food museum blog

Fresh Food's Tiny Space

Just a quick thought--my local ( this winter) Publix supermarket is gigantic yet its produce area is tucked into a tiny space way in the far corner of the joint. Here lie the "fresh" fruits and veggies that are supposed to make up the bulk of what we Americans are urged to eat, far too many of them packed and sealed under cellophane, the food, that is. The rest of the store is stuffed with acres of processed foods, some cleaning items, some pet food, and so on. Yet the produce arena is pathetically small.

ps The produce section backs up to the bakery, for which Publix is favorably known, apparently. Hydrogenated fats still are rampant here. No thanks.

In Case You Missed Cinnamon Roll Day...

We raised him right! Son of Foodie reported in from Goteborg, Sweden, that yesterday, October 4, was Cinnamon Roll Day. Apparently Kanelbulle Dag was dreamed up by the baking industry in 1999 and Swedes have been suffering through the day once a year ever since.

Said SOF of the kanelbulle: " It was so huge and good." With Swedish coffee, no doubt.

The kanelbulle pictured is also large enough to shield babies from the elements.

Freegans, Food Waste, Trash Tours, and Hope for Peace

Catching up on dumpster-diving news this weekend,  I  read this piece about "freegans" in the LATimes, Sept. 11. It's about New Yorkers who hit the best supermarket dumpster areas right after the garbage is put out--out back of D'Agostino's or Whole Foods they apparently find some real gems, enough to create lovely meals, stock the freezer and so on.

It seems to me the prime drawback other than possible intestinal distress and the odd rat turd, is that you cannot plan a meal. It's like shopping for clothes at Goodwill--you may go there hoping for a short black blazer but end up instead with a t-shirt from the Hard Rock Cafe in Prague.

But I digress---the freegan mission is explained this way at freegan.info:

"Freeganism is a total boycott of an economic system where the profit motive has eclipsed ethical considerations and where massively complex systems of productions ensure that all the products we buy will have detrimental impacts most of which we may never even consider. Thus, instead of avoiding the purchase of products from one bad company only to support another, we avoid buying anything to the greatest degree we are able. "

Or, as former Barnes & Noble bigwig Madeline Nelson puts it in the LA Times piece,

""We're doing something that is really socially unacceptable," Nelson said. "Not everyone is going to do it, but we hope it leads people to push their own limits and quit spending."

So now we have "eating locally,"  the Joan Gussow, Barbara Kingsolver, Michael Pollan, etc etc etc concept, we have No Impact Man, a New Yorker seeking ways to live off the grid, without plastic, t.paper, et al,  and the family that stopped buying anything from China for an entire year--A Year Without "Made in China,": One Family's True Life Adventure in the Global Economy, AND the freegans, who are truly pushing the envelope of how to get one's food. 

New York City throws away 50 million pounds of food a year--of that about 20 million pounds go to charitable groups.  Much more about massive edibles tossed away is chronicled at Jonathan Bloom's blog, Wasted Food.

To delve further into the freegan world you can follow up on these tips from the LATimes article.

"In recent years, Internet sites like Meetup.com have posted announcements for trash tours in Seattle, Houston and Los Angeles and throughout England. Some teach people how to dumpster-dive for food, increasing the movement's popularity. At least 14,000 have taken the trash tour for groceries over the last two years in New York. Another site, Freegankitchen.com, offers lessons for cooking meals from food found in dumpsters, such as spaghetti squash salad."

The late John Niederhauser, PhD, our friend and founding board member of The Potato Museum, said in his acceptance speech for the World Food Prize that feeding the world's people was the most critical challenge facing those who want peace in the world.

Younger persons around the world seem to be staking out eco-appropriate positions, pursuing "off the grid" projects--(I hope they are not all just out to write catchy, trendy books...) but where are the peaceniks? OR--  Is this the 21st century path to peace? 

Concerns About A Chef--Gordon Ramsay

Gordon Ramsay, the Brit "celebrity chef"  ( I dislike that silly term...,) is profiled by Bill Buford in the April 2 edition of The New Yorker Magazine.  I have never eaten at any of Ramsay's establishments, never really followed his story, but I am now officially concerned about his well-being.

Buford, a man who knows his way around a professional kitchen and has the oil burn scars to prove it, has apparently zeroed in on the secret to Chef Ramsay--he's a volatile perfectionist, a vigorously angry guy who creates in his dishes the peace and harmony missing from his daily professional life. And by so doing, he baffles the food critics. They come to dine at his newest restaurant in New York on W. 54th street, Gordon Ramsay at the London, and they expect a menu full of fireworks and mad exuberance, like the man. Instead, they encounter delectable, calming, seamless dishes. And are just a tad disappointed, evidently. 

