PJH Studios

Category: Food

Food, restaurants, meals, drinks, cooking, places to eat

  • Lunar hummus

    Chickpeas grown in moon dirt may bring us lunar hummus.

    Chickpeas of a variety called “Myles” were raised in a climate-controlled growth chamber at Texas A&M University. Seeds were coated with beneficial fungi and planted in a mix of the simulated lunar soil, made by Florida-based company Space Resource Technologies, and a nutrient-rich substance called vermicompost produced when earthworms break down organic waste.

    Harvestable chickpeas grew in soil mixtures of up to 75% lunar simulant. As the percentage of ​simulated moon soil – known as regolith – increased, the number of harvestable chickpeas decreased, though the size of the chickpeas remained stable. Seeds planted in 100% lunar simulant failed ​to produce flowers and seeds, experiencing early death.

  • Red roof Pizza Hut locations

    Red roof Pizza Hut locations taste like nostalgia, and a cure for the DoorDash blues. What’s crazy, is that even the corporation that owns Pizza Hut doesn’t even know how many of these locations still exist.

    Once a common sight across the country, these old-school, low-slung buildings had largely disappeared as the restaurant chain modernized its stores and focused on takeout. Mr. Pujol, a journalist who documents retro American highway culture, says he “freaked out,” and swerved into the parking lot.

    He had not discovered an abandoned relic from the Reagan era. As a plaque near the door explained, this restaurant in Tunkhannock, Pa., was a Pizza Hut Classic. The interior design and menu had been painstakingly engineered to replicate the Pizza Huts of the 1980s and ’90s, when families and friends settled into red-vinyl booths on a Friday night to eat deep-dish pan pizza and drink Pepsi from red plastic cups.

  • Inside the Great British Bake Off

    An insightful essay about the behind-the-scenes of what it takes to get into the Great British Bake Off.

    During the next couple of months, I inched closer to the show. I cleared interviews with home economists who quizzed me on the finer points of baking technique—how to tell when a meringue was done cooking, or how to get a thin, shattering crust on a loaf of bread. Next were screen tests, a first date with the camera. Toward the end, in-person baking trials. These days, it’s not until the thousands of applicants have been whittled to a final hundred that anyone even tastes the bakes. “The best amateur bakers in the country” is the line, although I get the sense that even the producers don’t fully buy this. Throughout the process, we were encouraged to practice, to fill in the gaps in our knowledge, to get up to speed with things outside the amateur repertoire of biscuits and cakes. If any of us were truly skilled at baking, it was often because we had sought out “Bake Off,” not the other way around.

  • The perfect grocery store shopping list app does not exist

    Planning a grocery shopping list seems like a thing technology could solve. But the complex the needs of meal ingredients, family budgets, how grocery stores are set up differently everywhere… It’s a recipe for insanity.

  • Sam Adams has a new beer that’s so strong it’s illegal in 15 states

    Sam Adams has a new beer that’s so strong it’s illegal in 15 states.

    Utopias — the white whale of the brewer’s lineup — is back for 2025 and it’s stronger than ever. Released every other year, the 2025 Utopias clocks in with a jaw-dropping 30% ABV, higher than most liqueurs and as much as some rums. Despite that high number, it’s still a beer. And that’s where the sales issues come in.

  • Taco Bell 50K marathon

    In Denver, someone figured out a 50 km loop that stops at 10 Taco Bells. Naturally, you would create an ultra marathon involving eating Taco Bell menu items.

  • Interesting Bars

    Interesting Bars, A cool website where you can search for interesting bars in a city. I suppose it’s still being populated as mid-sized cities aren’t represented.

  • Sushi’s rise in the USA

    Sushi’s popularity continues to grow.

    Once a small niche of the seafood business, sushi is now the industry’s growth leader.

    Most of that growth is not happening in $300-per-head omakase restaurants (though those are proliferating). It is happening in gas stations and big-box stores, bowling alleys and stadiums, U.S. Army commissaries and amusement parks.

    Retail sushi, also called “deli sushi” because of its usual location in supermarkets, is one of the fastest-growing segments in supermarkets overall, according to Circana, a market research firm. In 2024, retail sushi was a $2.8 billion business, up 7 percent from 2023

  • Ice cream cone chocolate seal on a cake

    Ice cream cone chocolate seal on a cake

  • Americans drinking less

    Alcohol consumption in the United States trending downward.

    A record high percentage of U.S. adults, 53%, now say moderate drinking is bad for their health, up from 28% in 2015. The uptick in doubt about alcohol’s benefits is largely driven by young adults — the age group that is most likely to believe drinking “one or two drinks a day” can cause health hazards — but older adults are also now increasingly likely to think moderate drinking carries risks.

    As concerns about health impacts rise, fewer Americans are reporting that they drink. The survey finds that 54% of U.S. adults say they drink alcoholic beverages such as liquor, wine or beer. That’s lower than at any other point in the past three decades.