Free Republic

Foods vie for best of fried title at State Fair of Texas 04:52 PM CDT on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 By ERIC AASEN / The Dallas Morning News eaasen@dallasnews.com Who will be crowned this year’s king or queen of fried fair goodness? Maybe it will be a cook who whips up something sweet, like the Fried Banana Split or Texas Fried Jelly Bellys or Fire & Ice, a deep-fried pineapple ring. Or something chocolate, like the Fried Chocolate Truffles or Chocolate-Covered Strawberry Waffle Balls or Deep Fried S’mores. Then again, it could be something savory, like Chicken Fried Bacon or...

Here is the question, in terms of both safety and taste. Can you cook or fry with salad dressing? I know you can marinate with some oil type salad dressings (alot of folks use italian salad dressing to marinate chicken, steaks and pork chops, etc). However, can you actually fry foods using say, creamy salad dressings? Like creamy italian or ranch style dressing? Or, also a weird but strange question, if you are eating something and pour creamy style dressing over it, can you put it into the fridge and reheat (probably via microwave) later on and eat it again,...

<p>Bangladesh police say a crocodile killed and ate a 25-year-old after he waded into a pond next to a shrine in an attempt to receive the animal’s blessing.</p> <p>Part of the shrine ritual involves bathing in the water with the crocodiles, but devotees are very rarely approached by the animals, according to Kabir.</p>

Health regulators have approved the use of ionizing radiation for fresh spinach and lettuce, saying the technique already approved for other foods can help control harmful bacteria and other pathogens. The Food and Drug Administration said on Thursday the radiation treatment also would make the leafy greens last longer and give them greater "shelf-life" for retailers and consumers. The approval comes two years after E. coli outbreaks linked to spinach and lettuce sold in grocery stores and served at various restaurants. Outbreaks of the dangerous bacteria sickened dozens of consumers and led some to be hospitalized. In severe cases, patients...

PHILADELPHIA — Childhood ear infections may not just put hearing at risk. Kids who get them may develop a strong affinity for fatty foods and could be predisposed to obesity, surveys now suggest. Researchers suspect that infections of the middle ear may alter the sense of taste by damaging a nerve that carries sensations from the tongue to the brain.

Calculated bioethanol yield per hectare. A study by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists found that sweet potatoes grown in Maryland and Alabama, and tropical cassava grown in Alabama, yielded between two to three times as much carbohydrate (starch, sucrose, glucose) for fuel ethanol production via fermentation as field corn grown in those states. Dr. Lew Ziska, a plant physiologist at the ARS Crop Systems and Global Change Laboratory in Beltsville, Md., and colleagues at Beltsville and at the ARS National Soil Dynamics Laboratory in Auburn, Ala., performed the study. The research is unique in comparing the root crops to...

What's for supper? I'm guessing the animal protein in the center of the plate tonight is one of these four-letter words: beef, lamb, pork, fowl, fish, veal or, on hunters' tables, deer. But is anybody serving goat? Some day soon you might. Goat is on its way to becoming a common menu option. Another red meat. Goat is beloved by Latino, Middle Eastern and Italian cooks but is not well known to most Americans. Those who haven't grown up with goat on the table may turn up their noses, imagining a smelly, scruffy animal, a lower-class member of barnyard society....

The FReeper Canteen Presents A most wondermous Seafood Cookin' Thread! A little something different for your summertime get togethers! Lets start off with a New England Clambake! Recipe from Chiff.com: 3 dozen steamer clams (more if you’d like) 3 dozen fresh mussels 6 live lobsters 18 small red or white potatoes 6 ears of corn (in the husk) 6 medium onions 3 lemons (cut into wedges) One or two sticks (quarter pound) of melted butter If you live near the beach some seaweed or rockweed 12 pieces of 18” x 36” cheesecloth 12 pieces of heavy duty aluminum foil...

I need advice in establishing a Celebrity chef or television chef ping list. There is an existing food ping list though I'm not sure how active it is. This would not be a place for the exchange of recipes though if that were to happen I wouldn't have an issue with it. The main purpose would be the diversion from more serious matters to discuss television food personalities and news of interest to "foodies": Rachel Ray, Anthony Bourdain, Bobby Flay, Mario Batali, Jacques Pépin, Paula Deen and so on.

