food museum blog

We All Scream for (Clever) Ice Creams

You recall that Ben & Jerry's  launched Yes, Pecan!  ice cream to honor the election hoopla (Barack Obama?)

Well----if you haven't seen these flapping around the Internets--here are my favorite suggestions for ice creams "honoring" Prez 43. ( For the full list go here.)

Grape Depression
Heckuva Job, Brownie!
Cluster Fudge
Iraqi Road
Chock 'n Awe
Impeachmint

Scary Peanut Satay Sauce?

As I prepared a leftover multi-grain pasta and veg dish for my lunch yesterday, I considered opening a brand new jar of Trader Joe's Peanut Satay Sauce to go with.
OY!

What about those nasty, scheming, b*****ds at Peanut Corp of Amurrica? Were they in any way involved with TJ's sauce?

I called my local TJ's and asked.   The back and forth of the staff was not that reassuring. 'Hey, Luis-- what about the Satay Sauce?  Peanuts from those guys or what?"

Silence.

Me: Errr, isn't there some kind of list?
Them:   Yeah, well, maybe, I think so, on our website.
Me: Well I know that some of your peanut trail bars are on the USDA list of tainted products.
Them: Oh yeah?
Me: Yeah.
Them: Hang on.
Me: ( gnash, sigh...)
Them: No problem, no worries. The Satay Sauce is not affected.
Me: You're sure?
Them: Luis, are we sure?
Me: ( OY!)
Them: We're sure.

So the fact that I woke up at like, 2 am, with weird tummy things going on was, like, nothing to worry about?   Huh?
OK, so maybe it was just my overactive mind.

Later, like, just now, I checked the TJ's website. At the bottom of the Home page is a tiny line of type that mentions the peanut thing. And when you click on it, it takes you to a page all about their having destroyed those crappy tainted products. No mention of Satay Sauce.

New worries, though: STILTON CHEESE, for gawd's sake. How could anything biologically inappropriate penetrate that stinky, bacterially-awash cheese?

Luis?

USDA Kicks Lethal Legumists Off The List

Verbatim, from the USDA press release:

USDA PROPOSES TO DEBAR PEANUT CORPORATION OF AMERICA

WASHINGTON, Feb. 5, 2009 - The U.S. Department of Agriculture today announced that it is suspending, and proposing to debar, Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) and its subsidiary Tidewater Blanching LLC from doing business with the federal government. Effective immediately, PCA is excluded from participating in government contracts or subcontracts, as well as federal non procurement programs. PCA will also be excluded from doing business as agents or representatives of other contractors, including serving as a subcontractor to other individuals or companies doing business with the government.

The suspension will remain in effect for one year and the debarment is proposed for three years, beginning today.

"The actions of PCA indicate that the company lacks business integrity and business honesty, which seriously and directly hinders its ability to do business with the federal government," said David Shipman, Acting Administrator of USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service.

World's Largest Restaurant

Apparently you and 6013 other diners can eat Syrian, Chinese or Indian food at the Damascus Gate Restaurant in a suburb of Damascus, Syria. The three year-old mega eatery recently made the Guinness records list.  Hard to say exactly what the place is like,  ( the restaurant's website is no longer up and running,) but the food is said to be good, and it looks as if customers there enjoy an indoor/outdoor experience. 

This place caught my eye because it's named for the  famous Damascus Gate built in Jerusalem's wall in the  1500's. The gate leads visitors directly into the Muslim market, and appears to bisect the Christian and Muslim sectors.   Somehow this is a metaphor to chew on.

Biggest is not always better, of course,  except in decisive American elections.

( Thanks tohttp://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/adjudications/080609_Largest_restaurant.aspx for photo.)

Squash Consumers Back Dems

Yesterday I hit the Corrales Farmers Market for probably the last time this season. I was fingering some handsome butternut squashes at $1 each when an older Hispanic guy  joined me to look them over. He had two $6  food vouchers  in his hand--"So these are healthy, right?" he asked.  I nodded and added that I loved them simply mashed with butter and black pepper. "They've got vitamins and good fiber, yes?"
I agreed--he then asked me to take him step by step through the cooking process, which I did.
"And they're filling, right?"
"Yes, indeed, sir. Just don't forget that little bit of butter."
Then he zeroed in on my Obama button---he was wearing an Obama sticker on his shirt---"Seems like so many people here at the market are voting Democrat."
" That's good," he said, " Like these squash." We laughed. We would have fist-bumped, but were too loaded down with Cucurbita moschata.

