Two new food blogs worth bookmarking

Two very different new food blogs have caught my eye recently, for very different reasons.

That’s not lettuce is written very much the way its creator Melissa Yen thinks about food: Constantly and from every angle. Our too infrequent conversations may occasionally veer away from food, but they always hurry back. Buying it, growing it, making it [at home or for paying customers], enjoying it [in restaurants or at the tables of friends and family]…

A former owner of the much missed Vella Cafe here in Chicago, Melissa’s first food job in a long line of them was in her aunt’s restaurant when she was eleven. She’s also been involved in the Logan Square Farmers Market. So when she says that thing that all food bloggers say, “I am someone who is absolutely passionate about food,” I think she has a little more history to back up those words than some of us do—certainly than I do. Continue reading “Two new food blogs worth bookmarking” →

Eat, drink and be healthy in 2010

A quick round-up of ideas for healthy eating and drinking, including fighting diabetes with small changes, more reasons to drink coffee, reasons to drink and not drink wine and an excuse for pregnant women to eat bacon.

‘Food Rules’ from someone who should know

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Michael Pollan

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Michael Pollan has written definitive tomes on food and health—the health of those who eat it, those who produce it and the planet we live on. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals is the best known, weighing in at nearly 500 pages.

His latest book, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, is a lot slimmer, a pocket-sized 112 pages. But in its own way, it’s just as full of useful information. In it, Pollan lays out 64 rules to help us eat smarter, eat healthier. In a piece he wrote for Huffington Post, he tells how the list came about and gives us a small taste of the list. Here are a couple of samples:

#36 Don’t eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk.

#39 Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.

Pollan recently appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He entertainingly but forcefully makes the point that the way we eat is responsible Continue reading “Eat, drink and be healthy in 2010” →

Food blogging and simple gifts

Every year around this time, I like to share a little something about gifts. Last year, it was the humble gift of an orange that meant so much to my grandmother growing up on a farm in Illinois. Two years ago, it was the amazing gift of the poetry of e.e. cummings, first shared with me in grade school, a beautiful poem about a tiny Christmas tree. And the year before that, when Blue Kitchen was not quite two months old, it was about our non-traditional tradition of Christmas Eve dinner in Chinatown and a joke about gifts that transcended language barriers.

This year, I’ve been thinking about the gifts this blog has given me.

Gift one. I fell hard for publishing as a teenager. I got my first taste on my high school newspaper. Then I started an underground literary magazine with some friends, The Grub Street Journal. Continue reading “Food blogging and simple gifts” →

Ten random things you missed if you don’t follow me on Twitter

I‘ll admit it. I came to Twitter reluctantly, skeptically even. It can certainly feel a little navel-gazing narcissistic the way it’s sometimes practiced. “It’s only 9:30 in the morning and I’m already craving chocolate cake.” And the world needs to know this because?

But Twitter can also be a way to share ideas, links to stories and blog posts and even visuals. Like the amusing billboard above that I photographed and posted on Twitpic, Twitter’s visual sibling, along with the caption “I’m not a big fan of Miracle Whip, but I love their attitudinal advertising!”

Funny thing is, I’ve come to really enjoy Twitter and tweeting [a tweet is what you post on Twitter, and it can be no longer than 140 characters]. From finding articles about food, wine and health I think are worth sharing Continue reading “Ten random things you missed if you don’t follow me on Twitter” →

The face of hunger is changing—so is fighting it

As the effects of a sagging economy continue to spread, an ever-growing number of Americans face “food insecurity,” a newly coined euphemism for not knowing where your next meal is coming from. Hunger.

According to Daily Kos, the PSA above featuring President Obama is sadly already out of date. It says that one out of eight Americans is at risk of hunger. The number is now one out of six. According to a new report by Feeding America, more than 49 million of us are at risk for hunger.

A recent article in the New York Times delivers more sobering numbers. Food stamps, once scorned as a failed welfare scheme, now help feed one in eight Americans and one in four children. More than 36 million people “use inconspicuous plastic cards for staples like milk, bread and cheese, swiping them at counters in blighted cities and in suburbs pocked with foreclosure signs.” Continue reading “The face of hunger is changing—so is fighting it” →

If you can’t stand the heat, take care in the kitchen: 10 Thanksgiving fire safety tips

Cooking fires are twice as likely to happen on Thanksgiving as any other day of the year. Here are some tips to keep your kitchen safe—on Thanksgiving and every other day.

The people at Underwriters Laboratories have the coolest jobs. They get to break things, start fires and make things blow up, all in the name of safety.

