Smithsonian.com

Healthy wine grapes, courtesy Flickr user Bensheldon

Occasionally, winemakers find a silver lining in rotting grapes, but most of the time, rot is just plain rotten. It ruins the grapes’ natural taste and thus the flavor of the wine.

In the United States, one of the most common culprits is bitter rot (greeneria uvicola), a sneaky fungus that hides its presence until the grapes are ripe. As the unsuspecting grower prepares for what might look like a great harvest, the latent spores stage a coup, turning the grapes soft, brown and pimply in a matter of days.

If as little as 10 percent of infected grapes make it into a pressing, it can make the whole batch of wine undrinkable (the taste, as the name implies, is horribly bitter). Obviously, this is a problem!

Cayenne peppers, courtesy Flickr user ArielAmanda

But a Louisiana microbiologist named Tony De Lucca has come up with an unusual solution: Cayenne pepper. Well, technically just one component of it, a saponin called CAY-1 that he named and patented in 2001, along with several colleagues at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service. They’ve been studying its anti-fungal properties ever since, and have discovered dozens of promising applications for both agriculture and medicine.

Recently the group reported another victory for CAY-1: This potent little pepper compound can be a lethal foe for bitter rot.

This discovery was prompted when a local vineyard called to report some diseased grapes. The scientists collected samples, isolated the fungi and put each type in a test tube with varying concentrations of CAY-1. It proved highly effective against greeneria uvicola, as well as several secondary pathogens.

“It begins to kill within ten minutes (in the test tube),” says De Lucca.

He’s been fascinated by medicinal plant compounds for a long time, he adds.

“If you look in other cultures, particularly in hot areas around the equator, they use a lot of spices, and I think they use it in part to protect against bacteria. Things like thyme, oregano and garlic have some really potent anti-microbials.”

Much more testing and a commercial backer are needed to develop CAY-1 into a marketable product, but it could potentially become an organic alternative to common synthetic fungicides. (And no, the wine wouldn’t taste like pepper!)

“I think nature is just chock full of stuff like this,” De Lucca says. “It’s just a matter of looking.”

For another angle on the connection between spice and fungus, check out this recent Smithsonian feature about the chili-hunting ecologist Joshua Tewksbury.

Spicy Chicken Sushi, converted Fancy Popeye's Fried Chicken. Credit: Erik R. Trinidad

Reasonable people may differ on the tastiness of Chicken McNuggets or the latest nacho-cheese-and-bacon-laden burrito novelty at Taco Bell, but there is one attribute of fast food I think we can all agree on: it’s fast. Well, and it’s cheap. But it’s not healthy, and it certainly isn’t pretty.

That is, it’s not pretty until the wizard behind a blog called Fancy Fast Food gets a hold of it. Erik R. Trinidad, the site’s creator, shows that by taking fast out of the equation you can turn an ordinary Happy Meal into a “culinary masterpiece.”

I’ve written previously about the time and effort food stylists put into prettying up menu items to be photographed for ads, but the dishes on Fancy Fast Food are complete transformations. Trinidad, though not a professional stylist, traces the roots of his interest in food presentation to his childhood. “My brother and I used to play what we called ‘Iron Chef Buffet’ at those Chinese buffets, trying to outdo each other with the fanciest presentation of a dish,” he says.

His creations include the BK Quiche, constructed from disassembled Burger King breakfast sandwiches. Spicy Chicken Sushi is made from Popeye’s fried chicken. Tacobellini is a tortellini-resembling dish made from Taco Bell burritos and tacos. My favorite entry, Tapas de Castillo Blanco, is a platter of finger foods made from White Castle Slyders and fried clams. All of the dishes include recipes and helpful photos, should you wish to replicate these impressive-looking (if not tasting) meals. The visual transformations don’t really improve the food’s flavor, Trinidad says. “It’s all processed food anyway, and I just add another process.”

Popeye's fast food, before it was transformed into art. Credit: Erik R. Trinidad

The site started as a goof on the “foodie” movement, he says. “I think the pretentiousness that comes with calling oneself a ‘foodie’ has gone overboard these days, and FancyFastFood.com aims to poke fun at these self-important gourmands as if to say, ‘Hey, you can have fancy food too, just by going to McDonald’s or Taco Bell!’ Granted, it’s still bad for you.”

Aspiring fast food gourmets can also submit their own creations to the site. The rules are that you can only use food purchased at a fast food restaurant, without other ingredients (except as a simple garnish), and you have to send before and after photos.

The latest submission, a Wendy’s Napoleon made from a Baconator Combo, was whipped up by Adrian Fiorino, and includes an impressive spun sugar garnish and a sauce made from Coke and ketchup. Judging from the link to his own blog, Insanewiches, Fiorino is a guy who enjoys playing with cold cuts. Take note of the Rubix Cubewich, a truly horrifying concoction of cubed meats, cheeses and pork fat.

If you’re still hungry for food play, top off the visual feast at Threadcakes, a fun cake decorating contest where cakes are based on designs from the T-shirt company Threadless.

The Shale Ale label features artwork by Murray Coppold. Image courtesy of the Burgess Shale Geoscience Foundation.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the discovery of the fossil-rich Burgess Shale in British Columbia by Charles Doolittle Walcott, the fourth secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. The centennial is being celebrated many ways, from articles to conferences, but one tribute has caught more media attention than others.

The Burgess Shale Geoscience Foundation, a nonprofit educational organization, has partnered with Big Rock Brewery, in Alberta, Canada, to create Shale Ale. As Randle Robertson, executive director of BSGF, said in a press release:

This is the champagne of beers to celebrate the contribution geologists have made to science. Shale Ale kicks off our 1909-2009 centennial celebrations, which are designed to engage the public in geology, climate change and the history of exploration and discovery in the Rocky Mountains.

