Food and Wine

Who You Callin’ a Wine Snob?

Featured image Time for a holiday note, even if a bit cranky. Friday’s Wall Street Journal “Arts and Culture” section has a feature entitled “How to Become a Wine Snob in Five Easy Steps.” I’m thinking the article is ironic, deliberately intended to annoy serious oenophiles. Like me. Herewith the headlines for the five steps, with brief commentary: 1. Talk about your “wine journey.” How ’bout not. I might hit you. 2. »

Here Come the Bugs

Featured image The Left’s campaign to replace meat with insects in our diet–more specifically, your diet, not theirs–continues apace. From the Wall Street Journal: “Switzerland Wants Children to Eat Less Chocolate, More Insects.” Switzerland in 2017 became the first country in Europe to allow insects to be sold as food for humans after a lobbying campaign by edible-insect startups. That was the easy part. Now the companies must overcome what entomologists call »

Eat Meat!

Featured image The Left has launched a comprehensive war on modern agriculture. One aspect of that war consists of attacks on animal husbandry, which to some degree ties in with longstanding crank theories espoused by vegans and others. However, contemporary attacks on meat are mostly climate-based. As such, they are dangerous to your family’s health. The Telegraph reports: Meat is crucial for human health, scientists have warned, as they called for an »

Summer Barbecue Wars Opening Soon

Featured image Forget the Russia-Ukraine War. The oldest war of all—the War Between the Sexes—has a new front opening this summer: the Battle of Barbecue Grill. Someone on Twitter named @Judiana (“Ruckus Causing Redhead”) blasted out this bellicose manifesto: We are about to enter the BBQ season. Therefore it is important to refresh your memory on the etiquette of this sublime outdoor cooking activity . When a man volunteers to do the »

Another Horrible Food Idea

Featured image Liberals aren’t just coming for our automobiles, gas stoves and air conditioners. They also want to change the way we eat, because of the climate, doncha know. What else? The Telegraph recounts a particularly nasty instance of liberals’ nouveau food: fake woolly mammoth meat. A mammoth meatball has been created using the resurrected flesh of the long-extinct animal. It was produced by a cultivated meat company as part of a »

Woke Food? Seriously?

Featured image Several decades ago I subscribed to Bon Appetit magazine. In those days, it was all about good food, consisting of articles about, and recipes from, excellent restaurants. But, as in so many areas of contemporary life, those days are gone. Bon Appetit survives–barely, I think–but its primary mission these days seems to be wokeness. Check out the magazine’s InstaGram feed to see what I mean. Here are some examples: A »

Meat Loaf on a Weber, and Vice Versa

Featured image I’m not a fan of meat loaf—the baked dish—or Meat Loaf, the musician who passed away today. Still, I am always sorry to hear of the passing of any artist who attracted a mass following. I am, however, a huge fan of Weber grills, and regard the Weber kettle one of the great products of modern science, worthy of the Nobel Prize in physics. The green egg and other designs »

California’s Latest Insanity

Featured image Never mind rising crime, runaway homelessness, and other afflictions of California; have you heard the latest madness? California may be on the verge of making bacon a contraband substance, or at least a scarce luxury good. From the AP: Bacon may disappear in California as pig rules take effect At the beginning of next year, California will begin enforcing an animal welfare proposition approved overwhelmingly by voters in 2018 that »

The Metaphysics of Bacon

Featured image I know you’ve all heard of the famous “plant-based” impossible burger, which is deeply confusing because I’ve always thought every one of my burgers was “plant-based”—cows eat plants, and then I eat the cow. QED. Now comes news that someone is trying to make “plant-based bacon,” and count me skeptical. Actually, if you do a web search, you will find lots of links to “vegan bacon,” which has to be »

You save 16 cents, what do you get?

Featured image The New York Post documents some of the hilarity occasioned by the lame White House tweet celebrating the saving of 16 cents for the food cost of a 2021 July 4 barbecue over last year. The Post story notes the pitifully stupid puns with which the White House advertised the Farm Bureau’s annual update on July 4 food costs (below). With an unprecedented humanitarian crisis at our border, soaring gas »

Trader Joe’s Mans the Ramparts After All

Featured image We noted in one of our Crazy Chronicles recently that Trader Joe’s was said to be following Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben in expunging product names (like “Trader Giotto” and “Trader Jose”) that someone—it turned out to be some hopped-up 17 year old kid—found offensive. Trader Joe’s has corrected the record with this announcement: A Note About Our Product Naming In light of recent feedback and attention we’ve received about »

The Power Line Show, Ep 197: Introducing Our “Three Whisky Happy Hour”

Featured image By popular demand we’re bringing “Lucretia,” Power Line’s International Woman of Mystery, back to the show, and we’ve decided to start our own “Three Whisky Happy Hour,” because why should Greg Corombos and Jim Geraghty have all the fun (and the booze) with their Three Martini Lunch. As Lucretia is a champion whisky drinker, we decided to offer up American bourbon, Scotch (the more bracing Islay and Highland single malts), »

Now Here’s Some Serious Red Meat

Featured image Now here is someone who takes no chances when it comes to ensuring sufficient meat consumption: Here’s a stomach-churning feat: A woman from Arizona devoured not one, but two 72-ounce steak dinners in about an hour at the Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo. The woman, identified as professional competitive eater Miki Sudo, posted a short video on Instagram of her polishing off that second steak. She’s won the women’s »

Loose Ends (94)

Featured image •  The New York Times had a whimsical story over the weekend about vegetarians and vegans who gave it up to be come butchers.  The best parts of the story: Before she was a butcher, Ms. Kavanaugh was a strict vegetarian. She stopped eating meat for more than a decade, she said, out of a deep love for animal life and respect for the environment. . .  She returned to »

Liberal Hate Turned to 11

Featured image The erratic Andrew Sullivan has a pretty good piece up at New York magazine about the Covington boys school affair on the Washington mall, and correctly notes that the mainstream media totally lets the Black Hebrew Israelites off the hook. Even the egregious Southern Poverty Law Center identifies the Black Hebrew Israelites as a hate group, but, as Sullivan notes: And yet the elite media seemed eager to downplay their »

Trump Triggers the Liberal Food Scolds

Featured image President Trump today hosted the Clemson Tigers NCAA football championship team, and served them fast food in the Oval Office: Trump really is a genius, because faster than you can say C. Everett Koop, a leftist was triggered. In this case it is David Roberts of Grist and Vox, who writes some really excellent energy articles on Vox, but suffers from an advanced case of Trump Derangement Syndrome: Um. . »

Settled Science: There Really Are ‘Latte Liberals’

Featured image I’m sure most readers took note of the hoax identity politics academic journal articles recently, but I have found a real article that you could easily suppose to be a hoax. The article is “The Real Reason Liberals Drink Lattes,” and it appears in PS, which is a secondary journal of the American Political Science Association (APSA). (That’s PS, not BS, you wiseacres out there!) This relevant bit of social »