This Saturday, food bloggers across the country are getting together to bake a difference! Specifically, they’ll be holding the first annual National Food Bloggers Bake Sale, part of Share Our Strength’s Great American Bake Sale program, a national effort that encourages individuals to help end childhood hunger by holding bake sales in their communities. Share Our Strength reports that since 2003, more than 1.7 million people have participated in the Great American Bake Sale, presented by Domino Sugar and C&H Sugar, raising nearly $6 million. Continue reading “Eat cupcakes, fight hunger: National food blogger bake sale this Saturday for Share Our Strength”
Category: Random Food For Thought
Logan Square Kitchen Pastry Market on Saturday, April events at Chicago’s Downtown Farmstand
Chicago’s Logan Square Kitchen Pastry Market returns with another one-day event of delicious creations by local small-batch pastry artisans, and Chicago’s Downtown Farmstand features a month of events highlighting food grown or produced within 250 miles of Chicago.
Going locavore in Chicago is sweeter than ever these days. In February, we wrote about a pre-Valentine’s Day Pastry Market at Logan Square Kitchen. Well, they’re at it again. This Saturday, April 10, the Logan Square Kitchen Spring Pastry Market will feature a day of pastries, chocolates, caramels, ice cream and more. Most of these treats are not widely available. In fact, many one-of-a-kind items will be created just for this event.
All the vendors featured at this one-day event are local food artisans, most of whom produce their wares in small batches, many producing seasonal items available for only a short time. Continue reading “Logan Square Kitchen Pastry Market on Saturday, April events at Chicago’s Downtown Farmstand”
International Home + Housewares Show 2010: Six great ideas for the kitchen
If you want to see what’s new—and what’s coming—for the kitchen, the International Home + Housewares Show is the place to do it. Every spring, the world’s largest audience of home goods and housewares professionals—more than 60,000 in all—descends upon Chicago’s McCormick Place. Marion and I elbowed our way through the crowds, looking for interesting new tools, gadgets and ideas for home cooks. Here’s what we found.
1. Hot Pot, BODUM Inc.
Perhaps best known for their beautifully practical coffee presses, BODUM brings plenty of functional style to the rest of the kitchen too. These HOT POTS go from the stovetop to the table, from the oven to the fridge. They’re made of heat-resistant borosilicate glass, with flexible silicone lids that can act as both a trivet and pot holder.
You can use HOT POTS in the microwave too. The food-grade silicone lids Continue reading “International Home + Housewares Show 2010: Six great ideas for the kitchen”
Earth Hour 2010: This Saturday, you can help save the world by candlelight
Romantic dinners are usually intended to heat things up, but dining by candlelight this Saturday night will actually help fight global warming.
Earth Hour, now in its third year, is a global initiative aimed at raising awareness of global warming and the issues of climate change. According to the Earth Hour website, on Saturday, March 27, 2010, at 8:30 p.m. local time, “hundreds of millions of people, organizations, corporations and governments around the world will come together to make a bold statement about their concern for climate change by doing something quite simple—turning off their lights for one hour.”
Tasting Table reports that a number of Chicago restaurants are participating, turning out the lights and serving up specials to mark the occasion. But you can celebrate right at home, with your own candlelight dinner. Here are some romantic menu ideas from the Blue Kitchen archives. Continue reading “Earth Hour 2010: This Saturday, you can help save the world by candlelight”
What are we really eating and who’s watching it?
Yet another wave of food recalls has food safety, food additives and FDA’s changing role in food enforcement in the news.
The argument for real food just keeps getting stronger. On March 4, Daily Kos reported that “the Food and Drug Administration [FDA] announced a recall of 30 processed foods containing HVP—hydrolyzed vegetable protein—a widely used flavor enhancer, due to ‘possible salmonella contamination.'” As of noon on March 8, the number of recalled products had risen to 108.
