Free Republic

BEIJING—The head of Yum Brands Inc.'s China operations made a rare appearance to take aim at the country's food-safety issues and win back customers after allegations of quality oversights at the company's KFC restaurants caused consumer confidence and sales to tumble in its largest market. Yum is aiming to prevent food-safety problems by cutting its ties with suppliers that source their chicken from small farms that are hard to regulate, said Sam Su, the chairman and chief executive of Yum's China division, in a press briefing Monday. But the fundamental problems that sparked consumer concern over the quality of the...

The smell of bacon was in the air Saturday as thousands converged on Iowa's capital city for an increasingly popular festival celebrating all things connected with the meat. Some people wore Viking hats and others walked around with makeshift snouts for the Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival. The annual event featured more than 10,000 pounds of bacon served in unusual ways, such as chocolate-dipped bacon and bacon-flavored cupcakes and gelato. "I love bacon more than I love my job," said Katie Nordquist, who was dressed in a tuxedo T-shirt that looked like bacon Saturday for her first time at the festival.

HERE'S THE CHALLENGE!

The Rock Cave IGA’s ground hog sausage has a regional following come the two weeks surrounding Groundhog Day every year. Now, it is making an appearance on national television along with Rock Cave IGA owners Glen and JoAnn Hawkins, their son Dale Hawkins and Café Cimino owner and chef Tim Urbanic of Sutton. The escapades will be shown on the Travel Channel’s “Bizarre Foods” show in which the host, Andrew Zimmern, is on a quest to find the world’s most unique tastes, according to www.travelchannel.com. Dale Hawkins said that West Virginia Living Magazine contacted him about the “Bizarre Foods” request...

Smile, Texas schoolchildren. You’re on calorie camera. That’s the idea behind a $2 million project being unveiled Wednesday in the lunchroom of a San Antonio elementary school, where high-tech cameras installed in the cafeteria will begin photographing what foods children pile onto their trays — and later capture what they don’t finish eating. Digital imaging analysis of the snapshots will then calculate how many calories each student scarfed down. Local health officials said the program, funded by a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant, is the first of its kind in a U.S. school, and will be so precise that the...

How much time did you spend in your car last week? Ten hours? Fifteen maybe? Wow, that sounds like a lot. But it's still probably an underestimate: As it turns out, the average American now spends 21 hours per week stuck inside a mobile metal box.

Many of the following recipes have been developed by the Schmidt family over the past 120 years. These items are unique to Schmidt's and can be found only in our restaurant. On behalf of the fifth generation of the Schmidt family. We welcome you and bid you "Guten Essen!"

Recently, in our review of Otto Pizzeria, a commenter noted that pizza was a sacred beast, and that “acting like we [knew] better” was unacceptable. It’s a refrain you sometimes hear repeated among local chefs and the owners of local food-oriented businesses (even though such comments alienate what I would think to be a fairly important demographic for their business); that food bloggers are self-important idiots, with no training or education, spouting off on the Internet about food, without the needed qualifications and background, be it in the food service industry, a professional career in print media food reviewing, or...

Did North Carolina potteries use uranium oxide glazes in the pre-WWII art pottery era? For a long time many students of North Carolina art pottery have held that they did, but this author has been unable to find any verifiable example of such a glaze. There are many examples of chromium oxide red-orange glazes, of course, and the colors of these glazes can be very similar. However, chromium oxide is not radioactive -- uranium oxide is, even in a glaze -- and chromium oxide does not glow under ultraviolet light, while uranium oxide glazes often do fluoresce in the presence...

Delicacies in other countries may seem disgusting at first glance, but chefs and dietitians say they can be delicious and nutritious. Just imagine the protein and minerals in an appetizing course of balut, followed by warm Casu Marzu, sizzling boodog and a refreshing bite of hasma for dessert. Technically that's boiled duck fetus, maggot-ridden cheese, a beheaded goat stuffed with stones and frog fallopian tubes. The whole meal is a good source of protein. Below is a list of foods you may find disgusting, delicious and perhaps nutritious -- if you can only bring yourself to try them. Corn Smut,...

