food museum blog

Expressive Chocolate Statue Draws Ire

Apparently a statue of Christ on the cross made from 200 pounds of chocolate is mightily annoying the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. 

According to today's AP story,  "This is one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever,” said Bill Donohue, head of the Catholic League, a watchdog group. “It’s not just the ugliness of the portrayal, but the timing — to choose Holy Week is astounding.”

Dubbed " My Sweet Lord," the piece is the work of Cosimo Cavallaro and is to be put on display this Monday at the Lab Gallery of Manhattan's Roger Smith Hotel. ( You can view the statue well on the artist's website. )

Again, according to AP, " Cavallaro, who was raised in Canada and Italy, is best known for his quirky work with food as art: Past efforts include repainting a Manhattan hotel room in melted mozzarella, spraying 5 tons of pepper jack cheese on a Wyoming home and festooning a four-poster bed with 312 pounds of processed ham."

Wow!

Since the hotel has been besieged by angry phone calls, it's possible the gallery may not go ahead with plans to display the 6 foot tall, anatomically correct chocolate Christ.

Can't help but wonder what will happen to all that chocolate....

Astonishingly, TV Food Ads Aimed at Kids are Less Than Ideal

No big surprise here as we read in the Washington Post  that half the tv ads aimed at children in the US are for food, most of it in the lousy column. After analyzing 1600 hours of tv programming either specifically designed for kids, or likely to have a large child or teen viewing audience, the Kaiser Family Foundation discovered that " 34 percent marketed candy and snacks, 28 percent were for cereal, and 10 percent promoted fast foods. No commercials promoted fruit or vegetables. " ( Duh.)

In an ideal world young people would be fed well at home, never introduced to junky fast food, and tv would be an occasional diversion.

Tra la.

You can read more at the Kaiser site here.

( Cartoon from calorielab.com)

Graceful Thanks from a Beer-Favoring Frenchman

German chancellor Angela Merkel, who presides over the EU until the end of June, recently hosted a huge 50th birthday bash for the European Union in Berlin.  At a luncheon event for the 27 EU leaders she wanted to give France's president Jacques Chirac, attending his last summit,  an appropriate gift.  Her choice? An 18th c. beer stein.

According to www.expatica.com Chirac mused on his departure a moment: ""Things are the way they are," he said softly, turning quickly to the departing gift from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a beer mug dating to 1710 with its lid from 1799.

"It's well known that I'm a beer drinker, even if I do of course have the greatest respect for France's winemakers," Chirac told journalists in Berlin Sunday, as celebrations to mark 50 years of the European Union drew to a close. "

Stone Barns Center in New York--Splendor in the Snow

In the good old days, if you were a Rockefeller and you wanted to have only unpasteurized milk on your table, you hired an architect and built your own fine damn dairy on your property. That's what John D. Rockefeller, Jr. did in the 1930's on his family's huge landholdings in Pocantico Hills, New York.

Today the dairy barns and some 80 acres of their surroundings comprise the stellar non profit Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, a place made possible in 2004 through the largesse of David Rockefeller, to honor his wife, Peggy, who died in 1996. Peggy Rockefeller was a hands on farmer who created, and oversaw more than one Rockefeller family farm in New York's Hudson Valley. She also founded the American Farmland Trust. 

Stone Barns is firmly committed to sustainable farming, based on traditional and even artisanal methods, but all with a modern spin. And food education is a key part of the mix. ( We include Stone Barns in our list of food heritage sites--an example of farming that honors the past and yet seeks out the most reasonable high tech approaches available today.)

The day we visited, a cold rain on its way to becoming snow was driving against the folks enjoying lunch outside the tiny cafe--we joined them and tasted assorted winter root vegs including Jerusalem artichokes in a salad built on cooked wheat grains. This was after our tour of the impeccable greenhouse---lined with young green salad sprouts and a perfect tribute to the upcoming St. Patrick's Day. The young woman working there sported a "Farmy" tee shirt and said she had never been happier. A former employee of the parks department, she said she had always "wanted to grow food instead of flowers."

Stone Barns is working hard on its educational mandate--even in the supposedly elite counties just up river from Manhattan according to ed director Judy Fink, "wealthy and poor commingle." Younger student visitors learn not only what sustainable means and how to pluck greens, but also explore their way around a white tablecloth and cutlery. Apparently people of all ages touch base at Stone Barns. While we ate lunch a bevy of Italians, including a couple of chefs, arrived in the heavy snow, to take a spin through the place.

Alas, we didn't get a chance to eat at Blue Hill, the handsome high end restaurant at Stone Barns that features the finest of the food produced there, augmented by the finest of the food produced in the relatively immediate area--their reservation list involves a two months  wait. Chef Dan Barber and his crew have made their reputation by stressing the actual fresh raw materials they work with, rather than fanciful manipulation of sauces and spices. This review from the NYTimes attests to that approach.

As we drove away, I recalled a visit to another magnificent  farm originally created by old American money--1400 acre Shelburne Farms in Vermont, once a Vanderbilt holding, now an educational center and food heritage site whose mission is " to cultivate a conservation ethic." More on this later.

If you visit Stone Barns, do not bypass the shop--its buyers have rounded up superb farm/gardening/culinary items in one spot.

Tasting Not So Locally ( Like, Irish) and Loving It

We were invited to a St Patty's eve event in New York at the Irish Consulate featuring foods of Ireland, The Food Island, as their( food ) promotion board, Bord Bia, charmingly puts it.  So determined were we to attend that we slogged there from up the Hudson on a bus through a blinding snowstorm, and then walked to the event, plunging into vast puddles of icy slush several inches deep---BTW, gal New Yorkers by the dozens were wearing gayly colorful tall rubber Wellies--I was in my slippery black leather boots--oy!

