Get rich quick 🤑
Or get famous for all the wrong reasons…
Good morning and Happy Diwali for those who celebrated it! We’re going mobile. Be it on a car ride, train journey or a Blue Origin trip to space, you can now have our emails read out from anywhere! Simply click on the “Listen” button above.
It’s oddly satisfying to hear a Siri-esque voice reading out the news every week. Try changing the speeds for some added entertainment. Our personal favorites are 0.5X and 2X!
In the food world
🍝 Numero uno
Barilla’s slogan — “Italy’s No. 1 brand of pasta.” has it in some legal salted hot water (side note: check cooking tips). This week, a judge said that unlike their spaghetti, the brand cannot slide its way out of a class-action lawsuit that claims Barilla’s Italian-heavy marketing misleads consumers into thinking that its pasta is made in Italy, when it’s actually made in Iowa and New York.
🎃 Halloween horror
The cost of celebrating Halloween this year is looking scarier than the decoration in your neighbors backyard. Since inflation has spiked, candy prices are higher than a trick-or-treater’s blood sugar level. The price of Skittles has jumped 42%, and Starburst prices are up 35% since last year.
🥩 Meaty payday
The security in charge of midwestern meat packing plants are probably sleeping a little easier now that suspects accused of stealing $9 million in frozen meat were arrested. Earlier this year, five law enforcement agencies in Nebraska started comparing notes and developed a strategy to catch whoever had been stealing thousands of pounds of frozen meat from beef plants throughout the state.
Law and disorder
One of the benefits of living in a democratic country with a well-established judicial system is the opportunity to use the courts to achieve justice and set wrongs right. 40 million lawsuits are being filed in the US each year. And with cases dragging along like a George R.R. Martin book, it’s no surprise that judges are always busy.
A lot of those cases are filed against restaurants. Now don’t get us wrong... when something goes — no ketchup served with fries — type of wrong, it’s the only way out. However, in most cases it’s money-hungry looking to make an easy buck. Here are some of our favorites that are great conversation starters:
🥵Beyond hot coffee — McDonald’s
The most infamous one of them all. In 1992, a woman was hospitalized after spilling hot coffee while sitting in the car, resulting in third degree burns on her thighs and a $10,000 medical bill. She ended up suing McDonald’s when they failed to reimburse her bill.
After a lot of back and forth about the ideal coffee temperature and using the lap as a cup holder, the courts ordered McDonald’s to pay the woman $2,736,000 for damages — a modest $2,735,000 over what she initially expected.
🖕🏼Finger food — Wendy’s
In 2005, a woman claimed to have found a finger in her bowl of Wendy’s chili. Not wanting to be classified as a finger food chain, Wendy’s escalated this issue to the FBI and even offered a $50,000 reward for information on who the finger belonged to.
Ultimately, it was discovered that the finger belonged to her husband’s coworker who had lost it in an industrial accident. The couple had kept the finger as some sort of a twisted collectors item to later use for a rainy day. Eventually, they were found guilty of conspiring to file a false claim and spent some jail time.
🪣K. F. C. you in court — KFC
In 2016, a New York woman filed a lawsuit against KFC for false advertising. The “fill-up” chicken bucket she received was not full of chicken despite the fact that the commercials showed a bucket overflowing with fried goodness.
KFC offered her a pair of gift certificates to assuage her disappointment, but she was having none of it and filed a lawsuit…only for the courts to dismiss the complaint on the grounds that it was as empty as the chicken bucket she received.
🥤Ice ice baby — Starbucks
Another rather comical lawsuit targeted the coffee behemoth for the amount of ice they were putting in their drinks. The plaintiff claimed that Starbucks was loading up their drinks with almost half ice, skimping on the actual coffee.
However, this did not hold up in court and the judge’s response is as close to what you can get as a legal version of being flipped at — “a reasonable consumer ordering an iced drink knows that the drink they receive will include both ice and the drink.”
🥪We have the meats - Arby’s
A man who ordered a sandwich at an Arby’s close to his home became very ill when he realized that the chain had taken their catch phrase to the next level by adding an inch long piece of human flesh.
As it turns out, the flesh came from the manager of the restaurant who cut his finger while working. In order to give the head a hand, he failed to dispose the lettuce bin in which it fell. The man successfully sued the company for more than $50,000 in damages.
Three truths and a lie
The verdict is out and we are guilty of fabricating facts and concealing the truth. We knowingly made up one of the facts below and as part of our punishment, you are required to identify it. In order to bail us out, 40% of you’ll need to guess correctly. We are counting on you!
Two dudes from New York sued Chobani in 2014 for deceiving customers with its Greek yogurt label because there wasn’t anything Greek about it.
A teen from Australia sued Subway in 2013 because their footlong wasn’t really a foot long and measured only 11 inches.
A mother sued Nutella in 2012 claiming that she was fooled into believing that the product was actually good for her kid’s health.
A couple in 2016 sued Taco Bell over their Chalupa Craving’s box because contrary to the claims, their cravings were not satisfied after eating it.
*Answer at the bottom
Strawberry kheer
-by Dhaval Shah @chefhusband1607
Humble ingredients brought together to create the timeless kheer — a rice dessert commonly served in Indian households! Kheer can be made as simply as you need or can be made rich and luxurious as you desire.
To celebrate Diwali, here is a strawberry kheer along with a dark chocolate ganache, roasted pistachio crumble and some fresh strawberries!
Cooking tips
How much salt to use for boiling pasta? Chop an onion and taste the tears that follow. The pasta water needs to taste the same.
Speaking of chopping, remember Adele’s Rolling in the Deep. Use only the rear part of the blade, not the tip, in a rolling motion.
While you have Adele, onions and pasta water going, if you feel the urge to cook some pancakes, heat a pan until it’s hot enough where if you add the tear drop (or any other water droplet). it immediately boils (roughly 350 F) for perfectly cooked pancakes.
Did you know?
Gatorade, invented at the University of Florida, originally tasted so bad that they had to pay athletes to drink it.
Pepsi spent a lot of money on an advertising campaign in China with the slogan 'Pepsi gives you life' - the only problem…. The translation came out 'Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave’.
Fermented horse milk, kumis, is a beloved drink in Kyrgyzstan. The country is using it as a tourist attraction.
While this simmers…
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Answer
We made up the one about Taco Bell.