09/09.04

James Beard Foundation Debacle You know just how bad things are when Celebrity Justice covers the scandal that's rocking the culinary world. From the J.B.F press release: "Longtime President Leonard Pickell resigns before Board of Trustees meeting; Trustees receive details of internal investigation of financial and operational issues, pledge modernization and accountability for one of the nation's best-known culinary arts organizations." Sept. 9, 2004

A Little More Coffee In Your Latte? Stirring a bit of bad news into the cups of caffeine aficionados everywhere, Starbuck's Coffee Company recently announced plans to increase its coffee prices for the first time in over four years due to increasing dairy prices and increased infrastructure costs. Sabrina Crawford, SF Examiner, Sept. 8, 2004

Don't forget, that milk in your latte came from a cow, and that a cow is a lactating mother, and if the offspring that milk was originally intended for is of the male persuasion, he is shipped off to the not-so-friendly-factory-veal-farm (it's enough to make you switch to soy). Niman Ranch is out to change that, or at least make the veal farm a little more friendly. Kim Severson, SF Chronicle, Sept 8, 2004

Edible Dorm Food "I found it hard to believe that really good food was being served at Yale. My memories of undergraduate food there were of working around it as best I could - spending a lot of time at the salad bar and cooking at friends' and advisers' houses whenever possible. The food at a reunion I attended a year ago was startlingly unmemorable - reunions, after all, are usually the time when schools put on the dog, to elicit donations along with memories of happy golden bygone days. Korby Kummer, Atlantic Monthly, 2004 (userid:bugmenot pswd:bugmenot)

"I was reviewing restaurants for the Toronto Globe and Mail and at first I thought, 'What a wonderful thing, I am eating out at someone else's expense and this is terrific,' " she says. But, she adds, "I found something was missing. I thought a restaurant experience should be even better than home cooking. You should have variety presented to you beautifully cooked and it should be a wonderful evening." More on the author of Last Chance to Eat: The Fate of Taste in a Fast Food World. Judy Creighton, London Free Press, CA, Sept. 9, 2004