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Food in the news
May 25, 2012
Chef Jason Donoho leaving Asti and Fino
Donoho, who started at Fino in November of 2007, became executive chef at the Mediterranean-inspired restaurant in April 2008 and oversaw both Asti and Fino beginning in September of 2009.
Longtime chef de cuisine, Andrew MacArthur will replace Donoho, effective next weekend. MacArthur has worked for Asti and Fino for five years.
“Jason Donoho, Brian Stubbs, Josh Loving, and Bill Norris are all good friends and have been great influences on my cooking as well as Austin’s entire food community,” MacArthur said. “I’m excited to continue producing outstanding foods with the multi-talented team put together here by Emmett and Lisa Fox and to continue to immerse myself in the Austin food & wine community.”
Under MacArthur’s leadership, Fino is rolling out a roster of new summer plates that include tomato and burrata salad with cumin vinaigrette and herbs, carrot anglonetti with lemon, nutmeg and crßme fraiche, and crispy pork belly with green chickpeas, orange and radish.
We have reached out to Donoho about his future plans.
In other chef-shifting news, former Trace executive chef, Paul Hargrove, has moved east, and will oversee day-to-day operations at chef Sonya Cote’s East Side Showroom.
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May 18, 2012
Pies & Pigs to raise money for Pie Fixes Everything owner
Austin’s food community is pretty tight, but the circle of entrepreneurs who have chosen to make a living with their small food businesses is exceptionally so.
“In many ways, Colleen embodies the best of our little corner of the Austin community,” Letelier wrote. ” Now we are coming together to give back to Colleen, for all of the time, energy, love and pies that she generously gives to those around her.”
Sommers is a regular vendor at the HOPE Farmers Market, and Letelier and several fellow vendors have organized a big fundraiser on June 14 at Springdale Farm, 755 Springdale Road, that will help Sommers pay for some of her treatment. (“Like many in the self-employed culinary and creative community, Colleen doesn’t have health insurance,” Letelier wrote in her email.)
Pies & Pigs will feature a pig cook-off between charcuterie makers Salt & Time and Three Little Pigs, Raymond Tatum’s East Austin food trailer, as well as a pie-eating contest, a pie auction and live music from Greyhounds and Whiskey Shivers.
The event starts at 6 p.m., and tickets cost $25. You can find more info and updates on the event’s Facebook page.
Photo by Mike Sutter for the Austin American-Statesman.
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May 11, 2012
Let letter carriers help you Stamp Out Hunger on Saturday
In the 20 years since the first Stamp Out Hunger day, the effort from the National Association of Letter Carriers has grown to become the largest one-day food drive in the country.
The annual event, which takes place on Saturday (that’s tomorrow, folks!), encourages people to put out paper bags filled with healthy, non-perishable food near their mailboxes. (They suggest canned tuna, stew and chili; peanut butter; canned vegetables; pasta and pasta sauce; beans and healthy cereals.)
Letter carries will then pick up the bags when they deliver mail, and the donations go to the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas, which will then distribute the food to more than 300 partner agencies across in Central Texas.
If you forget to put out the donation until after the carrier comes, you can also drop off your donation at one of four H-E-B stores (6900 Brodie Lane, 10710 Research Blvd., 701 S. Capital of Texas Highway and 2508 E. Riverside Drive) on Saturday between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.
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May 10, 2012
American Hipster gets to know Thunder Heart Bison
Did you catch this hilarious “Eat It, Don’t Tweet It” video from a few months ago?
Well, American Hipster, the production team who helped put it together, are in the middle of a cross-country road trip where they are profiling interesting people and places in 10 American cities, including Austin.
Earlier this week, they posted this video with Hugh Fitzsimons of Thunder Heart Bison in Carrizo Springs and Cat New of Thunder Heart Ranch to Trailer on West Fifth Street in Austin.
A nice little nod to two of the more unique ranchers and food trailers in the state.
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May 7, 2012
Paul Qui wins James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southwest
Paul Qui, executive chef of Uchiko and recent winner of “Top Chef: Texas,” won the James Beard Foundation Award tonight for Best Chef: Southwest, a year after his Uchi mentor Tyson Cole won the same honor.
Qui thanked his girlfriend Deana Saukam, the staffs (“my boys”) at both Uchiko and Uchi, as well as those at East Side King, his trio of food trailers. Other chef winners of the night included Hugh Acheson of Athens, Ga., and Christina Tosi of Momofuku Milk Bar in New York City.
(Bon Appetit was keeping a fun live blog of the event if you want all the winners, plus commentary.)
Alton Brown hosted the glittery ceremonies in New York City, that included a press room that “only Dante would have words sufficient to describe,” according to AP food writer J.M. Hirsch. The Empire State building was lit with yellow and orange in honor of the favorite foods (pineapples and tomato soup) of the Beard, a longtime food writer who inspired the awards.
Photos from JamesBeard.org and Deana Saukam.
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Art Blondin finds new home for his famous ribs at Jax Neighborhood Cafe
Blondin, who had filed for bankruptcy after running the restaurant for almost 20 years, has teamed up with Jack Malinowski, who owns Jax Neighborhood Cafe, to bring his famous barbecue to the live music venue at 2828 Rio Grande Street, near the University of Texas campus.
Last Monday was Blondin’s first day cooking at Jax, but the barbecue wasn’t the only thing reminiscent of his old place. On stage was Sarah Elizabeth Campbell, who had had a Monday night residency at Artz and who is now filling that same slot at Jax with fellow musician Marvin Dykhuis.
The menu, which is served from 4 to 10 p.m., is limited to burgers and ribs for now, but Blondin says he’ll be expanding it in coming weeks.
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Austinite Jeff Scott wins James Beard Award; will Qui follow?
At 1,000 pages, Scott’s two-volume book is tiny in comparison to the big winner of the book, broadcast and journalism award winners. ceremony — Nathan Myhrvold’s six-volume, “Modernist Cuisine.” (Full disclosure, I was a judge for one of the categories.)
Tonight, the chef and restaurant awards will be handed out, and four Texas chefs are up for Best Chef: Southwest, including Uchiko’s Paul Qui.
The other Lone Star chefs up for the award are Bruno Davaillon of Mansion Restaurant at the Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas, Bruce Auden of Biga on the Banks in San Antonio, Hugo Ortega of Hugo’s in Houston. The ceremony starts at 5 p.m. our time, and organizers are live blogging the event here.
Photo by Jeff Scott.
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May 3, 2012
Catching up: UT's $4 million restaurant deal, Larry McGuire part of Trophy's takeover
Lots of interesting food news in the past week. Here’s a quick recap:
In a $4 million deal, the University of Texas paid almost twice as much as Players restaurant is worth in order to buy the building and land on the edge of campus. Statesman higher-ed reporter Ralph K.M. Haurwitz has the nitty gritty on the deal, which will allow the owners to continue to operating rent-free for 10 years.
Larry McGuire is teaming up with Continental Club owner Steve Wertheimer to take over Trophy’s, the live-music dive bar on South Congress Avenue, to turn it into C-Boy’s, where you can catch a band and grab a bite to eat from McGuire’s culinary team. Wertheimer says it could be open in as soon as two to three months.
Burger King announced that it plans to only use eggs and pork from cage-free animals by 2017 but made no promises that it would only use meat from cage-free birds. A reminder: Cage-free is not the same as free-range. Also, what’s cage-free pork? Grist has the answer.
You have until noon Friday to book a ticket to Saturday’s big barbecue at the LBJ Ranch in Stonewall. Friends of LBJ National Historical Park are reviving the tradition in honor of the centennial of Lady Bird Johnson’s birth. In Wednesday’s food section, Michael Barnes talks with 91-year-old Tillie Ahrens Hahne, who cooked for the Johnsons for 11 years, about the grand picnics held at the Texas White House.
In his latest restaurant review, Matthew Odam explains hot pots and why the owner of Chen’s Noodle House went upscale with his newest venture, Chen Z.
The first peaches of the year are starting to come in. Yesterday, I took a road trip to Rhew Orchard outside San Antonio with Farm To Table owner John Lash to find out why Frank Rhew’s peaches are among the first to come in every year (he’s farther south than his Fredericksburg counterparts, so he can grow varieties that mature earlier in the season).
Starting Saturday, Latino magazine is hosting Tacorama, a week-long celebration of the taco that raises money and awareness about hunger in Central Texas. You can read more about it in this week’s Food Matters.
Players photo by Jay Janner for the Austin American-Statesman.
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April 17, 2012
Teresa Wilson sells Aquarelle property
After closing Aquarelle, her longtime French restaurant at 606 Rio Grande, in September, Austin chef Teresa Wilson has sold the property to an undisclosed party.
Teresa Wilson announced today that the West Austin building at 606 Rio Grande St. that housed her iconic French Restaurant, Aquarelle, from May 2000 through September 2011 has been sold to an unnamed party. Plans for the property were not announced. Ms. Wilson said “This has been a very emotional time for my family and me,” Wilson said in a press release today. “However, this step allows for us to now move forward. While a new culinary endeavor is in our future, the location and concept is currently under consideration”.
After Aquarelle closed late last summer, Wilson said she was planning to open another restaurant named Chonita’s in the same space.
According to the Travis Central Appraisal District, the property is valued at $892,200.
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March 29, 2012
UPDATE: Artz Rib House closes, but owner says he has something else in the works
UPDATED AT 4:30 P.M. THURSDAY
Artz Rib House, the longtime South Austin barbecue restaurant that was known as much for its live music as its thick beef ribs, closed its doors on March 19 and filed Wednesday for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which means that the remaining assets of the restaurant will be liquidated to pay his debts.
The bankruptcy filing indicates that he owes $303,000 in back wages and taxes and has assets of $23,400.
Owner Art Blondin said on Thursday that he is holding out hope that he can open another restaurant within a month, but he said he couldn’t reveal details of his plans.
“The customers have been absolutely wonderful. They stuck with us through the hard times. We would not have made it as along as we did if it wasn’t for the generosity and hard working help from all of our customers,” Blondin said Thursday afternoon.
“We’ve got some options. We’re going to be opening up real soon,” he said. “We’ll be keeping the music alive.”
The restaurant at 2330 S. Lamar Blvd. first opened in August 1992. In 2009, he temporarily closed the restaurant when his wife was in the hospital and while he was paying some back taxes. A fund-raiser that year helped raise $10,000 to reopen the restaurant, but in 2010, he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2010 in an attempt to reorganize the debt.
Charlie Stewart, who manages a number of bands in Austin, had been going to Artz since 1995, and said it was an indispensable venue for his bands who were just getting started. “That’s what was great about them; they were always willing to give new artists a chance,” Stewart said. “If you did well on a Tuesday or a Thursday night, you would work up the ranks.” “You could nourish the body and nourish the soul at that place,” he said.
Former Austin City Council Member Max Nofziger, who now plays in a band called The Harmony Brothers, said Artz was one of the group’s favorite places to play. “It was one of the few places that actually fed you and paid you,” he said. “Now where do I go to get barbecue? I haven’t had to think about this for 20 years”
“It’s awful for Austin; it’s awful for the music scene,” Nofziger said. It was a clubhouse for musicians like Sarah Elizabeth Campbell, who had a Monday night residency at the restaurant. Nofziger has known Blondin and his wife Zenobia Sutton, who put the “z” in Artz, since before the restaurant opened, and remembers eating their barbecue before the restaurant opened, when they would cater city council lunches.
“He took care of the music community for a long time,” Nofziger said. “Artz was a funky place, and the infrastructure of funk is being forced out of town.”
Blondin did this oral history interview with Lisa Powell in 2007, which goes into great detail about how the business started and the particular kind of barbecue that he specializes in.
Photo by Ha Lam for the Austin American-Statesman.
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March 23, 2012
Downtown bars raided, owners facing drug, money laundering, firearms charges
Big news coming out of downtown yesterday.
On today’s front page, Gary Dinges has all the details about the raid that resulted in the arrest of ten people associated with Yassine Enterprises, a company that operates eight bars and the recently opened Stack Burger Bar that earlier this year faced a class-action lawsuit about wages.
An ongoing investigation led to yesterday’s raid and the subsequent charges for alleged crimes including distributing cocaine, transferring firearms used to commit drug trafficking and money laundering, according to newly unsealed federal indictments.
Dinges’ report indicates that most of the Yassine properties, which include some of the most frequented bars downtown, are closed as the investigation continues, but Stack Burger Bar co-owner Tre Dotson confirmed today that the restaurant (above) will remain open. Stack was not involved in the wage lawsuit.
In much happier news, flip to the Metro section of today’s paper to read this story about an Austin Girl Scout troop that has made a cookbook to help people who lost their belongings, including their favorite recipes, in the Bastrop wildfires last September.
Photo by Rodolfo Gonzalez for the Austin American-Statesman.
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March 22, 2012
Southside Market & BBQ in Elgin recalls contaminated sausages
Southside Market & BBQ is recalling more than 2,000 pounds of beef sausages that may have been contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, a bacterium that can cause the potentially fatal disease listeriosis.
U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service classified the recall as a Class 1, which indicates a high health risk.
The following products were recalled:
- 16 oz. packages of “Southside Market & BBQ Original Beef Sausage,” Lot No. 065-E
- 16 oz. and 48 oz. packages of “Southside Market & BBQ Original Beef Sausage,” Lot No. 065-A, 065-B, 065-C, and 065-D
- 16 oz. packages of “Southside Market & BBQ 1882 Hot Recipe Beef Sausage,” Lot No. 065-D
Case labels or packaging may bear the establishment number “EST. 21577” in the USDA Mark of Inspection.
The FSIS hasn’t received any notification of anyone becoming sick from eating the sausages that were made on March 5. The products were shipped to Texas, California, Florida, Illinois and Louisiana.
Consumers with questions about the recall should contact Bryan Bracewell, CEO of Southside Market & BBQ, at (512) 285-3407.
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March 19, 2012
Austinites Paul Qui, Jeff Scott nominated for James Beard Awards
Notebook Obsession: The Private Obsessions of Sean Brock. Directed by Jeff Christopher Scott from jeff scott on Vimeo.
The James Beard Foundation announced the nominees for its prestigious culinary awards today, and two Austinites made the list.
Paul Qui, the “Top Chef” winner from Uchiko, is among the six finalists for the Best Chef: Southwest category, which his boss, Tyson Cole, won last year.
Jeff Scott, an Austin-based photographer and artist, was nominated in the photography category for his book, “Notes from a Kitchen: A Journey Inside Culinary Obsession.”
Outside Austin, Houston Chronicle critic Alison Cook is among the nominees for the Craig Claiborne Award, which honors restaurant criticism. Over on Texas Monthly’s food blog, Pat Sharpe fills us in on the three other Texas chefs who fill out the category.
Uchi pastry chef Philip Speer and Barley Swine’s Bryce Gilmore were among the semi-finalists from Austin who didn’t make the final cut.
The awards will be handed out in New York City in early May, and here is a list of the rest of the nominees.
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March 12, 2012
Sprouts, Sunflower merge grocery store chains
When you’re competing against large-scale natural food grocers like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, sometimes it’s good strategy to team up with your fellow competitors.
On Friday, Sprouts Farmers Market and Sunflower Farmers Market — which, despite their names, are grocery store chains, not farmers markets — announced that they were merging, the second such merger for Sprouts in less than a year.
The combined new company will operate 139 stores under the Sprouts Farmers Market name and will have about 10,000 employees.
Right now, there are 35 Sunflower stores, including one in Austin at 6920 Manchaca Road, and just more than 100 Sprouts locations. Last year, the chain ended up closing several of the Austin-area stores after a merger with Sun Harvest left the company with too many stores too close together.
There are now three Sprouts locations in Austin, 110 N. Interstate 35, 10225 Research Blvd., 4006 S. Lamar Blvd., and the South Austin Sunflower will transition to Sprouts by the end of the year.
Photo by Amy Gutierrez for the Associated Press.
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March 2, 2012
Council passes ban on plastic, paper bags starting next year
This time next year, baggers at grocery store checkout lines won’t be asking you, “Paper or plastic?”
The Austin City Council voted early this morning to ban both single use plastic and paper bags at most grocery stores and retail outlets. Those stores will offer reusable bags for purchase, and there are a number of exceptions including newspaper delivery and restaurant take-out bags.
The topic had been the subject of much debate over the past few months, especially the addition to paper bags to the ban, but the council voted to include them in the ban, which starts March 2013.
Austin is the first big city in Texas to pass such a ban. Click here to read Sarah Coppola’s story about the ban and what it entails for customers and retailers.
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February 29, 2012
Uchiko's Paul Qui becomes first Texan to win "Top Chef"
And his boss, Uchi’s Tyson Cole was as excited as anybody who packed into Uchiko on North Lamar Boulevard to watch the finale.
You can get a feel for the episode by scrolling through the live chat restaurant critic Matthew Odam hosted during the show, and here’s a story that is running in tomorrow’s paper with a few more details about Qui, the show, his prize and what several die-hard fans (who hadn’t missed a single watch party at his restaurant) had to say about their favorite chef.
Another late tidbit of news: Austin City Council member Mike Martinez posted on his Facebook page that the city will issue a proclamation for Qui on April 5.
Tyson Cole photo by Laura Skelding for the Austin American-Statesman.
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February 16, 2012
La Condesa opening in Los Angeles next year
And the news just keeps on coming.
Just a day after La Condesa pastry chef Laura Sawicki was lauded in Food & Wine’s inaugural list of best new pastry chefs, the owners of the hip interior Mexican restaurant downtown have announced that they are adding a third restaurant in Los Angeles.
Jesse Herman and Delfo Trombetta opened La Condesa at Second and Colorado streets in Austin in 2009, and in 2011, the team expanded to Napa Valley with a restaurant of the same name that is also under executive chef Rene Ortiz and Sawicki.
Herman says that they were actually looking at opening in Los Angeles first, but they got sidetracked by the opportunity to move into a space in St. Helena, Calif. “Napa has actually opened a lot of doors for us,” Herman says.
Each location has a different design and menu, but with the same spirit as the original location in Austin. “We spend a lot of time making sure (the menu and space) are adapted to the area where they are,” he says.
The third La Condesa is scheduled to open in Los Angeles at 127 S. La Brea in early 2013.
As an East Coast native, Herman says that he’s always been enamored with California, but he also sees the “huge market” for the kind of interior Mexican that Ortiz specializes in.
As for the under-construction Thai restaurant on South First Street, Herman said that construction, which has doubled the size of the previous structure, is coming along nicely, but he didn’t have a timeline for completion. (He did assure me, though, that there will be almost 50 parking spaces when it’s all said and done.)
Photo by Rodolfo Gonzalez for the Austin American-Statesman.
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Barley Swine rounds out GQ's 10 best new restaurants list
In what has turned out to be a big week for Austin food scene, GQ has just come out with its list of the best new restaurants in the country, and Bryce Gilmore’s Barley Swine came in at No. 10.
Gilmore is in good company: Grant Achatz’ Next and Michael Voltaggio’s Ink are in the top three. Barley Swine is the only Texas restaurant to make the list.
“The name itself is reason to be wary, combining as it does two movements as ubiquitous and smothering as melted cheese on enchiladas: craft beer and pork fetishism,” writes GQ editor Brett Martin. “And at first glance, Barley Swine looks like any number of places that have embraced some blend of small-plate aesthetics, farm-to-table piety, and neo-carnivore swagger. But the food proves just how mature these movements have become.”
Photo by Julia Robinson for the Austin American-Statesman.
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February 15, 2012
La Condesa's Laura Sawicki named best new pastry chef by Food & Wine magazine
For 24 years, the magazine has been highlighting the country’s best new chefs in their annual awards, and for the first time, they’ve picked out the top five new pastry chefs in America, and Austin’s Laura Sawicki of La Condesa is one of them.
Sawicki, a Culinary Institute of America graduate who moved to Austin in 2009 to help open the downtown restaurant, creates some of the funkiest (in a good way) and creative pastries in Austin, and we’ll get to see more from her when the La Condesa team when they open a Thai restaurant on South First Street later this year.
Also in Food & Wine’s top five are: Shawn Gawle of Corton in New York City, Bryce Caron of Blackbird in Chicago, Stella Parks of Table 310 in Lexington, Ky., and Devin McDavid Quince or Cotogna in San Francisco.
Photo from La Condesa.
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Congress, Barley Swine on top of Texas Monthly's top 10 best new restaurants in the state
Texas Monthly food editor Pat Sharpe’s annual “Where To Eat Now” list of the best new restaurants in the state comes out in the March issue, but in a blog post this morning, she announced that two Austin restaurants were at the top of the list.
Congress and Barley Swine come in at No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, with East Austin hangout Contigo at No. 7. Those are the only three Austin restaurants that made the cut, including five runners-up, but capturing the top two slots in Sharpe’s esteemed list is certainly worth noting.
“Tucked into a downtown high-rise and accessorized with icy crystal lights and white-on-white original art, Congress is one tall, sexy blonde,” she writes. “And behind the scenes, interpreting global cuisine with his usual finesse, is Mr. Bull, at the top of his game.” You can read the story online here.
Photo of Congress by Ralph Barrera for the Austin American-Statesman.
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January 17, 2012
Big names, changes announced for Austin Food & Wine Festival
The Austin Food & Wine Festival won’t look much like its predecessor, the Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival, but growing up is hard to do sometimes.
After 26 years as a smaller, Texas-focused affair, the folks behind C3 Presents and Food & Wine magazine announced last year that they were taking over the Hill Country Wine and Food Fest to make it the Austin Food & Wine Festival, which will take place April 27-29.
With the help of Uchi’s Tyson Cole, Jesse Herman of La Condesa and Tim Love of the Love Shack in Fort Worth, the new Austin Food & Wine team announced the lineup for this year’s festival on Tuesday afternoon. Tickets, which are two-day and VIP passes ($250, $850) instead of to individual events, go on sale on Jan. 24. You can find the programming details — including which classes, tastings, demos, etc, that that $250 will get you — on the festival’s website.
Click here to read the full story that will appear in tomorrow’s food section about which big-name chefs and media celebrities, including Andrew Zimmern and Gail Simmons, will be coming to Austin and how the newly formed Austin Food & Wine Alliance, the beneficiary of the event, will likely have a bigger impact on the day-to-day local food scene.
Photo by Larry Kolvoord for the Austin American-Statesman.
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Sugar struck: Diabetic Paula Deen's indefensible endorsement
By now, you’ve probably heard that Paula Deen has been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and is now a spokeswoman for a once-a-day noninsulin injection drug, Victoza.
Confirming the rumors that started to spread widely last week, Deen told Al Roker on the Today Show that she was diagnosed three years ago and that she’s entitled to be compensated for her work with drugmaker Novo Nordisk, “just as you are for your work,” she told Roker.
The announcement comes just as one of her sons has launched a Food Network show called “Not My Mama’s Meals” featuring lighter versions of her food (they got to cook together on the second half of the Today Show segment), and she and both boys will appear in Diabetes in a New Light commercials that will start airing by the end of the month.
Now, I’ve stood up for Paula Deen in this space before after that spat last year with Anthony Bourdain, but this is indefensible. She’s a multi-millionaire whose cooking has likely led to the demise of her own health and probably that of countless others. And what does she do with it? She finds a way to make even more money from it, getting paid with the profits that Novo Nordisk is making off people who are far less fortunate than she is.
Deen is justifying her partnership with Novo Nordisk by saying that “I wanted to bring something to the table when I came forward,” as if all the other information about how to prevent Type 2 diabetes and other ways to treat it weren’t out there already.
Clearly, I’m not the only food writer disgusted by this news. Jane Black expressed her disappointment that Deen didn’t own up to the role that her own eating habits played in getting Type 2 diabetes and become a role model by changing her brand and taking fans, many of whom are struggling with diabetes or have a family member who is, with her. “Deen knows that even a mention of healthy, responsible eating could undermine her multimillion-dollar television-and-cookbook empire built on the glories sugar and lard,” she writes.
In an on-camera interview with the Times’ Kim Severson, Deen admitted that the doughnut hamburger thing was “taking it a little too far” and that you should only eat it once in a lifetime, just after joking that you can’t beat the grim reaper so go ahead and eat that pat of butter.
The New York Times’ Julia Moskin talked with Southern cookbook author Virginia Willis, who pointed out that we have always been quick to attack Paula Deen for using so much butter, but that we let Michelin-starred chefs get away with it. Having said that, though, Willis reminded us that Deen — and this announcement — actually gives Southern cuisine a bad rap that it doesn’t deserve.
In a video on the drug company’s site, Deen explains that she has cut back on drinking sweet tea, goes on walks with her husband and is sharing diabetes-friendly recipes as part of this partnership.
All you have to do to get access to those recipes is fill out a form with almost 20 required fields, including do you “feel guilty when my doctor tells me my blood sugar should be better under control.” (Note that there’s no option to opt-out of getting promotional and marketing information from Novo Nordisk.)
There’s something very sick about all of this that has nothing to do with Deen’s cooking.
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January 12, 2012
Farewell, Dublin Dr Pepper
After a trademark dispute that started last summer, Dr Pepper Snapple Group and Dublin Dr Pepper Bottling Company announced yesterday that they’d reached a deal that ends the 121-year tradition of Dublin Dr Pepper, the beloved cane sugar-sweetened Dr Pepper sold in small 8-ounce bottles.
Dr Pepper Snapple will make a Dr Pepper sweetened with cane sugar that it will distribute to certain parts of Texas, but the “nostalgic packaging” won’t carry the Dublin label.
“Our main focus has always been on protecting the strength and integrity of the Dr Pepper trademark,” Rodger L. Collins, president of packaged beverages at Dr Pepper Snapple, is quoted as saying in the WSJ story.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram explains what this means to the small town of Dublin, which for decades has drawn as many as 95,000 tourists a year who were looking for the fountain of their favorite soda. (Most of them were unaware that much of the Dublin Dr Pepper was actually produced at an independent bottler in Temple, according to the Star-Telegram story.)
Who knows how much longer DublinDrPepper.com will exist, but the homepage (above) today is a pretty good visual contrast of this story. The slick, corporate Dr Pepper logo right next to the old-timey Dublin Bottling Works logo, which will take visitors to OldDocs.com, the site for Old Doc’s Soda Shop, the W.P. Kloster Museum and Dublin Bottling Works, which will continue to make Triple XXX Root Beer, NuGrape and SunCrest sodas.
It’s the end of a very long era that is near and dear to many Texans, including this transplant. Are you sad to see Dublin Dr Pepper go away? Will you drink its replacement?
Photo from Dublin Dr Pepper’s Wikipedia page.
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January 11, 2012
How can a food trailer help the homeless?
Have you ever thought about how hard it would be to get a job if you didn’t have a drivers’ license or social security card?
Sure, you could accept under-the-table money in exchange for helping move some furniture or clean a house, but if you’re without a job and without a home, odd-end jobs like that aren’t likely to get you on your feet.
Clean Slate is a local nonprofit that helps homeless men and women become employable by helping get them the skills, paperwork and the social and personal grooming they need to be employable.
The biggest component of Clean Slate right now is a car washing program that brings the workers to office complexes, where they wash the cars of employees inside the building who have signed up. But last year, they teamed up with Paul Petruzzi, a chef who went to the Culinary Institute of America who is now a restaurant consultant, to create Full Plate, a catering and lunch delivery program.
Earlier this month, I wrote about how Full Plate came together, and since the story came out, Petruzzi says they’ve had tons of calls for people who are interested in having the team cater an event or deliver meals to their home or office.
He says they have a breakfast catering gig next week for 120 people, which seems like a lot of people until you consider that their first event was a Sept. 11 remembrance event for 600 people at Lake Hills Church on Bee Cave Road.
Petruzzi also got a call this week from someone who owns a property on South Congress Avenue that currently houses a few food trailers. She offered Full Plate a space if they could come up with a trailer, which in a town as saturated with food trailers as Austin, shouldn’t be too hard.
I’ve also received a few calls at the office. One from a man who said he was out of work and “almost homeless” and another from a woman on a fixed income whose two sons are both homeless in Austin. (They were asking for the phone number of Full Plate, which, in case you’d like to hire them for an event or if you have a lead on a trailer, is 573-353-1235. You can also send an email to stephanie@cleanslateaustin.org.)
In another piece of good news, Petruzzi says that Carmen Gutierrez, the homeless woman in the story who worked at Dairy Queen as a young woman but who couldn’t get hired back there now, might be off the streets and in temporary housing by the end of the week.
Photo by Kelly West for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Food in the news
January 4, 2012
Jester King bests TABC, LBJ loved Michelob and other food stories you might have missed over the holidays
• The ranch near Stonewall that President Johnson’s family called home has been open to the public for a while now, but they recently opened the private quarters, including the kitchen. to the public. Most surprising find? A beer keg refrigerator with a Michelob tap.
• Jester King made news twice: Once with its win against the TABC that essentially allows brewers to call their beer what it is, and another with a recall of its Commercial Suicide beer, which could over-carbonated in the bottle.
• Restaurant critic Matthew Odam, Liquid Austin columnist Emma Janzen and I picked the top 11 food stories in Austin in 2011. We saw more trailers moving into restaurant spaces, craft breweries opening faster than we could count them and David Bull elevating the fine dining bar with his downtown restaurant, Congress, but in my mind, nothing tops can top what the farmers and ranchers have been going through with the drought and extreme heat. Agricultural losses in Texas alone topped $5 billion last fall, and consumers will be paying for it in the form of higher food prices this year.
• The Kung Fu Saloon owners are opening a new bar sometime early in the new year called the Brew Exchange that has an interesting concept: prices will fluctuate according to demand. The most often a beer is ordered, the higher the price. The taps that aren’t as popular will go down in price.
• Elizabeth Street Cafe, the much-anticipated Vietnamese restaurant on South First Street from noted Austin chef Larry McGuire, opened just before Christmas. Early reports are that the food is great, if slightly more expensive than banh mi, bun and pho at traditional Vietnamese restaurants, and that don’t expect that there will be any croissants left if you get there an hour after it opens.
• Botticelli’s on South Congress Avenue had a run-in with BMI. The music rights management music nonprofit sued Botticelli’s for failing to get the proper licenses to play copyrighted music. According to the story by Statesman business reporter Gary Dinges, “The nonprofit BMI, based in New York, says it first contacted the restaurant’s owners in late 2009. Since then, a spokesman said, BMI representatives have attempted more than 100 times — by phone, via mail and in person — to discuss the situation.”
SB 81 - The Texas Cottage Food Law from Christian Remde on Vimeo.
• Austin filmmaker Christian Remde came out with the last film in his yearlong series, The Twelve Films Project, and, like many of his videos this year, the final one dealt with food, specifically SB81, the so-called cottage law that the Texas legislature passed last year.
