09.10.04

In regards to the recent news involving the James Beard Foundation, please note that The James Beard Foundation Awards (which honor food and beverage industry professionals in America for their achievements) are not under any questioning or investigation.

The Awards has its own operating budget, management staff, volunteer committees and¬Ý offices. 100% of all sponsorship dollars for the awards goes into the underwriting of the year-long program which includes all program operating costs as well as the event costs, from the start of the call-to entry process in the Fall to the last medallion placed on an award winner in the Spring.¬Ý The Foundation covers just over 50% of the $1 million operating costs for the Awards. The awards are not a fundraiser for the Foundation, and have never been positioned as such. They are one of the several programs of the Foundation, and the mission of the Awards is specifically to recognize and honor achievement and distinction within the culinary industry.

JBF Trustees and staff do not vote on any awards programs, and membership in and service to the James Beard Foundation is neither a requirement nor criteria for awards consideration.

All programs of The James Beard Foundation are continuing as planned. They are about to launch the call-to-entry for this years awards, and the forms will be on www.jamesbeard.org later this month.

Drink Your Milk and Eat Your Vegetables

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."

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.

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.

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.

"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.

09.03.04

Food News


Caviar Ban? What Caviar Ban? "Contrary to recent news reports (MSNBC, NPR, IHT, and NY Times) exports of North American paddlefish (Polyodon spathula) have not been banned or "frozen" and are not subject to any national, regional, international or intergovernmental quotas. The CITES Secretariat has not posted quotas for Caspian Sea caviar, or intergovernmental quotas for species shared between different range States. This has apparently caused confusion regarding the status of U.S. paddlefish exports."

Through A Glass Darkly: "In 1976, in Paris, an American Cabernet beat the French Bordeaux in a blind tasting. This was not quite the event that it has since come to seem’Äîto the French winemakers, it was more like an American loss to the Lithuanians in basketball, wrong game at the wrong time ’Äî but it did mark a trembling of the earth beneath their feet."

New Generation of Wines Are Muscling Out Finesse: "As more and more wine today is sold on the basis of its performance in large comparative tastings, there is a natural pressure to make wines that will stand out in these rather artificial circumstances. It is just so easy for a taster to fall for the most concentrated, most powerful wines -- especially as these tend to overwhelm any more subtle wine tasted alongside."

Is the Price Right?: Alaska used to put salmon on the world's dinner plate, and a good living in the pockets of commercial fishermen. Not any more. Farmed Atlantic salmon from Europe, Chile and British Columbia have usurped Alaska's pre-eminent position as a salmon supplier. More salmon is now grown in nets than in the wild - and the gap keeps getting wider."

08.31.04

Corn Syrup Nazi: Everybody knows one!


"Did you know that there are over ten teaspoons of sugar in that can of soda?"


Paul Newmans Pasta Sauce Ingredients: Tomato Puree (Water, Tomato Paste), Diced Tomatoes, Corn Syrup, Salt, Soybean Oil, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Spices, Onion, Garlic, Citric Acid

Paul, man, that is just embarrassing.


Planters Dry Roasted Peanuts Ingredients: Peanuts, Salt, Sugar, Cornstarch, Monosodium Glutamate Flavor Enhancer, Gelatin, Corn Syrup Solids, Paprika, Other Spices, Dried Yeast, Onion Powders, Garlic Powders, Hydrolyzed Soy Protein, Natural Flavor

Wait a minute - you put corn syrup - on my peanuts! In God's name, why?


Yoplait Go-Gurt Ingredients: Cultured Pasteurized Grade A Milk, Sugar, Nonfat Milk, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Modified Corn Starch, Kosher Gelatin, Tricalcium Phosphate, Potassium Sorbate (To Maintain Freshness), Carrageenan, Natural And Artificial Flavor, Colored With Carmine.

You think sodas are making kids fat? Guess how many of these sugar tubes get downed every single day during school lunch?


Michael Pollan on high fructose corn syrup.



Awash in corn syrup: The Chart.

Link

08.31.04

Food News


Leslie Revsin 1945-2004: "Her first book, "Great Fish, Quick," was published in 1997. It was a finalist for the Julia Child Cookbook Award, given by the International Association of Culinary Professionals. She also was chosen as one of 13 chefs on the PBS show "Master Chefs of New York."

At Their Bark and Call: "On the room-service menu, I found a page devoted entirely to all-day dining for pets. The menu included such items as Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡KittyÔø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡s Salmon Supreme,Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡ Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡Chow Hound ChickenÔø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡ and Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡Whisker Licking Liver.Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡ The meals, which ranged in price from $9 to $21, were served on Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡appropriate petwareÔø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡ with Evian water accompanying them."

Just Try and Sneak In Some Saucisson: "Unlike a chef friend of mine who used to smuggle in ortolans (tiny, delectable French birds) packed amid his wife's underwear, we were completely open and aboveboard."

Good Thing I Drank All Mine: "Chateau Montelena in Napa Valley has undertaken a major renovation of its cellar after discovering that both the winery and its wines have been contaminated by TCA (2,4,6 trichloranisole), a chemical compound responsible for the off-flavors in corky wines."

World's Caviar Faces a Ban: "The United Nations agency that controls trade in endangered species has halted exports of caviar until the countries where it is produced comply with an agreement to protect sturgeon... As a result of the ban, the legal supply of Caspian caviar in the United States Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡ is likely to dry up once the 2003 harvest is consumed."

Julia Child

08.20.04

Julia Child's kitchen (photo: © WBUR.org)

A panorama of Julia Child's kitchen

Julia Child: The Myths

Julia Child: Encyclopedia

The famous peg board wall

What Julia really taught us

The very last interview with Julia Child in City Magazine

Only So Many Fish in the Sea

08.01.04

Holy Rock Lobster (1) - David Foster Wallace on lobster-cide in the lastest issue of Gourmet Magazine.

"Oh no, not her again." Gourmet Magazine's Caroline Bates goes shopping for her seafood dinner.

Know your fishmonger. "The time: 5:30 p.m. The place: a restaurant kitchen. The activity: setting up stations by the stove. A normal enough snapshot, except that at the end of the line, two chefs are maniacally removing the spines from -- eels." Olivia Wu in the SF Chronicle.

Tuna Mobsters: "Only one of these big tuna can be worth as much as the most expensive Mercedes-Benz...How do you expect criminal organizations not to want to be in on it?" World's tuna depletion demands urgent action.

"Big as a Porsche, fast as a Porsche, and as valuable as a Porsche..." Slide on up to the sushi bar.

The Big One that didn't get away.


Copyright © 2001-2004 Bruce Cole / Icons © 1997,1999 Igarashi Susumu