Massive Indian Power Outage Offers a Wider Lesson to the World

Our hearts go out to the 680 million people in northern and eastern India who are enduring that nation’s largest electric blackout ever. If that number seems too large to grasp, the recent outage has impacted a population group larger than that of the United States, Russia and Brazil combined.

That is a lot of people suffering – hotels, hospitals, restaurants, schools, rail transportation... all stopped still.

The world should take note and learn a very important lesson: we are all interdependent one to another.

Recently the President of the United States was misquoted when he correctly said that no business owner achieves success alone.

Any successful business needs lights, power, roads and healthy employees.

Often that large supportive, and very necessary, infrastructure is built and maintained by the collective effort of government, paid for with public taxes for the benefit of all.

Once during the early days of American history (1777-1789), the U.S. adopted a singular, every state for itself approach and the result was disastrous. Today we should know better.

Working together is always stronger that pulling apart with an “I/we don’t need anybody else” attitude.

No hotel department or restaurant division is successful in isolation.

Each has to be an integrated co-supportive professional community to be a truly successful and creative business. 

India will survive because she is one of the world's greatest nations blessed with an indomitable spirit.

It is our hope that India's recovery will be inclusive, embracing the right of all to the safety of light and an equally bright future for everyone.

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012

McDonald’s Adopts French Style

There’s hope that the image, at least, of fast food might change. Well, in France that is.  

McDonald’s French Division has hired the famed, but very private, product designer Patrick Norquet to create not only elegant (and very collectable) new beverage cups but also a new interior that upscales the rather dated red and yellow world of Ronald McDonald.

The result is stunning, modern, chic – in short, so very French.

One can only hope that this design change won’t be limited to just France.

After all, Patrick Norquet is international known, having designed product imagery for the likes of Dior, Guerlain and Lanvin.

Stateside his much copied “Rainbow Chair” is even in the permanent design collection at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City. Not a bad resume reference that.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, thanks to Patrick Norquet, mass produced dining interiors were replaced by inspired design in America? What better environment could there be to eat one’s ‘French’ fries in?

Historical Note: ‘French’ fries are not really from France. The name was incorrectly given to the fried potato strips by American soldiers during World War I. 

Unfamiliar with European terrain and confused by the endless trenches from which they fought, these weary soldiers thought they were in France when they were actually in Belgium.

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012

Veuve Clicquot Champagne Does French Style in a Sardine Can!

France is a state of mind as much as it is a country.

Consider the French view of subtle humor. Prior to the French Revolution in 1789, all that was laughable was described by such precise words as esprit (wit), farce (prank) and bouffonnerie (drollery).  

Indeed, it wasn’t until 1932 that L'Académie Française, that august institution directed by the forty members, known as immortels (immortals) who stand guard over the purity of the French language, even gave their official approval to the use of the noun humour within the French language.

But if some things seem to move slowly in the French culture, the result is often a great style that endures (there might be a lesson there). One example of the understated humor (dare we use the word here?) of the French that so delights the rest of us is the newly released Veuve Clicquot sardine can themed packaging.

Mon Dieu!!!Sardine can packaging for the elegant Veuve Clicquot Champagne ?!? Yes, and here is where the depth and character of French humor appears.

For you see, before the Widow (Veuve is French for Widow) Clicquot became the Veuve/Widow Clicquot, her maiden name was Barbe Nicole Ponsardin.

Her family had long laughed at their last name which contained the words for bridge (pon) and sardine (sardin). The family’s coat-of-arms even included a sardine leaping over a bridge! Now that’s French humor.

And when all the facts are told, it was the Veuve Clicquot herself who largely made champagne the legendary drink of celebration. And now finally she is receiving the fame she deserves – but with that touch of subtle French style that makes us all wish we were somehow a little more French: a zip top sardine-can containing one of the world’s great champagne: Viva Veuve Clicquot! 

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012

Batman Gets It Right while Rush Limbaugh Gets It WRONG

Take heart Batman! A recent study at Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab found that when children were asked if the Caped Crusader would eat apples (good) or fast food French fries (bad), they overwhelming said their hero would choose apples!

Wow! Pow! Bang!  So move over film critics who of late have negatively reviewed the most recent Batman film, The Black Knight Rises, as having little merit.

The movie’s talented director, Christopher Nolan, has even gone on record to defend the many fans who have responded to the critics’ negative reviews by storming the Internet.

The resulting digital wave was so massive that the popular cinema info site, Rotten Tomatoes, closed down the viewers’ comment area. Rather sad.

But possibly the strangest of the strange was Rush Limbaugh’s seeing sinister political plots by President Obama and Hollywood, where none existed, by confusing the film’s villain’s name, Bane with Mitt Romney’s controversial firm, Bain.

With just a little study (no apple from the teacher for Limbaugh), this extreme conservative radio host would have learned that the movie’s hateful character was actually created by Chuck Dixon and Graham Nolan (both lifelong conservatives) back in 1993, years before Romney began asking Americans to consider electing him president.

So at this point, the children in the Cornell Test Lab seem a whole lot smarter than this ill-informed commentator who often advances his career through hateful speech on a wide range of topics, including labeling those who advocate healthy food choices for children as "Food Nazis".

His comments are not just sad thoughtless speech, but rather the hazardous habit of substituting hate for truthful useful information.

Post Note, July 20, 2012: The staff of YourCulinaryWorld.com arrived at the office greatly saddened today by the tragic news from Aurora, Colorado where many people were killed and many more injured by a masked shooter during a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises.

The question that comes to mind as we discuss this horror is "Why?" Why must our world be like this? Why must be the innocent suffer?

We do not have the answer. We wished we did, but we do know that we must seek to understand the source of such violence, no matter how ugly the resulting answers may be to us or about us. 

Only then can we change the future and genuinely leave these darkened days behind us, rather than endlessly repeat the past, complete with all its senseless clubs and stones, guns and bombs. Then perhaps the seemingly ceaseless stream of tears that floods our world might stop.

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012

Aussies Enjoys Beer Can Regatta Before Swim at 2012 London Olympic Aquatic Center

Very soon the world's focus will be shifted to all things brightly British as the 2012 Olympics start in London. And one jewel that is sure to sparkle within the Olympic Complex will be the elegant new London Aquatic Centre in Stratford.

Designed by Dame Zahan Mohammad Hadid, the famed British architect and winner of the Pritzker Architecture Price, this stunning sports facility is a truly unique building whose time has come. This great and very talented architect, along with the hard-working Welsh construction team on site, has literally raised the roof on stadium design.

But far from London, there is another (and much more lighthearted) ‘construction’ event occurring. Each year the hardy beer drinkers of Australia converge in Darwin for the annual Beer Can Regatta. Each contestant there must race (well, sort of race) in a self-made boat made of beer cans!

No, it's not the Olympics but with so much fun one can only wonder if Captain Jack Sparrow wouldn't like to heave anchor from the Caribbean and set sail (in style, of course) for the South Pacific. Once there he might even considering, for a very brief moment at least, the replacement his beloved rum with a can of Aussie beer.

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012