• Boggy Creek owners Larry Butler and Carol Ann Sayle just might live in the oldest surviving house in Austin. Virginia Wood explored the historical significance of house on the pioneering East Austin farm in a fascinating article for the Chronicle a few weeks ago.
• LeeAnn and Lawrence Kocurek decided to shut down their charcuterie business this month. LeeAnn took a managerial job at Perla’s and Larry is now the chef de cuisine at Stories, the fine dining restaurant inside the Hyatt Lost Pines Resort.
Photos by Ralph Barrera, Jay Janner and Larry Kolvoord for the Austin American-Statesman.
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November 30, 2011
"Top Chef: Texas": Are Texas and San Antonio getting their money's worth?
Another winner from the business desk today: Reporter Gary Dinges got his hands on the once top-secret “brand integration agreement” that the “Top Chef” production company, Magical Elves, made with state’s Economic Development and Tourism Division and the San Antonio Convention and Visitors Bureau.
We already knew that the state gave Magical Elves $400,000 to bring the show to Texas and that San Antonio coughed up $200,000 to be prominently featured, but Dinges’ story reveals all the juicy details: “Top Chef” producers estimated that they’d spend $80,000 on rental cars and $197,227 on per-diems for travelers. The state also insisted that the series wouldn’t show underage drinking, gambling and illegal drug use by its hosts and judges and that it would limit “explicit negative statements about the state.” (I wonder if that means they’ll have to edit out all the griping from the judges and contestants about how f%*#$ing hot it was during filming this summer.)
Dinges reported that the state estimates it will receive $15 million in exposure in exchange for the $400,000 payment and San Antonio predicts in excess of $9 million in “positive media value” for the $200,000 deal. Three episodes were taped in the Austin area, but the Austin Convetion and Visitors Bureau declined requests from Magical Elves to pay to be featured.
Lucy Nashed, the spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry who earlier this year denied to more than one reporter, including this one, that any sort of money had exchanged hands, said that so far, the state is “pleased with the outcome of our brand integration agreement thus far.” The San Antonio CVS is also happy with what they’ve gotten so far, especially that first scene in front of the Alamo.
Do you think the state and San Antonio are getting their money’s worth for “Top Chef: Texas”?
It seems to me that San Antonio is really getting the best deal here. Without that $200,000 payment, “Top Chef: Texas” likely would have passed over the city altogether, and now, for a couple of thousand dollars, the Alamo City is home base for the entire season.
The next episode of “Top Chef: Texas” airs tonight at 9 on Bravo. We’ll have a recap up in the morning. (Apologies for missing last week. Let’s blame the turkey.)
Photos from BravoTV.com.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Celebs in the Kitchen, Food in the news
November 9, 2011
Parking in state garage near downtown farmers' market no longer free
Since the Sustainable Food Center Farmers’ Market Downtown opened in 2003, it has been located near and, as of last year, in Republic Square Park at the intersection of Fourth and Guadalupe Streets.
And since it started, the Texas Facilities Commission has allowed market shoppers to park for free in State Parking N, a garage at Third and San Antonio Streets.
But not any more.
Late last month, the Sustainable Food Center got notice that starting Nov. 1, the garage would cost $3 from 7 to 11 a.m. and $5 for anyone entering the garage after 11 a.m., even for farmers’ market shoppers.
Part of why SFC chose that location as home for the market was the free parking offered to them as an organization of “mission,” says Suzanne Santos, who directs the three SFC markets. There are a number of state-run parking garages downtown that are free on Sunday mornings for churchgoers for the same reason, Santos says.
But Mike Lacy, deputy executive director of the commission, says that since the initial agreement, downtown Austin has evolved. “We have statutory obligation to generate revenue after hours,” he says. The City of Austin recently started charging people to park on the street after 11 a.m. on Saturdays at a cost of $1 per hour, but City Hall offers its garage free to the public until 5 p.m. on Saturday. “Change is what it is,” Lacy says.
When asked if the commission would consider charging on Sunday mornings, Lacy said, “We’ll probably look at all of that in time.” He says that the decision to change the policy on Saturday mornings at State Parking N was primarily market driven. There are just more people wanting to park downtown on Saturday mornings, he says.
He also noted that the market will continue to have access to 75 free spaces in the garage for vendors and volunteers.
Santos says that SFC is appealing the decision, citing a 2003 bill that says parking in state garages could be offered for free if nonprofits asked for it.
She pointed out that there are still more than 100 free parking spaces for farmers’ market shoppers in the surface parking lot across San Antonio Street from the garage. Only half of that lot is available for shoppers, though.
“Our surveys show that over 70 percent of the people who come to the market wouldn’t come downtown if not for the market, and 40 percent say they go and shop elsewhere in the area,” Santos says. “If you keep people from coming downtown, you will lose money from sales tax.”
Photo by Ralph Barrera for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
November 4, 2011
After 24 years, Eastside Cafe owners part ways
For the past few years, Barger has been running HausBar Farm in East Austin, and all of the eggs and produce were going to the restaurant, but now that Barger has sold her share of Eastside to Martin, she’s selling the goods to Farmhouse Delivery and to other restaurants around town. She and partner Susan Hausmann have plans to turn the house on the 2-acre property into a B&B.
Martin says that she’ll still be keeping up the garden on the Eastside Cafe property, and that after the holidays, she’s going to start seriously looking for a space to open a breakfast-and-lunch diner modeled after Brown Sugar Kitchen, one of her favorite restaurants in Oakland, Calif.
She and partners Dee and Gary Kelleher of Dripping Springs Vodka haven’t settled on a name, but all of the options so far contain the word “pie,” which will be a fixture on the menu.
Photo by Mike Sutter for the Austin American-Statesman.
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November 1, 2011
Parkside's Shawn Cirkiel to open Italian restaurant called Olive & June in old El Arbol space
Shawn Cirkiel isn’t turning on his Polish roots, but the chef/owner of Parkside isn’t just dabbling in Italian with his Backspace pizzeria that opened a year ago — he’s turning the former El Arbol space at 3411 Glenview Ave. into an Italian restaurant called Olive & June (the combined middle names of his grandmother and his wife’s grandmother), which he’s hoping to open early next year.
“The goal is to beat South by Southwest,” he says.
It’s been a decade since Cirkiel jumped into the spotlight of Austin’s food scene when he bought Jean Luc’s Bistro. Cirkiel, who was in his mid-20s at the time, ended up closing the five-star French restaurant three years later to put the wheels in motion for a restaurant that he could call his own.
He chose an unlikely space — a worn building in the heart of East Sixth Street that had housed Dan McKlusky’s steakhouse since 1990, and in 2008, opened Parkside, an upscale but comfortable eatery that serves things like raw oysters and raw fish dishes, guanciale (pork-cheek)-wrapped quail, grilled venison with pickled blueberries and marrow bones topped with an herb salad.
It’s mix of cuisines that’s hard to classify, which is why Austin diners perked up when Cirkiel went Italian last year when he opened a pizzeria behind Parkside called Backspace a year ago.
Like many chefs, Cirkiel’s travels to Italy have influenced his cooking, but the roots of his love of Italy go back to the Italian American hub of Arthur Avenue in the South Bronx, where his dad grew up and where Cirkiel remembers enjoying jovial family dinners as a kid.
The focus at Olive & June will be Southern Italian menu, “with a little Northern mixed in,” he says, with half a dozen antipasti and 15 to 20 even smaller bites called piccoli piatti, as well as handmade fresh pastas and entrées — with dishes like grilled swordfish topped with mint, capers and olive oil, roasted eggplant and breadcrumbs that play on the traditional meatball, baby lamb and polenta — but no pizzas. (You’ll have to go to Backspace for that.)
Italian food culture is based on the premise of eating what grows well where you live, so expect to find food that reflects the seasons, Cirkiel says. Eventually, he plans to add brunch on Saturdays and Sundays, as well as Sunday nights that only feature the small plates and a family-style supper that would change every week.
With the help of his chef de cuisine, Justin Rupp, and pastry chef Steven Cak, Cirkiel will run all three kitchens, floating from restaurant to restaurant, depending on the day. General manager Harlan Scott will oversee all three restaurants as well.
They plan to turn the offices on third floor at Glenview Avenue into private dining spaces and to “soften” the look of the patio with a lot of greenery and flowers. “Imagine a cross between Santa Barbara and the Amalfi Coast,” Cirkiel says.
Updated 11/3 to correct name of Arthur Avenue in the South Bronx. Photo by Jay Janner for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Eating out, Food in the news, Openings/Closings
October 27, 2011
After almost 52 years, Mike's Pub closes -- for now
Don’t throw in the towel on Mike’s Pub just yet.
The longtime downtown burger joint is trying to renegotiate its lease to stay in a small upstairs space off Seventh Street and Congress Avenue, but owner Chris Lavas says he’s put in his final offer and that while it’s “possible” the property owner will accept it, “I wouldn’t say likely.”
Mike’s Pub has been open in various locations downtown since Lavas’ grandfather, Mike Lavas, opened it in 1959. It’s been at 108 E. Seventh St. since 1973, serving burgers to everyone from lawyers to construction workers who work in the downtown area. “We are closed right now,” Lavas said on Thursday. “It’s looking bleak whether or not we can resign the lease at this location.”
But Lavas, who bought the place from his dad in 2001, says he still wants to stay in the restaurant business and is looking at other locations.
“I would like to open it back up,” Lavas said. “There have been tons of people that have expressed how much they would like to see us reopen somewhere.”
Lavas said that they’ll update the website with details if they work out an agreement with the property owner or if they find another home for the restaurant.
Photos by Marla Brose for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating out, Food in the news, Openings/Closings
October 24, 2011
City Council wants to hear your thoughts on banning plastic bags
Did you remember to bring reusable bags the last time you went grocery shopping?
I didn’t either.
Having to use plastic or paper bags at the checkout is a constant source of guilt in my life, but I still can’t seem to remember to bring a few of the reusable bags that are spilling out from the bottom of my pantry.
But soon, those plastic bags might go away altogether.
The Austin City Council could vote on the plastic bag ban as soon as next month, but first, they want to hear from you at a meeting at 6 p.m. tonight at Town Lake Center (801 Barton Springs Road).
Staffers will be on hand to gather public input on the issue, but before you go, you should check out city reporter Sarah Coppola’s excellent story in yesterday’s paper about how bans on plastic bags have affected the handful of other cities in the U.S. that have bans in place and the pros and cons of plastic and paper bags. (The answer isn’t as clear as you might think.)
What do you think? Should the city take the step to ban plastic bags?
Photo by Elaine Thompson for the Associated Press.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Categories: Food in the news
October 10, 2011
San Antonio pays $200K to be included in 'Top Chef: Texas'
This whole “Top Chef: Texas” mess just keeps getting messier.
The San Antonio Express-News has the latest update to the saga: The San Antonio Convention and Visitors Bureau paid $200,000 to be included in eight of the episodes. The Dallas and Austin CVBs, representing the other two cities to be featured in the upcoming season, did not pay to be included, their representatives have repeatedly said.
The Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau, on the other hand, was asked to pay $120,000 to be included in one episode, but officials declined the offer. They were subsequently left out of the series, despite being a top tier dining destination and the largest city in the state.
Last week, the Statesman reported that Magical Elves, the “Top Chef” production company, has sued the state to keep details of the $400,000 deal under wraps and that Houston has paid to run commercials during each of the episodes.
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
October 5, 2011
"Top Chef: Texas" producers sue state attorney general
In today’s business section, Gary Dinges reports that the producers behind the show are suing the attorney general to prevent the release of details behind the $400,000 deal that the show made with the state to bring “Top Chef” here.
Even though plenty of other shows and films have received incentives to film here, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry says that the “integrated marketing agreement” is a first-of-its-kind deal for Texas. (It’s worth noting that this is the same spokeswoman who told me a few months ago that no money was being exchanged to bring “Top Chef: Texas” here.)
The Austin and Dallas visitors’ bureaus have confirmed that they didn’t spent any money to bring the show to their cities, but San Antonio is declining to say whether it had offered cash or other incentives.
Houston, which as the largest city in the state is conspicuously absent from the series, has confirmed that it declined an offer from the producers seeking compensation in exchange for being featured on the show.
You can read the full story here.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Food in the news
September 30, 2011
Austin Bakes for Bastrop coordinator Kathryn Hutchison: What's in Your Fridge Friday?
Are you ready for some sweets?
Tomorrow, the group of volunteers who raised more than $11,000 through a citywide bake sale for Japan after the tsunami earlier this year are back, this time raising money for victims of the area wildfires.
Austin Bakes for Bastrop will take place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday at seven locations — Community Renaissance Market (6800 Westgate Blvd.), The Flying Saucer (815 W. 47th St.), Foreign & Domestic (306 E. 53rd St.), Hotel San Jose (1316 S. Congress Ave.), Old Settler’s Park (3300 E. Palm Valley Blvd,, Round Rock) and both Whole Foods Markets — and will feature baked goods from more than 80 home cooks, food bloggers and businesses.
Proceeds will go to Austin Community Foundation’s Central Texas Wildfire Fund.
Who could be coordinating such an event? It’s Austin food blogger Kathryn Hutchison, who helped get the ball rolling on both the Japan event and this one. She’d be the first to say that she couldn’t do it alone, but she’s the one making sure all the balls — maybe muffins is a better metaphor — up in the air don’t come crashing down.
In her fridge today are tons of sweets that will be available around town tomorrow: Miles of Chocolate, vegan Rice Krispie treats and poppyseed lemon cake from Gullet Girl Scout Troops 1160 and 976, Cinna-mini crunch, madeleine cookies, Thunderbird Energetica Bars, chocolate cappuccino cupcakes and Tiny Pies
“All the stuff that is usually in our fridge is shoved into the crisper drawers, or else we ate it to make room,” she says. “This week has been a celebration of leftovers.”
What three things are always in your fridge? I always have local eggs, local organic produce and white wine in the fridge. We don’t usually keep a lot of sweets in the house, so all the pastries in my fridge this week are an exception to the rules!
What’s your favorite condiment? I got some really great pickle relish from one of my blogging friends, Fleur De-Lectable, at Austin Bakes for Japan (our last bake sale). It’s not too sweet, with just the right amount of spice, and I love using it on hot dogs, burgers, and in tuna salad. Lauren is bringing canned items to the Community Renaissance Market location of this bake sale, and I hope there will be another jar of pickle relish for me to buy tomorrow!
What’s your go-to sweet treat to always have on hand? Confituras jams and preserves. I always look forward to pear season in Central Texas because it means Stephanie will have salted caramel pear butter at the market. (Look for some of that at our Flying Saucer Triangle and Round Rock bake sale locations tomorrow!)
Photos by Kathryn Hutchison and Nathan Russell.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Food in the news, What's in Your Fridge Friday
Mirabelle sold, closing for 'a short period of renovation and renewal'
Early this morning, Michael Vilim, who founded Mirabelle on Mesa Drive in 1998, sent out this email to people on his newsletter list:
Mirabelle will be closing Wednesday, October 5th for a short period of renovation and renewal. Michael, Patrick and the Mirabelle owners have decided to make a change and Tuesday will be our last day. It’s been a great pleasure to have Mirabelle be the place where you’ve shared so many of the important occasions in your lives and also gratifying to be a place in the neighborhood where friends meet to share a good meal or bottle of wine. Please join us this weekend to celebrate 12 years of fine food and great friends.
Personally I’ve felt privileged to be part of your lives and I’d like to thank you for your support over the years. I’m looking forward to taking some time off, recharging my batteries, and visiting vineyards instead of hearing Patrick recount extravagant tales about them. If you can’t come by before we close on Wednesday, please be sure and visit when Mirabelle reopens the following week. Brian O’Neil (sic), who’s a terrific fellow and has run many top notch restaurants in town and across the country, has purchased the restaurant and he and the staff will be here serving up great food and wine for years to come.
For fans of Michael Vilim’s Mirabelle, tonight and tomorrow are your chances to say farewell.
“We’ll be closed for more than a day, but less than a week,” O’Neill said Friday morning. “For the rest of the year, I’m just going to leave it alone. There are parties and expectations and I need to meet the clientele and figure it all out. Starting around January 1, the Mirabelle that I envision will be much more of a neighborhood French bistro.”
O’Neill says he will be keeping the staff on and that wants to introduce Saturday and Sunday brunch before the end of the year. “I’m just ecstatic.”
Photo by Ha Lam for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Food in the news, Openings/Closings
September 22, 2011
Kenichi founder discovered dead in Aspen
The Pitkin County (Colo.) Coroner’s Office said Wednesday that the 50-year-old, who had survived testicular cancer and had talked openly about previous alcohol abuse and drug addiction, committed suicide.
In a 2001 story, Rieger told Austin American-Statesman restaurant critic Dale Rice that he was happy to be bringing a taste of California to Texas, where many West Coast transplants were moving in part because of the high-tech boom. “Sushi in California is as common as our barbecue. There’s a sushi bar on every corner in California,” he told Rice.
Kenichi Austin recently underwent a renovation and rehired chef Shane Stark, who was the opening chef a decade ago but had left before returning this year.
Photo by Lynn Goldsmith for the Aspen Times Weekly.
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
El Arbol, The Belmont close without notice
Updated with links to a business story by Gary Dinges, which outlines plans for El Arbol chef and general manager and how customers can get a refund on Living Social coupon.
The economy is taking a toll on local restaurants.
El Arbol and The Belmont closed this week without much notice to customers.
“We would like to thank everyone that has been a guest at El Arbol, at this time we are having to close our doors,” El Arbol, the South American restaurant in Central Austin, posted on its Facebook page. “We can’t thank our wonderful staff and guests enough. It has been our pleasure.”
The Belmont sent out this notice to people who had booked events at the West Sixth Street nightclub/restaurant: “We regret to inform you that The Belmont is closed indefinitely and without warning as of today, September 21, 2011. We apologize for the extreme inconvenience this may cause you and your guests…We are sincerely sorry for this and wish you nothing but the best of luck with your event.”
Earlier this summer, El Arbol general manager said that with 60 percent of the seating outdoors, the extreme heat meant fewer guests in the restaurant. Even with $5,000 worth of oscillating fans, it wasn’t cool enough to eat outside until about 8 p.m., Farnsworth said.
These closings leave many diners with unspent gift certificates and discount coupons through sites such as Living Social. UPDATE: Customers who had purchased a Living Social coupon for El Arbol can get their money back. One of the reasons restaurants sign up for those social discount sites is to get a rush of customers in an otherwise slow time, but it’s not always enough to save them.
As restaurants transition from summer to fall and even more of them come on the scene, it’s likely that we’ll see more closings from places that are teetering on the edge. Many are offering weeknight discounts, special dinners or other deals to bring people in the door. If you have a place you’ve been wanting to try, or a favorite eatery that you suspect might not be doing so well, now is the time to put your dollars to work.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Food in the news, Openings/Closings
September 21, 2011
Austin chefs Paul Qui, Andrew Curren to compete in 'Top Chef: Texas'
Well, isn’t this surprising.
Even though everyone in town suspected that Uchiko chef Paul Qui was going to be a contestant on the upcoming season of “Top Chef: Texas,” I hadn’t heard 24 Diner chef Andrew Curren’s name in the mix until today, when Bravo officially announced the contestants for season nine.
The new season will premiere at 9 p.m. on Nov. 2 on Bravo and will pit a record 29 chefs against one another. According to the release, only 16 will actually go on to compete in contests in Austin, Dallas and San Antonio that were filmed this summer.
Guest judges include Charlize Theron, Pee-wee Herman, Cat Cora, John Besh, Tim Love and Patti LaBelle, and Emeril Lagasse and Hugh Acheson have joined Gail Simmons and Tom Colicchio as official judges for the entire season.
Here are Andrew and Paul’s casting videos:
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
September 20, 2011
Marc Katz moving back to New York
Marc Katz is going back to his roots.
Long Island isn’t exactly his hometown, but it’s close enough to New York City for the man who spent more than three decades bringing a taste of the Big Apple to Austin. Katz is moving to Long Island less than a year after he closed Katz’s Deli, his West Sixth Street 24-hour delicatessen whose slogan, “Katz’s Never Kloses,” rang true until the doors shuttered on Jan. 1. (The holes that it left — both in kooky character and the high-value real estate on West Sixth — are still vacant.)
He is helping fellow Austinites Deanna Nauer and Cashmar Arnold open a restaurant in Mineola, an hour outside the city. “Mostly a bar with five or six very strong food items,” he says. No name for the restaurant just yet (his current somewhat risque favorite — Steaks, Boobs and Martinis — got nixed), but he says they hope to open in November.
He’ll back back to Austin to visit friends, a memorial bench for his dad on Lady Bird Lake and his dentist. “Having a large ego, I’m going to miss my fame, too,” he says. It’s time for reinvention.
“I’m going back to where this whole thing started from.”
Photo by Ralph Barrera for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Food in the news
September 19, 2011
Roscar chocolatiers lose shop, home in Bastrop fire
Like hundreds of fellow Bastrop residents, Frans and Roselly Hendriks lost everything in the recent wildfires.
Sure, they lost their personal belongings, but also reduced to ashes were the thousands of dollars worth of specialty chocolate-making equipment that Frans used to make Roscar chocolates.
In today’s Metro section, I wrote about what it has been like for Frans and Roselly in the two weeks since the wildfires swept the eastern perimeter of Bastrop. (Earlier this month, Sen. Kirk Watson and other officials gave a press conference, above, on the Hendriks’ property off Texas 71 just east of the city.)
While they sort out the insurance paperwork and deal with FEMA, Frans and Roselly are living in a hotel in Bastrop. He has his recipe book and, in some strange twist of fate, a coin from 1756 that Frans swears is from a coin collection that he started when he was a boy that was stolen in Florida a number of years ago.
“(Last week), I was going to go get a haircut, to get out of the room, you know,” Frans says. Roselly handed him a handful of money, including what looked like a very black quarter. He looked closely and recognized it as a rare coin that was once part of his collection.
“There are very few of these,” he says. “We don’t know how she came upon it.”
For now, Frans says they’ll post updates on the website, and because they have access to a computer center at the hotel where they are staying, you can reach out to them directly by email.
Photos by Kelly West and Laura Skelding for the Austin American-Statesman.
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September 14, 2011
Learn about Dumpster diving, food rescue at Blanton free screening
Filmmaker Jeremy Seifert’s 2010 documentary “Dive!” looks at food waste and what people are doing about it, including Dumpster diving.
At 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Seifert will be in Austin for a free screening of the movie at the Blanton Museum of Art. Seifert will join Capital Area Food Bank president Hank Perret, Ronda Rutledge of the Sustainable Food Center and the Sustainable Food Policy Board, UT professor Elizabeth Engelhardt and GivingCity Austin founding editor Monica Williams for a discussion after the film.
Tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis at the Blanton starting at 5 p.m. on Thursday.
Photo by Seth Ferris.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
September 13, 2011
As Paradise Cafe on Sixth closes, Old School Bar and Grill moving in
After 30 years at the corner of Sixth and Trinity streets downtown, Paradise Cafe closed last weekend, and in its place will be Old School Bar and Grill, an extension of the Old School restaurant and food trailer operated by Austin restaurateur Dan Parrott.
In July, more than a year after he opened the roaming barbecue trailer in a yellow school bus, Parrott opened Old School Grill, a restaurant at 6301 W. Parmer Lane.
Parrott says that the downtown location will incorporate much of the menu of the restaurant, minus the dishes that have to be cooked on a saute line because the new location at 401 E. Sixth St. has a smaller kitchen.
In the upstairs space will be Austin Cotton Exchange, a live music venue that will feature music from “different genres on different days of the week,” Parrot says. The new restaurant will also feature the same cocktail and wine menus of Old School Grill.
“We want to bring a level of service to Sixth that you don’t typically get in a lot of places,” Parrott says. He plans on opening every day at 11 a.m. and closing at 2 a.m., with the menu changing as the crowd inevitably changes. “I know there’s lunch down there… and dinner is sitting there waiting. I know happy hour is, too,” he says. But after that, he plans to offer a reduced menu with dishes such as sliders for what he calls “drunk 30.” “From 10 p.m. on, it is what it is down there,” Parrott says of that section of Sixth Street between Congress and Interstate 35.
Parrott says he is shooting for an Oct. 24 opening date.
Old School BBQ and Grill, the school bus food trailer, has been closed this summer while they got the first restaurant off the ground, but look for the bus to be back in a few weeks in a new location at 27th and Guadalupe.
Photos by Mike Sutter and Dan Parrott.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating out, Food in the news, Openings/Closings
September 12, 2011
Todd Duplechan leaving Trio to open Lenoir in former Somnio's space
Todd Duplechan and Jessica Maher, one of Austin’s top husband-and-wife culinary teams, is opening a restaurant called Lenoir in the South First Street space that used to house Somnio’s Cafe, which closed last month.
Duplechan tweeted last week that he had put in his notice with Trio, the fine dining restaurant in the Four Seasons downtown. Maher, who has most recently been working with Dai Due, and Duplechan moved to Austin four years ago from New York City, where they were working at restaurants two doors down from one another. The two restaurants shared a locker room, so they were always crossing paths.
Maher says that they hope to open the restaurant in December and that it will have two prix-fixe menus: A three-course menu with several choices and a five-course chef’s tasting, which will be set but able to be modified for dietary restrictions.
They’ll launch with dinner only, and then add brunch. “Todd will be cooking every night, and I’ll be doing front of house,” she says. “I want this to be a neighborhood place. We’re calling it casual fine dining. I want people who live near here to be able to afford it and come in once a week.”
Instead of butter-heavy sauces and rich food, Maher says they are planning to serve what she’s calling hot weather food. “We’re taking cues from other hot climates around the world and making our food lighter, more acidic and spicy,” she says. The ingredients will also have a sense of place. “We are devoted to local, no matter where we are.”
The name comes from the black grape varietal that originated in France but adapted to Texas. She says she knows it sounds cheesy, but the ability for the grape to evolve to its surroundings reminded them of how they’ve adapted to living here. “It’s awesome to work together. We really understand each other in the kitchen.”
No word yet on when will be opening or what the menu will look like, but I expect great things from this pair. They’ve been looking to open their own places for several years, and Duplechan’s menu at Trio has always been one of the most interesting, well-executed in town. His last day at Trio is Oct. 9.
Photo by Todd Duplechan.
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September 6, 2011
Bake sale on Saturday to raise money for fire victims
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Heirloom Tea Room grand opening in Bastrop turns into fundraiser, sanctuary for fire victims
Deena Spellman, who owns Bastrop Gardens Organic Garden Center in Cedar Creek, has been spent months preparing for a grand opening party Saturday for her newest venture, a tea room and eatery called Heirloom Tea Room.
When wildfires first broke out in Bastrop County east of Austin over the weekend, Spellman considered canceling the event, even though the fires are relatively far from her place.
“But then I realized that maybe my community might need a place to come chill out,” she said over the phone on Tuesday. “I don’t know if my baker was burnt out or my chef was burnt out…but I want to provide a respite for my community for a day.”
The free grand opening/fundraiser will take place from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday at 316 Old 71. Spellman says she’ll be putting out containers to gather cash donations to help fellow Central Texans who might have lost their homes or who are hosting evacuees.
People can walk through the gardens, enjoy music from a classical pianist and kids’ activities, eat tarts (even if she has to buy them from Central Market) and, of course, sip herbal tea that might help ease the stress caused by so many unknowns and so much turmoil.
“I want my community to know we’re open for her.”
Photo from Bastrop Gardens Organic Garden Center.
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Pedernales Bend fire leaves wineries, restaurants mostly unharmed
Hundreds of people have lost their homes in these wildfires that are burning across Central Texas, and it’s inevitable that some businesses, including restaurants, will go up in flames, too.
The Pedernales Bend fire, which is now mostly contained, started just up the road from Stone House Vineyard, which is located on a long winding road off Texas 71 near the Pedernales River (“B” on the map above), winery owner Angela Moench said via email. The high north wind swept the fire south, sparing the winery, but destryong more than 65 homes. “Dreadful devastation nearby, and I feel so much for all who have lost their homes,” Moench wrote.
On the other side of Texas 71 sits Spicewood Vineyards (“C” on the map above”, which lost electricity on Sunday, according to winemaker Jeff Ivy. “It got within four miles of here,” he says. But now that it’s mostly contained, he’s back to work at the winery.
John Gigliotti, who owns Lee’s Almost By The Lake near Briarcliff with his wife Jeannie, says that they could see flames from their house near the restaurant and had to evacuate. But now that the fire looks to be contained and the highway has reopened, the restaurant is open and they are moving back into the house.
Click here to find out how you can help the thousands of Central Texans who are affected by the fires.
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August 25, 2011
Bourdain, Deen spat prompts bigger discussion of culinary elitism
Frank Bruni, the former New York Times restaurant critic, tapped a nerve today with an article in response to a recent spat between television hosts Anthony Bourdain and Paula Deen.
Last week, Bourdain picked a fight with Deen when he called her “the worst, most dangerous person in America” because she’s “telling an already obese nation that it’s OK to eat food that is killing us.”
Deen fought back, saying “You know, not everybody can afford to pay $58 for prime rib or $650 for a bottle of wine.” As a multi-millionaire, she’s clearly not talking about herself, but she has a point. She’s defending her massive fan base, who, as a whole, flock to her and her fellow Food Network stars because of their “we’re common folk just like you” personas.
Bruni saw a bigger picture. In his op-ed piece, he uses their back-and-forth to talk about the deep dividing lines in our modern culinary culture that are based on class. Bourdain, he claims, represent “the self-appointed sophisticates,” while Deen and her fellow self-made millionaires Rachael Ray and Sandra Lee are the “supposed rubes.”
He compares the divide to the political one that continues to split our country.
And her retort exposes class tensions in the food world that sadly mirror those in society at large. You can almost imagine Bourdain and Deen as political candidates, a blue-state paternalist squaring off against a red-state populist over correct living versus liberty in all its artery-clogging, self-destructive glory.
Bruni makes a strong point when he writes about how hypocritical we’ve become about food.
When Deen fries a chicken, many of us balk. When the Manhattan chefs David Chang or Andrew Carmellini do, we grovel for reservations and swoon over the homey exhilaration of it all. Her strips of bacon, skirting pancakes, represent heedless gluttony. Chang’s dominoes of pork belly, swaddled in an Asian bun, signify high art.
The Village Voice responded with a post saying that although they agree with Bruni’s observations about how hypocritical our food society has become, he has missed the mark by using Bourdain and Deen as his targets. They then go on to question Bruni himself because of how he handled the Bush campaign way back when he was a political reporter.
But now we’re really getting off topic.
Instead of making this about Bourdain or Deen, who are clearly very wealthy celebrities who carefully craft every aspect of their public identities, we should be thinking about the people they have come to represent. The lower-to-middle class, trying-to-make-it-work working parents who can’t afford to eat out more than a few times a year, much less travel abroad and eat the street food Bourdain extols, and the middle-to-upper class, who have the dispensable income and time to if not eat at Momofuku, know who the hell David Chang actually is.
