Free Republic

Guinness dates back 256 years and is laden with deep cultural connotations for both the Irish and Irish diaspora here in the United States. Any significant change to it is risky.Even if it means removing an element deemed repugnant by a large segment of the population.We could be talking about isinglass — the clear collagen extracted from fish bladders that is used to draw spent yeast out of beer and clarify the finished product — but Guinness is planning to remove that particular substance from its brewing process in 2016 in favor of another less-fishy filtration method. There wasn’t all...

With an unofficial slogan of Take the Risk, Try Lutefisk, it's a pretty safe assumption that dining on lutefisk is not your average meal. That's what's printed on the aprons at Sons of Norway, Norrona Lodge No. 50 in Van Nuys, and you can kind of see why. A traditional Scandinavian dish of lye-treated whitefish, lutefisk is found most places where there's a decent-sized Scandinavian population, and it's part of the seasonal table: Thanksgiving to Christmas is considered lutefisk season. Lucky for you, the dish is also available once a year at a lutefisk and meatball community dinner at the...

It's no fun being in the middle.Heineken, Molson Coors and Carlsberg are storied brewers that trace their roots back hundreds of years and have loyal drinkers around the world. But the merger of their two biggest competitors leaves such mid-size brewers without a clear way forward.They find themselves squeezed between a Goliath that will produce almost a third of the world's beer and a growing army of craft brewers.Some experts say the mid-sized brewers should respond by pursuing takeovers of their own. Others argue that would do little good because the underlying problem is that consumers are increasingly drinking craft...

<p>Legally, alcohol is banned in Saudi Arabia. In reality, however, there are people in the country who drink.</p> <p>If you're wondering how exactly they actually get that alcohol, consider the multiple reports in the Saudi press today that describe how the Saudi authorities at border with United Arab Emirates caught a man with 48,000 cans of Heineken – all disguised as Pepsi cola.</p>

When I was a kid, the holidays seemed to extend for more than a month - from the moment we awoke on Thanksgiving morning, smelling the turkey already in the oven and yeast rolls rising over steaming pans of hot water - until we finally, reluctantly, took down the dried-out tree in early January. (To make things even more fun, I was born just a couple of days after Thanksgiving, and have nearly always celebrated it on Turkey Day.) Everything was somehow different during those weeks - the house had been cleaned within an inch of its life and decorations...

WASHINGTON, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., is calling on the Food and Drug Administration to probe an unusual caffeine-infused product: peanut butter. STEEM is offering peanut butter in Connecticut and Massachusetts that the company says contains the same amount of caffeine in 2 tablespoons as would be found in two cups of coffee. "STEEM is designed to provide a consistent release of sustained energy and the naturally slow digestion of peanut butter is the key to that. STEEM delivers protein, electrolytes and caffeine, granting you hours of endurance and focus, and freeing you from distractions like hunger and fatigue," the company...

The meals are for Monday and Tuesday, with the most being on Wednesday (of course) My itinerary for Wednesday: 7:00 IHOP for a pancake breakfast 8:00 Tim Horton's for a donut and coffee 10:00 Tubbys for a sammich 1:00 Famous Dave's for a 1 meat dinner . . . RIBS!!!! 3:00 Starbucks for a coffee 6:00 On the Border for a 2 or 3 create your own combo . . . and then home to recuperate.

Autistic seventh-grader Brandon Williams learned a lifesaving lesson from watching “SpongeBob SquarePants” — and had a chance to use the move when his pal started choking at school.

Curled up in bed in her West Village apartment, shivering from cold and exhaustion, Jordan Younger tried to ignore the hunger pangs as she counted down the hours until she could have a glass of green juice. The then-23-year-old New School student, in the midst of a grueling, monthlong, 800-calories-per-day juice cleanse, was truly suffering: Her lips were blue, her hair was falling out, her skin was blotchy and she hadn’t had her period in six months due to extreme vitamin deficiency. During that time, she was busy saving face writing her blog the Blonde Vegan, in which she perkily...

