A blog about food, history, food charts, and more. (Formerly Mental Masala)
Updated, 8/30/17: changed “cricket flour” to “cricket powder” because powder is a more accurate and preferred term. Every six months I visit several websites that sell pure cricket powder so I can update the prices in my “cricket powder price tracker.” The July update day occurred recently, so my post from 2016 has July 1, […]
Los Angeles has all kinds of tours and guide maps: movie stars’ houses, filming locations, locations in Raymond Chandler novels, architecture, city history, staircases, and food. But if you’re a true fan of advertising or cars, here’s a tour that might appeal to you: Los Angeles car commercial filming locations. Because of the good weather, the […]
During my extensive explorations of Flickr Commons, I ran across a magazine called The Utah Farmer, a periodical for all kinds of farmers in the Utah area. Ghirardelli Chocolate, the legendary San Francisco chocolate company (“since 1852”), was one of their regular advertisers, with an ad in most issues. One of their ads in 1915 had […]
I was out walking the other day, and it was hot, so I was really feeling the collar. As I rounded the corner onto Kings Lane, I spotted my old crony George. And so I says to him, “I’m headed to the Lion’s Pub, why don’t you come and have a pickle?” Once we got […]
Almost exactly one year ago, there was some commotion* in my tiny corner of the Twitterverse about a New York Times recipe from Julia Moskin for macaroni and cheese. There are a zillion mac and cheese recipes, so what caused the commotion? Uncooked macaroni. The recipe calls for uncooked macaroni to be mixed with milk, […]
Bowl of peppers from Thomas Campone Photography (via Flickr). CC BY-NC 2.0. When a bowl of beans or a bowl of soup needs some zing, or if I’m making a quesadilla in the middle of winter and don’t have any decent salsa, I open my freezer and reach for a jar labeled “Spicy Toltec BBQ […]
It has been quite a while since my last round-up of entomophagy news, so here’s another batch of fresh and not-so-fresh items. General For insects to gain popularity as food for humans, the insect containing foods need to tasty. Chefs will be leading this effort, whether in restaurants like Meeru Dhalwala from Vij’s in Vancouver, […]
I have been baking bread for a long time, but never with a great amount of intensity (though during one period in the 90s I was baking frequently and had a personal “bread museum” that chronicled my efforts). In the early years, general cookbooks like The New Laurel’s Kitchen were my teacher, but their basic […]
The Buttolph Collection of Menus at the New York Public Library has grabbed my attention and I’m wondering if I should start a new blog called “Menu Masala.” A food history nerd could spend a lot of time looking for menus with compelling art, analyzing the how contents have changed over time, searching for special […]
Updated below After my review of The Box and my port mapping exercise, I thought I’d sail back into port and unload a few port-related charts. The first shows the growth of three big West Coast ports: Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland. As international trade has expanded and the container shipping industry has become […]