I think about this divide a lot in my job, and I’ve learned that it’s not exactly as black and white as this argument seems. It’s not farmers’ markets versus grocery stores or fast food versus high-end restaurants. It’s not paleo versus Engine 2 or Deen’s fried chicken versus Chang’s pork belly.
We all fall, whether or not we admit it to our Facebook friends, somewhere in the middle, often dabbling in both the “high” and “low” aspects of food culture, even if it’s just a secret affection for Red Hots. It’s my job to cover all of it and not take one side or the other.
Just as there’s a need to nudge people who only eat antibiotic-filled chicken to check out all that the farmers’ markets have to offer, there’s a need for the people who’ve eaten at every top 10 restaurant in Austin to have an unexpected chat with an Austinite of different means while picking out out-of-season greens beans in the produce section of a regular old grocery store.
I think Bruni’s right to call into question the culinary elite, who have gained so much power in recent years that they’ve forgotten that the vast, vast majority of eaters aren’t even using the same vocabulary when they talk about food. It’s not fair to sit on a perch, especially one at 20,000 feet en route to your next exotic food vacation for your hit television show, and tell millions of people they are fat, stupid and wrong.
Bruni says it best:
Besides, treating Deen, Lee & Co. with anything that smacks of moralizing and snobbery isn’t likely to move them or their audience toward healthier eating. It’s apt to cook up resentment. And we’ve got enough ill will and polarization in our politics. Let’s not set a place for them at the table.
UPDATE: So many problems, so few solutions, right? Jane Black writes this nice piece on The Atlantic about what the Food Network could be doing to help with the obesity crisis. (Hint: Stop glorifying 105-pound burgers.)
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August 18, 2011
Frank heading to East Texas for its second location
White Denim frontman James Petralli. “Rainbows End” filmmakers Eric Hueber and Andy Cope. The small town of Nacogdoches has sent Austin several excellent additions to our cultural scene. Now it seems Austin is providing payback to the oldest town in Texas.
Purveyors of artisan sausages, cold beer, inventive booze drinks and high-end coffee, Frank has announced it will be opening its second location in the historic East Texas town.
Frank has partnered with Aaron Montes, who will open the inventive hot dog restaurant’s second spot, which will be constructed around the oldest existing restaurant in Nacogdoches, according to Frank’s website.
No word yet on when the restaurant will open. UPDATE: The restaurant will open on August 26.
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August 11, 2011
Aquarelle closing to reopen as Chonita's
A rep says that sometime in late August or early September, the restaurant will close and open as Chonita’s sometime in late September or early October. “I’ve decided to take the Italian and French dishes I’ve worked with over the years at Basil’s and Aquarelle and present them with a bit of a Latin twist,” Wilson tells the Chronicle this week.
UPDATE: I’ve just confirmed that Aquarelle will be serving their famous steak frit sandwiches at the Austin City Limits Music Festival next month and that it will be one of their last gigs as Aquarelle.
UPDATE 2.0: Teresa Wilson chimed in the comments below to respond to readers and pointed out that the website is still active. I’ve updated the post, and my apologies for the error. (I clicked on the link from the Facebook page on Thursday and got a broken page, but it must have been a server error.)
Photo by Brian Diggs for the Austin American-Statesman.
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August 9, 2011
Bravo confirms "Top Chef Texas," new judges
After weeks and weeks of “Top Chef” sightings in San Antonio, Dallas and Austin, Bravo has finally confirmed that season nine will be based in Texas.
In a blog post today, the network also announced that they are adding two new judges, Emeril Lagasse, who needs no introduction, and Hugh Acheson, the Georgia chef who appeared on season three of “Top Chef Masters.”
(When Acheson was in town last month to film the Austin episodes, he and I had a chance to chat over coffee at the new Cafe Medici downtown to talk about his new book. Like a television pro, he was mum on why exactly he was in town, but he offered up plenty of opinions on the Austin food scene, what a Canadian like him knows about Southern food and why a restaurant shouldn’t cost $3 million to open. Look for that article around the time his book comes out in October.)
Props to the Dallas Observer for doing some serious digging about what the state may or may not be spending to bring the show here. Too bad Bravo is already falling into the cliche trap, using played-out puns and stereotypes to portray Texas as not much more than a cowboy paradise.
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Jeffrey's chef Deegan McClung leaving Austin for New York
After spending 10 years cooking in some of Austin’s best kitchens, including Wink and Uchi, Jeffrey’s executive chef Deegan McClung is headed to New York.
Kate McClung, who came on as general manager at Jeffrey’s not long after her husband took on the head chef job about two and a half years ago, says working at the longtime Clarksville restaurant was an honor. “To be part of something that has stood the test of time was amazing,” she says. “We learned a lot and give our thanks to the owners, regulars and staff.”
Kate McClung, who went to grad school in New York and was as much a part of the Austin food scene as her husband, says they decided to leave Austin after a trip to a chefs conference in New York last year left them feeling inspired and energized by the idea of moving up there.
McClung’s last day as executive chef at Jeffrey’s was last week. No word on exactly where they’ll land, but Kate says they are both looking into several prospects.
Ron Weiss, who with his wife Peggy and Jeff Weinberger owns Jeffrey’s and its sister restaurant Cipollina across West Lynn Street, says sous chef Bridget Bishop will be taking over the kitchen while they make a decision about who will fill the executive chef position. “She knows the menu well…and we’re going to make some menu changes with her,” Weiss says.
Photo by Matthew Fuller.
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August 8, 2011
Woman who helped open Top Notch in 1971 dies
Forty years is a long time to run a burger joint.
In 1971, Frances Stanish and her husband, Ray, opened a little burger shop on Burnet Road called Top Notch, which later became immortalized in pop culture history when Richard Linklater featured it in his 1993 movie “Dazed and Confused.”
Last year, when she became physically unable to run the place, Stanish sold the restaurant to two families within the company that owns Austin’s three Galaxy Cafes and Zocalo, but her daughter continues to work there.
After battling breast cancer for 14 years, Stanish died on Friday at age 75, and you can read more about her life in the obituary that ran in today’s paper.
” ‘I don’t have time for cancer, I have a business to run,’ ” Joan Tucker remembered her mother saying.
Photo by Alberto Martínez for the Austin American-Statesman.
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August 2, 2011
Austinite is Official Cheesemonger of American Cheese Society conference
Two years after Austin hosted the American Cheese Society annual conference, Austinite Kelly Sheehan, above, of Antonelli’s Cheese Shop has been named one of two official cheesemongers of the event, which starts Wednesday in Montreal.
Sheehan, along with Antonelli’s co-owner John Antonelli, have been in Montreal since last week so they can help take care of and coordinate more than 1,600 cheeses that have been entered into one of the world’s largest cheese competitions. Kendall Antonelli, who has stayed in Austin to help hold down the fort at the shop at 4220 Duval St., says Sheehan was asked to apply for the official cheesemonger position. “It just speaks volumes about the expertise and knowledge she has,” Antonelli says.
Kendall Antonelli says she’s been ordering lots of cheeses over the past few weeks that she thinks will win awards because the demand will shoot up once the winners are announced this weekend. It’s hard enough for them to keep up with demand for the products and classes as it is. The cheese shop has only been open for a year and a half, but the weekly Cheese 101 classes sell out within an hour of being announced in a newsletter at the end of the month. In addition to the wide selection of cheese, beer, wine and charcuterie, they’ve added picnic baskets rentals and catered cheese plates since opening last year.
Antonelli says they aren’t planning to open a second shop any time soon but that they hope to add more storage so they can increase their wholesale business and deliver cheeses to the more than 30 restaurants that buy from them.
Photo by Kendall Antonelli.
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July 25, 2011
Proposed ban on plastic bags is back, plus drought and local wineries
Three food stories worth reading from this weekend’s Statesman:
Did you remember your reusable bags? Mayor Lee Leffingwell is reviving a proposal to ban plastic bags at grocery stores in Austin that the council considered in 2008 but put on hold when grocers promised to voluntarily cut back on the number of plastic bags used.
Smaller, sweeter grapes: Area wineries say the drought is affecting their grape harvest, producing a significantly smaller, but sweeter crop. The drought extends all the way up the high plains of Texas, where the majority of the state’s grapes are grown.
“Everywhere someone’s standing…that’s an opportunity for us.” Local company Let’s Gel has sold its millionth Gel Pro mat, those squishy mats you see in high-end kitchens and even on the TV shows of a number of celebrity chefs, too.
Photos by Ralph Barrera and Jay Janner for the Austin American-Statesman.
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July 8, 2011
Capital Area Food Bank to build new facility, doubling capacity
The Capital Area Food Bank announced this week that it is building a new headquarters in East Austin that will be twice the size of its current facility in South Austin.
“We’re maxed out,” says John Turner, senior director of marketing and branding. “We just can’t turn any more food.”
It took just 14 years for the Capital Area Food Bank to outgrow its 60,000 square-foot warehouse on far South Congress Avenue, where the nonprofit takes in and distributes 2 million pounds of food every month to a 21-county area that is twice the size of Massachusetts.
The population of Travis County alone has grown 20 percent in the past decade, Turner says, with the number of residents living in poverty increasing 45 percent. Higher demand means that the food bank distributed about 25 million pounds of food in the past year, more than 50 percent more than three years ago.
The new 125,000-square-foot facility, located at the MetCenter off U.S. 183 near the airport, will house staff, warehouse, production kitchen, sorting area and a cooler and freezer space four to five times the size of the current one that will expand the amount of fresh and frozen food they can accept.
The Capital Area Food Bank often rescues food, including fresh produce — like apples that U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell sorted at an event in 2009, above — and raw meat, from grocery stores and other retailers that would often be thrown away, but Turner says that if there’s not enough room to accept it, they have to turn it down. “We only have so much space, and we can’t leave it outside.”
With the increased storage space, Turner says the food bank should be able to turn over 45 million pounds of food a year, almost twice what it can do now. The expansion will also allow the organization to add about 50 jobs to its current staff of 75 full-time employees.
The addition of a production kitchen will allow the staff to cook large quantities of food to distribute to partner agencies that are serving meals, such as soup kitchens and Boys and Girls Clubs, and clients who might not have access to kitchens.
“If we get a load of meat and tomatoes, we could cook them down and make industrial-size quantities of Bolognese or chili, for example,” Turner says. “We’re not just trying to feed people; we’re trying to change the composition of that food to more fresh food.”
Turner says they looked at the cost of retrofitting an existing building, but they found that the most cost-efficient route was to build from the ground up. Construction should begin in spring of next year and be completed in 12 to 18 months.
Photos by Larry Kolvorrd and Rodolfo Gonzalez for the Austin American-Statesman.
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June 3, 2011
IACP Awards: Martin Yan, Amanda Hesser, Dorie Greenspan, Hank Shaw among winners
The International Association of Culinary Professionals celebrated the best in food writing at its annual awards ceremony Thursday night at the Paramount Theater.
It was the 25th year that IACP, the world’s largest association of culinary professionals that is holding its annual conference in Austin this week, have given out cookbook awards, among the most prestigious in the nation.
Among the winners were Dorie Greenspan for “Around My French Table” and “The Essential New York Times Cookbook,” which Amanda Hesser spent six years digging through the 160-plus year archive of the newspaper to complete.
Boggy Creek Farm in East Austin, considered one of the first urban farms in the country, won an award for community service, and Hank Shaw won best blog for the second year in a row.
Martin Yan, who was a TV pioneer in the late 1970s with “Yan Can Cook” and wrote more than 30 cookbooks, accepted this year’s lifetime achievement award. At the end of the ceremony, White House pastry chef Bill Yosses accepted an award on behalf of Michelle Obama, which recognized her efforts to promote healthy eating with the Let’s Move campaign.
Coleman Andrews, Alan Richman Sara Moulton, who were not at the ceremony, were also among the winners. You can click here to find a complete list of honorees.
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June 2, 2011
IACP Panel: Food as front page news
Reporters and food writers used to be two separate jobs, but journalists who write about food can’t ignore newsworthy topics like sustainability, hunger, food safety, school lunches, public health, etc.
But as we learn more about how we eat affects our health and the environment, Americans are much more interested in political and newsworthy topics like school lunch reform, pesticide use and what exactly goes into that box of Triscuits we always buy at the store.
I wasn’t slated to be on the panel with Severson, but when I met her outside the session (we’ve known each other for some time on Twitter), she asked if I’d join her and White House pastry chef Bill Yosses to talk about what it’s like as a food writer today trying to write about the many aspects of the beat.
Throughout the entire session, Kim, Bill and I talked about various hot-button issues while interacting and taking questions from the audience, which included former Bon Appetit editor Barbara Fairchild.
There’s no doubt that the demand for newsy food stories is great, but from my perspective, making time to write big exposes about the agriculture industry or high fructose corn syrup is the hard part. When newsrooms are being whittled down a few positions at a time, the remaining staffers have to help fill in the gaps by writing more stories.
Another point I tried to make is that it’s important for journalists to see issues from many different perspectives.
It would be easy to read “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and become an advocacy journalist whose only goal is to support the sustainable food movement. Even in Portland, Ore., where eating locally is considered mainstream, only three percent of total food purchases come from farmers’ markets. Grocery stores might not be as sexy to write about, but the vast majority of people get the vast majority of their food from traditional outlets.
This applies to cooking, too. Molecular gastronomy is a hot topic, but it’s not that important when you consider that many people are still unsure about how to chop an onion. Fancy cooking techniques are fun, but they seem a whole lot less relevant when you consider the number of people in your community who don’t have reliable access to food staples in the first place.
The trick is to balance lifestyle and news journalism to keep audiences both entertained (and filled with ideas for how to get dinner on the table) and informed about the consequences of what they eat.
One of the biggest pitfalls is reducing these complex food issues into black or white choices. Having reported on school lunches, I’ve found out that the chocolate milk-in-schools debate isn’t as clear as Jamie Oliver makes it seem. Several audience members went back and forth citing conflicting scientific reports about high fructose corn syrup.
It’s easy to vilify big ag, for instance, but when Tyson Foods donates millions of pounds of mass-produce chicken to food banks every year to feed people who can’t afford any chicken, much less the sustainably raised kind from your local farmer, the conversation gets a little more complicated.
Which is why we need food writers — in addition writing recipes that encourage people to cook in the first place so they don’t have to rely on the dollar menu — to do the digging.
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May 31, 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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May 18, 2011
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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May 10, 2011
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?
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
May 9, 2011
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.
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
April 11, 2011
Jamie Oliver's 'Food Revolution' returns as Chicago school bans lunches from home
Summer feels like it’s just around the corner, but the school lunch debate is heating up again.
Jamie Oliver really got the conversation going last year with “Food Revolution,” a primetime show on ABC in which the British chef went to Huntington, W. Va., to make over the school district’s lunch program. He was met with plenty of opposition, but nothing quite like what he faced when he took the show to Los Angeles for its second season, which premieres Tuesday night at 7 p.m.
Before he had even arrived, the LA school board banned him from entering any of the public schools in the district. (He and Jon Stewart had a good laugh about the fact that in the reality TV capital of the world, he can’t film inside a public institution.)
It’s David versus a 300-pound, chocolate milk-drinking Goliath, but even if Oliver can’t infiltrate the school system like he did in West Virginia, he’ll do as much good simply by having another season of a show that focuses on kids’ eating habits.
What’s really interesting in this conversation is that as Oliver’s show gets underway, the Chicago Tribune tells us about a public school that for the past six years has banned students from bringing lunches from home, unless they have a food allergy or medical condition.
People are, understandably, outraged because the assumption is that all public schools are serving nothing but fried, greasy foods, but the truth is that many of them are serving food that is more nutritious than the sodium- and preservative-filled processed foods many parents send their kids to school with. (Who knows what the Lunchables industry is worth, but it’s presumably fatter than the baby carrot industry.)
School districts are easy targets, especially under the bright lights of ABC’s reality TV cameras, but many of them — including Austin’s, which employs chef Steven Burke, above, to help oversee the meals — are serving food that is undoubtedly better than what is portrayed in the national media.
I don’t think that taking away the option of bringing a lunch from home is the solution, but Jamie Oliver’s work to improve school lunches won’t do any good if parents can let their kids bring a soda and Cheetos instead.
Photos by Ralph Barrera and Jay Janner for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Food in the news
March 28, 2011
Citywide bake sale to raise money for Japan relief effort
Event co-founder and Austin Gastronomist blogger Kathryn Hutchison says they are still accepting volunteers (click here to find out how you can help) and that the money raised will be donated directly to Americares, a nonprofit providing short- and long-term humanitarian relief in Japan.
From 10 a.m .to 3 p.m. on Saturday, you can buy (or technically, donate money in exchange for) baked goods at five locations around Austin: Woof Gang Bakery (1204 N. Lamar Blvd.), Nomad Bar (1213 Corona Drive), The Shops at Mira Vista (2785 Bee Cave Road), Foreign & Domestic (306 E. 53rd St.), Hotel San Jose (1511 South Congress Ave.). Sales will continue at a community block party until 5 p.m. at The Shops at Mira Vista.
View Austin Bakes for Japan 2011 in a larger map
So far, more than 80 volunteer bakers have signed up, so there will be plenty of sugary goodness to go around. And yes, there will be plenty of vegan and gluten-free treats to choose from.
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
March 22, 2011
Amid soaring food prices, how are you coping?
You can cut back on how much you drive, and you can cut back on what kind of food you buy, but there’s only so much penny pinching you can do in terms of feeding your family and your car.
Analysts have said that food prices rose faster in February than they have since 1974. Disastrous freezes earlier this year in Texas and Florida are to blame, experts say, as are rising commodity prices for things like corn, wheat and soybeans in every corner of the globe. And because cows, pigs and chickens eat feed made primarily from those ingredients, meat, milk and egg prices have shot up, too.
What’s a grocery shopper to do?
It’s worth pointing out that even with rising food costs, Americans still pay less of their overall income on food than just about anyone else in the world. (Less than 10 percent of our paychecks goes toward food, far less than the 20 or even 50 percent in other countries.)
We’ve grown to expect a dozen eggs to cost less than $1.50, a pound of butter to run about $2 and a loaf of decent whole wheat bread to hover around $2.50, but those prices can’t last forever. When lean ground beef tops $4 per pound, do you buy the cheaper, fattier ground chuck?
When I notice that my grocery bill is running high, I consciously try to make the food that I do buy last longer. I cringe a little more when I dig spoiled leftovers out of the back corner of the fridge and have to toss them into the compost pile.
In terms of both price and quality, produce is one of the most volatile areas of the grocery store. Just last week, I noticed that the price on squash had doubled, but broccoli was about the same, which is why we’re eating a lot of broccoli this week.
When the basics cost more, I’m less likely to splurge on anything special or out-of-the-ordinary. It makes cooking a little less interesting, but it makes me grateful that I have access to fresh food and money to pay for it in the first place.
What price increases have you noticed lately? How do you change your shopping habits when the cost of food goes up?
Photos from the Associated Press.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Food in the news, Grocery goods
February 14, 2011
Learn about Gulf Coast food culture at Foodways Texas' first symposium
In less than a year, Foodways Texas has gone from an idea in the heads of some of Texas’ most influential food folks to a bonafide statewide organization dedicated to preserving Texas’ food traditions.
And because you can’t preserve a food culture unless people know about it, the group’s first big event is a symposium on the Gulf Coast at Texas A&M at Galveston on Friday and Saturday, February 25 and 26.
The two-day conference will feature panels of experts from across the state, including a handful from Central Texas including Joe Nick Patoski, Elizabeth Engelhardt, Jesse Griffiths and Jody Horton, who will give insight into the not only the food that comes from the Gulf Coast, but the people who have build their livelihood around it and the natural and human-made disasters that threaten it.
Tickets ($175-$225) also include several meals prepared by notable Texas chefs. You can see the full schedule here.
Laura Skelding for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
January 13, 2011
'Forks Over Knives' promotes health benefits of a plant-based diet, but I'm not giving up meat just yet
About every six months, a new food documentary makes the rounds, screening in small theaters or auditoriums across the country and showcasing the broken links of our food chain.
From school lunches (“Lunch Line”) and agriculture (“Food, Inc” and “Fresh”) to food-as-medicine (“Food Matters”) and fast food (“Supersize Me,” “Fast Food Nation”), these movies have helped raise our collective consciousness about the health and environmental consequences of what we eat.
There is a lot of crossover between these food films, but each presents a slightly different argument — and the always-shocking data to back it up— about why you should change your eating habits.
But at some point, after you’ve watched them all, you have to start picking which science you believe.
Almost everyone concerned about rising obesity rates, heart disease, confined animal feeding operations and the use of chemicals to grow food agrees that reducing meat consumption is key to making any significant improvement to our current situation.
But “Forks Over Knives,” a new documentary featuring the father of the now-retired Austin firefighter, plant-based diet evangelical and author of “Engine 2 Diet” Rip Esselstyn that screened last night at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, presents a the case that we need to eliminate meat and dairy products altogether.
The film doesn’t focus on the environmental or ethical reasons to reduce or eliminate meat consumption. Most of the movie is spent on data such as “The China Study” that link diets full of meat and dairy to increased rates of cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis and a slew of other health conditions. (It should be noted that “Food Matters” beat them to the punch with the “Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food” tagline from Hippocrates.)
It also profiles several people who have reversed life-threatening diseases by changing their diet and follows along as three people with high cholesterol and blood sugar improve their overall health — and even eliminate the medicines they were taking — by changing to an animal-free diet.
(Just don’t call them vegans. Longtime vegetarian Evan Smith, who moderated a panel after the film, was quick to call out the fact that the v-word wasn’t being used, and Esselstyn admitted that it has to do with public perception and avoid the negative connotations that “vegan” carries. They like the ring of “plant-strong diet.”)
But because most of the current discussion around meat and dairy involves reducing consumption and choosing foods that come from free-range or sustainably reared animals, it was disappointing that the film or the panel afterward didn’t acknowledge the growing body of information that supports the idea that limited intake of grass-fed beef and free-range chicken and pork isn’t as harmful as the products that come from conventionally reared animals.
“Weston Price is not scientific,” was the one-line answer from panelist Dr. Linda Carney when asked about sustainably reared meats after the movie ended last night.
Her response both surprised and infuriated me.
First, I was amazed that the Weston A. Price Foundation, which promotes eating a diet based in nutrient-dense foods including butter, raw milk and pastured or grass-fed meat, has become well-known enough in the past few years that she could get by with a passing reference to the dentist who traveled the globe studying the affect of diet and health. (It seems the vegans v. Weston A. Price battle has been going on for some time.)
But I was frustrated that we couldn’t have a longer discussion about alternatives to meat as we have known it for the past fifty years.
It’s hard to dispute the fact that to improve our nation’s health and the environment, we need to reduce overall meat consumption, and this film presents some of the strongest data to date to persuade even the most stubborn meat-eaters to eat fewer steaks.
However, by taking a radical stance that dismisses animal products altogether (and the science-backed initiatives that encourage us to eat higher quality meat from better-raised animals), the “plant-strong” advocates are isolating themselves and their cause.
Even though a plant-based diet is what farmers, scientists and activists in all of these food documentaries support, but because meat — and the idea that humans are omnivores and not herbivores for a reason — is so entrenched in the American diet you can’t just slam the door in the face of the sustainable meat movement.
People are going to keep eating meat no matter how many times they hear about a fifty-something man dropping his cholesterol 100 points in two weeks on a vegan diet or see the meat-free Esselstyn climb up a fireman’s pole using only his hands.
They say you can’t argue with science, but it all depends on which science you’re using.
UPDATE: The site says the movie will be in theaters on March 11, but when I asked Rip at the screening last night, he said he wasn’t sure about its release. I wouldn’t count on national distribution on March 11, but keep your eyes peeled for it to eventually make its way in theaters around the country.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
January 11, 2011
Cooking Up English helps non-native speakers learn more than language
If you’ve lived abroad, you know how hard it is to adjust.
And it’s not just the language that’s difficult. The meals, the transportation, the fashion, the social customs, even the way food is packaged is completely different than what you’re used to.
When I lived in Spain in college, food was one of the greatest hurdles to overcome, starting with the vocabulary.
Even though I’d learned lots of food words in my Spanish classes, I didn’t have any of the cooking words I needed to work with my Spanish-speaking roommates in our kitchen.
“Sarten” (frying pan) being one of the first words my new roommates taught me, but I quickly realized that the word — or, more accurately, my not knowing such a useful and commonplace term — was emblematic of how little I actually knew going into this year in a foreign land.
Not just Spanish, even though I’d been studying it for four years, but everything about my new home, from why milk wasn’t refrigerated to why my stomach couldn’t adjust to not eating dinner until 9:30 p.m.
Cue tears of loneliness and self-doubt. Oh. So. Many. Tears.
What I would have given for something like Cooking Up English to not only teach me practical words and phrases relating to food and cooking but also to provide a place for me to meet other non-native speakers, to practice speaking with native speakers and to learn about the food customs, idioms and techniques of this new place.
(Click here to read Wednesday’s story about how Cooking Up English got started and to get a glimpse inside the chocolate pie-making class that these photos are from.)
People who’ve grown up in Texas take for granted that we know what cornbread is and how it’s different than regular bread. King Ranch casserole stirs up memories of your grandmother’s house, and of course black-eyed peas are what you eat for New Year’s. When you’re learning English, grammar and syntax can only go so far.
Cultural foodisms teaches you more about a society than how to conjugate verbs, that’s for sure.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Food in the news
January 4, 2011
Jester King bests TABC, LBJ loved Michelob and other food stories you might have missed over the holidays
• The ranch near Stonewall that President Johnson’s family called home has been open to the public for a while now, but they recently opened the private quarters, including the kitchen. to the public. Most surprising find? A beer keg refrigerator with a Michelob tap.
• Jester King made news twice: Once with its win against the TABC that essentially allows brewers to call their beer what it is, and another with a recall of its Commercial Suicide beer, which could over-carbonated in the bottle.
• Restaurant critic Matthew Odam, Liquid Austin columnist Emma Janzen and I picked the top 11 food stories in Austin in 2011. We saw more trailers moving into restaurant spaces, craft breweries opening faster than we could count them and David Bull elevating the fine dining bar with his downtown restaurant, Congress, but in my mind, nothing tops can top what the farmers and ranchers have been going through with the drought and extreme heat. Agricultural losses in Texas alone topped $5 billion last fall, and consumers will be paying for it in the form of higher food prices this year.
• The Kung Fu Saloon owners are opening a new bar sometime early in the new year called the Brew Exchange that has an interesting concept: prices will fluctuate according to demand. The most often a beer is ordered, the higher the price. The taps that aren’t as popular will go down in price.
• Elizabeth Street Cafe, the much-anticipated Vietnamese restaurant on South First Street from noted Austin chef Larry McGuire, opened just before Christmas. Early reports are that the food is great, if slightly more expensive than banh mi, bun and pho at traditional Vietnamese restaurants, and that don’t expect that there will be any croissants left if you get there an hour after it opens.
• Botticelli’s on South Congress Avenue had a run-in with BMI. The music rights management music nonprofit sued Botticelli’s for failing to get the proper licenses to play copyrighted music. According to the story by Statesman business reporter Gary Dinges, “The nonprofit BMI, based in New York, says it first contacted the restaurant’s owners in late 2009. Since then, a spokesman said, BMI representatives have attempted more than 100 times — by phone, via mail and in person — to discuss the situation.”
SB 81 - The Texas Cottage Food Law from Christian Remde on Vimeo.
• Austin filmmaker Christian Remde came out with the last film in his yearlong series, The Twelve Films Project, and, like many of his videos this year, the final one dealt with food, specifically SB81, the so-called cottage law that the Texas legislature passed last year.
• Boggy Creek owners Larry and Carol Ann Sayle just might live in the oldest surviving house in Austin. Virginia Wood explored the historical significance of house on the pioneering East Austin farm in a fascinating article for the Chronicle a few weeks ago.
• LeeAnn and Lawrence Kocurek decided to shut down their charcuterie business this month. LeeAnn took a managerial job at Perla’s and Larry is now the chef de cuisine at Stories, the fine dining restaurant inside the Hyatt Lost Pines Resort.
Photos by Ralph Barrera, Jay Janner and Larry Kolvoord for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
January 3, 2011
Third Royal Blue Grocery is now open
Downtown dwellers and office workers looking for another place to pick up a sandwich, a bottle of wine or a nutella rice crispy square, rejoice!
The third location of Royal Blue Grocery, at 609 Congress Ave., 469-5888, is now open.
Photo of original location by Deborah Cannon for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Food in the news
December 8, 2010
Rachael Ray talks school lunches, puppies and why hunger isn't a partisan issue
How did Rachael Ray spend her summer vacation?
Lobbying for six cents.
Every five years, Congress revises the Child Nutrition Act, which, among other things, determines how much money schools get reimbursed for the lunches they provide students. Until this year, it had been almost three decades since Congress had increased above inflation the amount that schools would get per child.
Ray met face-to-face with dozens of lawmakers and held press conferences to help bring attention to the bill. In the end, both the House and the Senate agreed to provide an additional six cents per student to schools.
“It’s not as much as we wanted, but it’s something,” Ray said in a phone interview on Wednesday. “Every penny makes a big difference in the quality of food” schools can provide to kids not just during the school year, but after school and during the summer.
“It’s important that the public schools offer something on a year round basis,” she said. “For children who are at risk for hunger, these are the only options they’ve got.”
Even though she would have liked to see even more funding going to schools, she’s “thrilled” that the bill is on its way to President Obama’s desk.
She emphasizes that making sure that kids have access to healthy food isn’t just something that parents in America should be concerned about. “I don’t have kids,” she says. “I have a dog,” but the impact that poor diets are having on the nation’s children “should be insulting to everybody.”
“Young children are having to take grown-up pills that aren’t even formulated for them.” Eight- and 9-year-olds shouldn’t have to take cholesterol medication. If we continue to let things spiral out of control, we’re looking at “catastrophic health care costs,” she says.
“We cannot afford to pay for this generation’s health care,” she says. “Do we really want to raise a nation of dull-minded, sickly kids? It’s our responsibility as a nation. Everyone should demand change.”
If you’re a gardener, why don’t you plant and help maintain a garden at a school, she suggests. Take your kids or nieces and nephews grocery shopping. Take them to a farm instead of an amusement park.
One thing Ray says she was surprised at was how both Republicans and Democrats seemed concerned about helping kids get access to better foods. “This is one issue that everyone can get behind,” she says.
But no matter how you slice it, politics aren’t near as fun as planning her annual South by Southwest party. Ray says they are just beginning to plan the big bash in March that combines her love of food and music. “We just want to try to match last year because, for me, it was spot on perfect,” she says.
