I want to be entertained

Ever since I first heard about mead, I wanted to try some. My chance came about a week ago when I noticed it in bottle at a local pub. I had to look it up to see what it actually was.. Long story short Mead is basically a Honey based beer, brewed from the usual beer stuff, but with honey instead of (or including) hops.

It takes a little getting used to, but its pretty tasty stuff.. Feels just right when you’re sitting in a beer garden. I think the stuff I tried had some other stuff in it, It tasted faintly of grapes. I would fully recommend it though:

www.lindisfarne.org.uk

I stumbled across this map showing the drinking ages across the entire world on a map. Not only is a useful guide, it also shows some interesting areas such as Iceland that has no legal drinking age at  all, meaning that literally anyone can drink alcohol, from ages 0 to 100.

Its also interesting that most places agree that 18 is the correct drinking age with only America and a few others having the age way up at 21. I strongly believe the drinking age in America is a bit of a joke. I would say a whole lot of Americans drink way before that age, so keeping it at 21 just makes it more of a deviant act than here in  Britain.

Restaurants across the world are feeling a sudden dip in sales after fears of swine flu befin to set in. When you think about it, its quite incredeable the way our collective brains work.. The majority of us collectivly think that going somewhere for a meal and eating out it a little bit dangerous at the moment. The fact that it really isn’t dangerous at all, and the likleyhood of you catching something from going to a crowded area are still patheticlally small, but it is nevertheless, an interesting thing.

The 15 billion dollar pork industry is also falling sharply, even though you cant catch swine flew from meat.

Swine Flu?  yeah, right.. when pigs fly

It is estimated that French restaurants have lost between 20 and50% of their income due to the recession (still sounds like a cereal to me).

The BBC reported today that French restaurants are getting increasingly desperate as customers are tending to grab ready made sandwiches and salads instead of sitting down and eating at a restaurant like they used to.

Whats interesting is that a quick search on Google turned up another article, just a year before claiming that the number of French restaurants going bankrupt has sky-rocketed.  The article was released in September 08- long before the credit crunch really started kicking off.

It appears to me to be simply a change in the way that the French are spending their time. It is a great time (and money) saver to simply grab a sandwich, maybe the French are only just coming to realise this.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8021292.stm -The recent bbc news article
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7634217.stm -The old bbc news article from September 2008.

I stumbled across a pretty interesting site that calculates (very roughly) how much money I have spent on alcohol to date. I’m not going to lie to you, the figure was a little startling at £6,396 in total. This is based on me going out twice a week and having 4 pints each night.

Lets go into a little more detail:

6,396 divided by the 5 years I have been legally drinking gives me an extra £1,200 per year. You have no idea how much I could have used that extra money in my second year at Uni. I could have bought a car.

There was a show on TV a couple of nights ago that followed a twenty something reporter as she investigated how women of different ages were drinking and using alcohol.

One of the more startling things to me was how the conclusion of the film focused on the pivotal role that booze has to plays in British culture, how maybe drink helps Britain loose some of its “British reserve” if only for one night.

I still couldn’t help but think that there was something wrong with it though. The show followed the presenter as she sat with 14 year old’s as they sat in their rooms with friends drinking alcohol stolen from their parents (they were drinking vodka, straight from the bottle through straws) When I was underage, that sort of thing was definitely left for the park, with 3 litter bottles of cider. It was much more of a social thing. There was something really wrong watching these kids with liquor.

The documentary also went up through the ages to these OAP’s who were part of some sort of club who at their age still enjoy going out and getting drunk. Although everyone was avoiding them like the plague (roudy old women are really

Captain Obvious strikes again.. This time to announce the breaking news that children who go to school within a block of a fast food restaurant tend to be fatter than those who do not.

The report showed that child obesity rose by 5.2 percent where a fast food restaurant was within one tenth of a mile of a school.

Eric N. Gioia, a councilman from Queens in America has called for a stop to fast food restaurants opening within half a mile of any school. Although this is way over in America, its not hard to see this kind of silliness spreading over the pond.

I guess I just hope my local chippy isn’t shut down.

This year’s list of 50 of the worlds best restaurants comes with a bit of a surprise this year, as Gordon Ramsey’s flagship restaurant plummeted out of the top 100 restaurants into obscurity.

While we are on the TV chefs, Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck came in 2nd for the 4th year running, while Marcus Wareing’s restaurant came in 52nd.

A restaurant called El Bulli in Barcellona came in 1st prize, with its experimental menu and interesting food.

There is nomention of cost in any of this simply because if you need to ask, you probably can’t afford it. A quick price check of one of Ramsey’s cheaper restaurants shows that a set lunch meal costs £45.

Restaurants across the globe are starting to realise the speed and globalised benefit of the social networking site Twitter.

Twitter allows (potential) customers to follow and keep up to date with the day-to-day happenings of restaurants and diners across the globe. Restaurants are only just beginning to use the service to its full potential, tweeting which chef is working tonight, what specials are on, any special offers that are available.

There is one chain of BBQ taco restaurants (addmitedly in Los Angeles) with over 16,000 people following their tweet. The website has made them a small fortune in sales as the number of following members increases exponentially each day.

http://twitter.com/kogibbq –Kogi BBQ has over 16,000 followers.

Yesterday the BBC did an article on the amount of calories contained in various alcoholic drinks. It’s a bit of a shocker when you think about it.. Kind of makes me think I should weigh 300lb from the amount that I drink.

Here is a break down:

Shot of Vodka: This one is the most shocking.. A 25ml shot of Vodka has the same number of calories as a 25ml shot of single cream.
Glass of Wine: 120 calories are in a single glass of wine. That’s about the same as a slice of gooey chocolate cake.
Pint of Bitter: Coming in at a close second, bitter contains 190 calories. Roughly the same as a sticky doughnut.
Pint of Cider: This is the real big one, weighing in at a whopping 200 calories. That’s the same as a can of beans on toast.