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May 2011
Texas Baker’s Bill is sitting on Rick Perry’s desk, but will he sign it?
The so-called Texas Baker’s Bill, which would allow certain low-risk baked goods and jams and jellies to be made in homes instead of commercial kitchens and sold directly to consumers, is one of the highest profile food bills of this year’s legislative session.
And as of the last day of May, it’s sitting on Governor Rick Perry’s desk awaiting his signature.
As long as he doesn’t veto it before now and June 19, SB 81 will become law.
Robb Walsh, who has been lobbying pretty hard for its passage in the Houston Press, has a good round-up of the effort over on his blog, but the Texas Baker’s Bill fan page on Facebook has the most up-to-date details of what’s happening with the legislation.
The Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance has been pushing for the passage of several other food-related bills, including one about raw milk. You can find a thorough summary of the bills’ progress (or lack thereof) on its blog.
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IACP Highlight: Mollie Katzen and walnut marshmallows
Katzen is here this week with the California Walnut Board, which will have a booth at the culinary expo on Friday, and she’s the special guest of a walnut-themed media dinner at Olivia on Friday night.
I don’t usually write about special dinners at restaurant, but the recipes for Olivia chef James Holmes’ walnut marshmallows and walnut brittle, which he’s serving for the dinner with Katzen on Friday, was just too good to pass up. (Need a primer on homemade marshmallows? Check out this story from Memorial Day last year.)
If making homemade marshmallows seems out of your culinary reach, check out Katzen’s (much easier) recipe for
walnut butter.
Walnut Marshmallows
1/2 cup cold water
14 sheets gelatin or 3 packages gelatin
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup corn syrup
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup ground toasted walnuts (pulsed into a powder in a blender)
2 egg whites
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 cup powdered sugar, for dusting
Lightly oil a 13- x 9- inch dish or pan. Pour the water into the bowl of an electric mixer and sprinkle over the gelatin powder to bloom the gelatin.
In a small pan, slowly bring the sugar, corn syrup, hot water and salt to a boil, stirring. When the sugar has dissolved stop stirring and cook until it reaches 240 degrees on a sugar thermometer. Immediately drizzle the hot sugar mixture down the side of the bowl over the gelatin as the mixer is running. Beat continuously on high speed until white, thick and tripled in size. Fold in the walnuts. In a second bowl, beat the egg whites to soft peaks; fold into the gelatin mixture with the vanilla. Pour into the lightly oiled dish or pan.
Sift powder sugar over the surface of the marshmallow and chill until set. Unmold and cut into any size rectangles or cubes, a pizza wheel works well for this. In order to get the suggest 102 servings, cut the marshmallows into cubes 3/4-1 1/2 inches. Brulee marshmallow with a torch for a “campfire” effect.
Spicy Walnut Brittle
2 cups sugar
1 cup water
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups lightly toasted walnuts, roughly broken into pieces
4 Tbsp. butter
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. cayenne
Lightly oil a quarter sheet pan with canola oil. Slowly bring the sugar, water and salt to a boil; stirring. When the sugar has dissolved, stop stirring and cook until the mixture changes to an amber color, but is not smoking; you can swirl the mixture occasionally but do not stir. When the sugar reaches the desired color, immediately add the walnuts, butter, vanilla and cayenne; stir to combine. Working quickly, pour the nut mixture onto the oiled sheet tray. Spread to about a 1/4- inch thick; allow to cool until very firm. Break into bite size pieces to serve.
— Taff Mayberry, pastry chef at Olivia
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IACP Highlight: Toni Tipton-Martin and Peace Through Pie
A year ago, when Toni Tipton-Martin signed on as the host committee chair for this week’s International Association of Culinary Professionals conference, she knew it would be an exhausting year.
In addition to the numerous other projects she works on, she’d be in charge of creating more than a dozens events that showcase the best of the Central Texas culinary scene.
But to lump all of Toni’s work into a “numerous other projects” just doesn’t do her justice. Bob Jensen, the University of Texas journalism professor and author, has written a profile of Toni that captures the tireless spirit of the culinary writer, mentor and historian.
It’s a big week for Toni. Not only is her year of IACP planning coming to a head, she’s working with White House pastry chef Bill Yosses at an IACP session at UT Elementary School tomorrow and hosting a Peace Through Pie Fundraising Social at 4 p.m. on Saturday.
The event, which has a suggested donation of $25 and is just one of many IACP off-shoot activities, will help kick off the city’s Juneteenth celebration, which marks the date (June 19) in 1869 when African American slaves in Texas learned they were free. (Toni Tipton-Martin and Luanne Stovall have been hosting this pie social for the past few years in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which is where the top photo was taken.)
The social will be hosted at, and is a fundraiser for, the 115-year-old Limerick-Frazier House, 810 E. 13th St., which Toni is restoring as part of her SANDE Youth Project.
Pie will certainly be a big part of the event, but so will an art exhibit that aims to help tell the forgotten stories of African American cooks in Central Texas using 8- to 10-foot-tall photographs from the Austin History Center.
Earlier this year, Tipton-Martin and Stovall collaborated on an art project as part of Houston’s Project Row Houses that featured large portraits of African American cooks, whose stories Toni is reviving in her blog, The Jemima Code.
