foodmuseumblog

Faux News Does Food!

Referring to the police pepper spraying of peaceful protesters at UC Davis recently, Fox News' "Megyn Kelly tells O'Reilly, that pepper spray is "a food product, essentially"?

Yes, indeedy.

"The Iceman": Last Meal Was Ibex Plus Einkorn Grains!

You know the guy, Otsi, the 5000 year-old mummy found in the Italian Alps back in 1991? Well now we know that the fellow ate wild goat, plus some wheat grains--in fact the ancestor to today's wheat grains--before being shot in the back with a stone arrow. He ate a hearty meal, at least 1/2 pound of food, apparently. And what he ate perfectly described his era--a combo of hunted food and gathered food, possibly even cultivated food. 

Isn't archaeology/anthropology grand?

Michigan Woman May Go to Jail For Her Garden

via www.casasugar.com   via TreeHugger

Annals of Insanity!

Oak Park, Michigan, just doesn't get it. The world has changed, people. Veggies and chickens are in, water-eating lawns, out.

Food! Rep. Gabrielle Giffords Asks for Toast

Honestly, an AP report just brought tears to my eyes, and a giddy delight that food once again is an underlying factor in so many things.

Apparently when Giffords first spoke, she asked for toast---not the remote, not world peace, not clean jammies, TOAST.  The FOOD Museum's motto, uttered by writter M.F.K. Fisher is this: "First we eat, then we do everything else."

"In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Giffords' husband Mark Kelly said his wife had her appetite back and was eating three times a day, "even though it's hospital food.""

"Pie in the Sky"--For Foodies Who Love Mysteries

Ever grateful for the endless treasure that is Netflix--I reserve it for the obscure, the old, the unheralded but good, rather than for the new--I stumbled upon this lovely Brit tv series written for the remarkable actor Richard Griffiths, whom I had most recently seen in the film The History Boys.

It's about an experienced Detective Inspector who is longing to retire so that he can run his own restaurant. Naturally, the series exists because "they" won't let Inspector  Henry Crabbe retire, but he also does open his business, so we see him both sleuthing and sauteeing. And talking with the hens in his new, utterly overpriced hen house, behind the store, as it were. Maggie Steed plays Crabbe's accountant wife, Margaret, who considers food as mere fuel, but strives to keep the Pie in the Sky Cafe on an even financial keel.

Crabbe has a gentle, insightful way with people, even the bad guys, and endures calmly the absurd ways of his immediate superior on the force. Possibly because Crabbe's mind is always on the next shipment of smoked Scottish salmon...

The series ran from 1994-1997.

Seeking and Not Finding Pumpkin Ice Cream

Sometimes a quest becomes damned depressing.  This is the time of year when the lovely people at Ben and Jerry's come out with a pumpkinny ice cream---this time it's Pumpkin Cheesecake. Now I had  spotted this at a local market but was not heading right home and didn't want either to slurp it all down, or to have it melt before I could even try it.

So later I stopped in at Smith's supermarket, having failed to find any at Trader Joe's,  where the dim bulb manager seemed amazed that I even knew of this seasonal flavor, and wondered why the store didn't have it--the same store that was shoving Halloween down our throats in August, and pushing Thanksgiving and Christmas simultaneously as of November 1st.

Walgreen's was next--I knew they carried a few B&J items but no, said the manager, that's all decided at corporate and in truth all 7000 stores do not really have room to carry more than a few basic popular flavors. "You have a huge aisle always overflowing with seasonal, um, items," I said, but that does not extend to ice cream? "

"No--you see if they don't sell, then we have to pay for them and throw them out."

"What? What about donating them to the local food bank?" I asked.

"That's not possible. Management thinks the employees will steal the food, you see--or that they will  deliberately damage things so as to make them unsaleable."

Temporarily silenced, I stood there while he pointed to a couple of security cameras. "See those?"

"70 percent of the cameras in the store are intended to watch the employees. And that's true in all the big supermarkets as well."

Lord. Makes you want to pour hot fudge over the pumpkin ice cream, if you ever find it, that is.

