Here’s some food for thought for today…
- So you say you like your portions big? Here’s some big foods that should fit the bill.
- A $180 investment got Michelle Obama and the White House garden folks 960 pounds of vegetables. Laureen Harper – we’re still waiting…
- Remember when the milkman delivered the milk right to your door? People in Manhattan can remember it like it was yesterday, because it was.
- I’m pleased to see that blood pudding has made this list – the world’s scariest foods.
- Too much salt? Lumpy sauce? Split Hollandaise? How to fix kitchen disasters.
- As much as farmers try not to become attached to their animals, losing one can be like losing a best friend.
- Little hands do the best picking – retailers in the US suspend dealings with a Michigan blueberry grower after children a young as 6 were found working in the fields.
- And finally, this list of rules for restaurant staff has been circulating over the past few days and the creator of Waiter Rant has offered up a rebuttal. An amusing aside – I was out for brunch yesterday morning and had a server do a good dozen or so of the actions on the verboten list, undoubtedly at the behest of the place’s manager.
Farm City – The Education of an Urban Farmer
Novella Carpenter
Penguin Press, 2009, hardcover, 276 pages
Idyllic dreams of moving to the country to become a farmer abound – in this era of local food and “who’s your farmer”, most people involved in the local food scene long for their own garden patch and flock of chickens. We tell ourselves it’s impossible in the city, and if we choose to obey local by-laws, it usually is.
The answer then, is to live somewhere that is almost lawless – where the local cops have more important things to worry about than whether your turkey gets loose and runs through the neighbourhood, terrorizing the local crack dealers.
Such is the unique situation writer Novella Carpenter has found herself living in. A resident of downtown Oakland, Carpenter and her partner Bill rent a second floor flat in a house next to an abandoned lot, and over the years, she’s expanded her Ghost Town Farm from a few laying chickens and a garden to include honeybees, meat poultry, rabbits and pigs. She’s also taken over the vacant lot next door, and has encouraged neighbours to join her.
Carpenter’s book, Farm City, The Education of an Urban Farmer, chronicles the growth of Carpenter’s farm, a progression in which she continually pushes the boundaries of what a city farmer can do (and what a motley crew of neighbours will endure).
Here’s some Halloween food for thought…
- Never mind that Halloween meatloaf hand… here’s a collection of severed feet, shrunken heads and voodoo guys, all made of ground beef.
- This holiday is not just for the kiddies – there’s good stuff for grown-ups at some of Toronto’s local bakeries.
- No one loves Halloween as much as Martha Stewart – her hardcore pumpkin carving set is a must-have.
- And it’s always good to have some inspiration when determining what to carve.
- Why waste those eggs by throwing them at houses when they actually make really cute ghosts.
- Boo is not the flavour, it’s the greeting. People may not get the Pepsi Halloween cans, but it’s a nice effort.
- And if you happen to be in Philadelphia tonight, dressing up as your favourite food item from the Chipotle menu will get you a free burrito.
Here’s some food for thought for today…
- Got your H1N1 shot yet? While you’re standing in line waiting along with all of the other media-paranoid people, think back to the spring when all signs pointed to the flu starting at a Smithfield’s CAFO in Mexico. Whatever happened with that? Cheap pork chops, anyone?
- Speaking of cheap meat, it’s time to choose – that or your health.
- Okay, you don’t have to give it up completely – but how about saving meat for special occasions and eating a vegetarian diet the other 90% of the time?
- And if you’re still worried about swine flu, you can always eat some Cocoa Krispies – they help support your child’s immunity, you know. *rolls eyes*
- Do “foodie” children really enjoy that foie gras and truffled lobster? Or does the human palate and an appreciation of good food not develop until later?
- Stemless wine glasses; easy, interchangeable and stylish – or sacrilegious?
- For years, farmers bemoaned the fact that the next generation wasn’t interested in taking over the farm when they got old enough – but now a whole new group of young people (mostly city slickers looking for a change) are buying up farms and revitalizing the industry.
- Maybe mushrooms really are put there by fairies to lure humans into the forest – Russian mushroom hunters get so entranced at the task, they can sometimes end up lost in the woods for days.
Here’s some food for thought for today…
- Seeing through the PR hype – are bloggers impressed by “brand ambassadors” ? They shouldn’t be.
- Out on the farm, tractors are a bit like crack.
- Speaking of hard drugs – turns out that our brains react to junk food the same way they react to heroin. Well, unless you’re this guy, who has pretty much lived on candy his entire life.
- Buddha’s hand - coolest fruit ever!
- They’re only lentils, they won’t hurt you – some easy steps and advice on giving up meat. (Y’all don’t need me to list the reasons why, do you?)
- But first, we have to eat up all these pigs so the factory-based farmers with 80 gazillion thousand hogs each don’t go bankrupt because of swine flu and low pork prices. Well, more likely school kids and poor people will end up with the excess pork because they don’t know enough about agricultural subsidies to argue the point.
