Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 72

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

• Amelie meets butter (above) in one of the coolest cooking commercials we've ever seen.

• Gin is at risk: British gin distillers could be facing a production crisis as a deadly fungus rips through Scottish junipers, leaving the berries “in serious trouble.”

• A new culprit in cod decline? "Scientists believe they have evidence global warming may hold a clue in the mystery of why, despite 20 years of increasingly harsh fishery regulations, cod hasn't rebounded. The species of zooplankton that is one of the preferred foods of larval cod simply can't take the heat."

• How about no more "trash" talk for starters. Short of Cod, Massachusetts Chefs Suggest a Dish of Blood Cockle: Catch Limits Have New Englanders Testing New Recipes, and Names, for 'Trash Fish'

• Foodem, a new tech solution for linking wholesale food buyers and sellers has launched. “Today, you see lots of small and mid-size farms take their produce to farmers markets, but they only sell for individual use,” Rehman said. “Many of those farms could handle wholesale quantity buying, but don’t know how to connect with those buyers. We help them find a market that works for them.”

• And one from the advertising vaults: If you don't have cutting-edge food photography, there's always naked ladies, like this one for Pol pasta in 1905.

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 14

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

 

• Old ideas get new packaging with Slow Fast Food (above).

• Using any available space, the pothole gardener strikes London.

• And what can go in those potholes is changing, as global climate change opens up crazy prospects like figs in Boston. The government plant hardiness map is catching up with the new reality.

• Old-school kitchen frugality is elevated to a trend as chefs turn scraps into stunning second acts. “It helps in the cost of running a business and it’s respect for the product. That speaks louder than just the food.”

• Dropping cod quotas in Gloucester, MA predict a loss of $70 million for the community. It show the heartbreak of a town that's tied to a wild fishery. Aquaculture could play a role in keeping people on the water and food on the table like it is in Europe.

• On the new solutions front, tech start-ups are cropping up to help with farm to table connections.

• Going right to the source, chefs and farmers join forces, briding the kitchen-field divide and resulting in better ingredients. "There are so many parallels, business-wise, between a farm and restaurant operations that often people on both sides don't see."

• UK farms are using permaculture design to survive and prosper.