Moderation at Meals, Excess in Watches

The Ozzies are reporting that people who pursued a weight loss program featuring low carbs were more depressed in the long run than those dieters who went low fat, even though both groups lost the same amount of weight.  I recall a few weeks ago I became testy after a 2 week almost no carb effort to jump start a return to moderate eating. MY GOD, I WAS GRUMPY. That's when I realized--hey--I need my lovely carbs, at least some.

And that's the point, isnt it? We need a happy melange of fat, carb, sour, sweet, salty, veg, vino, etc. I am noticing now, in maybe Week 12 of the "moderation diet," that I typically am eating half of what I used to eat at both lunch and dinner. Special occasions? Different. Less, but more than half. A special occasion is self-declared, incidentally, as well it should be.

So I can relate to the irritable, low carb, Down Underers.  What I cannot relate to, however, is Bernie Madoff apparently owning 17 Rolex watches.  How many clunky, ugly timepieces does one little guy need?

Bowl Cover Thief on the Loose

Listen, people, en garde. Should you encounter a tall, mischievous-looking woman of Teutonic appearance in a hotel corridor, lurking near the maid's cart, just walk right on by. She's lifting plastic shower caps to use as bowl covers and means no real harm.

When she visits the U.S., bowl covers are high on her shopping list and she ferrets them out, somehow, somewhere. I remember bowl covers--they were big throughout my childhood, and maybe yours. Elasticized things in several sizes, that one's mother used to seal leftover mashies from drying out in the fridge.  Everyone had them, and no one thought bowl covers would ever become as scarce as hen's teeth, to quote an elderly friend of mine, but they did. Instead, we progressed on to embrace plastic wrap, until learning it was killing us with chemicals.

A few years ago I was stunned to see bowl covers hanging on an odd dispenser in the soup section of a major supermarket chain and I pounced on them, buying up several sets, and passing them on to friends. Today, looking into my wax paper and tin foil drawer, no bowl covers, not a one.

I remembered that in the early 1980's my sainted mother bought a few archaic things at the Vermont Country Store, like wood handled butter spreaders, and, YES, bowl covers.

They still have them, described as "Reusable 1950's Vinyl Bowl Covers." Did the copywriter intend to suggest that cartons of  actual 1950's bowl covers survived in an underground bomb shelter somewhere only to be discovered and handed off to the VCS for sale? Or not?

Of course, duh,  Google knows its bowl  covers--the copy with this polka dotted offering from Kitchenworks in fact, says, "They look just like shower caps!" 

So there.

To Ice Or Not To Ice The Hot Tea

If a person about to order an iced tea notes that a large HOT tea is $1.09, vs $1.80 for iced, and if she knows full well that the ice machine and actual slices of lemon are freely available at the drinks area, if that person then creates her own iced tea from a hot tea, thus saving 80 cents, is that person a white collar criminal?  

Now said individual has been frequenting the coffee joint for over a week, as she is living in an Internets-free bungalow,  buying gallons of coffee, and risking obesity by indulging in pastries she never eats when at home, so it's not as if she's a piker or anything, and her inclination to "cheat"  came only after the thought of another coffee became repellent.

(A person's spouse just this morning commented that it might have been less expensive to rig up the Internets for a month than to support the coffee shop for two weeks.)

Curiously, for years this ersatz criminal's mother claimed full credit for introducing iced coffee to the iced tea-infused American Deep South. Mom and daughter were in Georgia eons ago when the Mom ordered an iced coffee. The white waitress was as stunned as if the mother had demanded the end to segregation. ( I digress.)

"Do you have a tall glass?"
"Yes, Ma'am."

"Do you have ice?"
"Yes, Ma'am."

"Do you have coffee?"

No fool, the waitress  had by then comprehended where this gambit was going. Mom was presented with a mug of coffee, a glass filled with ice, extra ice in a dish, real cream, and a long spoon. She created her iced coffee with grace, the waitress watching her every move.

When all was perfect, the mom held the glass high and proclaimed, " Iced coffee!---and thanks very much for making it possible," she added, directing her most merry grin at the woman, who seemed pleased indeed to have been present when a  direct yet cordial Yankee  had achieved alchemy of a sorts with hot coffee and ice.

