food museum blog

Art, Fast Food, Dying Warhorses

You may have seen the headline--McD's is thinking of putting one of their joints in the "food court" that serves the Louvre in Paris.  I can barely believe I am juxtaposing the words "food court" and Louvre. I haven't been there in a while but hitting a little bistro around the corner would have been my choice, after a morning spent tromping through the galleries.  But I need to enter the 21st c., don't I?  Apparently the Champs Elysees McD's is the most successful in the entire McD universe.

Gourmet Magazine, on the other hand, must not be shining brightly enough for Conde-Nast. It is ceasing publication of the ancient ( est. 1941) food journal by the end of this week, astonishingly. The company's Bon Appetit--less grand, less precious, more accessible? will carry on, for the moment.

My mother subscribed to Gourmet for several years in the 1970's, but the real Conde Nast star in our house was always The New Yorker. I've been reading it since I could read, and love it still.

Americans ( Soft Drink Industry) Against Food ( Syrupy Soft Drinks) Taxes

You, too, can fight back against food tax! YEAH!   I just stumbled onto this cheery, filled-with-young-healthy-looking models website called Americans Against Food Taxes, with its healthy lunch box message. The gigantic US beverage/convenience store industry cares deeply about your health, and that of your kids, and doesn't want bananas, um, and apples, huh?, taxed. No Cokes are pictured, oddly. No 7-Up pictured, either. No crappy soft drinks pictured anywhere on the website. Gosh and golly.

On the News tab is a photo of a young guy holding a paper bag overflowing with fresh veggies. No one is going to tax bell peppers, lettuce and asparagus..........

But here's the text, as it begins the --be afraid, America, be very afraid-- message that health care is bad and scary, and soft drinks are good and American.

"Get ready, because that’s exactly what many lawmakers and advocates of health care reform have in mind to help pay for the massive health care reform being considered in Congress. Senate leaders are considering new federal taxes on soda and other sugary drinks. Other watchdog groups are busy identifying other food items they believe are too high in sugar or fat content to tax as well."

A Coke being equated with "food".

INGREDIENTS:
CARBONATED WATER, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, CARAMEL COLOR, PHOSPHORIC ACID, NATURAL FLAVORS, CAFFEINE.

57MG CAFFEINE/20 OZ

65 grams of sugars, 240 calories. See sugar content of assorted drinks/juices here. And this, from a 2008 report published by newser.com:

"According to a study recently published in The Journal of School Nursing, soft drink consumption has increased by 300 percent in the past 20 years, the Allen Press reports, with 56 to 85 percent of children consuming at least one soft drink daily.

These beverages currently constitute the leading source of added sugars in the diet.."

So much to be pissed off about these days. I think I'll go cultivate my garden.

Fashionably Thin and Homeless in Posh America

Parking before starting a morning stroll along one of America's more pricey strips of waterfront at Coffee Pot Bayou in St. Petersburg, FL, I noticed a woman and two cute dogs in the next vehicle. It appeared they were living there.

She got out and I got out, we exchanged "Good morning" greetings, and I walked over to peer into the shallows at  silver schools of fish hanging like clouds over the heads of the much bigger sheepshead or convict fish, dressed in their usual snappy black and white stripes. Then I turned back to the reed-thin woman and asked, lamely, "Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Well, apparently, you are living in your car."

"You got that right!"

So....her life was in confusing flux, one of her children might come down from Michigan to help her, her dogs' toenails needed clipping, she wanted to air out her bedding, and, thank God, she made coffee every morning here at Coffee Pot Bayou, cleverly and illegally, by setting up her own Mister Coffee machine on a picnic table and using electricity from a plug presumably  readied for Christmas lighting.

I noticed good rings on her left hand, and traces of a decent dye job on her hair, and officially met her dogs, Suzy and Banjo. We'll call the woman Barb.

I suggested that the Quakers, among others, distributed food on Friday afternoons, but couldn't recall the exact location.

"I would have to drive there, wherever, most likely, and I'm way low on gas."  We laughed together, at the irony of having a movable home that was a liability if it could not move, since Barb could be in trouble with authorities if she tried to spend the entire night on C.P. Bayou.

So I gave her some $$$, and she and the doggies sputtered swiftly out of the parking lot. After the gas purchase, Barb said she would head to McD's for a cheeseburger. She said she could get it for a buck.

Earlier I had read on-line about economists predicting a 7% rise in food prices in 2009--food from cows, poultry and hogs--because of higher feed costs. So much for the cheap burger.

Maybe by 2009 Barb will have found her way. It's only two months away.