The Austin exhibit will be up through the Juneteenth festivities the weekend of June 19.
Photo by Deborah Cannon for the Austin American-Statesman, middle photos from The Jemima Code.
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How to take advantage of International Association of Culinary Professionals conference even without a badge
It doesn’t quite have the buzz of the South by Southwest festivals, but the International Association of Culinary Professionals is hosting its annual conference in Austin next week.
I can hear it now: “IACP, who?”
You might not have heard of IACP before, but it’s the world’s largest association of culinary professionals, and it’s kind of a big deal that the group’s 33rd annual conference will be held in Austin starting Wednesday.
This is the first time the conference has been held in Austin, and it will bring hundreds of the most influential food writers, chefs, cookbook authors and publishers, magazine editors, cooking instructors, publicists and others involved in the culinary world to our fine city.
(It’s not too late to sign up for the conference. Starting at 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday, you can register at the Hilton Austin, 500 E. 4th St. Four-day passes cost $745 for members, $930 for non-members, and day passes start at $225 for members and $410 for nonmembers. You can also live stream parts of the conference for less than $100.)
I’ll be blogging from some of the most interesting panels and workshops next week, but there are lots of opportunities for Austinites to get in on the IACP action without stepping foot in the Hilton.
IACP is hosting a handful of events that are open to the public, and a number of unofficial parties, dinners and book-signings have popped up, too.
First up, the official IACP events that are open to the public. (You can find details about these events and buy tickets here):
- The easiest — and least expensive — point of entry for everyday Austinites who love food is the culinary book fair, which takes place from 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Friday, June 3. More than 60 authors, including Diana Kennedy and Ellie Krieger, will be talking with fans and signing books at the culinary book fair, which costs $10 in advance or $15 at the door.
- At 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Uchi chef Tyson Cole will be cooking at Hotel Saint Cecilia in South Austin with fellow James Beard winner Brad Farmerie of Public in New York and Holly Smith, who owns Cafe Juanita in the Seattle area and competed on the Food Network’s “Next Iron Chef.” The “Three Hot Chefs” event costs $135 and proceeds go to the Culinary Trust, which provides scholarships and grants to chefs and other members of the culinary community.
- Foodways Texas and IACP have teamed up with local chefs for Up In Smoke, an event that starts at 6 p.m. on Saturday, June 4, at Boggy Creek Farm, 3414 Lyons Road, that celebrates the many Texas styles of barbecue with meat from El Naranjo, John Mueller Barbecue, Hoover’s Cooking, Lambert’s Downtown Barbecue and Dai Due. Tickets, which include beer, cocktails and wine, cost $65, with proceeds going to the Sustainable Food Center.
- Anyone who works in the culinary industry is invited to attend a cooking demonstration at 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday at the Hilton on the scientific approach to cooking called molecular gastronomy. The session, called Global Roots of Modernist Cuisine, costs $45 in advance, $50 at the door.
- Culinary professionals who aren’t attending the full conference can also a buy tickets to the culinary expo from 12:30 to 4:30 on Friday, June 3, which will feature chefs and exhibitors demonstrating and explaining the latest techniques, trends and innovations in the industry. Tickets cost $35 in advance, $40 at the door.
- A year ago, Michelle Obama launched her Chefs Move to Schools initiative with a star-studded rally at the White House (above). To celebrate a year of pairing chefs with schools to help fight childhood obesity, anyone with a chef’s coat or an interest in the cause is invited to join Food Network star Ellie Krieger and White House pastry chef and cookbook author Bill Yosses at 5 p.m. on Wednesday on the south steps of the capitol for a Chefs Moves to Schools rally.
- Persuading Americans to waste less food has been a passion of Boston-based author Jonathan Bloom for more than five years, and last year, he published, “American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and what we can do about it)” (Da Capo Lifelong Books, $26). Bloom is hosting a potluck and book talk at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday at Rain Lily Farm, 914 Shady Lane. Email customerservice@farmhousedelivery.com to reserve a seat ($25 per person, BYOB).
- To celebrate the release of her new iPad application “Baking with Dorie,” bestselling cookbook author Dorie Greenspan is bringing Cookie Bar, a New York pop-up cookie shop that is a joint effort with her son, to Brush Square Park at 10 a.m. on Friday, June 3. She and her team will be giving away sablés, her signature French vanilla shortbread cookies, out of an Airstream trailer until they run out.
- Five Texas chefs will be competing to see who can best pair Texas wines with Texas food in the first Edible Texas Wine Food Match at 7 p.m. on Friday, June 3 at the AT&T Executive Education & Conference Center. Judges include chefs Jacques Pépin and John Besh. Proceeds from tickets ($100) will benefit the Center for Wine and the Culinary Arts in Fredericksburg.
- Austin food blogger Jennie Chen is hosting her third Cupcake Smackdown from 5 to 8 p.m. at Hops and Grain Brewery, 507 Calles Street. Admission is free, but proceeds from cupcake and other food and drink sales will benefit the Texas Craft Brewers Guild and Keep Austin Dog Friendly.
