Category: food

National Pretzel Day – April 26

These are excellent soft pretzels.

Our nasty cafeteria manager

I worked in a federal building but the cafeteria was contracted out to the private sector. One guy who ran it for a while was really mean.

One of my coworkers told him once that the salad bar was out of some things and needed to be refilled. He told her, “Eat what’s there!”

Here’s how he lost the concession (based on several accounts and what I saw). A lady when to him with a bowl of oatmeal or grits with mouse droppings in it. (There were lots of mice in the building.) He told her, “Well maybe you put them there.” Did he really think a customer would spoil a bowl of food worth a dollar of two?

The customer wrote the health department and they did a raid. They showed up in the middle of breakfast or lunch.

For a few days, all of the kitchen equipment was on the floor. It looked like it would if you emptied your closet out. When the cafeteria reopened, someone else was running it.

White Tower architecture

White Tower Hamburgers was a restaurant chain that was founded in 1926. There is only one left. Here are pictures of the old buildings. Here’s an article from RoadsideArchitecture.com.

Architects Paul Hirshorn and Steven Izenour wrote a book about the buildings, White Towers, that was originally published in 1979. It was reissued in 2007. I have a paperback copy of the first edition

White Towers Revisited was an exhibit at the University of Pennsylvania in 2015. I saw it and thought it was excellent. Here are two articles on the exhibit.

Penn exhibit revisits White Tower fast-food chain

White Tower Power

National Pizza Day – 2/9

The 2022 Slice of the Union Address

Tweets about Jews and Chinese food on Christmas

Many American Jews eat Chinese food on Christmas since most other restaurants are closed.

French fry-flavored vodka

You can;t make this up. I love fries but I don’t know if this is a good idea.