Combining beer and science, Shale Ale’s label features Walcott and recreations of animals whose fossils he found. The vast majority of fossils that Walcott recovered were of soft-bodied creatures that are normally not preserved, making the Burgess Shale discovery one of the most significant in paleontology. The time period in which the Burgess creatures lived also adds to their importance. The fossils date to 505 million years ago and give a glimpse into life in the Cambrian Period—a time described by some as evolution’s big bang.

Unfortunately, Shale Ale is available only through the Burgess Shale Geoscience Foundation because of provincial liquor laws.

Even if you can’t enjoy a bottle of Shale Ale, you can still relax while watching this animated video of the Cambrian ocean from the Field Museum in Chicago with a glass of wine; it’s oddly soothing.

If Ernest Hemingway were around to celebrate his 110th birthday today, his party would no doubt involve a staggering amount of alcohol. He was a renowned writer—with more than a dozen books and a Nobel Prize in Literature to his credit by the time he ended his own life in 1961—and he was an equally renowned drinker.

I’m not advocating alcoholism, mind you, but I have to admire the gusto with which Hemingway approached everything. He packed a lot into his nearly 62 years as a writer, fighter (served in one war and covered two others), traveler (spent time in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Caribbean as well as the United States) and lover (four marriages! okay, not really advocating that either), deservedly earning a reputation for living life to the fullest.

So when I heard about last Friday’s Resident Associates event, “Savoring Life with Ernest Hemingway,” I had to check it out. The speaker was Phil Greene of the Museum of the American Cocktail, who I’d had the pleasure of hearing at a previous event about New Orleans cocktail history.

In between bits of Hemingway trivia and excerpts from his work, we learned (and sipped) five drink recipes he inspired. I’ll share a few here, in case you feel inspired to give him a birthday toast.

Jack Rose, courtesy Flickr user Michael Dietsch

The Jack Rose

1 1/2 ounces Applejack brandy or Calvados
1/2 ounce Grenadine
1/2 ounce fresh lime or lemon juice

Shake well with ice; strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

This is the drink to order while waiting for a date; it’s good enough you may not care if they show up or not. Plus, you’ll be channeling a scene from Hemingway’s famous novel The Sun Also Rises, in which the narrator, Jake, waits for Lady Brett at a Paris hotel:

At five o’clock I was in the Hotel Crillon waiting for Brett. She was not there, so I sat down and wrote some letters. They were not good letters but I hoped their being on Crillon stationery would help them. Brett did not turn up, so about quarter to six I went down to the bar and had a Jack Rose with George the barman.

Or, if you’d rather be your own barman, check out Rachel Maddow’s helpful how-to video.

The Green Isaac’s Special

2 ounces gin
4 ounces green coconut water
1 ounce fresh lime juice
Angostura bitters, to taste (about four drops)

Fill a highball or Collins glass with ice. Shake with ice and strain into the glass, or simply add each ingredient in order.

This drink “tastes as good as a drawing sail feels,” declares a character in Hemingway’s posthumously published novel Islands in the Stream. The coconut water and lime make it extremely light and refreshing; perfect for summer.

Death in the Afternoon

2 ounces Champagne or dry sparkling wine
1/2 ounce absinthe

“Pessimistic but sparkling”—that’s an encyclopedia writer’s description of The Sun Also Rises, but I think it sums up this concoction pretty well, too. It takes its name from Hemingway’s 1932 novel about Spanish bullfighters.

Death in the Afternoon, Courtesy Flickr user Audreythebug

There are only two ingredients: Champagne (or sparkling wine) and absinthe, in a 4:1 ratio. And yes, you can use real absinthe, a wormwood-based spirit that became legal again in 2007 after being banned from the U.S. for nearly a century. It tastes like licorice on fire, or, as a Hemingway character declares in The Garden of Eden: “This drink tastes exactly like remorse.”

And if you exactly followed Hemingway’s own recipe, published in a 1935 cookbook, that’s likely what you would feel: “Pour 1 jigger of absinthe into a champagne glass. Add iced champagne until it attains the proper opalescent milkiness. Drink three to five of these slowly.”

Recession stresses, like struggling to pay the bills, correlate with an increase in weight gain among adults. Image courtesy of Flickr user HnyBny1969 (Regina).

When some people are stressed, they eat “comfort foods” or increase the amount of food consumed, and as a result gain weight.

But what types of stress trigger weight gain? A new study in the American Journal of Epidemiology tackles that question.

John Ayanian of Harvard University and colleagues set out to look at the correlation of long-term weight gain with different types of stress related to work, personal relationships, life constraints and finances.

The study gathered data from 1,355 adults who completed an initial survey in 1995, when they were between the ages of 25 and 65, and completed a follow-up survey and exam nine years later. The researchers noted changes in the subjects’ body mass index between the initial and follow-up surveys.

The results? Greater stress was associated with greater weight gain, at least in people who were already overweight. As the study elaborates:

This effect was evident for financial stress (measured by difficulty paying bills) for both men and women, for all work-related stress variables (less skill discretion, less decision authority and higher job-related demands) for men, and for job-related demands, perceived constraints in life, and straining in relationships with family for women.

Other interesting findings:

1. Men and women 55-to 64-years-old experienced less weight gain compared with the youngest age group.
2. In women, quitting smoking was associated with more weight gain.
3. In men, generalized anxiety and an income between $25,000 and $44,999 were associated with more weight gain.

With people struggling to pay bills and paychecks decreasing, the recession is adding extra stress to the lives of millions—and with that extra stress, extra pounds might soon follow.