FoodWords Between Deadlines
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 Unknown11:51 AM
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
