WARNING:

BEWARE OF TRANS FAT!!!

Interesting/Digusting/Weird/Are you serious?

Americans ate eight million more orders of french fries and almost six million more hamburgers this year compared to last.


....interesting.


Rats destroy an estimated 1/3 of the world’s food supply each year.


......are rats not a part of the world?


Acorns were used as a coffee substitute during the American Civil War.


.....weird.


The only "real" food that U.S. Astronauts are allowed to take into space is pecan nuts.


.....are you serious? Why not macadamia?

Exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum

There is an exhibition entitled "Feeding Desire" that ends this week (Oct. 29th) at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum uptown. It has a good-sized collection but at the same time is not overwhelming. The exhibition showcases utensils and flatware from the 1500s to present-day. I went recently, and would really recommend going if you can find the time to before the exhibition ends. You can find out more here.

Two NYT articles

The NYT's business and art sections have had two articles within the last few days that are of relevance to past class discussions:

Rachael Ray Gives the Gift of Time
"... But Ms. Ray’s folksy approach belies the sophistication of her message. She is part of the cut-to-the-chase genre of media, like Lucky, Domino and Real Simple magazines, and their success is built on this fact of modern life: if people are more secure economically, it is only because they are working longer and harder than ever before. Lifestyle porn is fine and all — who wouldn’t want to have that epic downtown loft in Architectural Digest or those lemon caper calamari steaks in Gourmet? — but even if you can afford the ingredients, you can’t afford the time to conjure them before dinner. ..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/23/business/media/23carr.html

The Starbucks Aesthetic
"... When Starbucks executives describe the goal of the company’s cultural extensions, they invariably lean on the word discovery. 'Customers say one of the reasons they come is because they can discover new things — a new coffee from Rwanda, a new food item. So extending that sense of discovery into entertainment is very natural for us. That’s all part of the Starbucks experience,' said Anne Saunders , senior vice president of global brand strategy and communications. ..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/arts/22domi.html

Erotic Eats

Here's the "Food Porn" photo pool on Flickr.



Some examples from my favorite Flickr-ist, LynninLimbo:












Alright, just saw this one (not one of LynninLimbo's photos, as you may have guessed) in the pool--couldn't resist:

Today's Top Seller!

The question was raised today about the audience of "ethnic" cookbooks. Do the French buy books on French cooking? The Italians, Italian cooking? Hoping to get some insight into the purchasing habits of Euro-literate-cooks, I checked Amazon's French website for the current list of their best selling books in the category "Cuisine et Vins" ("Food and Wine").

Number one?








["I Don't Know How to Lose Weight"]


So much for Mireille Guiliano's arguement.


More on ethnic cookbook-buying later.


-Jenny

What a movie can do for a venerable brand....

I just read the September 17th issue of The New York Times Magazine and in it was a fantastic article that relates to much of what we have been talking about the past two or three weeks. Take a look: Consumed...Free Ride

"Which is why, as much as the brand has borrowed exposure from the film, it also lent a subtle set of meanings that only an old-school brand icon possesses."


-Dan

mmm...deadly peaches...

So I was shopping for fruit today...in Whole Foods of course...and I began to wonder about pesticides. Gosh they're yummy, eh? Well, of course, what I did was went home and proceeded to the internet for some helpful and always reliable information. I discovered a site I had been ignorant about until now: FoodNews

So I searched the small site that offers little information except for this handy dandy wallet-sized guide to pesticides on your fruits and veggies: Pesticides In Produce

Check it out. Be safe. And enjoy those highly pesticidic peaches. Mmmm!

-Dan

R. W. Apple Jr.

October 5, 2006
R. W. Apple Jr., Globe-Trotter for The Times and a Journalist in Full, Dies at 71
By Todd S. Purdum
R. W. Apple Jr., who in more than 40 years as a correspondent and editor at The New York Times wrote from more than 100 countries about war and revolution, politics and government, food and drink, and the revenge of living well, died yesterday in Washington. He was 71. The cause was complications of thoracic cancer. For his 70th birthday, he gathered friends at the Paris bistro Chez L’Ami Louis, which he often described as his favorite restaurant, for heaping plates of foie gras, roast chicken, escargots, scallops and pommes Anna, washed down with gallons of burgundy and magnums of Calvados.
Mr. Trillin, who later wrote about the evening for Gourmet Magazine, quoted one guest who summed up Mr. Apple’s attitude toward the party, and toward the rich, long life and career that produced it: “It’s my understanding that Apple has simplified what could be a terribly difficult choice by telling them to bring everything.”

The first link below has the complete obituary, links to some of his most acclaimed articles, and to his last one, a multimedia presentation, etc. If you've never read anything he wrote you should make a point to do so now. The second link is a Times-Picayune profile written when he visited New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina last year.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/r_w_jr_apple/index.html

http://www.nola.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/living-5/1131605332166260.xml

NYU Event

“The United States of Arugula” Author David Kamp at NYU, Oct. 6

Tuesday, Sep 26, 2006

On Friday, October 6, at 11:30 a.m. New York University will celebrate the publication of The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation (Broadway Books) when author David Kamp joins Clark Wolf, president and founder of Clark Wolf Company, the food, restaurant, and hospitality consulting firm, for a conversation about the book. The event takes place at NYU’s Bobst Library, Fales Collection (3rd floor), 70 Washington Square South. A book signing follows. For further information and to reserve a seat call 212.992.9018.

The United States of Arugula is the revealing tale of how gourmet eating in America went from obscure to pervasive, thanks to the contributions of some outsized, opinionated iconoclasts who couldn’t abide the status quo. Vanity Fair writer Kamp chronicles this amazing transformation, from the overcooked vegetable and scary gelatin salads of yesterday to our current heyday of free-range chickens, extra-virgin olive oil, “Iron Chef,” Whole Foods, Starbucks, and that breed of human known as a “foodie.”

This event is hosted by the Fales Collection of NYU and The Steinhardt School of Education’s Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health.

http://www.nyu.edu/public.affairs/releases/detail/1179