News Bites 11/13-11/20

We've always known that Jon Stewart is a pretty opinionated guy, but his passions may have reached a climax in last week's spiel (rant, no, attack) about the invalidity of deep dish pizza. "Not only is it not better than New York Pizza, but it' not pizza, it's a fu**ing casserole," yelled Stewart, feeling provoked by a statement that "deep dish pizza is the best pizza." Another memorable quote was "this is an above ground marinara swimming pool for rats" – preach Stewart, preach. In his rage, he even reverts back to the New York accent he's never had. Really one of Stewarts finest monologues.

Photo by New York Post

'Tis the season for pumpkin flavored everything because it's not fall unless unless you can drink your pumpkin in a latte. Except it's not really pumpkin. And of all the places, it probably should have never found it's way into a latte, but nevertheless it has. The New York Times recently explored the phenomenon, revealing (surprisingly, not so surprisingly?) that there is little to no pumpkin in most of the foods it claims to reside within. The basic takeaway is that most of the "pumpkin-flavored" foods are fatty, sugary, if not both – which would ordinarily over power the actually really quite subtle flavor of pumpkin so the "pumpkin" you are tasting in your "pumpkin-flavored" foods is either really just a combination of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves or "natural" flavors, which we all know aren't all that natural at all.

Screenshot from New York Times

You would think a multinational company like Starbucks wouldn't worry about competitors all that much, especially not a small New Hampshire coffee roaster attempting to market and sell a brand under the name of "Charbucks." But apparently small businesses in New Hampshire are posing a real threat to Starbucks' monopoly over coffee so the company took The Black Bear Microroastery to court for the second time to challenge the validity of the name. Starbucks lost, and rightfully so. Why don't they pick on somebody their own size, oh wait, no other coffee shop has 20,891 franchises around the world.

Photo by InterAksyon

So Coca-Cola has been around for 127 years not, which is quite a lot of years, so you'd think we'd know everything there is to know about it by now (except the secret recipe, of course). As it turns out there are always more facts to be uncovered, which First We Feast so kindly brought to our attention. From its humble beginnings as a nerve tonic created to help its creator overcome a morphine addiction to a de-ruster and jellyfish sting soother (but not overnight tooth-deteriorator) Coca-Cola will always manage to find a special place in our hearts, and lives.

Photo by First We Feast

Mario Batali and  Jimmy Kimmel are probably the last people you would expect to invite you to dinner upon first glance, let alone play matchmaker, but they did just that. Kimmel and Batali stopped Lars and Nicole, two complete strangers and invited them to have lunch...at Lars' house. After a thorough investigation of the fridge, Batali gets to work and the team musters up a meal one could find in one of Batali's restaurants, not to mention Kimmel not so subtly kindles a romance between Lars and Nicole. It was love at first fondue dip.

Photo by Eater

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