FoodWords Between Deadlines
Thursday, November 14
Crisco: Crucial to baking or Franken-food?
Here's a great story about the history of Crisco, that "white-white" solid vegetable shortening that heralded the era of manufactured foods. As an aside, it also explains the hydrogenation process clearly -- how oils solidify into fats and why they might be bad for you. I confess -- I use Crisco for frying French toast. Nothing else works as well.
posted by Unknown11:13 AM
Thursday, November 7
Central Illinois primes country's pumpkin pie passion
This story could have done a little more to mine the culinary aspects of major-league pie-pumpkin production -- like asking the pumpkin-processing plant manager, who must taste a pie every day, what makes the best pies -- but even so, it's a nice look at an area of the Thanksgiving feast that gets overlooked. It's also a nice reminder NOT to cook up that gassy old pumpkin that has been sitting on your front porch since Halloween.
posted by Unknown
Friday, October 18
How your dinner died
Is this useful information or more than you really want to know? Some restaurants are going to great lengths to explain how that salmon or elk steak ended up on your plate. The story began in the Wall Street Journal; this one is from MSNBC's Web site.
posted by Unknown
Thursday, October 17
‘Tear factor’ discovered in onions
You'll just have to find another reason to have a good cry in public, now that Japanese food scientists have discovered the enzyme in onions that generate tears. The tearless onion, they say, is just a few years away. No more eating bread, holding a piece of raw potato in your mouth, freezing onions or washing them -- a few of the ways people say they can combat the sniffles.
posted by Unknown
Tuesday, October 1
Yahoo! News - Boy rings police over grandma's dumplings
So much for the love between grandparents and grandchildren.
posted by Unknown
"First there were chickens; then, chicken tchotchkes!"A great story AND a great headline -- life is good! This is a fun story about a Wisconsin woman who wrote the book on chickens -- actually, one of a growing collection of chicken-focused books. Here's the beginning of a trend: Chickens are cool. Martha Stewart might have elevated an underground tendency toward chickens into a designer niche with her own flock of "pedigreed poultry" (stole that line from the story, I did), but others are finding the joy in raising a small flock. Having been in close personal contact with chickens, I have to say I prefer my chickens on a plate or on a piece of Quimper pottery -- the only stench that comes close to chicken poop is pig poop, and while some chickens are smart, most of them are not -- but if it gives some poor urban drone a few moments of pleasure to imagine a futue spent gaily tossing feed to appreciative avians, fine. Hey, maybe there's a book or a movie to be made there! No, sorry, somebody beat me to it: "The Egg and I," published post-World War II, made into a funny film with Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert.
posted by Unknown
Organic food labeling to debut this monthHere's a great explanation of the new federal regulations on organic labeling and what it means for consumers and producers. Its from CBS MarketWatch, an excellent Web site that deals mainly in business and finance issues.
posted by Unknown
Wednesday, September 25
More to Irish Cooking than Cabbage and Soda Bread
Oh, I do so love the Chicago Tribune food section. Have done since the old Mary Meade days. Here's another reason why: The staff takes what could have been a standard cookbook review and takes you inside the Trib's test kitchen -- been there! -- to show both how they tested some of the recipes and candid comments on the results. It's a great story and a good example to follow.
posted by Unknown
Tuesday, September 24
The Big Doughnut Battle: Krispy Kreme Invades Dunkin' Donut's Turf
Will Krispy Kreme unseat batter behemoth Dunkin' Donuts, now that it has arrived in downtown Chicago, or will it have the Starbucks effect? (Instead of driving independent coffeehouses out of business, they actually boost business for everyone.) Personally, my money is on DD. KK doughnuts are good right out of the oven, but I hate that sweet glaze that goes over every doughnut, even the frosted ones. Too icky-sweet for me. Although you can't beat the glassed-in production area for voyeuristic interest.
posted by Unknown
Frito-Lay North America to Add Healthier Snacks
Okay, they're not copying McDonald's. Yeah, yeah. But Frito-Lay, the snack-maker, said today it plans to cook its Doritos, Tostitos and Cheetos snack in a more healthful cooking oil and to introduce low-fat versions of some of its snacks, all because it is worried about the way Americans eat. Jolly decent of them, I say, but I wonder if the consumer reaction will be the same as the reaction that greeted McDonald's announcement that it is cooking french fries in a different oil. (See item below.) Essentially "ho-hum."
posted by Unknown
Report: Target May Give Supermarkets 'A Run for Their Money'
Taking a page from the Wal-Mart Big Book of Big-Box Retailing, Target is poised to become a major food retailer in the United States, which is probably all U.S. food retailers need to hear. Personally, I dunno. Is Target prepared to replace the frozen food I buy first but allow to thaw while I get distracted in the hard-lines department?
posted by Unknown
And You Thought Tofu was Boring
If anybody knows how to make solidified bean curd interesting, it's the Japanese. How about smoked tofu, baked and coated with salt and soy sauce, seasoned with apple and cherry essence? You'll have to go to Family Shokuhin in Takagi, Nagano Prefecture to get this Kunsei-tofu. Or, you could try it at home. This story, from the English-language version of the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading newspaper, tells you where to go and how to create some of the dishes at home. It's fun reading, even if you don't like tofu. (And if you do, freeze the tofu first before deep-frying. Works much better.)
posted by Unknown
Monday, September 23
Certified Organic: What's It Worth?
Need an all-in-one guide to buying organic foods? This isn't exactly it, but it's close, and it's from Newsweek's cover story this week on MSNBC.com . It doesn't endorse organic 100 percent, but it makes a stronger case for buying certain kinds of organic foods over others. ("organic" is a little bit of a misnomer here; isn't all food organic? But it's used to mean plant foods grown with minimal inputs such as chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, and products from animals raised without synthetic hormones and antibiotics and fed only organic feed.) It's a well-written, evenhanded treatment of a story that all too often evolves into emotion versus efficiency.
posted by Unknown
Consumers Don't Buy 'Healthier Fries' Claim
Here are some interesting findings -- not scientific, but interesting anyway. SupermarketGuru.com, the Web site run by food-marketing expert Phil Lempert, asked visitors to fill out a short online survey about McDonald's recent claim that it is changing the way it cooks french fries to make them more healthful. This touched off a debate on a food mailing list about all the media coverage this announcement got, with some people criticizing the media for covering this at all and asserting that it will just further bamboozle the great unwashed who patronize the Arches. This survey shows that while about 85 percent of those who voted do buy fries at Mac's, the same percentage said the news will not cause them to eat more fries. Also, just over half say the announcement was just a marketing gimmick. Again, this is not a scientific survey -- it relies on people to self-select -- that is, you're more likely to get people who have some motivation rather than a true cross-section of the population -- and it also doesn't control for the tendency of people to answer the question the way they think they should instead of the way they truly feel. Still, the results are there.
I draw two conclusions: 1. Even regular customers aren't necessarily buying into McDonald's marketing plan (which might be one reason why the company's financial outlook is flatlining at best. 2. Mass media coverage apparently did not produce the mass general acceptance that some food people predicted. Food writers have always had to deal with soreheads who insist that covering a trend implies endorsement, but I maintain that when a major food entity such as McDonald's does something like change its fry formulation, that is news, but not because we all think McDonald's is great.
posted by Unknown
Fewer Pumpkins This Year??
The summer drought that beset many parts of the United States continues to echo as we veer into fall. The latest bad news comes from the pumpkin patches of Indiana, where the crop is reported from nonexistent to spotty. As goes Indiana, so goes much of the Midwest.
We saw a big patch with the mournful sign "No Pumpkins This Year Due to Drought" while out on a country drive this year. Also, friends who can usually grow grass on sidewalks also reported that most of their pumpkins never made it past the blossom, and those that did are pretty sorry-lookin'.
posted by Unknown
900 Chicago Restaurants Ban Smoking in Restaurants
Doesn't say whether the infamous Billy Goat Tavern (once the hangout of the late great Mike Royko and allegedly the inspiration for the Greek restaurant in the old Saturday Night Live sketches).
posted by Unknown
Now pending in Australia: Plastic-bag tax
Here's a corollary to the debate just beginning to surface in the United States about a junk-food tax. The Australian Parliament is set to begin debate a proposed levy on the use of plastic shopping bags -- or "carrier bags" as they're known in various parts of the world -- in an effort to cut down on nonbiodegradable waste. A similar tax in Ireland apparently did cut down on the number of bags that ended up at the dump. Okay, it's not totally food-related, but here's the inevitable result: What if the world's governments someday do impose a plastic-bag tax? And a junk-food tax? I'llhave to pay extra to take my Twinkies home in a plastic bag. Is it worth it?
posted by Unknown
Friday, September 20
Seasonings and salt - innovating for success : just-food.com Feature
posted by Unknown
"Meals Make Us uman"
Here is a brief but charming essay that says today's culture of fractured, solitary dinnertimes "is a blip, not a trend. Cooking will survive, because it is inseparable from humanity. A future without it is impossible."
posted by Unknown
Wednesday, September 18
'It's not your grandmother's food section any more'
Hey, I'll bet you guys didn't know that, didja? Whoa nelly, those Gannett executives sure are on top of changing times. This page from the Gannett media company's Newswatch section argues for and outlines changes in newspaper food coverage. Trouble is, many food sections are already doing just what they want. Which, for the cynical newspaper journalists here should recognize is only par for the course. Most of the time, they don't even know the section is there. Most of them value their food news so little they don't bother to highlight or promote it on their Web sites or in email alerts. (That's one of the founding principles behind this blog -- we don't overlook the food section!) Much of this is done to capture the elusive 18-to-34 age demographic, which apparently doesn't respond to recipe-style coverage. I have one caution for newspaper section heads who want to break down the old mold and install something new: New is good, but don't forget who actually buys the paper and uses the news. Don't leave older readers in the dust, particularly older women readers who lost access to the kind of women's news they wanted to read when women's sections were revamped into "lifestyle" sections in the 1970s and 1980s. A good food section is like a buffet line: You can have an overall theme, but you should try to publish something for everybody. Otherwise, you risk losing yet another demographic, one that isn't as sexy but has just as much or more spending power to attract advertisers. Okay, rant over. Check out the story.