- Toni Tipton-Martin, in addition to her duties as the host chairwoman for the conference, has organized a Peace Through Pie Fundraising Social at 4 p.m. on Saturday, June 4. The event, which has a suggested donation of $25, will help kick off the city’s Juneteenth celebration, which marks the date (June 19) in 1869 when African American slaves in Texas learned they were free. The social will be hosted at, and is a fundraiser for, the 115-year-old Limerick-Frazier House, 810 E. 13th St., which Tipton-Martin is restoring as part of the SANDE Youth Project.
- Hank Shaw, the California-based and James Beard-nominated blogger behind Hunter, Angler, Gardener, Cook, has recently published his first book, “Hunt, Gather, Cook” (Rodale, $25.99). Shaw will be hosting a book signing and dinner at 6 p.m. on Sunday, June 5, at FINO, 2905 San Gabriel Street, that will feature dishes inspired by the book from chef Jason Donoho. The dinner costs $50 per person, $80 with wine. Make reservations by calling 474-2905.
Associated Press photo.
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Kristen Skelly: What’s in Your Fridge Friday?
We’ve really lucked out with neighbors in our six years in Austin.
Kristen Skelly is one of them. She moved in our ‘hood last year when she had a baby belly as big as me. Her son was born just a few weeks after mine, and it’s been nice to have a fellow new mama nearby. We can get the kids together for some baby wrestling and fawning over how cute the other’s baby is. It’s what moms do. (Did I mention she’s a massage therapist, too? Everyone needs a neighbor with a massage table.)
Kristen used to work as a national park service employee and science teacher, and she just started Austin Outdoor Explorers, where she leads hands-on science adventures and nature walks for birthday parties, home-schoolers or just about any other group of curious youngsters who want to learn about the environment.
She’s always adding turtles, fish, snails and frogs to the cleanest aquariums I’ve ever seen and didn’t bat an eye when I asked if I could feature her fridge for today’s Fridge Friday.
What three things are always in your fridge? Diet Dr Pepper ( I refuse to drink Dr Pepper Ten [the company’s new low-calorie soda] because the ad campaign is so offensive to women), Swiss cheese and lettuce (spring mix)
What’s your favorite condiment? Gulden’s spicy mustard. I have three bottles of them on hand at any time.
What’s your go-to late night snack? Triscuits and Laughing Cow cheese.
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More on veggie burgers: The Hot Dang and Austin’s best bun buy
I’m not the only meat lover who enjoys a good veggie burger from time to time, and I’m certainly not the only one who occasionally likes them topped with bacon and cheese.
I had a lot of fun making veggie burgers for Wednesday’s story, including trying to figure out how to recreate my own version of two of my favorite restaurant veggie burgers (Bouldin Creek’s famous meat-free burger and the magenta beet burger from 24 Diner). (Mike Sutter has a few more veggie burgers to recommend.)
It’s a good thing I didn’t try Martha Pincoffs’ The Hot Dang burger, above, until after I’d made my own or else I might not have even attempted them in the first place.
The Austin food blogger and cooking instructor launched her all-grain burger recently, and Hat Creek Burger Co. has already signed on to serve them at the Burnet Road location. (You can also buy them through Farmhouse Delivery and at the Sustainable Food Center’s Sunset Valley Farmers’ Market starting this Saturday.)
By eschewing the soy-based texturized vegetable protein that makes most commercially available veggie burgers taste like thawed hockey pucks, Pincoffs’ all-grain burgers are made with organic brown rice, pearled barley, wild rice, oats and cashews.
The patties, which cost about $8.50 for a four-pack, might seem a little pricey at first glance, but they are unlike any veggie burger I’ve had. Both filling and nutritionally dense, they crisp up nicely when fried in a pan with a little bit of oil or butter, and each grain of wild rice or whole cashew adds the most wonderful crunch. The Hot Dang does what a veggie burger is supposed to do: Make you forget you are eating a burger replacement.
So now that I’ve let you in on my newest favorite locally made artisan product, here’s another secret I’m letting out of the bag: Hopdoddy doesn’t just sell delicious meat and meat-free burgers.
The South Congress burger bar’s best kept secret is that it sells an eight-pack of day-old buns (both multigrain and brioche) for $2. Two dollars, folks. That’s cheaper than what far inferior buns cost at the grocery store.
Stick ‘em in the freezer and pull them out when you need them. You can thank me later.
Photos by Rodolfo Gonzalez for the Austin American-Statesman (top) and Rodney Bursiel.
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Tips for safely packing a lunchbox
In a story in Wednesday’s paper, food editor (and Mama Drama blogger) Tara Trower wrote about her quest to find decent, reusable lunchboxes for her oldest daughter, who will start pre-K classes in the fall.
Tara included a few recipes suitable for kids’ lunches, but no matter how much they enjoy that ham or tuna sandwich, no one will be happy if they get sick from eating it. Here are some food safety tips for lunches from the U.S. Department of Agriculture:
Lunchbox safety
When it comes to food, the danger zone for bacteria is between 40 and 140 degrees. So, perishable food transported without an ice source won’t stay safe long — especially when Texas temperatures soar close to 100 degrees.
- It’s fine to prepare the food the night before and store the packed lunch in the refrigerator. Freezing sandwiches helps them stay cold. However, for best quality, don’t freeze sandwiches containing mayonnaise, lettuce or tomatoes. Add these later.
