Celebrity Chefs

I posted my own thoughts on 'Celebrity Chefs' a few weeks ago. During the week, I read an article in Shortlist Magazine where Kayvan Novak, the man behind 'Facejacker', talked about his top five TV chefs. I agree with everything that he says about each of the chefs mentioned so thought that I would share his thoughts here.


Keith Floyd


I grew up on the late Keith Floyd cooking shows. He's an amazing character and an inspiration to me. Anyone who can hold a camera in a single take for as long as he did, with no script, is an actual genius. One of a kind.


Nigel Slater


his recipes are tasty and his prose is equally delicious. Who else could sound as if they were having an orgasm when eating unsecured loans porridge and make it sound so normal? He has ultimately proved that cookery shows are all in the delivery. Unconventionally mainstream.


Marco Pierre White


He cemented his reputation by being fiery, but what a chef. Sure, he sells stockcubes now but he's been there and done it when he was younger, winning Michelin stars. Imagine young Marco meeting today's Marco. You'd wonder what they'd make of one another.


Nigella Lawson


I enjoy watching her go to the fridge in the middle of the night. She likes tasty food and nothing satisfies her appetite. She's one of those posh chefs you can't help but watch and listen to the smooth sounds of.


Raymond Blanc


He's bumbling, with an intriguing personality, bad credit loans and although he's a head chef in charge of lots of people, he leads in a very cuddly, amiable way - the antithesis of Gordon Ramsay, who does it with lots of swearing.




Who is your favourite TV Chef?

McDonald’s playarea

A mom who publicized her findings of deadly bacteria in her area McDonald’s PlayPlace has found herself banned from several of the fast food restaurant’s locations.
Erin Carr-Jordan of Chandler, Arizona, gathered samples from the McDonald’s kid play area and claims that it was crawling with antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a.k.a. MRSA, a bacteria that can lead to serious illness and even death. Carr-Jordan alerted the manager of her findings, and went around the restaurant telling other diners with children about the bacteria, telling them to wash their hands or use sanitizer as soon as possible.
Now Carr-Jordan has found herself persona non grata at the 8 various McDonald’s restaurants in her area, according to the Arizona Republic News.
In a letter from Phoenix attorney James Stipe, Stipe unsecured loans said, “I write to inform you that you are prohibited from entering the following McDonald’s restaurants,” along with the location addresses.
Stipe continued that if Carr-Jordan was found at any of the locations, she could be subject to arrest for criminal trespass.
Carr-Jordan told ARN that she believes the same franchisee owns all eight locations.
A spokesperson at McDonald’s headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois, said, “We are still committed to [addressing Carr-Jordan's concerns], but it appears that recent actions by Dr. Carr-Jordan have become disruptive to the employees and customers within our franchisee’s restaurants, which prompted the letter from his attorney… We remain committed to working with an internal team on ensuring that our PlayPlaces are clean and safe for all customers.
Carr-Jordan has been on a mission to cleanse PlayPlaces since encountering one in Tempe several months ago that she says was covered with grime, and samples she obtained and sent to a private lab revealed the presence of various pathogens.
But Carr-Jordan has run into a brick wall in trying to engage more regulation over play areas in fast food restaurants. Government officials she has approached have said they have no jurisdiction over the play areas, and because they are generally completely separated from bad credit loans  the food preparation area, they are not subject to the same cleanliness and food-handling regulations.
A spokesman for the Maricopa County Environmental Services said that play areas only need to have an appearance of cleanliness to pass inspections, but said that the department encourages restaurant managers to routinely sanitize them.

Michelin Star Restaurants in London and Surrounding Areas

Taking into consideration that many families unsecured loans and couples like to eat out at least once a week. When the time comes for the day you will have to see if the menu is to what is your liking This will be a decision that can be made with taking into consideration what type of food you would like to leave for the evening and if their ratings are for that particular kind of food. Having a preference for steak will have you finding some type of steakhouse that can satisfy your craving. Many different reviews are put up through forums and blogs that people post online. These are very informative when it comes to trying to make a decision on a particular type of restaurant or food.

