FoodWords Between Deadlines
Friday, November 30
Al Gore Says He's Now Restaurateur in Tennessee
What? Al Gore is running a Shoney's? Say it isn't so!
It isn't so.
It was all a mistranslation. Somebody in Nigeria misunderstood. Whew! Another Internet hoax busted.
posted by Unknown1:48 PM
Cooked Breakfast Leads to Cancer?
Hot off the ether from the BBC: The morning fry-up has been linked to cancer of the esophagus in British women. Bad for you: eggs, bacon (AKA eggs 'n bake), sausage (AKA bangers), and a hot cuppa tea. Better for you: cereal and fruit. Guess those fabled English breakfasts are on their way out. The photo accompanying the story shows what from this American perspective is an unappetizing combination of cooked meats on buns. Apparently, esophageal cancer is more prevalent among British women than among their European sisters. As bad as the cooked breakfast can be, the worst thing you can do is to skip it altogether and gulp down a steaming cup of tea, because the hot tea damages the esophagus' lining. As I read it, the culprit isn't necessarily the morning fry-up but the hot tea that accompanies it more often than it goes a light, cold breakfast.
posted by Unknown
Tuesday, November 27
The Price of Cheaper Coffee
Coffee prices have swung wildly over the years: way up when a freeze wipes out the crop, way down when overplanting produces a surplus. That's what's happening now around the world: a glut of cheap coffee from elsewhere in the world is threatening the livelihoods of Brazilian coffee growers. One could gloat a bit, I guess, because cheap Brazilian soybeans help keep down U.S. soybean prices (spoken as one whose mom grows soybeans in Illinois), but we're talking about poor people who will have even less to live on. Read this story from the November 27 BBC daily email.
Juan Valdez: Another Victim of the Coffee Crisis
The coffee glut has hit hard in Colombia, too, so much so that Juan Valdez, the symbol of Colombian coffee, has been laid off. This New York Times story has a bit of fun with the idea but also reminds readers that the Juan Valdez commercials countered the image of Colombia as a cocaine-riddled nation. (Too bad the story is datelined "Medellin")
posted by Unknown
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"Shut up and bring on the food!"
-- Audrey Junior
"Little Shop of Horrors"
FoodWords
Volume 1, Number 3
November 26, 2001
Today's Specials:
o Letter from the Editor: The No-Calorie Food Feast
o The Buffet Table
o Announcements
o Subscription Details
Dear FoodWords readers,
Is it too soon after Thanksgiving to start thinking about food
again? A big part of my Christmas giving is food gifts - bread,
cheese spread, party mix, pies, etc. - but I'll kick off the
season with my son Evan's school bake sale this Friday. I am
holding my nose and going along with his request to make
"Confetti Caramel Crunch." It has Trix cereal, brown sugar and
corn syrup in it. So sweet it makes my teeth hurt just to think
about it. (See Item No. 3 concerning regrettable food.) But, it
will be a guaranteed best-seller. Won't the town dentists love us!
In the meantime, here are some great food stories I've been
saving (and saving and saving) for you all. No calories or fat
grams to count, either.
Let's go to the smorgasbord!
Janet Roberts
Editor
Comments? Click here
_________________________________________________________________
THE BUFFET TABLE
1. Americans Eating More Meals at Home
(Restaurants and Institutions Magazine)
Food editors, did you catch this little item in the news a while
back? A study by the research firm NPD Group found that Americans
are spending less time in the restaurant and more time in the
kitchen. Because the study was published on October 1, a little
over two weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, some
publications interpreted it as a reaction to the attacks. However,
the research was done well before then. Instead, the company
attributes the decline both to the economy, which is faltering in
many sectors, and to the rise in "meal solutions," those all-in-
one dinner kits that have sprung up in the boxed-dinner, frozen-
dinner and fresh-meat sections of the supermarket.
2. Another Review of Safe Holiday Eating Practices
(Not including "Don't Drink the Eggnog if the Dog Beat You to
the Bowl")
(Locateadoc.com)
It's a standard story for the holiday season, but it bears
repeating every year: how to prepare foods that won't send your
entire dinner party to the emergency room. This story has
much of the usual information (wash your hands, don't thaw the
turkey on the counter for three days, hot-foods-hot/cold foods
cold, etc.), but it also has useful advice for mailing food
gifts and getting every dish to the table at optimum
temperature. The only flaw in the story is that it doesn't factor in
enough time to work dinner around the TV football schedule. You're on
your own there.
3. The Gallery of Regrettable Food
(Lileks.com, via The Spike Report)
One of the chief frustrations of being a food writer is seeing what
people do to perfectly good food in the name of marketing.
Some truly awful foodlike objects crossed my desk in my food-
editing days (the lowest of the low was a short-lived attempt to
recreate the "S'more" of camping days with a cookie composed of an
ersatz graham cracker, marshmallow fluff and a piece of chocolate).
Here's a collection of "bad food" - screenshots of cookbooks from the
'40s, '50s and '60s and ads or commercial recipe pamphlets from food
manufacturers of the same era. Taken in context of the times, I
don't think everything in this food-snobs' comic paradise is as
awful as billed, but some of the comments are priceless. "Lileks"
is James Lileks, a columnist for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune
("The Strib"), whose Web commentary includes the Institute
for Good Cheer, "where we bring pop culture history back to life so
we can beat it to death again."
4. Hot News for Hot (Food) Lovers
(Gourmet News)
Speaking of keeping hot foods hot, here's a list of the newest
Scovie Award winners. The Scovie Awards, named for the Scoville
units of heat in chili peppers, in turn named for the scientist
who first quantified that measurement, are presented annually
to hot and/or spicy foods that are judged to be best in their
respective classes. The list of winners is a readymade holiday
shopping guide for chiliheads who pride themselves on their heat
tolerance or seek out the newest barbecue sauces, dips, salsas,
snacks and sweet-but-hot temptations.
5. Finally! The Proper Appreciation for Junior League Cookbooks
(Los Angeles Times)
American cookbooks seem to veer between the homespun and the
haute. Either they're high-fashion packages hot off the press at
high-quality houses like Stewart Tabori & Chang, or else they're the
homely little comb-bound books your mom's Woman's Club or church
circle is selling to raise a few bucks. Right in the middle, a
happy combination of home-tested recipes dressed up with a little
style and panache, are the books published by Junior Leagues around
the country (but especially in the South, where those women really
know how to put a good cookbook together). This story from the LA
Times gives these cookbooks the attention they deserve.
Thanks for reading. See you soon! Remember to visit the Weblog
( http://foodwords.blogspot.com/ ) to see what kind of quirky,
short-shelf-life, bizarre or breaking news I have posted that
day.
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posted by Unknown
Monday, November 26
Coming soon: Latest issue of FoodWords!
I'll post the newest issue in a day or so. If you were referred here from Netterweb, you can request a subscription by clicking here . Topics in this issue: food safety, Regrettable Food, hot-food winners and much, much more.
posted by Unknown
