Anyone who moves around in burgercentric circles knows of the battle that's been brewing for the last few years between the three major heavyweights of the high-quality fast-food burger* world. Of the three, In-N-Out Burger, founded in Baldwin Park, California, in 1948 has the longest history and certainly the most cult-like and devout following. On the other hand, Virginia's Five Guys--which has been around since 1986--has seen crazy expansion in the last few years, now boasting over 750 locations on both coast and a rabid following that is fast catching up on In-N-Out's heels. The underdog in the fight is New York's Shake Shack. Only seven years old, it's still a baby in the field, but if we're to believe the news, they're poised to expand, and in a big way (they just opened their latest location in Washington, D.C. yesterday).
But who really makes the best burger? It's a question that's debated far and wide on the internet and beyond, so we here at A Hamburger Today decided to take it upon ourselves to find the answer and declare an official King of the High Quality Fast Food Burger.
Delicious and $6.00. The bowl contained, from the bottom up: lettuce, cucumbers, rice noodles, carrots, nuts and grilled shrimp.
Food riots, deposed Middle Eastern despots and now this? Last week, a Texas man brandishing an assault rifle was involved in a three-hour shoot-out with police and had to be subdued with tear gas after ordering seven Beefy Crunch Burritos at a Taco Bell drive-through and being informed that their price had risen from 99 cents to $1.49.Late night comedians and serious pundits alike had a field day with the story, opining on issues like fast-food culture, obesity (the seven burritos contain 3,600 calories, double the recommended daily intake) and gun control.
With his petty gripe, the gunman, Ricardo Jones, is no Muhammad al Bouazizi, the self-immolating Tunisian fruit seller who inspired millions across the region to throw off the yoke of tyranny, but 50 per cent is 50 per cent in San'a or San Antonio. Food inflation is a global phenomenon.
Food prices are back on the march, and the powerful U.S. farm lobby faces a day of reckoning on Wednesday as the Obama administration wraps up a yearlong study into competition and consolidation in the agricultural sector.The Departments of Justice and Agriculture are holding their fifth and final workshop to review the competitive landscape in food production and livestock rearing after a unique collaboration that has left some of the industry's largest players looking nervously over their shoulders.
Monsanto Co. is already embroiled in a Justice Department investigation into alleged anticompetitive practices linked to the sale and distribution of genetically modified seeds that dominate U.S. farming. Dean Foods Inc., the country's largest milk producer, has also seen antitrust officials move to block a small acquisition.
Lawmakers already have had to wrestle with external forces on the sector, such as the rise of speculative funds that critics contend have inflated prices. The latest run-up in commodity prices has also reawakened the long-running food-versus-fuel debate as Congress decides whether to renew subsidies to the ethanol industry.
A few photos taken at Ela Orchard's space. Their apples are, of course fabulous.
Screaming down the home straight of Ferrari’s test track at 200kmph an hour in a classic red 458 Italia, I suddenly don’t feel like lunch. The Fiorano track near Bologna in central Italy is, at 3km, not long. But, partly in an attempt to impress the test driver next to me with some fast cornering, I feel as if I have left part of my stomach on one of its hairpin bends. Matters fail to improve as, in heavy fog untypical of early summer, I take the car off the track and, rather more slowly, on to the winding roads of the Apennines, heading for Ferrari HQ in nearby Maranello.Clusty Search: Luca Cordero di Montezemolo
I am still spinning slightly when we pull into the car park just before the company’s elegant and aristocratic chairman, Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, who somewhat incongruously arrives in a small Fiat. He explains that his journey from Rome has been a nightmare as fog diverted his helicopter and forced him to take trains and cars – hence the Fiat. Nevertheless he appears in characteristically enthusiastic mood. “I’ve just been to a conference at the Vatican [on the financial crisis]. Fantastic,” he explains. “Fantastic” is a word Montezemolo uses a lot. Ferrari is “fantastic”, Italian food is “fantastic”, his new high-speed train company, NTV, is “fantastic”, as is the 458 Italia I have been driving.
On my way out he hands me a white postcard. “This is what I give to all new employees at Ferrari,” he says. Looking at it in a Ferrari 599 on the way back to Milan, it looks to me like the perfect credo for Montezemolo. It starts: “The real secret of success is enthusiasm. You can do anything if you have enthusiasm ... With it there is accomplishment. Without it there are only alibis.”
Video from the current French agricultural fair.
Sometimes, doing a headstand works wonders, says Glyn Woolley. That is exactly what he did when tempers were running so high over a pay deal at the London milk depot where he was working in the 1970s that the delivery men threatened to strike. "I said: 'If I stand on my head on the table, will you go back to work?'" He promptly upended himself and the milkmen were, it seems, impressed. "They went back to their milk rounds and came back the next day for a proper discussion in a much calmer atmosphere," says Mr Woolley.
Today, in a cramped office in an industrial estate in Corsham, Wiltshire, Mr Woolley laughs as he recalls those events. During a lifetime in the dairy industry, he has had to be resourceful to become the owner-manager of Coombe Castle, a leading exporter of specialist UK cheeses , that sends products with names such as Stinking Bishop and Lord of the Hundreds as far afield as the US and Japan.
"I am a fighter and I don't like to give up on anything even if it means a huge amount of effort," he says. During the 2002 foot and mouth outbreak in the UK, for instance, that meant "days spent pestering" government officials, and getting the local MP to intervene so the company could sell cheeses from regions not affected by the disease.
Chef Dominique Crenn was raised in Versailles, France. She now makes an incredible Thanksgiving dinner, but when she first came to the U.S., the entire holiday threw her off.
She sat down with NPR's Steve Inskeep to discuss how she cooks for Thanksgiving.
"I was a little bit lost when I came here," she told Inskeep. "I had no idea what Thanksgiving was about."
In France, turkey is eaten at Christmas. So the American phenomenon of Thanksgiving turkey and dressing mystified her.