Food Cited In Illnesses That Hit Track Team By GINA KOLATA and JASON STALLMAN BEIJING — Several members of the United States track team became ill at the team’s pre-Olympic training center in Dalian, about 300 miles east of Beijing, and food poisoning was the likely cause, according to a coach for three Olympians. “When we were in Dalian, a lot of guys got sick — five or six every day,” said John Cook, who coaches the runners Shalane Flanagan, Shannon Rowbury and Erin Donohue. United States Olympic officials, who had acknowledged concerns about food issues in China leading up...

Eating rats is the best way for rich and poor people to solve the global crisis of rising food prices, an Indian official said Wednesday as he unveiled his plan to put rodents on menus.

"For a long time, humans were pretty dumb, doing little but make 'the same very boring stone tools for almost 2 million years,' says Philipp Khaitovich of the Partner Institute for Computational Biology in Shanghai. Then, 150,000 years ago, our big brains suddenly got smart. We started innovating. We tried different materials. We started creating art and maybe even religion. To understand what caused the cognitive spurt, researchers examined chemical brain processes known to have changed in the past 200,000 years.

DENVER (CBS4) ― Hotels and restaurants in downtown Denver are planning to wine and dine guests in town for the Democratic National Convention with some politically inspired food and drink. Elway's at the Ritz Carlton, that hotel's bar and the Corner Office Restaurant at the Curtis Hotel are among the eateries and watering holes with some creative offerings. The bar at the Ritz Carlton has two special cocktails for DNC guests. The patriotic drink is red, white and blue and called "changing tide." The bar is also offering the Obama Granite Martini. "Guest walks up to the bar, they're going...

Companies throughout the food chain are changing the way they do business in response to soaring grain costs, and consumers are likely to bear the brunt in the form of rising food prices. Farmers are making the broadest cuts to their livestock herds in decades, meaning meat at the supermarket will likely cost more in coming years. Middlemen are trying to shorten the duration of supply contracts to 90 days from one year so they can pass on higher costs more quickly. And food brands are shrinking the contents of their packages, from ice-cream cartons to beverage containers. ...In another...

Texas style BBQ, for all to enjoy. Step by step pics included, start to finish.

and the poor Meowser just can’t get the weight off. I am practically starving him to death (well, to hear HIM tell it), yet he remains the Raja of Rotundity. He gobbles down the measly half-scoop of Iams I give him, then turns around and glares at Tiger, who gets more than a full scoop and yet remains svelte and fit. And then there is Jetta, who is bulimic and simply throws up her food every now and then, undigested and whole, like it just came out of the bag.

There is a Cantonese saying that the Chinese eat everything that flies, except aeroplanes; everything with four legs, except tables; and everything that swims, except submarines - and visitors to Beijing's fast-food market during the Olympic Games will be left in no doubt of that. A stroll among the food stalls of Wangfujing Snack Street, not far from Tiananmen Square, reveals delicacies of every conceivable kind. Laid out in trays and boiling in cauldrons are everything from goat lungs with red peppers to scorpion brochettes, seahorses on skewers, iguana tails, dung beetles and silk worms on a stick, by way...

So what did the high rollers get for their money Thursday night after ponying up $28,500 each for dinner with Barack Obama? The Thrash dinner was part two of Thursday's fundraising blitz that garnered $1.6 million for Democratic coffers. An afternoon reception with Obama at Ginni and Richard Mithoff's drew more than 250 who paid either $1,000 or $2,300, the larger figure earning a photo with Obama.

Want to understand a foreign culture? Check out their cuisine. Few things are simple about international relations. The world's most studied state-to-state interactions are the result of decades, if not centuries, of political decision-making that labels some states allies and others enemies. But international policy analyst Chris Fair sees a simpler way to understand why some countries are the way they are: the food they eat. Her new book, "Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States: A Dinner Party Approach to International Relations," Fair argues that a nation's cuisine is the perfect lens to view what its...

THE latest round of global agricultural trade negotiations that began seven years ago in Doha, Qatar, collapsed in acrimony this week in Geneva. While India and China are getting the blame for refusing to reduce import tariffs and farm subsidies, you can assume that trade officials in Europe and the United States are breathing a sigh of relief that they aren’t going to have to limit their own protectionism... --snip-- First, they are transparent election-cycle harvests for farm-state politicians, who have small constituencies but exercise outsized national political clout. Second, because such special-interest legislation wins little broad public support, its...

