"IcedCoffee" news and stories

Cream of tomato soup. Photo: YumSugar.

Each Thursday, we round up a selection of scrumptious links from our friends over at YumSugar. Here's what they've got cooking this week:

Cheap, ripe, red tomatoes are prime for a homemade bowl of Cream of Tomato Soup.

Wolfgang Puck is getting into the iced coffee biz.

Come Party With Me whips up a pumpkin carving menu, featuring cheddar cheese balls, jalapeno corn muffins and more.

Quiz time: Can you look at a collection of root vegetable pictures and name them all?

Slime Rickey mixes grapes, lime, club soda and gin for a boozy beverage.

Applejack is a concentrated hard cider.

Guy Fieri: Love him or leave him?

Erin Meister trains baristas for North Carolina-based Counter Culture Coffee and sporadically maintains the blog Meet the Press Pot from her home in New York City. This is the third in a series of tips for the caffeine-addicted.

Since Isiticedcoffeeweather.com has finally (finally!) started answering in the affirmative, I think it's time you and I get chilly up in here. Of the numerous ways to make delicious iced coffee, my favorite is the popular Japanese style introduced to me by my colleagues and widely praised among its devotees: It's easy, adaptable and instantly gratifying -- like a beachside hot dog.

There are several different tools you can use to whip up a batch of summer's precious caffeinated lifeblood, depending on how much iced joe you require: a large Chemex will do the trick for the recipe below, but a cone coffee dripper positioned over a pitcher or cup (as at right) is perfect for smaller outputs.

Directions after the jump.

As we've noted, it's iced coffee time, folks. While we can all agree that the best version is that which is freshly brewed, sometimes you've got to make do with what can be grabbed out of the convenience store fridge. Starbucks' Frappuccino is a perennial favorite, and we're fans of their Doubleshot Energy Drink (especially the new Cinnamon Dulce flavor) when caffeine alone isn't quite enough.

Behold, however, a challenge to Starbucks supremacy from Pom Iced Coffee. Far from an unpleasant mix of joe and pomegranate juice (though it does feature a touch of the antioxidant-laced fruit extract), this is one smooth-blended iced coffee drink. The cafe au lait version is delightful, but it is the chocolate that may soon boast the title of best bottled iced coffee, with an addiction-inspiring taste reminiscent of a blend of Yoo-Hoo and chocolate Nestle Quik.

The only problem with this cooling nectar? It's only available at select stores and Whole Foods in the Northeast (though bottles have been spied at 99-cent stores on the west coast). If anything were to make a convenience store crawl or a trip to a pricey specialty grocer worth it, it is Pom Chocolate Iced Coffee. So stock up.

Note: Slashfood does not accept compensation of any sort in exchange for reviews.

You know how as a kid you used to stand peering out the door wondering whether or not to wear a coat, and then your mom would shout that yes, you definitely need to wear a coat, because it's brisk out there. But then you'd get outside and it was too hot, so you wrapped the coat around your waist where it was this hateful bulky thing and you wished you could have had some correct source of information that was not your mother.

Well, now we have the Internet, which is always right. Case in point: Is It Iced Coffee Weather? Demanding and capricious at once, it's an ether-mom for coffee-addicted adults. Yesterday we typed in our ZIP code and were relieved to see that yes, yes it is iced coffee weather! No more standing in the Dunkin' Donuts line like a fool, trying to figure it out! Today, however, the Web Site of Power says "no." But we want iced coffee! Who is in charge of this thing? There is no "about" button, and no contact info. Who are you, iced coffee diva?!

Is it iced coffee weather in Alaska? Chicago? Florida? Why not in 90210, whose Starbucks-slurping residents are surely enraged by that fact? We want an authoritative chart, but it's not like we're, uh, bloggers -- we can't sit around all day typing numbers into a Web site. So report back: Visit the site and for the love of all that is holy please take our poll and hit the comments to tell us the answer to this burning question.

These days, product placement (especially when it comes to food) is a fact of life. We all know that when one of our favorite television characters is holding a Coke or Pepsi product in an episode of their show, the company paid big bucks to get it there. Same goes for any mention of Kraft cheese, Cheerios cereal or Tropicana orange juice. We've come to expect this from scripted and reality TV shows (think about all the products on Big Brother or even Jon and Kate Plus Eight).

You'd like to think that the news is incorruptible, miles away from the allure of food companies offering pay for placement. Apparently, journalistic standards are a little looser in Las Vegas, where at Fox affiliate, KVVU, morning anchors now display plastic cups of McDonald's iced coffee on the podium, where a station-branded coffee mug used to sit. They hardly ever touch these cups, and the printed-on labels are angled for best viewing. The station readily admits that it's a sponsored promotion and defends the practice by saying that they cups don't come out until they start airing the lighter morning news at 7 a.m.

What do you think? Is it appropriate for food companies to get product placement on the news?

[via New York Times]

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