The Food Thing--Not A Top Political Theme

In these troubled times, it appears that businesses that offer "restorative" value will survive--places that  keep older cars up and running, for example, as nobody's buying new cars.  Consignment shops and discount clothiers  are doing well, apparently, though there will always be the Saks and Neiman Marcus customer...  Netflix is booming, as staying home becomes increasingly inviting (required.)  Full-service, sitdown restaurants are hurting----if you have to pay your mortgage and your utilities, and money is tight, no fancy restaurant meals, right? Yet what the biz calls  "no frills" eateries such as Chipotle are holding their own. I would guess that meatloaf and mashed potato comfort food joints are still getting customers as well.

Yet even eating at home is looking more expensive with fuel costs, world droughts, and more weighing in.  Unlike European shoppers, Americans are accustomed to "cheap" food in their supermarkets. Until fairly recently they have not valued the labor of the botanists and plant pathologists,  the farm workers and  farmers, the truckers and food vendors. Thus there is a reluctance to put tariffs on imported food goods --it could raise the cost to the consumer.

Read this September 23 AP piece out of  Lansing, Michigan---" Presidential candidate John McCain is heading into the heart of Michigan sugar beet country to visit a solar research center near Bay City.

But if he stopped Tuesday to talk to any sugar beet farmers, he likely wouldn't get a very warm welcome.
The GOP senator is a longtime critic of tariffs on imported sugar. He says they force consumers to pay more. McCain told CBS' "60 Minutes" on Sunday that he would "stop subsidizing sugar."

Ray VanDrissche (Van-DRISCH) of the grower-owned Michigan Sugar Company in Bay City says the tariffs are needed to keep other countries from dumping sugar here and wiping out domestic sugar growers.

He says McCain's remarks show he's "not very supportive of agriculture.""  ( Mind you, sugar, though important, is not a substantial food.)

Back in September, Thomas Frank offered up this in his article in the Wall Street Journal:

"For decades now we have been electing people like Sarah Palin who claimed to love and respect the folksy conservatism of small towns, and yet who have unfailingly enacted laws to aid the small town's mortal enemies.

Without raising an antitrust finger they have permitted fantastic concentration in the various industries that buy the farmer's crops. They have undone the New Deal system of agricultural price supports in favor of schemes called "Freedom to Farm" and loan deficiency payments -- each reform apparently designed to secure just one thing out of small town America: cheap commodities for the big food processors. Richard Nixon's Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz put the conservative attitude toward small farmers most bluntly back in the 1970s when he warned, "Get big or get out."

A few days ago I talked politics with Donn Teske, the president of the Kansas Farmers Union and a former Republican. Barack Obama may come from a big city, he admits, but the Farmers Union gives him a 100% rating for his votes in Congress. John McCain gets a 0%. "If any farmer in the Plains States looked at McCain's voting record on ag issues," Mr. Teske says, "no one would vote for him.""

Even though no one on the planet can function without eating, food is often taken for granted, especially where widespread hunger is uncommon. With voters  riveted on taxes and economic woes, neither of the two Presidential candidates, frankly, is making noise about farm and food issues:

Sustainability, healthy soil and clean water, local sources of quality food, strengthened  family farms, reasonable prices for both grower and consumer!

Food is a boring topic,  some say, unless you and your family are without it. 

ps    Sugar is big business in the US.  ( From the same AP story: Sugar beets are a major commodity in Minnesota, North Dakota, Idaho and Michigan, and also are grown in California, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Oregon and Washington state. Sugar cane is grown in Florida, Louisiana, Hawaii and Texas.)

Santa Fe Farmers Market New Home

Having hunkered down in temporary quarters for some years now, the SF Farmers Market is more or less installed, with both an outdoor  and an indoor selling space. 

As one vendor put it to me, "It's nice to have some plumbing."  Open year round on Saturdays and seasonally on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the Market hosts vendors whose produce must come from a region comprised of 15 northern New Mexico counties. 

Emblematic of the environmentally correct lay of the land up in Santa Fe was this shopper's bike, its saddlebags plump with early fall greens.

 

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.   

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.