Belgium running out of its best beer after brewery blockade

by Scott Carmichael on

Belgium is running out of beer! The world capital of good beer is in the middle of a “beer war”. When mega-brewer (and new owner of Anheuser-Busch) InBev decided to fire 260 of its Belgian employees, the entire staff decided to shut down the breweries, and prevent any beer from being produced.

The blockade is a serious matter – large Belgian grocery store chains are now without any beer, and Belgian bars have run out of tap beer. Brands like Leffe, Jupiler, Stella Artois and Hoegaarden have been unable to deliver any new beer for several days, which even impacts Belgium’s neighbors in The Netherlands.

Belgians consumer just under 95 liters of beer a year (compared to 81 liters in the United States), they are also one the largest producers of beer – InBev brews 21% of all the beer in the world, though the Belgian brands only make up a small percentage of that.

There are no plans as of yet to break up the blockade, though if the strike really does last too long, I’m guessing thirsty Belgians may take matters into their own hands.

Learning to cook Thai food

by Catherine Bodry on

I’m sort of obsessed with Thai curries, and if it weren’t for that I’d be more obsessed with other Thai dishes. I love the balance of bitter, salty, spicy, and sweet, and I’m always trying to guess which ingredient in each dish supplies one of those four elements.

I’ve never had the budget to attend a Thai cooking school (which are everywhere in Thailand), but I made it a point on my recent two-week trip to the country to allow for one. Since I was spending close to a week on Ko Chang, I chose the class at Blue Lagoon on Khlong Prao, because I’d stayed at the guesthouse on my Lonely Planet research trip last year and loved it. The food was always spot-on, with most of the produce coming from an organic garden, and made even better by the ambiance of small eating pavilions that hover over the lagoon. Friendly staff rounded out the offerings, so I booked a 1200-baht (about $35USD), five-hour class.A staff of four instructed and prepped for our class of seven. As a group we decided which dishes to prepare (tom yum, tom kha, curry, pad thai, chicken with cashews, and mangoes with sticky rice and coconut milk). Two staff prepped the dishes, making sure we had the proper ingredients and portions, while the other two instructed us on how to chop vegetables, when to add stuff to the wok, how to extract coconut milk from the flesh of the fruit (it’s not the juice inside, by the way), and generally had a good time with us.

One of the instructors was the granddaughter of a woman whose original kitchen is available for tours; the recipes in the cookbook we got to take with us were all hers. While the dishes were typical, mainstream meals that are universally “Thai,” I still like the idea that somebody’s grandmother had added personal touches to some of my favorite foods.

Of the food we prepared, curry proved to be the most difficult. I’ve always believed that anyone who can read can cook (even though I’m a disaster in the kitchen), but with curry you also need some arm muscles. In theory you can use a food processor to make the paste, but, as with pesto, it is believed that using a mortar and pestle better brings out flavors and aromas. Grinding all of the ingredients up took at least 20 minutes and was more labor-intensive than kneading dough. Thankfully the staff had bulging biceps and took over for most of us.

I got to sit back and listen to one of my favorite Thai sounds, the “thock thock thock” of the mortar and pestle, and afterward enjoyed a Thai feast that I hope I can repeat back home.

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Don’t just see the Great Wall of China, eat it

by Annie Scott on

In preparation for the World Chocolate Wonderland exhibition opening on January 29, 2010, Chinese confectioners have created an entire Great Wall of Chocolate.

“You have higher and lower levels and you have to fit each brick into place, one by one, to build it up, it’s difficult,” said chocolatier Wang Qilu. The wall reportedly includes an entire “crumbling” section, just like the real thing.

The hope of World Chocolate Wonderland general manager, Tina Zheng, as well as many of the participating chocolatiers, is that the approximately 80 ton exhibition (including other wonders like 560 chocolate terracotta warrior replicas) will boost China’s chocolate industry.

“Chocolate has not been around in China that long, it doesn’t have that several-thousand-year history that it does in the West which has made chocolate as common as milk or fruit,” Zheng told Reuters.

