Kosher for Passover Coke: It’s the Real Thing Baby

It’s that time of the year again folks — Passover season approaches, and with that comes the annual stocking of the KFP Coca-Cola, the “Real Thing”. I’ve resurrected and updated this post from last year so you can get the jump on it early. Both Coca-Cola of New York and Chicago have just started their production runs, so be vigilant!

– Jason

(Originally posted on March 25, 2006)

In April of 1985, the Coca-Cola company announced that it was re-formulating its flagship carbonated drink, which to the horror of Coke fans everywhere, included a switchover to high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Soon, the rest of the soft drink industry followed suit, and the classic taste of cane sugar-based sodas became practically extinct. Today, only a few small boutique soft drink companies still make sodas with refined cane sugar (or sucrose, made from sugar beets) a costly ingredient when compared with HFCS — but true carbonated beverage connoisseurs know and can tell the difference, as corn syrup has a characteristically cloying sweetness when compared to refined sugar. For nostalgic Coca-Cola lovers, unless you live in a foreign country that classic taste is but a distant memory.

Every late March and early April, for the two to three weeks leading up to the celebration of the Jewish Passover holiday season in the United States, Coke fans living in major metropolitan areas with large Jewish populations get their Real Thing, if only for that brief fleeting period. According to Jewish law, nothing made with chametz (any of a number of proscribed cereals and grains, including corn) during passover may be consumed — so in order not to lose sales from observant Jews during that eight day period, a small number of Coca-Cola bottlers make a limited batch of the original Coke formulation, using refined sugar. Needless to say, stocks run out quickly and fans of Passover Coke have been known to travel many miles seeking out supermarkets with remaining caches.

Passover Coke products (and Passover Pepsi) in 2-Liter bottles can be distinguished by their yellow caps, inscribed either with just the “OU-P” symbol and/or the words Kosher L’Pesach in Hebrew. The canned variety is rare and is known to be produced only by a scant few bottling companies in the United States — if you can find any, be sure to snap it up.

Here’s the official word from the OU Passover Web Site for 2009:

Coca Cola will again be available with an OU-P for Pesach. Aside from the New York metropolitan area, Coke will be available in Boston, Baltimore-Washington, Miami, Atlanta, Houston, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. This year, in New York, Coca Cola items will be made with an OU-P in 2 liter bottles and in cans. Other locations will have more limited Coke items made in different sizes. All these items, of course, require the OU-P symbol. Most of the bottling plants servicing these markets will designate the Passover Coke items with a distinctive yellow cap in addition to the OU-P symbol on the cap or shoulder of the bottle.

Chicago Coke fans need not worry — this year, the Chicago Rabbinical Council is having Passover Coke made with the cRc P-09 logo on the cap using local bottlers. cRc also has Passover Coke in cans, which is nearly impossible to find anywhere else in the country.

If you live in Cleveland, I also heard this recently from one of our readers:

“As an employee of the Cleveland Coca-Cola Bottling Company I can confirm that the plant does use sugar cane as a sweetener year round. Cleveland Coca-Cola is the exclusive Coke supplier of all of Cuyahoga County, however, not everything available in Cuyahoga County is actually produced in Cleveland. Look at the label and check the ingredients for “Sucrose.””

In addition to Coke and Pepsi products made with real sugar, you should also be able to find nationally Dr. Brown’s, perhaps the best black cherry soda on the planet in Kosher for Passover form. And to further improve your Passover Coke, hit it with a shot of Passover formulated Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup.

For more on Passover Coke, be sure to listen to this interesting NPR broadcast from 2004.

For more on Mexican Coke, KFP Coke’s south of the border cousin, have a look at what Kate at Accidental Hedonist has to say.

Novell produces its 2002 BMW 7-Series with SLED 11

At first glance, Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (SLED 11) is virtually indistinguishable from the company’s Free/Open Source and community supported Linux distribution, openSUSE 11.1. But does SLED 11 have the extra polish and the value add to justify its position as Novell’s premier enterprise desktop OS?

Click to read the rest of this article at ZDNet Tech Broiler.

Someone is stealing my food!

This video (click on photo to view) produced by the law firm of Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman is a must-view introduction to Intellectual Property and how it should be used, respected, and defended in the Food and Restaurant industry. If you’re a restaurateur, food writer or food blogger this is something you definitely need to watch.

Back in November of last year, I was invited by food writer and former NY Times dining critic Mimi Sheraton to a special seminar for food  industry and and writing professionals at the Harvard Club in New York City, which was entitled “Someone is Stealing My Food!”. It was a two-hour presentation on understanding Intellectual Property, a subject that many food bloggers and food writers and even businesspeople are ignorant of.

Most of the people who attended that event however were industry insiders, so in many respects it was very much preaching to the choir. However, I suggested to Mimi and the attorneys over at CLL that perhaps they should create a short, half hour “condensed” version of their seminar in Internet video form so that businesses and writers all over the country could benefit from their expertise. The video above is the fruit of their efforts.

