Just Desserts 2008-02-01

Stick a Pork in Him…

An Ardmore, OK, man was arrested recently for stabbing another man…with a pork chop bone. The swine.

Talk about the unkindest cutlet of all.

What prompted this assault-by-other-white-meat wasn't clear from local reports. All we know is that police had been called to a local business on New Year's Day, where they found the victim stabbed in the neck and covered in blood. The assailant was apprehended a few blocks away. He had blood on his clothes and, apparently, he still possessed the incriminating “weapon”.

Just Desserts is not aware of any other assaults by foodstuffs outside of Three Stooges shorts and would dearly love to know how the pork bone came to be the weapon of choice in this instance. Did the two principals get into a supplier/customer disagreement about a meat spec (“You want bone-in? I'll give you bone-in!”)? Or was it a family dinner argument (“What, pork chops again?”)? Or simply a botched hit by a dim-witted hood (“Make it look like an accident, like he choked or something…”).

All we know is that if this guy ever comes over for dinner, it'll be boneless chicken breasts and mashed potatoes…

Your Fridge Can Now Do the Mashed Potato…

A sign of our increasingly interconnected and wired world: Whirlpool Corp. recently unveiled a dock that lets consumers mount and play their iPods on their refrigerators through integrated speakers. We certainly hope it comes with some kind of parental lock. What parent wants to hear “Soulja Boy” over breakfast?

The fridge also has wi-fi capability that lets you download digital photos onto a high-resolution LCD screen mounted on the fridge (no more low-tech snapshots held up with magnets) and a wi-fi connection streaming weather, news and sports updates.

Maybe the next innovation should be high-definition pictures of the food inside the fridge, complete with nutritional information. After all, providing nutrition and calorie information on menus is supposed to discourage overeating by restaurant patrons, so why not midnight fridge raiders?

Whirlpool says its rationale is research showing that families tend to congregate in the kitchen but are often frustrated by the lack of counter space for all their gadgets. Silly us — we thought that's what the rec room was for…

Commie Plot to Undermine Capitalism?

A no-alcohol policy for business lunches is having a sobering effect on liquormakers in the Chinese province of Henan, and they don't like it. According to a report in Reuters, Communist party officials in Henan's major city, Xinyang, recently issued new regulations barring public servants and local officials from imbibing during official lunches.

They must have been imbibing a lot because the policy has depressed sales by as much as a third at some area distilleries. Apparently, “business lunches” involving Henan bureaucrats made the three-martini lunch sound like a Carrie Nation tea party. Just how much public business got done in Henan province before the no-alcohol edict went into effect?

The Henan liquor producers association is petitioning the “legal affairs committee of the standing committee of the provincial People's Congress and the government's legal institutions office” to revise or revoke the decision, according to Reuters. With bureaucratic wormwood like that to deal with, it's no wonder the business community in Henan would rather the regulatory suits remain drunk and stupid. The alternative is sober and meddlesome.

Quote of the Month

“This isn't the right sauce for everyone, but for someone out there, this is going to be absolute heaven. Of course, for a handful of people, it's going to be hell.”
— Chef d'Cuisine Robin Rosenberg of the Levy Restaurants-operated Jake Melnick's Corner Tap tavern in Chicago, which recently began menuing chicken wings coated with red savina pepper, reportedly one of the world's hottest. Jake's requires patrons who order the dish to sign a waiver agreeing not to sue for injuries (from Reuters, January 4, 2008)

The illustrations for FM's Just Desserts column are by Dave Clark. You can see more of his work at Clarktoons.