posted by Unknown
Tuesday, September 17
Snack food sales rocket in Britain
Here's an issue to unite parents around the world: Your kids aren't the only ones squandering their allowances on junk food and cigarettes. Interestingly, speaking of cigarettes, the story from BBC News, the online component of the grand old BBC, says more girls than boys buy cigarettes. Are the girls letting the boys mooch in order to gain favors?
posted by Unknown
Moosewood to Sell Canned/Frozen Products
It seems a bit heretical to apply conventional marketing terms to what Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca, N.Y., is planning to do, but there's no way around it: the restaurant will extend its brand, already on cookbooks, to canned and frozen organic vegetarian foods, and they're planning an extensive trade and consumer campaign to support the roll-out early next year. (Yikes! Get my pinstripe suit out of mothball!) This story, from MediaPost, a Web site and email newsletter tracking media and marketing news, reports Moosewood will market the products for specialty health-food stores, supermarkets and institutions. The move is destined to capitalize on supermarkets' increased willingness to allot shelf and floor space to organic foods and consumers' willingness to buy them at higher prices than they'd pay for conventional equivalents. Plus, the Moosewood brand is gold in organic/vegetarian circles, thanks to the restaurant's rep, which extends beyond the People's Republic of Ithaca (as someone who lives there once called it), and the cookbooks by food writer Mollie Katzen. (Highly recommended; the garbanzo-bean dip from "Sundays at Moosewood," the most conventional of the Moosewood book series, I think.)
posted by Unknown
More on trans fat
This story from the Tallahassee Democrat is a Knight-Ridder Tribune wire story giving good background about trans fatty acids - what they are, how they differ from other fats, why we should care about them. If you're a hard-core food or nutrition professional, you probably know most of this by now, but it explains the facts in easy-to-understand language that doesn't dumb down the issues.
posted by Unknown
Monday, September 16
McDonald's 'Healthy Fries' Debate
posted by Unknown
Schwan's Service Really Delivers
If you don't live in the Midwest, particularly the less-populated parts of the Midwest -- or you don't have a child who attends a grade school with a vigorous fund-raising program -- you probably don't know about Schwan's, the home-delivery food company.
In Green Bay, Wis., where I live, I see the little goldenrod-yellow trucks with the big white swans on their sides all over the place. They deliver frozen foods -- mainly desserts and frozen dinner foods -- at all times of the day and night, and their drivers are probably some of the hardest-working guys in the food-delivery business. The foods they sell would fry the eyebrows off our good friends at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, but I have a good friend who says, "I don't know what I'm having for dinner until my Schwan's guy shows up."
posted by Unknown
Thursday, September 5
Circling the Racetrack and Other Curious Shoppers' Habits
Forget a lot of the conventional wisdom about how people shop in a supermarket. A new study by Herb Sorenson of Sorenson Associates shows how supermarkets need to rethink store design and product placement - where the best places are to merchandise products, how to manage the store's "dead zone" (Hint: That's why they put the milk way back there!) and on and on. If you believe firmly that stores are designed not for the shopper's convenience but to maximize the store's goal to extract as much cash as possible from the wallet, you might not appreciate some of the advice. As a shopper, though, I can attest to Sorenson's description of the "racetrack" method of shopping, in which I circle the store's perimeter and then make excursions up the aisles. (Which is a dumb way of doing things, because the cold items usually are on the perimeter, like meat, dairy and frozen foods, so they have lots of time to warm up in my cart while I hunt down kitty litter and paper towels). If the store wants to make my work easier and shorten my time in the store, I'm all for it.
This story appeared on the GreatMindsinMarketing.com Web site, one of the properties in the marketingsherpa.com online-publishing empire. marketingsherpa.com's sites and email newsletters should be required reading for anybody whose calling in life even remotely resembles marketing communications and email publishing. Publisher Anne Holland (like me, a refugee from the print world) and her crew are some of the smartest people in the business.
posted by Unknown
Tuesday, August 27
Social Changes in the Grounds
Two voter initiatives, one in Berkeley, California, and one in Seattle, Washington, want to require anybody selling brewed coffee to sell only shade-grown, organic coffee for which the growers were paid a fair price. (No more Folger's for you!) Fair-trade coffee is available in many markets these days (even in little old Green Bay), but the protests have come thick and fast. Not just from people who resent having the government tell them what kind of coffee they can sell but from coffee associations themselves who say the rules will harm, not hurt, the small coffee growers who have been squeezed in the current world coffee glut. Their answer is to get people to drink more coffee. You make the call. This Chicago Tribune story handles the topic, rich with lampoon possibilities, even-handedly. I have no comment on the politics involved. However, whenever I hear about people who want to pass laws that spell out exactly which kind of product everybody can sell, I start looking behind the curtain to see which manufacturer or distributor might be holding the strings. How many purveyors of shade grown, organic fair-trade coffee are there in the world, anyway? Just asking.
posted by Unknown
Monday, August 26
'Russia Settles US Chicken Row'
That's row as in "squabble," "disagreement" and "dispute," but this is the BBC reporting, and "row" just works better. Russia is the biggest importer of U.S. poultry (where do you think the rest of the bird goes after the US market takes all the wings and breasts?). The Russians had put the kibosh on poultry parts imported from the US because of concerns about antibiotic residues and use of genetically altered foods in chicken feed and chlorine in food processing. However, the Bear and the Eagle have now agreed on a new veterinary certification, so the US can once again give Russia the bird. (Look, I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself. Never again, I promise.)
posted by Unknown
The Double Whammy of Food Poisoning
No matter how awful your job is, at least you're not Disney World's food-services director. In June, according to this AP story from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, salmonella-tainted Roma tomatoes were served at Disney World restaurants on the same day as an athletic competition for people who had received organ transplants. Who are some of the people most endangered by salmonella? People with weakened immune systems. Such as organ-transplant recipients. Yikes! Disney officials said the tainted tomatoes were diced and prepackaged. The Centers for Disease Control said as many as 141 people got sick, and lab tests confirmed results for 18 people. At least two had attended the organ-transplant games.
posted by Unknown
Friday, August 23
'Nutrition Watchdog Praises Burger King, McDonald's'
No, that is not a misprint, and it's not April Fool's Day, either. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, scourge of Big Food and Big Alcohol, really did say this week that some of the best fast food on the market comes from BK and Mac's. Of course, what CSPI gives with one hand, it takes back with the other. The five worst foods on its good food/bad food share the Burger King menu with the Chicken Whopper Jr. sandwich and the meatless veggie burger, which it ranked as two of the best foods. In addition to McDonald's fruit and yogurt parfait, CSPI also praised Wendy's mandarin chicken salad and the low-fat subs at Subway. The five worst, in nutritional and economic terms, were BK's ice-cream shake, hash browns, french fries and Value Meals.
posted by Unknown
Vegetables Forever: Real Life on a CSA Farm
Have you seen or heard stories about Community-Supported Agriculture farms, in which people buy shares of a harvest and get fruits, vegetables or meats delivered year-round? It's a great idea - you buy a small, medium or large share of a harvest, or a slaughter if you buy meat. You either pay cash for the whole share or mix cash and some hard labor on the farm. Then, when the harvest comes, you get your share. The reality can be a mixed blessing, especially if you are a city-dweller with romantic notions of going back to the land. The joy of getting your hands dirty lasts until you can't dig Mother Earth out of your cuticles, you've done your turn on the corn-detasseling crew or battled a horde of grasshoppers under an unforgiving August sun. But, the rewards make up for the labor when you taste your first sun-warmed tomato, broccoli that tastes as green as it looks, or sweet corn that's hours, not days, off the stalk. This story is worth reading on two counts: It's an honest, wry look at a woman's first year on a CSA farm, and it's written by Marian Winik, a writer who has had a fascinating life and has written lots of nonfiction books about it, including The Lunch-Box Chronicles: Notes from the Parenting Underground. It's not as precious as the title might imply, and this story isn't as reverential about her all-vegetables-all-the-time experience as stories about CSA tend to be.
posted by Unknown
Price is the Stopper for Organics
A recent survey found that when many people think about organically grown food (no chemical inputs including pesticides or herbicides), the first thing they think is that organics are more expensive than conventional food. Also, people who have never bought organics by now say they probably won't ever buy them. However, people who say they have committed to eating more healthfully do buy products they believe are better for them. This is all in a survey by A.C. Nielsen's Consumer Pre*View, a panel headed by the SupermarketGuru himself, Phil Lempert. This brief story from ProgressiveGrocer.com packs some interesting statistics in a small space.
posted by Unknown
Wednesday, August 21
NYT: The Deep-Fried Truth About Ipswich Clams
It's always good to see ordinary people in New York Times stories, especially when the stories treat them like intelligent human beings. (This happens rather less often, whenever Timesfolk step away from the Square, than one would like.) This story is worth reading for its look into the claims about Ipswich clams - are they or are they not really from Ipswich, Conn.? - and for the unassuming but "content-rich" quality of the writing by Nancy Harmon Jenkins, a wonderful but underappreciated food writer whom I worked with way back in graduate school at dear old UW.
