foodmuseumblog

Supermarkets? Why? What's So Super About Them? (Other than Wegman's)

Back in New Mexico, I rarely hit a traditional ordinary supermarket. A quick pickup of toilet paper or tissues, maybe, or to snag a bottle of wine when my cache of Trader Joe's vino is empty, but...Here in Florida, I buy decent bread and fizzy water in one, and some minimal organic veggies, wine, and eggs, in another. The "health" stores are pricey, though I get apples and chard there, there is no Trader Joe's, the local stands rarely have organic, and....sigh.

The fish market in Gulfport, on the other hand, is reasonable and superlative. (See fishy post from Feb.1) Mazzaro's Italian Market in St Pete is fab! ( See post Feb 5.) And, we have IKEA a few miles away in Tampa.....just sayin'.

But as I wander the vast aisles of a supermarket, in search of unsweetened apple sauce, I marvel at the crap that people, some people, must buy. Acres of cereals, candies, and cookies. Canned string beans! The often lamented ( by me) multiple rows of sodas, the freezers filled with icky prepared meals. The bakery still turning out products loaded with partially hydrogenated oils. The fake butters, the diet foods, the tabloids and crappy chemical-laden gum at the checkout....AAAAGGGHHhhhhhhh!  ( OK, there are still some dry pastas I might buy...)

Rant over.

ps Cute piece in WaPo today on people who have, or try to get dates at Wegman's, an unusual  supermarket, extremely-people oriented, featuring multiple in-store cafes, in NY, NJ, PA, Virginia and Maryland. Wegman's is exceptional. ( See photo, folks!)

Sidewalk Gelati: Paciugo, St. Pete

 

Time: 4:00 pm

Even on a nippy Florida afternoon, women, men, cyclists, and dogs, are making the gelati scene. Paciugo was started by a family from Torino, Italy in 2000, their first shop in Dallas, TX. Today they have over 30 stores in the US, plus three in Mexico. 

  Amazing speed? Yes. But done right. 

"Here at Paciugo, we uphold our Italian roots by making our gelato with whole milk and all-natural ingredients. Our sorbets are made with fresh fruit, sugar, and water. To ensure the freshness of our gelato, we also prepare all our ingredients by hand."

We can confirm the taste. And the ambience works, too, inside and out. Many a Tampa Bay Rays fan has hung about inside watching a game. Outside, on Beach Drive, the view is of massive banyan trees and just beyond, boats moored in the inner harbor of Tampa Bay.

There is evidence that the Chinese may have made the first devices for freezing frozen fruit desserts, and the Romans, who sensibly had plumbing, also had these delights. Arabs likely brought sharbat or fruit sherbet to southern Italy much later, along with sugar cane products, and then the joyful Neapolitans began adding milk, and then, and then...

Barack O in Sweets Shop in Marquette, Michigan? Say What?

What are the chances? Two sweets ( candy) shops in the news in the space of two days!

Food, Again: "Sweets," and Cairo Sweets Shop Key to Initial Protest, January 25.

According to a piece in today's Wall Street Journal, protest rally organizers selected 21 centers from which activists would begin to walk to Tharir Square. The 21st cite was kept utterly secret.

"They sent small teams to do reconnaissance on the secret 21st site. It was the Bulaq al-Dakrour neighborhood's Hayiss Sweet Shop, whose storefront and tiled sidewalk plaza—meant to accommodate outdoor tables in warmer months—would make an easy-to-find rallying point in an otherwise tangled neighborhood no different from countless others around the city.

The plotters say they knew that the demonstrations' success would depend on the participation of ordinary Egyptians in working-class districts like this one, where the Internet and Facebook aren't as widely used. They distributed fliers around the city in the days leading up to the demonstration, concentrating efforts on Bulaq al-Dakrour."

Protesters in small groups made for the sweet shop, with no police oversight.Then, the article goes on to say:

"The lack of security prompted neighborhood residents to stream by the hundreds out of the neighborhood's cramped alleyways, swelling the crowd into the thousands, say sweet-shop employees who watched the scene unfold."

