Over the past few years, there has been an increased interest in foods from the Middle East and the surrounding areas. This seems to be largely because consumers are looking to cook with different grains and more spices than ever before. At first, this interested manifested itself in dinners served with a side of couscous, instead of white rice. Now, home cooks are buying tagines and looking into completely new (to them) styles of cooking.

Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon is organized by country, so the differences between each cuisine are immediately obvious to the reader. Author Claudia Rodin, a certifiable expert on the cuisines of the region, does an excellent job incorporating detailed information about ingredients and the history of the dishes into the rest of the text. There are roughly 150 recipes and all have been adapted so that they will be relatively easy to remake in, say, the average American kitchen, although a trip to a specialty grocer may be in order to pick up a handful of the less common ingredients. Recipes include many vegetarian options and lots of couscous, along with Tagine of Chicken with Preserved Lemons and Olives, Squabs Stuffed with Date and Almond Paste, Baba Ghanouj and Pistachio Cake.

Make a list of all the things that could contribute to world peace on a piece of paper. Is bacon at the top? If not, perhaps it should be. The people at Peace Through Pork think that it might just be the key to solving the world's problems. They offer up a deep, critical explanation in which bacon is a metaphor for the fears and desires of both societies and individuals, but to keep it brief, here is their drunken frat boy explanation:

1. Bacon is really tasty.
2. People that don't eat bacon obviously have issues.

Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? One slice of bacon, by the way, has only about 40 calories and 3 grams of fat, along with 3 grams of protein, which makes it a filling and satisfying food that shouldn't necessarily be counted out of your diet for health reasons unless you're watching your saturated fat intake (1.1 g), in which case you want to eat it in moderation. If you're interested in showing your support, a bacon awareness bracelet is available.

Non-food related note: If you're a registered voter in the US, you can also make a difference in a way that is unrelated to bacon. You can go out and vote!

[via boingboing]

Fast food franchises all over the world give out toys with their kid's meals. Not all of them do, of course, but the companies know that is no better way to lure a hungry child in for lunch than with the promise of a free toy. Until recently, I generally assumed that the majority of the restaurants that did this were in the United States. Though the toys vary by location, they are distributed in even unexpected places. In the US and some other countries, the toys are very centered on cartoons and movies. In Qatar, as it turns out, they look to provide "fun and quality toys that kids can interact with" in their kid's meals. And by "interact with,"  they mean that their toys still have movable parts, because the "quality toys" are mostly likely still manufactured alongside the "quality" US kid's meal toys.

I do recall getting a surprisingly nice watch - plastic, but stylish - at a McDonald's in France, though it was about 9 years ago when the kid's meal toys seemed to be of a higher quality in general.

[Image via Peninsula Qatar)

Some troops may have a craving for a taste of home, but others won't rest until they really bring their favorites out to the base. Canadian troops deployed to Afghanistan are asking the iconic Canadian coffee and donut chain, Tim Hortons, to set up shop in the massive Kandahar Air Base. The soldiers maintain that because the US troops currently at the base are enjoying Burger King and Subway franchises, that Tim Hortons should do the same, as it just "wouldn't be a Canadian base without a Tim Hortons."

In the past, the company has refused requests to set up a full store, stating that their strict quality controls could not be monitored in a location so far away. The company faithfully participates in programs which provide coffee and "goodie bags" for the soldiers, as well as having set up shop on military bases across Canada. A company spokesperson says that they will consider sending a smaller coffee cart or trailer to represent the brand on the base.