"Oh, a month before Christmas, we're gonna eat Turkey?"
But now, she's hooked. Crenn has been celebrating Thanksgiving for about 20 years. "This is a pretty cool holiday," she said.
When Ken Preston went organic on his dairy farm here in 2005, he figured that doing so would guarantee him what had long been elusive: a stable, high price for the milk from his cows.
Sure enough, his income soared 20 percent, and he could finally afford a Chevy Silverado pickup to help out. The dairy conglomerate that distributed his milk wanted everything Mr. Preston could supply. Supermarket orders were skyrocketing.
But soon the price of organic feed shot up. Then the recession hit, and families looking to save on groceries found organic milk easy to do without. Ultimately the conglomerate, with a glut of product, said it would not renew his contract next month, leaving him with nowhere to sell his milk, a victim of trends that are crippling many organic dairy farmers from coast to coast.
For those farmers, the promises of going organic — a steady paycheck and salvation for small family farms — have collapsed in the last six months. As the trend toward organic food consumption slows after years of explosive growth, no sector is in direr shape than the $1.3 billion organic milk industry. Farmers nationwide have been told to cut milk production by as much as 20 percent, and many are talking of shutting down.
An Indian mother is set for an entry into the Guinness World Records after eating 51 of the world's hottest chilli in two minutes.
Anandita Dutta Tamuly, 26, gobbled up the "ghost chillis" in front of visiting British chef Gordon Ramsay in the north-eastern state of Assam.
Ms Tamuly told Associated Press she "felt terrible" - because she had managed 60 in an earlier local event.
Mr Ramsay tried a chilli but said "it's too much" and pleaded for water. He is in Assam for a television shoot of a global food series.
San Francisco's food scene is probably the most vibrant in the Americas. Whether they're starting trends or perfecting them, Bay Area chefs have long been among the world's most creative. But amidst all the innovation, there has been one faithful and beloved constant on the city's many tables: sourdough bread.
It's hard to find someone who doesn't like sourdough, but even rarer are people who know what makes it so distinctive. It's often thought to be a flavouring, or perhaps a baking technique, something pioneered in Gold Rush-era San Francisco. In fact, sourdough is simply bread in which the rise comes not from a package of shop-bought yeast, but from wild yeast that is in the air everywhere.
As the original leavened bread – all bread was "sourdough" until Louis Pasteur's germ theory led to packaged yeast – sourdough has a long and storied past. But as a let-them-eat-cake epoch gives way to home pleasures and the local food movement, sourdough is equally suited to our own times. Classic, inexpensive and uniquely local, sourdough is as fascinating to kids and novices as it is to practiced bakers and mad scientists of all ages.
Sourdough is an ancient art, but with just two ingredients its simplicity is as remarkable as its heritage. Flour and water are mixed and left to stand on a windowsill or kitchen counter. In a matter of days wild yeast take over and the mixture begins to froth and bubble with life. If you've ever wondered at the origins of this or that cooking method – "who on Earth thought to try this?" – sourdough is that rare thing, a miraculous culinary phenomenon that won't give you that feeling. With yeast naturally in the air, it's easy to imagine how an afternoon's forgetfulness in ancient Egypt led to the invention of leavened bread.
Apart from the fact that JetBlue Airways will offer passengers free Wi-Fi at its new Terminal 5 at New York JFK airport (as it does in Terminal 6), my favourite part of the new facility is...
The remote food ordering systems in the gate areas! Called re:vive, the touch-screen monitors let travellers order meals that are delivered directly to their gate-side tables.
Re:vive received a tremendous reception at Monday's ribbon-cutting ceremony, with plenty of "oohs and aahs" from the crowd.
Far Eastern Economic Review: he discovery that red wine is good for you has helped the tipple become more popular around Asia. And that has led to some interesting new brand extensions. Contributor Nicholas Frisch discovered Pejoy, a Japanese confection mixing wine and chocolate, in a Taiwanese Seven-Eleven.
Roger O'Neill video takes a look at the Crave Brothers use of methane - from their cow poop - to power the farm and 120 neighboring homes. The farm includes a cheese factory.
Thoughts of summer as Winter continues in Madison. Note the fashionable sushi delivery vehicle, a Smart Car and the smartly dressed pedestrian. Summer in Provence. Much more on Aix-en-Provence here [map]
Phil Corzine is not abandoning Illinois. A longtime soybean farmer in Assumption, a small town east of Springfield, he is firmly loyal to his state - he once ran the Illinois Soybean Checkoff Board, a program in which Illinois farmers promote Illinois soybeans. But the 1,300 acres Corzine planted in 2007 are not in Illinois, or even in the Midwest. They're in central Brazil, in the state of Tocantins, part of a big swath of soy-producing lands that stretch between the Andes and the Atlantic forest and from northern Argentina to the southern flanks of the Amazon basin. Soylandia, as this immense region might be called, is almost entirely unknown to Americans. But it may well be the future of one of the world's most important industries: grain agriculture.Mainly out of curiosity, Corzine visited Brazil in 1998. Like most U.S. soy producers, he'd noted Brazil's rapid rise in the trade - from amateur to global power in the space of a couple of decades. Its scale of operations, however, stunned him. A big farm in Illinois may cover 3,000 acres; spreads in Soylandia are routinely ten times bigger. Conditions there were primitive, Corzine thought, but Soylandia was going to expand in a way that was no longer possible in the U.S. With three partners he raised $1.3 million from more than 90 investors, mostly Midwestern farmers. In Illinois, he says, that kind of money "can't even buy the equipment, let alone the land." In Brazil it was enough for Corzine's group to acquire 3,500 acres in 2004. Since then, the land has almost doubled in value as other American investors clamored to get into Brazilian soy. This year Corzine, now 49, raised another $400,000. "We feel like what's going on is long-term positive," he says with Midwestern understatement.
