Faves No. 197

favorite finds from the front lines of food

Do you really understand chopsticks?

As much as I love all things food——-this is just a hard pass! Ugly sweaters can be charming I guess, but no, keep the food themes off them! I mean - all I want for Christmas are tacos…no! (Food & Wine) (fine, tamales….maybe)

These do not look ugly! And, I now know what kind of cookies I plan on making this holiday season. Let the ugly frosting begin! (Williams Sonoma)

The road to hell is paved with….awww who cares! This road in Germany was paved with more than good intentions, it was covered with a literally a ton of milk chocolate. It took 25 firefighters armed with shovels to pry off this little “technical difficulty”. (Guardian)

The latest unfortunate Climate Change Round-Up (NPR the salt):

1. Fishermen

2. Raw Oysters

3. Maple

In the DUH files - James Bond has a drinking problem. (Munchies)

Want to eat fries and stay healthy? No problem. But you can only have 6. Not six handfuls, not six orders, just 6 singular fries. Like this is going to happen! (Forbes)

And finally- the most googled foods in 2018:

1. Unicorn cake

2. Romaine lettuce

3. CBD gummies

4. Keto pancakes

5. Keto cheesecake

6. Necco Wafers

7. Keto cookies

8. Keto chili

9. Keto brownies

10. Gochujang

(The Take Out)

Friday Faves No. 159

our favorite finds from the front lines of food

In the Polished Brands test kitchen and photo studio, we mess with everyone's traditions — like cooking sockeye salmon in a Korean ginger marmalade. And it was good too.

An excellent read to talk about trend, class and race issues in the food scene: Putting identity politics on the table "So who’s allowed to cook what? Who defines authenticity? What does it mean when ancient dishes are exploited as trendy, cooked badly, and fashioned by hipsters instead of grandmas? Geopolitical sensitivities flare." And some fine, fighting points: “'I’m a bit annoyed by the ‘at my grandmother’s knee’ stories. I get the significance of lineage, but nobody asks a lawyer if she was at her father’s knee practicing law,' says Tiffani Faison, whose Tiger Mama serves riffs on Southeast Asian food." (Boston Globe)

Denmark Considers Taxing Meat, Calling It An Ethical Responsibility: How can we stop eating our way to a warming planet? "Their initial recommendation is to tax beef. Globally, food productions accounts for up to 29% of emissions. Cattle are responsible for a huge 10%. Taxing beef, they say, could reduce greenhouse gas emissions from food by 20% to 35%." (Fast Company)

Not all food and politics mash-ups are designed to encourage virtue. Largest US food producers ask Congress to shield lobbying activities: United Egg Producers, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and National Pork Producers Council are proposing a change to the Freedom of Information Act. (Guardian)

We don't include items about individual restaurants much, but seriously, it's Alinea, and too cool to resists: A New Alinea Plans to Serve Emotions as Well as Entrees "How do we season with sound? With light? With elements of emotions? For us, that makes the experience more complex and nuanced.” (New York Times)

Food and emotion are no strangers of course. Love might tear us apart, but chickpeas can bring us together: How Hummus Brought a Palestinian and an Israeli Together to Help Refugees in Berlin "I wanted to be a bridge between different cultures. Every time in nature when you combine two things together, you make a new thing that is stronger. The dish you just ate, “hamshuka,” is a mix of the traditional hummus that Jalil’s family has been making for more than 400 years and the shakshuka of my grandmother, with the egg and everything. It’s the bestseller here. Everybody loves it." (Munchies)

And for when you don't want to talk to anyone at all, not even to place an order, Amazon is getting into the restaurant delivery business, at least as a pilot project in some zip codes of San Francisco. 

Friday Faves No. 114

our favorite finds from the front lines of food

When farmers are working so hard to grow vegetables, it's crazy that we would let any go to waste for superficial reasons like irregular looks. French supermarket Intermarché launched an ingenious campaign to get people eating more vegetables while reducing food waste. A two-minute video explain the project.  (JW Intelligence)

One of the strongest food reads this week is the OpEd Don’t Let Your Children Grow Up to Be Farmers (and it's by a shellfish and seaweed farmer). And then some interesting letters to the editors get in on the topic. (New York Times)

Oh great, just what we needed: more corn. Shifting Climate Has North Dakota Farmers Swapping Wheat For Corn  (NPR)

Consumers are demanding antibiotic-free meat, and Big Food is starting to listen (even if our politicians are still mostly ignoring us) Alas, antibiotic free meat is still just about 5% of the total US supply. Sense of urgency please.... (PRI/The World)

The New Encyclopedia of Southern Food  "Twenty-six people, places, and ingredients are changing the way we eat right now" from Appalachian food to Moonshine Universtiy. (Garden & Gun)

Cashew Juice, the Apple of Pepsi’s Eye  "Pepsi is betting that the tangy, sweet juice from cashew apples can be the next coconut water or açaí juice....The demanding demographic group known as millennials, as well as new consumers among the world’s emerging middle class, have a restless appetite that is driving food companies to experiment on a grand scale with flavors and ingredients whose appeal until recently were largely local." (New York Times)

Friday Faves: notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 88

weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

• We've gone dark on the blog for the past few weeks as we got ourselves ready for a re-launch. Take a minute and look around our new digs.

