Reuters reporting from Helsinki:

A hospital patient in Finland found a mouse head among the steamed vegetables on his plate.

“Understandably, he lost his appetite,” said Sakari Kela, chief administrator at the Northern Karelia Central Hospital.

The health of the patient in Joensuu, eastern Finland, had not been compromised by the dead rodent, Kela said Saturday.

The severed head most likely originated in a bag of Belgian vegetables. The body has not been found and being “a Belgian mouse, the rest of it could be anywhere in Europe,” Kela said.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

“It’s an ill wind that blows no good.”

Democratic control of Congress, at least, has evidently upgraded the cafeteria service California-style, with an emphasis on locally-grown, fresh ingredients, eclectic cuisine, and… fresh sushi!

But at least one Republican is trying to make a little political hay over the change in cuisine.

NBC:

The presidential race is not the only place where change is an issue.

Members of Congress returning to the Capitol this week are being confronted by transformational happenings that have shaken the building to its foundations: Democrats have hired a new company to run cafeteria services. Naturally, this has caused an outbreak of partisan skirmishing.

“I like real food,” proclaimed Republican leader John Boehner when asked about the new menu by a producer for another cable news outfit. “Food that I can pronounce the name of.”

Boehner is now forced to wrap his lips around such phrases as “broccoli rabe and shaved persimmon,” “balsamic glazed butternut squash,” and “calico pinto beans”…all on this afternoon’s menu, along with the downright patriotic “American Regional Yankee Pot Roast,” which, even Boehner would have to admit, kind of rolls right off the tongue. On Fridays, there is a real sushi bar tended by a bona fide Japanese sushi chef. Gone are such grade-school cafeteria specialties as Salisbury steak and fried chicken, slathered in gravy and served with a side of chips. Debate rages among regulars about the merits of the new offerings. One consensus downside: the prices have gone upscale right along with the fare.

The company that Nancy Pelosi and her people have hired has a mandate to “Go Green,” complete with a mission statement posted outside the cafeteria on an eco-friendly LCD screen and a requirement to buy carbon offsets. Boehner doesn’t think much of that either.

“It reminds me of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, when we had indulgences,” says Boehner of the offsets.

Charles Bork, at National Review, identifies the increasing dryness of the West’s most popular cocktail as a barometer of Western Civilization’s decline.

“The Gilded Age” (c. 1895-1920) • 3 parts dry gin • 1 part dry vermouth

“The Jazz Age” (c. 1920-1940) • 5 parts dry gin • 1 part dry vermouth

“The Greatest Generation” (c. 1940-1965) • 7 parts dry gin • 1 part dry vermouth

“The Worst Generation” (c. 1965-1985) • 15 parts dry gin • 1 part dry vermouth

“The Postmodern Age” (c. 1985-present) • 3 ounces of gin • whisper the word “vermouth” over the shaker

Read the whole thing, then mix and shake.

In this month’s Vanity Fair, Nick Tosches serves up a tour d’horizon of the world of sushi from Tokyo’s Tuskiji fish-market where fish merchants use out-sized samurai swords to slice 300 lb. (136.36 kg.) tuna into quarters, to the locally famous Daiwa hidden in nondescript Tokyo streets in search of sea pineapple, to super high end restaurants like Sugiyama and Masa in New York where dinner for one can cost $480.

Sample excerpt:

My companion, the Japanese translator Eva Yagino, speaks to the chef, Hiroyoshi Gota, who tells her that, among the many sakes sold here, there’s a special sake, made by the Miyagi brewer Uragasumi, that’s rarely available. The waitress pours us some, letting the cold sake overflow to the ceramic saucer beneath the masu, the sake box, made of the same pale wood, hinoki—a cypress that grows only in Japan—from which the best sushi-bar counters are crafted. A ceramic dish of sea salt is placed on the table, and Eva-san sets me straight: I’m to put a pinch of the salt on a corner of the masu, drink from that corner, raising the masu and ceramic saucer together, replenish the salt in the corner whenever I want, and in the end drink all the spillage in the saucer; then order more sake and do it again. As we sip our salted spillage, Eva-san translates the menu for me.

