FoodWords Between Deadlines
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 Unknown11:18 AM
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