New Yorkers have been in the throes of sticker shock since this spring when the Big Apple became the first city in the country to implement a law forcing chain restaurants to post the calorie count of each food in the same size and font as the price. Restaurants have not exhausted their legal challenges, but the city will start fining violators up to $2,000 beginning Friday, say officials with the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. While some sit-down chains and fast-food eateries are waiting until the last minute, coffee shops like Starbucks — home of the 470...

SHELBYVILLE, Tenn. -- Some workers at a local plant will no longer to be able to take their Labor Day holiday because of religious reasons. Workers at the Tyson Foods poultry processing plant in Shelbyville will no longer have a paid day off on Labor Day but will instead be granted the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr. According to a news release from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, a new five-year contract at the plant included the change to accommodate Muslim workers at the plant. Tyson's director of media relations Gary Mickelson said the contract includes eight paid holidays...

Russia plans to form a state grain trading company to control up to half of the country’s cereal exports, intensifying fears that Moscow wants to use food exports as a diplomatic weapon in the same way as Gazprom has manipulated natural gas sales. The move by Moscow, the world’s fifth-biggest exporter of cereals, has been sharply criticised by US agriculture diplomats as a “giant step back” to the Soviet era. The decision to control food exports is the latest sign of how soaring food prices are reshaping the agriculture industry. The recreation of Soviet-style state trading will aggravate anxieties of...

The salmonella strain linked to a nationwide outbreak has been found in irrigation water and a serrano pepper at a Mexican farm, federal health officials said Wednesday. "We have a smoking gun, it appears," said Dr. Lonnie King who directs the center for foodborne illnesses at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

JERSEY CITY, NJ - A new study has revealed startling information concerning one of America's favorite ethnic foods. In a rare collaboration of nutritionists and criminologists, researchers at Howyflyl University have uncovered a link between certain types of pasta and violent deaths. Using data going back to the early 20th century, the study concludes that eating spaghetti greatly increases your risk of being whacked by the mob...

KUCHING: A misunderstanding over a small pet dog saw three stallholders attacked by a group of youths, resulting in one of the victims losing a part of his finger and sustaining a broken arm on Friday night. Prior to the 9.30pm incident at a parking lot in Kota Sentosa, where a number of foodstalls operate, a young couple and a friend went to a stall selling fried kuey teow accompanied by their small pet dog. The stall was operated by a 35-year-old man and assisted by his ‘mentally-challenged’ younger brother who is also in his 30s. Although it was unclear...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People infected with parasitic worms may be much more susceptible to the AIDS virus, according to a study published on Tuesday that may help explain why HIV has hit sub-Saharan Africa particularly hard.

DAVAO, Philippines (AFP) - A farmer has been detained by southern Philippines police after he confessed to shooting and eating one of the world's largest and rarest eagles, wildlife officials told AFP on Friday...

How an organic movement born in Berkeley exemplifies conservative values ALICE WATERS SEEMS at first like an unlikely conservative. A veteran of Berkeley's Free Speech Movement who once cooked a $25,000-a-seat fund-raising dinner for Bill Clinton, she eagerly compares her campaign for "edible schoolyards" - where children grow, prepare, and eat fresh produce - with John F. Kennedy's attempt to improve physical fitness through mandatory exercise. Her dream of organic, locally and sustainably produced food in every school cafeteria, class credit for lunch hour, and required gardening time and cooking classes is as utopian as they come. The name she...

ToughTimes, Tough Decisions (MATURE CONTENT) BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) - During these tough economic times, many people are struggling to make ends meet. The city's housing market is in a slump, gas and food prices are rising, and some say it's either sink or swim. Now, some women are going to great lengths to make some extra cash right in Baton Rouge. It's a fantasy, an escape for some attempting to close off the outside world. However, for the women inside who are barely clothed and strapped into high heels, exotic dancing can be a way to survive. "All of...