The Internet has made many different types of information available to individuals 24 a day seven days a week. This means that if you get some kind of idea or the information on something that could not get validity of the source of that. Most of this information used to be easily available at libraries across this great nation of ours and that was good enough for most. Technology today has brought this to another level with the Internet so prevalent. Many individuals lives in broadband Internet connections everywhere, many individuals will have to utilize these technologies just to stay in the loop.

When you find one of these rated restaurants that you would like to visit, it is best to look at some of the feedback that other patrons have left, after their visit to the restaurant. Many believe this is the best type of information to get. And if you think about it, having a persons view of what they experienced when they visited seems evidence and love to believe some of the statements.

There are many today that frequent restaurants sometimes on a daily basis and having this information available could prove to be invaluable not only with finding a great place to eat but budget wise. Most of the websites you will encounter will have information bad credit loans about pricing and learned that they have some specials going on during peak days of the week. Hopefully, some information given here will give you an accurate assessment of what to do and how to access restaurant guides and some of the feedback of past patrons. All of this information is relevant to making a firm decision about where to go and how to get the most for your money at Michelin star restaurants in London.

How to Grow Dragon Fruit

Origins of Dragon Fruit / Pitaya Fruit and Climate: Dragon Fruit is native to South and Central America, and as you would guess from that history, too cold conditions or cold winters will kill the pitaya cactus plant long before the pitahaya cactus plant successfully fruits at all. In fact, although it has characteristics of a cactus, the pitaya plant will not tolerate conditions that are oppressively hot either (don't think of Joshua trees in Death Valley). Think of the pitahaya cactus plant more as a tropical find than a hot desert cactus. In spite of the pitahaya cactus plant not being native, the climates of Vietnam and Thailand suit the needs of those wishing to grow pitaya cactus plants well, and it is commercially grown successfully in both Thailand and Vietnam as a result. In the United States, mild climates like Southern California are amendable to growing pitaya cactus plants. Growing pitahaya cactus in greenhouses is also possible.

Obtaining your first Pitaya Seed(s): If you can buy pitahaya seed already prepared and ready to be planted, go ahead and use those as your dragon fruit seed(s). If you do not have ready access to pitahaya seeds prepared and ready for cultivation, just go ahead and harvest the dragon fruit seeds from either the fresh pitaya fruit (save some next time you are eating) or take your pitaya seeds from your dried pitaya fruit. To get the pitahaya seeds from the fresh fruit, just gently mush the flesh with a little bit of water to wash away and remove the flesh from the dragon fruit seeds. Treat the dried fruit similarly, but you will need to be more delicate and careful. You may need a little more patience and perseverance if you harvest and prepare your own pitaya seeds from the fresh or dried pitaya fruit, but just keep at it and most likely you'll find enough viable seeds to get seedlings from them.

Getting the first Pitaya Plant Seedlings: Plant the pitaya seeds in (very shallow placement) a well draining potting soil or potting compost material and either keep the planted seed material moist, or better yet cover with a plastic bag or use a small greenhouse type of setup to keep the seeds moist. Make sure you clean off any residual flesh from the pitahaya seeds before you start them, as the left over flesh clinging to them can easily rot and spoil your planting. You should within 10-14 days or so begin to see the first seeds sprout and produce seedlings. Transfer them to a rich but well draining soil mix and keep temperatures moderate, and the pitaya plants should begin to take hold. Do not over water the growing pitahaya cactus plants! Give them a support on which to grow as they begin to mature and increase in size.

Growing Pitaya Cactus Plants from Cuttings: If you don't want to wait and enjoy the reward of seeing a seed burst forth into a seedling, and you have access already to a growing pitaya plant, you can try to grow pitaya cactus directly as a new plant from a cutting or section of the mature plant. Like other succulents and cacti, if you break or cut off a large enough piece of a mature plant it will attempt to put down roots and start growing itself to form a new plant. Try cutting a section of the mature pitaya vine (stem) and plant it directly in the ground or suitable soil medium. You may have trouble with the cutting rotting before it successfully starts growing, but with a little luck you will be growing pitaya cactus plants quickly without having to start from seeds. You should expect, if your pitaya cactus cutting section was large enough, blooms in 6 - 12 months - a significant savings in time from starting from seed.