• Dining out on canned seafood? Why not? High-end canned goods make a great upscale bar snack, no real kitchen required. “We’ve become really obsessed with this stuff and realized it’s an underrepresented food product in the United States so we’ve been reaching out directly to canneries in Portugal and Spain....Because they’re so simply packaged, people have one at the bar and ask if they can take one to go. It was kind of the next logical step for us to offer these things.” (Seafood Business)

• WineVision New in Harpers UK looks at social media success (or lack of it) in beverage brands: "The reason why most beer brands are doing a better job than wine in communicating and interacting with consumers is that they are more likely to ask their customers 'how their day has been' rather than feel the need to educate them about their products." (Harpers UK)

• The Great Greening Of The Global North: The fall crop is in, harvested. But the map of what we grow, where, is changing, with climate change. A (audio) look at the new map of North American food production. (OnPoint/NPR)

• In 'Original Local,' Thanksgiving Recipes From The First Americans (think native) (NPR)

• Insect eating creeps on to Paris menus "So on the one hand there's the whole question of finding new sources of food to feed the world. And on the other there's the challenge of making it look and taste good....The implication is that they are miserable people so they deserve miserable food.But it's pejorative. If you prepare them properly, insects are excellent food." (BBC News)

• What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets:  A new book profiles people from around the world and what their daily calorie and food intake looks like, from a Massai herdswoman, to an American soldier, to a Tibetan monk. (Brain Pickings)

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 75

weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

 

• Draught and flood-resistant gorilla beans (above) are helping fight malnutrition in central Africa. "Protein-rich gorilla beans have been bred to target malnutrition in DRC's North and South Kivu provinces. They contain up to double the iron and 70% more zinc than regular beans, and are often used as a meat substitute. Much of the scientific research into the purple and white kidney-shaped pulses, which have been produced without genetic modification, has been conducted by African research institutions" (The Guardian)

• Rising temperatures are throwing food production in jeopardy, especially in the western US, and we're not doing enough to adapt, says an OpEd on Our Coming Food Crisis. "Last year some farmers made more from insurance payments than from selling their products, meaning we are dangerously close to subsidizing farmers for not adapting to changing climate conditions." Maybe we should be looking at Gorilla Beans too. (New York Times)

• The Distraction of Data: How Brand Research Misses the Real Reasons Why People Buy "The evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller believes that humans display brands like proud peacocks exhibit their tail feathers, as “fitness indicators” that advertise their potential as mates....Humans also advertise their “fitness” to our fellow kind. The brands we choose are symbols that signify traits that mark our success and worth in the pecking order." (Fast Company)

• Happy hour in motion: animated gifs of some favorite indie beers (Laughing Squid)

• Hangovers: The Driving Force Behind Our Favorite Foods For the gifts of the Bloody Mary and Eggs Benedict, we are truly grateful. (Smithsonian)
  

• We love collective action: A new seafood industry coalition for sustainability has formed called Sea Pact, made up of member companies Albion Fisheries, Fortune Fish & Gourmet, Ipswich Shellfish Group, Santa Monica Seafood, Seacore Seafood and Seattle Fish Co. "The coalition will pool resources to promote fisheries and aquaculture improvements, in an effort to support more environmentally-friendly fishing and seafood farming." (Seafood Source)

• A slide show of the 50 Best Things to Eat and Drink Right Now in America, from brisket tacos in Brooklyn to beet homefries in Austin. "We're living in a golden age of stuffing our pieholes." (GQ)

• The latests in fake food in China — salt. Authorities busted a fake salt operation worth
  $3.23 million (China Daily)

• In the shadow of the world's tallest building, Dubai has a farmers market. "A whopping 4000 people attended the first market. 'People were unbelievably grateful...Local produce just was not available to the common man.'” (Modern Farmer)

• Looking for food poisoning? There's an app for that. Actually is for swapping leftovers with strangers, which probably amounts to the same thing. (Daily Meal)