I am genuinely curious to know what most people think of these things. They supposedly hold about three times as much ketchup as the previous versions. Additionally, they make dispensing that oh-so-glorious red goop onto your processed, chemically flavored fries as you fly down the interstate going 93 miles an hour (while juggling your iPhone and nursing a coke shoved between your nads, of course) a breeze.

What’s going to happen with this +∆ : K/Pq (scientific expression for increase in Ketchup per Packet)? Here’s my prediction: Americans will overconsume ketchup like never before, and due to the heightened levels of high fructose corn syrup consumption, the country will soon suffer obesity levels so high that they will be considered an epidemic.

Wait. I feel like I’ve overlooked an important fact. What could I be missing?

Try this.

Haha yes, yes, I know that these two things are almost completely unrelated. But do I care? Not really. The thought gave me a chuckle and that’s why I shared it with you.

Courtesy of SeriousEats

What’s better to do on spring break but brew beer? Well, there are a few things, but you’ll never see them on this site. So, it’s brewing beer for now.

I’m not going to go into all of the complexities of the home brew process, but I’ll give a reader’s digest along with the pictures of my neighbor John and company as the process rolls along:

The first step of making beer is in creating a mash, which is like a big batch of tea using special grains such as barley. It's basically a long process of steeping the grains in boiling liquid. I didn't get any pictures of this part of the process except at the tail end.

Then, you add hops. That's right: hops in motion.

You then use a large wrench to open the container of malt extract, as previous attempts using bare hands and one person will have failed miserably.

You then must use all of your brainpower and mathematical logic to try and devise a way to get the exact amount of malt extract needed. Ours involved a digital scale, a pyrex container, and several longhammers. That's a tool. Note that the amount we need will be left in the container.

Uncle Izzy, under John's vigilant supervision, adds the malt extract to the mash. The mash is now called the wort. Hooray for Uncle Izzy.

Uncle Izzy and John battle the wort cooler. Despite its distillative appearance, this device is used to run cold water through the wort in order to cool it to approximately 75ºF...

The cooled wort is transfered to its fermentation container....

...where water is added to dilute the wort from a sickeningly sweet syrup-like mess to something that yeast can work with.

The completed wort is then mixed up with a ballin' tool on the end of an electric drill. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, it's time to break out the powertools.

The yeast is pitched into the wort, but only after its approximate sugar content has been measured using a hydrometer. Specifically, the hyrdometer tells us the specific gravity of the wort, but specific gravity doesn't turn into alcohol now, does it? Sugar does. So for intents and purposes, it measures sugar.

And that, my friends, is how one makes beer. Kind of. I mean there’s the bit about waiting. And using an airlock to keep air out and to let CO2 escape at the same time. And cleanlieness. That bit is key.

Let me say this. If you try to make beer based only on the descriptions in this article, you run the risk of making really bad beer. Actually, that’s almost a promise. If you really want to know more about making beer, I reccommend this site.

False. Possibly false. Almost always false.

The New York Times today published an article on common food myths, and how they are just that: myths. Next time you think about slamming Barack Obama for talking about arugula, read this first.

Food, Glorious Food Myths – New York Times

Apparently, a man died recently after winning a pancake eating competition in Russia. At least he won. Maybe next time you’re told to watch what you eat, you’ll listen.

According to those who witnessed the event, he at least enjoyed the pancakes he was eating, and was the most active participant in the contest. That ended quickly when “…he started foaming at the mouth and went down like a sack of stones.”

Poor chap.

For awhile I’ve always thought that large scale organic food, like so many other things, was a gimmick that stemmed out of a legitimately good-natured cause. My mom and I had bantered about it before, with her saying that she didn’t want those pesticides in her food (valid point), and me quoting a statistic I read somewhere saying that if everyone in the world ate organic food, half the population would starve. Don’t get me wrong, I think that the concept of something being organic is one of the best things in the world of food. I just question the legitimacy of the current mass produced “organic” foods.

Now I might have a reason to think that it is just a smoke screen.

An article published in the New York Times yesterday cites the recent outbreaks of salmonella in peanut products, including some manufactured by Clif Bar and Cascadian Farm.

“The plants in Texas and Georgia that were sending out contaminated peanut butter and ground peanut products had something else besides rodent infestation, mold and bird droppings. They also had federal organic certification.”

Well that certainly makes me feel good about the safety of organic foods. Sure they may not have pesticides in them, but the illusion that they are “safer” cannot necessarily be maintained. Come on, if I’m going to get salmonella or bird droppings in my organic peanut butter that I paid 50% more for, what’s the point of buying organic?

As the article quotes, “Although the rules governing organic food require health inspections and pest-management plans, organic certification technically has nothing to do with food safety.”

So buying organic might keep some pesticides out of your home, but it won’t necessarily bring safer products in. Is there a solution ? I think so: buy locally at farmer’s markets.

Although there is no guarantee that the foods you buy there are organic, there’s a pretty darn good chance that they are. And in light of the green movement, it is a much more ecologically sound action to buy foods locally over organically. You’re supporting local farmers in your community, and you’re keeping the amount of fuel needed to transport those foods to a minimum. They usually cost the same or less than regular organic supermarket foods, and usually are fresher than anything you buy in a supermarket, organic or not.

I’m not saying to eliminate organic foods from your pantry. Just next time you’re about to buy something organic from a commercial supermarket, ask youself, “is there somewhere that I could buy this locally, and probably fresher as well?” The results won’t let you down, and you can feel good about supporting the local ecomony and the earth at the same time.