1. Reason, a libertarian magazine, has had a bunch of stuff lately about food-nannyism, a rich subject to be sure. This video was inspired by reports of New York cocktail-renaissance hotspot Pegu Bar getting in trouble with the health department for serving a cocktail with a raw egg in it. Actually, the egg was perfectly legal, but apparently the bar didn’t harsh the customer’s mellow sufficiently for bureaucratic tastes before serving it. Here, a Virginia mixologist talks about where his art runs into antiquated regulations:

This one (actually made by another site but picked up by Reason) talks with a pizza chain owner about the practical effects of the menu-calorie-count requirements specified in the health care bill:

But maybe the most interesting piece was this examination of TV-nutrition heartthrob Jamie Oliver; it’s not a slam piece, but it does suggest that Britain’s nutrition policy is being largely driven by a bit of a ditzy celebrity:

…for all his purported expertise in combating obesity—it was his work in this area that won him the TED Prize after all—there exists a very real question whether Oliver really understands healthy eating or even believes his own most basic dietary recommendations.

The current issue of his magazine Jamie (Feb./Mar. 2010) recommends several school lunch recipes the magazine bills as “wholesome meals to take to school.” The magazine’s suggested meal for Thursday is a tuna Waldorf pita with hot vanilla milk, an oaty biscuit, and a banana. According to the nutrition information provided in Jamie, this youngster’s lunch contains an astonishing 1,183 calories, 55 grams of fat (20 of them saturated), and 65 grams of sugar. That’s 73 calories, 12 grams of fat (11.5 saturated), and 3 grams of sugar more than the same student would get from eating both a McDonald’s hamburger Happy Meal (hamburger, fries, Sprite) and a Chicken McNuggets Happy Meal (McNuggets, fries, Sprite)

2. Everybody was talking about Michael Nagrant’s piece on publicist-for-the-new-millenium Ellen Malloy in that Time Out cultural clout issue, including the subject herself, but the one I found equally interesting (and more dispiriting) was the one on the guys who produce those neighborhood street fests in Chicago, and why market logic dictates that they’re all the same and don’t reflect their actual neighborhoods in any way.
3. You’ll never guess what the latest hot secret ingredient in Chinese food is!
4. Easily the best thing on LTHForum at the moment is this thread about what you would put in a care package from Chicago; forget Pizzeria Uno and check out recommendations for all kinds of ethnic sausage and the like (posts from Habibi, JeffB and Sazerac especially recommended).
5. “It’s the closest you’ll come to holding a fresh dinosaur egg.”  And what is it?  It is an emu egg, used in an omelet. (H/t Dan “Waffleizer” Shumski)
6. Taste of Beirut is a gorgeous blog about Lebanese food, well worth working your way through; I was fascinated by this Swiss Chard Cake (and the discussion of jarred grape leaves and why Swiss chard can be a better substitute).
7. What to do with your leftover ice cream spoons from a trendy ice cream parlor with chic little spoons (Istria Cafe in Hyde Park comes to mind).