It’s been quite awhile since I’ve posted something (anything!) on my blog.
I’ve got excuses! Lots of them.
* I’ve been busy with my work blog – Everything Eggs.
* I had to develop recipes to teach a couple of Afternoon Tea classes – one at Thyme to Cook in Guelph and the other at Household China and Gifts in Waterloo.
Triangle- shaped herb-crusted egg salad sandwiches pair perfectly with a cup of tea!
* I’ve been doing some recipe development and food writing for Roomplanners‘ e-zine.
Grocery shopping is not the highlight of the week for most people. Usually it’s just thought of as a chore, something you have to do if you want to put food on the table – without ordering in!
But what if, while you were picking peppers and bagging broccoli at your local grocery store, Michael Bublé tunes were being piped over the sound system? If you’re a Bublé fan like me, that would definitely help make the shopping excursion more pleasant.
Then, what if you saw the velvet-voiced Canadian crooner actually singing in the grocery store, say in Aisle 8, sitting above the shelves of pickles? Well, that would be quite lovely, but possibly a bit weird, although I have to admit I’d much prefer hearing him belting out tunes while I’m filling my cart with milk and eggs rather than the ‘good things grow in Ontario‘ guy (even though I’m a huge fan of Foodland Ontario and always try to buy locally-produced, seasonal foods!).
Since it’s highly unlikely Bublé is coming to a store near me or you anytime soon, his new video – Haven’t Met You Yet from his latest album Crazy Love – will have to suffice. It will also help explain what you just read!
Enjoy!
The Ig Nobel Prizes were handed out today. These awards are for “achievements that first make people laugh, then make them think”.
There were a few food and drink-related achievements among the winners:
* The winners in the Veterinary Medicine category were Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University (UK). Their research showed that cows who have names give more milk than cows that don’t have names!
* The Peace Prize went to Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl of the University of Bern (Switzerland) for determining whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle. (The answer? Empties are sturdier than full bottles, you really don’t want to be hit on the head with either because both can fracture your skull!)
* Javier Morales, Miguel Apátiga and Victor M. Castaño of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México won the Chemistry Prize for creating diamonds from liquid. Tequila, to be specific!
* The Biology Prize was awarded to Fumiaki Taguchi, Song Guofu and Zhang Guanglei of Kitasato University Graduate School of Medical Sciences (Japan) for demonstrating that bacteria extracted from panda feces can reduce the amount of kitchen garbage by more than 90%.
As for non-food related research, these were my favourites:
I’m trying to choose paint colours for a home reno project, but I seem to have worked up an appetite and it’s proving rather difficult to focus on the subtle differences between french vanilla and vichyssoise……mayonnaise and pale celery……mixed fruit and perky peach……hot spice and tangy orange tangerine…….and summer harvest and butter rum. (And if you liked those Benjamin Moore paint colour names, believe me, I could go on citing lots more colours named after food! Whoever is in charge of naming paints over there must like to eat!)
Now really. Who wouldn’t be hungry looking at colour chips like these?
Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go make dinner……
Wendi Hiebert 