Some of the products may be frozen and in restaurant freezers.
Today there are three chefs to make the VIP feasts - costing taxpayers a whopping $245,000 this year.According to figures revealed by the New York Daily News, his longest-serving man in the kitchen, Feliberto Estevez, picks up $97,000.
His pastry chef Jerry Montanez who was hired in 2007 is paid $68,000 while Jose Velazquez is on $80,000 after getting a $10,000 pay rise last July.
Last autumn, there were cutbacks in the police, fire and schools and there are more job losses to come across the board.
Although the 69-year-old billionaire Bloomberg prefers to live at his upper East Side townhouse, he does a lot of entertaining at Gracie Mansion.
More here.
"There will come a day when a Big Mac costs 120 euros ($163) and a Bug Mac 12 euros, when more people will eat insects than other meat," head researcher Arnold van Huis told a disbelieving audience at Wageningen University in the central Netherlands.
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The professor at Wageningen University in the Netherlands said insects have more protein than cattle per bite, cost less to raise, consume less water and don't have much of a carbon footprint.
He even has plans for a cookbook to make bug food a more appetising prospect for mature palates.
Van Huis has organized lectures, food tastings, and cookery classes with a master chef who demonstrates how to prepare a range of recipes using bugs, worms and grasshoppers, all bred - or raised - at a Dutch insect farm for consumption.
The former intelligence analyst is charged with unauthorized downloads of classified material while serving on an army base outside Baghdad.It was childishly easy, according to the published chatlog of a conversation Manning had with a fellow-hacker. "I would come in with music on a CD-RW labelled with something like 'Lady Gaga' … erase the music … then write a compressed split file.
No one suspected a thing ... [I] listened and lip-synched to Lady Gaga's Telephone while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history." He said that he "had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 8+ months".
Manning told his correspondent Adrian Lamo, who subsequently denounced him to the authorities: "Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public ... Everywhere there's a US post, there's a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed. Worldwide anarchy in CSV format ... It's beautiful, and horrifying."
“I’m frustrated to hear that (the state) felt like they’d have to do that,” said Michelle Sierk of Hempfield, president of the parent-teacher organization at West Point Elementary near Greensburg. The group already encourages parents to find creative ways to limit sugary snacks.
“We tell the party moms to send in one sweet snack, something salty, something healthy and one drink,” Sierk said. “We try to regulate ourselves in the sense that it’s our kids.”
But that's not enough for the "Nanny State" Pennsylvania State Board of Education.
One commenter wrote:
Once upon a time in America, people who stole candy from babies were considered to be really, really bad people, the lowest of the low. Now they run the government.
The measure, passed by a vote of 8-3, has been vetoed by mayor Gavin Newsome. The goal, say the legislative sponsors, is to use government regulation to help combat childhood obesity. Newsom called the intent laudable but imprudent.
"There are times when a city can go too far. There's a time when we even cross the line," Newsom said.
The 8-3 vote shows the board has enough votes to override a veto by the mayor.
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So much for McDonald's Happy Meal toys in the California city by the bay.Opponents of the law include the National Restaurant Association and McDonald's Corp, which used its now wildly popular Happy Meal to pioneer the use of free toys to market directly to children.
"We are extremely disappointed with today's decision. It's not what our customers want, nor is it something they asked for," McDonald's spokeswoman Danya Proud said in a statement.
"Getting a toy with a kid's meal is just one part of a fun, family experience at McDonald's," Proud said.
The San Francisco law would allow toys to be given away with kids' meals that have less than 600 calories, contain fruits and vegetables, and include beverages without excessive fat or sugar.
This could be the end of McDonald's Happy Meal's in San Francisco.
Can you imagine a Happy Meal with broccoli instead of fries or an artichoke sandwich instead of a hamburger? They would be healthy but who would buy them?
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Voigt is going on an all spuds diet for 60 days. During that time he estimates he will eat about 20 spuds a day.He won't be taking vitamins, though he's checking with nutrition experts to see whether colored-flesh potatoes have Vitamin A. He will try to stick to Washington spuds – easy enough since the state is the second-leading grower.
But he travels a good bit, so he may have to eat a tuber from Maine or Wisconsin or – perish the thought – Idaho.
The diet will take him to Nov. 29. That is after Thanksgiving. And Voigt admits the holiday will be a temptation minefield.
More here.
"Over the past couple of days something has developed that has me more than a little concerned.
Our specialty coffee machine (which makes the hot mochas, lattes and cappuccinos) has been working on and off for they past couple of weeks and started to smell of something I can only describe as ungodly."
It was determined that the coffee maker’s sporadic performance was due to the fact that maggots were growing in the mechanism of the coffee maker.
The machine was shut down right away and cleaned but maggots continued to grow inside the coffee machine.
More here.
A restaurant soon to open in Berlin has disgusted residents of the German capital by hinting that human flesh will be on the menu and asking for people to donate body parts.
Local politicians are not amused and believe it is a tasteless PR stunt.
The claims of cannibalism seem a transparent marketing ploy ahead of the restaurant's opening at the beginning of September. In a conversation with SPIEGEL ONLINE, a restaurant spokesman insisted unconvincingly that the project was not a hoax.
Perhaps it would have been more appropriate for the restaurant to wait until Halloween to open.
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A curator points out chocolate Buddha figurines at the World Chocolate Wonderland in Taipei.
"I think it's best that he settle," Rep. George Miller, an influential California Democrat who helped engineer Pelosi's rise to power.
"One should, as with tobacco, tax the purchase of unhealthy consumer goods at a higher rate and partly maintain the health system. That applies to alcohol, chocolate or risky sporting equipment such as hang-gliders."
Others want even more extreme measures such as weighing school kids each day.
The fat kids would then be reported to social services, who would have the authority to send them to health clinics.
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It was maggots falling from a container in an overhead bin that forced a US Airways plane to return to the gate in Atlanta.
The recall includes SpaghettiOs with Meatballs, SpaghettiOs A to Z with Meatballs, and SpaghettiOs Fun Shapes with Meatballs (Cars).
Campbell Soup Co. is recalling 15 million pounds of SpaghettiOs with meatballs after a cooker malfunctioned at one of the company's plants in Texas and left the meat undercooked.
More here.
In an advertising campaign that began in about July 2009, Kellogg began advertising on cereal boxes that Rice Krispies "now helps support your child's immunity."
The Federal Trade Commission said the company had agreed in February 2009 to stop claiming that its Frosted Mini Wheats were "clinically shown to improve kids' attentiveness by nearly 20 percent."
We have always said that you could get about as much nutrition by eating the box as eating Rice Krispies. The same could probably said for flavor.
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A picture of my cave
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