food museum blog

Cans Nixed: Further Proof That Fresh ( Or Frozen?) Is Better

The self-described "food politics" website Civil Eats has posted this by Naomi Starkman:

"Consumer Reports’ latest tests of canned foods, including soups, juice, tuna, and green beans, have found that almost all of the 19 name-brand foods tested contain measurable levels of Bisphenol A (BPA). The results are reported in the December 2009 issue and also available online. BPA, which has been used for years in clear plastic bottles and food-can liners, has been restricted in Canada and some U.S. states and municipalities because it has been linked to a wide array of health effects including reproductive abnormalities, heightened risk of breast and prostate cancers, diabetes, and heart disease. I’ve reported on BPA here, here, and here."

My pantry, which I just checked, contains a few cans--tomatoes, white beans, black beans, and pumpkin. I stared hard at them just now. A can of green beans never has entered my larder but, yes, tuna has, sardines have, along with the odd cans of beans. As a spontaneous, non recipe-based cook, those beans are vital and always ready to go.  Soaking dry beans overnight-- of course I have done that, but usually when I know that I am preparing a massive portion of black bean soup the next day.

I am sure many of you soak and cook beans ahead, and then freeze them in handy sized amounts, right?  But in what? Plastic bins! Baggies?  Chemical-laden somethings?

Help!

( Tks to http://www.thehungrymouse.com/home/2008/10/24/white-beans-two-ways-garlicky-dip-creamy-soup/ for can pix. It's a site that looks lively and informative, BTW.)

America Awakes To, Duh, Veggies

On and on roll the foodish stories:

1--Michelle in the veggies, cutting lettuce
2--Seed company sales soar as more Americans "discover" veggie gardening
3--Urban dwellers grow food on their rooftops
4--Kids eating healthier foods at McD's??

5--The healthy role model Prez buys burgers? Is that allowed?

And more.

But somehow all this breathless excitement over what many people and institutions have been encouraging for decades is irritating me.

You mean there's a link between what we eat , how much we weigh  and how we feel? No way.

There's a link between healthy eating and lower healthcare costs for all Americans?  Who knew?

Cooking veggies properly makes them appetizing to young and old alike? Amazing!

Front lawns are a waste of land, soil, time, wildlife, money, and they pollute as well? Wow.

If you don't ever introduce little kids to fast food joints, you have eliminated a major negative issue for all eternity?  You don't say...

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? 

Explosive Spuds--Want Ammo with That?

The same McCain Foods French fry factory in northern England discovered armaments recently in two separate batches of potatoes. On a Friday, the tip of a shell. On Saturday, a hand grenade. ( The Great War? World War II?) Police detonated both items. No tubers were harmed any more than usual.

( Left: Not a potato.)

Unpoetically, as far as we know the grenade was not the "potato masher" variety much valued by German troops during World War II.

( Hand grenade pic from www.crownpointantiques.com. Potato masher grenade from www.wwiidaggers.com/ ART.htm)

                                                                   (Right: Not for mashing potatoes.)

                                                                                                                      

That Pesky Low-Fat Diet Study

  Fellow Blogger and superlative foodie friend Kathy F, based outside London, covered the "low fat" issue so well recently Foodie got permission to cut and paste a portion of  her findings:

"A couple of articles on fat caught my attention, and as usual, the NY Times version has a misleading headline and even more misleading nutritional information inside: "Study Finds Low-Fat Diet Won't Stop Cancer or Heart Disease". The fact is, no one has been saying such a thing for quite a long time. The study was designed 20 years ago, when no one bothered to distinguish between good fats and bad fats, and when not as much was understood about cancer and heart disease.

The LA Times article on the same study is more informative. Small gains actually were reported on the low fat diet, likely due to the decreased consumption of saturated fats and the animal products that they're found in, though there seems to have been no effort to distinguish between types of fat in the low fat diet. Again, they make a false assumption:

Studies of women in countries with low-fat diets showed a lower incidence of breast cancer, which rose when the women migrated here and began consuming a Western diet. And red meats had been linked to colorectal cancer, presumably because of their high fat content.

No, nutritionists nowadays don't link colon cancer to high fat, but they do link the disease to low fibre intake and red meat consumption. Meat lingers in our long human intestines longer than it should, giving the carcinogens in meat more opportunity to provoke cancer cells. And then there's this recent study I linked to last week."

In the interests of full disclosure, we must reveal that Kathy F is a vegan, albeit one who cooks remarkably inventive and delicious food. So while we both use olive oil, only Foodie goes with dabs of butter from time to time--along with that full fat yogurt from Straus Family Creamery...

Gulfport's Grover Gives Back--Okra, Butter Beans and more

Foodie wanted to share this blurb from an AP story Sept 3 by Emily Pettus:

   

In poverty-stricken north Gulfport, MI,  Grover Chapman expressed disgust that his neighborhood has received no aid from government agencies or from private groups such as the Red Cross.

"Something should've been on this corner three days ago," Chapman, 60, said Saturday as he fed his neighbors.

He used wood from his demolished All Seasons produce stand to cook fish, rabbit, okra, and butter beans he'd been keeping in his freezer. The neighborhood is about five miles inland from the beach. Though many houses are still standing, they're severely damaged and corrugated tin roofs lie on the ground.

"I'm just doing what I can do," Chapman said. "These people support me with my produce stand every day. Now it's time to pay them back."

Food News Gleanings

Items of foodie  interest from The Week magazine,  issue dated July 1, 2005:

---A Washington Post story claims that people brewing their own jo would save $55,341 over 30 years  ( including interest) if they stopped buying those $3 daily lattes.