- And speaking of pork (I’m just full of the segues these days), how about bacon fat candles?
- Rub a dub dub, thanks for the grub – saying grace in a secular world.
Culinary trailblazer; creator of the military-style brigade system of restaurant kitchen management, instiller of proper sanitation techniques, promoter of French cuisine to the world…
…and the guy who created the terribly annoying and frustrating chef’s toque hat.
We’d be lost without him.
Here’s some food for thought for today…
- No matter how much you swirl and slurp that wine – geologists say the notion of “terroir” is a load of bunk.
- McDonald’s closes down its 3 franchises in Iceland. They don’t need stinky burgers, they’ve got fermented shark.
- Baltimore’s decision to take part in Meatless Mondays in all city-run schools raises the ire of meat producers, who go to the press adamant that the kids won’t be getting enough protein without dead animals in their diets. (Not true.)
- And what’s that, more kids in the US sick from e.coli poisoning from ground beef? But don’t the little munchkins need the protein?
- Can eating too much fat make you stupid?
- The humble turkey makes the cover of all the November food magazines (okay, I thought Rachael Ray was supposed to be the “turkey” on the cover of her magazine, but when it’s enlarged you can see she’s pulling the bird out of the oven).
- Speaking of which, Rachael Ray(not the turkey) has designed a menu for New York City’s school lunch program. Everybody wants to be like Jamie Oliver these days, don’t they?
- Grab a plate, help yourself, help yourself again – the all-you-can-eat restaurant gains popularity in recession-strapped England.
Here’s some food for thought for today…
- I know an Irishman who will be devastated by this news – Guinness isn’t good for you (and other dietary myths). Although, as someone with a dairy allergy, that one about milk not creating mucus is total BS – I can prove it, gimme some cheese and watch me get congested. So maybe the Guinness one is wrong too…
- People like cake, especially food porn watchers. Which is why Bravo has come up with a Top Chef spin-off featuring pastry chefs called Just Desserts.
- The KFC in Australia that allegedly gave a little girl salmonella poisoning via a Twister sandwich purged all of its sales records for the day the tainted food was purchased in an attempt to disprove the item was purchased there. Because THAT doesn’t look suspicious now, does it?
- Awww… the axis of food evil is all the things that make food tasty.
- More reaction to McDonald’s opening a location at the Louvre museum in Paris, including the twisted attitude of people who mock an overweight woman in real life, but gush over the works of Reubens.
- Florida tomato pickers protest over low prices paid by grocery stores.
- Not “spankingly fresh” and not sustainably raised – why farmed fish from Chile should not be in your sushi bento.
- Thinking of having a Harry Potter-themed party this Halloween? Complete with Potter-inspired recipes? Warner Brothers’ copyright lawyers want to have a fews words (specifically “cease and desist”) with you.
- “The Wrath of Grapes”, “Snow Peas Falling on Cider”, “Around the World in 80 Lays” – just some of the titles at the Edible Book Festival, where artists used food to interpret a book.
Here’s some food for thought for today…
- It turns out that many people don’t know the difference between “natural” and “organic” (including the legal differences) and some stores and manufacturers are taking advantage of that.
- Don’t be grabby – a diatribe against the idea of “grabbing a bite”.
- You’re used to checking food packaging and menus for nutritional information, but in Sweden their food now comes with information on carbon emissions created while growing and making the food.
- Russia raises taxes and duties on beer, ostensibly to collect monies to help with health care for alcohol-related illnesses, but leaves hard liquor alone.
- South Korea considers reclassifying dogs as “livestock” to ensure humane treatment of dogs raised for meat.
- In the US, the FDA has put the smart choices program on hold while it examines the issues associated with telling people froot loops are a healthy breakfast.
The content of this post can be found on a sub-site of the Contact page, but I thought I’d also post it here.
As regular readers are aware, recent changes to US law mean that bloggers are expected to disclose free samples, invitations etc., that mainstream journalists are not. My take on this is that bloggers need to accept that they are now (particularly with print media disappearing) part of the mainstream media and act accordingly.
Comments in a recent post on this topic lead to a discussion about how PR companies often try to pressure or intimidate inexperienced bloggers, and how those bloggers cannot be trusted in terms of giving a fair assessment or coverage of products, meals or events that they received for free.
Since I believe that bloggers should be accepted into the mainstream and treated the same as regular journalists, the onus is now on individual bloggers to make it clear to PR companies of all stripes, and their representatives, what they will and will not cover and how/why.
The following is the list for PR people to use when contacting me regarding covering an event, shop or product. I will be creating a separate, but likely very similar, version for TasteTO. I encourage other food bloggers who do reviews or offer local event coverage to do the same, and post it on their own site to make their intentions and modus operandi clear.