posted by Unknown
School Dumps Junk Food for More Healthful Snacks
Here's a good lesson in how to skew the news. The Center for Consumer Freedom, which despises anything that smacks of do-gooderism, especially in food, had a knee-slapping good time with this story about a school in Fresno that will enforce a no-junk-food policy on campus and is putting less junky junk food in its school store. The center seems to think this does kids a tremendous disservice. I say, good for them. The Center takes particular glee in quoting a teacher saying that she'd snatch a bag of Chee-tos right out of the hand of an unsuspecting grade-schooler. This apparently is the height of political incorrectness. Okay, if I want to give my kid a bag of salty or fatty snacks for lunch, that should be my right. But if I know the school is trying to encourage better eating habits, I'll just save the Doritos for a snack at home.
posted by Unknown
Hot Lunch Goes Organic in Palo Alto
Is it a case of offering more attractive and healthful lunches or pandering to the bad-food cops? You make the call, but when school resumes in the Palo Alto Unified School District, more kids will be able to buy organic vegetarian lunches. Not a bad idea in my view, if it offers something kids will buy and it's not junk food. Sounds better than another story, reported in the newsletter from the no-liberals-allowed Center for Consumer Freedom, which said a Fresno grade school will enforce a no-junk-food rule on school lunches. I'll post that if I can get the link.
posted by Unknown
Forbes.com: Fast Food Counts Calories
We could have predicted this one: People say they want fast food, but when they have to commit to it, they back out. Big surprise!
posted by Unknown
Tuesday, August 20
Portrait in Toast
Don't throw out that piece of burned toast! Use it to create your own bit of toast art, just like artist Maurice Bennett of New Zealand, who has an entire online gallery devoted to artworks pieced together from toast. But this is no garden-variety Toastmaster-charred bread. Bennett carefully toasts bread slices to achieve varying shades from barely tan to near-charcoal. Yes, he has devised a tribute to Elvis. Yes, these are public artworks, because, as he says, "The best view is gained from being some distance from the work." If he were to publish an email newsletter about his artworks, he could call it "Toast Points." Then again, probably not.
posted by Unknown
Bob Greene and the $74 Steak
What's Bob cheesed off about now? A restaurant in Washington, D.C., that sells a Kobe-beef steak for $74. He doesn't talk about what cut of meat it is - a rib-eye? Sirloin? Tenderloin? - just that the price seems pretty high in these days when people are seeing their net worths evaporate along with their jobs and their optimism. Bob wonder, where does one find this steak? The answer in this story is Washington, D.C., and Bob lets the implications fly (your Congressman eats high on the hog, sort of, while the rest of us trudge to McDonald's). You probably could find the same steak for a price in the same neighborhood - this is Kobe beef, imported from Japan, where the cattle get daily massages, live a stress-free life, mostly, and get fed a special diet - in Chicago. No comparisons drawn between congressmen and aldermen. Oh, and Bob's also mad about having to pay $5.75 for a bottle of water presumably from the minibar. Walk over to the sink and get a glass for free, he sputters.
posted by Unknown
Monday, August 19
Welcome, Eat-L Subscribers!
This is the place for FoodWords. I park stories here between mailings of my FoodWords newsletter, so I won't forget about them and so I can write a little about them ahead of time. If you'd like to subscribe, go to the FoodWords sign-up form. To read the original story, click the headline. Thanks!
posted by Unknown
Finally! A Place for All Those Happy Meal Toys!
I knew there was a reason we still have almost every fast-food meal toy Evan has collected in 7.5 years. The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago has a special exhibit, 25 years of toys, beginning with a Burger Chef Triple Play Funmeal today from 1977. Suppose they need to round out their collection of Spy Kids 2 commemorative gadgets? Oddly, I couldn't find a place to offer more donations. Hmmm.
posted by Unknown
Consumers, Retailers Slow to Accept Food Irradiation
Description later. Read it now. (You don't have to register.)
posted by Unknown
Lettuce: The Newest Processed Food
Here's another story that makes you register at the Web site before you can read it, but once again, it's a worthwhile place to park your address. The packaged salad has become the flagship product in the lettuce department. What was the eye-rolling product introduction of the early 90s has become the salad-makings of choice for more consumers. Lettuce - once a reliably unprocessed food in the supermarekt - is now officially a processed food, unless you continue to buy it by the less-expensive but labor-intensive head. What's instructive is the idea that the lettuce that goes into the bag salads is its second-grade quality. You can expect a more compelling description in the next FoodWords newsletter, out next week, but for now, here you go.
posted by Unknown
Changes in grocery biz offer food for thought
You'll have to fill out the nosy registration form at the Web site for Crain's Chicago Business in order to read this story about how supermarket chains are influence product innovations among other things. However, it's worth it for the insider look you get at how supermarkets control access to their shelves and what it means for independent food retailers, manufacturers and consumers. Excellent explanation of "slotting allowances," which some manufacturing folks prefer to call "paying tribute" or "bribes" or "extortion."
posted by Unknown
Rice Yes, FlatBread Maybe Not
Perhaps this will help erase the "Ugly American" stigma that dogs McDonald's image outside the U.S. Perhaps not, if its move to sell rice dishes in Hong Kong displaces smaller independent business. This story from the Chicago Sun-Times looks at what's being planned, gives an independent reviewer's opinion -- rice too sticky, chicken was good -- and where McDonald's resides as a whole in Hong Kong public opinion. It also includes a sidebar story saying that while the public has embraced its chicken-flatbread sandwich, the suits at the chain's Oakbrook, Ill. HQ aren't as sold on it. Two good looks at how big-business fast food makes decisions.
posted by Unknown
Julia Child's Kitchen at the Smithsonian
I know I said you could dispense with reading anything else about Julia Child once you read two recent stories in the LA Times and the Trib. However, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., has just opened its Julia Child's Kitchen exhibit and has put up a helpful Web site with plenty of photos, details, background information, etc. It includes a detailed project diary that catalogs all the steps the Smithsonian workers took to document, pack and recreate the kitchen in their museum space. Good thing I'm not a world-famous chef; I would hate to have every centimeter of my kitchen put under the microscope. It was embarrassing enough when the oven-repair guy opened up the oven to reveal how long it has been since I cleaned under the dang thing.
posted by Unknown
Thursday, August 15
A Day in the Life, at 90
Here's a wonderful Los Angeles Times interview with Julia Child in which we learn more about the life she lives now - in an assisted-living complex; DON'T call it a retirement home!, where she uses a walker to get around after back surgery - and in which the kitchen is wholly inadequate, right down to the useless min-oven which, she laments, "it tells you what to cook, you don't tell it." Pair it with the William Rice story listed below, and you'll get a well-balanced picture of the real Julia.
posted by Unknown
Wednesday, August 14
Farewell to Tall Food (Finally!)
Have you ever ordered a meal in a fancy or trendy restaurant and stared in appalled fascination at your entree because you were afraid to eat it? Not because it was scary-looking, but because it was so tall you wondered "why you didn't order your meal with a stepladder on the side." Those aren't my words, they're in this entertaining Baltimore Sun story by Arthur Hirsch, who links the death of "tall food" to the dotcom decline and tracks other odd-food trends. He talks to restaurateurs on many sides of the issue, from those who welcome a return from the dizzying heights to those who defend the practice as intellectual exercise. Ah, simplicity.
posted by Unknown
Shoppers Still Prefer Supermarkets, But Explore Other Formats
A new FMI/SupermarketGuru.com study says grocery-shoppers still do most of their primary shopping at supermarkets but say club and supercenter stores help them save money and offer better values. Well, okay, so far so good, but here's a twist. They also say the club/supercenter stores tempt them to buy more. Sooooo, where's the savings? I suppose because you have to commit more time to shopping in the club store - it's so huge, it's laid out almost anti-intuitively compared with your neighborhood Sentry, Schnuck's or Safeway - you're tempted to buy more. Wasn't that always the big knock against standard supermarkets, that they were designed to separate you from as much money as possible with tempting products? Nevertheless, check out this story from GroceryNetwork.com (Progressive Grocer), which provides lots of useful statistics. You'll find the full press release here.
posted by Unknown
Julia on Julia: America's Favorite Chef Talks to the Trib
Why do I love Julia Child so? Because she didn't use gimmicks in her cooking shows? Because she's a strong woman who eats what she likes? Because she isn't a phony, shares the credit, refuses to follow the trends? Because I got to meet her and tour the Madison Farmers Market with her many years ago? Sure, all these reasons and more. Julia Child is 90 this year and being celebrated from one end of the United States to the other. Although she has retired to a condo in Santa Barbara - she had to, her kitchen is being enshrined in the Smithsonian Institution this year - she is still a vigorous figure in the food world and a lively interview, as this phone conversation with William Rice of the Chicago Tribune shows. The story also includes a recipe for an excellent chocolate cake from one of her cookbooks, although not the to-die-for Queen of Sheba cake from her original Mastering the Art of French Cooking. We can expect lots of adulatory stories before the year is out; before you start to tire of them. Read this story first, and then you can dispense with the rest.
posted by Unknown
Tuesday, August 13
Yoo-Hoo! Here's Some Competition for You!
