Food Section: December 5, 2007

Credit: Men's Health

It's food news roundup Wednesday! Here are a few stories that caught my eye:

A California distiller releases the first legal domestic absinthe in almost a century, and the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Boston Globe all run features. The guys behind St. George Spirits, in my old stomping grounds of Alameda, are fantastic, and so, apparently, is their publicist. (Whoever you are: Double your fees.) Oh, and bonus link.

Now is also the time for holiday gift stories. The LA Times tastes 23 kinds of premium chocolate bars (stocking stuffers) and comes up with a few recommendations. Nancy Leson compiles Some Useful Foodie Gifts in the Seattle Times (I'm bully on the chocolate sushi, not so much on the pizza purse), Rebekah Denn rounds up her favorite cookbooks, while the Washington Post decides to one-up everybody by compiling all its cookbook reviews for the year.

Holiday blues: When you're thinking holiday gifts, this year, think of food banks, who are apparently way down on donations thanks to better inventory control and the success of places like Grocery Outlet.

Not for the clogged of heart, Men's Health has a mind-blowing package by Matt Goulding on its website: The 20 Worst Foods in America (thanks to Creative Loafing Atlanta�s excellent food blog, Omnivore, for the link). I'm not going to describe the contents of the package because I don't want to spoil your pleasure/disgust in reading it. My take-home message: don't eat at Chili's.

One last link. Chow's myth-buster series takles the enduring question: Do vegetarians lose the ability to eat meat?