The Art of Fermentation in coffee, bread, beer, cheese, yogurt…

The list of fermented food in our lives is staggering: bread, coffee, pickles, beer, cheese, yogurt and soy sauce are all transformed at some point during their production process by microscopic organisms that extend their usefulness and enhance their flavors. The process of fermenting our food isn’t a new one: Evidence indicates that early civilizations …

Shakespeare’s Restless World – fascinating new podcast from BBC Radio 4

British Museum Director Neil MacGregor presents Shakespeare’s Restless World, a new series for Radio 4. The 20-part series looks at the world through the eyes of Shakespeare’s audience by exploring objects from that turbulent period. Examining these objects, Neil discusses how Elizabethan playgoers understood and made sense of the unstable and rapidly changing world in …

Starbucks to improve its baked goods – purchases artisan bakery, La Boulange

Starbucks got the coffee right. Now, it is trying to do the same with the food. The world’s largest coffee chain announced on Monday plans to acquire for $100 million a small artisan bakery chain, Bay Bread and its 19-unit La Boulange bakery brand. The move comes just months after Starbucks (SBUX) purchased the tiny …

New Guinness Record for largest chocolate sculpture – 18,000 pound Mayan temple

A California dessert and pastry school, located in Irvine, has just broken the Guinness World Record for the World’s Largest Chocolate Sculpture: To celebrate our 30th anniversary, Qzina Specialty Foods, has broken a Guinness World Record for building the largest chocolate sculpture. The sculpture models an ancient Mayan temple and weighs 18,239 pounds, far surpassing the previous record set in Italy …

Pixar’s best kept secret – the Cereal Bar

If you happen to own Toy Story 3, one of the bonus features is a short video entitled “Pixar’s Cereal Bar.” In the video you’ll hear Pixar employees like Tia Kratter, Pete Doctor, and Andrew Stanton talking about the importance of cereal during a workday, and showing off an animated representation of how the Pixar …

The Knife Maker – maturing a skill into an art

In our second film, we meet writer turned knife maker Joel Bukiewicz of Cut Brooklyn. He talks about the human element of craft, and the potential for a skill to mature into an art. And in sharing his story, he alights on the real meaning of handmade—a movement whose riches are measured in people, not …

Chew – NY Times best seller about a Cibopath (one who gets psychic impressions from food)

Tony Chu is a cop with a secret. A weird secret. Tony Chu is Cibopathic, which means he gets psychic impressions from whatever he eats. It also means he’s a hell of a detective, as long as he doesn’t mind nibbling on the corpse of a murder victim to figure out whodunit, and why. It’s a dirty …

Bees are in peril – and so are most of our major foods

Bees are nearing a “crises,” prompting the government to spend millions on a massive data base and asking beekeepers on March 27 for advice on how to save them and prevent the nation’s agriculture from collapsing. Honeybees are critical in agriculture. The value of crops in U.S. agriculture that depend on their pollination is $19 billion, according …