Taylor Clark ought to know how Starbucks got its roc-like wingspan. That’s the tale by which we want to be spellbound. Clark quotes a 1997 Larry King interview with Howard Schultz, the company’s chairman, where Schultz outlines what should have been the plot of Clark’s book:
“People weren’t drinking coffee. ... So the question is, How could a company create retail stores where coffee was not previously sold, ... charge three times more for it than the local doughnut shop, put Italian names on it that no one can pronounce, and then have six million customers a week coming through the stores?”
Late in August 2006, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta began investigating cases of severe food poisoning reported by health officials in 26 states and one Canadian province. Over the next six weeks, a rare and particularly virulent strain of Escherichia coli 0157:H7 sickened more than 200 people across North America, hospitalizing half of them, some with severe kidney damage, and killing two elderly women and a child. For epidemiologists, the outbreak presented a breakthrough because a DNA-fingerprinting system enabled CDC investigators to trace the source of the infections from clusters of cases nationwide.Bacteria in stool samples of hospitalized patients were genetically matched to pathogens in packaged, "ready to eat" Dole brand spinach that they had recently purchased and consumed. Further, product codes on the bags indicated that the contaminated greens had been processed during one shift on Aug. 15 at a plant in San Juan Bautista then owned and operated by Natural Selection Foods. The company's records showed that the spinach had been harvested from four fields in Monterey and San Benito counties.
Home » About Vino Volo
About Vino VoloAt Vino Volo, our goal is to bring the world of wine tasting and retail wine sales to where it is most convenient for air travelers. Our innovative wine tasting restaurant and retail stores are specifically designed for passengers and our website is available to continue serving them even after they leave the airport.
Vino Volo (derived from Italian for "wine flight") combines a boutique retail store with a stylish tasting lounge and bar, allowing guests to taste wines in a comfortable setting. Vino Volo serves great wines from across the globe by the glass or in tasting flights. All wines poured are also available for purchase by the bottle, allowing travelers to purchase wines to take with them or have shipped to their home (subject to state law).
Our StoresWarm wood tones and comfortable leather lounge chairs welcome travelers into a sophisticated yet approachable post-security retreat in the airport terminal. Every Vino Volo location has an integrated retail area showcasing the wines being poured and offers elegant small plates to pair with the wines. Customers enjoy items such as locally-produced artisan cheeses, dry cured meats, and smoked salmon rolls wrapped around crab meat with crème fraiche. All of Vino Volo's dishes are available for customers to enjoy in the store or packaged to carry with them onto their flight.
7-10 new stores are planned for airports in 2007. We encourage you to check our website periodically for updates on new locations.
About Taste, Inc.Vino Volo is owned and operated by Taste, Inc., founded in 2004 and backed by industry leaders in wine, retail, and the hospitality industries. Vino Volo plans to open several dozen stores in airports across the country in the next five years. Taste, Inc. is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
Taste, Inc. is led by executives with deep industry expertise. Doug Tomlinson, Taste's CEO, has over 16 years of career success in launching and spinning off new businesses. Doug has helped several Fortune 500 clients start new businesses or divisions and has been featured as a cover author in Harvard Business Review. Ellen Bozzo, Director of Finance and Administration, has over 20 years of experience in multi-unit retail finance, including the role of Controller for Peet's Coffee & Tea. Joe LaPanna, Regional General Manager, has over 19 years of experience in high-end restaurant and wine retail management as well as managed the expansion of two major restaurant concepts. Carla Wytmar, Director of Development & Marketing, is a 20-year veteran in the food & wine industry, having worked with Hyatt Hotels Corporation, The Walt Disney World Company and as a consultant to top chefs and wine companies across the country.
Standing behind the Vino Volo team is a group of highly-credentialed investors and advisors with over a century of combined experience in retail, hospitality and wine that include the founder of Ravenswood Winery, the founder of Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker, and the CEO of Jamba Juice, among others. Each member of this group sits on a formal Advisory Board and actively consults to Vino Volo on its development and execution. "Taste, Inc. DBA Vino Volo" is the California-based legal entity behind all Vino Volo operations.
About our TeamVino Volo prides itself on building teams dedicated to customer service and with deep expertise in wine tasting and retail. Customer service is a cornerstone of Vino Volo's strategy, and Vino Volo invests heavily in training its talented staff to make wine approachable. A highly trained team of Wine Associates helps customers explore and enjoy Vino Volo's wines. The company also has a patented tasting framework to ease customers through the wine discovery process. Vino Volo is redefining service in airports, recently ranking #1 in customer service among over 900 airport stores mystery shopped, and is the recipient of the Airport Revenue News 2007 Award for Highest Regard for Customer Service.
Vino Volo offers some of the best opportunities in the wine industry, including:
* Intensive training program on service and wine
* Opportunity to continuously taste and learn about wine
* Annual retreat to a wine region of the world
* Full benefits package to full-time employees
* Competitive compensation packageFor More Information
Visit our stores or Contact Us. We look forward to hearing from you!
Anything that can make airline travel more enjoyable is a welcome development, so beleaguered travelers take heart: Vino Volo…the leader of upscale wine bars at airports. – Wine Enthusiast
THOSE eight daily glasses of water you’re supposed to drink for good health? They will cost you $0.00135 — about 49 cents a year — if you take it from a New York City tap.Or, city officials suggest, you could spend 2,900 times as much, roughly $1,400 yearly, by drinking bottled water. For the extra money, they say, you get the added responsibility for piling on to the nation’s waste heap and encouraging more of the industrial emissions that are heating up the planet.
But trends in American thirst quenching favor the 2,900-fold premium, as the overflowing trash cans of Central Park attest. In fact, bottled water is growing at the expense of every other beverage category except sports drinks. It has overtaken coffee and milk, and it is closing in on beer. Tap, if trends continue, would be next.
