Small Bites: An “essential” cookbook, hot sauce, cool candy, food trucks 2.0, farm made croutons

A trio of recent USA Character Approved Blog posts, Vermont-made croutons with a cool back story and our favorite hot sauce now actually comes in four flavors. Who knew?

Thomas Edison once said that, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” Not one to miss an opportunity, Amanda Hesser wrote the 932-page, 1,400-recipe New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century while working full time for the Times and giving birth to twins. For the herculean six-year project, Hesser scoured through recipes published in the Times since it began covering food in the 1850s and took suggestions from hundreds of Times readers. She then cooked and updated every recipe that made the cut. To read more of the project and what makes the resulting book essential for your kitchen bookshelf, check out my post on the USA Character Approved Blog.

Delicious Mexican heat in four flavors

At last count, there were approximately a bazillion hot sauces out there. We have maybe a half dozen or so on hand at any given time. But the one that always seems to make it from the cupboard onto the table—or into the ingredient mix—is Cholula. Continue reading “Small Bites: An “essential” cookbook, hot sauce, cool candy, food trucks 2.0, farm made croutons” →

Two new paths to culinary careers

For aspiring chefs, many roads lead to the professional kitchen. In this post, a new cooking school with a grand old name is announced, and a no-nonsense, comprehensive book spells out a whole range of culinary careers and how to get your foot in the door.

Born in 1846, the legendary Auguste Escoffier changed the course of culinary history, modernizing and codifying centuries of French cooking traditions and extending the fame of French cuisine throughout the world. In the early 20th century, he was France’s pre-eminent chef.

Besides changing cooking, Escoffier forever changed the job status of chef, elevating it to an honored profession—not just for himself, but for every chef who followed. And now he’s having an impact on food and the business of cooking again, through his great grandson Michel Escoffier. Continue reading “Two new paths to culinary careers” →

Blog Action Day 2010: Food’s water footprint

Today is Blog Action Day. Thousands of bloggers all over the planet are talking about water, from the perspectives of their individual blogs. I’d like to talk about food’s water footprint, how what we eat affects the water we all need.

The Great Lakes are called that for a reason. Together, they cover 94,000 square miles. In school, they loomed large for me, both in geography and history lessons. I was enthralled by tales of intrepid explorers and voyageurs braving these fresh water oceans in mere canoes. And living in Chicago now on the shores of Lake Michigan, I am wowed by its power and size every single time I see it.

Still, on a trip to Toronto last fall, we were given a startling new perspective on the Great Lakes and on water in general. A large chalk illustration of the five Great Lakes covered an entire wall in a trendy shop Continue reading “Blog Action Day 2010: Food’s water footprint” →

Blog Action Day 2010: The topic is water, the time to get involved is now

This Friday, thousands of bloggers around the world will talk about water from their own perspectives. Water is shaping up to be the next big global issue, encompassing human rights, animal rights, the environment and more. Get involved. Write. Read. Comment. Act.

Water. Most of us take it for granted because we have the luxury of doing so. At least for now. But almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water—that’s about one in eight of us. And as a result, 42,000 of us die every week. Even where water is plentiful, the ways that it is used and misused have consequences for everyone.

On Friday, October 15, Blog Action Day wants to get the whole planet talking and thinking about water. If you write a blog, visit the Blog Action Day website and sign up to write about water from your blog’s perspective. If you have blogger friends, encourage them to get involved. You can also Continue reading “Blog Action Day 2010: The topic is water, the time to get involved is now” →

Sharing the love: Tiny microbuses make a big splash on the Tillamook Cheese Loaf Love Tour

How do you celebrate 100 years of making great cheese? By taking it on a year-long road trip. Tillamook’s Loaf Love Tour is the subject of my latest post on the USA Character Approved Blog.

In the post above, you saw how seriously Tillamook takes its cheesemaking. Here’s how they have fun. Their cheeses are available in all 50 states, but they’re not universally known everywhere. So to kick off their 101st year in the business, they decided to spread the word—and the love—with the Loaf Love Tour. And what better way to do that than with the official vehicle of the Summer of Love, the 1966 VW Microbus?

Cute as the original was, though, it wasn’t quite cute enough. So the Tillamook team chopped their trio of microbuses to a diminutive Continue reading “Sharing the love: Tiny microbuses make a big splash on the Tillamook Cheese Loaf Love Tour” →

To get kids eating healthier, Jamie Oliver launches Jamie’s Home Cooking Skills

Jamie Oliver is on a mission to get everyone to eat better. His new website, Jamie’s Home Cooking Skills, is the subject of my latest post on the USA Character Approved Blog.