The video stars Mimi and the cast of attorneys at CLL. Yeah, not exactly YouTube viral video material, but I suggest you watch it nonetheless. It could keep you out of a lawsuit, which nobody wants to be in these days.

If you write about food professionally or as an ameteur food blogger, or if you are connected to the food industry in any way, please watch the video above.

Buying your computers at COSTCO now?

In the latest ZDNet battle of the geeks, I posit that homebrew and “Extreme” PC’s are an endangered species. But PC hardware maven Adrian Kingsley-Hughes and Education blogger Chris Dawson disagrees, as does Jon Bach from Puget Systems, who’s $16,000 “Extreme PC” became the object of my ire.

NJ Dining: Adonisa’s (CLOSED)

NOTE: Adonisa’s has closed.

Adonisa’s Greek Restaurant
200 Main Street, Fort Lee NJ
(201)944-9462

Fort Lee is one of my favorite dining destinations in Northern New Jersey, because it is an incredibly bustling town — practically a micro-city in itself, and home to a diverse ethnic population, which includes a large group of Asians, which includes Koreans, Japanese and Chinese. Traditionally Fort Lee was home to a very strong Italian-American population, but in the last 20 years, its demographics have swung towards the previously mentioned Asian group, whose affluence have transformed the Northern New Jersey town and the surrounding area into a mecca for Asian eating.

However lately, a number of new Non-Asian eateries in Fort Lee have popped up, Mediterranean-style in particular. My current favorite is the two-table takeout Joeyness on the far end of Main Street which specializes in Lebanese Falafel and Kebab sandwiches. However a new Greek restaurant/cafe, Adonisa’s has just opened up across the street from the Main Street Borders bookstore. It should be noted Fort Lee has had a Greek restaurant for many years now — a local branch of the It’s Greek To Me chain which recently moved to a bigger location on Palisades Avenue, but I never thought the food at any of the branches was anything special.

Adonisa’s is a legit and wonderful small Greek restaurant in the heart of Fort Lee. Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.

Think about that thumb drive the next time you format it

If you’ve been following the news in the Linux community, you’ve probably heard that Microsoft is currently in a lawsuit with Dutch GPS maker Tomtom over what is believed to be a refusal on Tomtom’s part to cross-license long file name support in Microsoft’s FAT32 technology.

FAT32 is most frequently used as a format to store data on USB thumb drives, flash memory cards for digital cameras and digital media players (such as Secure Digital, MMC, Sony MemoryStick and CompactFlash) as well as for storing for map information and Points Of Interest (POI) on portable GPS devices, such as the TomTom.

Read the rest of this article on ZDNet Tech Broiler.

NJ Dining: Penang

Penang Restaurant

Web Site: http://www.penangcuisine.com

Locations Shown:

200 Route 10 West, East Hanover NJ
(973)887-6989

334 N. Main Street, Lodi, NJ
(973)779-1128

Malaysian food is one of my favorite cuisines of Asia. There are only a few Malaysian restaurants in New Jersey, and virtually all of them are owned by the Penang Restaurant Group, which operates five locations, two of which are in Northern New Jersey. Penang also has branches in New York, Maryland, as well as in the Raleigh/RTP area, although I haven’t been to any of the others.

Malaysian food is a melting pot cuisine of sorts, in that it incorporates elements of Native Malay, Chinese and Indian cuisines.  However, it should be noted that most of the Malaysian restaurants in the United States are owned by  Chinese Malaysians, which come from several distinct ethnic sub-groups. The Chinese represent the second largest ethnic group in Malaysia, approximately 23 percent of the population.

Many Chinese Malaysians have emigrated to the United States due to the fact that they are subject to persecution and quotas (such as not being able to enter institutes of higher education).  As with any group of immigrants, some of these people open restaurants. Penang is one of those businesses owned by Chinese Malaysians, so the cuisine is highly representative of those groups, which include the Cantonese, Fujian, Teochew and Hakka peoples, among others.

Here’s the dining room in the East Hanover location. It has kind of a “EPCOT Malaysia” look to it, with bamboo decorative accents and such. I happen to really like this location because it’s in the same shopping center as Kam Man Food, which is a HUGE Chinese supermarket with lots of fantastic Asian produce and everything you could possibly need to cook just about any kind of Asian cuisine.

Click the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.

Ultimate Chef Bergen County: Honey

It’s time again for another episode of  Ultimate Chef Bergen County!

Click for Hi-Res Slide Show

After defeating Chef Joe Macri from Northvale’s Hennessy Tavern in the Ultimate Chef Bergen County finals at Chef Central in Paramus last month, on Saturday, February 28, 2009, Chef Christine Nunn of Picnic Caterers in Emerson went up against last year’s champion, Joe Cerniglia of Campania Restaurant in Fair Lawn, for the final bout and to compete for this year’s title and bragging rights of Ultimate Chef Bergen County.

This year’s “Secret Ingredient” was HONEY.

Ready for a sticky sweet smackdown, Jersey Style? Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.