"Sara Bonisteel" news and stories

When new bloggers join the Slashfood team, we like to make sure they get a proper introduction to our readers. Meet Sara Bonisteel.

Do you have a personal blog?
I tweet. Or is it Tweet with a capital T? I never could get a straight answer out of the AP Stylebook.

What is your day job, or rather, what do you do when you're not blogging?
I am an editor at AOL Food.

Make a run for the cupcake?

Taco Bell is test marketing cupcakes and smoothies in California, the Orange County Register reports.

Red velvet cupcakes, smoothies and "Wendy's-inspired shakes" were found by the Fast Food Maven on Wednesday. The paper's Fast Food Maven uncovered the sweets and drinks at two California locations -- Buena Park and Tustin.

But don't go looking for these mystery desserts at your local Taco Bell outpost quite yet -- they may not even make it to the menu nationally. "The company doesn't comment on products in development," Rob Poetsch, a spokesman for Taco Bell, told Slashfood on Friday.

So, are they any good?

Death, like taxes, is inevitable, but it's always sad when you hear of the passing of an old friend. The food world has been dealt a handful of blows in recent weeks with the deaths of some folks who helped to make the nation a tastier place.

At AOL Food we wrote today of the death of Milton Parker, the owner of New York's landmark Carnegie Deli. He was not alone.

New Yorkers who make their way to the Union Square Greenmarket often saw Joe Ades peeling carrots on the northwest corner of the square with the $5 peeler he peddled for years. Ades died on Sunday at age 75. "He was very excited about carrots," a woman who works on the square told the New York Times.

In California, Ozzie Osborne was passionate about soda, shakes and sandwiches. The longtime soda jerk who ran Ozzie's Soda Fountain in Berkeley passed away on Jan. 29. "He loved to tease people in a way that made them feel good about themselves," a patron told the San Francisco Chronicle.

In Robert Kolb's case, it was the product that made you feel good. The last of four generations of a Bay City, Mich., brewing family died on Jan. 28. Though Kolb Bros. Brewing Co. closed in 1936, Kolb started a beer distributor company that was renowned for delivering Buckeye beer until Miller bought the brand in 1972, putting the Kolb company out of business.

"From then on," Kolb's son-in-law told the Bay City Times, "he was a Budweiser man."

Coke Classic has left the building.

Nearly 25 years after Coca-Cola added "Classic" to its original formula in order to differentiate it from the short-lived New Coke, the company has admitted defeat.

Company officials confirmed Friday that they're phasing out the Classic tag from American cans and bottles this year to streamline global branding, finally putting to rest the New Coke fiasco of the mid-'80s.

"It felt like the right time," Scott Williamson, a spokesman for Coke, told Slashfood on Monday.

Coke fans surely remember the spring of 1985, when the company shelved Dr. John S. Pemberton's original 1886 Coca-Cola recipe for a formula that performed better in taste tests and tasted, as I recall, a great deal like its chief competitor Pepsi, which naturally caused a furor among the soft drink's legion of fans.

"In the real world, they had a deep emotional attachment to the original, and they begged and pleaded to get it back," the company says on its Web site.

"Critics called it the biggest marketing blunder ever. But the Company listened, and [77 days later] the original formula was returned to the market as Coca-Cola classic®."

Williamson said that "classic" will remain in small print on the side of the bottles in the phrase "Coke Classic Original Formula."

"When people think Coke, they think Classic," Williamson said. "So more than two decades after we introduced that word, its reason for being as a descriptor has essentially disappeared."

About time they realized Classic has been the standard all along.

There's no golden ticket in this new pricey chocolate bar, but you'll win more than a mere factory tour if you choose one of Lesal Ruskey's $13 treats.

The San Francisco chocolatier promises to plant a tree for every purchase of her 3.5-ounce Original Beans bars. She tells the San Francisco Chronicle that she'll plant a tree in the rain forest of the country where the bar's fair-trade cacao beans originate -- either Bolivia, Ecuador or the Congo. A certificate on the wrapper lets eaters know where their bar's beans came from.

"People are very judicious about spending their dollars," Ruskey told the paper. "We also believe if consumers are going to invest their precious dollars in an affordable luxury that they're investing in more than fleeting pleasure."

Analysts say that the shaky economy doesn't mean people are cutting back on expensive chocolate.

"It sounds expensive, but compared to a diamond or a car or a pair of a jeans or anything else you decide to be frivolous about, it's not that expensive," food analyst Marcia Mogelonsky told the paper.

While Original Beans is by no means the priciest chocolate bar on the market -- French producer Bonnat's bars top $22 -- it remains to be seen whether choco-nuts will plunk down the $13 for a taste of the eco-friendly treat.

Would you?

[via: The San Francisco Chronicle]