Growing Pitaya Cactus Plants to Maturity / Fruiting: As for many fruiting plants, the very young pitaya plants will not liberally flower or fruit at all until they have begun to reach some degree of maturity. The vines of the pitaya plant will have to reach a moderate size and weight (many lbs) before the pitaya plant unsecured loans will start to flower and bear fruit. At a minimum you should not expect fruiting and flowering for many months - unless your pitahaya cutting was huge enough to really be a mature plant already when you planted it!

Seeing the Mature Pitaya Plant to Fruiting: Because the pitaya plant blooms only at night and the blooms are fleeting, it can be hard to achieve successful pollination required for the pitaya plant to bear fruit. Many of the insects that pollinate other flowering plants are not active at night. Night active pollinators like bats and moths are more likely to pollinate the pitahaya plants than bees and other day active pollinators. Depending upon where bad credit loans you are in the world this can present a problem. One might say this is where the art comes into the process. Have patience, however, as the plants will usually bloom several times each year depending upon your climate and growing conditions. You may have to resort to hand pollinating the plants yourself.

Kiwi berries? Wow

Taste 1,000 Fruits is an item on my Mighty Life List. I’m currently inching my way through the first hundred.

These are Kiwiberries, and they are rocking me out. They’re grape-sized Kiwis without the fuzzy exterior, and you can just pop them in your mouth. I’m pretty sure Willy Wonka was involved somehow.

They’re delicious, by the way — sweeter and more intensely Kiwi-flavored than their larger Kiwi cousins, and so effing cute. Cute, I tell you!

Inside, they look just like tiny Kiwis, with the seeds unsecured loans and everything. I want to have a party just so I can use them to garnish Kiwi-themed cocktails.

Whooo’s a tiny little kiwi? Wuzzah-wuzzah. bad credit loans

Mountain Dew Voltage, its blue

Mountain Dew Voltage was declared the winner in a big PR marketing push, called DEWmocracy - where voters could choose the next of three flavors of Mountain Dew. Three flavors were introduced; Supernova, a strawberry-melon flavor; Revolution, a berry flavor; and Voltage, a raspberry-citrus flavor. All of them had the same caffeine content and the same basic genetic makeup, only the flavors had been played around with. SO over the upcoming months, lots and lots of people voted for their favorites. Counts differ, but there were somewhere between 250,000(first counting) to 1.6 million people (mountain dew press release) voting for their Dew of choice.

Each flavor was a ginseng infused candy sweet soda that offered people a chance to drink their Dew and go for something different than the green that made them the second most popular drink around. For the most part, the ingredients and masic makeup were all the same thing. The ingredients list is almost identical, as well as their caffeine content.
For me, the winner,Mountain DewVoltage, still does not measure up to the joy of Diet Mountain Dew. Now, Voltage is a decent-flavored berry drink, but it does not have the same sharp sour citrus, the same tang, the same Dew-ness. We all have our favorite soda. Some might get into Coke Zero or Dr. Pepper, but the thing is that we like it because we just do. It is our little treat and no one is going to be able to replace that drink, like a baby's blanket, loved teddy, or guilty pleasure TV drama. House sucks - isn't realistic, a stupid formula and is generally inane, but that does not stop me from getting sucked into every episode that comes my way. I love my DMD. And while I have lots of other soft drinks, it will have to be a very amazing drink to make me switch - and Voltage just is not good enough.

Taste:7
This is pure melted candy. It tastes like Laffy Taffy. Actually, I found more in common with blue Jolly Rancher than anything, slightly sour with that familiar Mountain Dew bite. It only has a slightly sour flavor profile from the citric acid and raspberry flavor - so it has some mountain dew sharpness even without the orange juice. The flavor is quite strong, although I could not taste any of the ginseng that was supposed to be within. I was able to taste the strong sodium benzoate and citric acid that is present in my beloved mountain dew.