- Insulated, soft-sided lunchboxes or bags are best for keeping food cold, but metal or plastic lunchboxes and paper bags can also be used. If using paper lunch bags, create layers by double-bagging to help insulate the food. An ice source should be packed with perishable food in any type of lunch bag or box.
- Prepare cooked food such as turkey, ham, chicken and vegetable or pasta salads ahead of time to allow for thorough chilling in the refrigerator. Divide large amounts of food into shallow containers for fast chilling and easier use. Keep cooked food refrigerated until time to leave home.
- To keep lunches cold away from home, include a small frozen gel pack or frozen juice box. Of course, if there’s a refrigerator available, store perishable items there upon arrival.
- Some food is safe without a cold source. Items that don’t require refrigeration include whole fruits and vegetables, hard cheese, canned meat and fish, chips, breads, crackers, peanut butter, jelly, mustard and pickles.
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Think spuds are boring? You haven’t tried purple potatoes
You don’t have to have a 4-year-old at home to get excited about purple potatoes.
Johnson’s Backyard Garden was selling them at the Wednesday afternoon farmers’ market at the Triangle two weeks ago, and I bought some to make into a potato salad for our Austin Food Blogger Alliance potluck.
(I figured I could get away with bringing a plain jane potato salad to a food blogger potluck only if there was some other noteworthy element, such as indigo-colored potatoes and backyard chicken eggs.)
Now, there are purple sweet potatoes and purple Peruvian potatoes, but these were purple majesty, a variety that was developed at Colorado State University to have higher levels of anthocyanin. (This flavonoid “has been shown in studies to possess anti-cancer and heart-protective effects, as well as benefits such as boosting the immune system and protecting against age-related memory loss,” reports the Chicago Tribune.)
Purple potatoes of any variety make beautiful chips and a gorgeous frittata. Just like other potatoes, they roast up nicely and can be deep fried. A squeeze of lemon juice will help them keep their color in things like fork-crushed potatoes. (El Arbol even has whipped purple potatoes on its menu.)
Johnson’s Backyard Garden, which just announced that it is expanding its community-supported agriculture program to include home delivery for an additional $5 per box per week, will have purple potatoes at its many farmers market stands for the next few weeks.
Keep your eyes peeled for them, though. Other local farms might be selling them, but I can’t say for sure which ones or at which markets.
(Didn’t mean to throw that pun in there, but on the heels of the 34th annual O. Henry Pun-Off in Austin, I think I’ll let it slide.)
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Austin360 Radio host LA Lloyd: What’s in Your Fridge Friday?
The Statesman has a little bit of new next to a little bit of old.
The big white building on the corner of Lady Bird Lake and Congress Avenue used to be a paragraph factory and that was about it. Just because we’ve been putting out a newspaper since 1871 doesn’t mean we don’t learn new tricks.
Take, for example, the radio station that is now broadcasting right next door to our test kitchen, which I use mainly to prep food for photo shoots or when I’m cooking something to share with coworkers.
It’s an Internet-only radio station, which is good news to the millions of us who only listen to traditional radio stations when we’re driving in cars that aren’t equipped with technology to stream anything but terrestrial tunes.
LA Lloyd spent many years working for those kind of stations, helping launch 101X in the mid 1990s and moving over to Cox, the Statesman’s parent company, when he worked as the program director for 99.5 KISS in San Antonio.
But now he’s in charge of Austin360’s newest venture: Austin360radio.com, which streams the kind of music Austin has grown to expect from a homegrown station 24 hours a day.
It’s not all Austin artists all the time, but Lloyd definitely gives more airtime to Austin-based bands and musicians than any other station in town. (And yes, he’s happy to get demos in the mail from up-and-coming acts: Just drop him an email — La.Lloyd@coxmg.com — or mail a disc to LA Lloyd, 305 S. Congress Ave., Austin, TX 78704)
He’s already been hosting in-studio performances and interviews with bands and has started a Thursday night special featuring live music from the Saxon Pub. He features interviews with Statesman music writers on the latest news on the local music scene, and just last week, he and music writer Michael Corcoran launched a gospel show that starts at 10 a.m. on Sundays and will occasionally feature brunch recipes from area chefs and restaurants. (And maybe your favorite food writer, if I can squeeze it in.)
Lloyd, who says he’s happy to be back in Austin with his wife, Kathi, and daughters, Taylor and Ava, was kind enough to take a photo of his fridge for this week’s Fridge Friday.
(And no, I haven’t forgotten about this much-loved feature. I’ve just been too busy to seek out many fridges lately. Email me at abroyles@statesman.com if you or someone you know wants to participate or if you want to suggest someone whose fridge you’re dying to peek inside.)
What three things are always in your fridge? Kalamata olives, Boars Head Pesto Parmesan Ham, orange juice
What’s your favorite condiment? Salsa
What’s the first thing you pull out of your fridge in the morning? Orange juice for my daughters before taking them to school.
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Ditch purees and let babies feed themselves real food
Baby-led weaning is a new name for a very old concept: Feed babies food.
More specifically, let babies feed themselves regular food instead of spoon-feeding them purees.
When I was pregnant with Julian, who is now 4, I thought I’d be a good hippie mom and make my own baby food instead of buying the shelf-stable jars that are the focus of so many disgusting baby shower games.
