Pinch: Food News

Showing posts with label Food News. Show all posts

Saturday, June 21, 2014

CDC Advisory: Don't _______ that Chicken!

Mad Libs! Does anyone play it in the winter? Mad Libs reminds me of summer road trips and lying around in the cool basement being bored enough to play Mad Libs by myself. Anyway, two verbs apply to the title of this post. Try to pick them among this list:

- Mollycoddle
- Beget
- Encourage
- Kiss
- Endorse
- Befriend
- Wash
- Catfish
- Underestimate
- Reach out to

Guess yet?

The correct answers are KISS and WASH. There's been some reporting on the former in the past few months. Turns out the rise of backyard chicken coops is causing an increase in Salmonella infections. Because people who keep chickens fall in love with them and plant kisses on them, in spite of the chicken clawing to get away like six year old human trying to avoid the slobbery kiss of a geriatric relative. Even those who shy away from physical expressions of love with their pets are at risk: just having them around in your living space puts you at risk. A healthy chicken can still get you very sick - essentially, they've got germs all over their feathers, feet and beaks. Letting the chicken cross the threshold invites disaster.

As for washing, we're now talking about a bird you're ready to eat. It doesn't matter if it's a whole chicken, or a skinless boneless breast, or a pile of chicken wings and drummettes: don't wash them before cooking. Doing so merely spreads the germs you washed off the bird all over your sink, splattering counters and utensils. I've written about this before around Thanksgiving because I brine the turkey with kosher salt and it needs to be rinsed and the whole thing makes me twitchy about poisoning our guests (not twitchy enough to stop brining, tho).

Brush up on your food safety here at the USDA site. And don't Snapchat that chicken!

Referenced above:
- Backyard Chickens Linked to Salmonella Outbreaks, CDC Says
- Risk of Human Salmonella Infections from Live Baby Poultry
- Why Washing Raw Chicken Could Be Hazardous To Your Health

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Sunday, July 31, 2011

On the Future of Bacon

Vincent was right: bacon tastes goood. But the market for frozen pork bellies futures has been dwindling. As of July 15 frozen pork belly options and futures are no longer traded at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange where they had been trading since 1961.* Anyone left holding a pork belly contract surely ain't gonna have no money to buy their son the G.I. Joe with the kung-fu grip.**

BTW, the totally awesome drawing here is by Alyson Thomas. I just love her butchery diagrams.

Futures, as explained by Motley Fool, are agreements between two parties to buy or sell a certain amount of a specified item for a specified price at a specific date. Don't ask me to explain options. It cannot be done!

Various news sources (NYT, WSJ and NPR) say that the market for bellies was historically strong in anticipation of summer sales when folks wanted to eat BLTs. That one sandwich was responsible for the rise and fall of the Duke brothers' (and others') fortune is ludicrous. Those sources say that year-round demand for bacon has caused the demand for frozen bellies to dry up. This is partly true. The full story of the death of the contract involves changes in the industry and how the contract failed to adapt accordingly. (Click here for Jeff Carter's explanation.)

What I don't understand is why the the contract didn't change. I get why the market for frozen bellies is down but why not allow for futures trades on fresh bellies? The fall of the contract comes at a time when you can't eat out without seeing pork belly on the menu. The belly garnered a noisy, intellectual, well-heeled fan base, similar to that of other humble foods such as the donut, BBQ, tacos, ice cream. Each are being produced by careful craftspeople and being consumed, discussed and venerated.

The "bacon tastes goood" statement voiced a truth that carnivores everywhere held but were too wrapped up in their cholesterol levels to celebrate. Once stated, the market - led in part by the Charlie Trotters and Alice Waters of our nation's restaurants - started giving us more of what we liked. Slow roasted! Glazed! Braised! God forbid frozen! From his chaise in the Caribbean, Billy Ray Valentine is making a killing on freezer space futures. Looking good, Billy Ray!

So what's the future of bacon? I couldn't tell you. But I can elaborate on the asterisked items above:

* A frozen pork belly futures contract consisted of 40,000 pounds of frozen pork bellies, cut and trimmed, where 1 point = $.0001 per pound ($4.00)

** That's from Trading Places. You can't talk pork bellies without letting Billy Ray Valentine doing some of the talking.

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Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Regarding The Joy of Not Cooking

This piece, from The Atlantic, attempts to answer the excellent question of why so many non-cooks posses such well-equipped kitchens. Three paragraphs really stand out. The first is because of these stats:

...in the 1920s, the average woman spent about 30 hours a week preparing food and cleaning up. By the 1950s, when she was raising her family, that number had fallen to about 20 hours a week. Now, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, women average just 5.5 hours—and those who are employed, like me, spend less than 4.4 hours a week. And that’s not because men are picking up the slack; they log a paltry 15 minutes a day doing kitchen work.