Buzz/Nutrition:5
I guess with a name like Voltage, I was expecting there to be a whole lot more caffeine in here than it does. Sure, the 20oz bottle has 92mg, or the same amount as a cup of coffee, but that is really not that much, when taken per ounce. The secret energy ingredient in here is supposedly ginseng - which will give you more energy if you take it for many weeks at a sustained level. In doses this small the only thing it is used for is to sell the drinkto the masses. So no buzz at all will be found in this, unles you feel like chugging down a two liter of this, which I would not reccommend.
Why not reccommend? Well, it ain't like this stuff is Made from vitamins and fruit blossoms. This is strictly lab made all the way. A 20 20 oz. bottle of Voltage is packed with 290 calories, 105 mg of sodium, and 76 g of sugars. So you know when doctors are yelling at the population for downing sugary drinks that are bad for them and are full of calories and blah blah blah - this is the drink they are referring to.

Packaging:8
The design is about what you would expect from a huge company like Mountain Dew. The label is all back and XTREME, trying to draw out the cool kids. I have only seen this in 20oz bottles, evidently done so you could see the cool bright artificial blue glow eminating from the clear plastic. It is a good use of thier update unsecured loans MTN Dew logo, only this time spelled out as opposed to the appreviation found on normal and diet MD cans. I like that they list the caffeine content on here, and overall appreciate the package design. Although it is not stunning or different, it is decent, albeit pandering and corporate.


Website:6
Mountain Dew spent $625,000 on online media for the first 10 months of 2008. It shows on this website, full of flash games and prizes, and basically all that you would expect from a site made by pepsi. HUGE companies put tons of time developing apps for this site, and all the work shows off in one big mess - with bad credit loans really nothing about the drink, but a whole lot of commercial and hype. If you like the hype, the downloads, the silly flash games, the forums, the myspace experience, the name-your-uberslick-web2.0-term-here gadgets - way too over the top. Dang people, mountain dew is a drink, not a social experience....I think they could do a whole lot more if they tried to do do a whole lot less. Let the drink and the drinkers be the most important thing about your site, not the electric puzzle games.

Chocolate Philadelphia Fudge Recipe

Yield

32 pieces

Ingredients

1 (8 ounce) package Philadelphia Cream Cheese, room temperature
4 cups confectioners’ (powdered) sugar, sifted
4 (1 ounce) squares unsweetened chocolate, melted
dash of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped

Directions

Line an 8" x 8" square baking pan with aluminum foil, unsecured loans extending foil at least 2" over ends of pan. Lightly butter foil. Set aside.

In a large bowl, beat cream cheese on medium speed until creamy. Gradually add sugar, beating until well blended. Add remaining ingredients. Mix well. Spread into prepared baking pan.

Refrigerate several hours or until firm. Using the extended edges, bad credit loans lift fudge from pan. Place on cutting board. Peel off foil. Cut into 1" squares.

Mc Donalds Minority Ads

Vintage McDonald's advertisement from 1970s

First, can we take a moment for the father/son afros? I’M LOVIN’ IT!

If you watch commercials and view print ads as obsessively as we do, you’ll note the growing shift in McDonald’s advertising over the past few years. McDonald’s has frequently been clever and innovative with their advertising. Remember the “Menu Song” ads from the 80s? Genius. But is it just us or have these commercials become decidedly more hip, more urban… dare we say, more Black?

Well, the answer from McDonald’s is yes and no. Yes, their advertising has become more Black, but also more Hispanic and more Asian, due to a strategy implemented by Neil Golden, McDonald’s U.S. chief marketing officer, called “Leading with Ethnic Insights.”

“The ethnic consumer tends to set trends,” says Golden. “So they help set the tone for how we enter the marketplace.” Golden says preferences gleaned from minority consumers shape McDonald’s menu and ad choices, which are then marketed to all customers.