Underwriters Laboratories is an independent product safety certification organization that has been testing products and writing standards for safety for more than a century. Each year, the Northbrook, Illinois-based UL evaluates more than 19,000 types of products, components, materials and systems. The UL Mark signifies that a product has undergone rigorous testing to assure that it meets UL’s standards for safety. You’ll find the UL Mark on some 72,000 manufacturers’ products in 98 countries.

Where you won’t find the UL Mark is on one single turkey fryer. Not one. All are deemed far too unsafe. Which leads me to safety tip number one:

1. Don’t deep fry your turkey. Seriously. The video above shows clearly all the ways this novel [read idiotically dangerous] approach to preparing your turkey can go wrong. And this is under laboratory conditions that don’t involve beer or wanting to hurry back to televised football.

But turkey fryers aren’t the only source of accidents. According to UL, “nearly 1,450 residential structure fires Continue reading “If you can’t stand the heat, take care in the kitchen: 10 Thanksgiving fire safety tips” →

Healthy choices and the power of fun

We all know that healthy living includes not just eating right, but exercising too. And many of us try to cajole, bribe and browbeat ourselves [and sometimes, our loved ones] into “burning more calories than we consume.” This sensible balance is an easy concept to grasp, but not always so easy to live up to.

But what if we could make doing the right thing fun? Would we do it then? That’s the question The Fun Theory has set out to answer in a number of ways. In this charming video, you’ll see how they tested whether fun could motivate people to exercise a little more.

How do you motivate yourself to get more exercise? Do you have a secret for making it fun? Continue reading “Healthy choices and the power of fun” →

A quick taste of Toronto

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I don’t know if Toronto has an official tourism tagline, but maybe they should consider stealing IHOP’s: “Come hungry. Leave happy.”

On a recent visit, Marion and I did just that. I’ll get to the food in a moment, but first here’s how Canada’s largest city fed our urban souls. When we’re traveling, some of the things we look for in cities we visit are great museums [art and otherwise], active gallery and music scenes, cool shops, a diverse, lively street culture, walkability and, if possible, decent public transportation.

Toronto delivered on all counts. We parked our car at our downtown hotel and didn’t touch it again until we were headed back to Chicago days later. Much of what we wanted to do and see was walking distance, down streets that invited and encouraged walking. Continue reading “A quick taste of Toronto” →

“86 Hunger” with top Chicago chefs, winery turns garbage into great taste

Six Chicago chefs—including Rick Bayless—are teaming with with the Greater Chicago Food Depository to take hunger off the menu. You can join them. San Francisco’s tough composting laws are actually helping restaurants and winemakers.

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The restaurant business is full of colorful terms. You only have to watch Hell’s Kitchen to hear some of the more colorful ones. Well, or hang around in my kitchen when things start to go wrong. But to “86” something lets the entire kitchen and restaurant staff know that a menu item is no longer available.

86-hunger-sm The Greater Chicago Food Depository wants to 86 Hunger: Take Hunger Off the Menu. To do it, they’re teaming up with six Chicago restaurants for a series of dinners in intimate settings, now through November 18. The series of dinners is being launched in a year when 35 percent more Chicagoans are turning to the Food Depository and its network of pantries, soup kitchens and shelters. Funds raised will benefit the Food Depository, which serves 500,000 men, women and children in Cook County every year.

Chef Rick Bayless kicks things off with a VIP event at his Frontera Grill on Wednesday, October 21. Dinner includes a visit to his home garden and a live cooking demonstration in the restaurant’s test kitchen. Continue reading ““86 Hunger” with top Chicago chefs, winery turns garbage into great taste” →

Blog Action Day 2009: Global warming and the meat of the matter

Nearly 10,000 bloggers around the world are taking part in Blog Action Day 2009, discussing this year’s topic, Global Warming, from the perspectives of their individual blogs. Here are my thoughts on meat’s giant carbon footprint.

Mae West once famously said, “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful!” Unfortunately, just about everywhere you look these days, the opposite is proving to be true. Take meat, for instance. America’s growing love affair with meat [and more recently, the developing world’s increasing infatuation with it] is having dire consequences for our health and the health of the planet.

How big is the world’s love of meat? In his 2008 article “Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler,” New York Times food writer Mark Bittman said, “The world’s total meat supply was 71 million tons in 1961. In 2007, it was estimated to be 284 million tons. Per capita consumption has more than doubled over that period. [In the developing world, it rose twice as fast, doubling in the last 20 years.] World meat consumption is expected to double again by 2050.”

What makes these numbers so scary? Consider this. According to Livestock’s Long Shadow, Continue reading “Blog Action Day 2009: Global warming and the meat of the matter” →