The second is because of the nod to South Park:

Jack Schwefel, the CEO of Sur La Table, talks about “the romance” of the high-end kitchen gadgets he sells. Take something like a Margaritaville Frozen Concoction Maker, which has “550 watts of shaving and blending power” and four preset frozen-drink settings and, according to Sur La Table’s Web site, was featured in the March 25, 2009, episode of South Park. (Stan tries to return it to the company but can’t because it’s on a payment plan and he can’t find out who owns the debt.) It retails for $349.95.

The third is where that author answers her question:

If you see cooking as an often boring part of your daily work, you’ll buy the pots you need to finish the job, and then stop. But if it’s part of a voyage of personal “rediscovery,” you’ll never stop finding new side trips to take—and everyone who’s been on a nice vacation knows the guilty pleasure of spending a little more than you should.

All I'd add is that while an enjoyable hobby or passion will always command a tidy portion of your disposable income, that explanation doesn't cover the trend in home building/kitchen design that calls for a six-burner plus griddle dual fuel range in every kitchen regardless of the residents' inclination to cook. This trend can only be attributed to keeping up with the Jones, or good old fashioned bigger is better consumerism.

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Monday, March 14, 2011

Mandatory School Breakfast - during class time - in Chicago

So glad this is getting attention outside of Chitown. Click here to read the story.

I'm still hopeful there will be a reversal on this issue. While there is clearly a need for a breakfast program in many CPS schools, there are many schools for which this will become a catastrophe of waste. Our local CPS school does a great job providing breakfast before school hours and has a low percentage of children on free or reduced-priced lunch. The administration has found an easy way to meet the needs of our neediest in a manner that enhances their school day.

The article points out Chicago's already short school day and that during the mayoral campaign Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel figured a child in Houston gets four more years of K-12 instruction than one here. As for the amount of class time the program will rob, the author offers his estimate:

...children are losing, perhaps, 20 minutes each day. That’s 57 hours over 170 school days, or more than 10 days — of instructional time.

Ten days! The loss of instruction is incredulous enough, but when combined with the lack of qualifiers for participating in the program it's positively embarrassing. We don't have time or money to waste. And weren't we beginning to take nutritional advice seriously? A consultant detailed the contents of the free breakfast:

“A lot of processed carbohydrates. My personal favorite was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on a graham cracker. Corn pops. Oversalted cheese sticks. Mealy apples. Stale bagels with cream cheese.”

Bad lessons, all the way around.

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Tuesday, February 2, 2010

NEWSFLASH: One in Eight Americans Visited Food Banks in 2009

The Pinched News sidebar is full of some really thought-provoking stories right now.

In mid-January the Times ran a report on CDC data that suggest obesity rates in the US have plateaued. Rates are still high, of course, but didn't get higher. From that article:

Some experts, though, were not optimistic that the leveling off was a result of improved eating and exercise habits.

“Until we see rates improving, not just staying the same, we can’t have any confidence that our lifestyle has improved,” said Dr. David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life Program at Children’s Hospital Boston.

Another compelling article was Snack Time Never Ends. If you have children, you can relate, I'm sure, to the lunacy of taking snack time to the end of every activity. When my children were very small this wasn't an issue for me - it' s only since they began playing team sports that I've taken umbrage with unnecessary post-game consumables. Nice hustle, kids! Do you want Pringles or Oreos with your Capri Sun?

And we wonder why we have an obesity epidemic on our hands.

A few articles concern school gardens, including Caitlin Flangan's recent missive in The Atlantic regarding the appropriateness of using time and money for school gardening programs in low-performing schools. While Flanagan misses an essential point of the innovative and practical teaching that is contained within the confines of even a waxed paper cup filled with potting soil and a few seeds (measurement! condensation! germination!) she does make a case for these lessons superceding lessons in higher math and reading. This is a good time to add that my children's urban public school is on the cusp of completing a roof garden with no public funding whatsoever, seeded financially via a Friends-of-the-School giving program, and seeded literally by a volunteer-led after school program called - perfectly - Super Seeders.

Finally, the news that startled me the most was this headline from today's Journal: One in Eight Americans Used Food Banks in 2009. Clearly, opening our wallets to local food banks remains necessary if we're serious about combating hunger in the US.

Don't see the articles in the sidebar? Find them under FOOD & CHILDREN here.

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Monday, October 26, 2009

Meal. Ready to Eat?

