jenrusso’s posthaven

Seriously, we've heard of food porn and all, but this is ridiculous: actor Ron Jeremy is going to star (link NSFW) in an adult film called The Flying Pink Pig that parodies the food truck craze. So much so they almost completely duplicated the name and image of The Flying Pig, an actual food truck in Los Angeles that serves up Asian-Mexican food like pork belly bao and tamarind duck confit tortillas.

Ron Jeremy, however, is no stranger to food — in the past he's appeared in the Food Porn episode of No Reservations. Anyway, the film has puns abound: "And the food doesn't suck, but the girls sure do!" "Refills are free!" "Sloppy seconds are on the house!" Etc., etc. There also appears to be some sort of caper-esque plot that involves Jeremy trying to take over the Pink Pig. Check out the SFW entire cover of the video below. The film hits stores January 25, 2011.

The SFW cover. >>>

· The Tastiest Food Truck to Ever Hit the Streets of Hollywood [Post2Peer - NSFW via LAT]
· All Ron Jeremy Coverage on Eater [-E-]

I couldn't resist posting this food news, food porn, food truck porn. I don't think I really want to see Ron Jeremy naked anymore though, even in a food truck porn parody.

Editor's Note:
The pizza saga continues. Men's Health editor-in-chief Dave Zinczenko recently appeared on the Today Show to discuss a New York Times article that implicated a marketing arm of the Department of Agriculture in the promotion of high-fat, excessively cheesy pizza and other cheese-heavy foods.

A few weeks after Domino's Pizza CEO J. Patrick Doyle traveled to New Delhi for the opening of the company's 9,000th franchise, he unveiled the next phase in the master strategy for global pizza domination. The company will establish a foothold of restaurants in Malaysia while doubling the number of U.K. locations by 2017. "We're in 65 countries right now," says Doyle. "We're not seeing many places where it doesn't make sense for Domino's pizza to go."

Pizza is the world's most popular food, and that enormous appetite is fueling what has recently become a transnational melee for market share and profits among four players: Domino's, Pizza Hut, Papa John's, and Little Caesars. On the face of it, this intense competition for the dough we spend on dough sounds like a good thing. We eventually bite into better-tasting pizza that's made faster and sold cheaper. "Pizza is as economical to buy now as it was back in the '80s, if not more so," says Jennifer Litz, editor of PizzaMarketplace.com, an online trade publication for the industry.

But what if that large pie delivered to your doorstep costs more than you think? A number of economists, sociologists, and food scholars claim that the $36 billion-a-year success of Big Pizza has ominous undertones and implications that reach far beyond weighty matters like deciding between extra cheese and anchovies. They argue that the unrelenting push for ever-cheaper pizza ingredients is hurting the planet and driving small and medium-size farms out of business. Some of these farmers feel they have no choice but to move to the megacities sprouting across the globe. Once relocated to urban slums, many find themselves among the estimated 1.1 billion people earning less than $1 a day, an amount that makes it hard to survive, let alone afford Domino's recent special offer of $5.99 a pie for two medium pizzas. Of the farmers that decide to stay put, some opt for a quicker death, at their own hand.

"We are faced with two possible futures," says sociologist Harriet Friedmann, Ph.D., a professor of geography and planning at the University of Toronto. "One is a diversity of crops, of cultures, and of cuisines that can inhabit ecosystems sustainably and produce healthy food for urban centers. The other is long-distance food from nowhere, monocultural systems that aren't sustainable, and simplified diets, especially for the poor. Global pizza typifies the second option."

Another outspoken opponent of the circumstances underlying the worldwide pizza trade has been Philip McMichael, Ph.D., a professor of development sociology at Cornell University. He believes that the combined processes of bioindustrialization, the ever-increasing reliance of agro-industry on fossil fuels, and the relentless search for the most rapidly expanding overseas markets has led to a phenomenon he calls "the food regime." The machinations that lie behind this new world order perform very well when it comes to churning out profits for transnational corporations, but that success comes at considerable social and economic expense, says McMichael. "It's undermining people who make their living off the land everywhere."

While I can understand acute hysteria and mass terror when it comes to melting icecaps, oil slicks the size of Arkansas, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with his finger on the trigger of a nuke, I haven't quite gotten my arms around the pizza apocalypse. So I decided to start my investigation at the beginning of the pizza chain, at the place from which a Domino's pie springs forth. I inch my rental car through a dismal-looking industrial park outside Detroit and pull up in front of a low-slung, nondescript building that houses one of Domino's 17 U.S. dough factories.