Except for the weather.
She and friend Bob Schneider are still talking about how cold it was that blustery day in the middle of the music festival when everyone from Matthew McConaughey to Neko Case and Jakob Dylan bundled up to take the stage.
Ray might not be able to do anything about the weather at this year’s party (no word on the date, venue or lineup yet), but she is watching out for local dogs and cats that need adoption. At each stop on her “Look + Cook” book tour, Ray is pairing up with a local pet adoption agency.
At Tuesday’s event at BookPeople, Austin Pets Alive will be hosting an Adopt-A-Thon starting at 5:30 p.m. outside the bookstore, 603 N. Lamar Blvd.
Photos by David Hartzler, Evan Vucci for the Associated Press and Jay Janner for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | | Categories: Celebs in the Kitchen, Chewing the fat, Food in the news
November 11, 2010
Wendy's new fries, new plans
For 41 years, Wendy’s has maintained a tradition in the cultivation, preparation, and serving of their crisp fries.
However, change has come to the famous starch. On Nov. 11, Wendy’s announced a nationwide launch of a revised and modernized rendition of their fries. Instead of using a variety of skinned potatoes and table salt, the company will now use natural-cut, russet potatoes and sea salt for their dish. This makes Wendy’s the only national fast food chain to leave their fries with a “skin-on” cut, seasoned with sea salt.
“Our brand position is all about real food, with authentic ingredients, and ingredients that you can understand,” Denny Lynch, the Senior Vice President of Communications for Wendy’s, said. “People used to be interested in taste and price; today more attention is on ingredients and the source of origin. That’s today’s world. We are positioning ourselves as someone who serves real ingredients.”
He said that the change was so customers could visibly see the commitment Wendy’s has to natural, regionally produced ingredients from the United States.
“Leaving skin on gives you a visible sign that it is a real potato from the potato fields, and visual is more authentic,” Lynch said. “Sea salt is something that has a natural perception. We want to offer food that you understand the ingredients and visually see the difference from our competition.”
Lynch said that Austinites may already recognize the fries since the city was chosen as a test-market to see if customers would positively respond to the change. “In test markets the fries have outperformed our expectations,” Lynch said. “They were slated for a 2011 release, but the results are so good that we moved up the launch to now.”
Fries aren’t the only area customers should expect to see changes, he said. The salads at Wendy’s underwent changes this Spring, with the inclusion of more ingredients, and Lynch said the hamburgers and chicken are next on the list for changes. The hamburgers will be designed to have the same weight, but a thicker but less square patty, a butter toasted bun, crinkle cut pickles instead of brine, red onions instead of white, and real mayonnaise instead of low-fat.
“We are re-engineering from the ground up,” Lynch said. “If you are going to change the company jewels you better make certain what you are changing for.”
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Food in the news, Snacks, The Science of Food
September 15, 2010
Cooking for Geeks talk tonight
Tonight, author Jeff Potter will be giving a talk about his new book, “Cooking for Geeks,” at the Whole Foods Market on 525 N. Lamar Blvd.
After years of working in computer science , Potter became interested in exploring the mysteries of food science, so he devoted himself to a year of daily research to uncover the roots of food science. Along the way, Potter discovered that food science is fundamental to becoming a better cook. He believes his resulting book can equally benefit both master chefs and home cooks.
“I was a good home cook, but I didn’t know why things are done,” Potter said. “Having a solid model and a wealth of information can change everything.”
In addition to signing his book, Potter plans to answer questions, show of various pieces of food science equipment, and demonstrate various food science tricks.
The talk begins at 6:30 p.m. and the book ($35, O’Reilly) can be purchased and signed at the event.
Permalink | | Categories: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food in the news, On the road, Playing with your food
September 14, 2010
Travis farmers market closes -- again
Just weeks after the Travis Country Farmer’s Market on Burnet Road announced its return, the market has closed again.
Lexington farmer Eric Snethkamp and his partner Scott Spain reopened the Travis County Farmer’s Market last month (The site has been closed since 2007.) Despite drawing 600 to 800 customers a week, Snethkamp says property owner Paz Dhody declined to offer an extended lease, as opposed to his current monthly lease.
Dhody did not return calls for comment, but Snethkamp says that Dhody plans to operate the farmer’s market himself, bringing in a consultant to help him.
In 2007, Brentwood Tavern left the market property after being abruptly asked to leave. Co-owners Kathleen Macek and husband Tim Thomas were also on a month-to-month lease.
“We were warned he had done it before,” Snethkamp said. “We thought we could do it for a month, sign a year lease, and bring in the cream of the crop farmers to the market. The owner saw how well we were doing and wanted to do it for himself.”
Snethkamp is looking for a new spot to sell his crops. He had been offering watermelon, tomatoes, peaches, zucchini, onion, and other produce. If the market had stayed open he was hoping to bring in a local gluten-free bread company, a local pasta company, and other locally made foods.
“We don’t know what to do. We are at a loss,” Snethkamp said. “People in the community are really upset about this.”
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: Food in the news
September 2, 2010
Special edition Gourmet on newsstands Sept. 7, but I'm not buying it
Earlier this summer, Conde Nast announced an iPad application called, ironically, Gourmet Live, and on Monday, Folio reported that three special edition recipe booklets will be sold on newsstands in coming months.
The miniature cookbooks will sell for $10.99, and the first is called Gourmet Quick Kitchen.
This idea of repurposing recipes and other food content for stand-alone issues isn’t new. Recipe-centric magazines like Fine Cooking and Cook’s Illustrated have found a great deal of success with their specialty issues, but with Gourmet, this just seems like a quick way for Conde Nast to make money on a beloved brand that hasn’t yet been replaced.
I, for one, never read Gourmet for the recipes. (Insert joke about reading Playboy for the articles here.) I could (and still can) get just about any Gourmet recipe on Epicurious.com or its iPhone app, but without the thoughtful, beautifully written articles about food and food culture, any Gourmet-branded product is just a haphazard spin-off of a product whose void I still haven’t filled.
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
August 20, 2010
Austin stars in 'Food Truck Revolution' on Sunday night
So many food trucks, so little time.
Producers from the Cooking Channel breezed through Austin earlier this summer to shoot a special called “Food Truck Revolution” that will premiere on Sunday night at 9 p.m. The show explores how Austin’s quirky nature contributes to the thriving food trailer scene and how it compare to others cities with a lots of food trucks.
Look for an appearance or two from yours truly during the hourlong special, which reairs Monday at 1 a.m. and again on Aug. 29 at 7 and 11 p.m.
Photo by Mike Sutter for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
August 4, 2010
Probiotics are all the rage, even for yogurt haters
Don’t like yogurt? You’re not alone.
To some taste buds, no amount of sugar in the world can overcome the tartness inherent to yogurt. And believe me, judging by the amount of sugar in most commercial yogurts, the yogurt-makers are certainly trying to make it palatable to everyone.
Thankfully, I’m in the yogurt-lovers camp. I eat them all: Greek yogurt, plain yogurt with a little bit of honey stirred in, drinkable yogurt, frozen yogurt and, as of the past few years, Jamie Lee Curtis-endorsed yogurt (mainly because there’s usually a killer coupon for Activia in the Sunday paper that brings the cost down to about 25 cents a cup).
Probiotics — and the booming probiotic-enriched product industry — are the subject of a story I wrote for today’s paper. Food manufacturers are finding ways to incorporate the good-for-you microbes found naturally in fermented foods including yogurt, miso, tempeh, buttermilk, kefir, sauerkraut and kimchi into everyday products such as cereal, bread, tortillas, chocolate, hummus and, according to a press release I just got today, ready-to-eat desserts like cheesecake.
Because women make up more than 80 percent of the yogurt market (please tell me you’ve seen this Sarah Haskins video mocking yogurt commercials), many of the probiotic-fortified products are targeted toward men.
Keeping your digestive system on track in this junk food- and antibiotic-packed world isn’t easy (this certainly isn’t a gender-specific problem), but it isn’t all about keeping you regular. Scientists are finding that certain strains of bacteria and yeast might help lower cholesterol and blood pressure and ease ulcers, tooth decay, vaginal infections and possibly even prevent colon cancer.
It will be interesting to see how far food manufacturers take this probiotic craze before the pendulum swings back and people start looking to naturally fermented foods to maintain a healthy gut.
In the meantime, I’m content getting beneficial microorganisms into my system by eating things like mangoes swimming in White Mountain’s gloriously rich and tart (not to mention Austin-made) Bulgarian yogurt and its 90 billion cultures-per-serving glory.
How do you like your yogurt? If not yogurt, do you eat other fermented or probiotic-enriched foods? Has Ms. Regularity, Jamie Lee Curtis, had anything to do with your decision?
Top photos by Thao Nguyen for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Food in the news, Grocery goods
July 26, 2010
Fruits, vegetables losing nutrients, former UT researcher finds
Fruits and vegetables in the U.S. just aren’t as packed with nutrients as they once were.
This decline was first reported in produce from the UK more than 10 years ago, and in 2004, a former UT researcher found that the same thing was happening to conventionally grown crops in the U.S.
In 2004, Donald Davis, PhD, a former researcher with the Biochemical Institute at the University of Texas, Austin, led a team that analyzed 43 fruits and vegetables from 1950 to 1999 and reported reductions in vitamins, minerals, and protein. Using USDA data, he found that broccoli, for example, had 130 mg of calcium in 1950. Today, that number is only 48 mg. What’s going on? Davis believes it’s due to the farming industry’s desire to grow bigger vegetables faster. The very things that speed growth — selective breeding and synthetic fertilizers — decrease produce’s ability to synthesize nutrients or absorb them from the soil.
Sarah Burns has the full report in Prevention magazine this month, including details about why organically grown produce often have higher levels of nutrients and tips on how to get the most out of the fruits and vegetables you do buy.
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
June 21, 2010
Ahead of 'Inedible to Incredible' premiere, John Besh talks seafood, oil and frumpy shoes
It’s a crazy time to be John Besh.
The New Orleans chef and James Beard-winning cookbook author has spent much the past two months being the unofficial spokesman for the Gulf coast as the oil spill has threatened an entire way of life for people in his native Louisiana.
When he’s not traveling with Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal or telling anyone who will listen about the gravity of the situation, he’s running a family, including four boys, and a family of restaurants, which within a few months will include a restaurant in San Antonio, his first outside Louisiana.
On top of it all, Besh is the host of a new series on TLC that premieres tonight at 9 p.m. “Inedible to Incredible” has been billed as the “What Not to Wear” of food, and, having been made over on national TV on the long-running fashion show, I can tell you that the comparison is spot on.
For the show, Besh ambushes seemingly hopeless home cooks, who don’t see anything wrong with dishes like adult baby food and strawberry cereal-laced hamburgers, shows them how awful their cooking really is and then walks them step-by-step on how to make it better.
“I had to be the bad cop and that galled me to death,” he says. “That one sound byte sounds crass, but it is for their good.” He says it was a life-changing experience for almost every person he worked with during this season.
Life-changing, indeed.
With the “What Not to Wear” cameras rolling in late 2007, hosts Stacy London and Clinton Kelly ambushed me at a downtown concert venue to tell me that I was a horrible dresser. It was humiliating to have a stranger have to break the news, but the truth was that I needed to hear it.
Watching the first few episodes of “Inedible to Incredible,” I empathized with the embarrassment, defensiveness and ultimate eagerness to learn that many of the “contestants” showed. It was a smart move by TLC to take the “What Not to Wear” format and apply it (almost identically) to food.
“(Food) is such a personal thing,” Besh says. “People don’t want to go there. I would never say to my wife that she dresses poorly or that she cooks poorly.” He says that after watching a few episodes of “What Not to Wear” with his wife, Jennifer, he thinks twice before walking out the door. “It’s made me conscious, and I think to myself, ‘OK, I can’t look like a slob. I can’t wear frumpy shoes’.”
I told him that his show will undoubtedly have the same effect on home cooks.
The former “Top Chef Masters” contestant is no stranger to television, but he says he is relieved that his TV appearances now aren’t limited to chef competitions. “People are looking at food on TV now as a sport, and that’s not why I cook,” he says. “So I stopped doing them. This is a show that can really make a difference” because ultimately, it’s about teaching people how to be connected with their food and how to cook with passion. “The show isn’t, ‘Hey, look at what I can do.’ It’s ‘Hey, look at what you can do’.”
He sees a connection between his work educating the public about what’s really going on in the Gulf — 60 percent of Louisiana’s coast is still open for fishing, he notes — and the impact he has with the new show.
Traveling around the country with TLC and stepping into other people’s kitchens, he says he quickly realized that few people are connected with the food traditions of where they grew up. “We’re all required to be stewards of where we are from,” he says. “I’m a product of these coastal communities. This is where I come from and this is who I am. It just happens that the problems of my city and region make front-page news.”
People come to New Orleans for the culture, and the food is a big part of that, he says. “After Katrina, New Orleans bounced back in a remarkable way…But right now, the oil itself isn’t affecting the daily life in New Orleans other than the psyche of the people that we’re up against a wall in another disaster.”
The biggest battle ahead for the Gulf is the perception, even many years in the future, that seafood from that region is tainted. “It’s more than the seafood; It’s more than the shrimp. It’s a culture,” he says.
And he knows he owes everything he has, including this show, to that culture. “If it weren’t for this seafood, this culture, nobody would know who John Besh was,” he says. “What I do wouldn’t have the allure.”
“We have a civic responsibility to do the best we can with the talents that we have. I’m not doing any more than what’s expected of anyone else.”
Photos from TLC, Judi Bottoni for the Associated Press and Lori Waselchuk for the New York Times.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Celebs in the Kitchen, Food in the news
June 14, 2010
'Lunch Line' doc digs deeper into school lunch reform
At 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, the Alamo Drafthouse at Lake Creek, 13729 Research Blvd., is hosting a screening of “Lunch Line,” a new documentary that explores many of the issues related to school food and the attempts to reform it.
Michael Graziano, who co-directed the film with Ernie Park, says that this will be one of the first screenings of the documentary and that several local food advocates will be on hand for a discussion after the film. In addition to its regular menu, the Drafthouse will be offering healthy school lunch foods for this screening.
Tickets cost $7 and can be purchased online.
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
June 11, 2010
Culinary Academy of Austin to become first Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts
Austin is a long way from the small village outside Nice, France, where Auguste Escoffier was born and where the museum that honors his culinary legacy is located, but an Austin culinary school is set to become the first Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts.
On Friday, the Illinois-based Triumph Higher Education Group announced that it had purchased the Culinary Academy of Austin and would be turning it into the first of a handful of culinary schools named for Escoffier, who many consider to be the father of modern cooking.
Escoffier’s great-grandson, Michel, who is president of the Escoffier museum and foundation, will be involved with the development of the Austin school and will be on its its advisory board.
Paul Ryan, president of Triumph who once led the Le Cordon Bleu culinary programs in the U.S., said on Friday that Austin was a perfect fit for the new venture. “I love Texas, and Austin has always been a city that piqued my interest.” Ryan says he was drawn to the Culinary Academy of Austin’s size and staff, so he approached Steve Mannion, who founded the Culinary Academy of Austin a decade ago with his wife Elizabeth Falto-Mannion, about acquiring it.
Mannion said on Friday that the deal had been in the works for about a year, but just a few months ago, “we were told that we were no longer part of the deal.” Thursday was Mannion’s last day at the academy, and he says he’s already looking into different food-related opportunities around the city.
Ryan says he’s working to create a collection of five to 10 “boutique culinary schools” that would honor the legacy of Escoffier, who died in 1935, more than three decades after he published his landmark textbook, Le Guide Culinaire.
After getting approval from several state regulatory agencies, Ryan says he plans to add two kitchens to the current location in Central Austin, as well as more instructors. He says the goal is to have around 250 students enrolled in two programs: one for culinary arts and another for baking and pastry.
“Part of the program will be working with the local community to buy our products locally,” he said. “We want to be focused on sustainable cuisines, and I believe Austin satisfies that part of our education.”
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Food in the news
June 3, 2010
Austin food writer Toni Tipton-Martin headed to White House for Obama event
Tipton-Martin was invited to attend the event to share with other food leaders her experience of starting a similar nonprofit in Austin two years ago. (Check out the most recent post on her food blog, The Jemima Code, to find out more.) The former Southern Foodways Alliance president started the SANDE Youth Project to teach cooking skills, nutrition and core values to underprivileged kids.
Obama’s nationwide program will help educate students on nutrition as well as improve the quality of the school meals. “People who are already doing similar programs will be sharing how they are getting it done, the problems they’ve had and inspiring and encouraging each other,” Tipton-Martin said before leaving for Washington D.C.
Photo from Toni Tipton-Martin.
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May 17, 2010
Austinites spend more on food than anyone else in U.S.
Austinites don’t just like to eat. We like to eat well.
According to a report from Bundle.com, Austinites on average spend twice as much as other Americans on dining out and almost twice as much on groceries.
In 2009, the average American household spent $3,778 on groceries and another $2,736 in restaurants and bars. In Austin, we spent an average of $6,146 on groceries and $6,301 on eating out.
Our salaries are set. So is our rent. Clothes and other big-ticket items are periodic expenses. But when it comes to food, we get several chances a day to save or splurge. Brian Wansink, the director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University, estimates we make 227 decisions about what to eat every day [emphasis mine—AB]— each of which has a small financial impact.
People making $40,000 to $50,000 spent $5,560 on food in 2009. People making more than $125,000 spent $12,655 — more than double. Did they buy twice as much food? Not likely, says Hayden Stewart, an economist at the US Department of Agriculture: they buy more expensive food. “Better cuts of meat, more organic foods, more gourmet or prepared foods — they all cost more, and when people have the money, they’re often willing to pay.”
An interesting fact: New York City ranks 39th on average food and drink spending, but if Manhattan were its own city, it would beat Austin by more than $600 for the overall average spending on food.
The report on Bundle is pretty cool. You can interact with the data to compare cities and see how the spending breaks down when you look at different demographics.
And just in case that Torchy’s Tacos shout-out in the illustration from Bundle caught your eye, you’d have to eat nine Torchy’s tacos every day for a year to spend your $12,447 all in one restaurant.
That’s a lot of tacos.
Illustration from Bundle.com.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Food in the news, The Science of Food
May 3, 2010
Austinite Paula Disbrowe wins James Beard Award
If it’s springtime in New York City, that means the James Beard Foundation is handing out its annual food awards, often referred to as the Oscars of the food world.
The cookbooks and media awards were handed out at a glitzy ceremony last night hosted by “Top Chef Masters” host Kelly Choi and Andrew Zimmern, host of “Bizzare Foods” who keeps a lot of sausage in his fridge.
This is the first James Beard Award for Disbrowe, whose written and co-authored four cookbooks. “It’s pretty awesome,” she said from New York on Monday. “I’m seeing Donald later to celebrate.”
Tonight, the foundation will hand out the awards for the top restaurants and chefs in the country. Texas’ hope rests in Bryan Caswell of Houston.
Here are the big winners, and here are the rest of the journalism and cookbook winners:
Cookbook of the Year: “The Country Cooking of Ireland” by Colman Andrews
Cookbook Hall of Fame: “A Book of Middle Eastern Food” by Claudia Roden
M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award: Francine Prose, Saveur, “Faith and Bacon”
Television Show, In Studio or Fixed Location: “French Food at Home with Laura Calder” (Food Network Canada)
Television Show, On Location: “Chefs A’ Field: King of Alaska” (PBS)
TV Food Personality: Andrew Zimmern host of “Bizarre Foods” (The Travel Channel)
Newspaper Food Section: The Washington Post, Joe Yonan
Craig Claiborne Distinguished Restaurant Reviews: Jonathan Gold, LA Weekly, “Sauced,” “Hot Birria, Cold Cerveza,” “Hare Today”
Website Focusing on Food, Beverage, Restaurant, or Nutrition: Chow.com
Food Blog: Serious Eats
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Food in the news
April 30, 2010
Council approves some farmers market changes, leaves prepared food item in committee
Austin City Council approved changes to the city code that will allow farmers market vendors to provide samples of their prepared product, but the issue of serving prepared hot food is still a few weeks from being voted on, according to David Lopez, manager of the health and human services department’s environmental and consumer health unit.
This leaves vendors, including Dai Due Supper Club and Thai Fresh, who until the city restricted the use of temporary permits had been selling freshly prepared foods on Saturday mornings, unable to sell food prepared on site.
UPDATE: Market director Suzanne Santos, who coordinates the three main SFC markets downtown, in Sunset Valley and at the Triangle, says that the main change is that vendors can obtain a sampling permit ($210 per year), which will allow them to give samples using compostable spoons instead of having to prepackage each sample in a closed container.
As for the prepared food issue, until the council votes on changes, hot food from Dai Due and other vendors will continue to be served at the Sunset Valley market on Pillow Road on Saturday mornings and at the downtown market days that have been designated “special events.”
The next “special event” market downtown will be May 15, which is the launch celebration of the summer season. For five weeks starting June 5, the downtown market will host its annual fruit and veggie fest, which will feature activities, samples and, because of the “special event” designation, prepared food.
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
April 29, 2010
Hunger Awareness Project: A week later, an empty shelf
This post is part of a Hunger Awareness Project with Austin food bloggers and the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas. Local bloggers will be cooking and eating from a typical offering from a food pantry and blogging about their experience to shed light on a situation that 50,000 Central Texas face each week. Click here or here to find out more, including how to participate or donate.
Not literally, of course. In this middle-class American food society, where our pantries and freezers are stockpiled with a month’s worth of food and then some, I have plenty I could serve my family.
Having attempted this week to walk in the shoes of the millions of Americans who don’t know where their next meal is coming from, my kitchen feels like an embarrassment of riches.
Chicken, pork shoulders and meatballs in the freezer. Cans of soup, dried beans, pasta, rice, dried fruit, nuts, cereal and bread in the pantry. Leftovers from this week’s pantry project in my refrigerator, whose door packed to the gills with condiments and preserves.
But the shelf of a month’s worth of food pantry fare from which I cooked is almost bare. All that remains are a few beans, rice, spaghetti, spaghetti sauce, juice and jalapenos.
I was able to squeeze in a few meals this week using things from my garden, including this giant chicken salad served with a side of pinto beans.
Both the protein and the vegetables ran out quickly. (Megan of Stetted wrote about how she made chicken last for twice the number of meals I was able to stretch it out for.) I’ve been eating leftover beans for what feels like days, and I finally broke down and had to buy more fresh fruit, vegetables and milk from the store. I only spent $25, which would still keep me under the food stamp allotment, but doing this project has made me more aware than ever of how much food costs and how quickly it seems to run out.
Justin and Han of Keep Austin Tasty have a nice post wrapping up what they’ve learned, one of the biggest being that variety in one’s diet is a luxury. Summer of Something to Chew On and Kim of The Dinner Hour both blogged about how difficult it can be to cook at all, not to mention from a restricted number of items, when life gets in the way.
Cameron of What To Eat dug deep into her pantry for a spicy chili chicken coriander soup that might make you forget you were cooking on a budget, and Kristi of Austin Farm To Table dug deep into her past — and tested her willpower — when she made Hamburger Helper. Aaron of Austin Epicurean came to terms with his childhood hatred of canned vegetables and actually enjoyed eating them in a stir fry.
I’ve been so impressed by the commitment of local bloggers. This has been an eye-opening experience just from my own time spent in the kitchen and at the dinner table with my family, but reading about how they’ve navigated this week has given me even more insight than I could have imagined into a very real situation that so many face.
The week-long project is ending, but now that I have a little better idea of what these people go through, I realize how much work there is to be done.
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
April 27, 2010
Hot Links: Hunger Awareness Project, Denny's famine ads, hipsters on food stamps
This post is part of a Hunger Awareness Project with Austin food bloggers and the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas. Local bloggers will be cooking and eating from a typical offering from a food pantry and blogging about their experience to shed light on a situation that 50,000 Central Texas face each week. Click here or here to find out more, including how to participate or donate.
Keep Austin Tasty: Justin and Han are sticking with their initial goal of showing what it “might be like for a young Chinese couple, possibly recent immigrants to this country, trying to reproduce the familiar flavors of home with our available ingredients” by making dishes such as garlic fried rice and skipping meals.
Savor The Earth: Beans and rice were already staples in Nicole’s diet, and she has a good stove-top method for cooking rolled oats.
Stetted: In addition to feeding her family of three from the food pantry list and food stamp money, Megan is being diligent about tracking how much each meal costs, as well as incorporating fresh produce from her garden. A dinner of potato pancakes cost less than $2.51 to make.
Girl Gone Grits: Kristina plotted out a week’s worth of meals using the list of ingredients from the food pantry. She even posted an easy recipe for lasagna soup, which calls for a box of Lasagna Hamburger Helper.
Texas, Times Two: The mother-daughter team of Lauren and Dee Kincke are blogging about their experiences on Bytes from Texas and Texas to Mexico. If you’re looking for new ways to eat oats, check out Lauren’s recipe for oatmeal pancakes. Dee has a recipe for stuffed cabbage rolls that use many ingredients already in your pantry.
Lisa is Cooking: With so many pinto beans to work with, Lisa made vegetarian collard rolls with poblano rice stuffed with protein- and fiber-rich beans.
Austin Farm To Table: Kristi, who has been volunteering with the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas for four years, is incorporating vegetables from her Farmhouse Delivery CSA with the items from the food pantry list to create meals for the week, which included a kale and egg Spanish tortilla.
South Austin Foodie Adventures: Suzanna has been getting creative with her ingredients by making a dip from cannellini white beans and granola from the oats. “I don’t know why, but granola cereals (well, cereals in general) are some of the most overpriced items, and you can make your own for pennies!” she writes.
Something To Chew On: Summer writes about what a luxury it is to spend $20 on burgers and fries with her husband when they were out and about and starving. “We had just spent — in five minutes on one meal — almost what I spent to supplement this project for a whole week.” Concern for food waste has prompted her to enroll in a free composting class hosted by the City of Austin.
Fete and Feast: Natanya created a podcast about why we’re doing this project, which includes some good information about how you can help. The Capital Area Food Bank can buy $25 worth of food with a $5 donation, which Natanya points out is like one drink at happy hour.
Austin Epicurean: Aaron is making good use of a whole chicken by eating the legs for dinner one night, cold chicken salad on garlic toast the next and turning the rest into stock.
Cheap, Cheap: Eggs are one of the cheapest and most diverse forms of protein, and two bloggers (Cameron of What To Eat and Justin and Han of Keep Austin Tasty) made similar spring onion pancakes using eggs and green onions. Tired of scrambled eggs? Former restaurant critic Leslie Kelly getting creative with her egg-a-day experiment, where she’s cooking and eating at least one egg a day and blogging about it.
Food Stamp Challenge: In 2008, Capital Area Food Bank of Texas CEO David Davenport ate for a month on the amount of money allocated from food stamps. He was allowed to spent $21 a week on food and beverages, and by the end of the four weeks, he’d lost 18 pounds, four pounds less than his doctors allowed, which meant he had to stop the challenge just a few days shy of a month.
Hipsters on Food Stamps: The bad economy and rising unemployment rate has hit twenty- and thirty-something hipsters just like everyone else, which means that some of them who qualify for food stamps are using the money to eat better than they’d be able to afford to otherwise.
Stamp Out Hunger: On Saturday, May 8, the U.S. Postal Service is hosting its annual Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive. All you have to do is place nonperishable food items such as juice, pasta, cereal, rice and canned vegetables, fruits, meats or soup in a paper bag near your mailbox, and your mail delivery person will pick it up and deliver to a local food bank.
Famine Isn’t Funny: After facing criticism of being insensitive to victims of one of the worst famines in history, Denny’s pulled a promo for all-you-can-eat fries and pancakes to mark the 150th anniversary of the end of the Irish potato famine earlier this year.
Overweight and Hungry?: It’s a hard scenario to comprehend, but millions of Americans, especially children, struggle with both their weight and food insecurity. Low-income families who don’t have much money for food end up spending it on high-calorie, but nutritionally deficient meals, which is especially hard on the still developing bodies of young children.
Lasagna soup photo by Kristina Wolter, chicken salad photo by Aaron Kull, potato pancake photo by Megan Myers and collard roll photo by Lisa Lawless.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Food in the news, Hot Links
April 26, 2010
Hunger Awareness Project: Using WIC, food stamps to buy local food
This post is part of a Hunger Awareness Project with Austin food bloggers and the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas. Local bloggers will be cooking and eating from a typical offering from a food pantry and blogging about their experience to shed light on a situation that 50,000 Central Texas face each week. Click here or here to find out more, including how to participate or donate.
Because I was only employed part-time at the newspaper and Ian didn’t have much work at the time, our income level was just below the cut-off point to receive vouchers for things like milk, cheese, juice, cereal, peanut butter, eggs and cans of tuna from the Women, Infants and Children program.
Growing up, my family hadn’t ever had to rely on food stamps, but I wasn’t too proud to research my options and apply for benefits when I found out we were having a child.
I ended up working full-time later in my pregnancy, but in the few months that I was among the millions of Americans enrolled in WIC, I learned a lot about a situation that for many isn’t temporary.
It was definitely nice not to have to pay for some very basic staples, but I was so impressed with the other benefits of the program, mainly the classes on breastfeeding and basic infant care. Immersed in a society that has over-commercialized birth and babies, I enjoyed being among other families that were trying to do things as simply as possible.
Unfortunately, I didn’t take advantage of the ability for people enrolled in WIC or SNAP food benefits, or food stamps, to buy food from local farmers markets.
At the Sustainable Food Center’s three farmers markets (downtown and in Sunset Valley on Saturday mornings and at the Triangle on Wednesday afternoons), you can buy eligible food using your benefits by swiping your card at the information booth in exchange for these wooden coins that many of the vendors accept.
When buying food for this week’s Hunger Awareness Project, I picked up a pound of store-brand lean ground beef ($2.97), and as soon as I felt the squishy tube, my stomach got a little queasy.
Because industrial ground beef is the cause of so many massive food recalls and made with animals who are grain fed and sometimes not in the best of health when they are killed, we’ve made the switch to eating ground beef made with local and sustainable meat.
On Saturday, I bought a pound of ground beef ($6) from Richardson Farms in Rockdale to do a side-by-side comparison with store-bought ground beef.
Because I knew which meat was which when cooking up hamburgers last night, this test was in no way objective, but for my own curiosity, I wanted to see what the difference was in meat from the store (left) and local meat (right) that cost twice as much per pound.
(This photo is just a friendly reminder to stop using charcoal lighter fluid and invest $10-15 into one of these stand-up starters. Instead of wasting half an hour and half a bottle of smelly, chemical-laden fuel to get the coals going, you can have a blazing hot heat source in just 15 minutes with one of this nifty contraptions, which only requires a rolled-up ball of newspaper and a match to get started.)
