Would you sit all night in a parking lot to get free combo meals?

That's what over 100 people did in Phoenix yesterday. They stayed overnight in the parking lot of Chick-fil-A to get 52 free combo meals. The doors opened at 6:30am and the customers (who brought along tents and sleeping bags and TVs so they'd be at home in the parking lot) walked through the door for their free meals. Reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where Jerry dated the woman who worked in the soup kitchen and he was amazed that people would eat soup all day, even in the morning.

Wait a second, 100 people got 52 free combo meals each? Is that what the article says? Yikes.

[via The Obscure Store & Reading Room]

Only a few days after we were told that it was once again safe to eat spinach, the FDA issued a recall on lettuce from the Salinas-based Nunes Co. The recall only applies to lettuce purchased from October 3-6 in seven western states: Oregon, Idaho, Montana,California, Nevada, Washington and Arizona, and "the recalled lettuce was packaged as "Green Leaf 24 Count, waxed carton," and "Green Leaf 18 Count, cellophane sleeve, returnable carton." Packaging is stamped with lot code 6SL0024."

The reason that the lettuce was recalled was due to a concern over a possibly E.coli contamination in the water supply to the fields, although no E.coli has been found in any of the lettuce and no people have reported illness. The owner of the family-run company says that they have strict safety protocols, which were strengthened when the "spinach scare" broke out.

At this point, all lettuce covered by the recall should be off shelves, but it could be a good idea to check the bags in your fridge just in case.

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I was talking to tea-dom's own Emily Thomas about how I loved the weird iced tea she'd made, and to explain the difference between it and mere Snapple. Emily did her impression of Dolly Parton as Truvy Jones in Steel Magnolias exclaiming, "Sweet tea! It's the house wine of the South!"  I shrank back in horror, but then realizing her Dolly impression was over, made a gesture for her to please continue.

"When, I look back on any given memory of my childhood in Florence, South Carolina ," she began, "my mother always seems to appear out of nowhere to refill all of our glasses with sweet iced tea. We drank it more than we drank water.

"This did not seem strange to me until I moved to New York. I ordered sweet tea in a restaurant and the waitress gave me a funny look and said, 'We don't have sweet tea. We have tea and we have sugar.'

Chef Kazuki "Kaz" Yamamoto is on the cutting edge of cuisine. And by "cutting edge," what I mean is that he cooks rare, occasionally immoral, and sometimes outright illegal, foods for those who are willing to pay for them. Based out of Arizona, he travels to homes of rich and/or famous clients and plies them with previously untasted delicacies from his traveling "restaurant, known as "Le Menu". Because his client list includes government officials and gastronomes alike, Yamamoto says he has had few problems in the past obtaining locations, including restaurants, to hold his dinners. When Stephen Lemons, the Phoenix New Times food critic joined in a dinner, he sampled foods such as Saguaro cactus salad, made from the legally protected succulent; tenderloin of Bichon Frise, endangered pygmy owl, roasted and eaten whole, with entrails and bones intact; and nigiri-style seal sushi.

Other items that Yamamoto is famed for include chimpanzee stew (protected), grilled intestines of brown bear (poached from Yosemite), rhino genitals, gila monster, giraffe tongue, monkey tartare and a dozen variations on penguin meat.

AriZona Beverage Co., which produces a line of popular iced teas, is experimenting with some new advertising techniques. The company already uses bright, eye-catching labels and graphics and is now experimenting with adding scent to its packaging. AriZona is working on embedding the smell of its products inside the cap of its bottles, but other companies are using other technologies to appeal to consumers, like scented inks. The Washington Post reports that the sales industry is frantically trying to come up with new ways to lure shoppers into trying their products, as television ads are shown to be increasingly less effective.