Way back in 1960, Domino's founders, brothers Tom and James Monaghan, purchased their first pizza joint not all that far from this forsaken stretch of Michigan frost and weed. Today the chain employs more than 10,000 people, and its 2010 fiscal revenue topped $236 million.

I'm met at the dough factory by public relations manager Chris Brandon, an enthusiastic 20-something who leads the way into an antiseptic dough-making room of clattering conveyor belts, industrial mixers, precision dough cutters, and metal detectors. It turns out that each lump of Domino's pizza dough must be x-rayed before it can be released into a litigious world, just in case a tooth-crushing twist of metal or stomach-puncturing screw might have fallen off the assembly line and dropped into the mix.

I approach a stainless-steel tureen that comes up to my chest, and watch as a carefully calibrated stream of water flushes into the bowl. After the water comes an autodispensed dose of soy crush--more commonly known as vegetable oil--that turns the liquid a dull yellow. Then 500 pounds of industrial flour explodes out of yet another stainless-steel pipe to join the fun. Through billowing clouds of white I catch a glimpse of the computer that runs the proprietary Domino's software. "Step #17," reads the screen. "Adding Flour."

Clearly this is high-tech bioindustrialization at its finest.

Soon it's time for a lifting machine to hoist the quarter-ton glob of dough 15 feet into the air, and then for a tilting machine to tip the entire concoction out of the tureen and into an extremely large stainless-steel hopper. "It's going to miss the bowl," I say.

"It may look that way," Brandon reassures me, "but it never misses." The dough slithers out of the tureen and into the center of the hopper; he smiles.

But a few minutes later, the next 500-pound batch hits the metal ledge of the hopper, teeters off the side, and unceremoniously plops onto the factory floor. Red lights flash, alarm bells ring, and the production line jolts to a halt.

For the first time in recorded history, a batch of Domino's pizza dough has missed the bowl.

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I guess overall the corporate food culture and structure is just bad. Men's Health really dove in here this investigative article is a novella. I give them a lot of credit for pursuing something that really is critical and fundamental in American health. All the more reason to support your local pizza parlor, and make your own pizza.

Even in a tough economy, Americans like to eat out making food one of the bright spots in the past few years, with new food and restaurant concepts cropping up fairly often. To help foodservice entrepreneurs get a jump on the future, research and consulting firm Technomic recently announced its 11 top trend predictions for 2011. Here’s a rundown:

1. Adult beverages. Consumers want to celebrate (or drown their sorrows). “Mad Men”-style retro cocktails, gin and bourbon will be hot, as will craft beers and punch (including sangria).  Cocktails incorporating herbal ingredients will proliferate; so will “skinny” (low-calorie) cocktails. To attract a wider range of consumers, more fast-casual chains will start adding alcoholic beverages.

2. Think outside the bricks-and-mortar box. Food trucks have been a major craze nationwide, and many restaurants are adding them on to use for catering or simply to spread their name outside the local area. Hot for 2011 will be seasonal and temporary “popup” restaurants and kiosks.

3. Celebrity farmers. Remember when chefs like Emeril Lagasse first got famous? Now, Technomic predicts, the same is about to happen to local farmers thanks to the focus on locally-sourced foods. Restaurants will highlight partnerships with well-known farmers who provide their meats, produce or cheeses by offering special menus, hosting visits from famed farms and referencing them in menu descriptions.

4. Social media/mobile/technology. Restaurants have been among the businesses benefiting most from mobile and social tools like Foursquare and Groupon. That will continue, as apps, couponing websites and location-based social media will continue to grow.

5. Korean and more. Korean tacos have surged to prominence thanks to mobile taco trucks, but Korean barbecue in general was also hot in 2010. That trend will continue, with Korean food in general growing in popularity in 2011, along with multicultural tacos and portable street food of all kinds.

6. Frugality backlash. Diners are sick of counting pennies. Anyone with a bit of disposable income will use it for luxury dining in 2011. That means business customers and affluent individuals will return to high-end restaurants in search of over-the-top specials. More middle-class mortals will be looking for reasonable prices, but along with that, even they will also want unusual menu items and restaurants that deliver an “experience.”

7. Deals still dominate. It may sound contrary to #6, but consumers have gotten used to discounts and specials, so they’ll still demand deals. However, with food prices on the rise, staying profitable will require careful attention to costs and cash flow.