The irritable creator of these subtly blended meals, a wildly successful international entrepreneur at 40, is frenzied with "massive pressure."  Buford writes: "You don’t see lines like these on a man who has just turned forty. Ramsay doesn’t smoke, and is a marathon runner. The lines betray something that exercise can’t melt: Stress? Fear? "

Someone please tell this fellow to relax and smell the roses. He has four young children he may not be enjoying enough. Presumptuous of me?

Remember this from The Guardian in 2003?

" France's top chefs railed yesterday against the pressures of their job and the power of the critics after one of this food-obsessed country's culinary giants committed suicide, apparently because of a bad review.

Bernard Loiseau, whose restaurant and inn La Côte d'Or in Saulieu, Burgundy, is one of the undisputed temples of Gallic haute cuisine, was found dead in his bedroom on Monday afternoon, his hunting rifle by his side.

A police postmortem has yet to determine the official cause of death, but friends and relatives of the 52-year-old superchef were in no doubt that he had shot himself. "He tried to do too much," said his wife, Dominique. "He was worn out; he'd just had enough."

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)

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...)

Spain's Cars to be Juiced Up with Citrus Biofuel--Florida's, Too

A major orange-growing area of Valencia, Spain, on the country's east coast,  is looking to convert citrus waste into biofuel. As reported in The Guardian,  producers in the region are building a major juice plant that will produce 500,000 tons of citric waste a year.

Using technology apparently being developed in Florida, the waste--from pulp but also from whole fruit deemed unprofitable to harvest--will produce 37.5 m liters of bioethanol.

According to the article:   " Local officials claim they could reduce the region's dependency on petrol by up to 40% while creating 2,500 jobs and revitalising a sector that pays for the upkeep of 100,000 families.

Spain, with the rest of the European Union, has a goal of replacing almost 6% of transport fuel with bioethanol or oilseed-based biodiesel by 2010 as part of its efforts to halt global warming."

Googling around for info on Florida biofuel technology I discovered a company called CitrusEnergy LLC that states on its website:   "Florida has 100 million citrus trees on 700,000 acres yielding 5 million tons of citrus waste."  It goes on to say that Florida should focus meeting its energy needs by using locally available biomass.   Company chief Dave Stewart told me they had just received a $2.5 million grant from the state of Florida. This will aid them immensely in attracting other funding for building Citrus Energy's first conversion plant in the Lake Ochechobee area. Stewart said construction would begin in October of this year and he expects the plant to be up and running the following October.

He added that the ethanol supply had nowhere to go but up. Producers generate only about 5 billion gallons right now while vehicles in the US slurp up over 140 million gallons of gasoline per year.

Another firm that is thinking locally is Xethanol. In December it announced plans to build a  pilot plant for the production of ethanol from citrus in Bartow, Florida.

Both these companies seem to say that basing the majority of U.S. ethanol production on corn, a product grown in the middle of the country that must be expensively trucked elsewhere, makes no sense. Each state or locale must look close to home for  "biostocks" that can be economically converted into ethanol for area use.

Eating locally and producing biofuel locally seem to go hand in hand!

( Incidentally, I think the term "liquid fuel alternative" is probably more accurate when describing a product derived from citrus waste. Ethanol has typically been described as grain alcohol.  Correct me if I'm wrong, people.)

Dry Cereal ( Whole Grain) Enthusiasts Live Forever

A press release issued by the American Heart Association last week began with this:

"Eating whole-grain breakfast cereals seven or more times per week was associated with a lower risk of heart failure, according to an analysis of the observational Physicians’ Health Study.  Researchers presented findings of the study today at the American Heart Association’s 47^th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention.  For the present study, breakfast cereals that contain at least 25 percent oat or bran content were classified as whole-grain cereals.

The analysis shows that those who ate a whole-grain breakfast cereal seven or more times per week were less likely (by 28 percent) to develop heart failure over the course of the study than those who never ate such cereal.  The risk of heart failure decreased by 22 percent in those who ate a whole-grain breakfast cereal from two to six times per week and by 14 percent in those who ate a whole-grain breakfast cereal up to once per week."

Eating cereal "seven or more" times a week? What an appalling thought.  Are we polling college students?( On the other hand, my grandfather apparently ate oatmeal just about every day of his long life.) Isn't there something equine about  folks diving down into big bowls of dry crunchies and cold milk ?  OK, not the milk part.

..."breakfast cereals that contain at least 25 percent oat or bran content were classified as whole-grain cereals. "   Only 1/4 of the cereal contained whole grains? Way at the bottom of the relase it states this:  "In the

United States

, foods considered “whole grain” contain 51 percent or more whole-grain ingredients by weight per reference amount customarily consumed."  ???

