Welcome to Edible Geography

The tale of General Tso’s Chicken, as described in my last post, may strike many of you as quite convoluted enough already. Until recently, however, I had (quite wrongly, as it turns out) associated an entirely different story with the dish. At the risk of further muddying the waters, here it is:

I’ve been in London this week, immersing myself in its edible delights – from red bean paste Kit Kats to a history of the grow-your-own movement, and from the creation myths of General Tso’s Chicken to bicycle-blended smoothies handed out in Trafalgar Square (not to mention the odd homemade mince pie – thanks Mum!) Unfortunately, such dedication to research has proved an obstacle to posting. But I will have plenty of interesting stories to tell if you have the patience to wait until I’m back online next week! Meanwhile, many thanks for reading and commenting – I really appreciate it.

Over at the Foreign Policy editor’s blog, Joshua Keating notes with surprise that North Korea’s Central News Agency chose not to make much of U.S. special envoy Stephen Bosworth’s recent visit to Pyongyang. After noting Bosworth’s arrival in a single sentence, reports Keating, the state propaganda engine went on to devote quadruple the coverage to a food-related headline: “Potato Starch Used In Dishes.”

“It used to be,” writes William Bryant Logan in Dirt, “that a good farmer could tell a lot about his soil by rolling a lump of it around in his mouth.” Today, apparently, it is harder to find someone who literally eats dirt:

Johannes Vermeer’s The Milkmaid is currently on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, on loan from the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum. The contextual exhibit explains the erotic connotations of milkmaids and kitchen items for Vermeer’s seventeenth-century contemporaries, pointing out subtle clues that today’s audience could easily miss, such as the depiction of Cupid on a tiny Delft tile near the foot warmer. Indeed, apparently the burning embers of the foot warmer itself were a symbol for female arousal.

By the end of this month, Subway, the ubiquitous and mediocre American sandwich chain, will have installed a franchise on top of a crane. According to the New York Post, the shop will be "fitted into a shipping container-like structure," which will then be attached to...