In a press release, the Vanderburgh County Sheriff's Office said that it was contacted on December 7 by a man who said that he and his wife vomited and experienced a burning sensation in their mouth, nose, throat, and stomachs after eating fast food ordered through DoorDash. The man told NBC News that he noticed something red had been sprayed on the delivery bag, so he checked footage from their doorbell camera. According to the sheriff's department, the footage shows that after dropping off the food and taking a photo, the woman appeared to spray a substance towards the food from a small aerosol can attached to her keychain. The sheriff's department said that using DoorDash records, detectives identified the woman as Kourtney Stevenson of Kentucky, who told local police in a phone call that she had been working for DoorDash while visiting her father, and that she'd used pepper spray to spray a spider. But the department also said that with an overnight low of 35 degrees Fahrenheit, 'outdoor spiders in Indiana are not active and would not be capable of crawling on exposed surfaces.'...

On Nov. 8, the MIT Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center (MIT PKG Center) collaborated with the MIT Club of Princeton, New Jersey, and the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen (TASK) to prototype tech-driven interventions to the growing challenge of food insecurity in the Trenton, New Jersey region. Twelve undergraduates traveled to Trenton for a one-day social impact hackathon, working in teams with alumni active in the MIT Club of Princeton to address technical challenges posed by TASK. These included predicting the number of daily meals based on historical data for an organization serving over 12,000 meals each week, and gathering real-time feedback from hundreds of patrons with limited access to technology. The day culminated in a pitch session judged by MIT alumni and TASK leadership. The winning solution, developed by a cross-generational team of MIT alumni and students, addressed one of TASK's most pressing challenges with a blend of technical ingenuity and human-centered design. Drawing on TASK datasets and external data such as weather and holidays, the team proposed a predictive dashboard that impressed judges with its practical utility, enabling the kitchen to reduce waste and distribute the appropriate number of meals to varied locations. TASK also appreciated several elements of solutions proposed to gather real-time feedback from patrons, and plans to experiment with them....

There is a meme that circulates every holiday season, an image of a sign in a restaurant window. 'The Chinese Restaurant Association of the United States would like to extend our thanks to the Jewish people,' it says. 'We do not completely understand your dietary customs ' but we are proud and grateful that your GOD insists you eat our food on Christmas.' Is the sign real' Perhaps not; the fact-checking site Snopes found no evidence of the association even existing. But the joke's popularity points to a tradition cherished by many American Jews ' Chinese food on Christmas. Like many minority groups, Jews have always created ways of adapting to the societies in which they live, but whose culture they do not totally share. And one thing that means is a collection of Christmas traditions, varying by time and place. Many of them came up in interviews for my book 'Beyond Chrismukkah: The Christian-Jewish Interfaith Family in the United States.' According to Jordan Chad, author of 'Christmas in Yiddish Tradition,' Jewish folklore about the holiday appears as early as the late 1300s. Plenty of Jewish communities in Europe spent Christmas Eve dancing and drinking, feasting and gambling ' as many of their Christian neighbors did, when those neighbors were not in church....

'Jolly morning!' is a weird way to be greeted, no matter the context. But it rang out, like birdsong, from behind the counter of a fast-food joint I visited in the Los Angeles suburbs in May. Although the restaurant's bright overhead lighting and giant menus suggested a typical American chain, something was a little off. Along one wall, a floor-to-ceiling mural depicted a cartoon bee in a chef's hat demonstrating the dance steps of the twist. The bee is the eponymous mascot of Jollibee, which now has about 80 locations across the United States. Its food seems familiar until you taste it. Chickenjoy, the chain's signature fried chicken, has a golden, rippled exterior, just as you might expect. But tooth meets flesh with a burst of garlic, citrus, and something salty and fermented, a little like soy. What lingers on the tongue is a blast of umami that's so deeply chicken-y, it's hard to square with the mild-flavored meat that Americans have come to know. The menu's other highlights smack of the surreal. The Aloha Burger is savory-sweet, sporting a halo of grilled pineapple beneath layers of bacon and cheese. Jolly Spaghetti is slathered in a sugary meat sauce and garnished with grated cheese and hot-dog slices. Crisp hand pies ooze purple ube and golden mango....