Understanding McDonald's as a commodities broker with a restaurant sideline: the McRib →

Willy Staley’s “A Conspiracy of Hogs: The McRib as Arbitrage,” is a lyrical, insightful conspiracy theory about the appearance and disappearance of McDonalds’s McRib sandwich. Staley argues that the McRib’s appearance correlates with falls in the pork futures market, and represents a way for McD’s to cash in on cheap pork, representing a kind of triumph of restaurant automation, logistical acumen, and financial engineering. In Staley’s view, McDonald’s is only secondarily a restaurant, and primarily conducts the business of a commodities brokerage.

A Subversive Plot: How to Grow a Revolution in Your Own Backyard
(via BoingBoing) 

How stir-frying works.

(via BoingBoing)

Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking →

“Cooking, like so many other creative endeavors is defined by relationships. For instance, knowing exactly how much flour to put into a loaf of bread isn’t nearly as useful as understanding the relationship between the flour and the water, or fat, or salt. That relationship is defined by a ‘ratio’ and having a ratio in hand is like having a secret decoder ring that frees you from the tyranny of recipes. Professional cooks and bakers guard ratios passionately so it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if Michael Ruhlman is forced into hiding like a modern day Prometheus who, in handing us mortals a power better suited to the gods, has changed the balance of kitchen power forever.

“I for one am grateful. I suspect you will be too.”

- Alton Brown, describing ‘Ratio’

Morning Banana

A diet fad has cleaned bananas off the shelves of Japanese groceries. The simple diet involves eating a banana or two in the morning, anything you want at lunch, and anything you want at an early dinner (no eating after 8).

The Morning Banana Diet, as it is called, looks like a slightly modified intermittent fast regime. If one limits one’s food intake between midday and 8pm (6pm is recommended), then an 18 hour intermittent fasting pattern is achieved.

I tried something like this (minus the banana) for about 2 months and lost 10lbs while keeping calories and physical activity fairly constant. Most likey the banana itself is unimporant - one could subsitute pretty much any 100 calorie-ish low glycemic index food for the banana and still achive the same results.

(via Seth Godin’s Blog)