Once there, with a soft Irish whiskey in one hand and a taste of Irish smoked salmon in the other, I gazed over at a table of artisanal cheeses and realized I was violating every tenet of the Eat Locally camp. Big time. Now, I am not a card carrying member of that religion. But-- as the Bord Bia representative was urging us all to " buy and consume more high quality Irish products," I was tasting superlative extra sharp Irish cheddar and feeling serious guilt about considering tossing overboard my friends at Cabot Cheese in Vermont... 

Of course, as you alert readers know, who am I kidding, I live nowhere near Vermont. I'm in New Mexico--I can count on excellent  wine, great chiles, apples, goat cheese, and the typical summer provender locally, yes.  I am not aware of anyone making cheddar cheese here.  As you also know, I am a Trader Joe's fan--how unlocal can one get? ( Some baked goods are indeed local.)

So why was I having pangs in the midst of enjoying great Irish fare?  Nuts! I gave it up and went for the hand dipped chocolates. Belgium should start worrying.

Oh-- and yes, we had no potatoes.

(Pictured is Ireland's Cashel Blue---http://www.formanandfield.com/cashel-blue-p-132.html)

Cheers!

I recently stumbled across this site that offers " how to say cheers" in numerous languages. Alas, there is no pronunciation guide....Slainte!

Exploited "Guest" Workers

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert reports today on a study released by the Southern Poverty Law Center that shows low wage guest workers in the United States are being exploited by their employers. ( This is typically not the way one treats a "guest," dare I say.) Some of these people work in the hospitality business but many more are brought in to work  in agriculture and in seafood processing.

According to Herbert, "One of the guest workers profiled in the report was a psychology student recruited in the Dominican Republic to work at a hotel in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The woman had taken on $4,000 in debt to cover “fees” and other expenses that were required for her to get a desk job that paid $6 an hour.

Herbert continues:  "The woman and her fellow guest workers had hardly enough money for food. “We would just buy Chinese food because it was the cheapest,” she said. “We would buy one plate a day and share it between two or three people.” She told the authors of the report: “I felt like an animal without claws — defenseless. It is the same as slavery.”

Oh So Sadly Heavy, and Yet, Less So Than Before

An AP story from last week started like this: "SAN NICOLAS DE LOS GARZA, Mexico - A man who once weighed well over a half ton left his house for the first time in five years Wednesday — wheeled outside on his bed to greet neighbors and see a mariachi band. "The sky is beautiful and blue and what I want is to enjoy the sun," said Manuel Uribe, who had once been certified by doctors as weighing 1,235 pounds. Though still unable to leave his bed, Uribe has lost 395 pounds since he began a high-protein diet a year ago. He now weighs about 840 pounds. "

Apparently 41 year-old Uribe was a heavy 250 pounds as a teen and just kept going. Since the summer of 2002 he has been bedridden,  fed and bathed by friends and family members. Just as with the American we first blogged about in 2004, Patrick Deuel, also a half ton fellow before gastric bypass surgery, we have to wonder why no one sounded an alarm at, say, 500 pounds?!

Incidentally, the original Patrick Deuel blog entry has elicited more comments, many of them removed for being utterly nasty, than any other topic here.  The latest on Patrick came in a year ago when he had a huge flap of fat surgically removed, in one swift moment losing another 81 pounds. After that point he weighed in at about 400 pounds.

Guess these guys fully comprehend now that it's much harder to take it off than to put it on...

Here's the close of that AP story:                                                                ( AP photo.)

" ( Uribe)  drew worldwide attention when he pleaded for help on national television in January 2006. Afterward, an Italian and a Spanish doctor both visited and offered gastric bypass surgery.

But Uribe chose to accept help from Mexican nutritionists working with the Zone diet. He says he will stick to that diet until he reaches his goal of 265 pounds.

"My goal is to leave the house on my own but I know that will be a long process," he said. Doctors say it may take between three and four years for Uribe to reach his goal.

Uribe said he plans to start a foundation to help overweight people get medical assistance and teach them about healthy eating habits."

Now quit fretting about that cookie you just ate and walk outdoors into the sun!

Vegetable Crime: Hash Stashed in Mash

As reported recently by www.shortnews.com:

Jailer Arrested for Putting the Pot in Potatoes

Robert Earl Hannon, a prison guard at Laflore County Jail in Greenwood, Mississippi, is free on $15,000 bond after he was arrested and charged with smuggling marijuana into the prison inside his lunch.

According to Leflore County Sheriff Ricky Banks the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics had been investigating how various contraband items were making their way into the prison when they apprehended Hannon.

The guard's alleged smuggling activities were discovered after his lunch was found with a large serving of mashed potatoes. He was known not to eat potatoes. Two ounces of marijuana and $200 cash were discovered buried in the mash.

Put A Chicken/Pig/Cow In Your Tank

While we're on the subject of liquid alternative fuels, at the Reuters Food Summit in Chicago yesterday, Tyson Foods Inc. chief Richard Bond said his company is developing fat-based fuels for use in jet engines or diesel engines.

According to the Reuters report, "The largest U.S. meat company, which produces 2.3 billion pounds of fat a year as a byproduct of its operations, could potentially start production of the fuel by the end of the year, Bond said."

The notion of pouring fuel derived from the fat of  dead animals into our tanks may be be slightly less enticing than that of using the lightly citrus-scented ( !) fuel blogged about yesterday here...But hey, it's all renewable and that's great.

p.s. An expert I spoke with recently said that if all the money poured into Iraq had been put into developing alternatives fuels, the foreign-oil dependency problem would be solved by now.

(As for the Reuters Food Summit that ran from March 5-8,  even after viewing the company video purporting to answer the question "What Are Summits? " we are not exactly sure...)