I didn't know the beverage market was crying out for a Yoo-Hoo replicant. What do I know? I'm not a marketing genius. Apparently, Coca-Cola and its product partner Nestle just couldn't let Cadbury-Schweppes have the whole chocolate-milk-beverage market to itself. But the name: "Choglit." Ewwww. Did they want something that sounds like "Chug It?" If I were a trademark attorney working for Dean Foods, I'd be busy investigating whether it comes to close to Dean's Milk Chug brand of pocket size milk drinks. But why am I complaining? At least it's a milk product that should resemble the dairy base. At least they didn't color it blue. Not yet, anyway. This story first appeared in the San Jose Mercury-News.
posted by Unknown
The Fight over Labeling Trans Fats: FDA vs CSPI et al
Will Americans ever find out the amount of trans fatty acids in their brand-name baked goods and margarines? Just adding that one line to nutrition labels has produced a 10-year battle and a new split between the Food and Drug Administration and consumer watchdog groups such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest. CSPI says the new warning, which the FDA is closing to ruling on, doesn't say enough to warn consumers away from foods that are high in trans fats. Trans fats, you might or might not know, are fatty acids that show up especially in foods make with hydrogenated fats, like oils that have an extra hydrogen atom added to make them solid and usable in mass production. Margarines made from plant oils are one example, but you find in many commercially baked goods. Some nutritionists says trans fats are worse on the heart than the cholesterol you get from butter.
posted by Unknown
Monday, August 12
Specialty Coffee, Anybody?
Now that Supermarket Guru Phili Lempert is turning out a decent weekly email newsletter, I'm paying more attention to his site. (I wouldn't read the newsletter closely when it was just a bunch of links to stories at the site, but now that he's putting up-to-the-minute news in the weekly email, I'm more likely to read it and find something interesting at the site. Just a bit of email-newsletter biz for my Ezine-Tips readers; the rest of you can come back now.) This piece has some good statistics on specialty coffee consumption, tastes, etc. - all material that's worth keeping in your evergreen file the next time you do a coffee story. Good for sidebars etc. and has a nice little graphic Phil might let you borrow.
posted by Unknown
Cure for the common cafeteria: Hospital has great takeout food
Here's a nice story from the Miami Herald about a hospital that hired a former restaurateur to run its food service. On the menu are Latin-inspired dishes like the kind Ray Acosta used to serve in his own restaurant. It's so popular people come from outside the hospital to eat or order take-out. Well, it's not a surprise to me. I did a story a few years ago about hospital cafeterias in Green Bay that were trying to break the hospital-food stigma, although picadillo and chicken adobo certainly weren't on the menu. No word about whether the patients get to enjoy the same fare in their rooms. My one suggestion: Remember to let the hospital workers get in line first, because they're probably on a 15-minute lunch period.
posted by Unknown
'Fast Casual' Takes Over from Fast Food
It was inevitable, I think - 20 years of going to the drive-through at your local fast-food palace has finally taken its toll on the Baby Boom generation. We ate there as overworked career-building singles, we took our kids there for emergency Happy Meals, and now we just can't face the prospect of one more Whopper, Big Mac or McSalad Shaker. (Who did the engineering on that one, I'd like to know?!) Although the big fast-food firms will probably never go away, their influence is fading among middle-aged fast-diners, to be replaced by quick-serve chains that produce something a little different. Some of the names in this new movement, as cited in this Des Moine Register story, include Culver's (a Wisconsin-based chain where the leading product is the butter burger) and Sonic.
posted by Unknown
Friday, August 9
Boar's Head: How to Write a Profile When Nobody Wants to Talk to You
Here's a story that scores on two counts: 1. It talks about a company that's a leading brand in the cutthroat world of gourmet deli products (not an oxymoron, despite what your own deli experiences have been) and 2. It does it with virtually no cooperation from the principal characters involved. Send this to your favorite Investigative Reporting 101 professor or student.
posted by Unknown
Tuesday, August 6
A Food Critic Tells (Almost) All
Every food writer who has ever had to express an opinion publicly knows the double pain of restaurant reviewing: writing about a bad meal and having to defend yourself from the restaurant owner's wrath. This detailed story from the Philadelphia City Paper talks with Craig LaBan, the food critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and goes to greater lengths to asses the issues than most similar story treatments. In another blog entry, I'll include a couple of links to Craig's stories so you can judge for yourself.
posted by Unknown
Monday, August 5
Yes, This is the Perfect Job
And now for this week's requisite chocolate-related story: From CNN, we learn that Fortnum & Mason's, that most British of prestige food shops, is looking for a chocolate buyer."We are looking for enthusiasm and energy to develop the already divine range of products available," the company said in a recent ad. Is it any surprise the company was flooded with chocolate-hounds? We would add one caveat: To rework an old phrase, when the gods want to punish you, they answer your prayers.
posted by Unknown
Sunday, August 4
Hello Blogger! Get Me Circulation!
For some reason, the correct subscription address isn't appearing, over there to the left. If you'd like to get FoodWords in email instead of having to trudge to the blog in hopes I've found something interesting for you to snack on, send a blank email here: Subscribe me!
posted by Unknown
Monday, July 29
RICH CHOCOLATE STORMS AMERICA
I have bad news for you if you're trying to break your chocolate habit. Premium chocolatiers are planning a $30 million advertising blitz this year to persuade Americans to eat more chocolate. (File this story under "Preaching to the Converted.") According to this story in Advertising Age, Americans are not holding up their end of the deal in worldwide chocolate consumption. This comes as a major surprise, seeing as Americans constantly get accused of consuming far more than their fair share of every other precious global resource. A few example: Lindt & Sprungli plans to spend $4 million to get us to eat more Lindor Truffles (my verdict: The fillings are too icky-sweet.) Godiva, a brand owned by the Campbell Soup Co., aims to spend an undisclosed amount to persuade us that its chocolate is not just a product but a lifestyle. (And not because you need a second income to support your premium-chocolate jones, I'm guessing.) I'd write more, but I just got this sudden urge for a Mars bar ......
posted by Unknown
Thursday, July 25
Is Bottled Water Better Than Tap?
Okay, I do feel a little doofus-like whenever I buy a bottle of water from a vending machine, a convenience store or the supermarket. Buying water?? What next, buying air? (Oh, yeah. We do that already. Oxygen bars. Not me, though; I draw the line there.) This story from the Baltimore Sun casts an earnest if slightly jaundiced eye at the practice, examining it from various viewpoints: nutrition (beware extra carbs and calories in flavored waters), economics (It can be pricey!) and environment (added pollution caused by trucking water from source to plant to store). And, of course, the snob value: Some restaurants are adding "water sommeliers" to help diners navigate their way through all the varieties. Get me a Coke!
posted by Unknown
Friday, July 19
The Five Olive Oils of France
France produces only 2 percent of the world's olive oil, but, because they are French, they've gone and appellation-controleed the whole process. That means, as with wine, there are five distinct growing regions around the country, and only the olive oil produced in a particular region, such as the Coteaux d'Aix en Provence, can bear that particular appellation. This article in the International Herald Tribune by Patricia Wells explains the differences among them, notes characteristic flavors and suggests best uses.
posted by Unknown
Friday, July 12
Breakfast at Tokyo's (coffee shops, that is)
Tokyo is one of the most expensive cities in the world. Even if you have an unlimited expense account, at some point you too would rebel at paying almost US$5 for a cup of coffee. The solution, according to Kaori Shoji in the International Herald Tribune, is to venture out of the hotel to a local coffee shop. The shops cater to the hordes of commuting Tokyo businessmen who don't have to eat at home by offering full meals for the price of one coffee. And we're not talking the Cholesterol Express of your average Denny's Grand Slam breakfast, either. It's an entertaining piece and in IHT's tradition of food-meets-culture reporting.
posted by Unknown
Thursday, July 11
FDA to require trans fat listing on food labels
Research that came out in the late 1980s and early 1990s cited trans fatty acids as being potentially more harmful to the body than traditional evils such as cholesterol, although the current wisdom is that neither is good for you in large amounts. Trans fats are commonly those that have been hydrogenated. If you haven't been near a hydrogen molecule since high school, that means foods that are made with fats that have had a hydrogen molecule added to make them firm enough for use in manufacturing. Margarine is the one that comes to mind first, because it's an oil in its natural state. Many processed foods are made with hydrogenated fats, such as cookies, crackers and microwave popcorn. This story, from the Boston Globe and Associated Press, talks about how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is thinking about adding warning labels noting the presence of trans fats in a food product.
posted by Unknown
Monday, July 8
ICED-COFFEE $CAM DUPES JOE SCHMOES
Only in the New York Post could you find this story: Two guys go a-walkin'; the first buys hot coffee, the second buys iced coffee and pays half again as much. In a white-hot New York rage, the first guy does some cipherin' and figgers out that the iced coffee should actually cost less than the hot coffee. He's right, mathematically speaking, but what he forgets is the "chic" tax, that it's cooler to walk around with iced coffee in a showoffy see-through plastic cup than with a paper cup of plain old standard stuff. Not that we agree with the rip-off, of course, but people are people.
posted by Unknown
Friday, June 28
Chicago Tribune | Scientists take starch out of french fry cancer scare
Of course, this doesn't mean you should celebrate with a Biggee Fry. But, the word from the World Health Organization's conference in Geneva, Switzerland, is that while acrylamide levels in cooked starchy foods such as potatoes are above those recommended for drinking water, they aren't high enough to be considered harmful or cancer-causing. Not yet, anyway; the scientists want to study the issue more - they are, after all, scientists. Still, they did say that McDonald's and Burger King's fries had the highest levels of acrylamide, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Association has classified as a "probable" human carcinogen.
posted by Unknown
Friday, June 14
Where is a Tall a Small? Starbucksland
As if there weren't enough reasons some people need to dislike Starbucks. The Car Talk Guys from National Public Radio (make that "Cah Tawk") are ranting about the deceptive ways Starbucks sizes its drinks (perhaps, as Dr. Ink of the Poynter Institute for wayward journalists suggests, to justify the big bucks the drinks cost). If you live in a city where there isn't a Starbucks on every corner, you might find this more amusing than people who have been held hostage to the tall (make that small) green coffee cups.
posted by Unknown
Thursday, May 30
Cooking with the Farmers Market
We're on the cusp of summer; so, it must be time to head out to the Farmers Market. You who live in warmer climates can eat fresh all year long; we in the northern climes live for the day when a radish - usually the first veggie of spring - comes out of the ground instead of from the produce aisle. If we still lived in Madison, Wisconsin, we could even now head down to the Dane County Farmers Market, which brings a dizzying array of fresh foods to the Capitol Square every Saturday from thaw to frost, to see what's fresh out of the hothouses and coldframes. Up in Green Bay, though - 130 miles and three cultural lightyears away - the market won't begin for at least another month. Till then, I'll have to content myself with what's at the store and save the recipes in this excellent Baltimore Sun story about chefs cooking with whatever's available at the market. That to me is the sign of a good cook - anybody can produce something memorable with a truckload of imported goods, but making a fabulous dish with whatever's on hand is true culinary genius.
posted by Unknown
Tuesday, May 7
The world’s greatest hot dog maker?