“Nodo-kuro,” she says. “A white fish with a black throat from the Sea of Japan. It is rarely caught.”

As she continues, I recall the way Tom Asakawa smiled when he said, ” … and other things.”

“Anglerfish liver. Ayu-fish guts. Sea-cucumber guts. Oh, and look at all these whale dishes: whale sushi; hari-hari nabe—that’s whale meat with mizuna, a sort of Japanese mustard green that looks like a dandelion green; whale bacon; whale skin; whale tongue; whale brain; shinzo (that’s whale heart); whale ovary—and, oh, here’s your hoya sashi, your raw sea pineapple. Sashi is what the restaurant people call sashimi.”

As I ponder my choices, Eva-san tells me about mamushi-zake. It’s a sake to which, during fermentation, a mamushi is added. The mamushi, a type of pit viper, is one of the two species of poisonous snakes indigenous to Japan. Introduced live into the fermenting sake, it releases its poison into the brew as it leaves this vale of tears. Unlike the Chinese, the Japanese are not big on snake eating, but there is this sake.

“I need to drink that,” I say.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Eric Felten, in his weekly cocktail column in the Wall Street Journal, supplies the history.

The Tom Collins … got its start in the 19th century, named after a notorious hoax that spread in the summer of 1874.

The original prank went something like this: A friend would run into you on the street and, with great concern, tell you he just overheard someone named Tom Collins at a bar down the street saying hateful and libelous things about you. You race to that bar to confront the bounder, where you would be told that Tom Collins had just left for a bar several blocks away. When you get there, Collins would already have decamped for another joint across town. As you chase all over the city, your friends convulse with laughter.

Soon, not in on the joke, newspapers in cities across the country were reporting on people trying to find the scurrilous fellow. “Tom Collins Still Among Us,” the Decatur, Ill., Daily Republican reported in June 1874. “This individual kept up his nefarious business of slandering our citizens all day yesterday. But we believe that he succeeded in keeping out of the way of his pursuers. In several instances he came well nigh being caught, having left certain places but a very few moments before the arrival of those who were hunting him. His movements are watched to-day with the utmost vigilance.”

When the papers realized it was all a gag, they got in on the act. The Daily Republican kept playing along for months, gamely reporting that Collins had been spotted in San Luis Obispo, Calif., on his way to Arizona. “Next spring,” the paper predicted, Collins “will jauntily enter the South American republics.”

It doesn’t take much to imagine how Tom Collins came to be a drink. How many times does someone have to barge into a saloon demanding Tom Collins before the bartender takes the opportunity to offer him a cocktail so-named? Indeed, you have to wonder if the whole Tom Collins stunt wasn’t a marketing gimmick to promote pub-crawling.

Recipe:

1½ oz gin
Juice of ½ lemon
¼-½ oz simple syrup, or 1-2 tsp. sugar
2-3 oz soda water.
Build on the rocks in a short highball glass (what was once called, appropriately enough, a “Collins glass”). Garnish, if you like, with cherry, and orange or lemon slice.

PJM has a valuable essay by Nancy Rommelmann, accompanied by this 8:10 video.

Yesterday’s Times featured a better-than-average consumer report detailing a a New York Times panels’ gin-tasting conclusions aiming at the ideal Martini.

The gins sampled included a commendably exotic selection.

Our favorite martini gin, Plymouth English Gin, could not have been more stylish and graceful. Plymouth has the classic juniper-based gin profile, yet it is uncommonly subtle and smooth. Still, it is assertive, its complexity emerging slowly but distinctly, the proverbial fist in a velvet glove.

By contrast, our No. 2 and No. 3 gins emphasized power. The Junipero, made in small quantities by the distilling branch of the Anchor brewery in San Francisco, came on strong with the traditional gin flavors of juniper and citrus, hitting all the right notes, though a little self-consciously.