This was sent to me by a relative I'll call Tim and, boy, was it an adventure. To begin with, receiving something so out of the ordinary was a total thrill. Plus, there was the element of criminality; the package clearly states that resale is verboten. Of course, my MRE was a gift, so Tim and I should be safe from prosecution.

I'm curious about the daily life of our troops - even more so since hearing the bit about $400 per gallon gas (and going thru over 800,000 gallons a day in Afghanistan). Speaking of intrigue concerning our armed forces, I'm surprised we don't have war shows on TV, something a la Friday Night Lights.

But back to the MRE. Upon first inspection I was pretty impressed by the Armed Services menu option #23, and Tim’s choice for me - Chicken Pesto Pasta - way more highbrow than the beef, peas and potatoes of yesteryear. Regular readers know Chicken Pesto Pasta is in regular rotation on the Pinch menu.

The MRE (Meal, Ready-to-Eat) is a lightweight packaged meal containing a main course, side dish, bread, dessert, hot and cold beverage mixes, and flameless ration heater. This field ration has been around since 1981 when it replaced the MCI (Meal, Combat, Individual). MCI were canned, wet rations issued by the U.S. Armed Forces beginning in 1958. (Click here to watch a clip of a retiring Army Colonel tasting a 40-year old pound cake he brought back from Viet Nam.) Be prepared for disappointment if you're curious about what exact preservatives are involved in keeping a pound cake fresh for forty years - it's something of a Don't ask, don't tell policy, I'm sure.

We took the MRE to the park to simulate an out-of-the-kitchen cooking and eating experience. But since I didn't open it until we got to the park and didn't bring water, we ended up preparing it back home.

There was a lot to praise in the MRE. The directions for the flameless heating element were clear (my favorite part had to do with placing the heating entrée on an incline – the written direction said "Lean it up against a rock or something") and the unit put out some serious BTUs.

Nutritionally, the meal was sound in terms of protein/fat/carb percentages. The Institute of Medicine found that the typical serviceperson burns over 4000 calories per day yet was consuming only about 2400. Giving our troops healthy but good food that they will want to eat will ensure that they are getting the calories they need.

The meal was balanced well for salty/sweet cravings and contained grab and go items that were completely ready to eat. (The entree, which is intended to be heated - NOT ready to eat -requires about 15 minutes of heating time in addition to the rock.) But with 24 different menu options it seems there's something for everyone. Most are comfort type foods like Meatballs in Marinara, Chicken with Noodles, and Beef Stew, and a couple of Mexican options, enchiladas and fajitas.

Now the negatives. For starters, it wasn't tasty. It's hard to imagine that there's not substantial waste involved in MRE shipping and distribution. Given the preservatives needed to keep them shelf stable for over three years, the ingredients list was, like, a mile long.

While the entree tasted better than I expected, it was by no means appetizing. The wet pack of pineapple was tasteless and messy to eat out of the slim package. Dried pineapple or mango would have been better. The chocolate pudding was ok, but it should have been chocolatier. Come on! Give the troops more chocolate!

The non-fruit drink was essentially sugar water. I allow that at some point a calorie IS a calorie, and finding ways to get servicemen ingesting more calories might mean including some empty ones. But sugar water? Couldn't there at least be some vitamins involved?

Other interesting facts:
- The Pentagon pays $86.98 for a case of MREs, or about $7.25 per meal. You can buy a case on Amazon for $79.99. Capitalism 1 Taxpayer 0

- MREs must be able to withstand parachute drops from 380 meters (1,200 ft), and non-parachute drops of 30 meters (98 ft). Um, what CAN withstand a non-parachute drop of 30 meters?

- In March 2007, The Salt Lake Tribune invited three chefs to taste and rate 18 MREs. No meal rated higher than a 5.7 (scale was from one to ten) with the Chicken Fajita meal receiving the lowest average score (1.3).

All in all, while MREs have improved over the years, they need to look and taste better. It really seemed like prison food, tucked into individual portion packs. And that's sad.

Got more time? Click this.

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Tuesday, October 6, 2009

But of Course She Is

Of course Ruth is going to write another tell-all. Listen to this:

“This has been a fascinating place to work,” she said. “But I’ve always said I can’t write it until I leave here.”

Reichl has done an outstanding job at Gourmet. I've been a quiet fan of hers since reading her memoir Tender at the Bone. But then she came out with Comfort Me With Apples. See, the first book introduced her and made me like her. But in her next book she told me all about her affair with Coleman Andrews (founder and former editor at Saveur) and it was just TMI.