China's devastating pollution problems aren't just taking a toll on China -- they're also affecting the rest of the world, says New Republic. For example: Acid rain partly caused by Chinese sulfur emissions, pours down on Japan and South Korea. On some days, one-third of California's background air pollution -- consisting of dust, sulfur and trace metals -- can be traced back to China. Some 80 percent of the East China Sea, one of the world's largest fisheries, has become toxic, due to sewage dumps from the mainland. Even if the Chinese government does spruce up Beijing in time for...

Family wins $40,000 over food tainted with urine by North Platte Bulletin Staff - 7/14/2008 A police officer from Sidney and his family won $40,000 from a restaurant that served them food tainted with an employee’s spit and urine. Officer Keith Andrew and his wife said in the lawsuit that a Taco Bell employee urinated and spit in food served to them and their children in October 2005. The owner of the restaurant is North Platte’s Mid-Plains Food and Lodging, owner of a KFC and Taco Bell here too. The jury sided with the Andrews July 11. In the lawsuit,...

AMSTERDAM: World Bank president Robert Zoellick said on Saturday that he expected food prices to remain above 2004 levels until at least 2012 and energy prices would also remain high and volatile. He repeated that with food and fuel prices in a "danger zone" there was a need for $10 billion to provide food and cash handouts for the world's poorest. Soaring oil and food prices have fuelled inflation across the globe at the same time as economies slow, posing a sharp dilemma for policymakers. Earlier this week, leaders of the Group of Eight rich nations in Japan agreed on...

This may be my 12 launch in ten years, all new crew. We have about 50 video recipes by some really great chefs, we have almost 300 more to upload over the next month and we are shooting new content. If you are a foodie who would like to rant and rave let me know, seeking fun bloggers.

A girl clutches the milk she received from a humanitarian assistance drop performed by Iraqi police in the Zuwarijat district of al Kut, Iraq, July 3. Photo by Sgt. Daniel West. FORWARD OPERATING BASE DELTA — Iraqi Police distributed bulk food products to citizens of the Zuwarijat district of al Kut as part of an outreach program to increase confidence in Iraqi Security Forces July 3. Supplies distributed at the event included rice, packets of noodles, canned goods and shelf-stable milk.“The overall purpose of the humanitarian aid drop is to show that IPs are improving relationships with the community by...

The most recent outbreak of salmonella poisoning of produce caused much alarm across the country and cost American tomato growers millions in lost revenue. As of this writing, over 900 salmonella cases have been diagnosed in 40 states. While American farmers struggled as the CDC did their best to pin the tainted tomatoes on them, their crops rotted on docks and in warehouses as consumers refused to buy potentially contaminated goods. For those of us in Arkansas, it was a relief when our famous Bradley County pink tomatoes were cleared; harvesting had not begun when the outbreak occurred.

Leaders of the G-8 nations are gathered this week in Toyako, Japan, to root out the culprits in a food crisis that has moved hundreds of millions from subsistence to starvation. They need look no further than an old group photo. The G-8 countries' interventions have distorted global agricultural markets to the paralysis point. Politicians legislate price supports to enrich farm voters. Lobbies extort tariffs to block cheap food imports and subsidies to underwrite food exports at prices that destroy competitors in poor countries. Conservationists have agitated to set aside productive land and pay farmers not to grow. And now...

Gordon Brown and his fellow world leaders have sparked outrage after it was disclosed they enjoyed a six-course lunch followed by an eight-course dinner at the G8 summit where the global food crisis tops the agenda. The Prime Minister was served 24 different dishes during his first day at the summit – just hours after urging the world to reduce the "unnecessary demand" for food and calling on British families to cut back on their wasteful use of food. Mr Brown and his wife Sarah were among 15 guests at the "blessings of the earth and the sea social dinner"....

Nutritionist and author Jonny Bowden has created several lists of healthful foods people should be eating but aren’t. But some of his favorites, like purslane, guava and goji berries, aren’t always available at regular grocery stores. I asked Dr. Bowden, author of “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth,” to update his list with some favorite foods that are easy to find but don’t always find their way into our shopping carts. Here’s his advice. Beets: Think of beets as red spinach, Dr. Bowden said, because they are a rich source of folate as well as natural red pigments that may...

