup of infringing its trademarked little bear. But these graduates from the northern Spanish port city of...