Blogs : Food Media

Farewell to a Loyal, Vibrating Friend?

Is the vibrating square hockey puck thing that lights up to tell you that your table at T.G.I. Friday’s soon to be a thing of the past? Food blog Food2 reports that a start-up called ReadyPing is planning to market a text message–based solution to the crowded restaurant/diner summons problem.

As the ReadyPing website points out, sending a message to customers’ own cell phones prevents pagers from being lost, stolen, or damaged … and, um, contaminated: “There’s no telling where those pagers have gone (the bathroom?) or who’s been touching them. An investigation conducted by CBS3 Philadelphia found that 5 of 7 pagers from different restaurants tested positive for commonly found bacteria such as Staphylococcus.”

One of the potential pitfalls, as per a thoughtful commenter on the Food2 story: Is this the key that unlocks the evil genie of restaurant-related text messaging spam?

Posted by James Norton | 2 comments
Tagged with: restaurant pagers, tgi friday's, media, readyping

Fear the Clear Beer

Coors, what can’t you do for beer, you amazing multinational behemoth? In one of the most condescending gestures toward women since the anti-suffrage movement, Coors has decided to introduce a clear beer to Britain in order to appeal to female drinkers. As reported by UK tabloid the Daily Star, Coors plans to test market the unnamed 4 percent ABV beverage in pubs this summer. Here’s the heart of the beast:

“The clear drink is put through an extreme filtering process that removes its color and it can be flavored with green tea and exotic fruits.”

The truly tragic thing is that there’s already a solution available for people seeking to sell skeptical women on the wonders of beer: It’s called lambic.

Posted by James Norton | 2 comments
Tagged with: coors, clear beer, women, lambic, media, daily star

The World's First CSF (Community Supported Forage) Box

Once upon a time, if you wanted to eat plant life, you had to hunt for it. Berries on bushes, fruit from trees, greens and herbs from the ground. If you could gather enough on your daily rounds, you could eat. If not, there was certainly no Kwik Mart where you could grab a nuked burrito and a soda.

In these days of scientifically farmed produce and feedlot meat, the ability to take what you need from nature seems almost mystical. Which is why scores of enthusiastic eaters in San Francisco are willing to pay $40 every couple of weeks to Iso Rabins, an urban forager whose perambulations in Bay Area parkland have produced the world’s first and only “wild-crafted” community supported forage (CSF) box through his fledgling firm, forageSF.

So what comes in the box? Wild mushrooms, nettles, greens, edible roots like radishes, all of it culled from the hills and valleys of the San Francisco Bay Area in a process outlined by local paper SF Weekly in this week’s spotlight on Iso Rabins and forageSF.

“On an unseasonably warm winter afternoon, Iso Rabins stepped out of a silver Subaru Legacy at the intersection of Walnut and Pacific streets, a tony corner of Pacific Heights that abuts the southern edge of the Presidio. Pausing to roll and light a cigarette, he hopped the waist-high stone wall lining the park. Behind him, rows of shingle and brick two-story houses climbed uphill into a bright February sky. As he stepped slowly and deliberately across an overgrown hillside bisected by a dirt walking trail, eyes trained on the ground like a man who had lost his wedding ring, the gentle ping of bats on baseballs rose from fields below. Suddenly Rabins froze, knelt, and began to nibble on a weed,” writes Peter Jamison.

“‘This is wild radish,’ he said absently, eyes scanning the ground as he masticated his find. ‘I’ve used it in potato salad, with wild salad greens. There’s a subtle flavor to it.’ A few more steps and Rabins came upon a patch of Claytonia perfoliata, or miner’s lettuce, so named for the 49ers who grew fond of the plant as a source of Vitamin C during the Gold Rush.”

The downsides of foraging? Park regulations, the possibility that finds are contaminated with animal pee, and the hard truth that nature doesn’t produce food to order. Oh, and there are some interesting details about poisonous mushrooms, still one of the easiest ways to kill yourself eating. Or just see some interesting hallucinations:

“In China … one infamous strain of wild mushrooms provokes an identical hallucination of xiao ren ren, or ‘little people,’ among all those who eat them. Many do so by accident — for example, after eating the culprit fungus in a dish prepared at a restaurant — and the resulting visions stir no more alarm among Chinese diners than an upset stomach.”

Image source: flickr member mecredis under Creative Commons

Posted by Joyce Slaton | 2 comments
Tagged with: foraging, food and cooking, foragesf, iso rabins, sf weekly, green, media, community supported forage box, csf

Depression Cooking with Grandma Clara

Clara Cannucciari probably didn’t plan to become an Internet celebrity when her grandson Christopher began filming her cooking in her kitchen. But that’s exactly what has happened, as hundreds of thousands are now watching her cooking series, Great Depression Cooking, available on YouTube, and recently collected on a DVD, now in presale mode.

Of course people love Clara. She’s a kick, dispensing salty wisdom and cheap recipes that average 50 cents a serving. But it’s the memories she shares along the way that are really special, like how her mom used to tell her to go outside and get the meat for dinner, buried in the backyard in the snow because the family couldn’t afford a refrigerator. Or how the family would turn off the heat at the end of cooking a dish to save gas, letting the hot water do the rest of the work on its own. Clara’s recipes are equally thrifty, utilizing ingredients like eggs, pasta, and lots and lots of potatoes. In this episode, Clara makes a Poorman’s Feast: thin steak with lemon and olive oil, lentils and rice, salad, and bread.

CHOW has a newly launched Cooking with Grandma series too.

Posted by Joyce Slaton | 1 comment
Tagged with: recession, great depression cooking, clara cannucciari, media, great depression cooking with clara, budget, cheap, cooking show, poorman's feast

Yo Ho Ho and a Barrel of Beer

If you’re a beer nut, you know the historical origins of the heavily hopped IPA (India pale ale) style of brew (the higher levels of hops and alcohol helped preserve the IPA for the trip to the Raj). The Times of London reports that Scottish microbrewery BrewDog has used a 200-year-old recipe to reproduce the original incarnation of the beer, and aged it on a mackerel trawler in the North Sea for extra historical veracity.

“‘With all the motion of the sea, the oxidation in the barrel would have been brought on quicker than if they were sitting in a warehouse,’ [said BrewDog co-owner Martin Dickie]. ‘Some interesting flavours were also introduced, like the wood of the barrel, but also the fruity flavours brought on by the oxidation.’”

Posted by James Norton | 1 comment
Tagged with: ipa, brewdog, scotland, beer, india pale ale, media