I seasoned both meats with salt and pepper and grilled them alongside some smashed potatoes.
(I got the idea for this method from a Gourmet recipe for pan-fried smashed potatoes. Turns out, the boiled-then-smashed-then-grilled potatoes taste even better than the pan-fried ones.)
The taste difference between the burgers wasn’t as obvious as I thought it would be, but the local meat burger (right) was definitely juicier and richer in flavor. I didn’t really like the texture from the super-fine grind of the store-bought burger (left), which was more mild and less beefy than the local stuff.
When you’re on food stamps, paying twice as much money for local meat might seem illogical, but there are many ways to stretch the meat and for many concerned with the health and environmental benefits of sustainably raised meat, it’s worth the extra cost.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Categories: Food in the news
April 25, 2010
Hunger Awareness Project: Leftover Tuna Helper ain't pretty, but it's food
This post is part of a Hunger Awareness Project with Austin food bloggers and the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas. Local bloggers will be cooking and eating from a typical offering from a food pantry and blogging about their experience to shed light on a situation that 50,000 Central Texas face each week. Click here or here to find out more, including how to participate or donate.
When I was young, having dinner made from a boxed meal like this almost seemed like a treat. (Probably because that’s how the commercials pitched it to an impressionable kid during breaks in “Saved By The Bell.”)
As an adult, I’ll occasionally buy the flavored pasta in a bag for my husband, but in general, we get by just fine without a “Helper” in the kitchen.
But for this Hunger Awareness Project, I bought a box of Tuna Helper last week, which Ian turned into dinner one night when it was just him and the kid.
Which meant that, lucky me, I got to eat leftover Tuna Helper for lunch the next day.
I don’t recommend this.
But hey, it was food, I was hungry and I needed a reminder: Eating on a budget ain’t always pretty.
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
Hunger Awareness Project: Thinking outside the (food pantry) box
This post is part of a Hunger Awareness Project with Austin food bloggers and the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas. Local bloggers will be cooking and eating from a typical offering from a food pantry and blogging about their experience to shed light on a situation that 50,000 Central Texas face each week. Click here or here to find out more, including how to participate or donate.
As soon as I saw the list of food for this Hunger Awareness Project, my wheels started spinning about how to use the ingredients so that we wouldn’t get bored by Day Two.
It’s not just about being bored, though. When you don’t look forward to meals, your morale drops. I imagine being down and out, perhaps looking for a job or even trying to make a special dinner when there’s no money for going out to eat, and looking at a whole chicken and a bag of rice with no hope of having more than, well, chicken and rice.
In fact, on the very first night of this challenge last week, chicken and rice is exactly what we ate.
Roasting a whole chicken is the first step to at least two meals, three when you include the soup you get to make from the carcass. Rub the raw bird with oil, salt, pepper and spices (we used lemon and thyme), and place in a cast iron skillet. Roast at 400 or 450 for about 45 minutes.
My go-to method for cooking rice, food pantry project or not, is to saute a few smashed pieces of garlic, add the dry rice, stir for a few minutes and then add stock or water with chicken bouillon cubes.
(I should have tried a little harder to spiff up the green beans. I forgot how mushy and flavorless canned green beans are.)
From the chicken drippings, Ian made a gravy that was one of the best he’s ever made. He added water and flour into the skillet (see why it’s good to use a cast iron skillet to start with?), stirring and adding seasoning until he got it just right.
A simple meal, but a delicious way to kick off the week.
With the leftover chicken, I could have made chicken and dumpling stew, but I wanted to use up a few cans of coconut milk that had been collecting dust in my pantry over the past few months.
Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything” is one of my all-time favorite cookbooks because the recipes don’t require many ingredients and are highly adaptable. I found one for a chicken soup with coconut milk and rice, so I added canned green beans and corn, powdered ginger, a few sprigs of cilantro from my garden and other spices to create a soup that if you closed your eyes and used your imagination tasted almost Thai.
But the real winners were the samosas I made using potatoes and a tortillas that I bought with my SNAP food assistance (aka food stamp) allowance. While I microwaved the potatoes, skin on, for 10 minutes to soften them, I sauteed chopped onions, turmeric, garlic, coriander seeds and cumin. Once the potatoes were soft, I mashed them up with the spice mixture.
Instead of making samosa dough from scratch, I just cut a tortilla in half and placed a small amount of potato in the center, folding the two corners on top of each other and sealing the edges with water and a firm pinch. (Here’s a good visual tutorial if you need one.)
In a hot pan with about an inch of vegetable oil, I fried the samosas for a few minutes and then served them with the soup.
Both meals were hearty and enjoyable to eat even though they used many of the same ingredients. Just goes to show that basic ingredients are just that: a base for whatever your imagination can conjure up.
Permalink | | Categories: Cooking, Food in the news
Hunger Awareness Project: The cheap, wonderful world of oats
This post is part of a Hunger Awareness Project with Austin food bloggers and the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas. Local bloggers will be cooking and eating from a typical offering from a food pantry and blogging about their experience to shed light on a situation that 50,000 Central Texas face each week. Click here or here to find out more, including how to participate or donate.
Old-fashioned rolled oats are one of my favorite pantry staples, food pantry project or not. Of course, they are essential for many cookies and streusel toppings, but I’ve always been a fan of oats for breakfast.
I have no patience for quick oats (rolled oats that are just chopped into pieces to cook faster), which just taste like mush or, if you’re using the little flavored instant packets, ridiculously sweet mush.
I was happy to see oats on the list of things that the Reaching Out Center in Pflugerville gave out to clients last week. (The Capital Area Food Bank of Texas gave us this sample list of food that a family would get once a month at a pantry like the one in Pflugerville.)
Not only are old-fashioned oats cheap, full of fiber and good for lowering your cholesterol, they are easy and quick to cook. I just throw a couple of handfuls of oats in a bowl, cover them with milk and microwave for three minutes. (You can cook for a few minutes longer, but I like mine with texture.) Add a few raisins, nuts and a sprinkle of brown sugar, and you’ve got a hearty breakfast that those “instant” maple syrup apple cinnamon oatmeal packets can’t quite rival.
(Flaxseed, hemp seed or wheat bran also mix well into oatmeal if you’re looking to incorporated more fiber or omega-3 in your diet.)
The only other breakfast item on the list was toasted oats cereal, similar to Cheerios. I stuck with the store brand when I stocked up for this challenge, and I’m happy to report that the honey nut toasted oats in a bag are a fine (and much cheaper) substitute for the name-brand cereal. In fact, I have a feeling I’ll be buying a lot more of these bagged toasted oats long after this project is over.
One thing that wasn’t on the food pantry list was milk, an ingredient that both of these breakfast options traditionally require. (I’d hate to have to eat toasted cereal soaking in water, but I’m sure many people have no choice.) Powdered milk was an option, but because milk is one of the items that my family would receive if we were enrolled in the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, I chose to buy milk instead of rehydrate it.
UPDATE: Blogger Lauren Kincke made (and posted a recipe for) oatmeal pancakes that she made with her rolled oats.
Permalink | | Categories: Cooking, Food in the news
April 24, 2010
Hunger Awareness Project: Feeding a growing need
This post is part of a Hunger Awareness Project with Austin food bloggers and the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas. Local bloggers will be cooking and eating from a typical offering from a food pantry and blogging about their experience to shed light on a situation that 50,000 Central Texas face each week. Click here or here to find out more, including how to participate or donate.
Let that figure soak in. A 60 percent increase in need in just 12 months. And this is despite news that the recession is starting to get better.
At a meeting at the food bank last week to kick off this Hunger Awareness Project, Austin food bloggers toured the facility with Lisa Goddard, online marketing director for the organization, one of the largest of its kind in the country.
She walked us through a gigantic warehouse that stored everything from canned goods to fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and dairy. The food comes from individual donations, like the canned food drives at the Reggae Fest or local schools, as well as big grocery chains such as HEB, Randalls or Walmart.
Last year, the facility in South Austin brought in, inspected, sorted and distributed 23 million pounds of food, up from 17 million the year before.
Goddard said that because of the economy and unemployment rate, the food bank’s 350 partner agencies — which includes food pantries, soup kitchens, after-school programs and programs for the elderly, Boys and Girls Clubs and health outreach organizations — are seeing more first-time clients than ever.
Who are these people? Goddard says that some people wait until the pantry shelves are completely bare before asking for help, while others know that at a certain time of the month, they will need a little boost to make it through until the rent and childcare checks clear. For some, unexpected medical emergencies leave them shorthanded, and for others, it happens when additional families members move into an already strapped household.
So how can you apply these unique situations to your life, even if you haven’t ever used food assistance? For one, many of us are always trying to find new ways to eat affordably. Sure as the summer heat, gas prices will continue to creep up through the summer, which always affects the cost of food. Staples such as rice, oats, pasta, dried beans and canned vegetables sit humbly in our pantries, just waiting for us to consume the sexier, more expensive perishables — yogurt, cottage cheese, lunch meat, fish, bread, etc. — we stock fresh week after week.
If you’ve ever donated food, you probably don’t think twice after dropping the cans or bags of beans in a box. Nothing like cooking with some of the most-donated items to make you think twice about unloading the stuff from your own pantry that you just don’t want to eat.
Gardening is one source of food that people of all economic backgrounds can benefit from. Yes, you have to have money for start-up costs and access to water, but growing your own food, no matter your income level, is something many of us are trying. (In fact, the vegetables in my own backyard garden will be the only fresh veggies we eat this week because canned was all that was available from the food pantry list.) At the food bank, Goddard showed up a dozen or so square-foot beds, which the organization uses as teaching tools so partner agencies can then build beds and show clients how they can grow food.
(One of my favorite parts of the tour was this odds-and-ends shelf with nontraditional donations. Armadillo milk, anyone?)
Anyone can participate in this project. The goal is to tell different stories of hunger and raise awareness about an issue that’s easy to ignore. Here’s a list of bloggers who are taking on the cooking-and-eating part, but your comments, tweets, Facebook shares and related blog posts are just as important. (If I’ve left off your blog, just shoot me an e-mail. This list was complied from the bloggers who went on the tour, but I know there are others participating.)
- Suzanna Cole - South Austin Foodie Blog
- Summer Huggins - Something to Chew On
- Lauren Kincke - Bytes from Texas: One Longhorn’s Adventures
- Dee Kincke - Texas to Mexico
- Aaron Kull - Austin Epicurean
- Lisa Lawless - Lisa is Cooking
- Stephanie McClenny - The Cosmic Cowgirl
- Megan Myers - STETTED editing toward a well-fed life
- Nicole Ray - Savor the Earth
- Han Ren and Justin Ong - Keep Austin Tasty
- Alexandra Richmond - Austin is Delicious
- Kim Usey - The Dinner Hour
- Kristi Willis - Austin Farm to Table
- Kristina Wolter - Girl Gone Grits
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
April 21, 2010
Bloggers team up with food bank for hunger awareness project
Food insecurity is a lot of things.
For one, it’s prevalent. Not just in far-off places seen only in news clips. Here. In Austin. In your neighborhood. One in six people in Texas don’t know where their next meal will come from.
Second, people who face this problem come from all backgrounds and find themselves in this situation for a million different reasons. More than forty percent of people served by the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas are children. Almost half of their clients have at least one working adult at home. Only 18 percent of the people who get food from the partner agencies are homeless, and more than a third of their older clients go extended periods of time without food.
Third, food insecurity is growing. In eight years (2000 to 2008), the number of people who said they did’t have enough to eat grew by a third, and Texas has the second highest rate of food insecurity in the nation.
Statistics only tell part of the story. In an effort to understand more about the situation thousands of fellow Central Texans face, 30 local food bloggers have taken a week-long challenge to cook and eat from a typical bag of food that someone might get from a food pantry or other agency.
Let’s face it, a week doing a project like this isn’t even close to actually looking at your bank balance and realizing there’s not enough for both rent and food. Not one of the participating bloggers would pretend otherwise, but the goal is to get us all thinking and talking about a very real problem that is easy to forget, even in this food-obsessed society we cultivate.
So here’s how it will work: The Capital Area Food Bank of Texas gave us a list of what one bag from an area pantry might contain, and the bloggers will go out and buy the food from a grocery store.
I spent $36 at H-E-B last weekend buying rice, beans, pasta, canned corn and green beans, spaghetti sauce, oatmeal, store-brand cereal, potatoes, Tuna Helper, a chicken, ground beef, juice and canned fruit, an amount of food that a family could pick up once a month. (Every partner agency offers a slightly different choice of products, which often include bread, fresh fruits and vegetables, so keep in mind that this is just a sample list.)
Bloggers can also supplement with the amount of money that would be allotted to them if they were enrolled in food stamps or the Women, Infants and Children program.
I’ll be highlighting some of the bloggers’ posts, as well as my own experiences, on Relish Austin in the coming week, but the food bank’s blog will be the best place to stay tuned to all the posts.
Thanks ahead of time to the bloggers who have signed up to participate, the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas for being open to it and readers who follow along.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Cooking, Food in the news
April 16, 2010
Hill Country Wine & Food Fest: Storms doom 'rain or shine' Texas25
“Rain or shine” doesn’t always mean what you think it does.
Locally heavy rain fell across the area on first day of the Hill Country Wine and Food Festival yesterday, and ticket holders to last night’s Texas25 event at Whole Foods Market received an e-mail reminder that the event would take place “rain or shine.”
The sold-out event was scheduled to start at 7 p.m., and just after 6 p.m., festival officials decided to cancel it due to safety concerns from the afternoon downpours, a festival spokesperson said Friday.
The last-minute cancellation left both ticket holders and vendors frustrated. A commenter on the Forklore blog said she spent two hours in traffic going to and from the event after receiving the reminder that the event would be held no matter what. Several vendors tweeted that they weren’t sure what to do with the product they’d prepared to served; Retro Bizzaro and Izzoz Tacos spread the word through Twitter that they were giving away tacos and snack treats at the nearby Kung Fu Saloon.
“They had to take the safety of everyone into consideration,” the festival spokesperson said. Tents set up on the rooftop plaza of Whole Foods downtown would withstand light or even moderate rain, but the rain had soaked electrical outlets, creating an unsafe environment for both vendors and guests.
“The non-profit festival was willing to take the hit for the safety of everybody,” she said. “We feel terrible, absolutely terrible.”
This was the first year for the $25 event, and people who bought tickets can apply that money toward a Stars Across Texas or Sunday Fair ticket. Stars Across Texas, which starts at 7 p.m. tonight, costs $100, and Texas25 ticket holders can get the early bird price ($40) for the Sunday Fair.
If you’d like a refund, send an e-mail to info@texaswineandfood.org.
There’s plenty of rain left in the weekend forecast, but festival organizers say the tents at Stars Across Texas at the Long Center and the Sunday Fair at the Vineyards at the Salt Lick can handle even the strongest downpours, so the events will take place, no matter what the skies bring.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Food in the news
April 15, 2010
Michael Pollan to speak at UT in December
Food activist and author (“The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” “In Defense of Food”) Michael Pollan is scheduled to speak at the Bass Concert Hall at the University of Texas in December.
Pollan’s talk is part of a just-released lineup for the 2010-2011 season of UT’s Texas Performing Arts and is presented in partnership with BookPeople and Edible Austin, which will be hosting Eat Local Week that week.
Tickets ($26-$42) aren’t on sale yet, but stay tuned to find out details on when you can buy them.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
April 6, 2010
In fight against fraud allegations, Yelp lets users see filtered reviews
Yelp has been fighting an uphill battle in recent weeks after a February class-action lawsuit claiming the company forces businesses to pay to have negative reviews removed from the site.
The company has gone to great lengths to dispel myths about how it filters and arranges reviews, as well as what is included in the advertising packages it sells to businesses, and yesterday, it made some substantial changes in how it operates, likely in response to the lawsuit.
Yelp announced that it is allowing users to see the reviews that have been filtered by its secret algorithm, which the company says is in place to detect “fake, shill or malicious reviews” by a business’s friends, family, employees or its competition or former employees.
When you initially look at a business’s page, you’ll see the filtered reviews, but at the bottom of the page, you’ll see something like this: “1 to 40 of 45 (15 Filtered),” with a link to the reviews that Yelp’s filter removed from the initial search. I tried it out today, and it’s kindof fun to read the whack reviews that people have submitted. Of course, there are some reviews that have been filtered even though they seem reasonable, but the majority of them clearly violate the site’s terms of service.
Another change is that the site has done away with the “Favorite Review” feature, which allowed a business owner to pick a review that would sit on top of the other reviews, that was part of the advertising package offered to businesses. Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman said that “doing away with ‘Favorite Review’ will make it even clearer that displayed reviews on Yelp are completely independent of advertising.”
Yelp has also created a Small Business Advisory Council consisting of local business representatives that will advise it in the future, and it will allow businesses that advertise with Yelp to post videos to the slide show on their page.
These changes come just a few weeks after a South by Southwest Interactive talk that I co-hosted called “The Yelp Effect: When Everyone’s a Restaurant Critic,” which explored how user-generated review sites like Yelp are affecting the restaurant industry.
I’m most happy to see the ability for users — and business owners — to read the filtered reviews. It does create a sense of transparency, but you have to know that you’re looking for the filtered reviews to find them. As for the “Favorite Review” feature, I could take it or leave it, and I doubt many users will be sad to see it go.
It’s also of note that Yelp has set up that council with business representatives to deepen the relationship between the company and the people who stand to gain or lose the most from its services.
I’d like to see community managers, who cultivate a network of “elite” reviewers in more than 40 cities, to do something similar. It would be a nice gesture to to reach out to the business owners as much as they do the most active reviewers.
What do you think of the changes? Do they make the company more transparent? Has Yelp done enough to reach out to businesses?
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Food in the news
April 5, 2010
Austinite's appetizing shot at $1 million Pillsbury prize
“I’ve watched (recipe contests) on TV and thought, ‘I could make that,’ ” Mobley says. She incorporated two Pillsbury products into an appetizer based on a beef tenderloin that she served to her family at holiday dinners, and the Razzle Dazzle Beef Bites earned her one of 100 spots in the bake-off final, which takes place April 12 in Orlando.
Starting at 8 a.m., she’ll make her recipe three times and submit the best of the three to judges, who will announce winners in four categories that night. Then, for the first time in the contest’s history, the four winners will then fly to Chicago to appear on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” on April 14, where the queen of daytime TV will announce the $1 million overall winner.
Mobley says she’s not too worried about making her dish for the judges. “My recipe is pretty foolproof, so I’m not too worried,” she said last week en route to Georgia, where she was picking up her sister-in-law who would join her for the finals in Florida.
Razzle-Dazzle Beef Bites
1 can (8 oz.) Pillsbury refrigerated crescent dinner rolls
1 package (3 oz.) cream cheese, softened
1/2 tsp. lemon-pepper seasoning
1/2 cup Smucker’s Red Raspberry Preserves
1 Tbsp. prepared horseradish
1 tsp. Dijon mustard
3 oz. shaved cooked roast beef (from deli)
1 Tbsp. chopped fresh parsley
Heat oven to 375 degrees. If using crescent rounds, remove from package, but do not separate rounds. If using crescent rolls, remove from package, but do not unroll.
Using serrated knife, cut roll evenly into 16 rounds; carefully separate rounds. Place 1 round in bottom of each of 16 ungreased regular-size muffin cups. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until golden brown.
Immediately press back of rounded teaspoon into center of each baked round to make indentation. Remove rounds from muffin cups to cooling rack; cool 10 minutes. Meanwhile, in small bowl, mix cream cheese and lemon-pepper seasoning. In another small bowl, mix preserves, horseradish and mustard.
Spread 1 tsp. cream cheese mixture into each round; top with 1⁄2 tsp. preserves mixture. Divide beef evenly among rounds; top each with 1 rounded teaspoon preserves mixture. Sprinkle with parsley. Makes 16 appetizers.
— Sharon Mobley
Photos from Pillsbury.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Cookbooks, Food in the news
March 27, 2010
Hear 'Splendid Table' on KUT at 11 a.m. on Sunday
You can’t smell or see the food that Lynne Rossetto Kasper talks about on “The Splendid Table,” a radio show that airs on National Public Radio stations across the country, but her enthusiasm and vibrant storytelling make listeners feel like they are in her kitchen.
Kasper’s hourlong program about food doesn’t just explore cooking and eating out, but also the colorful people who will do anything for a good meal. For the next month, “The Splendid Table” will have a trial run at 11 a.m. Sundays on KUT 90.5 FM, and listeners can vote online whether to keep the show.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Food in the news
March 26, 2010
Busy weekend for South Austin Food Co-op
Austin is no stranger to food cooperatives. Wheatsville Food Co-op has thousands of members and a newly renovated store on Guadalupe, just north of the UT campus.
A group of food-conscious Austinites has formed the South Austin Food Co-op, which has the goal of building a community-owned grocery store south of the river. Outreach and volunteer coordinator Katy Hamill says that, like many other food cooperatives, the store will be worker owned and support local farmers and producers.
The co-op has been gaining members in the past year, and two events this weekend bring a month-long membership drive to an end. At 5 p.m. on Saturday, bring a dish to the Human Potential Center, 2007 Bert Ave., for a potluck. From 3 to 7 p.m. on Sunday, listen to music from Matt the Electrician and other musicians at a fundraiser at Cafe Caffeine, 909 W. Mary St. (Admission to the show is $15 for non-members and $5 for co-op members.)
You don’t have to go to one of these events to find out more info or join. (Here’s a link to the online membership application.)
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news, Playing with your food
March 25, 2010
City council shows support of freshly cooked food at farmers market
UPDATE: At Thursday’s city council meeting, council members addressed the issue of hot food being served at farmers market. More than 40 people showed up to support changes to the city code that would allow hot food to be served weekly at local markets. Jesse Griffiths of Dai Due Supper Club, who has been serving sausage and biscuits at the market for several months, also spoke to the council and mayor Lee Leffingwell. Council members voiced their support of finding a way for farmers market vendors to serve food cooked on site and instructed city staff to come up with proposed changes to the code by April 22.
Produce, meat and prepared food have been mainstays of the Austin Farmers Market for years, but in the past few months, several vendors have been serving freshly cooked food, including sausage and biscuits and gravy, lattes with steamed milk and Ethiopian food.
But after April 1, the vendors cooking food on-site won’t be able to get the temporary permit that has allowed them to do so in previous months.
Those temporary permits are designed to allow food preparation at events such as carnivals, South by Southwest and Rodeo Austin without the equipment and facility investments needed to meet standards for the mobile food vendor permits used by more than 1,000 food carts and trailers around the city.
Mark Parsons, supervisor of sanitarians for the Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services Department, said the temporary permits weren’t designed to be issued for events that happen week after week, as many farmers’ markets do. “You want to minimize your risk to the public when you start doing it routinely,” he said. Farmers who simply sell produce (and don’t slice it) don’t need a permit, Parsons
said, but permits are required for vendors who sell prepackaged foods or prepare foods on-site.
“I personally like farmers’ markets and going back to a less-centralized food system,” Parsons said. “I’m hoping we can achieve the goal without too much of a headache.”
Market director Suzanne Santos says that Jesse Griffiths of Dai Due Supper Club was the first to utilize the temporary permit to prepare food on-site. “We respect that they are meeting the needs of consumers and businesses, keeping them safe and managing the risk,” she said.
But Santos said cooking on-site isn’t just about providing food for people to eat while shopping. One of the Sustainable Food Center’s primary goals is educating the public, she says and people cooking on-site is a valuable teaching tool for customers who want to know how to use in-season produce in their own homes.
Santos said she’s interested in working with the city to establish a separate permit for farmers’ markets, as cities including Sunset Valley and Houston have done, that would allow vendors with temporary permits to cook on-site every week. “(The city) is on our journey with us, and we haven’t finished our journey,” she said. “We’ve just come to a rest stop.”
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
March 22, 2010
Jamie Oliver leads an uprising in ABC's 'Food Revolution'
Jamie Oliver’s eyes might be bigger than his stomach.
In a new show on ABC, the British chef moves to Huntington, W. Va., a city the government has deemed the unhealthiest city in America, to try to change how people in the town think about food. This would be mighty task anywhere in the country, considering that two-thirds of the population is overweight and diet-related diseases including high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes could mean that for the first time in U.S. history, hildren might have a shorter average life expectancy than their parents.
“Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” premieres on Friday, but ABC broadcast an hourlong preview last night that gave a glimpse of what Oliver is up against, and viewers quickly find out that picky kids are the least of Oliver’s troubles.
Stubborn school cooks don’t see anything wrong with serving breakfast pizza and balk at the idea of making anything from scratch. (“The future of America is sitting here, having pizza for breakfast,” he says as he walks among the cafeteria tables. “If you’re a parent, it should piss you off.”) Bureaucratic school officials refuse to count brown rice as a serving of bread or grain but allow pizza (served the day after the students had breakfast pizza) to count as two servings. Students, some of whom identify a tomato as a potato, admit to eating chicken nuggets for both lunch and dinner on many days.
For the past seven years, Oliver has been working on similar project with schools and families in England. Just last month, he gave an impassioned speech seen by millions online about food education when accepting the TED Prize, a $100,000 award from the Technology, Entertainment, Design conference in California.
But now he has an opportunity to speak from a much bigger stage: A six-episode primetime series on a major TV network. That’s a lot for anyone to chew, even for a chef who made a name for himself on cable television.
In recent years, NBC has brought the obesity epidemic to life in “The Biggest Loser,” but that show is focused more on how much a dozen contestants sweat than how the majority of the country relies on processed, nutritionally deficient food.
Never have we had such an up-close view of how Americans eat and, more important, someone asking bluntly, in the kitchen of an overweight family brought to tears when faced with a week’s worth of junk food, “Why are you doing this to yourselves?”
So far, Oliver’s show combines a heroes-versus-villains storyline with the do-good feel of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” another ABC hit, but not everyone is hooked. In a preview for the Washington Post, former Statesman writer Hank Stuever says the show “has all the problems of most network reality pap” and fails to acknowledge how politicized food has become:
“Red state, blue state; I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of trying to get the nation to eat right,” he writes. “It’s tempting to just let folks keel over in a puddle of kountry gravy if they like, dead from clogged arteries or scurvy (or both)….And it has a certain hectoring quality, a la ‘SuperNanny,’ that obscures its educational aim. In its zeal to show America to itself, it helps America make fun of itself.”
If breakfast pizza leaves a bad taste in Oliver’s mouth, it’s cynicism like this that leaves a bad taste in mine.
I can’t be the only parent that has learned a lesson or two from shows like “SuperNanny,” and I have a feeling “Food Revolution” will make us all think twice about serving processed food in our own homes and turning the other cheek when our kids’ schools do the same.
The show might also force us to take responsibility for our kids’ refusal to eat anything but chicken nuggets. Oliver has to face this fact when the students pick the same-old pizza over his roasted chicken and, at the end of the meal, throw away whole fruit and untouched salads. (If you’ve ever been in an elementary school cafeteria, you know how real this scene is.)
How do you make kids choose to eat what’s food for them when their palates are accustomed to eating sodium- and fat-filled foods that are chemically engineered to taste good? We’ll see what happens on Friday when Oliver removes the choice part of that equation.
Oliver is starting off with schoolchildren, but it will be interesting in future episodes to see how he handles adults, who are often even more stubborn in their eating habits than their kids.
Apparently, grim statistics and a growing waistline alone aren’t going to change their minds.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Categories: Celebs in the Kitchen, Food in the news
March 13, 2010
Sunset Valley Farmers Market moving; SFC opening new market
Starting March 20, the Sunset Valley Farmers Market is moving to Barton Square Creek mall, and the Sustainable Food Center, which operates the downtown and Triangle farmers markets, will begin operating a new market in the parking lot of the Toney Burger Center in Sunset Valley.
The new market, called the SFC Farmers’ Market at Sunset Valley, will be open from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and will feature “a majority of the vendors from the previous Sunset Valley Farmers Market,” according to a press release on the Sustainable Food Center’s Web site.
“SFC has a temporary permit to run the market weekly, pending a review for a more permanent special use permit in April by the City of Sunset Valley. SFC’s intent is to run the market weekly, rain or shine, year-round,” the release states.
The Sunset Valley Farmers Market is now the Barton Creek Farmers Market, and will be open from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the mall parking lot next to Dillard’s department store.
Last year, this market lost its lease with the Toney Burger Activity Center, which is owned by the Austin Independent School District, and was negotiating for a new home with the City of Sunset Valley.
Permalink | Comments (13) | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
February 17, 2010
Chefs using Twitter to pick fights, fight back
In today’s New York Times, Julia Moskin writes about how chefs are taking to Twitter to voice their frustrations with customers, bloggers, other restaurants and event restaurant critics.
I’m fascinated by the power that social media gives people on both sides of the table. Moskin offers this quote from the wife of LA chef Ludovic Lefebvre:
“Before the Web and Twitter, restaurants were completely controlled by the press, and chefs and restaurants just had to sit back and take it. Now we have a voice.”
Now, how easily could we replace “restaurants” with “diners”? I’ve always thought that Yelp and other similar sites have given a voice to customers who previously didn’t have a place to air complaints or sing praises of a restaurant.
Two can play this game, but some chefs aren’t too happy about it. “Yelp is for cowards,” Moskin quotes a tweet from a California chef, who don’t have the courage “to say anything while in your restaurant.”
Clearly, people on both sides are taking it too far.
It’s too bad more chefs aren’t taking the high road like Houston’s Bobby Heugel, who owns Anvil, one of the premier cocktail bars in the country.
Earlier this week, he tweeted: “Anvil has a new staff policy. They are NEVER allowed to talk negatively about another bar or restaurant. … We want to be part of a supportive industry and community and will now require our staff, at Anvil or not, to handle themselves accordingly.”
(Heugel doesn’t mention not slamming customers, but I think he implies that by saying he wants to be a part of a supportive community.)
I guess people are just now figuring out what a powerful tool social media is, and with power comes responsibility.
Do you think the food world — from restaurant staff to chefs, critics and diners — does a good job of wielding this power? Were we better off when the restaurant critics were the only one with a public voice? How should chefs/restaurants respond to negative comments online?
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Chewing the fat, Food in the news
February 10, 2010
Walmart holds own against Whole Foods in Atlantic Monthly taste test at Fino
For Atlantic Monthly’s March issue, food writer Corby Kummer devised a brilliant taste test: Using similar ingredients purchased from Walmart and Whole Foods, create two identical meals and ask tasters to pick which they preferred.
UPDATE: “Just Food” author and Texas State educator James E. McWilliams, who was also on the tasting panel, makes a key point: The people tasting didn’t know what was being tested beyond taste. They knew that the ingredients came from two sources, but not that one meal came from the world’s largest company and the other was from the pioneering Austin-based natural grocer.
