Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Pick of the blogs: Chocolate&Zucchini

BBC News

By Darren Waters, BBC News entertainment reporter

Blogs and blogging have become buzzwords in the last 18 months, with millions of people setting up their own web logs to record their lives, comment on world events or share news.
There are almost as many different types of blogs as there are bloggers. Some are highly professional while others are simple online diaries. We pick out six of the best.

Among these six: Chocolate & Zucchini: "Paris-based Clotilde is a software engineer with a love of food and aspirations to become a food writer."

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Sunday, July 10, 2005

If MSG is so bad for you, why doesn't everyone in Asia have a headache?

The Observer Food Magazine

What does chiefly animate Japanese soups and broths is an amino acid called glutamate. In the best ramen shops it's made naturally from boiling dried kombu seaweed; it can also come from dried shrimp or bonito flakes, or from fermented soy. More cheaply and easily, you get it from a tin, where it is stabilised with ordinary salt and is thus monosodium glutamate.
This last fact is of little interest to the Japanese - like most Asians, they have no fear of MSG. And there lies one of the world's great food scare conundrums. If MSG is bad for you - as Jeffrey Steingarten, the great American Vogue food writer once put it - why doesn't everyone in China have a headache?

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Thursday, July 07, 2005

Feast fit even for a fastidious president

The Telegraph

By Auslan Cramb

The Queen welcomed the world leaders to Scotland last night with a banquet fit even for the refined palate of a French president.


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Wednesday, July 06, 2005

'Chirac? He didn't seem interested in food at all'

The Telegraph

By Jan Moir

Rick Stein has more reason than most to be aggrieved over Jacques Chirac's claim that the British are terrible cooks.

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A feast of Scottish delicacies awaits Chirac

The Independent

By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor

"Jacques Chirac may be forced to eat humble pie when he joins the G8 Summit leaders at a glittering dinner tonight hosted by the Queen at Gleneagles.
The French President ignited a simmering row after being overheard lambasting British food and pouring scorn on Scotland's "unappetising" national dish, but M. Chirac will be reassured to learn that Andrew Fairlie, head chef of the Michelin-starred restaurant at Gleneagles, learnt his trade in south-west France with Michel Guerard."

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Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Chirac: 'The only thing the British have ever given European farming is mad cow'

The Telegraph

By Toby Helm and Henry Samuel

Anglo-French tensions heightened last night after Jacques Chirac delivered a series of insults to Britain as London and Paris fought to secure the 2012 Olympic Games and faced fresh disagreement at the G8 summit.
The president, chatting to the German and Russian leaders in a Russian cafe, said: "The only thing [the British] have ever given European farming is mad cow." Then, like generations of French people before him, he also poked fun at British cuisine.
"You can't trust people who cook as badly as that," he said. "After Finland, it's the country with the worst food."

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