Anyway, Amazon.ca is now offering the book for the Canadian market, but they’re only charging $638.87 for it. WTF?

SRP is a cool $USD 625, and one Canadian dollar runs around $USD 0.9630 which translates to about CAD$ 1.05-1.07 when doing credit card transactions. So Amazon.ca doesn’t appear to be calling Canadian consumers Ben Dover since their price is close to the US SRP. Right? Wrong!

Boy are you ever wrong. What gets your underpants into a twist is that Amazon.com lists the same article for $USD 500 (sorry slowpokes - the initial 33% discount is now only 20%). I just did the calculation to get a copy to Canada and it comes out to $USD 533.98 (around CAD$ 571.38). Dunno… still seems to me like an extra $70 which could be better spent on copies of both Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisineand Alinea.

If you really want to be overcharged for Myhdvold’s tome, you can click on this link: Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

I’ll at least be able to profit from you.

Now to see what kind of fun to have with it.

Modernist Cuisine – The Art and Science of Cooking has popped up for pre-order with a SRP of USD$625. WTF? $625? that’s iPad country. However, this “book” happens to be 2200 pages in length and Amazon’s got it’s typical 33% pre-order discount so the tome drops down to USD$421.87 (gee whillickers, why that’s just one tenth of a cent per page!).

I’ve pre-ordered mine.

I successfully completed my targeted shopping spree, but my neatly-packed rollerboard and I get stopped by the crack TSA screening team at Terminal A. Why? It’s not the kilos of transglutaminase. It’s not the Pure-Cote. It’s one iSi stainless steam cream whip, and one bag of freeze-dried lime powder. The screener didn’t even use the ion mobility spectrometer but she insisted that I couldn’t have these two specific items onboard because it was a bag of lime and I could use the whip as a weapon. Checked luggage fine; carry-on, not fine.

What, like I’m going to charge up the whip and terrorize my fellow passengers by making them foamy lime rickies? Fruit prejudice is so ugly…

Oops – guess I shouldn’t have posted my upcoming shopping spree since it may interfere with being granted entry into Italy. Okay, so that’s a joke, but this isn’t: Italian Ministry of Health secretary Francesca Martini is wielding the banhammer against molecular gastronomy as an entire class of food preparation.

The Ministry thinks that “for the security of its citizens”, restaurants should no longer be permitted to use certain additives (powders) as well as “gaseous substances” (specifically liquid nitrogen) since their use ruins a perfect cuisine. A fundamentalist traditionalist gastronomic viewpoint to be certain, but the citizenry is still exposed to these additives as the ban does not extend to the food industry, and I’m guessing someone failed chemistry in high school since the “liquid” in “liquid nitrogen” describes that the nitrogen is is a liquid.

“L” for L*ddite maybe?

• Link: Caput Mundis Cibus, who broke the original story
• Link: Gazzetta Ufficiale della Repubblica Italiana, the repository to view the text of the law

In spite of the “affreux” nature of current cross-border travel, I’m actually looking forward to this. I spent much of my time as a free hire for the Swiss traveling through the Lower 48, and when I wasn’t busy convincing Ronny that a bottle of Kendall-Jackson was cheaper than ordering by the glass (which it is), I would while away part of the time shopping for this and that, but mostly for things to bulk up my kitchen capabilities.

That of course came to an end when I switched over to the southern apple fields; lots of mixed feelings on that last cross-border jaunt though mostly from realizing that the Vita-Mix 5200 blender (which can pulverize concrete) I was lugging back would likely be one of the last major purchases.

I’ve been back among the Americans since the blender run, though one can’t really do too much when all the activity is centered around an airport.

However, good news today as we’ll be going on a field trip. Extended time! There will only be limited time to physically shop on the off-hours as it’s still a business run, so I’ve decided to concentrate on backfilling the molecular gastonomy cupboard as those items are the most difficult to obtain north of the 49th parallel.

Yes, I know how to use all of these, and Martin Lersch maintains *the* hydrocolloid recipe collection on Khymos if I ever suffer from a memory lapse. Now just the question of which items in the “need it!” category really do classify as “need it! like now!” and which can wait.

 
It won’t however be all powders, enzymes and the like, as I also have an eye on some minor equipment purchases.

There’s always room for (eventually) adding a takobiki and a circulating water bath and chambar vacuum unit remain “must-have” items, but right now, I’m in specific need of a thermo whip as I have another recipe in development that arose from, of all things, a conversation about the physicochemistry of condiments.