I'm still feeling nostalgic for Gourmet. I hope Reichl's next book doesn't ruin the memory. Oh, in case you don't follow these things (like why Pinch cares about the editor of a dead publication), before beginning her tenure at Gourmet Ruth Reichl's was the NY Times restaurant critic. In addition to authoring several books and receiving FOUR James Beard awards, she co-owned a restaurant and work as its chef. [FIN]

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Monday, October 5, 2009

Gasp! Gourmet Bites the Big One

This makes me so sad! I've been enjoying Gourmet so much for the last year. There was a long while where I didn't feel it met my needs as a healthy gourmet cook, but lately they really had my number.

So many nagging questions...What will Ruth will do next? (Could she possibly have another tell-all left in her?) Will they keep the online site? What happens to all the gift subscriptions I just bought thru my children's school magazine drive? No, really...who's gonna pocket my cash?

Oh, Gourmet! You were nearly 70 and I was just starting to love you.

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Monday, August 31, 2009

What Julia taught me

I saw the movie. Of course I saw the movie! It's about Julia Child, impossible-not-to-love Julia Child, AND food blogging. I liked it a lot - the parts about Julia more than those about Julie - tho the kissie pooshkie between Julia and Paul (I always do enjoy Stanley Tucci!) felt like watching grandma and grandpa getting it on. And, really, who wants to see that?!?

Everyone who asks me my opinion of the movie also asks how much an influence Julia Child was on my cooking career. And what I say is this: indirectly. While it's impossible not to feel gratitude for the road she paved or impressed with her life's work, it (her life's work) just isn't my bag, baby. I like more simple, less contrived food. Fewer steps, fewer ingredients. And while I do love butter (and totally agree with the meteor-hitting-the-earth-in-30-days-so-I'm-totally-spending-it-eating-butter philosophy) I really do feel that butter is a cheap thrill, and often an easy way out. My bag is leaner, not to mention more seasonal and regional, and mainly a lot less involved. I just don't DO that much to the food we eat, and I feel my life is the richer for it.

Follow this link to walk down memory lane with Julia Grownup.

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Thursday, March 5, 2009

Waters, Waters Everywhere

Is it me or is Alice everywhere these days? Not that there's anything wrong with her recent foray into politics (touché, JP!), but between the Kitchen Cabinet, the organic bailout and the op-ed on school lunch, she seems to have set aside her chef knives and picked up a pen (pen = mightier?).

I can relate to the knives for pen swap. So can chef, author and TV personality Anthony Bourdain. Only Bourdain picked up a megaphone AND pen. He had this to say about Alice Waters in an interview with DCist back in January:

“Alice Waters annoys the living shit out of me. We're all in the middle of a recession, like we're all going to start buying expensive organic food and running to the green market. There's something very Khmer Rouge about Alice Waters that has become unrealistic.”

Hmm. Bordain’s trouble with Waters stems from his estimation of her arrogance or naivete (and I do take his point about the recession and food costs). But the trouble with the Khmer Rouge was less their radical agrarian communism and more that they kept killing people. All I'm saying is that it's not a fair comparison, seeing as Alice Waters doesn't have blood - or pesticides - on her hands.

For more, follow the post and comment trail from The Internet Food Association.

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Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Obama's Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

I was still digesting the NYT report that Hillary Rodham Clinton has been watching envoys poach her turf ("And Now Let the Jockeying Begin" published January 31, 2009) when today's news about President Obama serving Oatmeal Raisin Cookies hit the wire ("Obama Woos G.O.P. With Attention, and Cookies"). I tried in vain to locate the early 1990s image of Hillary serving cookies in the Clinton White House. It was a calculated photo-op meant to soften remarks she made about her career (along the lines of, "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies,") which caused people who stayed home and baked cookies to take umbrage - or caused people whose life's work centers on getting other people fired up, to stir up some umbrage.

I stay home and bake cookies, partly because of my career in the sweet kitchen and partly because I'm at home with kids and kids, in addition to liking stickers, like cookies. I was in college during Cookiegate. I didn't take - or couldn't be persuaded to take - any offense. Isn't the beauty of our freedom, opportunity, equality and, let's face it, wealth, that we can find our own balance of cookies and careers?

It remains to be seen if HRC will be well-regarded in her new position. It was always going to be tricky for Hillary in the Obama White House, especially with all the other sharp elbows in the room. I don't dispute the glass ceiling but I don't see gender as a limiting factor in the career arc of the Secretary of State. It's more personal than that (I would have said, "It's her character, stupid," if Carville merited quoting). Obama is green and finding his footing, and his cookies might be just as calculated as Hillary's. *HAH! Who am I kidding?!? The Roadrunner supercomputer is less calculating than the Clintons!* The critical difference: Obama makes handing out cookies look good.

