There was a good article in the Billings Gazette this week about our local Livingston Hospital. They’ve been making the change to local product and cooking “from scratch” (as long-time readers know, this phrase is one of my pet peeves). It’s been a big success, with 3000 more meals served this year than last, and folks who aren’t sick, or visiting someone, actually going to the hospital cafeteria for lunch. We have such great product around here, and it sounds like Jesse Williams is doing a lot of the same things that Rick Bayless does in his restaurants, thinking ahead,…
-
-
Here’s a link to the USDA News Release about the Child Nutrition Act and what’s been added to it. The list looks promising. It includes: Improve nutrition standards. Establishing improved nutrition standards for school meals based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and taking additional steps to ensure compliance with these standards; Increase access to meal programs. Providing tools to increase participation in the school nutrition programs, streamline applications, and eliminate gap periods; Increase education about healthy eating. Providing parents and students better information about school nutrition and meal quality; Establish standards for competitive foods sold in schools. Creating national…
-
So I have a new writing project — it’s in the tiny larval stages so I don’t want to talk about it too much, but I’m working on a murder mystery. One of my dearest friends here in town is Maryanne Vollers, author of the amazing books Ghosts of Mississippi: The Murder of Medgar Evers, the Trials of Byron De La Beckwith, and the Haunting of the New South and Lone Wolf: Eric Rudolph: Murder, Myth, and the Pursuit of an American Outlaw. We were both at a dinner party last night, and Maryanne arrived with a big bag of…
-
Well, some things are still wonky, but we’re getting there. More changes to come over the next few days as I figure out how to play with this new template. And something seems to have happened to my photos — working with support to figure that problem out. But let me know what you think in the comments.
-
So, I’ve been casting around for an alternative to tuna, now that the Genova tuna in oil that I liked has disappeared from my local grocery stores. There’s nothing but tuna in water which I think tastes like drek, and well, the whole tuna thing is problematic, as per this FAQ over at the estimable Monterrey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch site. Plus, my sweetheart doesn’t really like fish, which means I didn’t buy salmon from my friends in town who run a commercial fishing operation in the summer (I can’t eat that much by myself), and although I’m inching toward…
-
Hi folks — working on a really exciting redesign, so expect to see the maintenance mode page again over the next week or so. In the meantime, I’ve been thinking a lot about school food. The Billings Gazette had a piece about an elementary school that was about to start offering breakfast to all students. Which sounds like a great idea, except that I read about it right on the heels of Ed Bruske’s series, Tales from a DC School Kitchen in which he spent a week in his daughter’s school, and discovered fun facts like the breakfast offered contained…
-
There’s been a lot of noise on the foodie twitter/blogosphere about the EPA’s reluctance to ban Atrazine. As someone who grew up in the midwest, and who has relatives who grow corn and soybeans, let me tell you, that stuff is everywhere. I’ve also long wondered whether the sharp increase in agricultural chemicals was in some way responsible for the cancer cluster in which I grew up (the Zion Nuclear Power Plant didn’t help either). But we all got our water out of Lake Michigan, and all those chemicals were running into the lake. Here’s a piece from the Atlantic…
-
I got the saddest news this weekend — Camp Osoha, the place that saved my life, is closing it’s doors after 89 years. I went to Osoha for five years, during which, I moved twice and switched custodial parents. To say that Camp was the only stable point in my life for many years is an understatement. And Linda Porter, the camp director, has been a touchstone throughout all these decades — someone I could go back to years later for advice. Maybe it’s a western thing, but as an adult I don’t meet very many people who went to…
-
Residents in parish of Martin join forces to feed themselves | Society | The Guardian. Nick Snelgar, who earns a living from growing herbs and shrubs near his home in Martin, thought it was crazy that he could not eat local produce. “It would be fresher, tastier and more nutritious than anything from the supermarket and I thought it could be cheaper too if we organised to cut out the middlemen,” he says. “Farmers’ markets tend to be expensive niche providers for the few. I wanted a system to provide local food for the many.” He organised a meeting in…
-
Steve Sando and I had some good emails back and forth back in the day when we were both grumpy with Slow Food and Alice Waters. He grows the most DELICIOUS beans in the world. I can unabashedly plug them. Even if you think they’re too expensive and that buying beans by mail (as one must if you don’t live near by) — you’re wrong. His beans are wonderful. And you can plant them in your own back yard! I can personally vouch that the runner cannellini beans grow beautifully, make pretty red flowers, and produce lots and lots of…