Now New York City officials — like the mayors of Minneapolis, Salt Lake City and San Francisco — are campaigning to get people to reverse course and open their faucets instead of their wallets. The city Health Department, mindful of high obesity rates, says water is more healthful than many other, sugar-filled drinks. The city’s Department of Environmental Protection touts its low environmental impact. Both note that it’s practically free (leaving aside those New Yorkers for whom paying extra is a lifestyle choice).
According to studies done on shopping carts, more than 60 percent of them are harboring coliform bacteria (the sort more often associated with public toilet seats). “These bacteria may be coming from raw foods or from children who sit in the carts,” says Chuck Gerba, Ph.D., a microbiologist at University of Arizona. “Just think about the fact that a few minutes ago, some kid’s bottom was where you are now putting your broccoli.” According to studies done by Gerba and his colleagues at University of Arizona, shopping carts had more bacteria than other surfaces they tested—even more than escalators, public phones and public bathrooms. To avoid picking up nasty bacteria, Gerba recommends using sanitizing wipes to clean off cart handles and seats, and to wash your hands after you finish shopping.
Each of the 400 nine-and-a-half-ounce rounds that he produces every day is stamped with the seal of “Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée” or “AOC” — a coveted certification that authenticates the content, method and origin of production of a French agricultural item.But Camembert purists like Mr. Durand are infuriated these days because two of France’s largest dairy producers want to change the rules.
Citing health concerns, the two companies, Lactalis and the Isigny Sainte-Mère cooperative, which together made 90 percent of the traditional raw milk Camembert in Normandy, began earlier this year to treat the milk used for most of those cheeses.
In doing so, they were forced to sacrifice their A.O.C. status, the first time in French history that Camembert producers voluntarily did so.
But they also have asked the French governmental food board to grant that status to their new Camemberts, arguing that the processing they use — either filtering or gently heating the milk — does not sacrifice the traditional taste and character of the cheese.
On the outskirts of Modesto, John Fiscalini, with an assist from cheesemaker Mariano Gonzalez, makes the world's best extra-mature traditional cheddar.Stornetta's - Northern California.You can look it up. In the World Cheese Awards held in London in March, an 18-month-old cheddar from Fiscalini Cheese Co. was awarded the trophy in the category, the first time in the contest's 20 years that a British entry didn't win.
Down the road from Fiscalini Farms, in Hilmar (Merced County), Hilmar Cheese Co. operates the world's largest cheese and whey-products manufacturing facility. The company makes 1.4 million pounds of cheese every day and will make 500 million pounds this year. It produces 1 out of every 8 pounds of cheddar and Monterey Jack made in the nation.
California cheese production is on a roll. The state is about to pass Wisconsin -- America's Dairyland -- as the nation's leading cheesemaker.
A new oven is being billed as the greatest invention since the discovery of fire itself. This high-tech contraption, seemingly a cross between a furnace and a microwave, allegedly can roast a whole rack of lamb in 6 1/2 minutes flat. Which sounds impressive if all you want is chops on the table in less time than you would need to set it.
If you want an almost transcendental experience, though, the only route is low and slow, no special equipment required.
Cooking meat, or seafood, slowly and at extremely low temperatures does more than get the job done. It changes everything for the better — the texture turns more tender, the flavor becomes more concentrated — which is why chefs around the world, such as Ferran Adrià, David Bouley and, closer to home, Govind Armstrong, are so enamored of sous-vide. They seal food in plastic, then poach it at super-low temperatures. But it's astonishingly easy to get the same effect using only the appliance you have, not the one you dream of: Turn the oven to a setting just above what you would use to keep pancakes warm, or on the stove, bring a pot of water to just below a simmer. Insert ribs or sea scallops or whatever.
And in very little time you will be biting into the most true-to-itself pork or shellfish you have ever experienced.
Garlic may be good for a lot of things -- spicing up your diet, for sure -- but it seems to be no good at all at lowering your cholesterol.Another balloon pops. Perhaps the garlic farmers will need a subsidy of some sort to recover?
After conducting one of the most elaborate studies yet on garlic's effect on cardiovascular health, scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine said Monday that they could find no benefit in terms of reduced levels of LDL cholesterol, the "bad" form linked to heart disease.
Christopher Gardner, a Stanford assistant research professor and lead author of the six-month study, said he was disappointed by the results, describing himself as a garlic lover whose office is an hour's drive from Gilroy, the generally acknowledged "garlic capital of the world."
"We really thought this was going to work," he said. "I was going to get the key to the city of Gilroy. I was going to get 'Dr. Garlic' license plates."
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President Bush made a big push for alternative fuels in his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, calling on Americans to reduce gasoline consumption by 20% over 10 years. And as soon as the sun rose on Wednesday, he set out to tour a DuPont facility in Delaware to tout the virtues of "cellulosic ethanol" and propose $2 billion in loans to promote the stuff. For a man who famously hasn't taken a drink for 20 years, that's a considerable intake of alcohol. A bit of sobriety would go a long way in discussing this moonshine of the energy world, however. Cellulosic ethanol--which is derived from plants like switchgrass--will require a big technological breakthrough to have any impact on the fuel supply. That leaves corn- and sugar-based ethanol, which have been around long enough to understand their significant limitations. What we have here is a classic political stampede rooted more in hope and self-interest than science or logic.