8. Brand extensions. Full-service restaurants and even non-restaurant brands will move into fast-casual brand extensions as the economy picks up. Existing restaurateurs will look to remodel units and do brand makeovers.

9. Return to roots. In down times, people want comfort food. No wonder hot menus feature items like homestyle Southern fare; retro Italian; and family-style service. Also hot are “kid foods” like popsicles for dessert or items that put a twist on long-time favorite treats like Twinkies.

10. New convenience store competition. Retailers of all types continue to offer a wider range of food, treading on restaurant turf. In particular, convenience-store operators are adding more food items and upgrading quality.

11. Fit vs. fat. The battle between healthy and indulgent menu items has raged for years, and won’t end any time soon. In 2011 new federal menu labeling requirements will take effect. Restaurants will go to two extremes: Adding more healthy items like gluten-free and low-calorie meals, and promoting fattening delights as limited-time offers (which doesn’t require posting nutritional data).

If you’re in foodservice, consider ways to add some of these trends into your business for 2011 and beyond.

About the Author

Rieva Lesonsky is President and Founder of GrowBiz Media, a content and consulting company that helps entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses. A nationally known speaker and authority on entrepreneurship, Rieva has been covering America 's entrepreneurs for nearly 30 years. She blogs at SmallBizDaily.

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In the Maui market there are some things that ring true here.

This year news apps were either horrible villains or lifesaving heroes depending on your perspective. But what about apps for journalists — for reporters who need information and tools on the go? I’m not talking about podcasting or video editing apps. I’m talking about mobile and cloud-based tools that the average journalist will use on a regular or even day-to-day basis. Here are my top eight choices that either launched or received significant upgrades in 2010.

1: Rapportive

Mac, PC, Firefox, Safari, Mailplane, Fluid and Chrome; free

This is my favorite tool of 2010. As my co-worker Marshall wrote last March: “Stop what you are doing and install this plugin.” He wasn’t kidding. Rapportive replaces the ads in your Gmail account with publicly available information about the person who sent you the email: links to their social networking accounts, their photo and biographical info, even a live feed of their tweets. Not only that, if you mouse over other email addresses included in the email, those people’s info shows up, too. At right is what the right half of an email from my boss looks like.

Suddenly, the sources you exchange email with have a face, and even better, their background info is at your fingertips.

It’s not omniscient. Rapportive displays data based on the specific email address that the sender is using. If they use a different email to log in to social networks, then those accounts won’t show up. One fun bonus is that it finds some hilariously old accounts. You’ll be surprised how many people have long-forgotten Friendster profiles.

2: Simplenote

Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad, Android, Web; free/paid (no ads)

This is my second most-used tool of 2010. By itself, Simplenote, is, well, pretty simple. It’s a note-taking app that syncs what you write — whether you’re using a mobile device or a computer — live to the Web. It’s been around for two years but got a very significant update (tags, versioning, word count, sharing) in August. Its real power lies in its ability to work with a host of other desktop and mobile apps and browser extensions. Once you link to one of those tools, you no longer have to pay attention to Simplenote. It stays in the background, instantly syncing what you write to the cloud.

For instance, I use an app called Notational Velocity for pretty much everything I write. I like it because it stores what I write within the app; I don’t have any folders full of old documents. When I started using Notational Velocity I linked it to Simplenote and then forgot about Simplenote completely. But no matter where I go, no matter what computer or smartphone I use, I have access to everything I am working on or have written in the past.

True, there are plenty of other cloud-connected note-taking apps out there (Notespark, Evernote, etc.), but none have the simplicity and versatility of Simplenote.

3: Photoshop mobile app

iPhone, iPad, Android; free

Like note-taking apps, there are tons of image-editing tools out there. The Photoshop mobile app is a simple powerhouse that outperforms everything else. It meets my criteria for an on-the-go reporting tool: it’s stable, powerful and easy to use.

If you want hip filters and splashy effects, this isn’t for you. But if you need to quickly and easily color correct or make cropping/rotating changes to an image before you send it back to your newsroom or post it on your blog, this is your best bet. Over the course of 2010 it got several updates: new tools, Facebook and Flickr connection, and more.

4: Police and fire radio scanners

iPhone: 5-0 Radio; free/paid (extra feeds). Android: Scanner Radio; free/paid (no adds, more controls)

Even thought I work for a tech news site and don’t need an app like this, I love it. I wish I had something like it back when I was a daily reporter.