Presidential Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
Print recipe only here

INGREDIENTS
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
½ cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 t vanilla extract
1 ½ cups flour
1 t baking soda
1 t cinnamon
½ t salt
3 cups oats
1 cup raisins or chocolate chips

METHOD
In a mixer, beat butter on medium-high speed for 2-3 minutes. Add sugars and cream together for 3-5 minutes, or until light and fluffy.

Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well between additions, scraping sides and bottom of bowl as necessary. Add vanilla and mix in.

Sift or whisk together dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon). Add to mixer and combine on a low speed, scraping bottom of the bowl at least once. Add oats and combine on low speed. Add raisins or chocolate chips and mix until just combined.

Drop by measured spoonfuls onto a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake for 6-8 minutes in a preheated 350 oven. Or, wrap the dough in plastic wrap and bake individual cookies as desire. Unless you're serving a roomful of politicos, you don't need to bake all the cookies at once - just bake off as many as you will serve and refrigerate the rest for another day.

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Sunday, October 5, 2008

All the News That's Fit to Pinch

Pinch is pleased to announce the addition of a new feature. The content aggregated in PINCHED NEWS contributes to the dialog on food/diet/nutrition we love so much.

When we’re lucky, it also provides the chance to giggle at the news. As in the NY Times magazine piece “Losing the Weight Stigma,” where we are informed:

“Linda Bacon, a nutritionist and physiologist at the University of California at Davis…advocates tossing out the bathroom scale and loving your body no matter what it weighs.”

...and CHANGING YOUR SURNAME TO BACON. They didn’t mention her given name was Linda Lentil.

Seriously. Linda BACON? You can't make this stuff up.

Happy reading.

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Monday, June 23, 2008

Saveur Magazine's Best Issue

I've been a Saveur reader for at least a decade but never a die hard reader. There have been several lapses in my subscription, owing in small part to subscription mismanagement and bigger part disappointment in the magazine's ho-hum content and poor recommendations. But the photos always pulled me back for me for more. It has always featured the best food photography. I appreciate it even more now that Tastespotting has left the building. If you haven't heard of Tastespotting, it is (or was, depending on what the future holds) a site where anyone could post beautiful food photos that backlinked to a food blog. It was a great resource for cooks, readers and bloggers alike, and I hope it will have a renaissance. [6/27 update: TasteSpotting, under new ownership, is now online.]

Saveur has improved tremendously since Coleman Andrews left. Well, I should say ...ever since the new editor-in-chief James Oseland found his groove. The July 2008 issue, pictured here, had fascinating and informative feature after feature about so many things that captivate me. Airstream trailers (p. 33), gravlax (p. 37), food travel and recipes from across the continental US (p. 41), a recipe for Figaretti's "Godfather II" Linguini which puts my linguini with white clam sauce to SHAME! (p. 57), knife making (p. 63), and the journey of a wild salmon (p. 71).

Copper River salmon is in season now and it's On the Menu this Week. I'd like to know more about the branding of a fish to the river it swims, and what chefs and consumers think about it (the fish and the branding). Stay tuned for that conversation.

In the meanwhile, if you enjoy reading about food you should try out Saveur. More than any of their peer publications, they write for the food lover.

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Wednesday, March 26, 2008

What Iron Chef Taught Me about Home Cooking

I'm reading several books right now, all of them orbiting around the central question of WHAT'S FOR DINNER? At the top of my pile is Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle along with Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food.

I'm also devouring other food blogs and found a noteworthy observation from Michael Pollan on the New York Times Well Blog (find the whole interview here):

...A lot of us are intimidated by cooking today. We watch cooking shows on TV but we cook very little…You’re going to have to put a little more time and effort into preparing your food. I’m trying to get across how pleasurable that can be. It needn’t be a chore. It can be incredibly rewarding to move food closer to the center of your life.

I don't watch food TV, in part because I've cooked professionally (I bet much of the success of cooking shows is based on the intrigue about the inner workings of a professional kitchen; there's less intrigue for professionals) and in other part because when TV moves closer to the center of my life I don't get anything done. More than hoovering productivity there's a danger in getting too wrapped up in food TV, celebrity chefs, and the restaurant scene in that it turns eating well into a complicated pursuit. Certainly it's fantastic that we have talented chefs who do amazing things with food, but the reality of cooking at home should be within reach of the home cook. Moreover, the gourmand's diet championed by such diversions is usually an unhealthy diet.

Of course there's the entertainment factor, and I can't argue with that.

What has Food TV done for you lately?

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