Glen W. Bell, Jr., 86, founder of the Taco Bell restaurant chain, passed away last evening in his home in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif... One of the founding fathers of fast food and pioneer of the Mexican Quick Service Restaurant, Glen Bell is best known for founding Taco Bell, the world’s leading and most successful Mexican QSR chain...

If you're a cheese lover, this is for you! You may think you've died and gone to cheese heaven...where they don't count calories.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8DTSPzU0RI

[Archived Chef's Tables Recipes] Back in the ‘50’s when I was growing up no Christmas was complete without the sweet and spicy smell of gingerbread. An almost intoxicating aroma filled the house and you knew, even as a small child, that it wasn’t long before Christmas eve. If you ever dined in our Main Dining Room you probably noticed the full sized figures of colonial looking men & women and decorative large wooden planks that appear to have the same figures carved in them. What most of our guest don’t realize is that these boards are actual hundred and forty...

Leryn Franco is just your run-of-the-mill javelin thrower/pageant queen/model with her own calendar. But during the Beijing Olympics the 26-year old Paraguayan became so much more to the American people; she became our javelin thrower/pageant queen/model with her own calendar. So, my fellow Americans, it is with a heavy heart that I regret to inform you that our favorite Paraguayan athlete (sorry Jose Luis Chilavert) was eliminated from the Olympics this morning after failing to qualify for the javelin finals. Take all the time you need. Ms. Franco became the object of our attention after she was noticed by NBC...

Police say a trailer loaded with 14 tons of double-stuffed Oreos has overturned, spilling the cookies still in their plastic sleeves into the median and roadway. Illinois State Police Sgt. Brian Mahoney says the truck's driver was traveling from Chicago to Morris on Interstate 80 around 4 a.m. Monday when he fell asleep at the wheel and slammed into the median. "The boxes came out of the trailer and boxes were ripped open," he said. The crash about 50 miles southwest of Chicago remains under investigation. Mahoney says no charges have been filed but both lanes of traffic remain closed...

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - With a possible U.S. recession looming, Colonel Sanders is turning to China to fill the breach, offering a menu of fried dough and preserved egg porridge alongside the chicken that turned KFC into an American icon. Beset by falling sales at home, Yum! Brands Inc, owner of the Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut brands, is mounting an expansion drive in China that could make the country its biggest source of profit within a decade. But like many foreign firms in China, from mobile phone makers to clothing designers, the U.S. fast food giant has discovered it...

WASHINGTON - Papa salmon plus mama salmon equals ... baby trout? Japanese researchers put a new spin on surrogate parenting as they engineered one fish species to produce another, in a quest to preserve endangered fish. Idaho scientists begin the next big step next month, trying to produce a type of salmon highly endangered in that state — the sockeye — this time using more plentiful trout as surrogate parents. The new method is "one of the best things that has happened in a long time in bringing something new into conservation biology," said University of Idaho zoology professor Joseph...

Chopped cardboard, softened in an industrial chemical and made tasty with pork flavoring, is a main ingredient in batches of steamed buns sold in a Beijing neighborhood, state television said. The report, aired late Wednesday on China Central Television, highlights the country's perennial problems with food safety despite continuing government efforts to improve the situation. Countless small, often illegally run operations exist across China and make money cutting corners by using inexpensive ingredients or unsavory substitutes. They are almost impossible to regulate. China Central Television's undercover investigation report features the shirtless, shorts-clad maker of the buns - called baozi -...

SCIENTISTS have bred cows that produce skimmed milk and hope to establish herds of the cattle to meet the demands of health-conscious consumers. The milk is also high in omega3 oils, claimed to improve brain power, and contains polyunsaturated fat. The saturated fats found in normal milk are linked to increased risk of heart disease. The cows, which have a particular genetic mutation, were bred from a single female discovered by researchers when they screened milk from millions of cattle in New Zealand. Butter from these cows has the extra advantage of being spreadable straight from the fridge, like margarine.