The artisans themselves also continue to use the same methods they have always used. At some point after the second world war, as food production across Europe became industrialised, making hams in the traditional labour-intensive manner ceased to be a necessary way of life and became a wonderfully tasty two-finger salute to all the boiled, pink, anaemic, mealy, tasteless hams sitting on supermarket shelves and in refrigerated cabinets.Related: Fra'Mani:
Curing meat celebrates heterogeneity like no other culinary process. McDonald's manages to make hamburgers that taste the same from Cape Town to Novosibirsk; cured meats, with almost identical ingredients from region to region, taste wildly different. Italy produces six denominazione di origine controllata varieties of prosciutto, all of which are made from the whole leg of a pig, salt and perhaps a bit of sugar or spice. But by virtue of the airborne yeasts and moulds native to the particular region, variations in humidity, temperature and air quality, the diet and care of the pigs and the storage of the resulting hams, each of them tastes and feels quite different from the rest. The only other product for human consumption that varies so greatly from one area to another is whisky, which also relies on tradition, fanatical attention to detail and environmental alchemy. Just as Suntory can buy all the disused stills it wants, mimic the chemical and mineral composition of Scottish water and still produce something completely different from a Highland single malt, so a prosciutto from Parma will be softer, pinker and milder than a prosciutto from Modena, and a Lyonnais saucisson will have a tang that a salame Piacentino lacks.
Our mission is crafting salumi in the finest Italian pastoral traditions, using the highest-quality, all-natural pork.
Our pork comes from family farmers committed to the well-being of their animals and their land. The hogs are never given antibiotics, artificial growth hormones, growth-promoting agents or meat by-products. They eat only the finest grains and natural feed. This old-fashioned way to raise hogs produces pork of outstanding quality, which is the essential ingredient in all Fra' Mani salumi.
The Philly cheese steak is serious business. Ordering etiquette must be adhered to. Customers must state their preferred type of cheese and whether onions will or will not (“wit” or “witout”) be added. John Kerry, when campaigning for president in 2004 in Philadelphia, botched it badly, asking for Swiss cheese instead of the more traditional Cheez Whiz, a processed cheese spread. Even provolone or American cheese would have been better. George Bush ordered “Whiz wit” like a local.
With his Dickensian byline, Churchillian brio and Falstaffian appetites, Mr. Apple, who was known as Johnny, was a singular presence at The Times almost from the moment he joined the metropolitan staff in 1963. He remained a colorful figure as new generations of journalists around him grew more pallid, and his encyclopedic knowledge, grace of expression — and above all his expense account — were the envy of his competitors, imitators and peers.Apple's cuisine articles over the years were a treat - particularly when he sampled things I'd never touch. Apple visited Sheboygan in 2002 to write about brats.
Mr. Apple enjoyed a career like no other in the modern era of The Times. He was the paper’s bureau chief in Albany, Lagos, Nairobi, Saigon, Moscow, London and Washington. He covered 10 presidential elections and more than 20 national nominating conventions. He led The Times’s coverage of the Vietnam war for two and a half years in the 1960’s and of the Persian Gulf war a generation later, chronicling the Iranian revolution in between.
A hearing in the House Agricultural Committee last week highlighted everything wrong with U.S. farm policy. In preparation for writing the 2007 farm bill, House members heard from 17 witnesses representing every possible farm lobby —from cotton to corn, sugar to potatoes, rice to eggs, and sorghum — but not a single spokesperson for the interests of the American people as a whole.
Fewer than two percent of Americans farm for a living, and only a third of those farmers receive subsidies. Yet the interests of subsidized and protected farmers dominate every farm bill discussion in Washington. The broader interests of the United States and the other 98 percent of Americans are systematically ignored.
The biggest losers from U.S. farm policy are taxpayers. From 2000 to 2005, Congress spent an average of $17 billion a year in direct payments to farmers. That's real money, even in Washington. Most of those payments did not go to small "family farms," but to large operations and agribusinesses, including some Fortune 500 companies. Indeed, according to the Environmental Working Group, the top 10 percent of recipients collected two-thirds of the payments on offer, and the top 5 percent collected 55 percent.
Trade barriers and domestic price supports also force tens of millions of families to pay higher food prices. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, U.S. farm programs transferred an average of $10.5 billion a year from U.S. food consumers to producers from 2003 through 2005. That amounts to an annual food tax of $140 for a family of four — a regressive tax that falls most heavily on poor families that spend a larger share of their budgets on foo
When Peter and Sarah Botham recently installed a new 3,200-gallon tank at their rural winery, they stepped back, looked at it and realized that it holds more wine than was made in the first year of the business.
"It's hard to keep up," said Peter, as he forked grapes into a device that separates the fruit from the vines. "I'm really thrilled about the potential, but it's a little scary."
He was talking about a new agreement the couple signed with Badger Liquor Co., a large distributor that will put Botham wines into stores around the state soon, including the Copps and Pick 'n Save supermarkets."It's hard to keep up," said Peter, as he forked grapes into a device that separates the fruit from the vines. "I'm really thrilled about the potential, but it's a little scary."
He was talking about a new agreement the couple signed with Badger Liquor Co., a large distributor that will put Botham wines into stores around the state soon, including the Copps and Pick 'n Save supermarkets.
Cesar and 34 other California Olive Ranch field hands each seek to plant between 1,200 and 1,500 trees during a seven-hour workday, a tough quota. "You get used to it,'' he said.
California Olive Ranch is already the largest orchard for olive oil production in the United States, and the largest milling facility, producing 25 percent of California's olive oil. Now it is more than doubling in size with the planting of 500,000 olive trees on its 883-acre site in Glenn County
Mickies Dairy Bar is a Madison Institution. My eldest tells me that they have the best shakes around. One wonders, with the growing redevelopment environment, or, perhaps put another way - the insatiable appetite for a larger tax base - how long places like this will survive.
"We don't make widgets," Steve Parrish likes to say, and that acknowledgment strikes me as a good place to start this story. Parrish, whose title is senior vice president for corporate affairs, is a highly paid executive at Altria Group, a New York-based holding company that is the 10th-most-profitable corporation in America. If the name of the company doesn't strike you as terribly familiar, that's because a few years ago the company changed its name. It used to be called Philip Morris, a name that still attaches to two of its holdings, Philip Morris USA and Philip Morris International. (Altria also owns Kraft Foods.) So, yes, let's stipulate right up front: Steve Parrish represents the country's leading tobacco company, whose best-known brand, Marlboro, is so dominant it accounts for 4 out of every 10 cigarettes smoked in the United States. Last year, Philip Morris USA alone made $4.6 billion in profits. What was it that Warren Buffett once said? "You make a product for a penny, you sell it for a dollar and you sell it to addicts." They most certainly don't make widgets.Kraft is parent of Madison based Oscar Meyer Foods.
