| Eat To Live: Are food agencies healthy?
WASHINGTON, March 1 (UPI) -- Remember the contaminated spinach health scare? How many of you are still suspicious enough of the stuff that you haven't gone back to buying it? Another incident has so far involved more than 300 people in 39 states who got salmonella poisoning from Peter Pan peanut butter and Wal-Mart's Great Value brand. The warning affects jars with the product code 2111, manufactured at ConAgra's Sylvester, Ga., plant. If we relied more on local producers we could look in the eye while buying their wares, chances are we would be less in danger of falling sick from food. (Of course, it would mean giving up peanut butter unless you made your own -- not hard with a batch of peanuts in their shells, a food processor and some nimble-fingered children, but time consuming).
Paula Deen raises $200000 for local cause
The Foodbank of the Virginia Peninsula found the perfect recipe for a successful fundraiser - bring Paula Deen to town.
The Food Network celebrity cook helped the organization raise more than $200,000 when she appeared Feb. 10 at the Hampton Roads Convention Center in Hampton. More than 5,000 people turned out for two sold-out shows, said Foodbank Development Director Loretta Jones.
Deen served up her famous Southern wisecracks and cooked favorite foods such as cream biscuits with ham butter, phyllo-wrapped asparagus and herb-crusted pork loin. Dessert was Chocolate Bundles with Chocolate Ganache, which Deen calls her "ooey-gooey chocolate cake." Premium ticket holders got a full meal, while the majority of the audience was served a biscuit and dessert prepared by the Embassy Suites kitchen.
Earth it up
In a small village in Italy, on a lovely hillside farm, cows eat the grass, maybe a little clover, perhaps a few wild strawberries. Farmers or artisan cheesemakers make the milk from those cows into cheese. Hops are grown in a nearby field and that farmer or a brewer use the hops to make beer. Maybe there's a vineyard nearby also and grapes are pressed and fermented into a rich red wine. Olive trees on the outskirts of the farm yield tart green fruit, and there's honeycomb to go with it from the bees flying around in the sun. And oh, there are truffles the farmer's dog found under the oak tree. These delicious products of the land are from the same water, sun, and earth, the same climate and geography. Some feel that the earth and atmosphere that go into handcrafted delicacies like beer, wine and cheese is an integral part of the quality and flavors and that's one reason the big trend now is to eat and drink that which is made nearby and why the big buzzword in the food and wine world right now is "terroir." While the term was originally primarily applied to wine, it's now being applied to beer, cheese, fruits and bread and I'm sure many others to come.
Celebrities Commit to Supporting American Red Cross in 2007
Kristen Bell, Brooks & Dunn, Miley Cyrus, Gary Dourdan, Vivica A. Fox, Dwayne The Rock Johnson, Susan Lucci, Kellie Pickler, Raven-Symon, Forest Whitaker, Bradley Whitford, Among Others Join 6th Annual Celebrity Cabinet To Raise Awareness And Funds For American Red Cross InitiativesWASHINGTON, Thursday, March 01, 2007 The American Red Cross unveils it's sixth annual National Celebrity Cabinet with twenty new members, including American Idol alum Kellie Pickler, Golden Globe winner and Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker, Emmy award winner Bradley Whitford, and Veronica Mars star Kristen Bell. In addition, the 2007 National Celebrity Cabinet will include 30 alumni, such as Jamie Lee Curtis, Marcia Gay Harden, Heidi Klum, Tim McGraw, Julianne Moore, Elisabeth Rohm, and Rascal Flatts, among others.The 2007 American National Celebrity Cabinet will work to promote awareness of Red Cross services in a variety of ways, such as taping public service announcements; donating their time, money and blood; feeding victims of disaster; and generally lending a hand or a hug to those in need.
Aldi to open in Worcester
SHOPPERS in Worcester will get an early Easter boost this year, with the news that Aldi is opening its first store in the Faithful City. The cut-price supermarket chain has finalised a date for the opening of a new store on the old Courts furnishing shop in Pheasant Street, near Lowesmoor. The site, which was given approval by the city council last year, will open its doors on Thursday, March 29. .
Delicious memories
Each and every one of us can remember a food-focused time - a holiday dinner, an anniversary, a birthday party - that was special, either because it approached perfection or because something bizarre marked the occasion. That culinary history bears preserving. Author James Salter and his wife, Kay, a journalist and playwright, have done just that in a book that will inspire lovers of food to attend more closely to those times and places they enjoy good things to eat. Think of it as "foodie scrapbooking," and seriously consider picking up a copy of the Salters' recent "Life Is Meals - A Food Lover's Book of Days" to get you started. That said, you really can begin your own food journal with nothing more than the suggestion of how it's done. Be advised that to get it as right as these two have will take time.
Lecture to Focus on Connections among food, planet and immunity
Dr. Joseph Olejak, chiropractor and nutritional consultant, and founder of Delmar Wellness Center, will give a lecture titled "Empty Harvest: Connecting the Dots Between Our Planet, Our Food, and Our Immunity," at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 1, in Gannett Auditorium, Palamountain Hall. Admission is free and open to the public. Olejak has been combining his knowledge of therapeutic nutrition and holistic therapies for well over a decade. Trained in the U.K. and the U.S., he earned his degree in chiropractic from Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa. His clinical focus is on contexual healing - the integration of the whole. Olejak’s talk is the final event in Skidmore’s week-long series focusing on eating disorders, coordinated by the Eating Disorder Awareness Group, a branch of Skidmore Nutrition Action Council (SNAC).
I wonder how tulip trees survive outside of Eden
The calendar says March, and once again the tulip tree out by my mailbox is acting like a 4-year-old girl, eager to throw off her jacket and dress herself for spring in bright, frilly attire. She's putting on her lavender-pink blooms already, not even pausing to consider that one freezing March night will leave them in ugly black tatters. This happens every March, sometimes even in late February. The tulip tree is hungry for a taste of spring, so it dives in without thinking of the consequence. The consequence is that every year we watch the blooms die a horrid death just a day or two after their coming-out party. If the silly tree had only waited a couple of weeks, we could have enjoyed its finery for a good long time. In the back yard, the fig trees are more practical.
|