What better restaurant for this task than Fino, whose chef Jason Donoho sources many of his ingredients from local farms. Kummer gathered more than a dozen food-connected folks, most of them Austinites, for the test. The results will shaken anyone’s preconceived notions of the quality of food found on the shelves of both stores.
The majority of Kummer’s article is dedicated to exploring Walmart’s attempts to “go local” by encouraging farms within a day’s drive of its warehouses to grow crops that currently are hauled across the country from states like California and Florida.
It’s ironic, of course, that Walmart is attempting to forge relationships with the small farmers whose livelihood they squashed in previous years in the quest for low prices. At a press conference late last year, I heard from Walmart officials, as well as a farmer or two, about this new initiative, which Kummer points out is a clear attempt to tap into the quickly growing “locavore” market.
At the Austin press event, I found a handful of products — including potatoes, corn, zucchini, squash, mushrooms, oranges — with a “locally grown” sign and the Department of Agriculture’s Go Texan logo, but no mention of exactly where in this gigantic agriculture state the produce came from.
The bright lights and cookie-cutter produce were a far cry from in-season, heirloom varieties found at any of the area farmers’ markets. Patrons of these markets, as well as those who prefer Whole Foods, won’t be making the switch to shopping at Walmart anytime soon, but the company’s efforts can’t be ignored.
When you’re a company that’s making more money in a day than every single farmers’ market in the country had made in the past decade, a move like this has the potential to change the game, especially when your produce beats Whole Foods’ in a blind taste test.
The complicated network of farmers and distributors required to keep Walmart shelves stocked, combined with the icky history Walmart has of doing whatever it takes to keep prices as low as possible, in no way fits the traditional locavore ethic, but I’m hoping their massive buying power can have a positive effect — for farmers and consumers — in the long run.
I’m probably wearing rose-colored glasses, but I long ago learned that no matter how long you pretend Walmart doesn’t exist, it always will, and the majority of Americans will continue shop there.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
February 8, 2010
A new ketchup packet design for the new decade
I always feel a little bit guilty when I grab a fistful of ketchup packets at a fast food restaurant. I shift my eyes around quickly to make sure that no one is observing my packet gluttony—and if they are, I toss a packet or two back into the bin. Here’s the thing, those ketchup packets were made for unrealistic portions. I need at least three packets squirted onto my hamburger wrapper to achieve a good fry dunk.
Heinz recently announced that they are releasing a new ketchup packet design, Heinz Dip and Squeeze. It’s bigger and offers the option to dunk or squirt. Two options in one packet? It’s made possible by the very smart addition of a perforated end on the packet so the user can squeeze it like a tiny plastic ketchup bottle, and a removable lid so the user may also submerge their food into a small pool of ketchup.
This is the first ketchup packet makeover Heinz has done in 42 years. It’s got to be big news. I was a bit apprehensive about the new design at first, but that first dip into the deep reservoir of ketchup made all of my worries go away. It’s nice to have the ketchup confined to a pack for easier cleanup, and its great for maximum fry to ketchup coverage. Also, one packet equals three of the old guys, so for me it means grabbing less packets. The new ketchup also features reduced sodium. The flavor isn’t noticeably different. Overall, I think the new packets are more user friendly, and I look forward to seeing them at fast food restaurants soon.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Food in the news, Playing with your food
IHOP, Denny's bring back free breakfast days
There were hundreds of more interesting moments during last night’s Super Bowl than the silly chicken ads from Denny’s announcing free Grand Slam breakfasts on Tuesday, but a free meal is a free meal, and come Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of folks across the U.S. will be lining up for theirs.
A year ago, both Denny’s and IHOP scored major press by giving away food during two days in February. This year, IHOP’s National Pancake Day celebration is also a fundraising venture for Children’s Miracle Network. From 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 23, IHOP will be giving away one short stack of pancakes per customer, and in return, it is asking customers to make a voluntary donation to support local children’s hospitals.
Rather than go the charity route, Denny’s splurged on several ads during the Super Bowl promoting Tuesday’s deal: one free Grand Slam breakfast per customer from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The commercials also reminded folks that they can get a free Grand Slam on their birthday, which unless it is Feb. 9, will be a whole lot less crowded than Tuesday.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating out, Food in the news
February 2, 2010
Streep, 'Food, Inc.' earn Oscar nominations
2009 was a great year for food in film.
Most people who give two salt shakes about food saw “Julie & Julia,” based on former Austinite Julie Powell’s book about her quest to cook and blog about every recipe in “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.”
“Food, Inc.,” as well as the lesser-known and well-distributed “Fresh,” exposed the food industry’s dirty secrets to millions of moviegoers.
It’s no surprise, then, that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has nominated Meryl Streep for best actress for her portrayal of “Julia Child” in “J&J” and “Food, Inc.” got a nod in the best documentary category.
I loved Streep as Child, and riots probably would have erupted in America’s top restaurant if she hadn’t been nominated for her most excellent performance as one of the most famous chefs of all times, but I’m most excited about “Food, Inc.” getting such high-profile time in front of American audiences. The movie conveys much of the same horrific information as “Fast Food Nation” and Michael Pollan’s books, but the news bears repeating: The agricultural system in this country is broken, and we’re all in trouble if we don’t fix it soon.
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
January 28, 2010
Whole Foods to offer bigger discount to healthier employees
Earlier this week, Jezebel posted about a new program for Whole Foods employees that allows them a greater in-store discount if they don’t smoke and have low blood pressure, cholesterol and BMI, or Body Mass Index.
Part of an initiative from CEO John Mackey to reduce the company’s health care costs, the program will allow employees who have a BMI of less than 24, blood pressure of 110/70 and a cholesterol of 150 to get a discount of 30 percent on purchases from Whole Foods. The sliding scale leaves employees with BMIs above 30, as well as those who choose not to participate, with the standard 20 percent discount.
This program comes less than six months after Mackey’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that argued for less government control over health care. “Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health,” Mackey wrote. “This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health.”
What do you think? I’m the first to admit that I’d love a discount on, say, the cost of my own health insurance if I can prove a low BMI and blood pressure, but this Jezebel writer has an important point — and please note the sarcasm: “Because if public health research has taught us anything, it’s that reducing people’s buying power totally makes them healthier. Stay classy, Whole Foods.”
Organizations like the Sustainable Food Center work hard to make the public aware that access to affordable healthy food isn’t a reality for many people, most of whom don’t have the luxury of getting a discount at stores like Whole Foods. Everyone knows a burger at McDonald’s costs less than a pound of apples, so how do we make sure that people who are most in need good-for-you-food can afford to buy it?
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Chewing the fat, Food in the news
January 26, 2010
Bake sale to raise money for Haiti relief efforts
UPDATE: Stephanie reports on her blog that the bake sale raised enough money to provide 2880 vegan meals to Haitians in need.
Impromptu fundraising projects for the earthquake-devastated Haiti have popped up all over town in the past 10 days, and on Saturday, vegan bakers are going to be selling baked goods from noon to 4 p.m. at Ten Thousand Villages,
1317 S. Congress Ave., to raise money for the relief efforts.
Austin blogger Stephanie Bogdanich, who write the blog, Lazy Smurf’s Guide to Life, has rounded up fellow vegan bakers to bake and sell treats. The Austin event is just one of many inspired by Isa Chandra Moskowitz, who sent out a call on Post Punk Kitchen for vegan bakers to do what they could to help people in Haiti. The money raised will to go Food for Life.
Here’s a link to the Facebook event page for details about the fundraiser.
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
January 11, 2010
Despite freeze, farmers able to save majority of crops
Unlike many areas of the country, January is time for both harvesting and planting at Central Texas farms. So when area farmers heard news last week that an arctic front was coming, they got to work covering the winter crops such as cauliflower, kale and lettuce that don’t fare well when temperatures drop into the teens.
“We put a double layer of cover on tender things like broccoli and lettuce…and ran drip irrigation at night,” says Jo Dwyer, who runs Angel Valley Farm in Leander with her husband John. Water can help insulate covered crops from a freeze, which is what saved much of the Dwyers’ broccoli. “The stuff under row cover isn’t happy, but it’s alive,” she says.
In October, heavy rains at Angel Valley Farm caused much worse damage than any cold snap. “The biggest (weather) disaster that a farm can get is too much rain or hail,” says Dwyer, whose farm, because it is located in a valley, experienced temperatures in the single digits over the weekend.
“We expected it to be worse, so we’re happy,” she says.
Carol Ann Sayle and Larry Butler of Boggy Creek Farm ran out of row cover for their crops, but what they were able to cover — about 75 percent of the produce in the ground — survived. “It’s been a hammer job over the past two weeks,” Sayle says. “I think we’re going to lose a lot of baby arugula, rapini and the mustard greens…and fava beans. I’m sick about my fava beans,” she says. (Sayle posted more about the efforts to save crops over on her Atlantic blog, On The Farm.)
Other crops, including beets, chard and broccoli, appear to have survived. However, because the ground was frozen from Thursday until Saturday, Sayle says she’s afraid they might lose their citrus trees. “We won’t know for a few days if they survived.”
Sayle says this is the second worst weather-related event they’ve experience. “It’s not as bad as the tornado we had in 2001,” she says, but this freeze, combined with the drought last summer, means that the past eight months have been a “disaster,” costing the farm at least $75,000 in lost revenue.
One good thing about the freeze? “Cold weather is a blessing because I can be inside doing W2s” for the upcoming tax season, she says.
But with temperatures in the 50s during the day this week, both Sayle and Dwyer will be back in the fields harvesting what survived and planting seeds and transplants for the spring crop.
Photo by Carol Ann Sayle.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Food in the news, Food in your backyard
January 8, 2010
Austin mourns death of "the Pepper Lady"
One of Austin’s most colorful food scientists/gardeners/cooks/authors has passed away.
Jean Andrews, aka “the Pepper Lady,” who was best known for her books on all things capsicum, died Thursday in her home at the age of 86.
Social columnist Michael Barnes has more information on Andrew’s adventurous life on his Out and About blog.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Food in the news
December 4, 2009
Joe's Bakery matriarch Sophia De La'O: 1907-2009
Sophia De La’O, who along with her husband Florentino started the East Austin bakery that would become Joe’s Bakery, has died at the age of 102.
In 1935, the De La’Os started selling breads out of their East Ninth Street house. Their son, Joe Avila, was 6 years old at the time. By the 1960s, the family had opened Sun Bakery on East Seventh Street, which Avila bought and turned into Joe’s Bakery, now one of the longest-running restaurants in Austin. Many of De La’O’s recipes are still in use in the Joe’s Bakery kitchen.
In April, the families celebrated Sophia and Joe’s 102nd and 65th birthdays with a big party (click here for more photos of the party), complete with a mariachi band and dozens of regulars who’ve become part of the Avila/De La’O family. Five generations were present, including her great granddaughter Regina Estrada, left, and Estrada’s 1-year-old daughter.
The week before Thanksgiving, De La’O fell and broke her hip, Estrada said. She caught pneumonia and died Thursday evening. “It took us by surprise because we didn’t expect it so soon,” Estrada said Friday, because she was recovering so well from the surgery.
The rosary is planned for Sunday evening at Angel Funeral Home.
Photos by Ralph Barrera for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Food in the news
Forget burgers: Whata-marketing campaign!
As we all know, the fast food industry is more about marketing than making good food, and Whataburger is on a roll — with sesame seeds, of course — this season.
Not only are they doing a 12 Days of Whataburger promo with coupons for free products for 12 days straight, they are doing a big send-off for their A.1. Thick & Hearty Burger.
When my burger-loving colleague Omar Gallaga pointed me to this A.1. support group Web site, where devoted A.1. Thick & Hearty Burger lovers can record farewell messages and videos and send sympathy cards, my first thought was: “Wow, that must be a really good burger for them to go to all that trouble to say that it’s going away forever.”
So on the way back from Galveston last week, I stopped by a Whataburger in Sealy specifically to see what this A.1. Thick & Hearty burger was all about.
The burger tasted like every other Whataburger I’ve had, but just with A.1. sauce and extra cheese. Decent for fast food, but still nothing I can ever imagine shedding a tear over not being able to get again. And I most certainly won’t be going through the phases of grief that the man in their commercials goes though.
However, it’s a successful social media strategy. I commend them for tapping into the power of connecting people with similar brand loyalties and tastes in mediocre burgers, and for creating a campaign curious enough to make me buy a burger when I wouldn’t have otherwise.
Just like the pumpkin puree and sugar “shortages”, it proves my point that there’s no better way to sell a product — good or bad — than to tell the world it won’t be there for long.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Food in the news
November 24, 2009
In Julie Powell's 'Cleaving,' more marital misery than meat
Powell’s first book chronicled her attempt to pull herself out of a mid-life slump by cooking — and blogging about — every recipe in Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” The book was sassy, but fun and entertaining to read. “Cleaving,” on the other hand, is a dark look into Powell’s affair-ridden marriage, told as she sets out on another culinary adventure: to become a butcher.
The Austin High School graduate talked about this “darker, more personal” book when I interviewed her in August for a profile on her that was published around the time the movie debuted.
“It’s about butchery in the same way that ‘Julie and Julie’ is about Julia (Child),” she said. “It was a dark period in my marriage…I kinda had to do it. It was my digestion of the entire experience…By the time I got through to the end, I was able to approach the entire experience from a place of generosity and understanding. It wasn’t coming from anger or spite,” she says.
By the end of the book, it was easier to tell that she and her husband had processed the myriad infidelities, most notably a two-year affair with a man Powell refers to a “D” in most of the book.
Although the book ends with a revived passion for her husband, the lewd details of her affair are difficult to read, especially for fans of the first book. In “Julie and Julia” (both the book and the movie), we fall in love with her husband, Eric, a fellow former Austinite, who is patient, witty and sensitive, the calm to her crazy. She went to such great detail to portray him as the near-perfect mate, it’s hard to have sympathy for her when she falls (back) in love with a fling — or at least his preference for S&M sex — from college.
Marriage isn’t perfect, and Lord knows we need more realistic looks at what and what does not constitute a modern marriage, but there’s something to be said about modesty when it comes to writing about extramarital sex, the painful details of which I’m too embarrassed for her to share, just in case her family or friends are reading this blog.
I loved the parts of the book where she’s learning how to butcher like the boys at Fleisher’s butcher shop in Kingston, New York. The cold of the meat, her weary muscles, the boisterous banter in the store; Powell is a solid writer, but she could have used a little editing to pare down the endless pages filled with Buffy the Vampire references or scenes where she’s anticipating the buzz of her phone, which meant a racy text from her lover, or downing yet another bottle of wine alone after work.
The final third of the book becomes a travel memoir as she visits meat slayers in various parts of the world. The self discovery found along the way is to be expected, but it’s still nice to follow Powell as she’s on her own, away from the men who trouble her mind, gaining the confidence we knew she had all along to resolve her romantic woes.
It’s no “Julie and Julia,” but “Cleaving” will certainly make you appreciate a balanced partnership if you have one and warn you of the dangers of complacency and temptation inherent to marriage if you don’t.
Powell will be making several appearances in Austin in December. The first is a book signing at BookPeople, 603 N. Lamar Blvd., and the second at 7 p.m. on Dec. 7, at an Alamo Drafthouse screening of “Julia and Julia” for Eat Local Week.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Food in the news
November 19, 2009
Canned pumpkin shortage? Don't bet your pie on it
When a national food corporation runs low on a product, they issue a press release saying there’s a shortage.
Panic sets in.
Customers run to stock up (see: sugar, Kellogg Eggo waffles), only to find out that “shortage” isn’t a shortage at all, but one or two companies running low on a certain product.
Reports of a shortage on Libby’s canned pumpkin have been circling the Internet lately. The company says rains destroyed this year’s pumpkin harvest, which means there might not be enough canned pumpkin to go around.
It’s as if Libby’s is the only company in the canned pumpkin business. At two grocery stores yesterday, I was able to find plenty of the stuff, as well as whole pumpkins that — gasp — could be used to make pumpkin puree.
The reasons for a food “shortage” are rarely what they seem: Kellogg blamed rain for shutting down several of its plants, but one Atlanta plant was shut down for two months after a routine inspection found Listeria in a package of buttermilk Eggo waffles. It appears the plant had to be sanitized twice, which caused the delay in production that consumers will feel through next year.
Once again, there’s more than one company selling frozen waffles these days.
The sugar “shortage,” it seems, was more about prices than supply. Even the American Sugar Alliance said candy companies were crying wolf.
As for the canned pumpkin shortage? It was a rainy year for much of the Midwest, which I’m sure means that Libby’s doesn’t have as much of their signature product as they’d like.
But there’s no better way to make sure they’ll sell what they do have than announce there might not be enough to go around.
Photo by Deiru on Flickr.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Food in the news
November 17, 2009
Turn gratitude into new school in Tanzania
After all this talk about what we’re eating on Thanksgiving, it’s time to talk about gratitude.
On Nov. 24, people around the world will be gathering for TweetsGiving, a fundraiser like the Twestival that capitalizes on the generosity and camaraderie of the social media community to support a good cause. Money raised at next week’s TweetsGiving will go to Epic Change, which is helping expand the Shepard’s Junior School in Tanzania with new classrooms, a library, cafeteria and dormitory. (Students from the school are the kids sharing what they are grateful for in the video above.)
The Austin TweetsGiving will take place from 6:30 to 10:30 p.m. at Mama Fu’s downtown, 100 Colorado St. Buy your tickets here (100 percent of the proceeds go to Epic Change).
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Food in the news
November 12, 2009
Smithville's world record is broken by Norway cookie
Smithville’s Guinness World Record for the largest cookie has been broken.
In Norway, the world’s tallest man — Turkey’s Sultan Kosen who is 8 foot, 1 inch tall — unveiled a 1,435 pound cookie. That’s 128 pounds more than the previous record, set by a group of bakers in Smithville, just east of Austin, that was baked in 2006.
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
Backyard gardens help feed, sustain the formerly homeless
Now, in addition to Resolution Gardens, Austin Urban Gardens, Green Corn Project and a number of other area businesses and nonprofits, Mobile Loaves and Fishes wants to help Central Texans grow food.
With the help of people who were once living on the streets, Mobile Loaves and Fishes will build and maintain gardens and set up chicken coops in people’s backyards. Home owners will pay for supplies, but in exchange for the work, they’ll also share half of the bounty with the formerly homeless who help grow the food. Founder Alan Graham posted this video on Twitter this morning, showing off his backyard chickens and garden.
This garden and chicken service is just one part of the larger Karpophoreō Project — also know as KP — whose goal is to help low-income, homeless and formerly homeless create a sustainable food supply for themselves.
If you’re interested in partnering up with Mobile Loaves and Fishes, e-mail them at info@mlfnow.org.
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news, Food in your backyard
November 11, 2009
Giving thanks: Free meals for Austin veterans
Russell Williams, a pedicab driver, student and veteran of the U.S. Navy, picked up on reports yesterday of free food for area veterans, so he enlisted friend Jason Soliz, who is also a student/pedicabber/veteran, to help him visit each of the places in Austin honoring them with free meals.
Together than have more than 13 years of service to the U.S. military.
I met up with them for lunch at Wing Zone, where owner Brad Meltzer was giving away T-shirts and handshakes and heartfelt thanks to customers. Meltzer is giving away meals at Wing Zone until 2 a.m. Thursday and will be giving away dinner at his Austin and San Antonio Benihana restaurants from 5 to 10 p.m. Applebee’s is giving away an entree to veterans, and Outback Steakhouse has an onion blossom and a drink to honor folks who have served.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Eating out, Food in the news
November 4, 2009
Farewell, gorgeous Gourmet
With the help of Tipsy Texan David Alan and Fino bar manager Bill Norris, chef Jason Donoho and owners Emmet and Lisa Fox, we helped say goodbye to Gourmet yesterday.
It’s been more than a month since the food world found out that the 68-year-old magazine was closing, even though it had nearly a million subscribers and was regarded as the cream of the crop when it came to food writing and photography.
But good things always come to an end, and the good folks at Fino offered to host a wake of sorts for the publication whose last issue hit newsstands in the last few weeks.
Gourmet fanatics sipped on vintage cocktails (St. Ceclia Society punch and Chartreuse Champagne cocktails, for example) and nibbled on food inspired by the magazine (saffron rice croquettes and truffled popcorn prepared in duck fat) as we flipped through old and new issues.
Magazines, like every other printed media, are a tangible record of history that shows a slice of life in, say, 1975 when no one thought twice about advertisements like this one promoting cigarettes. (Norris and Alan said they spent quite a bit of time gawking at the now-laughable alcohol advertisements that featured elements like talking artichokes.)
Kim Usey also brought in her favorite issues, which included a Southern food issue from 2005 which featured a few gorgeous photos that I’ll admit made me well up. For years, Gourmet has printed photos that weren’t merely well-composed shots of well-styled food, they were a tender glimpse into what it means to love food and the act of serving it to family and friends.
Thanks to everyone, especially the readers I hadn’t met in real life, for coming out.
It’s a sad moment in food culture, and I was glad for the chance to mourn with friends.
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news, Playing with your food
October 14, 2009
Grapevine Market in Austin to close in December
Just as we’re all looking for signs that the recession is nearing an end, news travels that Grapevine Market on Anderson Lane will close before the end of the year.
I haven’t had a chance to verify it with the store, but Austinist is reporting that Grapevine Market in Austin close December 15. (No word on the Round Rock store.)
With six Spec’s stores in Central Texas, as well as countless other discount beer, wine and spirit outlets, I hope the holiday season is kind on Grapevine and other smaller, independent wine shops.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Food in the news
October 13, 2009
After the fall of Gourmet, what's next for food magazines?
I had a sad reality check last week when reporting on the state of food magazines for a story in tomorrow’s paper.
Like many of you, I was heartbroken at the thought of what the closing of Gourmet would mean for intellectual food writing. You know, the kinds of pieces that invoke a sense of place and personality, the profiles or in-depth articles meant to savor and actually tell a story. It’s the kind of writing that drew me into this whole journalism thing in the first place. I don’t read food magazines just to learn (for the 100th time) how to make a calzone or cut up an artichoke
When interviewing magazine expert Samir Husni, I brought up the gaping void Gourmet left behind for thoughtful, emotive writing about food. Before I could even finish my thought, Samir stopped me: No one cares.
But I care. Legions of friends on Twitter care. The nearly million subscribers to Gourmet — who will now be getting Bon Appetit to fulfill their subscriptions — care.
It’s not enough, Samir says. The masses want celebrities and recipes, not good reads. Long gone are the days when the inner circle of New York magazine editors get to bask in their own intellectual glory and ignore the American public and its incessant hunger for the famous and the familiar.
There are still a few publications where you can find this kind of food writing (Eat Me Daily has this great list of them), but Gourmet closing is a wake-up call to the few of us who care: support the publications that print (or publish online) the kind of writing you enjoy.
The top-down versus bottom-up argument exploded last week when Christopher Kimball, editor of Cook’s Illustrated, skewered the food blogging community in a New York Times’ op-ed piece:
Google ‘broccoli casserole’ and make the first recipe you find. I guarantee it will be disappointing. The world needs fewer opinions and more thoughtful expertise — the kind that comes from real experience, the hard-won blood-on-the-floor kind.
Food bloggers, including Adam Roberts, aka the Amateur Gourmet, were incensed. Roberts offered this reply, including this zinger: “Kimball may consider the food blogosphere a ‘ship of fools,’ but his ship is the one that’s sinking.”
But what exactly is this sinking ship? Cook’s Illustrated seems to be getting by just fine on a subscriber-only model with no advertising, and on the opposite end of the scale, the Food Network Magazine is getting thicker — with more readers — by the month. By Husni’s count, there were more new food magazines launched last year than in any other category.
It’s hard to say for sure, but I imagine there were 200 times as many food blogs started during that same time. Sixty percent of new magazines fail in the first year, and I suspect everyone, including food bloggers, are on the verge of experiencing some level of food blog overload.
So the question to me is, how much generic, often repetitive food content can we consume? What magazine, blog or other publication will pick up Gourmet’s readers? Will the demand for something more than how-tos, recipes and a smiling Paula Deen ever return?
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Food in the news
October 5, 2009
After 68 years, Gourmet magazine to close after Nov. issue
What a day for food news.
The New York Times is reporting that Gourmet magazine will cease publication after the November issue. After 68 years as one of the best food magazines around (the most recent 10 years with food powerhouse Ruth Reichl as editor), this news is a sad reminder of the changing times.
Yes, the economy is bad, but magazines have been struggling for a while. Ad sales are down. Subscriptions are down. Free content is everywhere, but you can’t find the quality of photography and articles published in Gourmet just anywhere. Especially in Bon Appetit, the “other” food magazine Conde Nast owns.
Few in the industry thought that Conde Nast could continue to publish two food magazines for much longer, but many put their bets on the less-prestigious (and to me, less engaging and enjoyable to look at) Bon Appetit. But when you look at the other food publications out there — Cooking Light, Eating Well, Saveur, Food + Wine, Every Day with Rachael Ray and even the Food Network’s magazine — readers want quick bites, tips, low-fat recipes and dinners they can cook in less than 20 minutes.
Gourmet just released “Gourmet Today,” a collection of more than 1,000 new recipes for “how we cook today.” A great concept and a fine book, I’m sure, but I haven’t seen it. Budget cuts must have forced them to reduce the number of review copies they sent out. (We haven’t received review copies of the magazine in a long time, but I subscribed anyway.)
It’ll be interesting to see what Reichl, a former New York Times restaurant critic, does next. She has a series on PBS that is supposed to air this fall and has had success with her memoirs, but what do you do after 10 years at the helm of the world’s most elegant food magazine?
UPDATE: It appears Gourmet will continue in book publishing and television programing. From an e-mail quoted on LA Observed:
Gourmet magazine will cease monthly publication, but we will remain committed to the brand, retaining Gourmet’s book publishing and television programming, and Gourmet recipes on Epicurious.com. We will concentrate our publishing activities in the epicurean category on Bon Appétit.
As if the news of Gourmet closing wasn’t enough to digest this morning, the Federal Trade Commission announced that starting December 1, bloggers must disclose freebies or payments they get from companies in exchange for reviewing their products.
From AP: “It is the first time since 1980 that the commission has revised its guidelines on endorsements and testimonials, and the first time the rules have covered bloggers. But the commission stopped short Monday of specifying how bloggers must disclose any conflicts of interest.”
This is an interesting ruling that will without a doubt affect the food blogging community. Violators could face up to $11,000 in fines, but I’d really like to know who is going to be perusing the millions of blogs to find out who is breaking the rules.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Chewing the fat, Food in the news
September 9, 2009
As UT drops trays, will students drop pounds?
College dining halls just aren’t what they used to be.
The University of Texas this semester joined hundreds of others across the country in removing trays from their cafeterias as a way to cut back on the amount of edible food thrown in the trash every day.
You remember loading up trays when you were in school: five or six plates and bowls, with just a taste of each of those glorious options offered in the all-you-care-to-eat dining halls.
I remember it well. Maybe a little too well because I have pictures to prove what all that food did to my body.
Most college students eat at the dining halls for the years they are living on campus. But even though I moved out of the dorms my sophomore year, I worked as a tour guide for the rest of my time at Mizzou, which meant at the end of each tour, I got to eat with the prospective students and their families in the dining hall.
Despite all that walking around campus, multiple plates of food — no matter how you crunch the calories — doesn’t bode well for healthy eating habits.
Cutting back on food waste (up to 60 tons, UT officials hope, or about $250,000 worth of food) is a great move for the institution, but it’s a swell step for students like me whose eyes are often bigger than their ever-bulging stomachs.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Food in the news
July 20, 2009
Buy tickets now for screening of 'Fresh'
The problems of the modern agriculture system have been uncovered in dozens of books and movies in recent years. One of the most recent productions is “Fresh,” a movie that focuses on the new ways of growing, distributing and selling food. Unlike “Food, Inc.,” which was released to theaters nationwide this summer, “Fresh” is being shown at private and public screenings across the country.
On Aug. 25, Edible Austin and the Alamo Drafthouse are hosting a screening at Boggy Creek Farm in East Austin that will raise money for the Sustainable Food Center. Drafthouse chefs John Bullington and Trish Eichelberger will create a locally sourced picnic dinner to be served just before the film starts at dark. Buy tickets ($35) now if you want them; the event is well on its way to being sold out.
Here’s a trailer from the Web site:
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
July 9, 2009
Free screening of 'Food, Inc.' on July 16
If you haven’t had a chance to see “Food, Inc.” yet, consider it your duty as a foodie to do so. The movie is playing in theaters around the country, but on July 16, you can see it for free at Regal Arbor Cinema at Great Hills.
Chipotle Mexican Grill, which buys some of its pork from Polyface Farm, one of the farms profiled in the film, is sponsoring the screening at 7:30 p.m. on July 16.
Tickets will be issued on a first come, first served basis. Click here for more information.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
July 1, 2009
Massive amount of ground beef, fajitas in H-E-B recall
The recall late last month of 400,000 of pounds of beef from JBS Swift Beef Co. is hitting closer to home with H-E-B issuing a voluntary recall of the following products:
- Raw beef briskets with plant inspection No. 969 (EST #969) with sell-by dates between May 12 and June 20.
- Raw beef inside skirt steaks in a Styrofoam tray with sell-by dates between May 4 and June 20.
- Hill Country Fare Beef for fajitas with a sell-by date of May 23.
- Any fresh ground beef in a Styrofoam tray with sell-by dates between May 9 and June 20.
Let’s see: ground beef, fajita beef, skirt steaks, beef briskets. Some of the most popular cuts of meat this time of year. And look closely, folks, that’s six weeks’ worth of ground beef sold in Styrofoam trays that H-E-B now says could be infected. With sell-by dates going back as far as May 4, most of this beef has probably already been consumed.
Check your freezer, just in case.
A little more backstory about the expanded recall: JBS Swift initially only recalled whole cuts of meat, but because many places grind beef in-store, ground beef got wrapped into the recall. JB Swift wasted no time placing the blame on stores that don’t use the “antimicrobial intervention steps” they do.
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June 22, 2009
Farm eggs in jeopardy at restaurants, stores
Farm eggs — and the establishments that sell them — have been caught in a regulatory snare in the past few months.
City health inspectors have been cracking down on a city code that requires eggs that are sold in restaurants or in stores to be graded and labeled at least Grade B.
Problem is, farm eggs aren’t required to be graded.
“It’s not a change,” says Vince Delisi, a supervisor of consumer health for the Austin Travis County Health Department’s Environment and Consumer Health Unit. “It’s been part of the establishment rules.”
Under state law, grading isn’t required for eggs that are produced by a person’s own flock.
