Category: Food

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[Water Cooler]If you work in an office, chances are there’s a water cooler somewhere. And if there’s a water cooler, chances are there’s a stack of disposable paper cups (or possibly, even in this age, styrofoam). And chances are that most people will walk up, grab a paper cup, take it back to their desk and then throw it away.

Of course, all those paper cups end up in a landfill somewhere. And there’s the material to manufacture them (even if it’s recycled). And there’s the energy that went into manufacturing them.

So why not reuse that paper cup if you’re only using it for water? It’ll dry out between uses, so the water shouldn’t seep through the wax. If you have, say, one glass of water a day, and you use the same cup for a week, you’re cutting down your paper cup usage by 80%.

Or better yet: do you have a coffee mug? You need to wash it out anyway before you put more coffee in (unless you’re keeping it full all day long). Why not wash it out earlier, and use the mug when you want some water?

Sure, it’s less convenient than walking past the lunch room and grabbing a new paper cup. But let’s face it: you work in an office. And Americans, on the whole, don’t get enough exercise. You might as well take advantage of the extra activity for some incidental exercise.

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From a food allergy alert released today:

Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc., is recalling “Chocolate Covered Almonds” due to undeclared peanuts and “Chocolate Double-Dipped Peanuts” due to undeclared almonds. [emphasis added]

I have to wonder: are they just really bad about keeping their ingredients separate, or did they get the labels switched on a couple of batches?

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I think this was at an Albertsons grocery store. All the vegetables on this particular shelf had little signs like this identifying their uses.

Habañero: Good source of capsaicin

Habañero peppers, a good source of capsaicin? No kidding!

I remember when I was younger, “jalapeño” was practically a synonym for “hot.” I had no idea it was barely the beginning. Jalapeños are only 2,500–8,000 on the Scoville scale—far below the 100,000–350,000 quoted for habañeros.

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Between cash, lunch and an errand, I walked the full length of the Irvine Spectrum today, and realized there will soon be 7 coffee shops in or near the shopping center—and 4 of them are Starbucks.

It opened with just one: a Diedrich Coffee, attached to Barnes & Noble.

Phase 2 (from the movie theaters to the carousel) added a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf.

Phase 3 (from the carousel to the ferris wheel) doubled the number, adding a Kelly’s Coffee & Fudge, and a Starbucks inside Barnes & Noble, which moved into the new section.

Somewhere around then the Diedrich closed. Without the bookstore traffic, it was off in a corner where only people going to restaurants would see it.

Then they put in a Nordstrom, with a Nordstrom e-Bar.

Then they extended the mall past the Nordstrom, put a Target at the end, and put a Starbucks in the Target.

Then they built an apartment complex across the street, and put a Starbucks in the apartment complex.

Now they’ve gone back to the first section, adding a new row of shops in front of the movie theater. And they’re filling in a corner long left vacant…with another Starbucks.