B&B Jan-Feb 2008
Bits and Bites January/ February 2008
With Valentine’s coming up..
My menu at les Jardins Sauvages : http://soupnancy.squarespace.com/menus/
Les Devins Chocolats de Sandra : A local artisanal FAIRTRADE chocolatier in Terrebonne with high quality chocolate that really tastes good! Available at Dix Milles Villages and at La Maison Verte.. http://www.ethiquette.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1206&Itemid=57&lang=fr
Nathalie Maclean reccomends wines for a first date or for a mature relationship.. I pick ‘endless love – celebrating the one you’re with’..
http://www.nataliemaclean.com/book/interviews.asp#110
Her favourite wine pairings for Chocolate
http://www.nataliemaclean.com/book/interviews.asp#103
Valentine’s Day Aphrodisiac foods with recipes from Epicurious
http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/holidays/valentinesday/aphrodisiacs
Bittman's new blog for home cooks
http://bitten.blogs.nytimes.com/
From Gremolata.com
Grass fed beef tastes better – It’s not just the eco-choice
http://www.slate.com/id/2152674/
Celebrity chef elected as prime minister in Thailand
Suggestions for an American chef-pres http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/blogs/editor/2008/01/president-celeb.html?mbid=rss_epilog
Mars/ Venus and taste : Waking up to the fact that women taste more and differently than men, some wine and food companies are starting to market to female tastebuds.
http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/blogs/editor/2008/01/chick-licks.html?mbid=rss_epilog
Susur at Otto? In Toronto, they seem equally puzzled by some of the Montreal Highlights Festival chef pairings. There’s a whiff of wierdness to it all, which might be understandable as Montreal and To do make awkward bed fellows. I wouldn’t know where to put Susur either. It doesn’t help that many of the city’s top chefs aren’t participating. Even if it looks like Mtl doesn’t want TO to be a smash hit, there’s certainly enough going on to make a festival, and I’m sure many great meals will be had.. But I hope the To crew rises above the difficult set-up and surprises, making it hard for those Montrealers who are waiting hungrily for a juicy round of TO bashing.
http://gremolata.com/montrealhighlights.htm
Rethinking the Meat Guzzler – A terrific article about the real cost of eating meat.. Some excerpts :
‘livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation’
“When you look at environmental problems in the U.S.,” says Professor Eshel, “nearly all of them have their source in food production and in particular meat production. And factory farming is ‘optimal’ only as long as degrading waterways is free. If dumping this stuff becomes costly — even if it simply carries a non-zero price tag — the entire structure of food production will change dramatically.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1
The bottom line : we need to choose to eat less meat and better meat. 30g per day is enough nutritionally, even 100g instead of the twofold NA average.. And I think meat should be expensive, reflecting the real costs and only sustainable practices should be subsidized.
Eating meat is only human, Bittman qualifies. http://bitten.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/eating-meat-is-only-human/#more-105
European retailers boycott bluefin tuna, leading the way. Chefs need to follow and stop serving an endangered species.
http://www.panda.org/index.cfm?uNewsID=123320
High Mercury Levels Are Found in Tuna Sushi
The Tuna Backlash Backlash - Another point of view
http://www.chow.com/grinder/4736
Killing chickens for a cause: Jamie Oliver pulls a few stunts to remind people where their food comes from, and what buying cheap food means. Good for him! Sales in the UK already show a shift in buying patterns. More and more, chefs are trying to educate people to care enough about the animals they eat to give them the best life possible and show the difference in quality.
Chef’s new goal – to look dinner in the eye
Clones as food – This was the story of the past few weeks
BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7190305.stm
FDA says clones are safe for food http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/14/AR2008011402941.html
For me this excerpt says it all : ‘we conclude that meat and milk from cattle, swine, and goat clones are as safe as the food we eat every day’
Because the thing is.. by the minute, that isn’t safe at all! That’s the point. We should be moving towards more natural and sustainable food sourcing, not expanding and complicating the industrial supply. As the mainstream food supply becomes scarier, the case for buying organic and local only gets stronger.
I don’t want to be anti technology.. I’m the girl who studied biotechnology at McGill (it was my minor) back when it was a new exciting field, all hype and no bad wrap, also before I had any notion of food ethics. It’s not as if I think that cloned meat will be any different, but I just don’t see why we need it, and I’d rather not think of where it could lead us. When it comes to the motivation behind it, am I missing something? Why is it exactly that we want cloned meat? Only because we can do it? Or is the prime goal to select for certain characteristics to later facilitate mass producing those special beasts for big business lucre? Even if production goes ahead, the idea of Not labelling it in the US is unbelievable -how can that possibly fly? This would just make for a trade mess with obligatory labelling in the EU. Besides, the consumer has the right to know and choose. The origin of anything should be on the package, whether it’s a farm or a lab.
French minister says no to cloned bifteck http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080117/sc_nm/cloning_france_dc_4;_ylt=AtoZzzWMZyrZ5sxlSoJk_.L0kPUI
Commentary on Grist with links to more: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/2/6/83532/92532?source=food
CBC's report with Canadian feedback http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2008/01/15/cloning-food.html
The super carrot: More fiddling with food, this time in the name of medicine. The latest controversy over GM Crops involves a super carrot..
When a carrot isn’t a carrot http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/01/14/scicarrot114.xml
Again, why do we need this? Through industrialization of our food, we’ve diminished the quality of our food, so now we need to be boosting it – how backwards.. When we can easily enough eat healthily by choosing to (by avoiding processed and fast food, shopping at farmers markets, buying local and organic and consuming a varied diet).
A larger portion of our food supply is already GM since corn, soy and wheat are largely GM and they are in everything (a conservative estimate in the US iso ver 60%, here ?), so lets protect the rest!
Again more fiddling with the food supply - Mosanto.. While we weren’t looking, big companies like Mosanto cleverly sneaked GM traits into the mainstream while they took control of the commodities, in effect forcing farmers to plant their seeds (that are resistant to the pesticide they sell) for competitive yields.
Going against nature in everyway way, farmers are required to buy the seeds annually, because Mosanto owns this genetic material. Completely AFU (All fucked up) - it makes me sick. Tom Philpot explains it well here :
http://www.grist.org/comments/food/2008/01/17/?source=food
The anti-locavore : A very tongue in cheek article dissing the ‘eat fresh and local’ movement.. Even if I don’t agree, I appreciate original opinions, and this writer is witty, and quite amusing..
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1702353,00.html
The Power of Suggestion : High price makes wine taste better
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article3177658.ece
Nancy Hinton
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