( Thanks to arichny.blogspot.com/.../coffee-pot-bayou.html for the pic. My camera was elsewhere...)

Farming and Electing---Kids, the Adults Are Here!

Back in the high desert after a vacation along the east coast, I can report A--a lack of rain here; B--the aroma of roasting chiles in the air, and ; C--a need in yours truly to vent.
I hear a "har-har" radio story about a man who happily has eaten a BigMac every day since the early 1970's, and I reflect on the inanity of much of what is labeled" news" these days. (Incidentally, the report said the guy walks 10 miles a day............!)

Even food news as noted in effete east publications endlessly focuses on the same boutique farms like Stone Barns, outside of New York---why?  because it's close to NY and easy to get the story. Kidstuff.  We had a terrific time there ourselves, but the notion that its all-natural restaurant, Blue Hill, is accessible to the average mortal is utterly bogus. It's hideously costly and difficult to book into. And many other places across the country serve up tasty, locally-grown food as well. Thankfully, this is a trend.

Having just spent about a week working on Summit Springs Farm in Maine with two old pals,  in the farm's first summer as a CSA, I can attest to the fact that growing food is exceedingly hard, satisfying, down and dirty, frustrating, joyful, tiring, and all the rest. In other words, the undertaking is full of contrasts, of gray, of subtlety. It is serious stuff,  the work of adults, of grown-up people who comprehend its importance. 

Case in point re contrast---The giant horn worms that found the tomato plants in the greenhouse are spectacular beauties, busily going about their mandate to destroy said plants. Feeding them to the happy hens in their enclosure made me both utterly satisfied, ( as were the "girls,") but also a twinge remorseful--these creatures are perfectly designed, and turn into hummingbird-sized hawkmoths, if they make it that far in their lifecyle. Of course they fancy many of the solanaceae--tomatoes, tobacco, eggplant, and potatoes, too, though I have never seen them on any spud plants in my realm.  I plucked them from my bin-grown tomatoes earlier this season, after finding two giants decimating a datura ( Jimson weed) plant not close by.

As the farm is headed towards its organic rating, it uses no pesticides. So the tomato plants are fading away earlier than they might, under onslaut from the lovely green worms. And the squash bugs are working away in the winter squash rows, though thus far the squash are holding their ground. ( I know, as we weeded the hell out of them...)

Each week the farm decides what to offer its CSA members, and sometimes, these choices are tough--rain rotted many of the potatoes, the chard is fading, the new lettuces not yet ready--and yet satisfied customers roll away from the small garlic-festooned barn with what IS available. Apples just picked from one fecund tree by Sonya. Jewel boxes of yellow and red cherry tomatoes, and plenty of "blue" spuds.

We are looking at a crucial election this year, by the way, one that will impact the nations of the world, as well as the planet, and, of course, these United States. While some wish to pretend we are electing junior high student council personalities, and that up is down and backwards is forwards, sorry, kids, the grownups are here, and when we are not weeding, planting, harvesting and selling,  we are voting like responsible adults.

(Two of the Rockin' Goddesses weeding away in the eggplant row.)

Wall.E ---A Film Promoting Love, Plants, and Giving Up Junk

As many people now know, Wall.E is a trash-collecting robot who finds love in an extremely unattractive environment, our own Planet Earth in the year 2700. The Pixar flick is touching, clever, and a tad too long. The film opens with little Wall.E pursuing his workaday life in the rubble of a trash-filled, people-free Earth. The lone "live" creature there is a resilient cockroach who reminds older (nay, ancient) viewers of the fabled Jiminy Cricket, though the cucaracha has no lines.

Long story short, Wall.E's life begins to change when a probe robot released from a spaceship arrives on Earth and finds a wispy green plant that Wall.E has stashed away with his belongings. The arrival of the plant signals the return of life to Earth and galvanizes the fat, immobilized, junk-food swilling cartoon humans on the Mother Ship into action. Chases and antics ensue, mostly among the robots, because the humans can't even toddle.

Love conquers all, of course, and agriculture is reborn. Fade to credits.

Don't miss the credits! They are riveting, as they present the history of art, animated version. In my view, the film should have ended, and then a screen saying Do Not Leave Yet should have popped up. Because the art finale is superlative.

Wall.E is a not so subtle indictment of Fat America, people.(  BNL, the corporate entity that had taken over Earth in the film, stands for Big N Large.) We were sitting in the so-called Handicapped seats and watched the credits through the mostly weight-challenged people streaming out, many of them dragging or carrying kids, popcorn containers, and drinks.

