Sugar Cane

Total time: 1 hour, 15 minutes plus chilling time for the ponche Servings: 25 cocktails FOR THE RECORD: Ponche Villa recipe: In Wednesday's Food section, a recipe titled Ponche Villa, which accompanied an article about the fruit tejocote, included the wrong nutritional values. Each cocktail has 150 calories; 0 protein; 22 grams carbohydrates; 0 fiber; 0 fat; 0 cholesterol; 22 grams sugar; 7 mg. sodium. Note: Adapted from a recipe by John Rivera Sedlar with Julian Cox. Sedlar writes, "I've always enjoyed this classic holiday 'ponche.

Starbucks raised eyebrows when it recently started offering coffee for $7 a cup. But that's nothing compared to a brew that goes for a hefty $50 per serving. Why does this coffee cost so much? Because the beans first have to be eaten, digested and then pooped out by an elephant. Apparently that's an exotic enough process to fetch a price of $500 a pound, making this one of the world's most expensive blends. The coffee is called Black Ivory and hails from Thailand. It was unveiled last month at a handful of luxury hotels catering to, well, the sort of people who can afford a $50 cup of joe. Quiz: The year in business "When an elephant eats coffee, its stomach acid breaks down the protein found in coffee, which is a key factor in bitterness," Blake Dinkin, who has spent $300,000 developing the coffee, told the Associated Press . "You end up with a cup that's very smooth without the bitterness of regular coffee.

The government on Monday published a proposed regulation that would prevent thousands of foreign sugar cane harvesters from qualifying for permanent U.S. residence status under a program for seasonal farm workers. The Agriculture Department published the proposed regulation to comply with an order issued last month by a judge who found that the agency had procrastinated in revising rules he had previously struck down. Last spring, U.S. District Judge Thomas F.

The Global Garden, our weekly series exploring multicultural L.A. through the lens of its landscapes, is approaching its first birthday. The column has covered so much -- sugar cane, shiso, loquat, purslane, moringa, sweet lemon, ice cream bean -- so much that we've pulled all of the installments into one convenient library that we'll continue to update. THE GLOBAL GARDEN ARCHIVE Bookmark it. Share it. Enjoy it. And happy planting.

Policosanol is a mixture of alcohol compounds -- mostly octacosanol -- extracted from the waxy coatings found on leaves and stems of plants. In humans, these alcohols are thought to work as well as statin drugs in lowering levels of "bad" (or LDL) cholesterol. Policosanol research was pioneered in Cuba, where most of the supplement is derived from sugar cane. In the U.S., policosanol supplements are made from a variety of sources, including wheat germ, yams and beeswax.

Cuba announced a campaign to boost sugar production to an all-time high over the next couple of years, mostly for export to Soviet Bloc countries. Production from this year's harvest, which began in November, is expected to top 8 million tons and grow to 9 million tons a year after that, the state-run Prensa Latina news agency said in a dispatch monitored in Mexico.

They had come to say goodby, to pay final homage to their hometown, a small, sleepy plantation village that has outlived its usefulness and is soon to be razed by bulldozers. They had come, these 750 young, middle-aged and old Japanese-Americans, from throughout the Hawaiian Islands, from many places on the mainland, to this obscure village hidden 87 years from the outside world by fields of tall sugar cane.

"Sugar Cane Alley" has a redemptive purity about it. We watch a black boy escape from Martinique's exploitative sugar cane fields and realize that life, however indifferent it seems, offers moments of justice. Director Euzhan Palcy's screenplay, based on Joseph Zobel's influential 1950 novel of the same name, often simplifies Jose's struggle and that of his people, the ghetto-dwellers who work on the white man's plantations.

Vermont's century-old technology for producing maple syrup is helping transform the sugar cane industry in Honduras and has the potential to spread to southern Mexico and other parts of Latin America. The standard maple boiler evaporator designs, with modifications to boil sugar cane juice, are helping reduce pollution and cut production costs while increasing profits for the farmers.

Feeding a sweet tooth won't just lead to weight gain and a mouthful of cavities. A new study suggests that diets high in added sugars can alter levels of important blood fats and increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. The study, published in the Wednesday edition of the Journal of the American Medical Assn., found that people who got at least 25% of their daily calories from added sugars of any kind were 3.1 times more likely to have low levels of so-called good cholesterol in their bloodstream than people who got less than 5% of their calories from added sweeteners.