Then I heard about baby-led weaning, a term coined by British nurse and researcher Gill Rapley for letting babies feed themselves regular food.
But babies don’t have any teeth, so how can they eat anything but soup-like foods?
Babies have hard gums and an even harder bite that are perfectly capable of mushing up already soft foods like bananas and avocados. But those are only the most obvious foods suitable for babies who can sit up and put things in their mouth. Almost any vegetable or fruit can be cooked until it is solid enough to hold its shape but soft enough to to be mushed between your fingers (or in baby’s mouth). Pasta is easy to overcook, even if you don’t mean to. Rice is fun for them to try picking up with their wee fingers.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t a time and place for applesauce, yogurt or iron-fortified cereal. Tracey Murkett, who co-authored two baby-led weaning books with Rapley, recommends letting babies use spoons, celery, carrots or sliced apples as a dipper for purees or other foods that are hard to pick up.
As I wrote in today’s print column about baby-led weaning, it’s been so nice — not to mention a whole hell of a lot less expensive — not to have to buy a single jar of baby food for either of my boys. I’m not a perfect baby-led weaning mom, though. There are times when we don’t have time to let Avery play/eat a meal (it does take patience and a little extra cleaning) and I’ll spoon feed him some applesauce mixed with rice cereal, but in general, he sits in his high chair and eats some variation of what we’re eating.
Here’s a recipe from Murkett and Rapley’s baby-led weaning cookbook, and as you can tell, it’s not much different than any other recipe you’d cook.
Mild Vegetable Biryani
This dish is a tasty accompaniment to curries, making a change from plain rice. The rice is soaked before cooking to help the grains stay separate — perfect for when your baby is able to pick up tiny things.
1/3 cup basmati rice
1 Tbsp. sunflower oil
1 tsp. cumin seeds
1 large carrot, finely chopped
2/3 cup frozen peas
1 garlic clove, finely chopped or crushed
Pinch of chili powder
Boiling water
Wash the rice and soak it in a bowl of cold water for about 30 minutes before cooking. Warm the oil and cumin seeds in a large saucepan (don’t allow the seeds to get too brown). Add the drained rice, vegetables, garlic and chili powder, and stir to mix. Pour on boiling water to cover the ingredients by about 1/2 inch. Cover with a lid, bring back to a boil, and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes, until the water has been absorbed and the rice is plump. Fluff up with a fork and serve with a curry.
— From ‘The Baby-Led Weaning Cookbook’ by Gill Rapley and Tracey Murkett (The Experiment, $18.95)
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Unsolicited advice for C3, Food & Wine magazine as they create new Austin Food and Wine Festival
At a press conference last night, Charlie Jones of C3, with help from chefs Tyson Cole and Tim Love and even mayor Lee Leffingwell, announced that the Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival was becoming the Austin Food & Wine Festival.
This isn’t just a change of name, folks.
The Austin-based C3 hosts some of the biggest music festivals in the country, and Food & Wine magazine is behind successful food festivals including the Aspen Food & Wine Classic and the South Beach Wine & Food Festival.
That these two companies are working together on the Austin Food & Wine Festival is a huge deal for Austin. The Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival was, arguably, already the biggest food festival in the state, but it was a regional festival that attracted visitors from, perhaps, a three-hour radius around Austin.
But with the backing of these major players, this new festival means that just days after South by Southwest ends next year, Austin will again be thrust into the national spotlight, but this time, entirely for its food culture.
Now, no one asked me for advice on how to run the new event — and if anyone knows how to pull these kinds of things off, it’s C3 and Food & Wine — but I’ve been hearing enough questions and concerns from readers that I thought I’d share some anyway:
Plan wisely for crowds. If people are traveling from outside Austin to come here for a big food festival, they won’t return if it’s too crowded or poorly executed. C3’s first big foray into food events in Austin was last year’s Gypsy Picnic, a trailer food festival that became so crowded within an hour of opening that it turned into a bit of a fiasco for both vendors and guests. On the other hand, C3’s music festivals (Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits Music Festival) are good examples of managing large crowds. I haven’t been to a Food & Wine food festival, but food writer Jeff Houck of the Tampa Tribune says that certain aspects of it feel like “the mosh pit at Lollapalooza,” which isn’t exactly a good thing if you’re holding a glass of wine in your hand.
Don’t ignore regional food and wine. Saveur magazine helped put on the Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival for three years in the early ’00s, but I’ve heard from various sources that the partnership didn’t last because the new organizers weren’t respectful of the local food culture. “(C3 and Food & Wine) need to take into account the longterm, existing relationships within the city that the festival has made over the past 25 years,” Congress chef David Bull said at last night’s press conference. And just a hint: Like everywhere else, local is big here, so include area farmers, farmers’ markets and ranchers and you’ll do well.
Don’t let national celebrities overshadow regional talent. Everybody loves the promise of seeing someone in real life whom they’ve seen on TV, but it’s easy to feel like we’re living in the TMZ of the food world with gossip sites like Eater and others spreading across the country. Bring in some big names to introduce them to Austin, but pair them up in inventive ways with Texas notables who have been dedicated to the Austin food festival in the past.
