Food usually doesn’t look as good as it’s packaging, but this one is an overkill. Schubecks panna cotta with strawberry sauce I bought in REWE!

outsite:

inside:

It not only looks like crapeteria food, it also tastes like crapeteria food. This panna cotta is just an artificial-tasting pudding.

The German regulations say that the packaging shouldn’t trick the customer into thinking that he’s buying much more than actually.

The watchdogs from Hamburg checked this [pdf warning!]

Result - up to 61% air.

After discountfan.de

What you see here is a £100.000 pot, part of mindlessTimeless Luxury Collection. click the image for the press release

Ah, I can see these little diamonds trickling down the drain… Maybe one should never wash it???

I have seen it in a newspaper, the author somehow forgot to mention the source of the news, but signed it “Magdalena Miroszewska”. That’s not really professional, I suppose she has “borrowed” it from luxist.com

What do you do if you want to make say, a deer ragoût? Go shopping for deer meat. Simple.
Well it seems that some guys go and buy a Zoo ticket instead:

The Zoo keepers in Erfurt are accused of killing animals and selling their meat.

So far I have just seen mentions of goats, sheep and deer in the media, no bizarre species… Let’s see how the investigation unfolds.

Today is 491th anniversary of the Reinheitsgebot

I’m not a big enough wurst fan to actually buy it:
Erich Lissner: Wurstologia oder Es geht um die Wurst. Eine Monographie über die Wurst

This 1939 monography is a taxonomy of over a thousand types of German sausage, AFAIK.

Goat meat is quite delicious. Young goat, that is - the younger, the tastier. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Well, sort of…

Check out this National Geographic video about making Kutti Pi.

Recently I tried to find some info about vegetarian cheese.

To curd the milk, you need to treat it either with some acid (sour milk/lemon juice/vinegar) or the enzyme rennet. Animal rennet is extracted from the fourth calf’s stomach. To be exact, from the stomach of a by-product of cattle breeding, called the male calf ;-) (or rather :-(, I too happen to have XY chromosomes). Well, there’s also vegetarian rennet, used more often in cheapo cheeses. Kraft foods, is supposed to be using only the vegetable rennet for instance. So Kraft is in. Nice french cheese platter? For vegetarians? Out!

Now, it seemed simple at first - all the fresh cheese should be fairly vegetarian, right? Wrong! Mascarpone? Not quite… Mozarella? Wikipedia doesn’t say anything, but google suggests that rennet is used here, too. Ricotta? Well, it is made using whey from curding the rennet cheese. What’s better - rumors say that even cottage cheese is made using rennet. Why? Because nobody is willing to sit around waiting for the milk to get sour, if they can just curd it nicely within an hour or so. Of course, a) it’s a rumor b) they could use vegetable rennet. But as long as it’s not written explicitly, I guess I can forget about feeding it to any vegetarians too…

And now, that you know the whole story, let’s have a look at the byblical quote: “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk.”, Exodus 34:26. Why should I believe these cafeteria-bound academics and their strange stories about cooking goats in milk to please Moloch? By now it should be evident to every foodie - byblical Israelites shall not eat french cheese :-) Amen!     

Marmite - you love it or hate it. Well, I hate being ripped off! Unfortunately it doesn’t stop me… In the UK, a 250g jar of Marmite costs ca. 2.20 GBP (ca 3.20 euros). But here in Germany, it’s priced at around 8 euros. Everywhere. A couple of months back, I paid 7.79 euros for it, at The British Empire. A week after that, I have seen in the - then newly-opened - Gandhi grocery, a 250g jar for 3.99. As I had one already, I just swore a bit. This week as my jar started running low, I went to Gandhi. And what do I see? 125g for 3.99. It’s marmite collusion…

I was talking with my vegetarian colleague about the risk of stumbling across ingredients which have animal origin, like various E-numbers, and as I searched the internet, I found this interesting thing:

Sanguinaccio dolce (Google translation) - a chocolate cream with pig’s blood.

Since it is a Carnival tradition, it must be really old. Too bad that the description is so laconic…