( Iced coffee tks to http://www.mon-ami.co.nz/us/mealsSummerDrinks.php,  not tea, pictured.)

Empathy With Bernie

Confession: Of late I have developed a clearly unhealthy interest in the gustatory experiences of Bernie-- Yes, I Madoff With Your Dough, Especially If You Are Jewish and Trusted Me--Madoff, currently confined to a tiny holding cell in New York City. I read that the first night in the slammer he was served refried chicken and CANNED string beans on a styrofoam plate.

Quel horreur !

Aside from the fact that Bernie is bad, and that he betrayed the trust of so many, he has not been a canned string bean man since summer camp in the Catskills 60 years ago. When was the last such bean you tasted? ( Not the dilly beans you pickled and canned yourself!)

Now were there some decent olive oil,  fresh black pepper, and a tad of seasoned vinegar available, perhaps in a cruet perched over the urinal,  Bernie could bring those beans some life.

The man apparently has no reading material, no paper and pen..........and nothing to eat. OK, better than the dirt, salt and veggie shortening that many of the poorest  Haitians are turning into mud patties and eating.  No question.

A world in which mega-luxury types have yachts dotted about the world's briny, while their fellow humans eat dirt--ain't it amazing?

Still--the Bernie thing fascinates. What is Ruth Madoff eating? Has she an appetite? Why hasn't she vamoosed  long-since to Namibia, a nation with which the USA has no extradition treaty? It's a democracy, was once a German colony---am I seeing a skewed/perverse poetic justice in that?-- and its people are not reduced to mud pie eating.

Exquisite Excess

We have an unemployed, unmarried mother of 6 deciding she absolutely had to have more children; we have a whistle blower filled with info on the nefarious Bernie Madoff ignored for years by the SEC; we have our beloved and leguminous Peanut Corporation of America knowingly shipping out salmonella-afflicted products, inspection reports by the state overlooked by the overworked USDA, slapped in a file cabinet; we have Republican leaders deeply involved in the financial and international debacle of the past eight years whining and wringing their hands on tv because their wisdom is being overlooked----whatever!!

Justice: PCA filed for bankruptcy. Its CEO took the Fifth before Congress days before, his emails piling up as evidence against him.

Questions:  

Did Bernie's wife squirrel away $15 million in chump change before his arrest? Has she Madoff with it?

Where will the nation's Lovebirds in Chief have Valentine's Day dinner? ( In Chicago.)

What would happen if you didn't   A--pay your taxes; B--have a financial plan ready, accurate to the penny, as you are asking for,  ooh, billions of dollars?

Does anyone really like that bizarre red velvet cake?

The Dog Ate My Brownie

Yes, I've been away, and not able to update this blog. And yes, there's a distressing new war winding down in a small country, in addition to those other wars in the Middle East, plus assorted conflagrations elsewhere.

Closer to home, an espresso brownie created by the Chocolate Maven from which I had nibbled only the tiniest of  layers, was found and devoured by the resident terrier. Said animal was in the car with me, on the way back from puttering and sniffing and chasing lizards in an enclosed  garden I care for periodically.  Normally the lively and ever-alert Lillian J. Russell is restrained ( gently) in the backseat. But as there were no shady parking places when I stopped to run an errand, I
( foolishly forgetting the baked good) set her loose in the vehicle, windows open,  so she could seek out the least sunny spot.

Friends, within seconds she had found the brownie. Now I know chocolate is supposed to be dire for dogs. But thus far in our acquaintance this one has survived, nay thrived, after eating half a bag of dark choc Hershey Kisses at Halloween, two squares of Belgian dark chocolate  innocently left on a low coffee table when the would-be snacker had a phone call over Christmas, and today, the brownie.

The balm of  Gilead that brownie was meant to be, soothing me after my perusal of the global news of violence and mindless destruction, unavailable. Sigh.

I think I'll go read about the 12,000 calories per diem the waterlogged Mr. Phelps must stuff into his elongated Olympian frame. Presumably some of those are likely to be, must be, from chocolate.

( Having stayed on the ball all day, the brownie thief collapses, CD cases as her pillow.)

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.)