What exactly are Egyptian sweets? Here is what Egypt Sweets has to say:

 

 

Assorted Egypt Sweets: (6 pieces)
1 piece of semsemia (sesame, sugar, glucose).
1 piece of homosia (chickpea, sugar, glucose).
1 piece of fouleya (peanut, sugar, glucose).
1 piece of bassima (coconut, butter, sugar, glucose).
2 pieces of malban with walnut (starch, sugar, glucose, walnut).

 

Pepsi can redesigned to pay tribute to 'beautiful, confident women' - CSMonitor.com

Pepsi announced that it has redesigned the can for Diet Pepsi in a tribute to attractive females, a class that has until now been celebrated only in television, movies, the Internet, newspapers, magazines, music, books, poetry, paintings, sculpture, posters, calendars and most forms of public advertising, but not in soda-can shapes.

via www.csmonitor.com

Annals of Absurdity: It's the Virginia Slims of sodas. Terrific.

Note final paragraph of above piece:

"The press release did not note that the redesigned can might make the person holding it appear fat by comparison."

Mazzaro's Italian Market: Don't Brave Saturdays Unless That's Your Only Shot

Mazzaro's in St Petersburg, FL,  is so beyond description, or comparison with other entities--even in Italy--that we give up. I can tell you that select tour buses stop there. And that people drive hours from other parts of Florida to shop/eat/hang there. Their employees are loyal, and calm, and cheerful, even when customers are dithering over which biscotti to buy, or how much fresh pasta to haul home.Pear and gorgonzola pockets? Yes! A pound.

The crunchy, perfect, crispy panini sell out early in the day, and the coffee is roasted in front of your eyes. This celebratory, sprawling place, that is part deli, part bakery, part coffee bar, part cheesery and winery, part lunch joint, started out doing coffee roasting, and things just grew from there. Founded by wayward Pennsylvanians with major loyalty to Pittsburgh, Mazzaro's is where you jockey for parking, and then wait contentedly for your chicken parmesan sandwich, knowing both will work out beautifully.

 

Owner Kurt Cucarro's blog supplied these stats re Mazzaro 2010:

13,853 lbs. Cheese cut and wrapped in the Cheese department.

Italian Cookies from the bakery, 3838 lbs.

2925 lbs. of Fresh Pasta.

4435 Cannolis

Olives by the pound 2991

4500 pounds of Fresh Roasted Coffee

10,000lbs. of Flour for Bread

34,570lbs. of prepared food in the Deli

1 Semi Truck full of Wine (about 20 pallets)

Flogging Fish from the Curb

What is it with Marines and Yale grads? On encountering this category of persons, in my experience within minutes one learns either that Semper Fi reigns, or that an individual “went to school in New Haven.”

OK, fine. The guy who sold me 14 pieces of freeze-packed ahi tuna caught in Indonesian waters from his little pickup truck, right on the street outside my house, the Semper Fi guy, is forgiven. The tuna is superlative. And the ex-Marine is a hard-working flogger of frozen meat and fish, a facile talker with charm.

Right up until he said I reminded him of his mother. Surely he was too old to have a Mom my age... But I digress—perhaps this is the wave of the economically-challenging future. Guys, and gals, selling goods from their trucks, launching websites, sticking business cards in our doors, quoting their mothers, tossing in their Semper Fi-ness. Alluding to their Yale-ness. Whatever.

Bread—a decent multi-grain baguette, warm from the oven, leaning up against my door in the mornings, every day or so? I could go for that.

Half and half from cuddly, healthy, undrugged cows? Once every 2 weeks. Yep. Add it to my order.

Random Bits and Bobs about Food

Apparently the Sunmaid Raisin logo has been updated! ( three years ago?) turning the sunbonnet-clad happy vineyard worker, (actually a model, ) of 1915 into a silly looking computerized doofus with a dumb hat. Not much of an update at all.  Anyway, this made the news, and got me thinking of those tiny boxes of Sunmaid that my mother placed in my lunchbox.  Though I ate the little brown squashed things, after some time I informed my mom that I really didn't like raisins, particularly the baked ones.

She then laughed and divulged that her sister also hated cooked raisins, stating firmly one day that they looked like  mashed bugs. Ta da--family ties.

