How a Japanese cookie lead to 110 Powerball winners and, by the way, we learn who General Tso was and why we love his chicken so much

Game Day Dinner on Sunday [1] was Chinese take-out food (you know, a tradition for the holiday season). While ordering, the topic of General Tso's Chicken came up, because the menu for the local Chinese restaurant was written in Engrish [2] and came out as General Tao's Chicken.

I normally wouldn't even bother mentioning this, but I just now came across this fantastic talk on General Tso's Chicken [3] (who is also making a documentary about General Tso's Chicken [4]) that goes into not only the history of this classic dish, but makes the point that it is a thoroughly American dish [5] (created by a Taiwanese chef in 1970s New York City).

Oh, about the title? That's also covered in the talk, which reminded me a bit of Connections [6], that wonderful television series by James Burke [7].

[1] /boston/2010/12/19

[2] http://engrish.com/

[3] http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jennifer_8_lee_looks_for_general_tso.html

[4] http://thesearchforgeneraltso.com/

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Tso's_chicken

[6] http://www.youtube.com/user/JamesBurkeWeb

[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Burke_(science_historian)

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