When a farmer walked into Whole Foods wanting to sell a huge sack of morels, store employee Heather Hilleren watched a futile effort unfold.
The farmer didn't have vendor credentials, and it would have taken two weeks to get them. By then, the freshly picked morels would have spoiled.
Flame, or at least a suggestion of grilling or broiling, matters. That's a principal reason a Whopper bested a Big Mac, cooked on a griddle. It's why the new roster of one-third-pound charbroiled Thickburgers at Hardee's tasted better than the steamed slivers at Krystal, a White Castle analogue in the South.Bruni last covered the 2004 Bush campaign. Perhaps there's a lesson in this.
Buns matter. The large, doughy one on the classic Whataburger created ample space for three slices of tomato and a sense of heft that felt good in the hands, good in the mouth. The generously buttered, crisply toasted ones on Culver's burgers, called butterburgers in honor of those buns, exalted whatever they encased, which included seared, loosely packed patties with more charred edges and, as a result, more flavor.
To the extent that's possible, try to find foods that are locally produced, seasonal, fresh and flavorful! If they are organically grown—that's even better! If it's not local, that's okay. It's a chance to celebrate the farmers from other regions or countries. If your having a potluck dinner, remember to ask your guests to do their best to find out about the origins of food they bring to share and how it was grown.via Kristian Knutsen.
Cheese championships are hardly a spectator sport, but cheese-lovers will have a unique opportunity to observe the 2006 World Championship Cheese Contest right here in Madison. Free and open to the public, the contest is slated to take place at the Monona Terrace Convention Center on March 21-23.
While UW-Madison scientists don't usually compete, they do influence the contest's outcome. This year, for instance, Mark Johnson, a scientist at UW-Madison's Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research will join an international panel of judges that will include cheese connoisseurs from France, Japan, the Netherlands and South Africa. Another judge on the 15-member panel will be a Puerto Rican, Leyda Ponce de Leon, who earned a doctoral degree in food science at UW-Madison in 1999.
Every three weeks, a FedEx flight departs Zaventem Airport on the edge of Brussels carrying Michel Boey's products to the United States. Call it the chocolate bomber.
"It is exactly as in wine," he said, receiving a visitor amid heavy aromas of dark chocolate. "Once, wine was wine. Now we appreciate smaller quantities, but the quality is better."
Pasta and oysters and rich Gorgonzola,
Coffee and doughnuts and nutty granola,
Bluegill and pizza and hot chicken wings,
These are a few of my favorite things.
It has been a pretty good year in the culinary trenches. Some good new restaurants have opened, a few have closed, and I didn't get food poisoning once. Here are a few of my fonder memories:
Love it or hate it, cabbage is getting plenty of press for its potential to fight illness ranging from cancer to bird flu. It all began a few months ago when South Korean scientists noticed that feeding the spicy cabbage dish kimchee to roughly a dozen chickens infected with bird flu caused most of them to recover. Restaurants selling kimchee ran out quickly and the idea that cabbage cures started to spread.
In The New American Cooking, cookbook author Joan Nathan showcases some of the more unusual items that are turning up on America's tables -- plantains, pomegranates and other once-obscure ingredients.
A longtime food favorite in the southern United States, the delicious deep-fried turkey has quickly grown in popularity thanks to celebrity chefs such as Martha Stewart and Emeril Lagasse. While some people rave about this tasty creation, Underwriters Laboratories Inc.'s (UL) safety experts are concerned that backyard chefs may be sacrificing safety for good taste.
"We're worried by the increasing reports of fires related with turkey fryer use," says John Drengenberg, UL consumer affairs manager. "Based on our test findings, the fryers used to produce those great-tasting birds are not worth the risks. And, as a result of these tests, UL has decided not to certify any turkey fryers with our trusted UL Mark."
e were a group of seven, including two vegetarians and a 15 or 16-pound turkey. The veggies brought their first Tofurky, with some of the trimmings. Their report: Overall not bad, but it gets cold quickly, which makes it less palatable. They were hoping to get their hands on a Celebration Roast, but they were nowhere to be found.
I was home by eight, just in time for “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.” The wind was howling that not even a blanket or a few glasses of red wine could warm me up.
The Madison Food & Wine Show was held this weekend at the Alliant Energy Center. A first time visitor, I found the event enjoyable. Unsurprisingly, there was no shortage of cheese. One of the more interesting offerings was Swiss Valley's fondue. Whole Foods had an elaborate set of tastings, from Olives to cheeses. The surprise of the show? a knife sharpening service. Photos here. Gail Ambrosius (Dark Chocolate) was also a worthwhile stop. Website with links to vendor's site.
Yes … that’s David Ansel, the Soup Peddler, in a lengthy spread from November’s issue of FOOD AND WINE magazine. (Nice to see the Law of Remarkability in action.)
This autumn we find the Soup Peddler in the beginning throes of his fifth soup season. But this year, many things have changed for Brand Autopsy’s favorite jumboSHRIMP Marketing business. Gone is the infamous delivery bike in favor of deliveries by refrigerated trucks. And gone is the single-minded soup menu. In its place is an expanded menu including entrees because as David said in an email to his Soupies,
The term Trappist describes the source of these ales rather than a particular brewing style. In fact, the beers vary considerably. Some are dark as chocolate stout and some are amber-gold, bordering on orange. They can be intensely sweet or dry enough to pucker. Sometimes they can be both, reaching a full, rich, complex sweetness as you turn the ale over in your mouth, yet turning dry and refreshing as you swallow. They can all be wonderfully fragrant, with aromas of spices, flowers and fruit, and they are always strong, ranging in alcohol from about 7 percent to 12 percent, as opposed to the 5 percent of a typical lager.I've always enjoyed an occasional Chimay, available at Steve's Liquor among other local stores.
