Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 22

a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

• Too pretty to eat, pantone tarts by Emilie Guelpa.

• Mountain-city-saliva-chicken anyone? There's a new campaign in China to make menu translations less literal (and less gross).

• Pesticides and the fate of the honey bee: Three new studies link bee decline to Bayer Pesticide. Their products are used on corn, soy and more.

• Those crazy cephalopods, one minute you see them, the next minute they've turned into something else... rare footage of the mimic octopus.

• An Atlantic vintage? A Pacific vintage? "You can think of the world’s oceans as a kind of rich broth. They’re full of salt, of course, but they also contain other ingredients, many of them vital to marine life and to the processes that control the Earth’s climate." Not strictly a food story, but we appreciated the metaphor.

• One more story from the deep: Unlocking Seaweed’s Next-Gen Crude — Sugar (although intended more for cars and fertilizer than doughnuts).

• Feeling nostalgic for one of our favorite culinary innovators, we happened on this Swedish Chef collection. Bork! Bork! Bork!

• Usually, we go looking for the bizarre. Occasionally, it shows up in our mailbox, like this promotion for a bacon coffin. "We think that your final resting place deserves the eternal glory that is bacon." And Penelope the Pork Fairy says, "Amen."

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 17

a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

• Tiny foodies will be taking over a cafe near you: Let's begin by saying "Babyccinos" are happening, and there's nothing you can do about it.

• Catching invasive species is making town and country strides at being hip. Fishing for snakehead is featured in the current issue of Food & Wine and Trout Unlimited is singing the praises of fly fishing for carp.

• The family fishing boat — even more endangered than the family farm. New England cod fisherman face bleak prospects.

• Giving some relief for certification madness, European Union and United States Agree to Historic New Partnership on Organic Trade and will recognize each other's certifications.

• France has set goals to reduce pesticide use by half. "Being an American citizen in the early 21st century, I find it stunning that a government would intervene explicitly against the interests of the agrochemical industry," Tom Philpott writes.

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 15

 a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

• "Survival in the epicurean jungle was a matter of brawn and culinary skill, in which mastery of the Switchblade Spork was king. Gangs of sous-chefs and line cooks ruled the streets and no food was safe from the steely glint of their sporks."

• In tsunami-hit Japan, microfinancing is helping food business get up and running even when banks don't want to lend. "So I wondered if maybe what we do really is important. Many people are waiting for the very original products that we select and sell. They are small goods, but they fill voids in our hearts.”

• UN asserts that famine is predictable: "drought and famine are not extreme events but “merely the sharp end of a global food system that is built on inequality, imbalances and – ultimately – fragility.”'

• Want kids to eat more veggies? Research written up in The Journal of the American Medicine Association (JAMA) says that putting pictures on cafeteria trays helps. Score one for the power of suggestion.

• States, like Massachusetts, are increasingly looking to create brands of provenence to market fisheries. “If we took a look at fish being landed in Massachusetts and put a mark on them ... it allows a story and to tie in what’s happening in New Bedford or Gloucester. It means something to [diners]."

• A new photo and text project assembles a Lexicon of Sustainability, from Backyard Pollinator to Kitchen Incubator.

• Pesticides are bad to eat, but they're even worse to live around. Grist looks at the environmental and social costs of conventional agriculture, from chemicals that dust fruit like snow to contaminated drinking water.

• Ancient ice, hopefully not headed for a cocktail near you. In Chile, police are holding a man found trying to smuggle five tons of a Patagonian glacier for upscale bar drinks.