A recent study shows Americans aren’t eating their vegetables. I know you’re as shocked as I am. But I was shocked at just how much we’re not eating them. The study, released this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, concludes that “only 26 percent of the nation’s adults eat vegetables three or more times a day,” according to The New York Times.

Part of the problem is that too many of us just don’t find vegetables interesting. But British-born chef/cookbook author/TV personality Jamie Oliver thinks that’s because no one is learning to cook anymore. Continue reading “To get kids eating healthier, Jamie Oliver launches Jamie’s Home Cooking Skills” →

Round-up: Travels, a beautifully unimproved cleanser and food in the news

The kitchen was closed this week while we were on a trip to the Pacific Northwest. Seattle, Portland and all gloriously green, mountainous, forested and ocean-viewing points in between. Plenty of great food moments too, including Seattle’s Pike Place Market, shown above, that are sure to inspire future posts here. In the meantime, here’s a quick look at my new post on the USA Character Approved Blog, plus some food stories making the news recently.

Bon Ami Cleanser: Old, unimproved and still just right. Cleaning product makers have been leaping onto the green bandwagon, with mixed results. But Bon Ami has been green since it was just a color. For more than 120 years, it’s been made of a handful of simple, real ingredients. And it’s been cleaning like crazy, while living up to its promise of “hasn’t scratched yet.” Continue reading “Round-up: Travels, a beautifully unimproved cleanser and food in the news” →

A bicycle built for treats and getting hammered in America’s Heartland

Fruity freezer pops sold from a bicycle in LA and silky smooth vodka in Indiana, both made with local ingredients, are the subjects of my latest posts on the USA Character Approved Blog.

These days, it seems everything is getting a gourmet makeover. Burgers, cupcakes, s’mores… One of the biggest hits this year is reimagined Popsicles, the iconic brightly colored and flavored summer treat for countless generations (and a fiercely guarded registered trademark of Unilever, as some hapless artisanal frozen treat makers have discovered). And perhaps no one is remaking them as deliciously or selling them as charmingly as Michelle Sallah and John Cassidy.

Together, they are Popcycle Treats. Sarah makes the inventively flavored freezer pops from seasonal produce and some interesting surprises. Continue reading “A bicycle built for treats and getting hammered in America’s Heartland” →

Want healthier meat and dairy? You’ll find it at “Home on the Range”

Pasture raising the animals we count on for meat and dairy products is healthier for everyone. A website that helps you find grass-fed food locally is the subject of my latest post on the USA Character Approved Blog.

The picture above, of cattle grazing in an open pasture, used to be how all farming was done. Livestock fed in pastures—or in the case of ranches, out on the range. No feedlots, no penning animals in and fattening them with corn. It’s not that farmers and ranchers were more humane back then. They just had a lot of common sense. Cattle (and goats and sheep) ate readily available grasses and supplied the, um, fertilizer that helped more grasses grow. There was no need for chemical fertilizers or the fossil fuel to make them and spread them. And there were no truckloads of manure to be gotten rid of.

Jo Robinson thinks we need to be doing more farming that way again. To help consumers find farmers who are raising grass-fed animals, she writes a website called Eatwild. The name comes from studies Continue reading “Want healthier meat and dairy? You’ll find it at “Home on the Range”” →

Medium Raw: Anthony Bourdain revisits Kitchen Confidential, 10 years later

Chef/author/TV personality Anthony Bourdain was in Chicago recently promoting his new book. I’m still starstruck from getting to see him speak. He’s the subject of my latest post on the USA Character Approved Blog.

Anthony Bourdain is the man who scared me out of the restaurant business. Not that I was ever in it or even seriously considered trying my hand at it. But like most food-loving home cooks, I’ve had my fantasies about running a bustling little neighborhood bistro where regulars would turn up night after night to ooh and ahhh over my simply prepared meals.

Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, published ten years ago, quickly disabused me of any notion that I could—or even wanted to—cook professionally. Reading this fascinating, profane peek behind the culinary curtain into the world of restaurant kitchens was like sitting down with a brutally frank career counselor: Continue reading “Medium Raw: Anthony Bourdain revisits Kitchen Confidential, 10 years later” →