Treat volunteers with respect. You can’t pull off big events like this without the backing of volunteers. Both C3 and Food & Wine know this, but hopefully they’ll utilize the supportive members of the food community here without making them feel used and abused. A free glass of wine and a thank you from one of those big name chefs go a long way.
Don’t forget the kids. ACL always has a huge kid area, and even though food festivals are usually centered around wine and haute cuisine, the new food festival should make room for the under 21 crowd, too. I’m not talking about dumbing down the events, but just making some of them kid-friendly with cooking activities to engage Austin’s young eaters. Chefs seem to have babies as fast as they open restaurants, so they’ll be happy to be able to include their kids in the events, too.
Spread the love. With so many people involved in the food industry here, it will be hard to include them all, but it will foster a lot of goodwill if they try to work with more than just the top 10 biggest names in food here. I understand the need to create a certain level of exclusivity, but Austin is a quickly growing city that still has somewhat of a small town feel. Burning bridges or kicking longtime food and wine festival partners to the curb won’t help get this new festival off on the right foot.
Offer low-cost ways to participate. Sure, people will always spring for the $100 tasting tickets or even $1,000 VIP tables, but offering low-cost points of entry will allow you to host the expensive events without pissing off everyone (which is most of us) who can’t afford them.
Just a few ideas from my corner of the Austin food world. It’ll be exciting to see what this newly reconfigured festival looks like, I just hope I’ve recovered from SXSW enough to fully appreciate it.
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With flowers, eggs aplenty, is this the apex of the spring garden?
Even without today’s massive rainfall, I had a pretty hefty garden post lined up and ready to go.
I haven’t been home to see for my own eyes how the 2-3 inches of rain we got has impacted the chickens and vegetable garden (not to mention the rain barrel that my husband said filled up in a matter of minutes), but here’s how the garden was looking two days ago:
I’m amazed at how well the melon and cucumber plants are doing this year. Both are bursting with yellow flowers, and the melon has crawled all the way up a five foot tomato trelis. There are tiny melons on that plant, and I found a single but sizable cucumber hiding under the leaves, which went directly into…
a jar of Claussen pickle juice. The quickest of quick pickles.
I’ve been harvesting a few onions at a time and letting a couple of them bloom because the tiny white flowers are so fun to look at. I’m drying the onions in a plastic, netted sack that once held a few dozen Cuties, and although we like scallions/green onions as much as the next family, it’s almost impossible to use all the long green tops before they go wilty. That is, unless you make….
green onion chimichurri! I threw in a few bulbs of green garlic, as well, in the food processor with olive oil, salt, pepper and a splash of red wine vinegar. We’ve eaten this on fajita tacos, pork chops and even eggs. It’s a good alternative to its Italian cousin pesto for using up a lot of pungent greens.
Tiny summer squash and zucchini are popping out from under those spiky leaves.
And once again, the peppers are just teasing me with their healthy looking leaves and petite flowers. I haven’t had much luck with pepper plants delivering on their promise of fruit, but I plant them every year, just in case.
The chickens (you’ll read an update on them in a minute) have officially figured out how to breach the dainty fence around the garden, but it still keeps them out most of the time. When they do get in, they go straight for the shallots, right, which they’ve completely flattened. The garlic, left, doesn’t look so great, but I think it’s because they are just about ready to be harvest. They say to wait until they are halfway brown, so I imagine I’ll be pulling them up this weekend.
Nasturtium is an edible flower that I hadn’t previously grown, but I can’t remember a more vibrant color in my garden. Ever.
You find the craziest bugs in your yard when you have a garden and are spending a lot of time looking around closely at things. I found the discarded shell of some kind of spiky insect, but I have no idea what kind. Looks like a caterpillar that has morphed into something else.
The tomatoes will probably benefit the most from this heavy rainfall we just had. It’s been difficult to water them as deeply as they like, especially when the plants have already grown so huge and it’s been so hot. These little fruits will hopefully be getting a slight blush in the next week or so, and I’m going to try harvesting them when they just start to turn red instead of waiting until they are sandwich ready on the vine. They are just too susceptible to bugs, squirrels and birds when they get a lot of color, and I’ve read that they’ll ripening just fine on the window sill.
Now on to the birds.
Our yard really needed this quenching rain because the chickens have been giving her hell.
We’ll see how the grass responds in the next few weeks, but they are constantly combing the yard for new life — plant or bug — so this rain should help it grow back faster than they can peck it.
Cotton still hasn’t laid any eggs, but we’re giving her until soup weather returns in October.
Even with her missing her middle and “thumb” claws, Julia is just as charming and productive as ever. When the temperatures were in the upper 90s earlier this week, we thought she’d stopped laying eggs because the nest where she’d been laying them was empty day after day.
Just as my spirits were sinking at the thought of a whole summer with two chickens and no eggs, I peeked into these tall yard waste bags that were waiting on the outside of our fence to be taken to the curb.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I’m sure I said outloud to no one in particular. Julia had been sneaking under the wooden gate to get outside and lay eggs (Nos. 51, 52 and 53) in her new nest without anyone knowing she’d left the yard.
Just another delightful little surprise in a backyard project that seems to be full of them.