The No. 3 gin, Cadenhead’s Old Raj from Scotland, at 110 proof, or 55 percent alcohol, was by far the most powerful gin we tasted: Tanqueray and Tanqueray No. 10 at 94.6 proof were the next highest. But while Old Raj packed a punch, its muscularity came across as bright and in control.

Two standbys of the American cocktail cabinet fared well as martinis. Seagram’s Extra Dry came in at No. 4. We found it surprisingly complex in the glass, with fruit, herbal and gingery spice notes, yet it didn’t stray far from the gin ideal, while Gordon’s London Dry adhered to the straight and narrow, with a slight emphasis of spicy cardamom and nutmeg aromas.

Tanqueray London Dry made a classic though quiet martini. Its livelier cousin, Tanqueray No. 10, with its emphasis on citrus flavors, may work well neat or with tonic, but was discordant in a martini.

In fact, in the context of a dry martini, few of the newer, hipper gins worked. Aviation is a popular gin out of Portland, Ore., but its predominant flavors of wintergreen, vanilla and anise had no place in a martini. Nor did the menthol and peppermint in G’Vine, a new French gin, the pronounced melon fruitiness in Hamptons, made in Minnesota, or the cinnamon emphasis in No. 209 out of San Francisco.

“What was really striking was how un-dry some of these were — like bathing in canned fruit or a postnasal saccharine drip,” Pete said.

We didn’t reject all of the less conventional gins. With its floral aromas, Hendrick’s from Scotland seemed to work from a different palette of botanicals, and it made for a lively, colorful martini. Bombay Sapphire was sort of jazzy — a martini that intrigued without really hanging together. Both Quintessential and Martin Miller’s hit odd notes, though they made pretty good martinis.

We each had a favorite that didn’t make the top 10. I liked Citadelle, a new-wave French gin. I felt its unconventional citrus flavors merged well with evergreen aromas, but the others disagreed.

Likewise, Audrey was pleased with that old standby Beefeater, while I found the flavors indistinct. Florence, who adores Tanqueray, liked the Tanqueray No. 10 as well, while Pete was more inclined to the G’Vine than the rest of us.

Complete article

I thought giving top marks to Plymouth (Travis McGee’s old favorite) was a very defensible choice.

Cadenhead’s Old Raj is interesting. It was clearly created to exploit the over-rich sucker market of those who will reliably buy any over-priced product, because they have to have “the best.” There is no legitimate basis for a bottle of gin retailing at $50+. (I’ve seen it priced closer to $80.) Its color is precisely that of snake venom, and rightly so, because Old Raj really does “biteth like the serpent and stingeth like the adder.” The stuff is so high proof, that it limits you to one drink (instead of your usual two). Two generous drinks mixed with Old Raj and you’re a goner.

My own opinion is that the panel over-praised Junipero and Hendrick’s, I think neither is well-balanced, and unreasonably slighted the classic Beefeater’s.

They should have included the humble Gilbey’s (the absurdly cheap bar gin), just to demonstrate how good a bottom-of-the-market in price terms gin actually can be.

And I would have added the little-known, moderately priced (around $27) Desert Juniper gin, produced by Bend Distillery of Bend, Oregon. Generously flavored with huge doses of the native Juniper berries which grow abundantly in the desert of Eastern Oregon, this particular gin has been a recent favorite of mine.

Hershey, Nestle and some other big companies are up to no good.

Would chocolate containing trans fats and sugar substitutes taste as sweet as the real thing? Hershey Co. and other candy-makers say yes.

The Chocolate Manufacturers Association, whose members include Hershey, Nestle SA and Archer Daniels Midland Co., has a petition before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to redefine what constitutes chocolate.

They want to make it without the required ingredients of cocoa butter and cocoa solids, using instead artificial sweeteners, milk substitutes, and vegetable fats such as hydrogenated and trans fats.

“They are trying to pull one over on us,” said Cybele May, 40, publisher of CandyBlog, on which she has encouraged more than 200 people to write the FDA to protest what she calls “mockolate.” “What they are asking for is permission to confuse the consumer for what we readily accept as chocolate,” she said. …

A pound of chocolate contains roughly 25 percent cocoa butter at a cost of $2.30, while vegetable oils are as little as 70 cents a pound.