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Atkins Nutritionals, the New York company founded in 1989 by the late Dr. Robert Atkins to cash in on his low-carb diet, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday. The company cited weakening demand for its products. Ironically, the Atkins diet–affectionately known by some as the “cheeseburger-hold-the-bun” diet–had been blamed in recent years for earnings shortfalls in companies ranging from Krispy Kreme Doughnuts (nyse: KKD - news - people ) to Kraft Foods (nyse: KFT - news - people ) to Interstate Bakeries (the maker of Wonder Bread and Twinkies).
Last month's discovery of the second U.S. case of the brain-wasting disease has renewed calls for the quick implementation of a trace-back system.
The National Cattlemen's Beef Association said the database would enable federal and state animal health officials to track down herdmates of an infected animal within 48 hours of an outbreak.
Dennis Getto adds five new restaurants to his annual top 30 list.
 | Odessa Piper, who recently sold her L'etoile Restaurant, has been seen on recent Saturday Mornings (Farmer's Market) at the Cafe. I told here that I thought she was moving on. She mentioned that she would be cooking more often, which, I think, is good for Madison. |
Many years ago, one mustard dominated the supermarket shelves: French's. It came in a plastic bottle. People used it on hot dogs and bologna. It was a yellow mustard, made from ground white mustard seed with turmeric and vinegar, which gave it a mild, slightly metallic taste. If you looked hard in the grocery store, you might find something in the specialty-foods section called Grey Poupon, which was Dijon mustard, made from the more pungent brown mustard seed. In the early seventies, Grey Poupon was no more than a hundred-thousand-dollar-a-year business. Few people knew what it was or how it tasted, or had any particular desire for an alternative to French's or the runner-up, Gulden's. Then one day the Heublein Company, which owned Grey Poupon, discovered something remarkable: if you gave people a mustard taste test, a significant number had only to try Grey Poupon once to switch from yellow mustard. In the food world that almost never happens; even among the most successful food brands, only about one in a hundred have that kind of conversion rate. Grey Poupon was magic.
Two huge consumer brands have been busy cloning themselves.
Procter & Gamble Co. rolled out a cold-water version of its blockbuster Tide laundry detergent earlier this month. Coca-Cola Co., meanwhile, unveiled plans to start selling a seventh version of Diet Coke, this time sweetened with Splenda instead of aspartame
Our wonderful farmer's market supports Robin Good's statement that we should "Buy local and Live Free". Good provides a useful illustration:
Its gotten to the point where much of our nourishment depends on a handful of giants.Yesterday's winter farmer's market included a big stack of tomatoes, potatoes, cheeses, honey, spinach, apples, eggs, pork and beef.And theyre shipping foods an average of 1500 miles to reach your plate, a practice that strains anyones notion of fresh.
But a quiet revolution is in the air, and we the eaters hold the power for change.
The typical Tom (tomato) is exhausted by the time he gets to market.
1500 miles from field to fork thats the trek made by the average fruit or vegetable these days. Because of the need to hold up over distances, our foods are bred, not for taste but for transport their ability to handle the long haul. And what do we eaters get? Tired tomatoes
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Kim O'Donnell discusses a variety of Thanksgiving recipes (including vegetarian) in these easy to use videos.
Susan Stamberg presents several chocolate recipes for our review:
Stamberg talks to chocolate expert Fran Bigelow, author of the recipe book Pure Chocolate, about all things chocolate -- chocolate sauce ("the magic of chocolate and cream"), chocolate espresso sauce (chocolate and coffee, a natural combination), and personalized chocolate chips (pick your favorite chocolate bar and cut it into small chunks).Then, Stamberg pulls the conversation toward that certain holiday recipe that's been a Thanksgiving tradition at NPR for more than three decades. (You know, the one that "sounds terrible but tastes terrific." For details, click the link under Once More with Relish... at the top of this page.)
Andrew Gauthier remembers his 1993 Thanksgiving, along with some other food options of the day (Crystal Pepsi, Pizza Hut Big Foot Pizza). He begins: Overall, 1993 was an exceptional year to be a fat kid......
John Moore sips and summarizes Pepsi Spice, proving once again that it is rare for large organizations to truly create new products (rather than simply repackaging an existing one). My guess is that most of the time and money went into packaging/marketing/ad agencies rather than the product. The entire soft drink process is fascinating....
I made my weekly Harmony Valley Farm stop at this morning's Dane County Farmer's Market. There was, as always, lots of action, despite the rain. L'etoile's Odessa Piper was doing some shopping and visiting with Richard. A photographer was also quite busy taking digital images of them for an upcoming article on fall foods in Vermont's Art of Eating quarterly magazine, the "must have foodie quarterly". I snapped a few photos. Click on a photo to view this morning's pictures.
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Our Local Dane County Farmer's Market continues to be in the news. It is now recognized as the largest in the nation by the North American Farmers' Direct Marketing Association, and still growing, according to R.W. Apple, who visited recently:
Everything sold must be grown in Wisconsin, and the sellers must actually have participated in the production of the goods. On this glorious late-summer day, with the sky a soaring canopy of robin's-egg blue, more than 300 farmers from 30-odd counties came to town, many of them driving through the night to get here by 6 a.m. (By comparison the Union Square Greenmarket in New York has only about 70 farmers in peak season, but it is part of a network of 47 such markets in 33 locations in the city.)There's more local flavor:The last of summer's bounty was mingled on the stands with fall fruits and the first tender root crops of winter. The growers said it had been a wet summer, bad for tomatoes, but you couldn't tell from those offered by Thomas M. Eugster of Old Stage Vegetable Gardens in Brooklyn, Wis., south of Madison. The tiny yellow Sungolds and the scarlet Goliaths, big as softballs, could not possibly have been sweeter.