I dunno. This looks like a much pricier version of the Presto hot dog cooker my brother dragged home from a rummage sale sometime in the late 60s or early 70s. I'm not a fan of one-purpose appliances, but the guy who wrote this column thinks it's the greatest thing since, well, since sliced bread. It looks and acts like a toaster, except the slots are different. I think it's telling that a guy thought this was great, whereas your typical overworked mother is thinking, "Great. I don't have anyplace to put this, I still have to clean it out, I can't put brats or Vienna dogs in there, it costs $50, and my kids eat too many hot dogs now as it is." It might not ever replace the microwave-toaste oven combination, unless of course you're a single guy with more money than sense.
posted by Unknown
Burger chains ready for fight in 99-cent war
Today, from the pages of the Chicago Tribune, this alert to a new marketing incentive by executives of major burger franchises in the U.S.: the initial skirmishes are between No. 1 McDonald's and No.2 with a bullet Burger King, but you can bet the shake machine that the ramifications will filter down to your local Sonic or Fatburger soon. Just great: Another temptation to get take out instead of a "real dinner!"
posted by Unknown
Thursday, April 11
Supermarket Gripes are the Same the World Over
Here's something to ponder the next time you're standing in the 10-items-or-less aisle behind three people whose carts are overflowing with merchandise but who can intimidate the high-school sophomore into accepting them anyway - things aren't much better in England, the alleged "nation of shopkeepers." Catherine Sleep, editor of the food-news site just-food.com, lists her pet supermarket peeves - make that "whinges," a much more interesting word - including price deception, inadequate product knowledge and lack of convenient alternatives. She pokes as much fun at herself as she does at the "major multiples."
posted by Unknown
Wednesday, April 10
Coke: It's What's for Breakfast (And Not Just Down South)
Having just polished off my daily breakfast Coke - fountain product from McDonald's, over ice, in my plastic reusable Coke cup with lid - I can heartily attest to this essay by Lucian V. Truscott IV (which might or might not be an alias) about the joys of drinking Coke for breakfast. I too was a Coke nonimbiber for many years - I remember watching a fellow journalism-school student start his days that way and thinking how awful it was - I have since changed my mind about both the student (I married him) and the drink (I started the awful habit a few years ago when I just had to accompany it with a sausage muffin, also from McDonald's). Today I have ditched the muffin but retain the Coke - it helps me start my day and goes so well with my oatmeal, yogurt and banana! I disagree with one interview subject's contention that the best Coke is poured from an icecold two-liter bottle over commercial ice: My preference is for fountain Cokes that use the Classic Coke formula (McD's doesn't, sadly but Cousin's Subs, Fazoli's and a sandwich place here in town do).
posted by Unknown
Wednesday, March 27
Chicago Chefs Vow to Pass on the Bass
This week, chefs in many of Chicago's highest-profile restaurants are taking a pledge not to serve any Chilean sea bass until the fish, which is neither Chilean nor a sea bass, until the fish population is allowed to recover. Like swordfish, orange roughy and redfish before it, the fish formerly known as Patagonian toothfish swam in relative obscurity until it was discovered, promoted and found on menus all over. Now, it too has become overfished and a favorite of poachers, and the once-hearty fish that tipped the scales at 200 pounds now barely registers at 20 pounds. Read the story from the Chicago Tribune and then go out for a salmon dinner, which is much better for you anyway. (eDiets.com has a story today that salmon is one of the 10 best foods for women.)
posted by Unknown
Tuesday, March 26
A Peek Behind the Curtain at Michelin's Guide Rouge
How does the Michelin Man find all those great restaurants? If your travel taste is so rarefied that you can detect the shifts and waves that add a star here, deduct one there at restaurants over le tout France, you'll enjoy this piece from Business Week magazine that purports to peer into the mysterious process in which the guide, published by the same family business that makes tires (or tyres, for our English cousins), demarcates the state of French cuisine and causes joy and misery throughout the land. Plus, it's fun to read.
posted by Unknown
Friday, March 22
Hot Gossip in the Food-Editor Job Shuffle!
Now, here's something you don't see every day in the frantic world of media gossip: As reported Thursday, there's a shakeup in the food-editing world at the very pinnacles of newspaper food journalism: A former Talk magazine editor is going to be the New York Times' new food editor, while the Times person is moving to take Russ Parsons' place as LATimes food editor. But, as the NY Post reported Friday, the ex NY-er will be joining her boyfriend at the Times, who also is a food writer. To avoid the appearance of nepotism, the boyfriend won't be reporting to the girlfriend but to a neutral third party, the LATimes' deputy managing editor and an exNYT'er himself. All of this sounds like just so much inside baseball, but to those of who just watch the gods relocate themselves on Olympus, it's a fun spectator sport.
posted by Unknown
Wednesday, March 20
In Praise (Or Not) of 'Taste of Home' UPDATED
Do any of you read this magazine? It makes a big noise about being different from the usual food magazines because it uses only recipes from readers; in other words, real people, not those snotty East Coast editors who are too skinny for words and wouldn't know how to use a tub of Cool Whip on a bet. Personally, I am not a fan, although I know many are (even a couple of you!). I find it hard to read, and it's a little too just-us-girls in the writing style. But, as this New York Times article shows, (it's written by confirmed New Yorker Regina Schrambling, who manages to look only slightly askance at the magazine and its solidly Midwestern staff and surroundings) the magazine has a devoted readership and reflects its readers. I loved the paragraph that says the magazine opened a Taste of Home restaurant to divert its groupies from visiting the offices. The main reason I don't read it is that one of its readers ripped off a recipe that won a prize in the Wisconsin State Journal's old cookbook contest in 1989 or 1990 - the reason I know she ripped it off is because I rewrote the recipe based on an extensive phone call with its originator, and the version that appeared in the magazine didn't even change my somewhat colloquial wording. Still irritates the heck out of me, but it was a great recipe: Blueberry Stuffed French Toast. Mmmm!
Update! The reason for all this East Coast interest in a distinctly middlebrow foodiemag is that Readers Digest had been rumored to be interested in buying it for $700 million. The rumor came true and the sale was announced on Friday. Seven hundred million?? That'll go a lot farther in Greenfield, Wisconsin, than it would in New York or LA.
posted by Unknown
Wednesday, March 13
Top Story: Silicon Valleyites can recreate favorite pricey restaurant dishes at home
The heady days of four-figure dinner checks are a memory for many newly unrich tech workers, but that doesn't mean they have to resort to mac and cheese from the ol' blue box. The San Jose Mercury-News has taken extreme pity on these poor folks who now must learn to shop for food and wash dishes like the rest of us and some tips for recreating the taste of the high life at home, such as substituting a sirloin tip or chuck roast for that thick steak, buying monkfish instead of lobster, choosing a soy-based "caviar alternative" instead of the fishy real stuff, making do with truffle oil instead of truffles and the like. Now, I dunno. This sounds a little Marie-Antoinetteish, don't you think? Perhaps the Merc's corporate tongue is planted firmly in its cheek, but it sounds a little to me like one old duffer at the country club leaning over to the other and saying, "Yes, old boy, it's sad that you had to give up the limo, but I'm sure you'll get used to driving yourself in the Lexus."
posted by Unknown
Tuesday, March 12
Farewell to the Cake Lady
Some of the best newspaper reading is on the obituary pages. The Boston Globe's obit page featured this story of the Cake Lady, a woman in Newton, Mass. famous for her luxuriously frosted cakes. It recounts in affectionate details how she painstakingly detailed cakes for everyone from the birthday boy down the street to President John F. Kennedy to Dr. Benjamin Spock, whose cake rode belted in its own cabin seat, ticket and all, to a party in New York City. What are you doing with your own life today to make your obit worth reading?
posted by Unknown
Catfight Over Chef Comments - on International Women's Day
Isn't it depressing - people who say women will never achieve equality in this world until they can stop attacking each other got more material for their side in this exchange between a female British member of the European Parliament (what I think a Euro MP is) and one of England's leading cookbook authors. The MEP jokingly commented on some of Delia Smith's quick tips, giving the impression -or, giving a bunch of guys looking for a catfight the impression - that she was knocking Delia Smith's recipes as out of date and not recognizing time pressures on real women. Glenys Kinnock apologized, saying it was all a joke, and Delia brushed it off, but of course, the prospect of two women fighting on International Women's Day is just too appetizing to ignore.
