News You Can Use

When was the last time you ordered a café brulot? Dictionary.com's education tool "Flashcards" actually has a helpful guide that popped up in the ol' browser recently. While "Types of Coffee Beverage" might not sound very exciting (and yeah, okay, this "flashcard" deal is aimed at kids), it's actually a fun little guide to coffee culture in an age when artisanal everything can be kind of a drag. Just sayin'.

Are we being bamboozled by organic labeling? Probably! So says Slashfood in a recent post.

The New York Times takes on the restaurant world's current dilemma: Whether or not all these coupon/discount sites are helping or hurting the bottom line. Let's see: Offer deep discounts on food and share whatever cash comes in with an online coupon site? Probably gonna lose money there.

Like a good day and night, we started with coffee, let's end with coffee: Gizmodo gets to the heart of the question, "Why does ice coffee get lighter faster than hot coffee when you add milk or cream?" The answer, it turns out, is that milk and half-and-half are emulsions of proteins, and when the emulsion hits hot coffee (or vice-versa), the heat breaks it into simple proteins and water and changes the color. In iced coffee, there's no heat to faciitate the process, which is why the baristas at my coffee shop need to learn that "a splash of milk" means "a splash of milk."