The Cutting Season A Novel Attica Locke Harper/Dennis Lehane Books: 374 pp., $25.99 How much do I admire Attica Locke's second novel, "The Cutting Season"? To answer that, I need to go back to her 2009 debut, "Black Water Rising," which told the story of Jay Porter, an African American attorney in Houston, a former radical in full retreat from the unresolved issues, political and personal, of his past. Set in 1981, "Black Water Rising" is nothing if not authoritative; Locke, who lives in Los Angeles, was raised in Houston and understands how the city works.

The makers of high-fructose corn syrup would understandably like to change the image of their product, which has gained a reputation as the trans fat of the sugar world. In fact, as sales sink, they'd prefer a name change altogether — to corn sugar — and have asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for permission to use it on food labels. The liquid sweetener is a natural food, a Corn Refiners Assn. advertising campaign claims, and nutritionally the same as any other sugar.

Here in Pakistan's southern Punjab province, the tawny waters of the Indus and Chenab rivers have swallowed up vast swaths of verdant rice paddies, sugar cane fields and mango orchards that usually feed the nation. Floodwaters have submerged the village of Basti Dopiwala, leaving farmers and their families stranded on a small patch of dry land to ponder survival without the fields that sustain them. Along the banks of the Chenab, the river gently laps the boughs of mango trees that stretch to the horizon and are a source of national pride.

Feeding a sweet tooth won't just lead to weight gain and a mouthful of cavities. A new study suggests that diets high in added sugars can alter levels of important blood fats and increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. The study, published in the Wednesday edition of the Journal of the American Medical Assn., found that people who got at least 25% of their daily calories from added sugars of any kind were 3.1 times more likely to have low levels of so-called good cholesterol in their bloodstream than people who got less than 5% of their calories from added sweeteners.

As a boy, Esteban Avila had only a skinny old horse and two pairs of pants, and he lived in a swampy neighborhood called The Toad. He felt stranded across a river from the rest of the world and wondered about life on the other side. He saw merchants pay bands to serenade them in the village plaza and dreamed of doing the same. He had a girlfriend but no hope of marrying her because her father was the village butcher and expected a good life for his daughter. Then Avila found an elixir and took it with him when, at 19, he went to the United States.

Immigrants from an obscure corner of Mexico are changing heroin use in many parts of America. Farm boys from a tiny county that once depended on sugar cane have perfected an ingenious business model for selling a semi-processed form of Mexican heroin known as black tar. Using convenient delivery by car and aggressive marketing, they have moved into cities and small towns across the United States, often creating demand for heroin where there...

Now that Brazil is slated to become the first South American country to host the Olympics, maybe Americans will pay more attention to one of its finest exports: cachaça . Made from fermented sugar cane juice, the clear, fiery liquor puts the defining kick in Brazil's national cocktail, the caipirinha . Made with cachaça , muddled lime and sugar, a caipirinha is a profoundly simple beverage that perfectly captures the restless,...

Starbucks raised eyebrows when it recently started offering coffee for $7 a cup. But that's nothing compared to a brew that goes for a hefty $50 per serving. Why does this coffee cost so much? Because the beans first have to be eaten, digested and then pooped out by an elephant. Apparently that's an exotic enough process to fetch a price of $500 a pound, making this one of the world's most expensive blends. The coffee is called Black Ivory and hails from Thailand. It was unveiled last month at a handful of luxury hotels catering to, well, the sort of people who can afford a $50 cup of joe. Quiz: The year in business "When an elephant eats coffee, its stomach acid breaks down the protein found in coffee, which is a key factor in bitterness," Blake Dinkin, who has spent $300,000 developing the coffee, told the Associated Press . "You end up with a cup that's very smooth without the bitterness of regular coffee.

Only the goats risk the cool shade of the century-old colonnades left standing in this provincial capital. The people have hauled themselves and their possessions into the middle of the dirt roads, away from the fallen storefront arches and tin roofs that now rest on piles of brick like crumpled hats. Leogane looks like an archaeological dig overrun by squatters who wait for food, medical attention and shelter from the sun and coming rain. International aid is starting to pour into Port-au-Prince, two hours to the east.

Total time: 1 hour, 15 minutes plus chilling time for the ponche Servings: 25 cocktails FOR THE RECORD: Ponche Villa recipe: In Wednesday's Food section, a recipe titled Ponche Villa, which accompanied an article about the fruit tejocote, included the wrong nutritional values. Each cocktail has 150 calories; 0 protein; 22 grams carbohydrates; 0 fiber; 0 fat; 0 cholesterol; 22 grams sugar; 7 mg. sodium. Note: Adapted from a recipe by John Rivera Sedlar with Julian Cox. Sedlar writes, "I've always enjoyed this classic holiday 'ponche.