Quick Tips

Chefs seem to be everywhere but their own kitchens these days, as guest-chef nights have proliferated at restaurants across the city. Restaurateur Mike Isabella notably hosts Industry Takeover Nights the first Monday of every month where local and visiting chefs and mixologists take over the kitchen of Graffiato’s first-floor pizza bar. And this summer, Mandu […]

We are told time and again by multinational companies proposing mergers that consumers will benefit from better prices. But we’ve seen how well that concept works in the real world, as anyone who has flown lately, or purchased prescription medication, …

Chances are, many of the women you know have a turbulent relationship with food.

We are constantly inundated with messages about dieting, and expected to attach moral value to “good” or “bad” foods. Salads are great, and an apparent delight to consu…

There’s little that says love, romance and lifetime commitment quite like the city of Las Vegas and the smell of hashbrowns. Just ask the 33 couples who got married at a Las Vegas Denny’s in the last year and a half.

Denny’s CEO John Miller announced this heartwarming tidbit Monday during an otherwise boring conference call with analysts discussing the company’s second quarter earnings. “Denny’s on Fremont,” started offering the service inside its wedding chapel last April.

According to the in-store wedding coordinator, saying your “I do’s” at the famous diner costs as little as $199 and includes use of the wedding chapel, a photo booth, a champagne toast, two wedding-themed Denny’s T-shirts, a “Pancake Puppie” wedding cake, decorations, a bouquet, a boutonniere and a wedding certificate.

Though Denny’s may be one of the few large chains erecting a chapel to accommodate weddings, it’s not uncommon for couples with a zeal for a certain brand to choose to get married in a department store or fast food restaurant. Brides and grooms have pledged their lifelong devotion to one another in the shoe aisle of T.J. Maxx, the garden department of a Home Depot and under the florescent lights of an Illinois Taco Bell, USA Today reported in 2010.

Self-described “passionate Denny’s fans” Nancy Levandowski and Steven Keller were the first to wed at the company’s Las Vegas chapel last year.

“When we reflected on all of our memories made at Denny’s, we knew that getting married over a plate of pancakes would be our best memory yet!” Levandowski said in a statement at the time.

Check out a few more photos from their special day below:

From inside the chapel:

The cake!

Outside Denny’s:

What do you eat when you’re a complete a total failure? Why, No Choice Frozen Dinners, of course. Finally, a meal as absent of hope as you are!

Via Tastefully Offensive

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — The release of carbon dioxide into the air from power plant smokestacks to the tailpipe on your car could pose a risk to red king crab and other lucrative fisheries in Alaska, a new report says.

Ocean water becomes more acidic when it absorbs carbon dioxide released by human sources, such as the burning of fossil fuels. Increased ocean acidification could harm important Alaska commercial and subsistence fisheries and communities that rely heavily on them, according to the new research aimed at spurring discussion on how to address the changes.

The research, led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was to be published Tuesday in the online journal Progress in Oceanography.

Researchers said changes in ocean chemistry could make it harder for mollusks and other small creatures to build and keep their skeletons or shells. Previous studies have shown red king crab and tanner crab grow more slowly in more acidic water and that red king crab died in highly acidified conditions.

Communities in southeast and southwest Alaska face the highest risk from ocean acidification because of their reliance on fishing, relatively lower income levels and fewer job alternatives than other parts of Alaska, the report states. For communities with high food and energy costs, ocean acidification could be another hit, the research says.

According to the NOAA, Alaska’s high-latitude coastal waters are more vulnerable to acidification because cold water can absorb more carbon dioxide. Circulation patterns also bring more acidic deep-ocean water to the surface, the agency said.

Co-lead author of the study, NOAA oceanographer Jeremy Mathis, said the goal was to try to quantify the potential risk and impacts from ocean acidification, a question that’s come up in meetings with fishermen, villages and communities but one he’s never had a good answer for.

While direct, harmful impacts aren’t showing up yet, the ocean is changing quickly, he said. Oceans are about 30 percent more acidic today than they were at the start of the Industrial Revolution, he said. If fossil fuels continue to be burned at the current rate, pH levels could drop significantly by the end of the century, said Mathis, who is also director of an ocean acidification research center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

“We could have a 300 percent greater change between now and the end of the century than we have in the past 250 years combined,” he said. “So the rate of change is what’s accelerating.”

Mathis said lab studies have shown a low level of tolerance for acidification in crab, but those impacts haven’t been seen in the wild yet. As the oceans change, there are some who believe species will adapt or new organisms will emerge, and that could happen, he said. But acidification also could change population dynamics, he said.

“In a place like the Bering Sea, where a billion-dollar industry has been built around a few species of crabs, then that’s where we really start to worry. It’s something we’re going to have to pay very close attention to,” Mathis said.

As an area of further study, Mathis said he would like to be able to quantify the potential financial impacts of the changes.