The food spilled on the carpets in America's Metroplex's could probably feed the people of Bhutan for a day.

ps The cockroach lives inside the one food item on Earth that has not decomposed---a Twinkie-type offering.

CORRECTION, JULY 5---The corporate monolith is Buy 'N Large not Big 'N Large.

On Fat Kids and Stingy Buffets

The Washington Post is running Part 2 of a major piece on childhood obesity in America, an exploration of the excesses of one country's love affair with bad food and drink choices, among other things.  But always part of this not-new story, is that in the poorest of our country's neighborhoods are the fewest decent supermarkets. The well-off have access to good food, gyms,  personal trainers, and multitudes of how-to books and magazines on health and well-being.
( My unsolicited advice to all new parents--never take your kid to McD's or the equivalent, period. One visit and they are hooked. )

Meanwhile, to buffets---I returned to a favorite Indian joint recently and found two of the three primary veggie offerings were 1--potatoes and a few green pepper hunks; 2--carrots and peas. Neither dish had much appeal, even though I enjoy both spuds and carrots. But I felt I was witnessing the "cheapening down" of what was once a worthwhile buffet, a phenomenon written up on the Internets recently.  And, puzzled by the not so fine taste of the chapati bread, I decided that they were made with inferior flour, to save costs, given the huge rise in wheat prices.  I will ask about that the next time I stop by, if I stop by again, but before parking myself for lunch, I will more closely scan the buffet offerings.   

Not About Gluttony!

The marketing minds in the Dodgers' baseball organization have come up with a lovely new way to increase ticket sales in a lousy part of the stadium, while at the same time pushing up antacid use and obesity figures among Angelenos.  Buy a ticket for a seat out in right field, and get an all-you-can-eat opportunity that begins, according to a report on MSNBC," 90 minutes before the first pitch, and lasts before the start of the seventh inning"-- the available eats are dogs, popcorn, nachos, peanuts and sodas. No beer, ice cream or candy.

"Fans are allowed four items per trip to the food counters under the stands. Soda stations offer unlimited drinks and bottled water is free."

Dodgers' COO Marty Greenspun is delighted with the right field experiment, proclaiming it a hit with fans. ( Average walk up ticket price is $40, $20 if part of a group.  A hotdog usually costs $4.75, as do sodas. )

“This is really not about gluttony,” he said. “This is really about offering a new fan amenity. It’s all up to individual choices.”

( Dodger Dog thanks to http://la.foodblogging.com/2005/05/21/dodgers-fans-divided-over-dogs-drinks-at-stadium/)

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)

Original Wendy's Closes

A fixture in downtown Columbus, Ohio for 37 years, the first ever Wendy's Restaurant closed Friday.    An AP story byAndrew-Welsh Huggins reported that the store was a victim of a downtown location with poor parking and no life after five o'clock.  The relocation of the city science museum from across the street was the final blow.

According to AP, "Wendy's restored the restaurant in 1994 to its original fixtures, including multicolored Tiffany glass lamps, hanging plastic beads and tables with old-fashioned newspaper laminate surfaces.

The company plans to move the memorabilia to corporate headquarters in the suburb of Dublin."

Apparently, old photos, the blue striped dress sewn by her mother for founder Dave Thomas' daughter Wendy after whom he named the store, and other offbeat food historic gems, are part of the collection.

Spare the "Nutrition," Spoil the Child with Good Food

I was just listening to a woman from the Center for Science in the Public Interest speaking with Ed Schultz on his  radio show about children and obesity. Now we all recognize that this is a huge  ( sorry) problem in America, as well as in Britain and elsewhere, and much has been said and written about it. But this morning, after chat about changing what is in school vending machines, and an acknowledgment that  lunchrooms have slowly improved their offerings,  the speaker said something about "teaching nutrition" in schools.

Please, no. Turning the food thing into a nutrition lesson will kill off anyone's appetite. ( Except for those of budding biochemists, perhaps.)  Imagine the young eyes glazing over when asked to focus on good and bad fats, which vitamins do what, amino acids--huh?, and so on.  This seems to play right  into the "fear  food" syndrome that appears so bizarre to many Europeans.

Kids need to experience what good food really is--from growing their own veggies, to cooking up tasty meals full of variety, to sitting down with classmates and teachers and family and eating well. And cleaning up!

They also could take pleasure in knowing where food comes from, who raises it, and what its  history is.  ( Yes, The FOOD Museum offers proven educational programs along these lines!)

Interspersed with all that, like green peas in basmati rice, could be inserted stealth nuggets about nutrition...

( Pic from www.newmexicokids.org/.../index.htm.)