food museum blog

Thanksgiving Dinner Thoughts, PLUS, Confessions of A Retail Saboteuse

Martha's Living is all into briny turkey,  though the November cover features a turkey grilled in Texas, the WaPost wants me to crush the bird's backbone,  and Gourmet is offering a maple-glazed bird. Every autumn the home and food mags twist themselves inside out to do something "fresh" with America's own gobbler. But some of us say, hey, it's a large fowl, so roast it like a chicken, already. Big whoop.

Appropriately, the beast is not my assignment this Tgiving---I am working my mind around a new approach to sweet pots, sticking to the same old, same old for mashies made from Yukon Golds, and pondering a creamy leek gratin dish (from ?? ) instead of creamed onions with sherry/bourbon/brandy or whatever. The leek recipe is too rich but will do, once I am finished making it simple, stupid.  And I am building a crunchy offering from a base of Belgian endive.

So I was fondling the B.E. the other day in my local Sunflower Market when my red pencil eyes noted the labeling above the endive basket--"Belguim endive."  Now this is so wrong. First of all, the glorious country of Belgium is spelled incorrectly. But, more to the point,-- Do we say France toast? Or England mustard?  Or Spain onions? Come on!  ( OK, Vienna sausage...)

But when I gently asked the produce guy to correct the label to read "Belgian endive", he looked at me as if I were the village crank, ( testy older dame, more like,) and said, "It's that way in the book."  "Well in that case "the book" is incorrect," said I.  He waved the little sign around a bit, huffed and puffed, and then graciously waved me off.  ( I didn't go into the pronunciation of endive, honest!)

Of course he didn't know with whom he was dealing....I asked the checker to show me "the book," where, voila, "Belgian endive" appeared.  So.........On my next visit to the store, I wandered over to the endive to eyeball the sign. Same one, unchanged. Armed and dangerous, I whipped a Sharpie out of my pocket, plucked out the label, turned it over, wrote the veg up properly, reinserted the label, and sidled off.

Off the subject, but still---  If you happened to be in Lowe's in St Pete, Florida this October and wondered who had unplugged all the Christmas singing merry-go-rounds and talking Santas, wonder no more.

( Thanks to http://www.belgianendive.com/ for the pic.)

If Nobody Made Money From War, Would We Be Having One?

War is such a jolly thing for so many purveyors of supplies, isn't it? It's often a chance to charge more for ordinary things, like food for the troops. An Army marches on its stomach, yes--the food supply chain is utterly vital. ( Apparently there was little money to be made from armor, either for soldiers or their vehicles, though that may be changing.)

According to the NYTimes, "... investigators from the Justice and Defense Departments are examining deals that the Sara Lee Corporation, ConAgra Foods Inc. and other American companies made to supply the military, officials said.

The inquiry centers on whether the companies overcharged the Army’s principal food supplier for the war zones, a Kuwait-based company called the Public Warehousing Company. Investigators are also looking into whether Public Warehousing improperly took payments from the food companies.

Public Warehousing, which supplies enormous amounts of fruits, vegetables and meats for more than 160,000 troops in combat zones, said in a statement that it had done nothing wrong and was fully cooperating. "

Public Warehousing feeds troops in both Kuwait and Iraq, apparently. And operates on many levels globally. ( I saw no mention of Halliburton on its website, but there is much to read there. )

Food News From All Over

"Functional" foods are on display at the annual Institute of Food Technologists convention in Chicago. Wait--I thought we were all attempting to eat fresh, as local as possible, unprocessed foods, right? Not if these food fantasists win us over. The NYTimes reported that even sushi and brownies can be, um, enhanced.

"There was also sushi concocted from fish paste colored by lycopene and green-tea infused rice, and brownies with phosphatidylserine, a chemical compound that is said to enhance memory. "

Twinkie anyone? ( Am currently browsing the chemical contents of Twinkies courtesy Steve Ettlinger's book, Twinkie, Deconstructed, Hudson Street Press, 2007.)

The NYTimes also reported that thieves intent on raising money for drugs are stealing copper wire and other metals from California farm equipment, including irrigation setups, causing crop losses , as well as lost time, to farmers.

Meanwhile,  Austin-based organic food purveyor Whole Foods is battling the FTC   regarding its wish to purchase Wild Oats, a 565 million dollar deal---anti-trust watchdogs say the acquisition would cause prices to rise. ( You may recall that Whole Foods CEO John Mackey was caught out posting on the Internet anonymous, false and negative comments about rival Wild Oats in past years...)