posted by Unknown
Friday, March 8
Community Cookbooks Honored
I know, you have enough cookbooks. But if you have room for one, or a few, more, here are the winners of the McIlhenny Co.'s 2001 Tabasco Community Cookbook Awards. There are overall winners, regional winners and Hall of Fame entrants. Don't know if one criterion for winning is not including any recipes made with cream of mushroom soup. Check out this story, and I will in the meantime hunt down a link to the Tabasco news release.
posted by Unknown
Thursday, March 7
Aisles of cultural exploration
There's one thing you won't find anywhere in all the thousands of square feet of your favorite Super-Shopper Mega Hypermarket food store: the kind of close-to-the-ground cultural experience you get when you walk down the crowded, tilting, wooden aisles of your local ethnic grocery store. In my town, it's the new Mexican and Asian stores that pop up on street corners and in old buildings nobody else wants. You won't find all the modern conveniences we've gotten used to in the typical American supermarket, but then you also won't be able to choose from 20 different kinds of coconut milk or jasmine rice at Wal-Mart, either. If you really want to know a culture but can't fly over for a visit, walk around a grocery store and talk with the people who work there. Even if you don't know the language, and they don't know yours, you'll be able to get your point across.
posted by Unknown
Wednesday, March 6
posted by Unknown
Friday, March 1
IHT: Fusion! The French break loose
Yes, another Patricia Wells column from the International Herald-Tribune. This time, she chronicles a Parisian restaurant that breaks the time-honored rules of cuisine which dictate when, where and how one may order one's meal.
posted by Unknown
Tuesday, February 26
Survey: Americans Trust Supermarkets
How do you feel about your local food emporium? This survey says Americans rated higher than other business on trust, outscoring retail. Businesses that scored negative ratings included oil and gas, insurance and brokerage.
posted by Unknown
Down-home food gets a nutritional makeover
It was inevitable, I guess, that Southern-style down-home cooking, "soul food," would eventually become chic and, having become chic, would get made over to dispose of nasties like saturated fat, calories and taste. Okay, I agree - cooking in bacon drippings and using ham hocks for flavor can lead to nutritional nightmares. I just hope the "new Southern" foods replacing them can capture the heartwarming, feel-good tastes of traditional soul food. Will macaroni and cheese (the homemade kind, not the orange stuff from the box) taste as good with low-fat cheese? Or do we just eat less of it and go for a walk afterwards? This story from the Baltimore Sun talks to chefs who have opened soul-food restaurants in the area as well as to people who are manufacturing food ingredients to capture this new interest.
posted by Unknown
Monday, February 25
Ten best foods for kids
Remember the story a few weeks back about the top 10 worst foods for kids? Here's the follow-up. On the list: Orange juice (in moderation), melon, broccoli, whole grains, oatmeal, protein foods, nut butter (almond or peanut butter without added hydrogenated fat - yeah, yeah, I know peanuts are legumes, not nuts, but that was on the list), sweet potatoes, yogurt, eggs. I'm pleased to report my child likes everything on the list but sweet potatoes - I'm going to try harder to incorporate them into the diet, but then I hated them, too.
posted by Unknown
Island Packet Online: Store shares glimpse of times past
Stories about general stores that manage to survive despite the Wal-Martization of rural America are always so inspiring. This is a charming story that's only tangentially about food, but humor me -- the story is well-told, sentiment-free and featured on a newspaper Web site that was recently voted one of the best in the United States, so give it a look.
posted by Unknown
Friday, February 22
Finally! A Sabbath-friendly oven!
Did you know your oven is programmed to shut off after heating for 12 hours straight? I do, now that I have read General Electric's press release about its latest device, a "Sabbath Mode" on its ovens that make it easier for observant Jews to use their appliances on holy days without breaking any dietary laws. When the oven is set to Sabbath mode, it overrides the 12-hour shutoff, which permits serving cooked or warm foods on the Sabbath (you don't have to start up the oven on the holy day). The oven also doesn't display icons, silences tones or timer beeps and permits temperature adjustments without displays or beeps.
posted by Unknown
Thursday, February 21
NOLA.com: Box of seafood gumbo disrupts airport for hours
I always thought gumbo was supposed to have an explosive effect after you ate it, not before. However, New Orleans airport personnel took no chances when a traveler found a suspicious-looking box in a men's room and alerted security employees. The airport closed two concourses and delayed flights while they inspected the package, which did not pass the bomb dogs' sniff test, by the way. The newspaper clippings on the outside, having to do with warnings of more security alerts, helped make it look like something sinister. At least it wasn't a bomb, but in New Orleans, wanton disregard of gumbo is a crime in itself, isn't it?
posted by Unknown
Friday, February 15
Just pinging ...
Hey all. Just wondering who's reading today's blog. If you wouldn't mind, would you send me a message to let me know you're out there? Click here and send, would you please? Thanks a bunch.
posted by Unknown
Alzheimer's May Be Linked to Normal Diet Byproduct
Does your family, or your spouse's, have a history of Alzheimer's disease or other dementias associated with aging? You might want to know about a new story that suggests a diet high in animal protein might be a risk factor. Animal protein produce the amino acid homocysteine. The study found that people with high levels of it in their blood were more likely to develop Alzheimer's than those who had lower levels. A high-protein diet, particularly one high in animal protein, can produce higher homocysteine levels. The solution might be to follow the diet advice to eat a balanced diet with a greater emphasis on leafy greens and other B-vitamin-rich fruits and vegetables. B vitamins are thought to be useful in slowing the mental decline, one of the symptoms associated with Alzheimer's. I'm eating broccoli as I write this, and I think I'll schedule a spinach salad for dinner tonight. But, will hot-bacon dressing cancel the effect?
posted by Unknown
Airlines Eliminating Food Service: This is a Problem?
Given how awful airline food is, you might think the news that many of them are cutting back or eliminating food on short-haul U.S. domestic flights is good news. Unless, of course, you don't think to bring your own, or you do as an unnamed reporter for the New York Times did (where this story first appeared before being republished in the International Herald Tribune) and leave too little time to get through security before boarding. I don't know if the world's best airline (Midwest Express, the only way to fly) has reduced its own worthy fare in response, but I will be prepared with lots to chow on when our family flies to Disneyland in March on American Airlines. Some airlines have never offered food service, like Southwest. Passengers compensate for the lack of comestibles by buying their own and bringing it on board, something that seasoned travelers who care about their tummies have done for years on other flights.
posted by Unknown
Wednesday, February 13
The Comedy of Food
Give me a minute while I gear up my best Rodney Dangerfield impression and take a look at this story from the Baltimore Sun about a comedian who builds an act around food. Talk about multitasking: She bakes bread during her show (called "Filler Up"), and she wants to find a way to incorporate her new KitchenAid stand mixer. I can understand her devotion to the mixer; mine barely has a chance to cool off. And yes, she thinks she can do a cooking show. Hmm, a comedy revolving around cooking. Is that the spectre of Emeril I see before me? Well, she can't do much worse, and she might even be better! As for that Rodney Dangerfield impression .... I'm still working on it.
posted by Unknown
Tuesday, February 12
New FoodWords Sent Out Monday!
Just shipped out another issue of FoodWords. Want to subscribe? You should be able to see "Subscribe me!" in the blog description at left; unfortunately, the link is the same color as the background. So, here's the fastest way to subscribe: Subscribe me! Thanks awfully!
posted by Unknown
A Dream of Parking Perfection, with a Little Food
One of my favorite food writers is Calvin Trillin, a Missouri-born but Manhattan-living writer who can make even parking the car an event of life-changing proportions. This story, a feature evolving from Trillin's latest book, "Tepper Isn't Going Out," centers on the theory and practice of finding and maintaining a good parking spot in Manhattan. It isn't directly about food, but it's simply impossible to be anywhere in even the same psychological space as Trillin without getting food mixed in somehow. Reading how Trillin combines parking and brunch-food shopping gives you an idea of the great food writing that lies between the covers of classics like "Alice, Let's Eat." Trillin coined the gently derogatory phrase "Maison de la Casa House" to describe restaurants that foist horrible permutations of "Continental Cuisine" on unsuspecting Midwesterners. He also speculates that the government is filling abandoned missile silos with surplus chicken a la king. The next time you're at the library, see if they have any Trillin nonfiction collections. They're slim volumes, and the essays read quickly.
posted by Unknown
Monday, February 11
Research Offers a Sweet Surprise: Chocolate Is Good for You
And just in time for Valentine's Day, too. We suggest you commit this article, which appeared first in the Los Angeles Times, to memory and take it with you the next time you either go to the candy story or have someone near and dear to you think he/she is doing you a favor by withholding chocolate. Not that the concept of chocolate as either an aphrodisiac or a source of healthful eating is all that new. The only grim news, for me, in this whole story is that my favorite form of chocolate - milk chocolate - is probably the least nutritious of all the versions. Sigh.
posted by Unknown
Another reason to eat breakfast!