The thrust of the article, however, is not to highlight the folly of the leftist policies of mandating the use of biofuels, it is of course, to bash the Bush Administration. "The daily said the report was finished in April but was not published to avoid embarrassing the US government, which has claimed plant-derived fuels have pushed up prices by only three percent." Last time I checked, Bush is not in the Enviro-kook camp, so it’s not like he’s trying to cover for Barack Obama, Al Gore, and their minions, who want to use more biofuels as an alternative to...

LAREDO – Day after day, Mexican trucks line up as far as the eye can see for entry to the U.S. at the World Trade Bridge, carrying everything from raw tomatoes, broccoli and fresh basil to frozen seafood. They also bring in salmonella, listeria, restricted pesticides and other food poisons. Customs and Border Protection officers take less than a minute per truck to determine which products enter the U.S. and find their way into grocery stores and restaurants across North Texas

Iraq plans to file suit in a U.S. court against the United Nations for alleged corruption in the oil-for-food program, Iraqi legal sources said Friday. The United Nations established the program in 1995 to allow Iraq to sell oil to global markets in exchange for food and humanitarian supplies without generating revenue to rebuild the Iraqi military in the wake of the Persian Gulf War. The program ended shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, when the Coalition Provisional Authority assumed responsibility for humanitarian functions. An investigation by the congressional investigative body the Government Accountability Office found loopholes in the...

Okay, I'm waiting for Republicans to go on the attack here. If Democrats hold up drilling, aren't we then, in theory, using up more of the world's existing supplies? When is the GOP going to get clever here? This is such an easy position to take. By not drilling, we are using more of our foreign neighbor's supplies, an argument the Dems have used against us for decades. Also, ethanol taps into our food supply. If we use our food to make fuel, then we have less food to feed the poor. That's downright "evil"! Another dacades old Dem argument....

Remember, when you are a Democrat, you leave your individual rights and preferences at the door. You are now a cog in the great machine. You will comply with approved party policy, or you will be branded a heretic and will become fodder for a Keith Olbermann rant. Per the Party Grand Poobahs, the fun at the Democrat Convention will be supplemented with some proper dietary rules. Warning to Southern delegates to the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver this August: it will be a no-fry zone. As part of the effort to make the August 25-28 convention the...

Democratic convention to be no-fry zone By Scott Shepard Cox News Service Article Last Updated: 06/26/2008 08:45:08 PM MDT DENVER — Warning to Southern delegates to the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver this August: it will be a no-fry zone. As part of the effort to make the August 25-28 convention the greenest ever, the Democrats' guidelines for food catering include one that strikes at the heart of Southern cuisine: no fried food. No fried chicken. No fried catfish. No fried green tomatoes. No fried okra. No fried anything.

First it was a proposed ban on plastic bags. Now, a member of the influential Madison Plan Commission wants to ban the restaurant drive-through -- or at least restrict the ubiquitous symbol of America's auto-centric lifestyle.

Duane Kraemer approaches with pride the Angus bull eating hay behind a fence at Texas A&M University. As the veterinary surgeon draws near, the bull snorts and paws the ground. Healthy as he looks, many Americans would not want to see this bull become steak on their plate. His name, “86 squared”, hints at his origins as the clone of a bull called 86. The US Food and Drug Administration set off a debate across the food industry when it ruled in January that clones of cattle, pigs and goats were safe to eat. Since then the US Department of...

Japan is taking fighting obesity to the extreme. CNN's Kyung Lah reports.

Dodge City — Earlier this month, more than a hundred thousand South Koreans demonstrated against newly elected president Lee Myung-bak as his entire cabinet offered to resign. At the root of this massive protest was not a declaration of war against North Korea, a boycott of the Chinese summer Olympics, or even escalating oil prices. It was a treaty allowing U.S. beef imports. Beef production accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions than automobiles. Its insatiable demand for feed grains has raised world food prices to levels beyond the reach of the world’s hungry and the relief agencies that support them....

Today, at the request of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), U.S. Marshals seized various animal food products stored under unsanitary conditions at the PETCO Animal Supplies Distribution Center located in Joliet, Ill., pursuant to a warrant issued by the United States District Court in Chicago. U.S. Marshals seized all FDA-regulated animal food susceptible to rodent and pest contamination. The seized products violate the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act because it was alleged in a case filed by the United States Attorney that they were being held under unsanitary conditions. (The Act uses the term "insanitary" to describe...