Block Cheese--The New WMD

According to an AP report, over the past several weeks persons not as yet identified have been stopped at US airports and their bizarre belongings found in checked bags seized.

A Transportation Security Administration bulletin indicated that "the seizures at airports in San Diego, Milwaukee, Houston and Baltimore included "wires, switches, pipes or tubes, cell phone components and dense clay-like substances," including block cheese, the bulletin said. "The unusual nature and increase in number of these improvised items raise concern."

Authorities apparently are concerned that would-be terrorists are "practicing" future heinous acts.

Note to criminals:  If my plane is going to be blown to bits, please let it be via a decent extra sharp cheddar, not Velveeta!

UPDATE: Apparently the "practice run" story was a false alarm, allegedly put out by the FBI. ( I cannot confirm that.) A TSA spokesperson said that the bulletin examples ( block cheese) were just a warning, not actual fact. “I think it's really crucial to focus on the fact that there is no specific credible threat related to this information. It is simply just part of an overall environment of being alert.”

Food, Lies and War--Ethiopia

Food aid for hundreds of thousands of people in the eastern Somali-border area of Ethiopia known as Ogaden is being cut off by the government in order to squeeze what they view a rebel forces opposed to the regime. At the same time food as well as money  is being siphoned off and reallocated by members of the Ethiopian military.

According to the NYTimes, ..."food aid is embezzled in two stages. First, soldiers skim sacks of grain, tins of vegetable oil and bricks of high-energy biscuits from food warehouses to sell at local markets.

“The cash is distributed among security officers and regional officers,” a former government administrator from the Ogaden region said in a recent telephone interview on condition of anonymity because he still works with government officials.

Then the remaining food is hauled out to rural areas where the soldiers divert part of it to local gunmen and informers as a reward for helping them fight the rebels. The former administrator said he also knew of specific cases in which army officers stole food from warehouses and gave it to the families of women whom their soldiers had raped, as compensation.

Several Western humanitarian officials estimated that 20 to 30 percent of the donor countries’ food aid to the Ogaden — aid that last year was valued at more than $70 million — routinely disappears this way. To cover their tracks, the soldiers and the government administrators who work with them tell the aid agencies that the food has spoiled, or has been stolen or hijacked by the rebels, humanitarian officials said."

The Perils of Eating, PLUS, Is the Homeland Secure?

The world's number one exporter of fruits and vegetables, China, is finally coming under scrutiny as its customers get a hint that tainted pet food ingredients could well lead to iffy items aimed at humans.

According to a piece in today's Washington Post, "China has been especially poor at meeting international standards. The United States subjects only a small fraction of its food imports to close inspection, but each month rejects about 200 shipments from China, mostly because of concerns about pesticides and antibiotics and about misleading labeling. In February, border inspectors for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration blocked peas tainted by pesticides, dried white plums containing banned additives, pepper contaminated with salmonella and frozen crawfish that were filthy.

Since 2000, some countries have temporarily banned whole categories of Chinese imports. The European Union stopped shipments of shrimp because of banned antibiotics. Japan blocked tea and spinach, citing excessive antibiotic residue. And South Korea banned fermented cabbage after finding parasites in some shipments.

As globalization of the food supply progresses, "the food gets more anonymous and gradually you get into a situation where you don't know where exactly it came from and you get more vulnerable to poor quality," said Michiel Keyzer, director of the Centre for World Food Studies at Vrije University in Amsterdam, who researches China's exports to the European Union."

Meanwhile, back home, Congress held hearings about the American spinach and salmonella- afflicted peanut butter that caused sickness and, in the case of the E.coli-tainted spinach, death.

Seldom mentioned is that fact that the numerous US regulatory agencies involved in food safety are understaffed and lacking adequate lines of communication and cooperation with one another.  They often overlap on or duplicate some tasks, while leaving other areas of concern unexplored.

But worse---get a load of this April 22 report by Elizabeth Williamson in the Washington Post.

"The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has known for years about contamination problems at a Georgia peanut butter plant and on California spinach farms that led to disease outbreaks that killed three people, sickened hundreds, and forced one of the biggest product recalls in U.S. history, documents and interviews show.

Overwhelmed by huge growth in the number of food processors and imports, however, the agency took only limited steps to address the problems and relied on producers to police themselves, the documents show."

