Beans, beans they’re good for the heart…and wouldn’t ya know it, they’re good for art! I stumbled upon this masterpiece while catching up on the blog over at Rancho Gordo. Rancho Gordo by the way is an incredible heirloom bean producer. They grow the tastiest varieties of beans. Honestly, they are packed with so much flavor you won’t believe the difference from the mediocre beans that get crammed in cans and slapped on the shelf that the majority of us eat. This is what beans used to taste like until we decided to pay more attention to things like size, yield and disease resistance over flavor.
I don’t think this mural was made with Rancho Gordo beans, but nonetheless it was made with beans, which just blew me away. Talk about some talent. One of the community members on crafster.org posted this project that took about 2 1/2 pounds of beans, lots of gluing and lots of time.
Oh and if you think I’m trying to send a subliminal message now that we are just 5 days away from election day…I am. Go vote.
Our friends at Threadless held a competition for t-shirt designs that embody the spirit of democracy. They picked three winners and now you can not only buy them and wear their designs, but you can drink them too!
Jones Soda - the wacky soda company with outrageous flavors is printing these t-shirt designs on their soda labels for a limited edition run. It feels good to see companies like Threadless and Jones Soda teaming up and using their popularity to spread a great message. Although it’s just a bottle of soda it does help serve as small reminder of how extremely lucky we all are to even have the right to vote. We can decide who becomes the next president of the United States of America. Cheers to that!
According to a survey done by the National Confectioners Association (NCA), consumers are expected to spend about $2.18 billion on candy for Halloween. Looks like we’ve got the candy category covered.
But what are some other goolish goodies you can get your hands on this year? From pancakes, to brownies to spiced pumpkin seeds, check out these halloween-inspired foods, delicious now or any time of the year.
Frankenstein Mills - Aretha Frankenstein’s made from scratch recipe for light, fluffy pancakes. They claim these flapjacks are to die for.
Fat Witch - Scary good brownies that come in flavors like Red Witch (brownie with dried cherries), White Witch (white chocolate brownie), and Breakfast Witch (oatmeal, walnut and coffee on a little bit of brownie).
Superseedz - No carving or messy hands required. These punkin’ seeds are ready for munchin’. To satisfy both your sweet and savory tooth, they offer flavors like Sea Salt, Somewhat Spicy, Original Curry, and Sugar & Cinnamon.
The Thanksgiving edition of my favorite food mags arrived about 2 weeks ago, giving me ample time to peruse the recipes and start testing to see which will make the cut for the Thanksgiving menu this year. I have more than enough time to get recipes figured out, but turkey-time is now! If I want anything other than a Butterball on my Thanksgiving table, planning early is essential.
The past few years I’ve gone with the stately Bell and Evans Turkey that makes its way onto a silver platter and served at the White House every year. Each turkey is fed a diet that consits of corn, soy, vitamins and minerals, never any animal by-products. They’re free to roam, with plenty of fresh air and clean well water. Each house produces only one flock per year to avoid disease and the need for drugs. I’ve always been impressed with the quality and flavor.
Photo Courtesy of Curt Gibbs.
This year, I want to go one step further and order a heritage turkey - a variety of domestic turkey which retains historic characteristics that are no longer present in the majority of turkeys sold at supermarkets today. Heritage turkeys are physically capable of being raised in a manner that more closely matches the natural behavior and life cycle of wild turkeys.
Many people have never tasted a heritage turkey (myself included), since these breeds were displaced by the Broad-Breasted White Turkey in the 20th century. Anyone I’ve talked to that has actually tried a Heritage Turkey says the flavor will knock your socks off and beats any Broad-Breasted Whites aka Butterballs. They have a richer, more intense turkey flavor than commercial birds. One hallmark of the heritage turkey is that it mates according to nature, unlike the American Thanksgiving classic, the Broad-Breasted White, which has been bred for white meat and is so top-heavy it can’t walk or breed naturally. Sad huh?
Good Shepherd Turkey Ranch, based out of Lindsborg, Kansas is one of the few farmers in the country raising heritage turkeys and they sell them through their website. Not sure about availability, as I have not placed my order yet, but from the look of their site it seems that they are not sold out just yet. But watch out, I might just beat you to it. : )
All through elementary, middle and high school, I was a packer. My mom primarily (sometimes with my help) would pack my school lunch everyday. My tastes certainly weren’t as sophisticated then as they are now - but it was clear to me even then that corn dogs, pizza, grilled cheese sandwiches, and honeybuns (the crap they served at school) weren’t my idea of a desirable, much less palatable lunch.
The school lunch programs across the country need change - serious change. It inspires me to see people who are starting to make that happen. Ann Cooper, the director of the school lunch program in the Berkley school district, has made some big strides towards changing the way children learn about food and what they eat in school. She spoke at the TED Conference last year and her presentation was just recently published on their site. Check it out for an inspiring, more in depth look at the state of the school lunch programs and some of the ways she’s changing it for the better.
