Of mushrooms, bees, soggy pizza, and other food and drink news

How America became Italian - How pizza became as American as apple pie - As they joined the military and integrated into suburbs, Italian Americans shed the popular stereotypes surrounding them. Gradually, the customs developed in Little Italys found acceptance in the mainstream and were absorbed into broader American culture. Food is a good example of this phenomenon. ... Pizza, believed to have originated in Naples, epitomizes Italian Americans’ outsize influence on our culture, where pizza took on an entirely new meaning. Generally, Americans don’t like the original Neapolitan pizza, whose crust tends to be a bit soggy in the middle — unlike the crispier Italian American version. An Italian restaurant owner who opened a pizzeria in New York featuring Neapolitan pies told me his customers complain that his pizzas are undercooked. Italian Americans have continued to put new spins on the Neapolitan creation. In Chicago, they created the deep-dish pizza. New Haven’s legendary Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana is famous for its white clam pizza, as well as its regular red-sauce and cheese version. In the classic American way, corporations also got into the act, from Domino’s to California Pizza Kitchen. Few foods are more ubiquitous in the American diet, and few are more synonymous with American cuisine.

The Mushroom That Explains the World - An anthropologist tries to understand capitalism by studying a Japanese delicacy. - Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World is a portrait of human relations with non-human species, specifically the matsusake mushroom, which grows in northern Europe, northeast Asia, and the Pacific Northwest, and is prized in Japan as a high-status delicacy that makes a refined gift. An anthropologist who has described mushrooms as “companion species,” she is interested in what people make of mushrooms—from sub-cultures and rituals to supply chains. She is also interested—sometimes playfully, sometimes a bit more seriously—in what mushrooms might make of us.

Could A Mushroom Save The Honeybee?

The Future Of Our Food Depends On Honeybees, And The USDA Is Spending Millions To Save Them

The Highs and Lows of Hard Apple Cider History - Chances are that our ancestors wouldn’t recognize the cider sold in supermarkets today as anything worthy of the name. The lily-livered sweet cider that we like to sip this crispy time of year (hot, with cinnamon sticks) was considered next to undrinkable by our forebears. The colonial farmhouse cider barrel held fermented cider—the hard stuff—and people guzzled it like modern Americans slurp soda.

ASA bans Strongbow ad for suggesting alcohol as important as relationship - Advert portrayed alcohol ‘as being indispensable and taking priority in life’ Advertising Standards Authority rules. ... A YouTube ad for Heineken-owned Strongbow cider has been banned for implying that alcohol is as important in life as having a relationship. The ad was based around a spoof awards ceremony with a winning category called “best Strongbow as my other half”, and showed a picture of winner Carl holding up a can of Strongbow in front of his face. In a message read out on Carl’s behalf accepting the award he praised Strongbow as his “other half”. “I love you,” he said. “I’ve loved you since the first day I met ya. And I always will do. My dear Strongbow.”