Before the hearings began panel chairman Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich said this:  "This administration does not like regulation, this administration does not like spending money, and it has a hostility toward government. The poisonous result is that a program like the FDA is going to suffer at every turn of the road."

Food safety is as much a national security issue as my audacious attempt to carry on an airplane a sealed bottle of water and 4.1 ounces of face cream. Please.

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.

On Wasted $$, Indentured Kids, Fatter People, Healthier Fats, Hungrier People

OK, let's see...In today's news, $160 million is being spent in the U.S. on "attack ads," leading up to the November 7 midterm elections. What a marvelous use of what some would consider a good deal of money.

Meanwhile, the NYTimes reports on the growing issue of child labor in Africa and elsewhere, many of them working in agricultural or food-related businesses.

The article is built around a hungry, 6 year-old new conscript , forced to work in a fishing village in Ghana.

"...the children are indentured servants, leased by their parents to Mr. Takyi for as little as $20 a year.

"Until their servitude ends in three or four years, they are as trapped as the fish in their nets, forced to work up to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, in a trade that even adult fishermen here call punishing and, at times, dangerous."

"A 2002 study supervised by the labor organization estimated that nearly 12,000 trafficked children toiled in the cocoa fields of Ivory Coast alone. The children, who had no relatives in the area, cleared fields with machetes, applied pesticides and sliced open cocoa pods for beans."

"The International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency, estimates that 1.2 million ( children) are sold into servitude every year in an illicit trade that generates as much as $10 billion annually. "

Back in the US, an article by two academics from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, posits that an extra one billion gallons of gasoline is used up each year because cars are transporting "fatter Americans."

And KFC, ( Kentucky Fried Chicken,) is phasing out trans fats by the end of April in most of its US outlets. According to this report in The Guardian,

"KFC previously resisted change - in June, the chain said it had been using the same type of oil for 50 years and did not want to tamper with Colonel Sanders's "finger lickin' good" recipe. But it was hit with a lawsuit from the non-profit Centre for Science in the Public Interest, which maintains that trans fats contribute to 50,000 deaths annually in the US. The class action was in the name of Arthur Hoyte, a retired doctor who said he had eaten KFC's chicken without being warned of the health risks.

The Centre yesterday dropped the case and its executive director, Michael Jacobson, praised KFC: "What are McDonald's and Burger King waiting for now? If KFC, which deep-fries almost everything, can get the artificial trans fat out of its frying oil, anyone can. Colonel Sanders deserves a bucket full of praise."

Remember that $160 million?    

The number of hungry people in the world is increasing by 4 million per year

U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization

(Rome, October 30,  2006) Ten years after the 1996 World Food Summit (WFS) in Rome, which promised to reduce the number of undernourished people by half by 2015, there are more hungry people in the developing countries today – 820 million – than there were in 1996, according to a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization report released today  Noting that promises are no substitute for food, FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf today called on world leaders to honor a 10-year-old pledge to halve the number of hungry in the world by 2015.

From the World Hunger Education Service.

(AP photo of KFC employee devouring newly healthified fried foods.)

Beyond Bizarre Food News Coverage--The Suspect Fingered Prawns

Never thought I would write a syllable about this peculiar fellow named Karr, but the AP ( August 21) insisted on providing details of his (maybe last decent) meal, on the Thai Airways plane that brought him Business Class from Thailand to the United States.

"Before takeoff, he sipped champagne. During dinner, Karr had pate, salad with walnut dressing and fried king prawn with steamed rice and broccoli, followed by a slice of Valrhona chocolate cake for dessert. Karr had a beer before a glass of French chardonnay with the main course."

Thanks for sharing, AP.

Pick Peaches

It's good to know, that while some people in the world are plotting to blow up their fellow human beings while they fly across the Atlantic, others are researching and writing up articles about the world of museums, about intellectual property, about knowledge in danger of being lost, and so on.

The FOOD Museum itself is delighted to have been profiled in the current issue of the Newsletter of the International Council of Museums, a publication of UNESCO, in a section called Museums of the World. ( Coming on-line soon.)

Just a tiny reminder that a very few of the world's people are up to no good. The majority are plugging away at a myriad of positive pursuits.

Why just yesterday I ( Foodie, now tiring of the third person schtick,) picked some rich-looking peaches that were hanging well over a neighbor's fence into the street and gave them a good home.