So then--This morning I was perusing the wedding announcements in the NYTimes on line and came across a description of the meeting, life together, and eventual marriage in Connecticut of two middle-aged gay men, Stephen Davis and Jeffrey Busch. 

The universality of the desire to be married struck me ( sorry, Tiger,) along with the global commonality of the final statement in the piece.

The Times reporter writes:

"The synagogue was just a few miles from where  Mr. Busch spent his childhood. “Growing up, I thought I’d have to move 10,000 miles away,” Mr. Busch said. “That’s what it meant to be gay then.”

Now the couple are not only living in his hometown, but Mr. Busch’s mother, 72, shares the house with them. When they walk in the door, she asks, “Have you eaten?”"

Jewish mothers, other mothers, fathers, and persons of food, understand this.  According to a delightful piece on Chinese food by Jonathan Lipman,

"Anyone who has ever studied the Chinese language knows that Chinese folks talk about food more than any other topic, to the point that in some parts of northern China, people greet one another with "Have you eaten?" (chifanle meiyou) rather than "Are you well?" (ni hao?).

(Tks to http://guanabee.com/2009/12/lorraine-collet-petersen-sun-maid-raisin-makeover/ for the raisin images.)

Fat Americans, Again

So I've been away, traveling up and down the east coast, visiting friends and family, and doing some biz.  I pulled into a roadside rest area somewhere in New England with the usual fast food subjects on hand and decided to buy a coffee at Cinnabon.

As I stood in line, naturally I noted and smelled the alluring and catastrophically caloric buns. (730 calories per bun, according to the Internets. ) Now hey--I love to eat something divinely wickedly tasty once in a while. But of late I have been, shall we say, cutting back? So I spotted some tiny versions of the full-sized buns and when it was my turn asked for one, with the coffee.

"Honey, you have to buy 6 of those," said the clerk.

'This, " I blurted out, gesturing melodramatically and then slapping the counter,  " is why Americans are so fat!"  Rather than calling security, the woman serving me the coffee threw her head back and guffawed with gusto. 

"Ain't that the truth, honey, ain't that the truth."

Deliver Me From Bland!

Amazingly, I ate lunch at my second Seventh Day Adventist-inspired vegan joint in almost as many days. This one, Little Lad's, is in Portland, Maine, and it seems that the same fellow started them both--and others. So maybe he likes bland food that features  descriptive names but tastes almost exactly the same?  ( New Hampshire's stuffed pepper did have a tasty tomato sauce.)

We ate lentil pilaf, Armenian style,  "Shepherd's Pie," fresh corn, slabs of potatoes, and salad. I doubt that an Armenian came within an inch of those lentils.  The corn and the salad were fine. When I asked for black pepper, I was told that the cooks think pepper is tough on the digestive tract, so no dice. The salt, too, was hidden, but available.

Little Lad's sells perfectly popped and seasoned popcorn in bags that is exceptionally good, I must say. They give you small sample bowls with your lunch and, of course, I bought a bag to take away. (If the popcorn is distinctive, then why is the carb-heavy food so...?)

A fellow blogger who lives near London makes delectable vegan food--as do many others inclined in that direction--so there is no reason for same to be utterly lacking in distinction. Or spices.

For supper in Portland? Gilbert's Chowder House--homemade onion rings! Fried clams with bellies! Oh yes, mighty fine, as a once in a blue moon treat. We neglected to have cole slaw.

Tomorrow I head south, back to the wicked NY/DC metro corridor, where  I most likely will not be enticed into another such vegan eatery.

ps   Don't miss eating at Flatbread if you are in Portland. Pizzas and ethical stances of distinction.

(Super)market Plunges Et Al

Eavesdropping on an informal gaggle of what appeared to be Trader Joe's' top bananas chatting hard against the coffee wall, I heard that they had just come from a meeting with "corporate." ( A second Albuquerque TJ's is opening any minute.)

So I stepped up and said, "Excuse me, but what about Florida?"

A big guy in a Hawaiian shirt replied--"Funny you should ask. FL was top of the list, but now it's a no go. That state has the most foreclosures, the first decline in population in decades, and high unemployment."

