Valleys and Troughs

Bear Gryllls raw animal medley, including the infamous goat testicle.

One of our favorite aspects of Man vs. Wild, and the reason we'd pick Bear Grylls above Survivorman Les Stroud any day of the week has always been the stiff-upper-lip British pluck with which he will eat literally anything he finds, be it living, dead or of indeterminate status. Stroud's greatest claim to glory is that unlike Bear, he allegedly does all his own camerawork. Which does impress. But would he give himself a fetid-water enema if trapped on a raft in the ocean? We can't say for sure. But Bear Grylls would. The best part of the above video is the glimpse of the crew's perspective - "definitely needs... more garlic." If we ever find ourselves trapped in a remote wilderness, we will only momentarily hesitate before chomping down on some goat balls. Oh, and the fetid-water enema, just in case:

VALLEY?

Coffee will save your life, as well as your sanity.

We are hardly alone in our devotion to coffee; it is, for all intents and purposes, the lifeblood of this country. It is the one common bond that adheres us (mostly) to one another, the salve that soothes or at least overrides the jangled nerves of an overstressed populace. Coffee. Sweet, faithful coffee. Just saying it takes the edge off a bit. And so it strikes us as particularly heart-warming whenever news breaks of a new health benefit associated with what is already the greatest drink ever. In this case, preventing diabetes:

Tea and coffee drinkers have a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes, a large body of evidence shows.
And the protection may not be down to caffeine since decaf coffee has the greatest effect, say researchers in Archives of Internal Medicine.
This analysis revealed that people who drink three or four cups of coffee or tea a day cut their risk by a fifth or more, say researchers.

The best part about this is that the impetus behind this study was almost certainly the attempt by these researchers to vindicate themselves for drinking upwards of four cups of coffee a day. Somewhat disheartening to see decaf getting the glory here, since it's about as respectable a beverage as non-alcoholic beer, but the conclusion is essentially the same: coffee saves lives. So the next time someone tells you they're trying to drink less coffee, tell them you're trying to breathe less air. Then laugh mirthlessly as you walk away, because you get it.

VALLEY

via BBC

Add some catastrophe to your glass with Titanic ice cubes.

We're always on the lookout for a novel way to spruce up an ordinary cocktail, and we may have found just the thing for the holiday season. The above ice cubes - sold as a tray, as ice-cube molds generally are, and shaped to resemble the titanic and the iceberg that sunk her - have been made available by a company in the UK to much hand-wringing and eyebrow-raising, and other things British people do to show they're upset without actually expressing any emotion.

Titanic historian Brian Ticehurst has gone so far as to suggest the product is akin to making light of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

'They are distasteful, hundreds of people died in the tragedy,' he said. 'How long will it be before this firm makes ice cubes of the Twin Towers to commemorate 9/11?'

First: there are still Titanic historians? Hasn't it been pretty much covered by now? Plus wasn't this like a hundred years ago? If James Cameron can move on, the rest of us should be able to do the same, and we personally feel that nothing can quite be defined as tasteless when it's sole purpose is to be consumed with alcohol. As for ice cubes shaped like the twin towers, we'll have to cross that bridge when we come to it.

Christ. Valley?

via dailymail.co.uk

Thing we didn't know we needed: inhalable chocolate.

We've never considered chocolate to be a particularly difficult food to eat. In fact it may be the single-easiest food there is in this regard: you don't even have to chew it, all you have to do is move your tongue around slightly and swallow. Well, thankfully, there are those who are never satisfied with the status quo, with mediocrity, and they have forged into a bold new field of hassle-free consumption: inhalable chocolate.

In 2007, David Edwards, a biomedical engineer at Harvard University, gave his students a project: Develop a way to inhale food, rather than chewing and swallowing it. “They took a whiff of everything from pepper to carrots and coughed a lot,” Edwards says. Last fall, he introduced Le Whif, a lipstick-size inhaler that drops a delicious, one-calorie chocolate taste on your tongue.

That's right. Delicious chocolate taste, the inarguable simplicity of breathing, and only one guiltless calorie. There is nothing about this that could better. Edwards is also developing a technique by which a tuberculosis vaccine could be administered using Le Whif, so there are life-saving implications here as well. In the annals of things we didn't know we needed, inhalable chocolate may prove to be an item so fantastic and revolutionary we'll soon find ourselves as a society wondering how we ever lived without it, a and everything that existed beforehand will seem like a shadowy memory of a world little-worth remembering. The future is beautiful, and chocolatey, for everyone.

VALLEY

via popsci and lewhif

And just to make you feel bad about yourself: bottled water will destroy the earth.

From the folks who brought the internet infographic:

TROUGH

via onlineeducation

Highlight of the night: hot chocolate spoons.

This is going to be awkwardly phrased. Chocolate Company, a Dutch distributor of ... chocolate, has made available a line of wooden spoons with various kinds of chocolate at the bottom for stirring into drinks. Namely, hot chocolate. That should fill up the monthly quota for the use of the word "chocolate." The spoons are called "hotchocspoons," which if nothing else is sensible. The flavors range from strawberry & pink pepper to amaretto & macaroons, and a set of 20 will run you €50, which works out to more dollars than we'd like to consider. One can never put too high a price on pure milky happiness.

