PB&J: the snack of champions
NPR
Some athletes have lucky socks. Some wear ancient — but lucky — T-shirts under their jersey for every game. But the entire NBA eats peanut butter and jelly sandwiches like they’re game-winning manna from the basketball gods. “PB&J — if there’s a locker room that doesn’t have it, I haven’t seen it,” says ESPN reporter Baxter Holmes. The obsession started during the 2007-2008 season, when Boston Celtics star Kevin Garnett ate a PB&J before the team clinched a win, and from then on Garnett and his teammates had to have the childhood staple before every game. The ritual spread from there.
The Teutonic twist in Tex-Mex food
Southern Foodways Alliance
The story of chili powder is about as Mexican as spaetzle, which is to say that a German invented it. William Gebhardt immigrated to San Antonio in the 1800s, right as waves of U.S. tourists were coming to the city to see the Alamo and eat chili con carne, served on the street by the chili queens — usually young, unmarried women. Gebhardt opened a bar and used a chili-queen recipe for his own version of the dish, but like everyone else he had to import ancho chiles from Mexico. After a long wagon ride back to San Antonio, the peppers quickly rotted in his storeroom. So Gebhardt started drying them in an oven, and then mixed in dried cumin and oregano, too. Eventually, he bottled the spice, launched Gebhardt’s Eagle Brand Chili Powder Company, and Tex-Mex cuisine was born. Today, most Tex-Mex dishes use heavy doses of chili powder, not the fresh chili paste that is common in Mexico.
Sheetz v. Wawa: a gustatory dustup
Thrillist
If you don’t have an opinion about Sheetz v. Wawa, then you aren’t from the Northeast. They’re the Hatfields and McCoys of the convenience-store industry, two food-forward chains with dueling menus that inspire the kind of passion from their customers typically found at restaurants that don’t also sell cigarettes and gas. “People with access to Sheetz or Wawa don’t just casually enjoy these brands. They’re the subjects of countless gushing listicles … There are highly active YouTube channels based around the menus. They don’t have cult followings — they have people who consider the brands to be part of their identity,” says Thrillist.
The top five food crimes
Mother Jones
From the Great Maple Syrup Robbery to a $30-million wine heist, here are some of the biggest food crimes in recent history. Also making the cut is The Codfather, the subject of FERN’s latest story (written by Ben Goldfarb and published, as it happens, with Mother Jones): “The details of [this] seafood kingpin’s story are enough for an episode of The Sopranos: Federal agents disguised themselves as Russians and busted fisherman Carlos Rafael for a laundry list of crimes, including mislabeling his catch and selling thousands of pounds of fish under-the-table to a dealer in New York City,” says Mother Jones. Check out an interview with Goldfarb on The Bite.
I scream, you scream, we all scream for food-waste ice cream
Fast Company
The Portland-based ice cream shop, Salt & Straw, is known for doing funky things with ice cream. Take the month it devoted its menu to fermentation and used sourdough bread, fish sauce and fermented honey. This June, the shop, which sees about 100 customers every hour on hot days, will sell only flavors made from food that was destined for the trash. The apple-butter ice cream, for example, will use re-steeped rum spices leftover from a local distillery and ugly, bruised apples. Many of the ingredients will come from gleaners and the Portland Fruit Tree Project, which collects free fruit from around the city.