Nancy Rommelman says:

Whereas I used to have two salts – table and kosher – in my pantry, I now have six, and counting.

And she links an actual blog devoted to discussing salt!

Read the whole thing.

Pay attention, Karen.

Marco Evaristti, edgy Chilean artist, at his latest exhibit in Santiago has served up meatballs made from his own fat.

Foxnews.com:

“Ladies and gentleman, bon appetit and may god bless,” said Marco Evaristti, a glass in his hand, to his dining companions seated last Thursday night around a table in Santiago’s Animal Gallery.

On the plates in front of them was a serving of agnolotti pasta and in the middle a meatball made with oil Evaristti removed from his body in a liposuction procedure last year.

“The question of whether or not to eat human flesh is more important than the result,” he said, explaining the point of his creation.

“You are not a cannibal if you eat art,” he added.

Evaristti produced 48 meatballs with his own fat, some of which would be canned and sold for $US4000 dollars for 10.

A veteran at shock-art, in an earlier work Evaristti invited people to kill fish by pressing the button on a blender the fish were held in.

In April 2004 he dyed an enormous iceberg in Greenland with red paint.

Santiago Times:

Six years ago, artist Marco Evaristti scandalized the Chilean art world when he displayed live fish in working blenders. The opening of his new exhibit at the Animal Gallery in Vitacura is likely to cause just as much sensation, hype and criticism when visitors are invited to eat meatballs made with Evaristti’s own fat.

The Chilean-Danish artist, who underwent liposuction for the work, describes it as a criticism of the plastic surgery market. The meatballs are canned and available for purchase; two cans have already been sold to collectors for US$23,200 each. Evaristti claims that the meatballs are not only delicious, but contain less fat than supermarket meatballs.

President Bachelet and poet Nicanor Parra were invited to enjoy the dish at the opening. Neither has given a response so far. The artist assured that he, if no one else, would enjoy the meal.

Another controversial piece consists of six fake faeces covered in gold taken from the teeth of Jewish holocaust victims…

Exhibit details:
Galería Animal
Alonso de Cordova 3105
Vitacura
M-F 10:00-8:00
Saturday 10:30-2:00
Until January 27th.

One couldn’t make this stuff up.

According to Michael J. Weiss’, a basic feature of American cultural geography is a clearly demarcated ”mayonnaise line” across the national map, which “separates the creamy Hellman’s mayonnaise buyers to the South from the tart Kraft Miracle Whip salad dressing lovers to the North.” I think it’s true. I’m from Pennsylvania, and I prefer Miracle Whip to Hellman’s. My wife is from Kansas City, and she takes the opposite position.

Trudy Schuett tells us the villains at Kraft have fiddled with the recipe for Miracle Whip, and the new version just isn’t the same.

When I was a kid growing up in the Detroit suburbs, there were two things you’d be most likely to put on a sandwich, or use to dress coleslaw or potato salad — mayonnaise (we pronounced it “manayse”) or Miracle Whip.

Most families were firm on which product they used. So much so, that I never used mayonnaise for anything until I got married and started experimenting with food. By the time my son was in his teens, and our house became the place to turn up when they were hungry for him and his friends, I kept both on hand. Even today there are strong preferences, and I use Miracle Whip for some things, and mayonnaise for others.

Lately, though, you may have noticed if you’re a Miracle Whip person, that your sandwiches don’t quite taste the same, and your coleslaw doesn’t hold up overnight.

That’s because the old standby you used and loved for decades is no longer the same product. They’ve changed the recipe! If you look on the label, you see the first ingredient is now water, not soybean oil as in the past. Since products (at least in the US) are labeled with ingredients in order of the amount, that means there is now more water than anything else.

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds.

Wolfram Siebeck visits the infrequent tourist destination of Iceland, and experiments with the local cuisine.

Part 1 -arrival at Reykjavik.

Part 2 – whale steak, cod tongue, ‘black bird,” sheep’s head.

Maybe he should have stuck to Paris.