As if you really needed any. This story, quoting research published in the journal Obesity Research (they should know, after all!), nearly 80 percent of participants in a study who were able to maintain their weight loss ate breakfast every day. Food of choice? No, not the latest horror from McDonald's, the cheddar/bacon/sausage McMuffin, but a bowl of cereal. Ho hum, perhaps, but effective.
posted by Unknown
Sunday, February 10
Poultry Farmers Quietly Begin to Reduce Antibiotics
In what looks like a victory for health activists and supporters of organic food, the United States' three largest poultry producers have begun cutting back on the amount of antibiotics they use to keep their flocks healthy. The three are Tyson, Perdue and Foster Farms which, according to a story in the Sunday New York Times, produce about a third of the chicken Americans eat. The story pits the traditional assertions by poultry farmers that antibiotics are needed to treat sick chickens and to keep the whole flock healthy and are used responsibly. The anti-antibiotics advocates say that widespread use of antibiotics leads to the creation of resistant genes in both chickens and the humans who eat them. The cutback is the start, but not the solution, because other problems still exist, according to this story, written with depth and even-handedness by food writer Marian Burros.
posted by Unknown
Friday, February 8
All Hail Jean-Claude Vrinat
Don't you wish you had Patricia Wells' job? Eating your way across the world certainly ranks up there for me. I'm sure that for every heavenly repast, she has had to slog her way through ten dining disasters, but still ... In less-skilled hands, a dinner of lamb shoulder and veal cheek would sound like something you'd read on the ingredient label of a hot dog. Here, it makes me want to cast aside all obligation and flee to Paris on the next plane.
posted by Unknown
Wednesday, February 6
A Testament to Soul Food
Have you ever eaten something that made you feel good all over, and not just because of the taste? That's soul food. There's a little controversy over whether soul food, a term African-Americans use to describe the comfort foods of their youths, can apply to white folks' food, too, but that's not the point here. Indianapolis Star Lynn Ford wrote a column recently talking about how no matter how far up the social ladder some African-Americans move, they don't lose their taste for soul food. He talks about his own preferences in soul food -- don't scoop out the baked macaroni and cheese from the middle, give him the part with the browned edges! -- and interviews a cafe owner whose provocative statement about soul food started him down that particular path. Ford was found dead this week in his apartment, apparently from natural causes. That is sad for many reasons, not the least being that I would have loved to hear more about his soul-food history.
posted by Unknown
Tuesday, February 5
'Cave Man' Diet Green-Lights Grassfed Meat
What did those hunter-gatherers know that we moderns don't?
Somehow, without the expert advice of dietitians and nutritionists, they ate meat that ended up being better for them than the meat we eat now. (Insert snorting retort from our vegetarian/vegan friends here.) But, it's true, according to a US study published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, which found that grassfed game (beef, too) yields meat that contains a mixture of omega-6 and omega-3 fats that are "healthy and essential in proper nutrition and ... lower cholesterol and reduce other chronic disease risk." The fats we eat today are too high in omega-6 fats, which come from oilseed-based foods fed to cattle. Hunters in the old days ate meat that technically was higher in fat but better because of that mix. A conservation (read: hunting) group helped support the study.
posted by Unknown
Monday, February 4
Ray's List of Weird and Disgusting Foods
You might not want to be eating when you read this list, a worldwide compendium of every awful comestible on earth. Naturally, one person's disgusting food is another's delicacy, a case I can make most pointedly when seeing that cheese curds ended up on the list for the United States (a nation so large it gets broken down by geography) in its Midwest region. In fact, I would quibble with every item attributed to the U.S. Midwest, either because it's not really that bad, to my taste, (like "sliders," those tiny steamed hamburgers from White Castle, or Jell-O salad), or because the food didn't originate in the Midwest (like fruitcake. Take it back, England!). Other foodstuffs on the list have no such gray area, including jellied eel (England). Curiously, many items are either cheese (Gorgonzola made the list, shockingly)or sausage (no surprise; you never know what's lurking inside that
casing, or even where that casing originated).
posted by Unknown
Friday, February 1
French Fries to Cost More?
Potato growers in the U.S. say they need the big processors to more for the potatoes that eventually become fries at the big fast-food chains like McDonald's and Burger King. The Potato Marketing Association of North America voted to ask for the increase after U.S. growers cut back plantings to reduce supplies, resulting in a 40-percent price increase last November, compared with 2000. The potato growers say because french fries are such a low-cost, high-margin item, the big guys can afford to pay more for their spuds. This article from the Seattle Times says analysts estimate that 80 cents of each dollar earned on french-fry sales is profit.
posted by Unknown
Another Diatribe Against Screaming Children in Restaurants
Here's a paradox: I agree with the idea that parents must control their children in restaurants and that other diners should not have their meals ruined by out-of-control kids. That's the point this writer makes in her complaint against parents who allow their kids to let it all hang out and hang the consequences. I'm lucky that seven years of hauling Evan in and out of grown-ups' restaurants has produced a child who has never had to be disciplined or taken out for bad behavior. But she's so arrogant, so .... so .... pardon me, but "snotty" is the only word I can think of, that my only retort is, "Yeah, wait till you have kids and no babysitter and you can't face ordering one more dinner from a menu board instead of a waiter, then we'll see." Here's an example from her piece: "Restaurants are public places, not exercise yards for feral youngsters."
posted by Unknown
In California, Dream Cuisine
Another fabulous food piece by Patricia Wells, who must be one of the luckiest foodpeople in the world. This time, she visits Thomas Keller of the French Laundry restaurant in the Napa Valley winemaking region in California. Read it for her description of Keller's "coffee and doughnuts" recipe.
posted by Unknown
Julia Child's Kitchen at the Smithsonian
I'm glad I'm not a famous but retired chef. I'd have to clean up my kitchen: sweep under the workbench, throw out the coupons that are older than my child, etc. Now that Julia Child has returned to her native California to retire, of sorts, her Cambridge, Mass., kitchen has been recreated at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. This Washignton Post story gives you the details.
posted by Unknown
Tuesday, January 29
Polenta a Potential Protein Purveyor?
Okay, I apologize for the overlong reach in that title. Nevertheless, here's a good explanation for polenta's potential as a source of protein when eaten (or "consumed," in dietitian parlance) in combination with legumes or animal products to round out the protein mix. If nothing else, this story, which first appeared in the Los Angeles Times, passes on a good tip for avoiding that rancid taste that sometimes pops out when you make something from cornmeal: Buy the freshest you can find and keep it airtight in the fridge. (Unless, of course, you grind it yourself, Martha.)
posted by Unknown
Another reason to go grocery-shopping alone
Today's food-marketing horror note: Toys R Us is testing out toy-sales kiosks at four Giant supermarkets in Washington, D.C., and Virginia. ("Kiosk" is a little misleading here; at 600 to 1400 square feet in size, they're about the size of my house.) It's part of TRU's quest to wrest toy-sales dominance away from Wal-Mart. A TRU representative - who obviously has never had to struggle with a toy-crazed child at either TRU or the supermarket - said the typical parent goes to the grocery store 96 times a year but only 4-5 times a year to TRU. Why do you suppose that is? I guess now that TRU is looking at putting toy kiosks in stores, I can look forward to more toy tantrums, overpriced merchandise and surly store clerks. On the positive side, this might cut down on the requests to buy treats at the check-out.
posted by Unknown
Howstuffworks "How Food Preservation Works"
Another stellar presentation from the brains (Marshall Brain, that is) at HowStuffWorks.com. Topic for today: How refrigeration, freezing, canning, irradiation, dehydration, freeze-drying, salt, pickling, pasteurization, fermentation and other forms of food preservation work. The explanations are clear and in the case of current hot topic irradiation, temperate. There's a lot to go through, but if you're looking for a new way to handle your garden's overproduction, or to more successfully freeze the products from that 20-point buck you shot last season, this is the place to find it.
posted by Unknown
Stop and Smell the Marmite
If you haven't had Marmite, a peculiar vegetable-based spread, by the time you're 3, you'll probably never develop a taste for it. That would include just about the whole of the United States, save the tiny population of English expatriates who exchange addresses for and haunt the doorsteps of American shops that dare to stock the odd-smelling stuff. Marmite is celebrating its centennial this year, an occasion that will go practically unnoticed in America unless you read this article that appeared in the New York Times and presents a Yank's attempt to understand the English devotion to it. From the paper's description, Marmite approaches peanut butter in both its evocation of happy childhood and its versatility as a food ingredient. The secret recipe includes yeast and vegetable extracts, salt, niacin, spices, folic and various B vitamins, making it a staple food for polar explorers, travelers and military personnel. (As an aside, perhaps a reader in England or Australia can tell me whether it's similar to Vegemite, the Australian vegetable paste made famous in the U.S. in a song by the band Men at Work in the early 1980s.) The downside is that it tastes, at least according to one account, like a cross between cheese and shoe polish. We will delicately sidestep the temptation to link this affection for Marmite to the obvious stereotypes about the quality of English food and beg you instead to read the story. My favorite part of the story came when Marmite devotees were able to detect a minute change in the formula in one shipment, which came from a South Africa factory, and shot off outraged letters to the company. It reminded me of an incident a few years ago in which Wisconsin brandy drinkers were the only ones in the whole country to detect and complain about a subtle change in the way Korbel was blending its brandy.
posted by Unknown
Will the new M&M be pink, purple or aqua?
It's that time of the decade again, time to pick a new M&M candy color. Your choices: the pink, purple or aqua candies that previously showed up only at Easter (and Valentine's Day for the pinks). Previously color changes came in 1949, when the original violet was dropped in favor of the more boring tan (was this a social statement on the coming decade of the 1950s? No, because M&M kept red), and in 1995 when bright blue replaced tan. This time, a company rep said, no color will get bounced. You can go to the company's Web site to vote or call an 800 number (toll free in the United States). I like purple, but the bright violet from the old days and not the pastel version of today. Given the choices, I'll probably vote for pink. It seems to blend in better with the other colors, which are primary-hued. Aqua is definitely out - I've never been a fan of blue food. The polls open in March, but you can register to get an email message when they open.
posted by Unknown
Organics find mainstream market
It's something that organic growers have been predicting for at least 20 years - organically grown food will find a mainstream market if people give it time and money. This story, reprinted from the Arizona Republic and the Idaho Statesman, reports on a thriving organic farm in Idaho and ties in market data from a Food Marketing Institute report on organics. It doesn't break a lot of new ground, but it does confirm the idea that organics can take hold, at least in a vigorous niche if not all the way throughout the supermarket.
posted by Unknown
Friday, January 25
Food So Good, It's Geekalicious
Looks to me like Wired magazine found an excuse to crash the winter Fancy Food Show in San Francisco. Its reporter, Katie Dean, wandered the aisles looking for geek-friendly food and found ceramic knives, celebrity fund-raiser foods, gadgets for latte lovers and others with more money than sense, and salsa. Professional food-show goers will see no new ground broken here, but it's a mildly amusing read, anyway.
posted by Unknown
Thursday, January 24
eDiets.com: Top 10 Worst Kids' Foods!
