Have I Been Eating Toblerone Wrong All Along?

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Is it safe to eat mouldy bread?

Should bread and tomatoes be stored in the refrigerator?

How much sugar can you eat in a day? 

What’s the best time to eat a pineapple/pomegranate/papaya?

These are the burning food questions taking up cyberspace this week. But there are other intriguing questions too, like: 

1. Where Can I Eat A Meal Curated By A Michelin-Starred Chef In India?

And you might think the answer to that question is, in a fine dining restaurant. But you’d be wrong. Because the right answer is, on a SpiceJet flight. The airline has tied up with Chef Vikas Khanna for a limited-edition menu that can be pre-booked by fliers. Khanna has currently curated four dishes — two rice-based and two wraps, encompassing vegetarian and non-vegetarian options. There is a Chicken Aloo Bukhara Biryani (with a vegetable version as well) and a Chicken Khurchan Roll (with a Paneer Bhurji variant). Proceeds from sales of these in-flight meals will be donated to the NGO Mijwan.

2. Which Is The Best Day Of The Week To Dine Out?

Tuesday. 

Why?

Because Anthony Bourdain said so once. And to pre-empt any further questions, we’ll leave you with his wisdom: "Generally speaking, the good stuff (deliveries) comes in on Tuesday: the seafood is fresh, the supply of prepared food is new, and the chef, presumably, is relaxed after his day off. (Most chefs don't work Monday.)” 

3. Can Astronauts Eat Idli-Sambar In Space? 

The short answer is yes, and the truthful answer is sort of. The Defence Food Research Laboratory had created a special space-proof version of everyone’s favourite breakfast item for India’s first manned mission into space. The dehydrated idlis were the size of Rs 2 coins, with sambar powder and coconut chutney in powdered form on the side. For the long answer to this question, listing the various considerations that must be accounted for when designing menus for astronauts, read this piece on Slurrp. (You won’t regret it.)

4. Do Real-Life Castaways Eat & Drink Like Robinson Crusoe?

Sadly, no. Think raw turtle meat, with a side of turtle blood.

5. Have I Been Eating Toblerone Wrong All Along? 

Yes, probably, according to this chef who demonstrated the right method, which apparently involves pushing the chocolatey triangles inward and not outwards. Since the original video is on TikTok which you may or may not have access to, we’ll briefly encapsulate what we have gleaned: you hold the tips of the first two triangles with your thumb and index finger, pinch and push them towards each other, which leads to the first one snapping right off. End result: less chocolate on your fingers and more for your tummy.

In other news: 

A Reddit user is winning the internet’s goodwill for saving guests at her sister’s wedding from eating months-old food. The backstory is that this woman had a lot of food left over from her wedding that she wished to donate to a soup kitchen, but her mother firmly vetoed the idea and said she had a different use for it in mind. The woman was roundly horrified when, at her sister’s nuptials eight months later, the buffet was laden with dishes that looked eerily similar “just a whole lot more dried out”. The mother had apparently frozen the leftovers and served them up once again. The woman discreetly warned her sister’s guests to stay away from the banquet, and while they were thankful, her mother was not. Well one can only hope those leftover-leftovers from wedding no. 2 won’t end up being reheated for some other occasion with hapless guests.

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Padma Lakshmi is leaving Top Chef, having hosted it for 19 of its 20 seasons. You can revisit Slurrp’s piece on how the model and author became the goddess of food TV.

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It’s Bear Grylls’ birthday today. It’s a handy occasion to remember that this is a man who has eaten, among other things: a live scorpion, raw snake head, raw alligator, raw zebra meat, camel (you guessed it — raw), a giant larva, a blood-sucking tick, a yak’s eyeballs, a goat’s balls. We’re sensing a pattern here, and we can’t say we’re keen on it.

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This one pips Marie Antoinette’s apocryphal “let them eat cake” quip by a bit. The New York Times reports that as China’s young people face record rates of unemployment and struggle professionally as well as emotionally in the post-pandemic landscape, Chinese President Xi Jinping has advised them to learn to “eat bitterness”. That sure sounds… useful.

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And robots are getting to be even more like us than ever: They can teach themselves how to cook by watching YouTube videos.