"texture" news and stories

While browsing del.icio.us the other day I came across a link to WikiHow page on tasting dark chocolate. There are 11 suggested steps to getting the most out of your chocolate tasting experience. The first encourages you to "mute all kinds of background noise, such as television, music, a crying baby, etc." (Will someone please mute the baby?) After that comes palate cleansing and several tips for taking in the aroma, visual appearance and texture of the chocolate. There is also a list of suggested brands, in case you want to do some side-by-side comparisons.

Yesterday's New York Times featured a great account of eating a variety of insects in Thailand's Ubon province. Jennifer Gampell writes about tackling crunchy, salty fried scorpions (right), as well as grasshoppers and crickets. She passes on the large water beetles, but apparently takes a liking to a type of fly, fried with lemongrass and served in a spicy salad of chili and green papaya. Meals like this are abundant at roadside stalls in Ubon, Gampell says. The details of exactly what and where she ate are a little cloudy, however, since English names and locations seem, at times, hard to come by.