Pacificapocalypse

And it’s filled with fresh piping hot mini donuts.

Court and I were at Fogfest this weekend; the usual assortment of arts and crafts and other nonsense… until we saw this, the ultimate application of technology and mankind’s overwhelming desire for fried dough products.  I give you Harvey and his automatic mini donut machine.

photo credit: Scott Ableman

I *need* one of these. Imagine it just chugging away on your kitchen counter top; an endless parade of hot, fresh, mini donuts. Video awesomeness below.

Picked up Doc and Melissa afterwook last night and headed over to The Alembic in the Haight. Dodged the scruffy gutter punks with their obligatory dogs and found a table in the back. Court was bummed; they didn’t have the bacon Cracker Jacks on the menu (so sad; ok so you’ve had honey baked ham and maple cured bacon right? So you know that pork has a great affinity for the salty caramel/molasses family of sweets? Well the bacon Cracker Jacks are like a million times that – all flavor and mouth texture. Fan fucking tastic – so much so that we’re putting it on the wedding menu.) But they did have pickeled quail eggs and a few other things that were new (oh man Kobe beef tongue sliders and baked bone marrow with garlic confit and caper gremolata – food nerd, I know) Drinking and eating lip smacky noises commenced. Doc’s keeping busy and it sound like he has a new gig lined up in mobile platform game development. Ended up staying out later than I wanted, but it was good to catch up and they do make a mean Old Fashioned. Oh and Doc has agreed to stand up as my Best Man for the wedding, so that’s cool.

A report hit on Monday, January 26, regarding High Fructose Corn Syrup and mercury.
Not cool.
I’ve been a nay-sayer and hatchet man against HFCS since reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma about two years ago. (An excellent read by the way, if you have any interest in where your food comes from.) Suffice to say I’ll take sugar or honey (though honey has it’s own set of problems) any day over HFCS. The funny thing is that right around the time people started becoming more aware of HFCS, how pervasive they are, and the potential health risks associated with it, the Corn Refiners Association (the trade association that represents the corn refining industry) who have a vested interest in the production of HFCS, apparently hired a PR firm and threw together a little site called The Truth About High Fructose Corn Syrup, to plead their case before the public. It’s filled with all sorts of fascinating information about Our Friend High Fructose Corn Syrup™. They play a little fast and lose with the details, but come on kids! It’s from CORN! So it has to be good right? It’s natural. Yeah. Right. Lead, arsenic and cancer are all naturally occurring, let’s slather some of that on your toast. Big tobacco plays this game too.
So of course they had to respond to this negative report ASAP, and here’s what they had to say:

“This study appears to be based on outdated information of dubious significance. Our industry has used mercury-free versions of the two re-agents mentioned in the study, hydrochloric acid and caustic soda, for several years.”

Hydrochloric acid and caustic soda?
Really, Corn Refiners Association? Is that what you wanted to say?

You’re not helping.