The Berger Project

According to a recent NY Times article here are the top 11 foods that you should be eating, but probably aren’t (and suggestions on how to eat them):

1. Beets - Fresh, raw and grated to make a salad. Heating decreases the antioxidant power.
2. Cabbage - Asian-style slaw or as a crunchy topping on burgers and sandwiches.
3. Swiss Chard - Chop and saute in olive oil.
4. Cinnamon - Sprinkle on coffee, apple sauce or oatmeal.
5. Pomegranate Juice - Just drink it.
6. Dried Plums - aka prunes
7. Pumpkin Seeds - Roasted as a snack, or sprinkled on salad.
8. Sardines - Choose sardines packed in olive or sardine oil. Eat plain, mixed with salad, on toast, or mashed with dijon mustard and onions as a spread.
9. Turmeric - Mix with scrambled eggs or in any vegetable dish.
10. Frozen Blueberries (or fresh, in season) - to long to list.
11. Canned Pumpkin - Mix with a little butter, cinnamon and nutmeg.

How many do you eat?

I would bet money that most of you couldn’t not tell me the brand name and type of your top three favorite wines, let alone even one. Why not? You could name your favorite cookie, car, beer, etc. (unless you are indecisive — but that is a different issue).

The problem with wine is that there are just so many brands and varieties from all over the world. Then you factor in the year the wine is from and the fact that you ordered it at a restaurant from a last over over 200 bottles and the chances of remembering are slim to none.

So if you are a wine seller how do you breakthrough? There seems to be two standard solutions and one really interesting idea.

1. Advertising - Major wine brands like Yellow Tail and Gallo wines have huge marketing budgets.
2. Turn the market on its head - Why sell wine based on some funny variety names, why not send it as people drink it…with food. "Wine that loves " did just that.
3. Give people something to remember - Tons of people collect corks, but as far as I can tell they don’t really tell you what bottle (brand, type and year) you just drank. So the first option may me to brand the corks, but why not give people something a little more useful to take home with them. Like a place they can get all the information they would need to find the bottle again — the label. That is what Oxford Landing did with their label. Just peel it off and take it home, now that is how your create loyalty.

Now don’t you wish you thought of that last one?

Linds did a great write-up of our weekend in Hamburg so no reason for me to be original. Here are some excerpts from her ‘diary’…

Happy Easter! You would think that Easter was bigger here than it seemed but it was just another Sunday out in Hamburg. Sunday was museum day. We went to the Hamburg museum and were excited to find out that they had a “Jews in Hamburg” exhibit.  It was also very interesting to learn that Adam lives in an area of Hamburg called “little Jerusalem.” After the Hamburg museum we went to the “Dom.” This is basically Hamburgs “Coney Island” and although it was probably about 20 degrees out, and Easter Sunday it was packed with families. We got to eat a Berliner (donut) and some other good German snacks. After the “Dom” it was lunch time at one of the bistros by Adams apartment since we both grew a large appetite from walking alllll over the place. This restaurant was very good and we had some quiche, salad and soup. And of course we got beers since they are literally cheaper than a bottle of water or soda. Since it was freezing out and had walked a ton and I got to see a lot, we just went back to Adams apartment to thaw out. We stayed in and cooked dinner and rented a movie.

Linds did a great write-up of our weekend in Hamburg so no reason for me to be original. Here are some excerpts from her ‘diary’…

Saturday was of course another long day. We woke up a little bit on the late side but that was okay because I obviously needed my sleep.  From lunch we went full swing into site seeing. We walked by the beautiful government building on through downtown (which is where they have all the 5^th Avenue stores). We then went to St. Michael’s church which is one of the two most famous churches in Hamburg. From St. Michaels church we walked down to the Reaperbahn and then down to the harbor of the Elbe River. It was very pretty and we finally found a ferry ride that also had an English translation tour. After the ferry ride we walked through the park. Since it was cold and we were hungry, our next stop was the bakery to have a snack. After our snack, I was now ready for a nap, which was cut short because we had to get ready for dinner and Adam’s first night out in Hamburg!! We went to this restaurant that basically sat on the water. It was a beautiful restaurant and very good. After dinner we met Adam’s friends Tamir and Felix at a very NY bar (in their opinion) and then to a more german “underground” techno bar. At about 2:30am, I killed the night by saying that I needed to go home.