Back in the 1980s my girlfriend and I frequented a shopping mall in Montgomery County, MD that was one of the loveliest indoor malls of that extravagant era. White Flint Mall, on Rockville Pike, had beautiful decor and lots of wonderful shops and department stores. I remember seeing what appeared to be polished copper lining the sides of the escalators; the indoor water fountains; and the see-through, bullet-shaped elevator that seemed to be made of lucite - and feeling a tinge of guilt at the money spent on all of it. And I remember being struck by the thought that...

Next year's St. Patrick's and Irish-Italian parades in Metairie could bring a reduced risk of being smacked in the head with a cabbage. The edibles could still be airborne, but float riders would be required to soften their touch in throwing them. A proposal coming before the Jefferson Parish Council on Wednesday (Nov. 3) would require that all "fruit, vegetables, soap and other non-perishable food items" be tossed underhand at the parades. The reason: Too many people were getting hurt by flying food, said Sean Burke, the administration's director of citizen affairs. He recalled two incidents that led to a...

The clitoris: a gastronomic delight typical of Galician cuisine, according to a town that promoted its local festival after using Google Translate. Rapini, the speciality of the Galician town of As Pontes. Photo: Laurel F/Flickr ========================================================================================================================= A town hall in northwestern Spain was left red-faced after a Google Translate error led to it advertising its local leaf vegetable celebration as a much more X-rated affair. One of the highlights of the year in the town of As Pontes in Galicia, northwestern Spain, is its annual rapini festival, when townsfolk celebrate the town's speciality, the leafy green vegetable similar to spinach....

Beer Guinness changes recipe to go vegan Guinness is going vegan. Starting in 2016, the Irish beer will be fully vegan friendly for the first time since they started brewing beer 256 years ago, reports The Independent. Guinness, like many other brewers, use isinglass, a by-product of the fishing industry that's used to clarify the beer and make yeast settle faster. While most of the agent is filtered out during the brewing process, there are still traces of fish bladders in the finished product. Vegan customers have long been petitioning the brand to discontinue its use of isinglass. One was...

Jacqueline Eide was taken to the hospital after being bitten on her left hand by a tiger at Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium on Sunday morning Eide had sneaked into the zoo to pet the tiger, but when she reached into the cage she was bitten A spokesman for the zoo said that the tiger believed to have been involved was an 18-year-old Malayan tiger named Mai The woman was cited by police at 7.20am for criminal trespass and remained in the hospital for treatment A 33-year-old woman suffered severe hand trauma after sneaking into a Nebraska zoo...

See more at the link.

After Benjamin Franklin, my favorite 'American Eccentric' has always been Tasha Tudor (1915-2008). At a certain point, Tasha appears to have decided that she should have lived - and should always live - in the early 19th Century. She proceeded to build a long lifetime in accord with that ideal, wearing the clothing of that era, cooking and house-holding as a woman would have done then, even learning to roast a turkey in a 'tin oven' before a fire; and devoting herself to country life, art, hand-crafts, gardening, and animals. She is famous for her artwork and illustrated books for...

The mayor of the southern French town of Alès has shut down operations at a local slaughterhouse following the release of a video showing the mistreatment of animals inside the facility. The secretly shot footage, which was released Wednesday by animal rights group L214, shows animals regaining consciousness while they are being slaughtered. The graphic video shows animals having their throats slit, being bled while hanging by one leg or being left to bleed to death on the slaughterhouse floor. "A person who had access to the slaughterhouse contacted us, knowing that we had already looked into this matter," explained...

Do you eat bacon? Oh. You might want to sit down for this. I’m very sorry to be the one to break this to you, but you’re probably going to get cancer and die. I hope you have your affairs in order. At least, that’s how some people interpreted the news of a World Health Organization study that classified processed meat as carcinogenic to humans and red meat as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” (So you’re saying there’s a chance?) It was only a matter of time before bacon and hot dogs took their place on the epic grocery list of...

MENLO PARK, Calif., - A California startup analyzing food on a molecular level announced some hard news about one of the most beloved foods in the United States: 2 percent of hot dogs contain human DNA. Clear Food, the consumer guide wing of Menlo Park startup Clear Labs, said it analysed 345 hot dogs and sausages from 75 brands sold at 10 different retailers and discovered 14.4 percent of the products included ingredients that were not listed on the label. The startup said several of the tested brands had "hygienic" issues. "Hygienic issues occur when some sort of non-harmful contaminant...