"Look at them," said a shopper to his wife. "With those gigantic T's you could make a BLT without any B or L."
But the king of this particular mountain is Richard deWilde of the all-organic Harmony Valley Farms near the pretty town of Viroqua, who loads a 20-foot truck every Friday night and leaves for Madison at 2:30 Saturday morning, arriving about 5:30. On a beautiful day, he might sell $6,000 worth of vegetables or more, but cold, rainy weather cuts that in half, he said, "and the food pantry" a charity "loves us."A bearded, keen-eyed, third-generation farmer whose grandfather was a buddy of J. I. Rodale, the pioneer organic farmer and publisher, Mr. deWilde grew up in South Dakota. He and his partner, Linda Halley, farm 90 acres planted in more than 60 kinds of vegetables with the help of their two sons and a number of hired hands. The farmers' market, he said, is his "show window," which has made the operation's name in the region and has enabled him to sell to restaurants in Madison, Chicago and Minneapolis, and also to run a Community Supported Agriculture plan, in which 450 local households pay for weekly delivery of three-quarter bushel boxes of assorted produce.
Harmony Valley Farms has even broken into big-time mainstream commerce. Mr. deWilde sells several cool-climate specialties burdock, celeriac, daikon and three kinds of turnips to Albert's Organics, a wholesaler in Bridgeport, N.J., and a broader range of vegetables to 18 Whole Food supermarkets in the Chicago area.
"Some of my friends at the farmers' market complain about that," he said, "but they help to keep me going. They pay on time, and above market price."
Dave mentioned Madison's wonderful farmer's market today. Here are some of my favorite photos.
Katie Fehrenbacher on Japan's interesting cell phone accessible food safety database:
heyve already got a functioning beef tracking and data systemby which the consumer can locate their steaks species, sex, stats, place-of-birth, farmer in charge, and location of the farm, all from a ID number on thebeef packagingvia any Internet connection.Now the fish business is thenext food item to get the treatment and DoCoMo Sentsu (subsidiary of NTTDoCoMo) partnered with the Marine Fishery Systems Association to create a 2D barcode tracking system for all fish
Tyler Cowen's interesting talk before the Institute of Culinary Professionals:
If you look at Mexican food in this country, a lot of it, of course, is not eaten by Mexicans at all. It is eaten by Americans. But consider the Mexican food eaten by Mexicans. Well, who are the Mexicans, for the most part, who are currently coming to America? They tend to be fairly young, and they tend to be male. So take a group of young men, say ages eighteen to twenty-five, put them together in large numbers and let them eat. What do you get? Well, some of it is quite excellent, some of it is not so great, but you get something very different than the native cuisine. Let's say you performed this thought experiment with France. Take a million Frenchmen, male, ages eighteen to twenty five, bring them to the United States, let them loose, have them eat. You are not going to get classic French cuisine.Via Marginal Revolution.
Scott Simon remembers Julia Child (Audio)
D.C. resident Jacques Tiziou has a taste for cicadas. Watch him as he collects and prepares the young, tender, winged insects for brunch
Bija Gutoff writes about the technology behind San Francisco's Hippy Gourmet:
This is not your typical celebrity-kitchen show. In fact, its not typical TV at all. The Hippy Gourmet eschews the frantic pace of most TV programs and doesnt measure its success by ratings alone. We dont do three-second edits like MTV, Ehrlich says. The Hippy Gourmet creates a new tone for TV, one thats about relaxing and seeing what good can be done in the world. Beside preparing meals, the show promotes such causes as sustainable agriculture, social welfare and environmental activism.Its a philosophy that has earned The Hippy Gourmet millions of fans on the West Coast. Now in its third season, the 30-minute show broadcasts via 24 public access cable stations from the Bay Area to Lake Tahoe. And, through talks underway with PBS and The Food Network, Ehrlich expects to soon boost his audience nationwide. He credits the shows high visibility to the production standards enabled by his Apple tools. We could not have created this show without the Mac and Final Cut Pro, states Ehrlich.
Fascinating series on the making of California wine:
"Over two years, Chronicle writer Mike Weiss documented the making of the 2002 Ferrari-Carano Fum Blanc. The glory of spring in a verdant vineyard. A couple who risk a fortune on a dream. The subtle science of nurturing flavor from soil. The tale of migrant workers from a Mexican village. This serial saga will continue Monday through Friday in Datebook. The story opens today in a New York restaurant, where the first bottle of the vintage is to be finally uncorked."Photo Gallery
Julie Leung . This book is a fascinating look at the origins & cultural implications of the fast food business.
Fast Food Nation dates to 2001, but is well worth reading today.
In 1979, Christopher Kimball was a gangly 28-year-old getting ready to launch a food magazine out of the garage of his Weston, Conn., home. He didn't have much experience at publishing; he didn't have much training as a cook. What he did have was $110,000 raised from investors, a stubborn dedication to home cooking and a shrewd business sense that his ideas would eventually pay off.
Twenty five years later, they have. Kimball, who at 53 is still gangly and stubborn, heads up a publishing empire that racked up $25 million in sales last year, thanks to its flagship, advertising-free, magazine Cook's Illustrated, a bimonthly that has turned obsessive recipe testing into a gold mine. In the past five years, the magazine has expanded its success with a spinoff public television show, "America's Test Kitchen," plus two subscription Web sites (cooksillustrated.com and americastestkitchen.com), and a steady flow of cookbooks. Washington Post
Valentine's Day Cake @ La Brioche. It's come to this.....
A pair of Californian entrepreneurs want to turn an empty lake bed just east of town into a non-polluting dairy farm for 90,000 cows, and to convert the cows' prodigious produce of manure and flatulence into a renewable form of energy. This cowtown, which will cover 1,900 acres, is the brainchild of William Buck Johns and Henry Orlosky.
See also the Harper Lake Energy Project.
