Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 73

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

 

  • Nursery food is good for you, or at least the nostalgia it inspires. "Nostalgia has been shown to counteract loneliness, boredom and anxiety. It makes people more generous to strangers and more tolerant of outsiders. Couples feel closer and look happier when they’re sharing nostalgic memories. On cold days, or in cold rooms, people use nostalgia to literally feel warmer." Bring on the mac & cheese and a fluffernutter. (New York Times)
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Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 72

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

 

  • Amelie meets butter (above) in one of the coolest cooking commercials we've ever seen.
  • Gin is at risk: British gin distillers could be facing a production crisis as a deadly fungus rips through Scottish junipers, leaving the berries “in serious trouble.”
  • A new culprit in cod decline? "Scientists believe they have evidence global warming may hold a clue in the mystery of why, despite 20 years of increasingly harsh fishery regulations, cod hasn't rebounded. The species of zooplankton that is one of the preferred foods of larval cod simply can't take the heat."
  • And one from the advertising vaults: If you don't have cutting-edge food photography, there's always naked ladies, like this one for Pol pasta in 1905.

Sing Along Snacks: Texas Cookin'

It's never too early or too late for a snack, so crank up that volume on your computer.

Guy Clark sings about Texas Cookin', just in time for the 4th of July.

"I know a man that cook armadillo
tastes so sweet he calls it pie
I know a woman makes pan dulce
tastes so good it gets you high

Get them enchiladas greasy
get them steaks chicken fried
Sho' do make a man feel happy
to see white gravy on the side"


Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 71

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

 

  • Food advertising jazz age-style (above) with a 1929 promotion for Runnymede eggs served aboard the Graf Zeppelin (found on the great vintage image site Retronaut).
  • Farm Free or Die!  Maine Towns Rebel AGainst Food Rules "Local food activists don't want to eliminate regulation; they just want to self-regulate at the community level among people who know and trust each other." Similar efforts are happening in the UK “Food and farming aren’t just about market economics and just getting people calories in their body; it’s got this huge social and cultural dimension to it.
  • Counterfeit Food More Widespread Than Suspected "Investigators have uncovered thousands of frauds, raising fresh questions about regulatory oversight as criminals offer bargain-hunting shoppers cheap versions of everyday products, including counterfeit chocolate and adulterated olive oil, Jacob’s Creek wine and even Bollinger Champagne. As the horse meat scandal showed, even legitimate companies can be overtaken by the murky world of food fraud."
  • Food Entrepreneur Is A New Breed Of Afghan Business Owner  "I'm very optimist for after 2014, because 10 years ago, woman were not able to work outside of home, especially during the Taliban regime. And right now, we can see lots of the women, that they have their own business. And also, we can see lots of change."

 

Sing Along Snacks: Sweet Kentucky Ham

It's never too early or too late for a snack, so crank up that volume on your computer.

Rosemary Clooney (perhaps with a little inspiration from the Pork Fairy) sings the Dave Frishberg song Sweet Kentucky Ham live at a jazz festival held on the lawn of the White House, summer of 1993.

 

"And you're staring at your scrambled eggs and steak

And you must admit your heart's about to break

When you think of what you left behind 

And you've got sweet Kentucky ham on your mind, on your mind

Nothin' but sweet Kentucky ham on your mind"

 


Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 70

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

 

  • With Silver Bells and Oyster Shells (and So Their Gardens Grow) "The oyster industry has grown nearly 20 percent yearly in states like Rhode Island, Virginia, and Massachusetts, over the past decade, and owning a restaurant in which to sell the product is becoming a more common business model for oyster farmers."
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Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 69

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

 

  • "When words just aren't enough, say it with bacon..." urges this jewelry-spoof commercial (above). "All you have to do is listen, and bacon will show you the way."
  • Good news: the young folk don't want to eat anonymous junk. The Millenials are spending differently and restaurant chains are trying to woo the younger generation. "Between the proliferation of artisanal food trucks and items like cupcakes made of Valrhona and Callebaut chocolates and topped with a fondant daisy for $2.75 at Georgetown Cupcake, or Fresh Direct’s offering of “heritage” pork from the Flying Pigs Farm in upstate New York, millennials tend to spend their dining dollars sparingly and in a more calculated way."