VALLEY

via plunderguide

Things we didn't know we needed: disposable flasks.

It's happened to all of us. You show up at a minor-league baseball game with a water bottle full of Everclear, only to find out at the gate that you have to throw it out before you're allowed in. TROUGH. Okay that may have only happened to us, but we're sure most of you, if you're sufficiently free-wheeling and light of heart, have had similar experiences. This overwhelmingly stodgy and stifling society in which we find ourselves immersed necessitates a little creative thinking from time to time regarding drunkenness and the most efficacious means of achieving said drunkenness in a public and possibly inappropriate place:

Enter the Disposable Flask ($15/set of 3). These 7.5 oz. reusable foil pouches are portable, freezable, pocketable, and easily disposable, and feature airtight plastic lids that won't leave tell-tale leakage marks on your clothes.

Well there's not much for us to say about these. Available from Restoration Hardware, of all places, the idea is pretty straightforward and the execution beats the hell out of the old ziploc-bag-taped-to-your-gut routine, which works about as well as it sounds like it would. We aren't sure why it's taken so long for these things to be made, or at least for us to be made aware of their existence, but we have seldom come across an item we didn't know we needed as badly as we do. God bless the internet.

VALLEY

via geekologie

The eternal sandwich debate: diagonal or rectangle?

There is one standard to American meals in our mind, and that is bread. Ideally, bread with other ingredients, such as cheese, more kinds of cheese, and preferably some kind of sauce. Usually we just sort of mash these together indiscriminately like savages, but when we're feeling especially industrious we take the time to make an actual sandwich. And the seemingly trivial decision as to how to cut that sandwich - the ongoing debate between diagonal and horizontal - actually has some pretty surprising implications. According to a piece from npr, the diagonal is vastly superior, aesthetically and otherwise:

Since the time of the pyramids, architects have always understood the supremacy of the diagonal line, says Kevin Harris. He designs houses in Baton Rouge and knows his angles. Harris says the diagonal cut exposes more of the interior of the sandwich, "and by exposing the interior, it engages more of your senses before you take the first bite."
"It's more revealing, almost like a burlesque dancer," he says. "Covered enough to be clothed, but uncovered enough to be very, very appealing."

Not a bad argument, really. Anytime food (or at least the preparation of food) can be compared to a burlesque dancer and requires one to emphasize "very" not once but twice to describe how appealing it is, you have to think you're heading in the right direction at least. And for those of us a bit more practically-minded and who also disdain crust, there are numbers to be considered. From Paul Calter, professor of mathematics at Vermont Technical College:

If your bread is square, and if each side is 4 inches long, you have 16 inches of crust. Cut that bread down the middle, and you get 8 inches of crust-free surface. Cut that same bread diagonally, Calter calculates, and you end up with almost 11 inches of crustless surface. That's a substantial increase.

It hadn't occurred to until now that this topic was so carefully considered by such luminous minds, but apparently the finer points of sandwich-making strike at the core of what it is to be American. We feel that if we haven't resolved this issue, at the very least we've helped to get the dialogue going, and that's what's really important. There may be no right way to cut a sandwich, but there is certainly a better way, and for the moment at least it appears to be triangle-shaped. Who knew?

VALLEY

via npr

Morning Marginalia: World's biggest catfish.

The above leviathan is a Mekong giant catfish, caught by fishers in the Thai river of the same name. Weighing in at 646 pounds and almost 9 feet long, it has been equated in size to a grizzly bear. Experts (which experts we would like to meet, just to sort of size up) believe it may be the largest freshwater fish on record. Though an effort was made to keep the fish alive for the purposes of captive breeding (the species is endangered) it died, was butchered, and likely made for a pretty memorable meal. We have eaten catfish once, and it tasted like something you damn sure wouldn't want to cook 646 pounds of. An acquired taste, we suppose.

VALLEY?

via NGnews

Nightcap of the night.

Manhattan

3 oz. Scotch
Splash sweet vermouth

As the overconsumptive malaise of Thanksgiving begins to mercifully wear away, we find we need something of a palate cleanser. And what better way to eradicate the lingering residue of shame and gastrointestinal duress that comes with about five thousand calories too many than with that most stately and reserved of cocktails: the Manhattan (being named after the greatest city in the world doesn't hurt). The important thing here is the Scotch, and there's really only one suitable option for those of us with limited means - Johnny Walker Black. For about $30 one gets a singular Scotch well-regarded even by the kinds of people who generally make you feel bad about what you're drinking (which people's opinions we wish we didn't respect, but find we sort of do, though grudgingly) and you won't be disappointed with the finished product. So loosen up, throw a cherry in there, and sidle up by the fireplace, if you happen to have one. The holidays are officially upon us; we could all use a little lifting of spirits.

VALLEY