"guardian" news and stories

Shake Shack Shackburger. Photo: Robyn Lee, Flickr.

A few of the best stories spied elsewhere on the Web this week:

Set your DVR for the fall Food Network lineup.

A British hospital patient posts pics of his daily meals and asks readers to identify each dish.

A Hamburger Today creates a comprehensive style guide -- required reading for all burger enthusiasts.

Ace of Cakes gets the Easy-Bake-Oven treatment from Girl Gourmet.

U.S. restaurants make Guardian's Top 50 Places to Eat in the World.

Can't get enough ramen? Check out this hand-pulled noodle-making video.

Julia Child goes underappreciated in Paris.

Just like in many other parts of the world, industrial chicken farms are putting small breeders out of business in rural India. They just can't compete with the immense economies of scale that the industrial farms have cultivated. Of course, the giant farms keep the birds in unhealthy conditions and then feed them all sorts of antibiotics to keep them healthy.

The Guardian reported last week on a new way that rural Indians are fighting back, and it turns out to be an old way. They are turning to a native chicken breed that is better adapted to the area, can be raised outside, and has a strong immune system so the birds don't get sick as often. Due to all of this, the giriraja breed is easier and less expensive to raise, so even poor rural families can have a few chickens for food and maybe a little bit of profit.

What do you think about returning to native chicken breeds?

As with everything else these days, the price of glass is going up. Some wine and beer bottlers have already switched to less glass-intensive bottles and a French champagne maker is experimenting with the same idea.

Mumm, is experimenting with bottles that are 65 grams lighter than regular champagne bottles (which are about twice as heavy as wine bottles), in an attempt to cut down on costs. The company is currently storing the test bottles for two years to make sure the thinner glass can withstand the pressure that is produced by the bubbly. If they do determine to use these lighter bottles, Mumm will also have to get approval from Comité Interprofessionnel du vin de Champagne, the trade association that represents grape growers and champagne producers.

If the bottles survive and the CIVC approves the change, we'll be seeing these new, thinner champagne bottles around 2010. The question is, if Mumm gets CIVC approval, will other champagne bottlers will be quick to follow?

[Via the Guardian]

The foodie quiz is a fun little way to waste a couple minutes of the morning and maybe have a little laugh or two while you're at it because it is certainly not a serious quiz in any way. If it were serious, it is highly unlikely that one of the answers, right or wrong, would suggest that the correct solution to a minor restaurant dilemma is to "grab the waiter by his neck, shove him in a tiny crate, which you load into the hold of a plane bound for Auckland, while shouting: 'How would you like it, you animal abusing spawn of the devil?'"

The quiz is intended to test your knowledge of general foodie issues, kitchen trends and food movements. I scored 42 out of a possible 45 (the higher the score, the better), which apparently makes me a "gastro-warrior." Take the quiz and get back to us here in the comments to let us know how you fared!

Source

The Guardian recently featured a piece about the increasing amounts of soy in European and American diets. While many associate soy with centuries-old Eastern traditions, The Guardian article points out that soy products like tofu and soy sauce differ from the soy milk and soy burgers of today in that the older foods have been tempered by fermentation. Several sources in the piece voice concerns about phyto-estrogen levels in unfermented soy products and their possible links to cancer and unusual hormonal development. Some experts warn that the newness of such products is a cause for caution as their longterm effects have yet to be studied in depth.