----The U.S. government evidently is paying $12.68 per day for  meals served to Gitmo guests, while U.S. troops are fed on $8.65 per day per person.
----A beer watchdog group in London reports that British beer is being served way too warm in pubs. 52 degrees is the refreshingly perfect temp for draft beer.
----Diet soft drinks make you fat because the sugary taste doesn't deliver the satisfaction available in a regular sugar-filled soft drink but instead primes the drinker to want to eat.  The University of Texas Health Science Center  revealed that "the risk of obesity goes up by 41 percent for every can or bottle of diet soda a person consumes daily."
----Three men who robbed a McDonald's in Virginia over a year ago were identified by DNA in abundance on their unfinished burgers.
---Soft shell crabs are in--don't forget to eat them!

Mad Cows and Englishmen ( The Blokes Who Test Them)

' "There is no risk whatsoever," he ( Mike Johanns, US Secretary of Agriculture) told reporters in a hastily organized conference call Friday night. '  One always releases bad news to the distracted American public on Friday night, as they happily head home  focussed on weekend plans or this month fixated on Michael Jackson's fate...The story, reported by Alexei Barrionuevo, appeared in the NYTimes Saturday, June 11.

Yes, Virginia, we have  a mad cow or two or three or more  in the USA. 

"The beef cow, which was nine years old and could not stand, was first tested last November and passed three initial tests. Then the Agriculture Department's inspector general, in reviewing the department's mad cow testing program, requested that the cow and two other previously suspect animals be tested again with a different technology that is used in Europe. The one cow tested positive on Friday.

Agriculture Department officials said they did not yet know which state the cow came from.
A sample of the animal's brain tissue will be sent to a laboratory in Weybridge, England, and results should be available in a few days, a spokesman said."

There is no risk, absolutely none, dig into your prime rib, but we, uh, the government, have no clue as to where the latest damned maddening cow came from.

Blame Canada! ( Can we?)

( Cow pictured is not known to be mad, and appears content to be near its fodder, if not its mudder. As for its udder, well...)

Eat/Fiddle with Food Before You Die............!

The foodies over at the Observer Food Monthly in the UK decided to celebrate OFM's 50th edition by publishing "the top 50 things every foodie should do."  Resident Foodie zeroed in on a few of these suggestions, adding her spin.

Make toast    Thick slices dripping with butter, especially eaten with frothy hot chocolate a la francaise---in our new book, Gastronomie: Food Museums and Heritage Sites of France,   published this fall by Bunker Hill Publishing, we suggest you visit Chocolat Casenave in Bayonne to try this.

Boil a new-laid egg    First, take the egg in your hand, feel its warmth, marvel at it.  Put egg back, await chick. ( But first, ascertain a rooster has been involved.)

Dive for sea urchins-- Travelers to southeastern France, don't miss the "Oursinades" , sea urchin events held in Carry le Rouet, from December to February. ( see Gastronomie: Food Museums and Heritage Sites of France.)

Wolf down a hot dog on Coney Island  Foodie  passes on this one. Give me a ballpark dog anyday.

Take a coffee at Caffe Florian   For the Brits to write that "you will pay dearly for your tiny espresso,"  but do it, the scene is worth every penny, means that for Yanks traveling with the dead/doomed dollar, that viewing experience in the Piazza San Marco will probably cost more than a meal at one of Venice's terrific  hole in the wall joints well off the touristed piazzas.  So do it anyway.

Visit Highgrove   The P of  Wales' showcase for organic farming expresses the ideal.  We will be going there next trip for sure.   (  Just learned there may be a five year waiting list..........)

Eat chocolate cake in Vienna   Duh!

Queue for fish and chips    Frankly, my dear, Foodie would rather queue for fried clams and fresh onion rings . There's this terrific place in Point Judith, Rhode Island whose name escapes us but where the f.c.'s are  sublime.

Poach a snail   ( Are we pushing our book, or what??)    According to Gastronomie: Food Museums and Heritage Sites of France,  you can visit the escargotiere of Valerie Samac in Pouilly en Bassigny and observe all aspects of snail raising, snail cleansing, and snail cooking and tasting. Look for the big wood sculpted snail out front.

Homage to Paul Keene and Walnut Acres

We first disc0vered the remarkable organic products of Walnut Acres about 21 years ago, when we were living in Washington, DC. We had tasted some of the company's mayonnaise  at a friend's house and soon ordered the Walnut Acres catalog. Superb soups, peanut butters, dressings, apple juice, and apple butter,  and that mayo. I recall that we would order with other people in the neighborhood so that the driver brought to one address, and our order was thereby discounted.

Today Walnut Acres ia gone, though its label lives on with a few soups from Hain Celestial Group. Its founder, Paul Keene, died recently at age 94. His central Pennsylvania farm was one of the first commercial organic entities in the country, selling both to natural foods stores and  mail order customers around the world.   When he started in the 1940's  many people thought his efforts were "kookie", even subversive.  But he and his wife Enid persevered, taking 100 broken down acres and turning them into a 500 acre organic showcase in Penns Creek, with a thriving bakery and retail store.   The strongest pest controls they used were ladybugs.

Evidently the family did not want to continue the business, once Keene left the day to day running of things. After changing the catalog and clogging it with items such as rice cookers and kitchen gadgets--did they ruin it?--they sold Walnut Acres in 2000.

Foodie thought of Keene on a recent visit to one of those mega house and garden centers--at the entrance to the plants section were two or three boxcar sized displays of chemicals for killing every imaginable creepy crawly or flying  thing, every soft furry burrowing beastie, every unwanted bit of anything.   ( Sigh.)

Miss the mayo.