..."than those who never ate such cereal. " Huh? What about those who eat whole grain breads or rolls or tortillas or muffins or pancakes for breakfast? 

I have looked around the Internets a bit to try to discover if one of the giant cereal companies could have funded this study, maybe one of the companies with a big stake in oat or bran. So I went to Cheerios.com and right here, to their credit, they do discuss the whole grains we all should be eating and where to find them beyond the cereal box.

Just curious,  I typed  sugar and sugars and sugar content in the website Search box . I got back  "your search for sugar returned no results."  I recall reading once that Cheerios had about 2-3% sugar content, while Capn Crunch and/or Sugar Smacks were well over 50 % in sugar content.

However they are doing it, the Cheerios people certainly seem to have cornered the baby market, ( and maybe also the 7 day plus adult cereal eaters, who knows? )  I seldom encounter a baby or toddler these days who does not have a Cheerio lodged  in his ear or stuck in the wale of her overalls. Those tiny o's appear to attract tiny fingers on most of the highchair trays of America.

Are Shopping Carts Out to Kill You? The Details at 10!

Learning to steer your shopping cart with your elbows is not that difficult, if you set your mind to it. OR you can carry wipes, OR you can use waterless gunk on your hands after shopping. Or wear gloves, as did Moms in the 1950's. ( In the market? Maybe not.) Or just punt. Whatever!

Anyway--it appears that the germ-phobic have something new to lie awake nights worrying about. Last month ABC's Good Morning America reported on this exciting finding:

"How germy could shopping carts really be? Very, according to researchers at the University of Arizona who tested all kinds of public surfaces. They found that shopping carts were loaded with more saliva, bacteria and even fecal matter than escalators, public telephones, and even public bathrooms.

Every kid in America teethes on shopping cart handles," said Dr. Chuck Gerba at the University of Arizona. "They don't have the best sanitary habits. … I mean, you're putting your broccoli where their butt was."

Your broc maybe, Doctor, but not mine--mine goes directly into my fresh, clean woven hemp reusable bag on that rare occasion that I buy broc, that is..give me rapini anyday over broc.

But I digress.

Incidentally, reading this transcript from tv land was enlightening--one finds few specifics, no dates, little attribution...

( Note: No child was forced to handle germs found on this shopping cart in order to create this perfect picture from http://www.artwhere.be/clients/entreprises/shopping-cart.html)

Trader Joe's Has Taken Over My Kitchen...Whither the All-American Supermarket?

Recently I was in my traditional grocery store, after doing a tad of banking at my branch there, and I had trouble swiping my card in the machine--I was buying trash bags.  "This pesky thing is new,"  I grumbled to the clerk. "Oh, we've had those for months," she said .

Boing.  True.  The seductive allure of alternative food shopping apparently has virtually eliminated  jammed-to-the-gunnels-with-snack-foods  Smith's from my life.  I pondered this on my drive home. The bags of cut greens, spinach, the short, slender crisp cukes, the French-style frozen green beans, broccolini, spicy hummus, balls of mozzarella floating in milky water, extra shaaap Vermont cheddar, oozy St. Andre, dog chews, cans of tuna, canned beans of all sorts, including my favorite Cuban-style black ones, the full fat creamy yogurt, the Thai-spiced peanuts, and the vino galore, ( and more...,)  all are purchased from the right hon. Trader Joe's emporium. 

And all other veg, plus organic bulk flours, come from the Sunflower Market chain started a couple years back by Wild Oats founder, Mike Gilliland, who told me he had become bored with his rich, idle life, post WO. 

Shopping at both TJ's and Sunflower is........fun.   The staff are upbeat and well-informed.  The customers, particularly those at TJ's, are peppy and pleased,  trolling the aisles and emitting little gasps of delight as they discover garlic-stuffed green olives for VIRTUALLY NOTHING. Oh my gawd!  Nowhere else have I been collared by shoppers eager to share their enthusiasm for, say, the frozen Thai veggie dumplings, or the korma sauce--"to die for!"

Now Whole Foods--it was recently announced that they are buying Wild Oats--- is also on my food radar, though their prices are generally too high. I venture in there once in a while, especially on weekends, to sample this and that,  to eye the specials, and to slurp down a small vat of their fish soup.

And in season I am out at the farmers markets buying fresh local goodies.  So Smith's, the all-American supermarket,  has become a place where I bank, and once every 6 months, buy kitchen trash bags.

( P.S. People I know elsewhere complain bitterly about the crowded parking lots at many Trader Joe's markets. Here in the Wild West, we do not have that problem. Errr, not to the same extent. Avoid weekends.)