"But wouldn't that make space less expensive? And more people looking for the well-priced? offerings TJ specializes in? "

"That's what I thought," he said. "But corporate doesn't think it's a good bet."

(Damn.)

Meanwhile, the WaPost reports that supermarkets in the DC Metro area are cutting prices, or rather as the writers hyperbolically put it more than once, prices are "plunging."  On things like Folger's coffee and detergent. Stores who had upgraded with sushi and exotic cheeses to entice higher end consumers now are cutting the heck out of t. paper prices.

I, for one, am more likely to eschew sushi than t. paper in these troubled economic times.

Whole Foods Snafu?

Soon after Whole Foods' CEO John Mackey wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that contained this paragraph, ""The last thing our country needs is a massive new health care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health care system..," some of WF's liberal, affluent customers cried "Woe!" Or more likely, whoa! 

The baby zucchinis started to hit the fan. Mutterings of boycotting  WF were heard in the land. Spokespersons for WF said the remarks did not reflect the corporation's views. Wait--Mackey is the CEO, right? Huh?

Union types weighed in. According to a report on HuffPost, "Now the Change To Win Investment Group and United Food And Commercial Workers Union -- both a part of the Change To Win federation of unions representing six million workers -- have put out statements criticizing Mackey and encouraging a boycott of the store." Needless to say, WF is not a union shop.

Up in Santa Fe, where people who work for WF ( and most other retail establishments) cannot afford to live, soon after Mackey's remarks, I observed eager shoppers  locking carts in their eagerness to purchase $14.99 a pound tilapia. The place was jammed, and lines were long at the checkouts.

Boycott?

Now everyone's current favorite food author Michael Pollan has said he will not boycott WF, though he disagrees with Mackey's remarks on health care.  "...Whole Foods is often right about food, and their support for the farmers matters more to me than the political views of their founder." 

Whole Foods is the country's biggest natural/organic food store--it has over 270 stores in North America and the UK, and after buying up Wild Oats, it may be the only game in town for some.

Thanks to Trader Joe's, the local growers market, and  Southwest chain ( established by the former head of Wild Oats, incidentally,)  Sunflower Farmers Market--it's not a farmers market, dare I say!--I rarely hit Whole Foods, lovely though it is. When I do, I buy Swiss vegetable broth cubes, faux Canadian bacon, and a small container of butternut squash/crab bisque which I sit down and eat in situ. That's about it. The place is way too pricey, other than its house brand of crackers, relish, and similar items.

So--to boycott?  I never darken Home Depot's door anymore, after discovering its head honcho was a huge backer of G. Dubya. Bush. But its competitor, Lowe's, is an easy alternative.

Given my pitiful purchasing patterns at the Whole Oat, I doubt my absence will be missed. I'll go back there in a month or so,  after Obama's health care legislation passes.

Homage to Teddy, and Mocha Chip

Ted Kennedy was enjoying mocha chip ice cream, my personal fave, in his last days, according to this piece in today's WaPo.

While the Howard Johnson's Mocha Chip of my ( and Kennedy's) youth is long gone, the flavor has resurfaced in offerings from Starbuck's--Java Chip Frappuccino comes close. The Internets tell me that Honey Hut, in Cleveland, Ohio, sells a nifty mocha chip.

M. chip was one of the original 28 flavors of ice cream from Howard Johnson's menu--he started his business in Quincy, Massachusetts, with homemade ice cream, doubling the butter fat content, and attracting a slew of customers.  His first roadside restaurant in 1929 led to a chain of 400 by 1954. Cleverly, Johnson had forseen the need for family eateries along the nation's toll roads.

Alas, by the late 1970's, the Hojo roadside joint was fading, as the company zoomed into the lodging business. Thereafter the brand was bought and sold many times over.

Today there are 3 actual HoJo restaurants in operation, in Bangor, Maine, Lake George, NY, and Lake Placid, NY. I visited the Lake Placid place a few years back, and gorged on fresh onion rings, fried clam roll and, mocha chip ice cream. Heavenly.

FYI  Keep up with the HoJo saga here--apparently we may see a return of Hojo's!

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.

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.)