It’s that time of year when we like to think about food and drink

I don’t know where the reindeer end and he begins.

Fascinating look into culture of Finland’s reindeer farmers. Reindeer meat is becoming chic, but production is falling due to climate change, predators, and logging.

↩︎ Economist, posted Dec. 24, 2016

A short article by Mayukh Sen on how and why fruitcake became a slur. See also: Why you should go easy on all the free pickles, onions, and white bread in Texas.

↩︎ posted Dec. 24, 2016

Got an angry uncle or grandma who needs some strategic taking-down at dinner? The FBI’s former lead international kidnapping negotiator offers holiday survival skills:

If you were to say, “I’m feeling really anxious about this dinner,” there’s actually solid data that shows that simple identification process dials down the anxiety. It doesn’t reinforce it. If you do an MRI of someone’s brain you can view the portion of the amygdala that magnifies fear, and when you see someone identify the fear by saying, “I’m feeling afraid,” the electrical impulses drops. It sounds simple, but self-identification—or external identification by someone else—reduces symptoms.

↩︎ posted Dec. 21, 2016

Once at her apartment, Aunt Jane gave me a real bourbon ball, one she’d made using one hundred percent bourbon from her cupboard. It had the balsa-wood smell of the liquor I knew from sniffing my parents’ highballs, and the same clammy bite. But the bourbon stuck in my nose. Ever so gently did it burn the edges of my tightened throat.

How to win the cookie swap: with a kickass Kentucky bourbon ball.

↩︎ Food52, posted Dec. 15, 2016

Don’t show this to your kids (or risk the challenge of trying to make it yourself): An elaborate goth gingerbread castle, complete with candy glass windows. Says the architect, Christine McConnell: “This project was a huge undertaking for me. I usually try to limit projects to two weeks, but I got so excited about this that I ended up getting a little carried away.”

↩︎ posted Dec. 19, 2016

Maybe it’s everything else in the news—which we read closely, sweat angrily, discuss anxiously—but sometimes, especially this time of year, it’s fun to think about food. We’re talking roast receipes, old-fashioned latkes and new-fangled donuts, and Christmas morning cereal. But also this round-up of holiday menus of yore.

Menus catalogued by the New York Public Library from Christmas dinners served in the early part of the 20th century offer an interesting look at our ancestors’ dining habits. The menus come from a survey of restaurants, hotels, and even an Army fort’s Christmas dinner service. Turtle soup, frozen egg nogg, mid-meal punch, plum pudding with hard sauce, and gateau assortis.

You’d think we were feeling nostalgic for some reason. So what? Fuck it, someone send us a Chrismukkah wreath already.

↩︎ posted Dec. 15, 2016

Why food is the most dangerous substance we will ever eat.

Fascinating article by Deborah Blum about how, prior to the regulation of the food industry, there was very little preventing us from eating poison. Which explains all the borax on people’s Christmas menus.

E.g., here’s information on “mad honey”:

So what is mad honey? It’s just honey, but it comes from bees feeding on some very poisonous flowering plants that flourish along the Black Sea (and elsewhere), notably rhododendrons. These plants contain a class of poisons called grayanotoxins that act directly on the nervous system. The classic symptoms range from tingling and numbness, dizziness and nausea, impaired speech and a loss of balance. Some victims report a sense of being surrounded by spinning lights, others complain of a tunnel vision. “Mad-honey poisoning” can also be fatal, as the compromised nervous system starts shutting down the lungs and heart.

↩︎ posted Dec. 15, 2016

Tasting is fearful because it is pleasurable; it is described as “good” in relation to the wider sense of food as undesired and dangerous, which is often articulated through discussions of feeling “too full,” “sick,” or “stretched” after eating.

When sitting around a table with family isn’t calming: an accessible article/white paper on anorexia.

↩︎ Gastronomica, posted Dec. 15, 2016

What to get the foodie who has everything? How about utensils designed to eat bugs in the future?

↩︎ posted Dec. 15, 2016

I hope you like tartan, because it is the IN pattern this Christmas. Everything must be tartan this year: the cookware, the table linens, the ribbons, THE CHILDREN. Yes, you must dress the children in tartan frocks. And not cheapass tartan frocks, either. If it is not hand-appliquéd by a disaffected French factory worker who only shows up to work two days a week.

Always rewarding: This year’s edition of the “Hater’s Guide To The Williams-Sonoma Catalog.”

↩︎ Adequate Man, posted Dec. 15, 2016