food politics

Friday Faves No. 186

favorite finds from the front lines of food

Yup...it's an actual recipe folks! 

Bon Appétit Baby!

Congrats to all the 2017 James Beard Award winners! While we are sad that A Year In Port didn't make it to the win, it was an honor to be nominated.  In case you were wondering The Birth of Saké walked away with the win. (James Beard Foundation)

And just because I think more people should be watching documentaries about wine - here are the two trailers for your viewing enjoyment.

Film is a great way to communicate, it's almost like having a seat at the table...at least it gets the conversation started.  The good people over at Perennial Plate know this and make it their business to bring people together while bringing attention to issues that concern us all. Each short film will showcase a family originally from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America or the Middle East. 

Francisco and Lucia are Guatemalan refugees who came to Colorado in the 80s, through farming with their community and growing certain plants indigenous to Guatemala, they are able to hold on to a piece of their home.

British retailer Co-op has starting to sell only British bacon and has thrown down a real challenge to other UK retailers to do the same.  That means that their almost 5,000 outlets have removed Danish bacon and New Zealand lamb making them the first supermarket chain to sell fresh meat exclusively from the UK. The National Farmers Union is pretty excited about it as one can imagine. (Munchies & Farming UK) 

And here is an article of how San Francisco chefs are navigating the intersection of food and politics. (SF Chronicle)

Friday Faves No. 181

Our favorite finds from the front lines of food.

What would it take for hipsters to embrace junk food? Would it be as simple as a repackaging exercise? From Nerds to Slim Jims, artist Dan Meth reimagines some of America's favorites. (Bored Panda) 

In keeping wth the American food theme, the good, the bad, and the popular, social media platform Pinterest gives valuable insights into what people across the country are planning to cook. Food is the largest category on Pinterest, clocking in with over 15 billion pins. And, over the past year there has been a 24% increase of "Pinners" who engage with food. Check out this amazing geographic breakdown of the most popular foods on Pinterest across the country.  From survival bread in Alaska to banana pudding in North Carolina, it's all at your finger tips.(Buisness.Pinterest)

Visionary chef Dan Barber is taking on food waste with a laudable "everything old is new again" approach. (Guardian) 

There is a beef over the definition of "milk".  This question is coming up for debate in congress thanks to the Dairy Pride Act.  If passed, non-dairy "milk" producers would no longer be able to call their dairy alternative soy, almond, flax, cashew, etc. products "milk".   And, yes, this was presented by a senator and representative from Wisconsin and Vermont respectively. (Business Insider)

What is Paella? That's not just a flip question, its incredibly serious and a very difficult question. Enjoy this amazing story about the creation of wikipaella, an effort for paella lovers and chefs to actually define what paella is. It is a "way for a community of rice lovers to preserve a fundamental component of their culinary heritage." (Guardian)

 

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.

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. 132

our favorite finds from the front lines of food

Angst muffins (above). Life is short. Read the full comic here, while you can. (Existential comics)

The furry face of California salmon conservation: beavers. "Wild salmon are adept at crossing the beavers’ blockages. In addition, the dams often reduce the downstream transport of egg-suffocating silt to the gravel where salmon spawn, and create deeper, cooler water for juvenile fish and adult salmon and steelhead. The resulting wetlands also attract more insects for salmon to eat. In ongoing research that covered six years, Pollock and his colleagues showed that river restoration projects that featured beaver dams more than doubled their production of salmon." (On Earth)

Pancake day and Semla — the quieter culinary pursuits of Shrove Tuesday. "But the Protestant Reformation, which swept across Northern Europe some 500 years ago, killed off most of the traditions that made Catholic Mardi Gras so much fun. As they stripped the church of ornate decoration, reformers railed against the feast-and-famine cycle of extremes." At least they still had sugar. (NPR)

Bittman Does Berkeley: Talking Food Politics With Mark Bittman On how the food conversation is evolving: "Labor has really stuck out for me. The fact that people who cared about food did not talk about labor five years ago and now they do talk about labor, that’s a big deal." And to the inseparable issues of food and economic justice: "People are suffering. we need to fix that. but that’s not a cooking problem. if there’s a cooking problem, I can solve it. Cooking is easy. Social justice problems are not so easy." (KQED)


From Cup to Coupe: A History of Our Favorite Champagne Glass With the release of A Year in Champagne in select theaters and on iTunes March 6, we've had Champagne on the brain. (Food52)


With emerging markets such as Russia and China facing disruption, Rabobank has highlighted a shift in exporters’ focus towards the US. (Drinks Business)

PayPal Badge_2.png