But what is HVP and why is it in everything from salad dressings to soups, potato chips, hot dogs, dips and even ready-to-eat tofu dinners? Wikipedia says that the flavor enhancer “is produced by boiling cereals or legumes, such as soy, corn, or wheat, in hydrochloric acid and then neutralizing the solution with sodium hydroxide.” And as Helene York reports in an article for The Atlantic Online, “HVP could be in almost any food.” The term food industry suddenly sounds especially appropriate. Continue reading “What are we really eating and who’s watching it?”
Logan Square Kitchen serves up fixes for the Chicago locavore sweet tooth
I‘m often kvetching about the lack of food trucks in Chicago, thanks to draconian local health regulations. Well, last weekend Logan Square Kitchen reminded me of the wealth of delicious locally produced foods—and the wealth of local culinary talent—with a pre-Valentine’s Day Pastry Market.
Logan Square Kitchen is itself an outcome of an increased interest in local, artisanal foods. Created by longtime Logan Square residents Zina and Nick Murray, it houses a shared-use commercial, two-galley kitchen that chefs, pastry chefs and entrepreneurs armed with secret family recipes can rent to produce their creations. Unlike home kitchens, it is up to health department code, so users of the space can legally market their wares.
The front half of Logan Square Kitchen is an event space. And that’s where we found a number of delights last Saturday, all locally produced. Continue reading “Logan Square Kitchen serves up fixes for the Chicago locavore sweet tooth”
Hunger in America 2010: A major hunger-relief charity delivers a troubling report
In its first comprehensive report since 2006, Feeding America shows how the economic downturn is increasing risk of hunger for a growing number of families and creating pressure on relief organizations.
The French have a saying: Jamais deux sans trois—never two (catastrophes) without three. There is certainly no shortage of catastrophes, disasters and ongoing problems in the world today. The latest to capture world attention is the devastation created by the earthquake in Haiti.
And just this month, Feeding America, the nation’s leading domestic hunger-relief charity organization, issued Hunger in America 2010, “the largest study of domestic hunger,” according to their website. The report shows that hunger is increasing at an alarming rate in the United States. Continue reading “Hunger in America 2010: A major hunger-relief charity delivers a troubling report”
All quiet in the kitchen this week
I never called him Dad. I was already grown and living on my own when he and Mom married, not the first marriage for either of them. So Dad just didn’t sound right to me. Instead, I called him by his name, Jim.
Friends from the old neighborhood and the Fisher Body plant in St. Louis where he spent much of his working life called him Red. They did so even after his hair no longer matched his nickname. Red suited him. Like the color, he was big and bold and cheerful—and yes, sometimes a little loud.
Jim dreamed big. He always had projects, plans and ideas brewing, some of them a little goofy maybe, but some of them verging on visionary. And as he aged, they shifted from schemes to get rich quick to ways to save the planet, or at least a little corner of it. Continue reading “All quiet in the kitchen this week”
TV Dinners: Serving up an eclectic sampling of 101 cooking videos
For people who can’t get enough of cooking—and that would include me—Guide to Culinary Schools has compiled a wonderfully eclectic mix of cooking videos.
The Internet is a wonderful place, chock full of cool stuff. On the other hand, it’s chock full of stuff. So much so that sometimes it’s hard to sift through everything to find what you’re looking for.
The website Guide to Culinary Schools has done some major sifting and come up with a wildly varied mix of 101 cooking videos. The videos range from classic Julia Child to current big names such as Mario Batali and Eric Ripert to goofy bits about baking cookies on your car’s dashboard. Continue reading “TV Dinners: Serving up an eclectic sampling of 101 cooking videos”
Four ways to help the people of Haiti
The food blogging community has proven itself time and again to be generous, warm and caring, always ready to share. The people of Haiti are in desperate need of your generosity right now.
Living in the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, Haitians face daily struggles in the best of times. But the devastating earthquake has left many of them injured, homeless and without food or water. According to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, as much as a third of the nation’s population—about 3 million people—has been affected by the quake.
The best way to help is money. Donations in whatever amount you can give. Here are four organizations that will put your generosity to good use. Continue reading “Four ways to help the people of Haiti”