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 68

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

 

 

  • Newcastle Libraries has posted a cache of UK historical images, like the fishing photos above, to Flickr. Pictured above: At left, a studio portrait of a Fisherman from Cullercoats taken c.1890. The man is wearing a waterproof coat souwester and cork life-jacket. At right, an 1897 studio portrait of Maggie Brown a Fishwife from Cullercoats. Maggie Brown is wearing her 'best' clothes which include a printed cotton or silk blouse with matching apron. A silk square is worn to fill the neckline of her blouse.
  • Some forgotten foods of the UK (from cookies to sheep) are making a come back with help from Slow Food UK's Chefs Alliance. Says Carina Contini, of Centotre in Edinburgh: “The special ingredient is always the story. Understanding where ingredients come from and how they got there allows us to connect with our environment and food chain and we love sharing this knowledge with our customers.” 
  • On U.S. farms, women are taking the reins says a new report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. Many are career-changers looking for a different kind of life and a way to make a difference. “We are seeing more beginning farmers coming in and I think the trend is going to continue. Women are [already] outnumbering men in owning smaller farms.”
  • Detroit's Urban Agriculture Ordinance that passed on April 15 has opened the city for urban aquaponics. Two new facilities are underway for tilapia, catfish and blue gill — although the finer points of regulation still have to be worked out. "The city is in the process of coming up with a process,” for approving fish farms, says Kathryn Underwood of the City Planning Commission. “We don't even have all of the forms quite in place yet for all of things that need to happen. We're riding a bike and building it at the same time.”

 

Sing Along Snacks: Chiquita Banana original

It's never too early or too late for a snack, so crank up that volume on your computer.

Bananas — once a new exotic food, and now the most popular fruit in America. Chiquita hit the big screen with a song to tell us all about them.

Produced by the United Fruit Company in the 1940's, this commercial appeared only in movie theaters. The voice of Chiquita belongs to Monica Lewis. She turned 91 May 5, 2013.

 


Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 67

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

 

  • The Cut Foods project (above) by photographer Beth Galton and stylist Charlotte Omnes gives a new look into the center of common foods, from donuts and coffee to soup and ice cream. "Normally for a job, we photograph the surface of food, occasionally taking a bite or a piece out, but rarely the cross section of a finished dish. Charlotte and I thought it would be interesting to explore the interiors of various foods, particularly items commonplace to our everyday life. By cutting these items in half we move past the simple appetite appeal we normally try to achieve and explore the interior worlds of these products."
  • El Bulli chef to launch cultural foundation Ferran Adrià aims to create a monument to high cuisine as fitting the legacy for a restaurant voted world's best five times. "I decided to get out of the restaurant star system...But El Bulli never closed. It is simply being transformed."
  • A portrait of the cuisine of Senegal, and the story of their indigenous rice, now under threat by GM crops. "Indigenous Senegalese rice is burgundy in color, transforming into a pale violet when cooked. In Bassene’s carefully arranged pile of rice bundles, there was an equal number of red and tawny yellow rice varieties. He explained that this was a blended variety of traditional Senegalese and Asian rice, a product of the GM crops that have begun to infiltrate the fields of western Africa just as they are the world over. ...One wondered if he felt that after such long struggles and eventual triumphs over war, slavery, and colonization, he finally felt defeated by the silent war being waged upon his fields by the pitchmen touting the virtues of GM foods. Bassene took a bundle of the red indigenous rice in his hand, gripped its base tightly, and said, “We will always prefer our own rice. We will never stop farming it.'”
  • Share: The Cookbook that Celebrates Our Common Humanity is a project of Woment for Women International (WfWI), with contributions from Annie Lennox to Aung San Suu Kyi. "Food builds our physical resilience, brings us joy, and strengthens our bonds with family and friends. What we choose to eat, and how we choose to prepare it, can also generate employment, wealth and economic stability for others."
  • A look in The Guardian at whether Food miles are missing the point: "The problem is it's far too simple. Looking only at transport costs for your food is not just to miss the bigger picture, it's to miss the picture entirely. The only way you can get some sense of the footprint of your food is by using what's called a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), which brings everything about the production of that item into play: the petrochemicals used in farming and in fertilisers, the energy to build tractors as well as to run them, to erect farm buildings and fences, and all of that has to be measured against yield. It's about emissions per tonne of apples or lamb."
  • Another reason to oppose fracking: it's messing with beer. "According to the Association of German Breweries, hydraulic fracturing to extract oil and natural gas from shale rock poses a threat to the taste of pilsner and they're campaigning against legislation to regulate the extraction process."