Golden first discovered how dramatically minority tastes can influence mainstream preferences when he oversaw McDonald’s marketing in the U.S. West in the 1990s. His team had developed products aimed at Hispanics called the “Fiesta Menu,” which included guacamole and spicy beef tortas. After the launch, the items sold well enough in Hispanic neighborhoods—but sales rose more than expected in Orange County and specifically Laguna Beach, an area that was more than 90 percent white. “The intended consumer said, ‘We sure appreciate what you’re trying to do, nice try.’” Golden recalls. “But [the Fiesta menu] overperformed in the general market.

The fast-food giant’s strategy is a departure from the way companies typically market to American households. Usually, a company works with an agency to develop advertising aimed at the general market, then turns to boutique multicultural agencies to create versions tailored to Blacks, Hispanics, or Asians. McDonald’s unsecured loans still creates ads specially tailored to minority groups, as it has for over 30 years, but minorities exert an increasingly influential role in its mainstream advertising as well. The company thinks they provide early exposure to new trends.

“Most companies think they can box in Latinos, box in African-Americans, and then run the general market ad,” says Steve Stoute, chief executive of Translation, which advises brands, including McDonald’s, on how to reach young adults. “McDonald’s will take an ad that could be primarily geared toward African-Americans and put a general market advertising dollar behind it.”

So, “minority” trends have become what the “majority” follows, huh? As America bad credit loans becomes increasingly more diverse and “minority” populations continue to grow, McDonald’s is truly ahead of the curve… minority trends ARE majority trends, friends!

KFC Chicken Cheese Killer

KFC is gambling that its Double Down will be a hit in Canada, as it unveils the "sandwich" (if it can even be called that) with a massive media campaign.

You'd be hard-pressed to find a Canadian fast-food lover who hasn't heard of the Double Down – the culinary concoction that uses two slabs of fried chicken instead of buns to sandwich together bacon, cheese and KFC "secret sauce."

When the greasy, salt-laden debuted in the U.S. in the spring, gobsmacked nutritionists expressed shock, while food porn lovers salivated. The DD became KFC's most successful sandwich in the company's history, with more than 10 million sold in less than a month.

Now, the Double Down is in Canada and according to Dan Howe, the chief marketing officer of KFC Canada parent, Yum! Restaurants Canada, the excitement is practically palpable.

"We have been amazed by Canada's reaction to Double Down," he said in a new release. "There's a lot of excitement and people tell us they are planning Double Down parties with their friends."

KFC Canada has even launched a Facebook fan page to generate further hype. There, they challenge fans to "Take Down the Double Down," and a Wall of Fame, where Double Down fans can claim "bragging rights" to having the intestinal mettle to try a sandwich that promises almost an entire day's worth of sodium, almost half a day's fat in one sandwich, and a whole lot of grease on their fingers.

The Double Down is just the latest entry in the world of food sensations designed to both flabbergast and fascinate at the same time. And at 540 calories, 30 grams of fat and 1,740 milligrams of sodium, it is a tad outrageous.

But, the Double Down is hardly the most outrageous. It doesn't have even as many calories as KFC Canada's own Classic Sandwich, which boasts slightly more than 1,000 calories.

Nor does it have the fat content of the KFC Wrapstar or Boxmaster (32 and 45 total grams of fat respectively). And a poutine from KFC packs a lot more sodium (2,450 mg).

Meanwhile, Wendy's Baconator boasts 610 calories, 35 grams of fat and 1,130 mg of sodium, while Burger King's Triple Whopper with Cheese has bragging rights to 1,250 calories, a mind-numbing 84 grams of fat and 1,600 mg of sodium.

Still, considering that adults should be aiming for daily sodium intake of 1,500 mg, eating one Double Down throws that goal out the unsecured loans window. And since adult men should aim for no more than 90 grams of fat a day, and women 65 grams, the Double Down could get you almost halfway there – all with no fibre and precious few vitamins.

On the upside? It's low in sugar and carbohydrates.

KFC Canada says its Double Down bad credit loans will be available for a limited lime, only until Nov. 14. But if it sells well – after the initial excitement dies down – this unabashed grease fest could be a permanent fixture on the menu.