Take a guess: chicken nuggets, french fries, toaster pastries, hot dogs, juice-flavored drinks, fruit leather, chips, doughnuts, prepackaged lunches and soda (pop to us Midwesterners).
Okay, I'm guilty. I let Evan have 7 of the 10 bad food (not on our list: doughnuts, juice drinks, pop). Fruit leather (fruit roll ups, I'm guessing), chips, hot dogs, maybe once or twice a month on average, although my husband does pack a small bag of Old Dutch white-corn taco chips in Evan's lunches. Lunchables (the packaged lunch), maybe three to four times a month. Pop-Tarts, on average once a week. Chicken nuggets and french fries are our biggest offenders - at least once a week, thanks to my husband's practice of taking Evan to Mac's after school if he's really ravenous.
How do I feel about this list? Obviously, a diet made up of only these items would be horrendous to health and mental well-being. NEVER to allow them? Maybe in your world, but not in mine. I find a Lunchable to be an excellent behavior motivator, and I do add in fresh fruits or vegetables to the quotient. We don't send them to school in the lunch box, though.
posted by Unknown
Monday, January 21
The Food Timeline
What came first, salt or rice as a human comestible? You'll have to click on this site to view the Food Timeline, which traces the evolution of the human diet from salt to rice to Flutie Flakes. Each food stop on the timeline is also linked to a Web site: you'd expect Snapple and Chips Ahoy to have their own sites, but popcorn.org is worth a trip, as are sites devoted to muskmelons, emmer grain and salt (which even has its own discussion group!). It's a real treasure trove for food historians, because it also includes related information such as recipes culled from their original sources. The site is developed by the Morris County Library of New Jersey who apparently were perpetually peppered, so to speak, with food-history questions by students and adults alike. (Although "pepper" as a category doesn't even show up on the timeline.)
posted by Unknown
"Moaning Shopper" Gets Bounced
Don't like the prices at your local Safeway? Keep it to yourself. This story on justfood.com, a United Kingdom food-news source, says British shopper Douglas McKinlay has been barred from his local Safeway because he moaned too long and loud about prices. ("Moaning," apparently, means complaining to the management, not standing in the aisle and emitting dolorous tones.) McKinlay said he was just registering his complaints about confusing price displays, having found earlier in his shopping career that a well-placed and well-founded complaint about being overcharged 2 pence netted his 20 pounds' worth of cakes and an apology from the manager. To add injury to insult, McKinlay says he shops at Safeway only on special occasions, that its archrival Tesco has better prices and refund policies. So there, Safeway!
posted by Unknown
Friday, January 18
Another U.S. product threatened by illegal Chinese imports: garlic
We love garlic but seem to be frightfully ignorant of its potential as contraband. The Chinese, however, are once again way ahead of us on this one. The Fresh Garlic Producers Association, however, says that cheap imports are evading a 376-percent tariff imposition by coming into the country from Thailand and Vietnam. I'll never look at 40-garlic chicken the same way again. Perhaps I should get a certificate of authenticity first? The reason for all of this, of course, is money and the growing demand for garlic. Americans eat about 2 pounds of garlic a year (happily, not all at once). One of five Americans eats garlic every day, according to the trade association.
posted by Unknown
Thursday, January 17
Waiter, Please Put a Lid on It
Look, there's nothing I can say to describe this New York Times article by William Grimes, about the growing menace of garrulous waiters, that comes close to capturing its wit and laugh-out-loud character. Here's a sample: "(T)he amuse-bouche arrives, and the first lecture begins as the waiter itemizes the ingredients in each before-dinner morsel. This performance accomplishes several things. First, it draws attention to the chef's cooking style. Second, it makes the diner feel that he is getting quite a gift. Third, it begins the important bonding process that, by meal's end, should bring diner and waiter closer than most blood relatives. The emotional outlet for this surge of good fellowship is called the tip."
posted by Unknown
'Cheeky' Naked Chef Shills for Sainsbury's
Are you a fan of Jamie Oliver, the 26-year-old Naked Chef? He does a cooking show - fully clothed - for the BBC, which is picked up in the United States on either PBS or the Food Channel, I forget which. I'm not a fan because I think he's a culinary slob, but then I feel the same way about Emeril and Nigella, so don't go by my opinion. I'm also not a thirtysomething English woman who apparently makes up a large part of Jamie's audience and also is the target shopper for Sainsbury's, one of the leading supermarket chains in the United Kingdom. Apparently, one recipe that Jamie did over the Christmas holidays was enough to cause a run on tins of goose fat in stores. Beyond that, Sainsbury's executives attribute a sales increase to his appearances in commercials and advice on product development, so they've given him four more years and 2 million pounds (I think that's about $3.5 million US) to keep it up. A Sainsbury's spokeswoman said, "People like him because he is quite cheeky. They find his passion for cooking inspiring." Well, if it gets the next generation interested in cooking, more the better.
posted by Unknown
Wednesday, January 16
FDA Warns About Asian Jelly Candies
Dangerous candy? Yes, according to the FDA, which has banned importation of candies made in Asia and sold under names such as Jelly Yum and Fruit Poppers, small, brightly colored gel candies that come in small plastic cups and often have a bit of fruit embedded in them. The fruit doesn't dissolve, and the gel is so sticky that rescue workers can't get it out of the throats of choking children. Some labels say they aren't for children under either age 6 or age 3, but others have no such warnings. Six children have died from choking in the U.S. Grocery stores have pulled them off shelves, but they continue to be sold, especially in Asian food markets. The FDA banned the importation in October.
posted by Unknown
A New Cooking Term: 'Speed Scratch'
From the people who brought you such 90s food-marketing terms as "home meal replacement" comes this first new term of the millennium: "speed scratch." It refers to those all-in-one dinner kits that give you most or all the ingredients to make a main course, like AgriLink's Voila!, Stouffer's Oven Classics and the like. For some, all the foods you need are measured or mixed and packaged; you just put them all together and shove 'em into the oven. Others require a fresh addition, usually a meat. The "scratch" part comes because you have to dirty a dish and do a little more than just open a box and stick something in a microwave.
posted by Unknown
Tuesday, January 15
Georgia Pols Want to Make Grits the State Processed Food
Now there's a legislative initiative you can sink your teeth into. Or not, since coagulated grits is (are?) one of nature's more unappetizing foods. Two Georgia politicians want to make grits the state's official processed food. "It's the most Southern of foods and deserves an honor. There ought to be a law that you have to serve cheese grits with fried fish," says one of the Georgia solons. Why grits and not barbecue? If you don't know what grits is, you either aren't from the South or haven't ever eaten at a Shoney's. This story from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution calls it a white-corn porridge eaten at breakfast, which is probably as good a description as you'll get, except it doesn't mention the old trick of drowning grits in butter to give it flavor. However, the story's headline writer obviously has eaten his/her share of grits over the years; here's what he/she wrote: "What? No Red-Eye Gravy?" (red-eye gravy is made from meat drippings, usually ham, and coffee)
posted by Unknown
Monday, January 14
Tesco Debuts Safeway Online-Shopping Service
The British grocery chain Tesco plans to do what Webvan and other online grocery services could not - stay in business. The chain, which was once known as a bargain-basement chain until executives upgraded it a decade or more ago, bought a $35 million stake in the American chain Safeway's online GroceryWorks last year and rolled out the new version today (Monday, January 14). It claims it will succeed where Webvan failed because of its "store pick" model, in which employees fill orders from existing stores instead of a warehouse. That's not such a unique concept; it's what Peapod started out doing. I used to see the Peapod workers in their pretty spring-green aprons working the aisles at Chicago-area supermarkets. Webvan's warehouse system was legendary for its cash consumption and bad design. In Tesco's favor is its claim that it turned a profit last year, a most remarkable feat.
posted by Unknown
Questionable Milk Marketing Tactic No. 1: La Llorona Will Get You If You Don't Drink Milk
Now I have to admit to a bias here first off: I live in Wisconsin, whose nickname is "America's Dairyland," and I often chuckle at the things the California dairy industry does to promote consumption. The latest, for me, is a real head-scratcher. It has just kicked off a campaign to promote milk drinking among teens by using an old Latin American folk tale about a ghost of a woman who roams the earth looking for the two children she killed after her husband left her. If you don't drink milk, goes the commercial designed by four Latino students at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, La Llorona will come after you. I don't quite get the connection, but the commercial apparently has La Llorona weeping as she sees the empty milk container in the fridge (which is, granted, a typical teen-age trick). I didn't grow up with the La Llorona myth, and I'm not Hispanic, so perhaps I'm not the best judge here, but my feelings echo those of Gabriela Lemus of the League or United Latin American Citizens who told the LA Times: "– I don't know if I'd buy milk from someone who was trying to kill me." This story is from the UK-based just-food.com
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