Sing Along Snacks: AquaBounty Garden

 It's never too early or too late for a snack, so crank up that volume on your computer.

The food-centric, satirical Beatles cover band The Eatles goes under the sea to an AquaBounty (that's the company trying to sell consumers a genetically engineered "salmon" that's a cross between three different species) Garden in the shade.

 

"I'd hate to be under the sea,

in a AquaBounty garden in the shade.

Let's make a wish, no transgenic fish

that they went and died away beneath the truth..."


 

If this one had you tapping your toes, The Eatles have a full range of subversive titles like Modified Fields Forever, I Am The Wal-Mart, and While the Microwave Gently Beeps.

 

Plenty to dread

On May 29, 2013 the Guardian UK reported a new study that GM 'hybrid' fish pose threat to natural populations, scientists warn  Study shows genetically modified salmon that breed with wild trout can produce a fast-growing, competitive fish.

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 66

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

  • A powerful use for spoiled food: Kroger Co.'s anaerobic digester in Compton takes unsold food from Ralphs and Food 4 Less and converts it into 13 million kilowatt-hours of electricity a year.
  • A thoughful piece that explores How Twitter is Reshaping the Future of Storytelling "For people who love compelling writing, there’s something tantalizing about lines being shared one at a time. A line on its own changes a reader’s relationship to the very texture of the syllables and ideas. Twitter story experiments aren’t shackled by the linear requirements of paper."

 

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 65

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

 

  • Discover global cuisine through the kitchens of grandmothers with this excellent photojournalism project Delicatessen with love by Gabriele Galimberti. Each photo features a  grandmother with her signature dish as both ingredients and finished product. At right, grandmothers from Egypt, Haiti and Latvia.
  • The GM food debate gets even uglier as Monsanto threatens to sue the state of Vermont. "Lawmakers in Vermont are looking to regulate food labels so customers can know which products are made from genetically modified crops, but agricultural giants Monsanto say they will sue if the state follows through."
  • Luxury food producers take note and come up with ways that you can take advantage of this style. Jaeger-LeCoultre tempts female consumers with emotional marketing, and they do a great job of it. “'Jaeger-LeCoultre’s strategy behind this campaign is connecting with their target market’s emotions on various events and occurrences that happen throughout their life, and focusing on the positive perspective that they can continuously reinvent themselves,' Ms. Strum said." Notice that nothing is said about watches in the full two minutes.