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As ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking’ turns 50, a look through Julia Child’s letters at the Ransom Center
It’s hard to imagine writing a book in the pre-Internet era, much less writing one while living an ocean away from your editor.
Julia Child’s story has been told hundreds of times, most memorably in “Julie and Julia,” the 2009 movie starring Meryl Streep that was based on Austin native Julie Powell’s bestselling book.
But one of the reasons this fascinating character in American history lives on so vividly is because she was such an avid letter writer. During the many years she spent abroad, she kept in contact with family and friends by exchanging letters with them from whatever corner of the world she and her husband, Paul, happened to be living at the time.
When Judith Jones, an editor at Alfred A. Knopf, convinced her bosses to publish Julia’s 10-year-in-the-making “big French cookbook,” she and Julia had to correspond via snail mail for more than a year before Child moved back to the United States.
Many of the letters are part of a collection of papers from Knopf that the Harry Ransom Center has acquired over the years.
Last week, I had a chance to look through some of the dozen or so manila folders that hold more than 10 years’ worth of paperwork connected to Julia. It took me three hours to get through only a year and a half of the letters, so the story I wrote for today’s paper captures just the beginning of Julia’s long career in food, which happened exactly 50 years ago.
(The Ransom Center currently doesn’t have any plans to display the papers in an exhibit, but members of the International Association of Culinary Professionals will get a chance to look at them in early June when the group hosts its annual conference here.)
I tried to capture the humor, frustration, excitement and anticipation contained in those letters, but it’s hard to describe the feeling of reading page after page of such intimate correspondence between these women.
(You can click here to see a gallery of some of the letters of more photos of Julia.)
Jones, though not a household name, was responsible for getting Child’s book published in the first place, just 11 years after rescuing “The Diary of Anne Frank” from a reject pile. (John Updike was another of her authors.)
Julia was nearly 49, having already lived an envious life traveling around the world and experiencing the wonderful people and food she eventually wrote about in “My Life in France.”
All the back-and-forth it takes to assemble, edit, illustrate, market and publish a cookbook had to be done one letter at a time. No emails, phone calls or instant messaging, but just like today, each letter had to contain very clear information about the progress and next steps.
How will people in 50 years go through our correspondence to find the back story of how a certain project came to be?
Technology makes it easier to catalog and search documents, but there’s a certain nostalgia in holding a letter that Julia Child once typed on a piece of wispy onion skin paper, signed with a pen and slid into an envelope to mail across the Atlantic.
Images courtesy of Harry Ransom Center, with permission from the Julia Child Foundation.
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Grocery store prices on track to rise 4 percent this year
To get a better idea of how fast food prices are rising for your everyday cook who shops at an everyday grocery store, I’ve been pricing a list of 20 items — 19 ingredients, plus toilet paper, because let’s face it, we all have to buy toilet paper, even if you don’t cook much at home — for the past three years.
Well, I took off a few years because after doing a story on food prices in 2008, Phil Lempert, aka the Supermarket Guru, said in an interview that our list wasn’t a very good one because it had things like lentils and kidney beans on it. What you really need to track is the price of Coca-Cola, he said, because it’s the No. 1 selling product in grocery stores nationwide.
When Mike Sutter and I started researched our latest story about food prices, which appears in Wednesday’s paper, I decided to pull the list back out and see how things had changed, despite Lempert’s admonishment.
In 2007 and 2008, we did this price check at HEB, Walmart and Randalls, but this time, I compared only the prices at HEB, which has more than half the market share in Central Texas.
As you can see from the chart at the top of this post, the total cost of the 20 items is $2.67 more than it was in August of 2008. That’s a 6.6 percent growth in three years, just shy of the 7.2 percent growth the Consumer Price Index says we’ve experienced in the cost of food at home. (It’s worth noting that at least one of the items — the Folger’s coffee, which is now 11.5 ounces instead of 13 — isn’t sold in the same size as it was three years ago, which means the price per ounce has gone up higher than the flat comparison suggest.s)
Every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which oversees the CPI, does its own price check to track the percent change in the retail price of dozens of items, including eggs, potatoes, carbonated drinks, apples, pork chops, cookies, rice, and even “lamb and organ meats.” (Click here to see the detailed numbers from March. If you’re like me, you’ll find Table 3 on page 14 the most interesting and helpful.)
We highlighted some of the most common ingredients, including butter, sugar, coffee and beef, in our story for tomorrow’s paper, which asks the question: Are food prices are rising as fast as we think they are?
I think that answer depends on how you look at the numbers. From looking at my own grocery store receipts, and learning a lot about the intricate world of grocery store margins and supply and demand, I don’t think they are rising as fast as people think they are.
According to the CPI, we’ve had two years of only a slight growth in grocery store prices (.5 percent in 2009 and .3 percent in 2010), which means we’re probably overdue for the 4 percent growth that’s expected this year.
If you’re a calculating grocery store shopper, do these numbers align with what you’re seeing? Are you surprised at how much or how little grocery store prices have changed in the past few years?
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What’s in the White House honey? Local beekeeper finds out
When Konrad Bouffard, owner of Round Rock Honey, was in Washington D.C., last week for the Future of Food Conference, he asked Sam Kass, the second in command in the White House kitchen, for a few jars of honey from the hives located on the grounds of the first residence.
