What do bread, wine, cheese, chocolate, coffee, soy sauce, yogurt and beer have in common?

They're all fermented... and healthy.

Flour, water, and a little fire are the only tools you'll need to make this air filled bread with Michel Nischan and William Ruble.

This might be the best Belgian import since waffles and Tintin. Le Pain Quotidien, a chain of bakery-cafés, states its cause clearly: “In bringing you the best organic ingredients, we support sustainable farming for future generations.”

I guess the wordsmith who drafted their mission statement couldn’t think of a short, catchy way to add that Le Pain Quotidien serves great food, reasonably priced, thoughtfully prepared, and presented in a cozy setting with long farm tables intended to foster chitchat among fellow diners (see? I couldn’t do it, either).

Native Americans gave us tobacco. Apparently, we returned the favor with fry bread.

I wasn’t up on the whole fry bread phenomenon till I heard a story on NPR’s All Things Considered a few weeks back. Now a fixture of Native American cuisine, it turns out that the deep fried dough isn’t indigenous to Native Americans at all; it became popular only when the Federal government began to issue commodities such as white flour and lard to native tribes at the turn of the century.