The wall stands just 33 feet long, but is doubtlessly far more delicious than the actual, 5,500.3 mile wall.

If you’re interested in seeing China’s World Chocolate Wonderland, get yourself to the Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium on January 29.

[via Reuters]


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Papa Gino’s: a Massachusetts pizza that defies substitution

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Massachusetts can be a strange place. It took forever for the major national chains to work their way into the state. I didn’t see a Target or Wal-Mart in my area until I got out of the army in 1999. Tastes and attitudes tend to be more than a tad provincial, so even the chains are usually local. When I left Boston several years ago, I was able to find replacements for just about everything I enjoyed – and was usually able to upgrade. How could I not? I’d moved to Manhattan, which is famous for having everything … except what it doesn’t: Papa Gino’s.

Papa Gino’s is a New England pizza chain. Most of its restaurants are in Massachusetts, though it has a few outlets in northern Connecticut, Rhode Island and southern New Hampshire. It’s the quintessential local chain – it’s big in the area and virtually unknown everywhere else in the country. So, when I knew someone who was heading up to Massachusetts, I asked him to bring back a few slices, which I ate cold the morning after his return.

To the pizza connoisseur, a slice from Papa Gino’s would probably be a disappointment. It isn’t exotic and lacks the character of its local competitors. Ask a Bostonian if he’d walk to the nearest Papa Gino’s or brave the Callahan Tunnel for a pie at Santarpio’s in East Boston, and he’ll have his car keys in his hand. But, expats view the world through different lenses, and a slice from Papa Gino’s is something we just can’t get – making it all the more valuable.

Eaten cold, a slice from Pap Gino’s is at its finest – unless you’re eating it cold and you have a hangover. It may not be a cure for what ails you, but it’s sure as hell a great diversion.

[Photo by Svadilfari via Flickr]

Gadling’s hangover cures

by Sean McLachlan on

Sooner or later it will happen to you on a trip. You’ll drink too much schnapps, or ouzo, or chang, or tej, and you’ll wake up the next morning feeling like your brain is two sizes too big for your skull and your mouth was indecently violated by The Mummy.

A hangover is one of the worst types of traveler’s illness because it’s self-inflicted. Luckily every country that has a local branch of hooch (and that’s most countries) has a local remedy. Here in Spain, someone suffering from a reseca should go to a cafe and order a tostada con tomate. This is toast with a bit of olive oil topped with tomato puree and salt. It’s best taken with some strong coffee. The Scots like drinking their national soft drink Irn-Bru. In England people have a traditional fry-up, with baked beans, toast, sausage, bacon, tomato, and mushrooms. Lots of carbohydrates is one school of thought for curing a hangover, although Vitamin C is also a common cure.

When I asked the rugged, hard-drinking travelers here at Gadling, I got plenty of suggestions. One blogger gave her personal recipe as “Emergen-C, carbs, a nap, a shower, more carbs.” Others suggested the “hair of the dog.” Two said a few Bloody Marys work best, mixed either with eggs Benedict and greasy hash browns or a nap. The Mexicans have a variation on the Bloody Mary cure called the michelada that sounds like it should work pretty well. I wish I had known about it after a certain tequila night in Nogales.

Gadling readers offered some favorite cures too. In Wisconsin, with its history of German and Scandinavian immigrants, the traditional remedy is sauerkraut juice. I can’t imagine stomaching such a thing the morning after a pub crawl, but with its salt, liquid, and vitamins C and B6, I can see how it would work. More palatable is ice cream or chocolate milk to get your blood sugar level up quickly. Chocolate before going to bed is said to give you crazy dreams as it flushes the alcohol out of your system more quickly but you’ll wake up feeling OK.

The main causes of a hangover are dehydration, vitamin B deficiency, and the toxins in the booze you guzzled the previous night, so the best cure is preventative: drink quality stuff and before going to bed have plenty of water and some vitamin B tablets. I’ve noticed that a night on the town enjoying quality British real ale gives me a pain-free morning, while drinking regular lager destroys me.

For more international cures, check out this handy National Geographic diagram. If all else fails join The Prohibition Party. Yep, they’re still around!