Cronicles of Pointless People

Carrie Keagan Wants to Rock Nicki Minaj's "Backwards Mullet" Hair:

Carrie Keagan, host of VH1's Big Morning Buzz Live chats with Us Weekly about the history of hair in music. From Joan Jett's shag 'do, Cyndi Lauper's "highlighter yellow" hair color and Macy Grey's afro,

It's a Polite Way of Saying "Hello, I'm Tedious and Vapid"

Berlin, a city where being individualistic always seems to mean sheepishly following one dingbat style cult or another, is holding a "hipster festival. Gack. Most of them think the former east is charming. In other words: hide the children and the livestock.

Sharf, Defined

andBerlin has a write-up of a Currywurst vendor that always seemed a little too non-amateur for my taste, in that I prefer the individually owned stand. But in Hauptbahnhof, beggers can't be choosers, and Curry 66 (a reference to the year the Currywurst was made popular in ehmahlige West-Berlin,) has the added kick of added kick... or a rarity to Currywurstdom of pepper-hotness that might give a sniffle to a non-German.

This time when I tasted my Currywurst it was definitely spicier than any other I have had in Berlin so far and a real contender for ‘The Best of the Wurst’, as I’ve come to think of my quest for the tastiest Currywurst in Berlin – it comes with plenty of sauce and by the end of my meal the plate was wiped clean.

Here's the thing: it's not the heat, it's the sweet. Currywurst is made with a kind of specialty ketchup which is often too sugary to my taste, so the added heat can only come as an improvement. What's BAD (and I mean bad,) is when you find that Currywurst-ketchup snuck into other things. You can detect it immediatelty, and should immediately head for the hills. Another note to gourmands of the good: you CAN get a decent burrito after the fashion of the trend in the US in Mitte - at a place called Dolores. Evidently they are also doing well enough that they are a maturing operation, evidence by graduating to a non-hipster-disposed part of town at Wittenbergplatz. Watch this trend. Chipotle is opening a store in Paris, and has opened one in London. It won't be long before the trend starts to spread.

Piraten! Move out of Your Parent's Basement!

I've never heard of a political party become so adept at repelling women without, say, making them wear veils or binding their feet:

Just after walking the German Pirate Party plank due to exhaustion, ex-Pirate political manager Marina Weisband dropped the boom on her mobbing male marauders by outing them as being just as chauvanistic and sexist as male types everywhere else are, political or otherwise.

The response she got from these thoroughly modern males amounted to "whatever you say, sweet cheeks."

Alas, Memory Lane

Ikea's bottled "Swedish Festive Easter Soft Drink"

It wasn't stunningly foul, but tasted oddly familiar. It tastes like the stuff branded as Pepsi that they sold in East Germany.

It's kind of a mild malt flavor. The reason the DDR-licensed Pepsi tasted this way, was because the eastern licence-users refused to pay Pepsi to import the syrup, and wanted the formula. Naturally, the licencees of products such as this didn't see the past behaviour of the COMECON crowd as terribly honest in these matters, and refused.

Nonetheless, even in the worker's paradise, a corporate logo's appeal was even understood by the Nannies-in-Chief of the people.

Recipes from the Near Distant Ago: Meat Soljanka, Russian Style

A RECIPE FOR 4 SERVINGS

INGREDIENTS:
800 g beef
150 g veal
1 carrot
1 parsley root
2 onions
1 bay leaf
150 g chicken, finely diced
100 g ham, cut into small pieces
2 sausages (such as frankfurters), cut into thin slices
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon flour
2 pickles
10 salted, real saffron milk caps, chopped (can be substituted with mushrooms),
12 olives, black
1 tablespoon capers
1 cup sour cream
Salt & pepper


PREPARATION:
Make a broth of beef, veal, carrot, onion, parsley, and 1 bay leaf. Add pepper.
Remove some meat from the pan and use it for another course.
Add to this broth the chicken, ham, and sausages.
Chop the onion finely and fry in butter and flour. Thin with broth and add to the pot
Add the pickles, mushrooms, olives, and capers. Let it come to a boil, and then let simmer on low heat for 10-15 minutes.
2 minutes before end of cooking, thicken with sour cream.

Variation: The poultry can also be sauteed in butter and then added to the Soljanka

A Festival of Ironies: the "Bee Crisis" meets Foodie Fetishes

Quotations from the oddly named:

"Their crisis is our crisis," says food guru Michael Pollan. So precious has bee-produced honey been considered over the ages that it was not even marketed...