Delisi says farms can sell direct to consumers at either farmers’ markets or at their farms, but a retail establishment isn’t allowed to receive or sell eggs that aren’t graded.
So why don’t farms just have their eggs graded? Under the Texas Department of Agriculture’s Egg Law, producers who sell graded eggs also have to be licensed.
Delisi says his department has received confirmation from Texas Department of State Health Services and the Texas Department of Agriculture, as well as lawyers with the City of Austin, that its interpretation of the laws is correct.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture oversees the grading of eggs, but the Texas Department of Agriculture ensures that graded eggs are being sold under the correct label, according to Bryan Black, Assistant Commissioner for Communications for the state agriculture department.
“In Austin, there’s a growth of the buy local movement, which we certainly agree with, but we have to make sure they are in compliance with the regulations,” Delisi says.
“It’s sad that our food chain is coming to this and that we can’t support our local producers,” Emmett Fox owner of FINO and Asti restaurants, which serve food made with many locally-sourced ingredients.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
May 27, 2009
Diana Kennedy signs with UT Press
For more than 50 years, she has been studying, cooking and writing about Mexican food, giving her a culinary expertise matched by few other chefs or authors. Her books include the 1989 classic “The Art of Mexican Cooking,” which was recently reiussed, “The Essential Cuisines of Mexico” and “From My Mexican Kitchen.”
For much of the past decade, Kennedy has been focusing on the region of Oaxaca for “Oaxaca al Gusto,” which at 400 pages, is a tome of a reference book that was first published in Spanish in Mexico last year.
Kennedy, who lives in Michoacan, Mexico, is pushing 90 and still going strong. UT Press sponsoring editor Casey Kittrell, who is working closely with Kennedy on this book, says she took many of the photos herself as she was researching.
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May 26, 2009
Pollan, Schlosser delve deep into food industry in "Food Inc."
The dirty laundry of the modern food system has been hanging on the clothesline for all to see for a while, or at least in the mainstream since author Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation” and Michael Pollan’s “Omnivore’s Dilemma” became best-sellers in recent years. Documentaries including “Supersize Me,” “The Future of Food” and “King Corn” also have shed light on the perils of genetically modified seeds and agribusiness.
In “Food, Inc.,” a film from director Robert Kenner that comes out next month, Schlosser and Pollan explain yet again how the corporation-controlled food industry hurts farmers, the environment and American’s health. The film will be distributed nationally, starting June 19 in Austin at the Regal Arbor Cinema and Alamo Ritz theaters. Get a sneak preview and talk with Kenner and Schlosser at a special screening and locally sourced dinner at 7 p.m. on Monday at the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar Boulevard.
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May 18, 2009
Austin one of few stops on USDA animal identification tour
The Department of Agriculture is hosting seven so-called “listening sessions” across the country on the proposed National Animals Identification System (NAIS). One of those stops is from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Wednesday at the Embassy Suites Hotel (5901 N. Interstate 35, registration is at 8 a.m.).
From the amount of attention this issue has been getting, don’t be surprised to see more than a handful of farmers and activists taking a stand against this plan that would require every livestock animal, from pasture raised lamb to backyard chickens to be tagged. I wrote about some of the aspects of the proposed system in a Relish Austin column last month.
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May 5, 2009
New York chefs slay at 2009 James Beard Awards
(The red carpet and quasi-live blog only mildly satiated our desire to be part of the event, to watch the chefs/authors-turned-celebrities mingle with each other and graciously — or ungraciously — accept their awards.)
But they weren’t, so those of us who didn’t get invited relied on tweets from the event, blog posts and finally a press release from the James Beard Foundation to find out who won.
Not very exciting if you’re into food but can’t swing a trip to the ceremonies, but the awards are nonetheless considered the top food prize in the country, which means they are dissected and debated at length (Eat Me Daily has a particularly interesting post about the dearth of female nominees) from the nominations through the winners and post-award frenzy. (The media awards — which most food writers, including this one, dream of winning — were given out on Sunday night.)
New York chefs and restaurants, unpredictably, took home many of the awards, and out of this great state of chefs, restaurants and writers, there were no wins for Texas. Nancy Nichols of Side Dish calls it as it is: “Dallas, we have a serious PR problem.”
For us online food geeks, Epicurious.com won for best food Web site.
Here are most of the rest of the winners, and I’ll leave it up to you to share your thoughts on who should have won in the comments section below:
Outstanding restaurant: Jean Georges (chef/owner Jean-Georges Vongerichten, owner Phil Suarez, New York)
Outstanding restaurateur award: Drew Nieporent (Myriad Restaurant Group, New York)
Outstanding chef: Dan Barber (Blue Hill, New York)
Best new restaurant: Momofuku Ko (chefs/owners David Chang and Peter Serpico, New York)
Rising star chef of the year: Nate Appleman (A16, San Francisco)
Outstanding pastry chef: Gina DePalma (Babbo, New York)
Outstanding wine service award: Le Bernardin (wine director Aldo Sohm, New York)
Outstanding wine and spirits professional: Dale DeGroff, New York
Outstanding service: Daniel (owner Daniel Boulud, New York)
Best chef: Great Lakes: Michael Symon (Lola, Cleveland, Ohio)
Best chef: Mid-Atlantic: Jose Garces (Amada, Philadelphia)
Best chef: Midwest: Tim McKee (La Belle Vie, Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Best chef: New York City: Gabriel Kreuther (The Modern, New York)
Best chef: Northeast: Rob Evans (Hugo’s, Portland, Maine)
Best chef: Northwest: Maria Hines (Tilth, Seattle)
Best chef: Southwest: Paul Bartolotta (Bartolotta Ristorante di Mare at Wynn, Las Vegas)
Best chef: South: John Currence (City Grocery, Oxford, Mississippi)
Best chef: Southeast: Mike Lata (Fig, Charleston, South Carolina)
Best chef: Pacific: Douglas Keane (Cyrus, Healdsburg, California)
Humanitarian of the Year: Feeding America
Lifetime Achievement Award: Ella Brennan (Partner: Commander’s Palace Family of Restaurants)
MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award: Aleksandra Crapanzano (“Benedictions,” September 2008 issue of Gourmet)
Newspaper Food Section: The Washington Post, Joe Yonan
Newspaper feature writing about a restaurant or chef: Katy McLaughlin (“Sushi Bullies,” The Wall Street Journal)
Newspaper feature writing without recipes: Kristen Hinman (“The Pope of Pork”, Riverfront Times)
Newspaper feature writing with recipes: Rebekah Denn (“High on the Hairy Hogs: Super-Succulent Imports are Everything U.S. Pork Isn’t”, Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
Magazine feature writing about restaurants and/or chefs: Ruth Reichl (Gourmet, “The Last Time I Saw Paris…”)
Magazine feature writing with recipes: Edna Lewis (Gourmet, “What is Southern?”)
Magazine feature writing without recipes: Alan Richman (GQ, “Made (Better) in Japan”) (Worth noting: In this category, Richman beat out Austin’s Pat Sharpe of Texas Monthly, who was nominated for “BBQ 08: The Top 50 BBQ Joints in Texas”)
Reporting on nutrition or food-related consumer issues: Rachael Moeller Gorman (EatingWell, “How to Feed Your Mind”)
Blog focusing on food, beverage restaurants or nutrition: Erika Ehmsen, Elizabeth Jardina, Rick LaFrentz, Amy Machnak, Johanna Silver, Margaret Sloan and Margo True (Our One-Block Diet, Oneblockdiet.sunset.com)
Food-related columns: Corby Kummer (The Atlantic, “A Papaya Grows in Holyoke,” “Beyond the McIntosh,” “Half a Loaf”)
Restaurant Reviews: Adam Platt (New York Magazine, “Faux French”; “The Mario of Midtown”; “Corton on Hudson”;)
Writing on spirits, wine or beer: Alan Richman (GQ, “¡Viva La Revolución!”)
Multimedia food journalism: Ruth Reichl (Gourmet.com, “The Test Kitchen”)
Audio webcast or radio show: WNYC, The Leonard Lopate Show: 3-Ingredient Challenge (hosts Leonard Lopate and Rozanne Gold, producer Sarah English, New York City Metro, Online)
Video webcast: Savoring the Best of World Flavors, Volume III: Vietnam and the Island of Sicily (producers John Barkley, Kenneth Wilmoth, Greg Drescher, Steve Jilleba and Janet Fletcher, host Jonathan Coleman, Ciaprochef.com/WCA3/)
Television food segment: “CBS News Sunday Morning: In a Pinch” (producers Jon Carras and David Small, host Martha Teichner, CBS)
Television Food Show, National or Local: Lidia’s Italy: Sweet Napoli (host Lidia Matticchio Bastianich)
Website Focusing on Food, Beverage, Restaurant, or Nutrition: Epicurious.com (Tanya Steel)
Cookbook of the Year: “Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes” (Jennifer McLagan)
Cookbook Hall of Fame: Jane Grigson for her entire body of work, including The Art of Charcuterie, Good Things, Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book, The Mushroom Feast, & English Food
Cookbook: American Cooking: “Screen Doors and Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales from a Southern Cook” (Martha Hall Foose)
Cookbook: Baking and Dessert: “Bakewise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking” (Shirley O. Corriher)
Cookbook: Beverage: “WineWise: Your Complete Guide to Understanding, Selecting, and Enjoying Wine” (Steven Kolpan, Brian H. Smith, Michael A. Weiss)
Cookbook: Cooking from a Professional Point of View: “Alinea” (Grant Achatz)
Cookbook: General Cooking: “How to Cook Everything (Completely Revised Tenth Anniversary Edition)” (Mark Bittman)
Cookbook: Healthy Focus: “The Food You Crave: Luscious Recipes for a Healthy Life” (Ellie Krieger)
Cookbook: International: “Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China” (Jeffrey Alford, Naomi Duguid)
Cookbook: Reference and Scholarship: “The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America’s Most Imaginative Chefs” (Karen Page, Andrew Dornenburg)
Cookbook: Single Subject: “Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient” (Jennifer McLagan)
Cookbook: Writing and Literature: “In Defense of Food” (Michael Pollan)
Cookbook: Photography: “The Big Fat Duck Cookbook” (Dominic Davies and Dave McKean)
(Photo by Elise Thompson of LAist.com)
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Food in the news
May 4, 2009
Whipping up real change out of food policy buzzwords
Sustainable. Food. Policy. Board.
Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? A buzzword — “sustainable” — combined with “policy” and “board,” which will make anyone’s eyes glaze over, and that almighty necessity “food.”
But, as a friend of mine used to pester me when I’d start talking big, what does it mean?
It would be easy for the good intentions of the Sustainable Food Policy Board, which formed last year and is made up of 13 people with strong ties to local food, to be squashed by the hurdles that inevitably get in the way when people try to affect change.
In any other city, in any other time, with a board led by any other folks, this might be the case.
So what does that mean, improving local food system?
Most of us take supermarkets for granted, Winne explained, but for many people without transportation, getting to and from a supermarket isn’t easy. Food boards can help reroute buses and even convince city governments to give incentives to supermarkets to open in neighborhoods where there weren’t any.
Protecting farmland is something else food policy boards, like the one in Portland, Ore., have accomplished. After a survey of the farms around Portland revealed that 85 percent of the farms sold directly to the city and its residents, officials decided to include farmland protection in the city’s long-term planning. The city even turned down proposals for subdivision that would adversely affect farms. (Farms in the Austin area that are on the brink of closing down because of water issues could greatly benefit from protection like this.)
In Cleveland, the food policy board made it so that community gardens, like the 4-acre Sunshine Community Gardens in Austin, would be protected under an “urban agriculture zone.” They also created an ordinance so residents, following certain protocol, could own backyard chickens and keep bees.
Policy boards — there are about 100 such groups in the U.S. — have created incentives such as seed grants to encourage farmers to keep farming and business opportunities for them to sell produce at local schools and government facilities.
Food policy boards can influence how cities respond to the push to post nutritional information on menus and to remove trans fats from restaurants. Boards can also help develop education programs to help kids understand nutrition. (Winne found some schools requiring as little as one hour per school year on health and nutrition. And we wonder why childhood obesity is reaching pandemic proportions, if I may steal another buzzword of late.)
“Focus on things that are closer at hand,” Winne told the group. His first suggestion was that the group assess Austin’s food system: Who are the stakeholders? Which organizations are already working in the community? Who doesn’t have access to fresh, quality food? What is the City’s buying power when it comes to food? Which schools have programs to improve kids’ lunches? Which schools are doing the best job educating their students on nutrition?
“Food has become a real exciting topic these days,” Winne told the board and about a dozen audience members. From farmers’ markets to salmonella to the rising cost of health care to the environmental impact of the food industry, people are talking about food like never before.
“We can make changes as a group that we can’t make as individuals,” he said.
(Mug shot courtesy of MarkWinne.com)
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
May 1, 2009
Channel your inner Michael Pollan
…or Alice Waters or your sustainable food activist of choice because you can help change the way we think about food. Join members of the Sustainable Food Policy Board for a public meeting on Monday at 12:30 p.m. in the city council chambers at City Hall.
The newly formed board will featured a special guest, activist Mark Winne, who has worked for more than 30 years on food and agriculture policy groups. The boards he works with, including Austin’s, focus on improving access to quality food, reducing hunger and food insecurity, educating the public on the benefits of local good and supporting local farmers.
When you think about it, food relates to everything: from oil (petroleum-based fertilizers are an industry standard at this point) to education (studies show that unhealthy kids don’t learn as much or as well as their healthy counterparts) to the environment (livestock are the largest source of methane from human-related activities) to, of course, our health.
FYI, parking will be free in the City Hall garage. Just bring your ticket with you and the city clerk with validate it. The full agenda will be posted here on the City’s site.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
April 27, 2009
Swine flu: Is pork OK to eat?
Yes, as long as it’s cooked properly.
With the news about swine flu creeping up the I-35 corridor from Mexico, people are understandably concerned about eating pork products.
According to the CDC, you cannot contract swine flu by eating properly cooked pork, which means it is heated to 160 degrees.
From the CDC Web site:
Can people catch swine flu from eating pork? No. Swine influenza viruses are not transmitted by food. You can not get swine influenza from eating pork or pork products. Eating properly handled and cooked pork and pork products is safe. Cooking pork to an internal temperature of 160°F kills the swine flu virus as it does other bacteria and viruses.
However, what is troubling, Food Renegade reports, is that there are reports from Mexico that the flu might have originated at a confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) in Perote, Mexico, run by the Virginia-based pork producer Smithfield. You might remember Smithfield — and its high-profile spokeswoman Paula Deen — in the news in 2007 after criticism arose about dismal working conditions at a North Carolina plant.
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April 15, 2009
Hill Country peach crop devastated by freeze
Peach farmers from the Fredericksburg, Stonewall and Johnson City area confirmed this week that a cold night last week killed nearly all the blossoms that had already popped out on the trees.
Bill Psencik, a grower situated between Stonewall and Fredericksburg, says he thought he was in the clear: the average last date of a freeze is around April 1. “I keep hoping I might find some (unscathed blooms) under a limb, just enough for our use, but no. It’s a total loss.”
The impact of the peach industry on Texas’ economy is about $39 million; 40 percent of the crop is grown in Gillespie County.
Many farmers, including Psencik, have insurance to help cover the losses caused by freeze, but even with insurance, it’s a heart-breaking scene. “I have lost more than I have made in 12 years,” Psencik says. He says he’s had three full crops in that time; last year, his orchard produced 35 percent of a full crop.
Farmers suffered two freezes last week, but the second on Tuesday morning, when the temperature dropped to 28 degrees, was the worst. The peach trees only flower once, and once the pit is ruined, there’s no hope for a fruit, Psencik says.
Fredericksburg farmer Gary Marburger calls the freeze devastating, but it will be a few more weeks before he knows for sure. Some of the varieties could still bear fruit, but it’s not looking good. “We’re all gonna be surprised if we turn out anything.”
Paul Wood, who grows peaches north of Johnson City, says it’s still possible that his ranger and red haven peaches will bear fruit, but he doesn’t consider it likely.
Marburger says his strawberries are just fine; there are still a few weeks of you-pick berries available. But both his and Psencik’s blackberries, which were in the height of blooming, were wiped out along with the peaches.
“I was gonna make this my last year,” says Psencik, who he sat behind a desk in Austin for 45 years until starting a second career as a peach farmer more than a decade ago. “I’m 73 years, and it’s a lot of work. I might do it one more year. I really like growing things.”
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
April 8, 2009
Are croissants really croissants without trans fats?
Trans fat is making a splash at the Capital right now, and I’m not talking about french fry oil spilling on a kitchen floor. Lawmakers are pushing for a statewide ban on the substance that is linked to a higher risk of strokes, diabetes and heart disease.
California, New York City, Boston and Philadelphia have similar bans. Proponents say it’s a matter of public safety; opponents say the government shouldn’t tell restaurants and businesses what they can and can’t serve.
I tweeted about it yesterday, and over on Facebook (oh, the tangled Web 2.0 we weave) a few people chimed in and the subject of croissants came up.
Apparently it’s pretty easy — and about the same cost — to switch to using non trans fat when frying foods, but it’s another matter for bakers because the cost of high-quality butter, shortening and other fats varies widely.
Maribel Rivero, who works with the El Chile family of restaurants, dug a little deeper when the topic of butter versus shortening came up. She talked to Texas Culinary Academy pastry instructor Aimee Olson, who had this to say:
“Butter is the traditional and obvious choice because of the taste. European-style butter has a larger percentage of fat solids as opposed to the water filled butter (the cheaper the more water) we have in the States. So Americans use a product called ‘pastry margarine’ especially made for laminated doughs (croissants, danishes and puff pastries) because it is more elastic and solid, but of course does not have the mouth feel or taste.
This is why flour is added to the ‘beurrage’ when making laminated doughs to absorb any excess moisture and create elasticity, since the dough goes through so much folding and rolling. With too much liquid the fat solids “slide” out of the dough when baking creating a heavy greasy product.”
Jim Murphy of Sweetish Hill Bakery says most bakeries don’t use trans fats as it is, so although your croissant may contain shortening, it’s likely trans fat free already. “Shortening and oil with trans fat has almost disappeared commercially,” he says. “This discussion is already over.”
He says he is concerned that people will see “zero trans fat” on a label and think it means “zero fat” and eat more than they would if they looked more carefully at the label.
One more fact about trans fats: Although the label may say zero grams of trans fats, the FDA allows foods to contain up to .49 grams of trans fat and still be labeled zero. The American Heart Association recommends consuming no more than 2 grams of trans fat per day.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Food in the news
April 1, 2009
H-E-B, Central Market voluntarily pull pistachios off shelves
From spinach to tomatoes, then jalapenos and peanut butter. Now pistachios are the target of an investigation by the FDA and California Department of Public Health.
From the FDA’s Web site:
Thus far, several illnesses have been reported by consumers that may be associated with the pistachios. It is not yet known whether any of the Salmonella strains found in the pistachio products are linked to an outbreak.
Setton Pistachio of Terra Bella Inc, Calif., has issued a voluntary recall involving approximately 1 million pounds of its products.
Pistachio suppliers to H-E-B and Central Market have stated that they don’t use products from Setton Pistachio, but as a precautionary measure the stores are recalling every product with pistachios in them.
Another salmonella “outbreak,” another recall. Wonder for how many months this investigation will drag on? If you’re curious about some of the food safety legislation under consideration at both the federal and state levels, check out my Relish Austin column today on the subject.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Food in the news
March 30, 2009
DeVito in Austin to sign bottles, celebrate a birthday
Danny DeVito is in Austin this week not only for a bottle signing at Twin Liquors at the Hancock Center this morning (it ends at 1 p.m.), but also to celebrate his wife (and icon for the curly-haired among us) Rhea Perlman’s birthday.
Last night, DeVito and Perlman enjoyed dinner and drinks at Sullivan’s Steakhouse downtown, he told bloggers and members of the press just before the event to promote his line of limoncello liqueur. The idea came about for the drink after a loopy 2006 appearance on “The View,” during which he said he’d drank seven limoncellos with George Clooney. Less than a year later, the product launched, and now it is available in a variety of liquor stores in Central Texas.
He was a nice a guy as you’d imagine him to be. And funny. And short. And full of laughs. He seemed genuinely excited to be here and meet the hundred or so people who had lined up before the 11 a.m. start time to meet him.
Here’s the story I wrote for Saturday’s paper about how the limoncello came to be and Danny’s own drink recipes:
Little did Danny DeVito know that a night out drinking with his friend George Clooney three years ago would lead to his own liqueur.
Over the phone last week, DeVito, the star, producer and director of dozens of films over the past 30 years, told the story he’s told a thousand times since that 2006 appearance on “The View,” when his loopiness, he says, was mistaken for public drunkenness:
He and Clooney had put away a few drinks one night; DeVito went home, and instead of going to sleep, started working online, and before he knew it, it was nearly dawn and he had interviews starting at 7 a.m. He took a nap between appointments and slept right up to the start of “The View.”
“They were pulling me out of the car,” to go on stage, he says, and as soon as his segment started, the hosts were asking him about his night out. Giddy and boisterous from the late-night revelry and hardly a wink of sleep, he made a joke about drinking seven limoncellos and went on to do wacky impersonations of former President George W. Bush. The blogosfire began before the show was even over.
While the media was having a field day, DeVito says he was receiving letters, cards and even bottles of limoncello, an Italian lemon-flavored liqueur, from people, some calling him a crazy man, others supporting him for enjoying a glass of a fine liqueur steeped in tradition.
The light bulb came on.
“In life … you never know when something is going to up at you,” he says. “I told my wife (actress Rhea Perlman), ‘I feel like this is an opportunity. I want to brand my own limoncello; taste it, put what I want in it.’ So, I put out the feelers.” Within a year, Danny DeVito’s Premium Limoncello was on the market.
The actor, who will be shooting the fourth season of his hit FX show, “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” this summer, was involved every step of the way, from finding the best lemons in Sorrento, Italy, near where limoncello was born, to designing the scratch-and-sniff label. “I didn’t want it to taste like candy,” he says. “I wanted something with a kick and no coloring.” Now he’s touring the country for bottle signings.
If you’ve never had limoncello, DeVito shares some of his favorite ways to drink it:
• Shake one part limoncello and one part vodka with ice in a mixing glass. (Try tequila instead of vodka for a refreshing summer drink.)
• Fill a glass a 1⁄3 full of limoncello and the rest with prosecco or champagne for a before-dinner drink, similar to a Bellini, that DeVito’s daughter created.
• For an impressive dessert, freeze sparkling water, such as San Pellegrino, and then crush it in a blender or ice crusher until it’s like a fluffy snowball. Scoop onto a plate and drizzle limoncello on top.
• For a hot drink, make a pot of mint tea and add a shot of limoncello.
Now all you’re missing is one George Clooney, and you’ve got yourself a party.
Permalink | Comments (17) | Categories: Food in the news
March 3, 2009
On food and sex...
Is food the new sex? And by new sex, George Will and Mary Eberstadt mean, the new judgment-laced pleasure you’re not traditionally supposed to enjoy.
Eating, he wrote last week, has become highly charged with moral judgments, and sex has become notably less so. Here are some snippets from Will’s opinion column, which was prompted by an essay by Mary Eberstadt:
One might think, she says, either that food and sex would both be pursued with an ardor heedless of consequences, or that both would be subjected to analogous codes constraining consumption. The opposite has happened — mindful eating and mindless sex.
Imagine, says Eberstadt, a 30-year-old Betty in 1958, and her 30-year-old granddaughter Jennifer today. Betty’s kitchen is replete with things — red meat, dairy products, refined sugars, etc. — that nutritionists now instruct us to minimize. She serves meat from her freezer, accompanied by this and that from jars. If she serves anything “fresh,” it would be a potato. If she thinks about food, she thinks only about what she enjoys, not what she, and everyone else, ought to eat.
Betty would be baffled by draping moral abstractions over food, a mere matter of personal taste. Regarding sex, however, she had her Categorical Imperative — the 1950s’ encompassing sexual ethic that proscribed almost all sex outside of marriage. Jennifer is a Whole Foods Woman, an apostle of thoroughly thought-out eating. She bristles with judgments — moral as well as nutritional — about eating, but is essentially laissez-faire about sex.
Eberstatdt argues that the sexual revolution has had a vast negative effect on society. Will adds fuel to her fire by saying that the “devaluing of personal intimacy” is evidenced by the presence of AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases and the number of children born out of wedlock.
Yet he and Eberstatdt both fail to mention the still-rising rates of obesity and the whopping profits of the fast food industry. And that STDs have been around forever and that we finally have medicine to keep many of them from turning fatal. And that all those babies born to miserably wedded parents in the 1950s were, as shocking as it may seem, likely to have had premarital sex, too. (P.S. In case you missed the memo, as of 2002, 95 percent of Americans have sex before marriage.)
Apparently, I’m not the only one a little confused.
Hugo Schwyzer points out that the “moral language of food” has been around since the 1920s, not the 1990s, as Eberstadt would have you believe. Eberstadt writes that a potato might well be the only fresh food “Betty” would serve, forgetting that for centuries, fresh food was all that existed. Schwyzer also reminds us that Will’s article and Eberstatdt’s essay seem born out of the desire to control women’s bodies.
I think that food is the new sex but for entirely different reasons. Food is once again about pleasure, and even unmitigated pleasure — in moderation, of course. We get to choose food that makes us most fulfilled to eat. The days of Snackwells and Atkins are behind us. We don’t have to eat pork chops smothered in cream of mushroom soup ever again!
If eating animals isn’t for you, you have the resources to lead a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle. If you want to eat animals and you want to have an hand in their slaughter, you can do that, too. If you want to eat a salad while your husband eats a bacon cheeseburger at McDonald’s, you now have half a dozen salads to choose from. Butter is no longer a bad word. The cheese section of Whole Foods is larger than my house. You can once again buy animal bones to make stock. The bulk sections of most grocery stores mean old world grains and exotic spices are at your fingertips.
You can eat the food you love and love the people with whom you are intimate.
Mindful eating and mindful sex are both more prevalent than ever. It is our duty as pleasure-seeking humans to do both responsibly.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Food in the news
February 16, 2009
"Dilemma" still tops in Austin; Tyson Cole nabs James Beard nomination
You can tell a lot about a community by looking at the books its citizens read. That said, I was delighted to come across the local best-sellers list in the Sunday paper (what, you don’t spend Sunday mornings leisurely flipping through your real live ink-laden local newspaper?) and find that Michael Pollan’s 3-year-old “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” still on the local best-seller list (No. 3 behind Spike Gillespie and Katherine Tanny’s “Stricken” and Carol Dweck’s “Mindset”). Add to that Robin Goldstein’s second edition of “The Fearless Critic” (No. 7) and you’ve got two of the top 10 nonfiction books being sold at Book People centered on food.
Go us.
Another exciting thing happening is a surge of food writers hopping on Twitter. Joining @andrewzimmern, @ruhlman and @amandahesser in recent weeks are NY Times food writer Mark Bittman (@bittman), author and Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl (@ruthreichl) and cookbook author and Austinite Paula Disbrowe (@pauladisbrowe). No Jonathan Gold yet, but @FollowingGold goes to all the places the Pulitzer prize-winning restaurant critic reviews for LA Weekly.
I have a feeling my Top 10 Twitter food follow list will need an update soon.
Also nominated in the category were Bryan Caswell of Reef in Houston (@wholefish on Twitter), Sharon A. Hage of York Street in Dallas, Paul Petersen of Cafe Cenizo in Marathon, Armando Pomales of Cafe Central in El Paso, Andrew Weissman of Le Rêve in San Antonio and John Tesar of The Mansion Restaurant at Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas.
Stephan Pyles of Dallas nabbed an outstanding chef nomination, and Houston’s Feast and Dallas’ Tei An were nominated for best new restaurant.
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February 9, 2009
Sasha and Malia Obama's Eastside connection
From kindergarten through second grade, Dorsey was a student at Malia and Sasha Obama’s new school in Washington D.C., but it was her father and grandfather who spent the most time there.
“My family was connected to the school for 40 years,” Dorsey said a few weeks ago, just after Obama was sworn in as president. Her grandfather and father were both principals and teachers at the school; her grandfather started working at the school in 1941 and her dad left in 1981. Dorsey’s brother is now in charge of the boys’ summer camp that her grandfather started.
In January, Sasha and Malia Obama started school at Sidwell Friends, a private D.C. school that was started by Quakers in 1883 and is a favorite of presidential families. Even though a Clinton, a Gore and two Nixons also attended, it wasn’t until the Obamas enrolled that Dorsey felt so emotionally stirred.
“The middle school at Sidwell Friends’ school, where Malia is attending, was my grandfather’s idea,” she says. “He loved teaching those kids at that age and he decided that there was something about that age group, from 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grade. They were too old to be with elementary kids, so he came up with the idea of a ‘middle school,’ ” she says. This was back in the 1940s. “He said ‘This is a special group. Let’s break them out and focus attention on them at this place in their lives.’ “
No one in Barger’s family is Quaker, but it was the social advocacy of the Quakers that drew Barger’s family there in the first place. A child of the 60s, Barger has spent much of her life advocating equal rights for all. “My dad would take groups of kids on school field trips to go picket in front of the South African embassy,” she says.
And an interesting note, considering Obama’s place as the first black president: Even though Quakers were vociferous advocates of abolition, the school was not desegregated until the mid 1960s. Barger went to school with Gilbert Queen, the first African-American ever admitted.
Dorsey, who spends her days tending Eastside’s gardens, the produce from which graces the tables of her restaurant, says she always thought it was neat when presidential children attended her former school, but this is a moment she’s been waiting for her whole life. “Because my family was so involved with equal rights for everybody, this is a special moment for me,” she says. “We are being true to the things that we have claimed to be since this country was conceived. We’re living a dream.”
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Food in the news
February 6, 2009
Who needs men when you have chocolate?
Or at least that’s what chocolate advertisers want you to think.
Rather than get myself all worked up about the ridiculous ways food is marketed toward women (I already went on this rant last year about cookbooks, yogurt and Easy-Bake ovens), I will just sit back and laugh at what the incredibly witty Sarah Haskins has to say today, just in time for the big V-day, about chocolate ads. (It’s part of her popular Target Women series on Current TV. Food-wise, she’s tackled diets, cooking for your family and yogurt, and you can’t miss her video about birth control ads.)
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
December 18, 2008
Review a dish online, donate a hot meal
The Austin-based site Dishola.com, which allows users to review food by the dish instead of by the restaurant, is doing a dish-for-dish campaign through the holidays to donate meals to Meals on Wheels and More.
For every dish reviewed on the site through Jan. 11, Dishola and Whole Foods will donate a hot meal to people in need. This is the second year for the project, which last year results in 600 donated meals last year. The goal this year is 1,000 meals.