Scanner Radio for Android launched this year with more than 2,300 live police and fire scanners and weather radios from around the world. One interesting feature is that it will let you know when a specific feed has a lot of listeners. According to the developer, “You could have the app alert you when any scanner in the directory has more than 500 listeners, or, you could have it alert you when scanners you choose (such as those in your area) have more than, say, 50 listeners.”

I use 5-0 Radio, which launched in 2009. It claims to have “the largest collection of live police, firefighters, aircraft, railroad, marine, emergency, and ham radio” feeds.

5: USA.gov mobile app

iPhone, mobile Web; free

This may seem a little elementary, but the USA.gov app is unmatched as a portal for searching all federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal government websites, including in some cases vital birth, marriage and death records. It also does image searches and government recall searches.

Out in the field covering a fire and need some background? Punch your city name and “fire code” into the app. What about reporting about an accident at a job site? Searching for your city name plus “OSHA fatality” will bring up the agency’s website that lists accident reports.

6: Mobile document scanners

iPhone: JotNot Pro; $0.99. ScannerPro ($6.99), Document Scanner ($4.99), Scanner & Fax ($7.99)

These kinds of apps sometimes get mixed reviews (and I’m kind of cheating since some of then came out before 2010). They’re essentially camera apps that are really good at enhancing text in the images they take. Can you do the same thing by taking a photo and messing with the contrast and sharpness? Yes, in some cases. But often you can’t: the paper is wrinkled; the paper isn’t on a flat surface; you have multiple pages that need to be a single document; you need the resulting image to be a PDF.

I use JotNot Pro (right) mainly because it’s cheap. If I forked out $4.99 for something like Document Scanner I would also be able to do things like OCR (a process where images of words are turned into actual text). Each of the apps I listed have varying features that may or may not fit what you need from a tool like this.

7: DocumentCloud

Private beta

DocumentCloud made big headlines when it launched earlier this year. If you don’t remember, it’s “an index of primary source documents and a tool for annotating, organizing and publishing them on the web.” Since then, dozens of small and large news orgs have used it to annotate and augment public documents that they’ve published. As of August, there were close to 500 users and 100 newsrooms participating in the beta trial.

I don’t know when the service will go public (the development team has been rolling out updates for beta testers throughout the year), but when it does, it’s going to be an invaluable tool for newsrooms, regardless of their size.

8: The Onion mobile app

iPhone, Android; free

The Android app came out this year (the iPhone version launched in 2009), and it is, as The Onion says, the “last bastion of unbiased, reliable, and definitive news in a world dominated by superficiality, mediocrity, and non-Onion news outlets.” You need it.

Did I miss any of your favorites? What will you be using in 2011? Let me know about it in the comments.

This entry was posted by Abraham on Tuesday, December 7th, 2010, under Blog and Journalism Posts and with these tags: cloud, DocumentCloud, editor, Gmail, police, Rapportive, reporter, scanner, Simplenote, twitter. Follow comments using the RSS feed, or leave leave a response or trackback from your own site.

I am already downloading....

Fri. 19 Feb '10

Branca Busters

NYC bars are sweet on a bitter spirit

So many cocktail trends amount to what sounds like a dare, leading enthusiasts toward bolder and more challenging flavors. You like tequila? Then you should try mezcal. Bourbon's great, but have a sip of this right-off-the-still white dog.

In New York these days, the latest dare seems to be Fernet Branca. This 150-year-old, famously bitter Italian amaro--and purported hangover cure--has been showing up in cocktails in bars and restaurants all over the city.

Fernet Branca has traditionally (and mysteriously) been the fetish of the San Francisco set. But sales jumped 50 percent in New York during 2009, and there's been a similar bump in Boston.

Lucillia Crowe, vice-president of marketing for Infinium Spirits, which handles Fernet in the United States, gives credit to evangelizing bartenders. "Mixologists are traveling around and getting all over the place," she says. "It's a kind of bartender's handshake: 'Do you know it?'"

Chief among these preachers is Damon Boelte, the bar manager at Brooklyn's Prime Meats. He has the aggressively herbaceous elixir play the role of both eye-opener--in the Fernet-laced Italian Fizz on the breakfast menu--and nightcap, in the make-a-man-of-you Waterfront cocktail, which not only contains Fernet but also its more feminine sister, Branca Menta.

In terms of volume, San Francisco still holds the Fernet crown. But New York, says Crowe, "is gaining."

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I love Fernet. If you want to find some on Maui best bets are Ambrosia and Merriman's Kapalua.