When Bouffard was at the White House, he wondered how the meticulously manicured — and presumably heavily fertilized — lawn would affect the bees’ honey. He didn’t just want a taste of what might be the most famous honey in the country, he wanted to send it off to Dr. Vaughn Bryant, a scientist at Texas A&M, to do a pollen analysis, which is something he frequently does with his own honey to find out exactly what’s in it.
The results, which come just in time for President Obama’s visit to Austin today, were surprising. The analysis confirmed his first impression that the majority of the pollen in the honey came from clover, but that overall, it has a very low pollen concentration, which is unusual for clover honey. “This suggests that over the winter the bees may have been fed sugar water, thereby reducing the final pollen concentration value of the produced honey,” he says.
Although the dominant pollen is clover, the trees in the vicinity of the White House and the National Mall are what give its real character and flavor, says Bouffard, who has been keeping bees in Central Texas and selling honey since 2002. Dogwood, cherry, crepe-myrtle, elm and magnolia trees, as well as honeysuckle and even poison ivy, among others, provided the so-called minor pollen.
Bouffard says that the White House beekeeper, who is also a carpenter at the big white mansion on Pennsylvania Avenue, should try to convince the groundskeepers to let parts of the lawn near the vegetable gardens grow wild.
“Patches of un-manicured lawn are more important to producing quality honey than even herb and vegetable gardens,” he says. “Increasing the diversity of grasses and flowering weeds gives the bees more foraging options and helps maintain and preserve the natural pH and the humidity of the soil.”
Top photo from the White House, middle photo by Ron Edmonds for the Associated Press, bottom photo by Addie Broyles.
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Diana Kennedy, Edible Austin win first James Beard awards
UPDATE: Uchi’s Tyson Cole has tied for a James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: Southwest. Sharing the best chef in the Southwest title is Saipin Chutima of Las Vegas’ Lotus of Siam, the foundation reports. This was Cole’s fourth Beard nomination.
EARLIER: It’s early May, so it must be James Beard season.
The annual awards honoring the best in food are given out in two installations, the first being the journalism and cookbook awards, which were handed out last week. The second half are the chef and restaurant awards, which will be given out tonight, and our hometown hero Tyson Cole is a finalist in the best chef in the Southwest category.
This is the first James Beard nomination and award for Kennedy, who has published nine cookbooks, many of which are considered the backbone of the Mexican cookbook cannon. She is a frequent visitor to Austin, often spending time with friends, including Tom Gilliland of Fonda San Miguel.
This is the first year the James Beard Foundation has given this award, and Edible Austin, founded in 2007 by publisher Marla Camp, was one of three Edible publications whose covers (right) appeared in the official program for the media and cookbook awards.
“It is gratifying that our work and that of all the Edible Communities publications throughout the United States and Canada is being recognized as having a significant impact on our local food systems — ultimately helping to build global food security and healthy communities,” Camp said on Monday.
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Navigate Austin food scene with blogger’s new book
The book is divided into eight geographical sections, which includes a chapter about the Hill Country, and for each part, Esquivel writes about a restaurant’s food, ambiance and even cocktails. The book, which is available online at various retailers and in store at BookPeople, also includes a guide to local farmers’ markets, food events and grocery stores and even has a few recipes from local chefs.
Crystal was one of the first Austin bloggers I met when I started this food job three years ago. She was already a blogging professional by then and was so sweet to embrace a newbie like myself.
In the acknowledgments of her new book, she wrote a very nice line thanking me for my work in the food community, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that if it weren’t for longtime food bloggers like her being so inviting from the get-go, I don’t think we’d have the unified community that we do.
When I first reached out to her and others to get together for a drink, they responded to my invitation with enthusiasm. If they would have seemed hostile to the idea of getting to know each other offline, we wouldn’t have persevered to form the group that we now have.
Thanks, Crystal, for helping set the welcoming tone, which is what Austin bloggers have come to expect from one another.
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The fascinating world of grocery lists
“If you buy more rice — I’ll punch you.”
Since 1997, Bill Keaggy has been collecting grocery lists, one of which included that not-so-subtle hint to not buy any more rice.
Grocery lists are just one of the many collections, lists and virtual projects that Keaggy keeps on his immaculately curated site. (Don’t you wish you had a running list of every band you’ve seen? What about every day of the year you turned 30? Shoe-shaped rocks, anyone?)
The St. Louis-based designer/brand marketer/graphic artist has personally found many of the lists, and like Found magazine, people often send him lists they find in the bottom of grocery carts, near the check-out line or in the parking lot outside. Yes, some of them are mundane, but usually, there is some element that is funny, sad or in some other way worth noting. (Here are his top 10 lists from the past 10 years.)
Keaggy turned his collection of lists into “Milk Eggs Vodka,” a book that came out in 2007 that was released in paperback last month.
Last year, he went on Jimmy Kimmel Live to talk about the book and why it’s so fascinating to read other people’s lists.
Don’t believe him?
I found the grocery list at the top of this post at HEB last week. “Chow mein crunchies” are definitely worth a chuckle, but “something for calming” made me pause.
Have you ever found and kept a grocery list from the store? Do you even write grocery lists anymore or has your mobile device replaced the need for a paper list?
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