From Dishola.com:
For most of us, food is the centerpiece of our holiday celebrations. We relish the meals we share with friends and family at our favorite restaurants, and we savor the holiday recipes we make at home. But we also know that some in our community are not as lucky. The elderly, the working poor, and too many children are not always able to enjoy great food whenever they wish… With so many people in precarious straits, non-profits like Meals on Wheels have never needed our support as much as they do now. That’s why this holiday season, Dishola and Whole Foods Market have partnered with Meals on Wheels and More to bring warm, nutritious dishes to the hands of those less fortunate.
Click here to get started reviewing. I just wrote up the enchiladas de mole at Manuel’s. (If you write one up, share the link the comments.)
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
October 29, 2008
When market changes are a good thing
Enough with roller coaster stock market changes! The Austin Farmers’ Market has a few changes coming up you should know about:
- The winter hours for the Triangle market at 46th Street and Lamar Boulevard begin today. To accommodate the ever-shortening days and upcoming time change, the Wednesday market will go from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. until spring.
- Next Saturday, Nov. 8, the downtown farmers’ market will have its regular hours (9 a.m. to 1 p.m.) at the location at Fourth and Guadalupe streets but it will be open again from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the new Mueller development where the old airport used to be off Airport Boulevard.
The afternoon market, which will be held in Browning Hangar near one of the Mueller neighborhood parks, will feature cooking demonstrations for both kids and adults, live music and, of course, food samples.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
Enjoying a sandwich free of high-fructose corn syrup?
The news about Jason’s Deli eliminating high-fructose corn syrup from their food products has people talking over on the Statesman’s business blog.
But don’t forget that there is far more HFCS in the soda you are washing that sandwich down with. Jason’s says that it is considering changing its drink options to HFCS-free sodas. You can have your say on its Web site.
Seems like we haven’t seen the last of the HFCS debate, fueled recently by those commercials sponsored by the Corn Refiners Association.
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
October 8, 2008
Should gender matter when eating out?
When dining out, are men and women treated equally? The New York Times’ Frank Bruni raises that question today (and not surprisingly, set off a storm of comments doing so).
For decades, the restaurant standard has been to sit and serve women first, offering the wine menu and check to the man, and oftentimes the man expected to order for the table.
It’s no surprise that these traditional patterns are changing, but Bruni points out that maybe not so much has changed after all.
He cites examples recently where he ate with another man and two women and they were served different kinds of amuse bouche. The men were served a crispy chicken wing. The women? A chilled cucumber soup with trout.
Bruni goes into detail how some New York restaurateurs plan decor, lighting and even temperature depending on whether men or women are the target dining demographic.
He also talks with waitstaff and diners who claim that servers often aren’t as likely to let the woman take the lead in ordering wine if a man is present.
And because the stereotype remains that men eat and drink more than women, Bruni says that some servers say they see fewer dollar signs when an all-female table sits down to eat, and not just because they are assumed to order fewer menu items. He quotes “Waiter Rant” author Steve Dublanica:
“On a Saturday night,” (Dublanica) continued, “you get these two ladies who walk in and say, ‘We haven’t seen each other in ages, we’re going to talk and talk and talk,’ and they’ll sit for four hours. Women are more verbal than men. That’s a scientific fact. And I’m like, ‘Ladies, I have reservations for these tables. You’ve got to go.’ ” As a consequence, Mr. Dublanica explained, “Waiters are guilty of treating female diners as second-class citizens.”
Dining out in Austin, I haven’t noticed blatant unequal treatment of male dining partners and me, in fact, having read this Bruni article, I think servers and restaurateurs in Austin are doing a pretty good job dumping these mid-20th century gender roles out with the dishwater.
What do you think? Should men and women be treated differently at the dining table? What are your experiences with respect to gender roles in Central Texas restaurants?
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Food in the news
September 30, 2008
USDA requires new labeling on food
For those of you who pay attention to labels — which you should be doing if you’re watching how much you spend on groceries or are in the least bit interested in nutrition — get ready to start seeing some changes.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is now requiring retailers to label the country of origin on certain products.
The so-called COOL law, six years in the making, says that retailers have to reveal the origin of raw, not processed, products, including raw beef, veal, lamb, pork, chicken, goat, wild and farm-raised fish and shellfish, fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables, peanuts, pecans, macadamia nuts and whole ginseng.
If the food is cooked, smoked, roasted or if it is an ingredient in a bigger dish or is otherwise substantially changed, no label is required, which upsets some consumer groups such as Food and Water Watch.
“The rules also contain a massive loophole that will allow large quantities of food to go without labeling, which, given the recent scandals about the safety of imported food, is unacceptable,” says Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of Food and Water Watch.
The definition of “processed” creates the loophole, Hauter says. More than 60 percent of pork, the majority of frozen vegetables, an estimated 95 percent of peanuts, pecans, and macadamia nuts, and multi-ingredient fresh produce items such as fruit salads and salad mixes are considered processed and therefore won’t require labeling.
There is a six-month grace period to comply, but keep your eyes peeled for these country-of-origin labels. It will be interesting to see where our food — or at least some of it — is really coming from.
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September 29, 2008
Aspiring UK chef dies after eating chili
An aspiring UK chef, who had just passed a physical for work, bet his girlfriend that he could make the hottest chili. He suffered heart failure and died the next day, the Telegraph reports.
His girlfriend says that he woke up at 2:30 a.m. and was scratching himself all over. Officials are doing a toxicology report to find out if the chili was linked to the death.
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
September 26, 2008
ACL food court is a-rockin'
I showed up to serve tacos at the El Chilito booth at noon today, but there were only a handful of people eating so early in the day. They were prepared though: vats and vats of filling ready to go and plenty of still-energetic staff to work the customers.
Oh how things change in just a few hours.
I went back to the booth just awhile ago and things were hoppin’, but not like they were over at Hudson’s. As you’d expect, the lines for chicken cones were already starting to form, and the cheery staff couldn’t be happier that business was bustling (Imagine the tips they are looking at if every customer leaves a dollar. Heck, even if every other customer left a dollar, those Hudson kids are leaving with pockets overflowing at the end of each night.)
Hudson’s chef and owner Jeff Blank was in good spirits, too, not just because his booth was doing well but because everything seemed to be running smoothly with the food court as a whole. He’s been leading the vendors for years now, and each of them that I talked to couldn’t say enough about how helpful he’s been in coordinating this massive event.
Aquarelle chef and co-owner Terry Wilson, who says she was up all night with her son who has a pretty bad earache, said despite not getting much sleep, everything was going well at her restaurant’s inaugural booth.
Click here to view photos of the food offerings at ACL.
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
September 23, 2008
Still no Gulf oysters
A $300 million blow to be exact.
Of the 29 harvest areas in Louisiana, only four have reopened, but that doesn’t mean they are harvesting oysters. Carol Huntsberger, co-owner of Quality Seafood in Austin, says that some of the areas may need replanting first. This is the first in time history that all of the harvesting areas were closed for so long.
Quality Seafood hasn’t had Gulf oysters for sale since Gustav hit at the beginning of September.
And even though the harvest areas are starting to reopen, she says they won’t know if they’ll get any of them for at least a few days. None of the Texas harvesting areas have reopened.
Quality Seafood is selling pre-shucked West Coast oysters now instead.
“It’s not looking promising,” Huntsberger says. “The saddest part is these are some of the same oyster harvesters who were hit by Hurricane Katrina. I wonder if they are going to open their doors again.”
Ed note: To read more about the effects of Hurricane Ike on one oyster man, check out this post on Eating Our Words by the Houston Press’s Robb Walsh.
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
September 11, 2008
Oyster Club dinner cancelled
Hurricane Ike has prompted organizers to cancel the first Oyster Club fundraiser event in Kyle. The event, which is a $100-a-plate fundraiser for the Rude Mechanicals performance group, will now take place from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 12, at The Plant at Kyle.
Marla Camp, publisher of Edible Austin, one of the event’s sponsors, said optimistically that the benefit of moving it is that the middle of October is the peak season for Texas Gulf oyster.
Plus, if you couldn’t make Saturday’s date, now you have a few weeks to sign up for the Oct. 12 party at the Plant.
Find more area cancellations and volunteer opportunities and submit your own.
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news, Playing with your food
September 10, 2008
Hurricane prep, not panic
Houston Chronicle food writer Alison Cook offers her take on preparing for Hurricane Ike, but what should we be doing here in Central Texas?
I’ll make no claims to have experienced anything close to the conditions meteorologist Bob Rose described in his live chat today about a tropical storm in Central Texas. (Living as a child in Florida gave me a small sense of what to do when hurricane danger looms, but it was growing up in tornado alley that taught me how to deal with spending a flashlit night under a stairwell.)
What I’m figuring out is that just because winds won’t top 100 mph and there aren’t levees to be topped doesn’t mean we can completely relax. Widespread power outages are a real possibility, the greatest effect of which isn’t being unable to use your microwave. If 75 mph winds barrel through the area this weekend and knock down some key power lines, you don’t want to be stuck without some dry goods and extra water.
Even if you keep your refrigerator closed, you’ve got about four hours before you have to start worrying about food going bad. As for your freezer, you have up to two days as long as you don’t open it.
And if things get worse, you can imagine how crazy the stores will be come Friday afternoon (this is the part I remember from the turbulent summer of 2005).
I’m not one to peddle hysteria, so don’t go out and clean out your local grocery store of water and granola bars, but it never hurts to have extra canned goods, dried fruit, peanut butter, bread, chocolates, wine.
You know, the essentials.
While you are out buying extra supplies for your family (and pets!), pick up a few extra bottles of water, peanut butter, granola bars, canned meat with pop tops and baby diapers.
The Capital Area Food Bank of Texas is collecting supplies to help Gulf Coast evacuees in Austin (some are estimating that up to 25,000 will seek refuge here). You can drop off the supplies at the food bank at 8201 S. Congress Ave.
Also, if you know of any other volunteer opportunities or cancellations, we have a form you can fill out and a searchable database.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Food in the news
September 4, 2008
What's worth buying organic?
I dabble in buying organic fruits and vegetables, and when my kid was first eating solid foods, I tried even harder to make sure what he was eating was as pesticide-free as possible. But as he got older, I stopped buying so much organic because, like those Luvs diaper commercials say, parents often live and learn, then start slacking on all the super-high standards they set for themselves.
But the problem of pesticide-laden foods is still in my mind, so I was delighted to come across this article that explains what foods are more susceptible to pesticide exposure.
These so-called “dirty dozen” fruits and veggies had the most pesticide residue in the study by the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit research organization in Washington, D.C.
peaches apples (According to this report, 92 percent of the apples tested positive for pesticide residues. 72 percent of those had more than one type of bug-killer on their peel.) sweet bell peppers celery nectarines strawberries cherries lettuce grapes (imported) pears spinach potatoes
You don’t end up paying extra for organic fruits and veggies that are pretty clean, even in their non-organic versions.
The foods that are considered “consistently clean” are: onions avocados sweet corn (frozen) pineapples mangos sweet peas (frozen) asparagus kiwis bananas cabbage broccoli eggplants
Of course, you’re supposed to wash fruits and vegetables before eating, and peeling many of these foods can reduce the amount of pesticide exposure. If you’re shopping on a budget — and I’d love to know who isn’t these days — it’s good to know what’s worth the extra money and what’s probably OK to eat when grown conventionally.
One interesting fact I found while digging around on the EWG’s site is that fish, wild or farmed, can be labeled organic, even if mercury or PCBs are found. The problem is that the USDA hasn’t developed organic certification standards for seafood.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Food in the news
August 21, 2008
Fearless Critic dupes Wine Spectator
Robin Goldstein, author of the polemic Wine Trials and Fearless Critic books, pulled a fast one on Wine Spectator. Goldstein submitted a fake wine list from a fake restaurant in Milan, paid the entry fee for the magazine’s contest and ended up winning an Award of Excellence.
Goldstein’s harsh criticism of the wine establishment became well known after the Wine Trials came out this summer and basically said that in blind tastings, most people can’t pick out a pricey wine versus a cheapy, implying that the wine industry’s high-minded approach to making and selling wine manipulates everyday palates across America.
Now, Goldstein’s publicity stunt against one of the biggest wine magazines in the world has everybody talking. Wine Spectator reacted with strong words against Goldstein and his motives and defended its methods of giving awards to restaurants with strong wine lists.
Wine Spectator says it: 1) made numerous calls to the restaurant, where a recorded message said the restaurant was closed 2) found the location of the fake restaurant on Google maps 3) verified the wine list from the supposed restaurant’s Web site 4) reviewed posts from fictitious “diners” on Chowhound boards.
I think Wine Spectator went to respectable lengths to verify this restaurant, and Goldstein is happily raking in the page views and public spotlight from this stunt. I might have been more sympathetic to Goldstein’s test of the awards process if he hadn’t gone to such great lengths to dupe the magazine. Instead, Goldstein, who lived in Austin when his Fearless Critic series debuted here, looks like a malicious schoolboy.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Food in the news
August 20, 2008
Say goodbye to your favorite Torchy's trailer
When Torchy’s Tacos owner Mike Rypka told me he was closing Torchy’s original trailer on South First Street, I almost started to cry.
What about the basketball goal! The poison-ivy coated creekside! The grassy back yard where Julian learned to walk! With so many memories at the lot across the creek from the Texas School for the Deaf, how could he think of shutting it down?
Don’t get too sad, he reassured me. Not only was the original trailer moving just two lots down the street, it was also getting a neighbor — Shuggie’s, a burger and seafood trailer whose menu he’s been working on for months.
So, the original Torchy’s will close down on Sunday, August 24, only to reopen alongside Shuggie’s on Friday, August 29 (the date on the sign hanging on the trailer now is a misprint, Mike says).
“It’s gonna be a lot of fun once we get that thing up and rollin’,” Mike says. He’s planning a game room with pinball machines and pool tables, a tire swing, horseshoes and a kids’ area at the new spot, which will also have more parking.
Oh, and as for Shuggie’s: Prepare yourselves, folks. Greasy, hand-formed meat patties, po’ boys, onion rings, hush puppies. Need I say more?
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Chewing the fat, Eating out, Food in the news
August 14, 2008
Julia Child: A spy-turned-chef
The National Archives released tens of thousands of names of World War II spies this week, which confirmed what many knew for years: Julia Child worked for the OSS, the predecessor to the CIA, in India in the 1940s. She leaked stories of her involvement in the OSS — NPR had this story in 2002 — against the government’s wishes.
She started out doing administrative work, but her biggest accomplishment before writing Mastering the Art of French Cooking and becoming the biggest chef in the world was developing shark repellent — yes, shark repellent — to ward off sharks that might trigger explosives intended for German submarines.
That Julia. She always had something up her sleeve.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Food in the news
August 8, 2008
Austin named hardest-drinking city in U.S
Feeling tipsy?
You’re not alone, according to Forbes magazine, which this week said that Austin might be the hardest-drinking city in America.
Forbes, which releases similar rankings several times a year, used data from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey to pinpoint Austin residents’ affinity for alcohol. The CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Survey last year found that 61.5 percent of residents said they had at least one drink in the past 30 days.
But it was the number of drinks per day that put Austin at the top of — or perhaps the bottom of — the bar. Nearly nine percent of people surveyed said they had at least one drink per day for women, two for men.
Milwaukee, Wis., came in at No. 2, followed by San Francisco, Providence, R.I., and Chicago.
The University of Texas, like most major universities in the U.S., has been battling the binge drinking image for decades. Forbes named it the No. 1 party school in 2006.
“I would hope that people would look at the methods of how these rankings are made,” said Sandi Cleveland, manager at the Health Promotion and Resource Center, which is part of the University Health Services. “It’s important for people to understand that UT students make up 5 percent of Austin’s population when they are all here.”
UT participates in a survey similar to the one conducted by the CDC in which students are asked about their drinking habits. About 72 percent said they had had an alcoholic drink in the past 30 days, Cleveland said. Thirty-four percent said they had participated in binge drinking, which means drinking more than five alcoholic drinks on one occasion, but the average number of drinks consumed was fewer than four. In the CDC survey, about 20 percent of adults in Austin said they have had five drinks on one occasion.
“We work with freshmen at orientation to talk about how students can avoid dangers of alcohol abuse, how to recognize alcohol poisoning,” she said. Cleveland said that 35 percent of first-year students don’t drink any alcohol.
Photos: Forbes’ hardest-drinking cities
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Beer/Wine/Spirits, Drinks, Food in the news
August 7, 2008
A tomato love fest at Whole Foods
Tomato farmers lost roughly $100 million due to the salmonella scare this summer, even though tomatoes weren’t the culprit for more than 1300 people getting sick. They’ve been cleared to eat for some time now, but some say the industry is still reeling.
Whole Foods wants to give tomatoes a boost. Both Austin stores will host a tomato celebration on Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. to “do our part to reinvigorate the industry and support the growers,” according to company spokeswoman Elizabeth Leader Smith.
Throughout the stores, tomatoes will be featured in cooking demonstrations and even wine pairings. There will be plenty of samplings and a Q&A session with experts.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Food in the news, Playing with your food
August 1, 2008
What is Mexico saying about the FDA's pepper investigation?
From the AP:
MEXICO CITY - Mexican agriculture officials said Thursday that U.S. colleagues hunting for the source of a salmonella outbreak are rushing to a conclusion about finding the strain at a Mexican pepper farm.The salmonella sample that one U.S. official called “a smoking gun” was taken from a water tank that had not been used for more than two months to irrigate crops, said the director of Mexico’s Farm Food Quality Service, Enrique Sanchez.
Sanchez told a news conference on Thursday that the tank held rain water and suggested that roaming cattle or other factors could have recently contaminated the tank with the same strain of salmonella that has sickened 1,300 people in the United States since June.
On Wednesday, Dr. David Acheson, the food safety chief for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, described the finding of the salmonella strain at a farm in the northern state of Nuevo Leon as a key breakthrough in the case.
“We have a smoking gun, it appears,” said Dr. Lonnie King, who directs the center for food-borne illnesses at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Sanchez said the U.S. officials “totally lacked scientific evidence” to make such statements and said they had broken a confidentiality agreement by announcing findings before their investigation is complete.
“We’re eating this same produce in Mexico and we haven’t had any problems,” Sanchez said.
He suggested the FDA officials confused the source of the samples because the tainted water was found on a farm in the Tamaulipas state municipality of Hidalgo — not in Nuevo Leon as the FDA reported.
The FDA issued a statement later Thursday saying it was “surprised and disappointed” the Mexican response.
“We are confident of our findings,” the statement said. “FDA’s analytical methods are publicly available.”
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
July 31, 2008
H-E-B voluntarily pulls serrano peppers
At a hearing yesterday for members of Congress, FDA officials said they had found traces of salmonella in the irrigation water and on serrano peppers at a farm in northern Mexico, which is not the same farm the tainted jalapeños were discovered at earlier this month.
The result: Yet another voluntary recall by one of Central Texas’ largest supermarket chains.
H-E-B and Central Market voluntarily pulled all serrano peppers off their shelves today as a precautionary measure and made no mention of the origin of the peppers they were recalling. (U.S.-grown serranos are still in the clear, according to the FDA.) The chain simultaneously announced that it would be restocking shelves with Georgia-grown jalapeños more than a week after a similar voluntary jalapeño recall.
Randall’s still has both serranos and jalapeños, along with a sign indicating that they are grown and packaged in the United States, according to Connie Yates, a company spokeswoman.
We’re still looking for confirmed cases of salmonella sickness in Central Texas. E-mail me if you were one of the more than 1,300 people nationwide to report their sickness to local health officials.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Food in the news
July 29, 2008
Taking a stand against hunger
To raise awareness of this grim statistic, the Capital Area Food Bank started a campaign this week asking people to make a statement to both their fellow community members and their representatives at the Capitol, says Lisa Goddard, advocacy and online marketing manager with the organization.
The challenge is to take a photo of yourself with a sign that says “Hunger is unacceptable” and upload it either via flickr or the organization’s Web site (you can also e-mail it to them).
The ever-growing photo database include shots of people at food pantries, members of the media, families, students and even a dog or too. “People have been really creative,” Goddard says. “There are no parameters.”
So many people going hungry is an awful situation, Goddard says, and the bottom line is that it is unacceptable in today’s society.
“We can’t move on with solving this issue as a community until we have a basic understanding of what is acceptable social, moral behavior for everyone in the community,” she says.
People are encouraged to drop off or mail their signs to the food bank, 8201 South Congress Avenue. (Write your name and address on the back of the sign so the representatives know you’re in Central Texas, and sign it.)
“The goal is to get people interested,” Goddard says. “Think of it as Advocacy 101.”
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
July 28, 2008
TGI Friday's Guy Fieri hits up Casino El Camino
I’m stoked any time an Austin eatery or foodie gets the national spotlight, but it makes me crazy that Fieri, who won the second season of The Next Food Network Star, is also a spokesman for TGI Friday’s, a chain that may be partially responsible for the deaths of hundreds of these beloved dives. I don’t know Fieri, so I can’t say for sure, but the guy is on his third Food Network show, so he can’t be hurting that badly for dollars, especially from a company so antithetical to the mission of this show.
Of course, Fieri isn’t alone. Tyler Florence hooked up with Applebee’s to promote healthier menu options. Rachael Ray looooves Dunkin’ Donuts (and if you can believe it, she just came out today with a charitable line of premium dog food), and remember, Paula Deen talks ham, not unions.
The celebrity chef sellout question is your call, but thank God — for many reasons — we’ve still got Anthony Bourdain. From this interview:
I’ve had pretty much a full spectrum of offers for business, as well as personal services! Endorsements and reality shows, you know the usual kind of (expletive). It’s a quality-of-life issue, I don’t want to wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and see the Tidy Bowl guy or the spokesman for Lomotil. I won’t be doing a set of steak knives
Personally, Fieri drives me nuts (or maybe it’s just the hair), but like I said, I’ll watch anything with Austin in it.
And at least he snagged a recipe for El Camino’s Amarillo Burger.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Chewing the fat, Eating out, Food in the news
July 24, 2008
On the hunt for jalapenos?
If you’re in Austin and missed last night’s market, look forward to Saturday’s markets downtown and in the Burger Center’s parking lot in Sunset Valley. Georgetown’s market is today, as is Smithville’s. There are lots of farm stands and individual farmers with peppers, so if you are determined, you can get your hands on some salmonella-free jalapeños despite the recall.
Fresh out of jalapeños recipes? Here’s a rough approximation of the delicious creamy jalapeños dressing they serve at Chuy’s. Put it on a salad or use it as a dip for chips or veggies.
Creamy jalapeño ranch dressing
1 quart Kraft mayonnaise
1 cup low-fat* buttermilk
1 cup jalapeños w/juice (The recipe calls for HEB Harvest Moon, 12 oz jar, hot sliced, but use fresh if you’re feeling adventurous.)
1 cup green tomatillos w/juice
1 small bunch cilantro
3 packs buttermilk ranch dressing
*The original recipe does not use low-fat ingredients.
Put the buttermilk in the blender. Measure out one cup of jalapeños and juice. (Spoon out the jalapeños from the jar and pack down one cup and pour the juice over to fill the empty space. Jalapeños and juice together should equal one cup!)
Dump jalapeños into blender and blend on high until they look like the crumbs in the buttermilk.
Measure out one cup of tomatillos and juice the same way you did the jalapeños. Add to blender.
Pull cilantro leaves off of the stems and dump into blender. Blend on high until tomatillos are gone and cilantro is finely chopped.
Add mayo and all three packets of ranch dressing. Blend on high until blended together.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news, Recipes
July 17, 2008
Keeping it caffeinated (and clean)
With all the bitterness ‘round these parts (yesterday’s iced coffee feature and mini comment firestorm after that food bank post), how great is this story by the Washington Post about a feud in a D.C.-area coffeeshop that erupted after a customer ordered a triple espresso over ice? Barista said no, customer shot back, and an expletive-laden argument ensued, both in the shop and online.
What’s the grind? Coffeeshop says it wants to hold up the integrity of its drinks (the way the espresso is made means it’s bitter over ice, and they don’t want to serve bitter coffee); the customer says he has a right to order the drink however he’d bleepity bleep bleep like it.
After this debacle, I think both sides would say that as humans we need to treat each other with the same dignity and respect we’d like to be treated with. As customers. As businesspeople. As bloggers. As readers. As members of the same community. But it’s amazing how easily the Golden Rule melts into a puddle at your feet when any attack gets heated or personal.
Blogs are so interesting and important because they allow a discussion among readers; it’s not just one person talking in a corner to herself. But we’re seeking a discussion, so let’s keep it civil and productive. Speak your mind! Disagree! Offer counterpoints and suggestions! But if your comment contains personal attacks on me or other commenters, I won’t publish it.
Hey, at least we kept it (relatively) clean. And I do love me some volleyball. :)
Permalink | | Categories: Food in the news
July 16, 2008
Could you live a month on food stamps?
He lost 18 pounds and had to stop yesterday, just four days shy of his goal, because doctors warned him that he shouldn’t risk his health by losing any more weight.
“I can’t put into words how painfully disappointing it was to have to stop,” he said yesterday on the phone. Because of pre-existing health issues, “I was really restricted on what foods I could eat, and the thing I was really surprised the most at was how difficult it was to eat any kind of a healthy diet at $21 a week.”
“It wasn’t about making it 4 weeks,” he said. “It was about understanding things a little bit better. I understand a lot better that when you’re hungry, you want different things.”
One shopping day, while standing at the check-out line, he realized he didn’t have enough to buy what he needed to make chili, a calorie-rich dish he thought would provide meals for at least a few days. “And I thought I had a great idea, ‘Just don’t buy your medicines this week’.” If it’s not sacrificing medicines, it’s utilities or other bills that have to wait.
He tried to include fruits and vegetables in the budget, but they just didn’t provide enough calories. Ritz crackers and peanut butter were what got him through the experiment.
But for so many people in Central Texas, eating on $21 is a week is no experiment, it’s a grim day-to-day reality that’s only getting worse as food prices increase a few cents each week.
Next time you go to the grocery store, think about how far $21 dollars goes these days and consider giving back to local organizations that try to fill in the gaps that food stamps inevitably leave.
Permalink | Comments (20) | Categories: Food in the news
July 14, 2008
Know anybody with salmonella?
So it’s been six weeks since the national Centers for Disease Control and the FDA issued a warning saying Roma and large round tomatoes were possibly linked to people getting sick with salmonella. Texas-grown tomatoes were declared safe, then U.S.-grown tomatoes. The search moved to Mexico, where the government is trying to convince the FDA to declare the tomatoes safe after weeks of testing and no evidence of salmonella.
Now, serrano and jalepeno peppers and maybe even cilantro are suspects in the breakout that has sickened more than 1,000 people, which means that this could be the largest produce-related illness since they started tracking these outbreaks in the 1960s.
According to the CDC, a little less than half the total number of people sickened fell ill in Texas. That’s 448 people as of a few days ago. More than 40 of those cases were in Central Texas.
Do you know anyone who has fallen ill in this outbreak? Please send me an e-mail at abroyles@statesman.com if so.
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June 17, 2008
Would you swear off salmon?
There’s been all kinds of news lately about how close we are to overfarming the world’s oceans. Author Taras Grescoe argued in a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times suggested we should stop eating salmon until the numbers rise again.
Greenpeace just ranked U.S. grocery chains on their seafood purchasing practices and policies. Not surprising, Whole Foods came in at No. 1, but the Austin-based grocery only received four of ten possible points awarded to stores for how well they responded to the issue of overfishing.
Wal-Mart, of all places, came in at No. 5, far ahead of H-E-B, which was No. 18. Too bad for Trader Joe’s, who many consider Whole Foods’ biggest rival (though there aren’t currently any plans for stores in Central Texas), which came in just two notches ahead of H-E-B, but still in the bottom half of the list.
“Every supermarket we surveyed is contributing to the crisis facing our oceans,” said Greenpeace ocean specialist John Hocevar, who lives in Austin. “The good news is that several large supermarket chains have begun taking steps toward sustainability. A year from now, we expect the retail seafood sector to have made considerable progress from what we see today. Several retailers already decided to drop some Red List species after we contacted them as we prepared this report.”
Red List species include certain kinds of tuna, halibut, red snapper, salmon, swordfish, orange roughy, scallops and - everyone’s favorite - ocean quahog.
Well, what about farm-raised salmon? They’re OK, right? Wrong, says Mark Floegel, a researcher for Greenpeace. He points out that farm-raised salmon are raised in pens in the ocean, where farmers crowd as many salmon in as possible.
With all those salmon crammed together, you create an environment where disease, Floegel says. To combat the disease, farmers feed them antibiotics, which means more chemicals in the fish you eat. Then to feed the carnivorous salmon, they catch all the fish nearby, which messes with the local food chain.
In short, farm-raised salmon doesn’t quality as sustainable.
Growing demand for sushi can’t take all the blame. Looks like Red Lobster mainstays are also on the list, so maybe we should all think twice before ordering or buying fish whose populations are quickly decreasing.
Another thing you can do is talk to the people behind the seafood counter at the grocery store about your fish concerns and ask them to start selling fish that are harvested in a sustainable way, which is what I think I’ll start doing.
I can live without salmon nigiri for now, but not forever.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Food in the news
June 6, 2008
Watch the James Beard Awards live
Devour TV, a recently launched food video site, is offering live coverage of the annual James Beard Awards on Sunday night.
David Rosengarten, Food Network veteran, journalist, cookbook author and editor-in-chief of the The Rosengarten Report, will interview chefs on the red carpet and will get reactions from the winners as they are announced.
The Kitchen Sisters — Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva — who produce “Hidden Kitchens,” which airs regularly on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” did a special on Texas last year with the help of Willie Nelson, Jimmy Dale Gilmore and Robin Wright Penn.
The show has been nominated for a James Beard Award before, and tonight, it is competing against “Mouthful, the Wine Country’s Most Delicious Hour,” hosted by Michele Anna Jordon and “The Splendid Table,” hosted by Lynne Rossetto Kasper.
Watch and see if this Texas gem wins the Oscar of food awards!
Has anyone heard this Hidden Kitchens special? Should it win?
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June 5, 2008
Craving that lavender ice cream?
This is too much…
From the AP:
Police: Funny fudge made with lavender, not pot
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) — Indiana University police say brownies a girl gave to dorm workers didn’t contain marijuana at all. The leafy substance mixed in was lavender. IU Police Capt. Jerry Minger said the 13-year-old girl came forward after the case was publicized to let officers know the brownies were safe. The fudge was given to workers at IU’s Eigenmann Hall on May 23 and police were called after one of the employees took a bite and noticed a green, leafy substance inside. The girl gave some of the lavender to police for a field test, and Minger said it registered a “weak reaction” on a test for marijuana. The girl made the fudge for a school project, in which she had to make a Swedish food.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Food in the news
