New Food Pyramid

via amandaw

Interesting visual here that rather points out the problems with “eat right!” as a political doctrine (the original poster noted that “instrumental food” is the ability to choose your food for a specific outcome, like special diets, etc).

For much of the world, just having enough food is hard. Having reliable, ongoing access to food is a privilege; having novel food and specifically-chosen-for-health-benefits (let alone environmental, anticapitalist, etc.) is even more of one.

Beijing Zoo Serves Up Its Inhabitants

Visitors to Beijing zoo are warned not to feed the animals, but they are encouraged to eat them at a restaurant that offers crocodile and scorpion on its exotic menu.

After watching the beasts in their cages, diners at the zoo’s restaurant can gnaw on the webbed toes of a hippopotamus, chew a kangaroo tail, nibble a deer’s penis or slurp down a bowl of ant soup.

Jonathan Watts:  Hippopotamus on menu at Beijing zooThe Guardian

WHAT.  THE…

Coq au WHAT?

From Fancy Fast Food, this little gem: 

Cheerwine is a popular soft drink in the south that is more “cheer” than “wine” (and more “cherry” than “cheer”), but we’re going to pretend it’s that Pinot — it looks like that when you pour it into fancy stemware anyway.

What better way to pair a Carolina dish with Carolina Cheerwine than to fuse them together in a mock recipe for Coq Au Vin — that French dish where chicken is braised in red wine? And so, we present the Fancy Fast Food recipe for “Coq Au CheerVin” (pronounced kohk oh sheer vaehn’ if you want to sound all Frenchy):

My mind is sorta blown. You see, dear readers, I lived for a while in South Carolina, and I know people who drank Cheerwine. And it terrified me. And the idea of using it as a cooking ingredient—especially to make fast food taste better—well, I’m just. Yeah.

But strangely drawn to it. Like the day we had the Double Down in the office. Part of me wants it. The very, very bad part. 

It’s Neat To Tweet From Your Teat!

This is so a-mooo-sing! First of all, a completely fascinating farm thing—Buttermine Farms in Ontario, CA turned their cows into robots by implanting RFIDs in them and setting up what’s called a Voluntary Milking System:

As a cow approaches the robotic milking pen, the computer reads the tag and determines whether or not the cow is scheduled to be milked, based on her stage of lactation and average daily output. If the cow is ready for milking, she is allowed into the pen. Once inside, a robotic arm washes her teats, latches on, and extracts the milk while the cow eats high-grade feed to make her happy. The milk output and feed input is recorded by the main computer and stored in a database, along with the total milking time, time/teat, and total time in pen. The farmer enters additional information into the database, such as a when a cow gives birth, becomes ill, or is sent for slaughter.

Some artistes decided they wanted in on the action, so they added a Twitter node to the network. Because everything tastes better with social media!

They picked out twelve cows, developed a persona for each one, and created a Twitter feed. Now we can all treat ourselves to updates like these, from Attention Please, Contrast Amanda, and Mortyfy, respectively:

10.3 kg of pure nourishment, with the help of Robot 101.”for thee Brim high the snowy milking-pail”

I just squirted 16.4 kgs of milk out of my teats in 6:58 seconds. What did you do today?

Got into the milking pen at Thu, May 20 ‘10 6:52 am and in 10:22 secs I pumped out a full 19.4 kg. Impressive!

I can’t wait to see what they twitter from the slaughterhouse.

—Snacktime

For the record, I know as many men as women who are raising chickens and tending gardens (though my data are as anecdotal as Orenstein’s). Mostly I know couples who are making the choice to produce more of their own food. Yes, some educated high-achieving women disillusioned with work are quitting their jobs to create a homemade home. But I suspect a good number of men would appreciate the same choice. If more women than men are leaving careers to create more meaningful lives at home, it may reflect the greater freedom women have to do so.

Lisa Graham McMinn on Her.meneutics in response to The Femivore’s Dilemma in the NYT a few months ago.

While I don’t normally read “Christianity Today,” I found Ms. McMinn’s article to be insightful and poignant.  The Femivore’s Dilemma is one of the first articles that bonded the three of us ShutUpFoodies writers.