Meet The Team / Erich Kuersten

Man, I can't believe I let a whole decade of ambivalence separate me from what is now proving to be both my savior and my downfall, the nitrous fuel for the racecar that is myself... red bull. They're small, they're expensive, but if I drink more than two of them in the same afternoon, I'll be up for the next 24 hours.

A careful examination of the labels will show you that Red Bull and most of its contemporaries, such as Monster and Rock Star, operate on the same ingredients: Taurine, b complex vitamins, caffeine. But unlike, say, Rock Star, Red Bull packs a little miracle worker called Glucuronolactone, this is the stuff that should be in the tap water instead of flouride, if ya ask me. It's supposed to give you a feeling of well-being. Brother, you had me at hello.

Whether of not you live in New York City you will find much to learn, share and enjoy from a recently begun food blog called Not Eating Out in New York , by local writer Catharine Erway. In addition to writing on film and other topics, Erway has been spending her time since graduating Emerson college a few years ago working in various administrative jobs and, mainly, cooking. "The blog idea came to me when eating in some restaurant one day and realizing, you have no control over what they're putting in your food," she told me recently in Union Square Park . "They may say the food is organic, but you have no guarantee unless you follow the cook around the kitchen."

In the US, part of our collective weight problem may be that we are on the consumerist treadmill and can't slow down. If something's really good we make an "mmmmm" sound and then we chow down and drift off to thinking about what we will do later. We watch too much TV, talk on the cell phone incessantly as we rush from place to place, so we forget how to lose ourselves in the sensation of eating, from the first bite through to the last, each lifting of the fork part of the poetry, even the dab of a napkin becomes transcendental if done with one's full attention.

Maybe I'm just speaking for myself here. Lately I've taken a vow of no TV and no electric lights in my apartment after work, and it's amazing how much sharper my senses are, eating by candlelight without all the distractions.

Of course the trend of completely dark restaurants is not exactly new, but it seems to me it's still yet to catch on in the US the way it has in Germany, Canada and London. But I say it's time we here in the US began to slow ourselves down a little bit, stop to smell the roses, taste the wine, unplug the TV, and relax... we may not need dark restaurants if we can darken our own living rooms.

Now that McDonald's is displaying proud banners throughout NYC that they have "iced coffee!" you can be sure that the once unusual and eccentric beverage is a trend that's exceeded its critical mass. Isn't Mickey D's the barometer of when trends reach the point where they become totally and forever uncool? In the last few years-in New York City at least-iced coffee was the domain of Starbucks and the assorted bagel shops, bakeries and internet/bookstore boutiques. The perfect blend of thirst quench and caffeine jolt, the iced coffee gives you a lift, then makes your tongue shrink up from dehydration as it pulls all the available moisture out of your body to assist in its chemical conversions within your body, but it does NOT make you all gaseous like soda pop might, so you can walk down the street, jaw set in grim determination, and suck that thing down and never make one illusion-of-togetherness shattering "noise."

No matter who you are, where you're from, or what your taste, a salt shaker lives on your table, your stovetop, or your counter. Perhaps all three. Salt is cheap and readily available. Hardly an item exists in your pantry that doesn't list it as an ingredient.

It's chemical name is "sodium chloride." Common table salt is produced by flooding salt deposits with water. The brine which results is then evaporated and the crystals are refined. Kosher salt is made similarly, though the brine is raked continually during evaporation. Sea salt is (obviously) evaporated from sea water. Certain varieties contain chemical additives that prevent clumping, allowing for free flow from shaker to your steak; iodine may also be added to prevent hypothyroidism in consumers. All salts are nutritionally equivalent, regardless of what type you decide to use.