Food News Feed

Though the nation's food elite might cringe, Ms. Ray, 37, is one of the most influential people cooking today. Let the big-name chefs fuss with foams and sous vide. She'll stick with hot dog nachos and "jambalika," a dish that is kind of like jambalaya. With more than 4 million books in print and four shows on the Food Network, Ms. Ray has shown America the way back to the kitchen. As she likes to say, "How cool is that?"

Somewhere between moving chicken fences, washing dozens of eggs in her downstairs bathtub and wielding a chainsaw from the top of a cherry tree, Chenin Carlton finds time to eat. {Is "Chenin" a great name or what? Don't you wish you were named after a wine grape?}

"Worst trauma I have ever seen to a shrimp - six sad little crustaceans with third-degree burns from the broiler."
"Service was slower than geology."
You get the picture...

Rakoff takes note of a brief article in the New York Times reporting about "ice cubes frozen from a river in the Scottish Highlands and overnighted to your doorstep -- the perfect complement to your single malt"...
{Editors note: I used to work at a dot-com where we received free samples of said ice cubes. And yes, I rushed home and plunked them into my Reidel single malt glass, topped off with the flavor of the moment, leaned back in my Aeron chair, and sighed, "Ahhhhh".}

The magazine (NY Times) was one of the most powerful platforms for food writing in the nation and, to the people in line, I was a rock star. My mother, a sensible Ohioan, was with me that night and she was appalled. She stood near as fans gushed admiration for my prose and recipes. Finally, as if unable to contain herself another second, my mother interrupted one woman's compliments and asked: "Do you actually cook that stuff?" "Of course not," replied the customer, who looked like my mother, tall, lean, with a white cap of stylishly coiffed hair. "Every week I cut them out of the magazine and promise myself I will cook them. Don't we all?"
Related: The eGullet discussion thread.

Estimated at $500 million to $550 million a year, the market for natural and organic beef accounts for less than 1 percent of overall U.S. beef production but is growing at about 20 percent annually, while overall beef production of 24.6 billion pounds this year is down from 25.1 billion in 1995, according to the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.