 

 

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 64

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

  • 3D printing meets food (above). Janne Kyttanen has produced prototype printed pasta, breakfast cereal and burgers to demonstrate how advances in 3D printing could transform the way we eat (interview and slideshow). "Kyttanen, co-founder of design studio Freedom of Creation and creative director of printer manufacturer 3D Systems, told Dezeen: 'Food is the next frontier. We’re already printing in chocolate, so a lot of these things will be possible in the next few years.'"
  • What drones should be dropping: beer. In South Africa this summer, concert goers will be able to order beer on their phones that will be delivered by drone, kind of like beer from heaven.
  • Square, the mobile payment start-up firm, sets its sights on the food industry "Several months ago, Square launched a “Business in a Box” package for $249, including two card readers, an iPad stand, a cash drawer and an optional receipt printer, all wirelessly connected to the Square Register app. Last week, Square announced an update to that app designed specifically for quick-serve restaurants, allowing operators to modify orders and print kitchen tickets."
  • Flavor and Language — the eternal challenge of describing flavors in words. "I came across an interview with Harold McGee, that peerless explorer of the science of food. In it he said apropos of sauvignon blanc: ‘It is so difficult to connect particular flavours with their sources, it’s hard to really define what minerality is, or what the expression of a place in a product could actually be. And you have to ask yourself, how many times have people actually tasted minerals, like the flint from which Loire white wines are said to get their flavour? How often do you put a rock in your mouth and suck on it?’" via the excellent project Flavour First
  • Workers Claim Racial Bias in Farms’ Hiring of Immigrants “If you can’t find locals to do the work, why is the answer to bring in people who have little protection and not grant them legal status?” asked Mr. Knoepp of the Southern Poverty Law Center. “If we need them, why not bring them in and make them legal citizens with real protections? The answer is because then they wouldn’t keep working in the fields given the conditions of that work. They would do something else. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

  •  Trending: sommeliers = new food celebrities "Until recently, serious restaurants in the United States were owned by celebrity chefs, creative developers like Danny Meyer and Richard Melman, or corporate chains. But sommeliers have now begun taking the lead role, as investors make them the centerpiece of their restaurant concepts."

  • Nigeria is one of the top markets for champagne. "The figures, from research company Euromonitor, found that Nigeria had the fastest growing rate of new champagne consumption in the world, second only to France, and ahead of rapid growth nations Brazil and China, and established markets such as the US and Australia." And not only are they drinking champagne, they're making music video about it. Check out Pop Champagne


Sing Along Snacks: Peanut Butter (with a bonus track)

It's never too early or too late for a snack, so crank up that volume on your computer.

The Marathons sing about one of America's favorite foods: Peanut Butter.

 

 

Feeling a little too scrubbed and wholesome? Let RuPaul fix that for you honey.

She's got her own Peanut Butter song, New Orleans bounce-style. "It must be jelly cause jam don't shake." Warning: video may be too bootilicious for work.

 

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 63

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

  • Chickens are keeping their mess to themselves, fashionably, with chicken diapers (right). "'Chickens are a symbol of urban nirvana,' The New York Times wrote last year, 'their coops backyard shrines to a locavore movement that has city dwellers moving ever closer to their food.'" We expect the ironic, 80's-inspired, hipster chicken diaper line any day now.
  • A sensible and delicious solution to low meal-cost school lunches: ditch the industrial meat. A New York City school goes meatless. “This is so good,” said 9-year-old Marian Satti of a black bean and cheddar cheese quesadilla served at Tuesday’s lunch, the Daily News said. 'I’m enjoying that it didn’t have a lot of salt in it.'”  
  • Culinary students at CIA protested what they feel are weakened standards. “There are students here who understand the work and the discipline...but there are also some who just want to coast and get on reality shows, and we see them getting away with it.”
  • A small town in Scotland has launched its own signature menu as a way to support regional cuisine and identity. Huntly, a town of only 4,000 people, has stepped out with this vision. How about "Huntly tattie soup (made with locally-grown veg and short rib or plate beef); Deveron cure trout and mayonnaise made with rapeseed oil; Highland kedgeree (using Moray-smoked haddock, free-range eggs and Fairtrade rice); and Gordon barley risotto with Moray langoustine, mushrooms or rabbit, dotted with Douglas Fir pine oil."
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