When I first learned about the La Cocina food incubator program, I thought to myself, man…what a good idea, why isn’t anyone else doing this? I guess I just wasn’t looking hard enough. After a little bit of research, I was pumped to find plenty of other food incubators that have popped up across the country to help small producers get off the ground.
From Texas to Vermont to Colorado, here are some of the incubators I stumbled across.
If you don’t read 101cookbooks, a food blog focused on super healthy recipes, you are seriously missing out. The blog, run by Heidi Swanson, is one of those blogs that I check on everyday to make sure I haven’t missed Heidi’s latest masterpiece. The pictures alone are some serious food porn and honestly make me want to jump out of my chair and head straight into the kitchen. Why I didn’t rush to make Nikki’s Healthy Cookie Recipe the moment I saw it is something I now sincerely regret. Yesterday, after nearly 3 weeks of simply thinking about making them, I finally took action. And they were fantastic.
How are they healthy you might ask? Well…instead of butter, sugar and eggs - oh and flour (yes I was skeptical too!) she uses substitutes like bananas, coconut oil, almond meal and oats. Then you throw in some really good dark chocolate chunks. I used Seth Ellis Chocolatiers 65% organic dark chocolate bar (not yet available on the site, hmm… sounds like I need to get on Rick about that! :). It tasted something like a banana bread/oatmeal/chocolate chip cookie and it was delish! I’m always looking for healthy recipes (fruit just doesn’t always cut it) to satisfy my often unrelenting sweet tooth. This one is certainly a keeper. Check out 101cookbooks for this recipe and of course many other fine examples of Heidi’s culinary work.
Last month at the Web 2.0 Expo, Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media, gave a sobering keynote about the vacuity of Web 2.0. After pointing out some of the most pressing issues facing our country, he chided that some of our best and brightest are working on web applications like SuperPoke and iBeer. O’Reilly went on to talk about companies that are leveraging technology to take on social and political challenges, while urging many more to ask the question of whether we’re working on the right things.
Here at Foodzie we’re working diligently to build a platform that provides every artisan food producer the opportunity to connect with their customer and make a living selling their food.
Artisan producers and foodies need a better way to connect. There are thousands of small food producers across the country who are incredibly skilled at making their products. Their challenge, however, is marketing their product to a wide range of consumers while still maintaining control of the growth of their business. For many of these producers, selling their products through a retailer means scaling up production in order to facilitate retail distribution requirements. This is in direct conflict with the way artisan foods are produced: with extremely high-quality ingredients, in small batches, with a great deal of personal attention. Selling through a middle man also means that there is one more person between the producer of the food and its consumer, which doesn’t always allow the consumer to understand where it comes from, who makes it, and how it’s connected to the world at large.
We’re really passionate about the future of food and we hope that our impact extends beyond the web and into the lives of many independent producers and growers.
*On a side note, O’Reilly Media is organizing the 5th Annual Web 2.0 Summit. This year’s conference will focus on opportunities where the web meets the real world to solve some of our most pressing issues. Speakers include Al Gore, Lance Armstrong, Michael Pollan and many other thought leaders.
Election day is right around the corner and instead of slammin’ a shot for every time the McCain camp says “Maverick”, why not indulge in a truffle? Check out these election-inspired chocolates from Moonstruck, an artisan chocolate maker in Portland, Oregon and the clever write-up about them on the Candy Blog.
There’s an inspiring story in the New York Times today entitled Uniting Around Food to Save an Ailing Town. Years ago the granite companies that supplied many jobs in Hardwick, VT decided to pick up and leave. But instead of letting the town fall apart, they’ve rallied together and determined that food is the future. They’ve collaborated to create new businesses and 75 to 100 new jobs.
There has been so much doom and gloom over the past few weeks with all the discussions about the future of our economy that it was a welcome change of pace to read about something so positive. I truly believe small businesses are the future and when they work together each business has a greater likelihood to succeed. The sum is undoubtedly greater than its parts.
I started thinking about many of the producers I’ve met that have that same collaborative attitude as the folks in Hardwick. Adam from Grafton Village Cheese wants to figure out a way to help promote other small producers in Vermont by shipping their products out of one location to help boost individual orders from multiple Vermont vendors. Christina from Kika’s Treats helps to promote other small producers in California by using their ingredients in her graham cracker treats and lists them all out on her site to give them the props they deserve.
Enabling these same type of actions in the digital world is important to us; we want to allow producers to collaborate on Foodzie and share their collective wisdom. Whether it’s sharing tips on where to source ingredients and shipping supplies or promoting other producer’s products that are complimentary to their own, I believe they will all be more successful if we provide them a way within our marketplace to do much of what they are already doing…and that’s working together.
Photo Courtesy of Crafster.org
Photo Courtesy of Curt Gibbs.
