As a self-professed beer geek, I've always appreciated the link between chocolate and beer. I've been known to munch on a bit of good dark chocolate whilst enjoying a cold flute of Lindemans Framboise, and there's nothing quite like a bottle of Young's Luxury Double Chocolate Stout. Until yesterday I had no idea the connection between two of life's greatest gustatory pleasures goes back to 1100 B.C. (N.B., that's Before Christ not Before Chocolate, though given what I learned it could very well stand for Before Chocolate.)

National Geographic News reports that researchers believe chocolate was accidentally discovered 3,000 years ago by Central American Indians brewing beer from the pulp of cacao seedpods. Around 1100 B.C. ancient brewers used the cacao pods to make their beer. The pod pulp was used to make the beer and the seeds were then discarded. Some 300 years later people began to use the fermented seeds to make a hot beverage, a distant relative to today's hot cocoa. Chocolate itself continues to be made from fermented cacao pods.

Give an ancient Central American the sludge left over from brewing and what do you get: chocolate. Give a Brit a similar goo and you wind up with Marmite. Perhaps I'm being a bit unfair, after all the Central Americans were making beer since 1100 B.C.

About five years ago my good friend Edward J. O'Halloran told me about Tayto, an Irish brand of crisps, or potato chips, as we call them here in the States. This was long before I attained my current status as an international junk-food maven. Since then I've noshed on treats ranging from downright fishy to bland beyond belief. Sadly I've never tried Tayto, or any other type of Irish crisps, for that matter. All of which brings me to the subject of this St. Patrick's Day dispatch: a survey of Tayto and some other crisps that I purchased in the Irish enclave of Woodside, Queens, yesterday. As a bona fide beer geek, I'm a wee bit ashamed to admit that this tasting was done with bottles of Guinness that did not have the famous widget; be advised your results may vary. Slàinte!!

Since they're so in line with my affinity for fishy flavored junk food, let's start with Tayto Prawn Cocktail Flavour Crisps. While there's nothing wrong with this crisp as far as tastiness and crunchiness, I detected not even the faintest hint of prawn. I suspect that in Ireland "Prawn Cocktail Flavour" has as much to do with seafood as "cheese food product" has to do with dairy farms on this side of the pond. This suspicion is borne out by the fact that on the ingredients, prawn cocktail flavor is composed of a dozen subingredients, including MSG and saccharin. It's a craveable crisp that goes well with the Guinness, but I can't help feeling that the folks at Tayto Castle let me down by not giving me my fix of fish flavor.

I never munch on pickled onions, save for when I'm drinking a Gibson, but I hear they're a renowned delicacy in the United Kingdom, so next up is Tayto Pickled Onion Flavour Crisps. These little guys are really quite good and they certainly taste like pickled onion. In fact, they're so addictive I'm struggling not to finish the whole bag! Now if only I had a Gibson to sip with them instead of this bloody Guinness. Or are cocktails and potato chips déclassé? The one down side of these crisps is that I now have quite the case of onion breath. That aside, Mr. Tayto and company have done right by the global snacking community.

I've just passed the halfway mark on my first bottle of Guinness and I'm eager to try yet another snack oddity from the folks at Tayto, Roast Chicken Flavor Crisps. Yeah, you heard right. Seems that Koreans aren't the only ones out there trying to make junk food taste like chicken. Tayto's stab at poultry-flavored potato chips doesn't taste terribly much like chicken either. This is the worst of the Tayto products I've tasted so far. Perhaps it's because what are supposed to be chicken-flavored crisps are described as suitable for vegetarians on the package. I'll stick to chicken cracklings.

I have no idea what Marmite tastes like, but from what I hear, you either love it or you hate it. Whatever the opinion may be, what Marmite is is a supposedly nutritious British foodstuff that is made from the yeast residue from the beer-making process. It is often used as a spread on toast.

Well, just in time to prepare for St. Patrick's Day...a little Irish love for Marmite from Guinness Beer (another love it or hate it thing -- personally, i can't stand Guinness)! Marmite will use the yeast residue from making Guinness to make a limited run of about 300,000 jars of Marmite. Apparently, the stuff was available in the UK as of February 19, 2007.

[via: Cool Hunting]

With a new little niece around, I am becoming more and more aware of what little babies and toddlers eat. Cheerios and goldfish crackers always seem to the be the snack of choice, and dinner-time foods are always finger-foods like chicken nuggets and peas. However, kiddies around the world don't eat the same way. Heck, growing up in a Korean household, I'm quite sure I was wrapping up little balls of rice in nori and spilling soy sauce all over myself. If you've ever wondered what a two-year-old in South Africa is eating, check out this list:

• Japanese toddlers may not be eating sushi, but they do lunch on egg-flavored rice with broiled fish or seafood and miso soup with tofu. It's no wonder that Japan has the longest average lifespan, with the types of foods that are introduced into the diets as such a young age.
• In South Africa, kiddies eat toast thats been spread with a touch of Marmite, a concentrated yeast spread that is a by-product of the beer brewing process.
• If it's Marmite in South Africa, it's Vegemite in Australia, spread on Ryvita crackers
• Danish and Swedish kids eat meatballs and lots of other meat and potatoes. Sweden has the world's highest consumption of ketchup, which kids put on to disguise anything that looks healthy.
• In India, children eat khidchi, a spicy rice and lentils porridge.
• They even list kids in Korea! Korean kids eat lots of kimchi, which is probably how they build up such a tasty tolerance for spicy foods. They also eat gim-bahp and bibimbahp.

 

The love-it-or-hate-it spreadable yeast extract, Marmite, has been unchanged for over a century. The thick brown spread is made from a byproduct of the beer brewing process and is a pantry staple for the Brits who love it. But Marmite is getting a makeover. The product has always been packaged in glass jars but the makers of Marmite have been developing a new, squeezable version over the past five years. Packaged in a plastic squeeze bottle, the reformulated Marmite will be slightly thinner in consistency than the jarred version is, but company representatives insist that the flavor will be the same. The new bottle is scheduled to hit Sainsbury shelves tomorrow. The smallest glass jar size will be phased out.