Features

Food stamps: Real welfare queens live in Manhattan

Found by on Wednesday, 9th February 2011
Indiana Daily Student
» Indiana Daily Student
Hands up, on closer reading this turned out to be a piece about US security – but it’s still a great piece of writing with a charming headline
“Food stamp usage in the United States has increased 14 percent from the last fiscal year, leaving 43 million individuals, one in seven
Americans, largely reliant on the underfunded government program,
according to the Department of Agriculture. No doubt the recent spike in food stamp recipients, a large portion of whom are single parents trying to raise their children, will most likely cause right-wing politicians and television hosts to scrutinize the American welfare program with party lines, such as ?creating a culture of dependence? and ?welfare queens driving around in Cadillacs.?”
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Cheese and Biscuits

Found by on Tuesday, 8th February 2011
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, Knightsbridge
» Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, Knightsbridge
Obviously this review needs no introduction and yet I’m feeling the need to write one and include the words “meat fruit”
“If there existed a movie that all your best friends loved, had received rave reviews from every movie critic on the planet, and had smashed all box-office records, would you be interested in seeing it? The answer seems obvious – of course you would, even out of sheer curiosity, and although there would be a risk your inflated expectations didn’t quite match up to the reality, you wouldn’t blame anyone but yourself, you’d probably still have a good time, and anyway what do you have to lose?”
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Lyfe Kitchen, Chicago-Based Healthy Fast Food Chain, Prepares For Launch With Former McDonald’s Execs

Found by on Tuesday, 8th February 2011
Huffington Post
» Huffington Post
“Two veteran executives from McDonald’s are starting a restaurant chain to revolutionize the fast-food industry – by serving food that isn’t harmful to your health. Lyfe Kitchen, a Chicago-based company whose name is short for “Love Your Food Everyday,” will be spearheaded by former Golden Arches President and Chief Operating Officer Mike Roberts, and former communications boss Mike Donahue, as the Chicago Tribune reports.”
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Blue Nun – the world’s top-selling wine for 30 years – gets a makeover to tempt the female palate

Found by on Tuesday, 8th February 2011
Daily Mail
» Daily Mail
“It was the height of sophistication. . . or a byword for tackiness. Blue Nun was the world?s top-selling wine between the 1950s and 1980s, but became the butt of jokes and fell out of fashion. It was the wine of choice for the appalling, cheesy, TV chat show host Alan Partridge. However, it survived all the put-downs and even won the approval of style icon Victoria Beckham, who might be assumed to prefer Cristal champagne.”
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Rise of UK’s only school of artisan food based in Notts

Found by on Tuesday, 8th February 2011
BBC Magazine
» BBC Magazine
“The Welbeck Estate in North Nottinghamshire is home to the UK’s only school of artisan food. Since it opened in 2006, aspiring food makers have been learning centuries old techniques for making cheese and bread. The school started when the estate was looking for a baker – eventually finding one in the southern hemisphere. Director Gareth Kennedy said: “It became very clear to us that there wasn’t a supply of bakers in the UK suited to the emerging artisan skills.”Rise of UK’s only school of artisan food based in Notts
”
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Does This Rabbit Taste Like Tires?

Found by on Tuesday, 8th February 2011
Slate
» Slate
Road pizza, YUM!
“It really was a good-looking rabbit. Shiny coat, sleek body, glassy eyes – only its mangled back leg hinted at its violent cause of death. My husband Peter and I had come across this rabbit on a trip to a bird sanctuary in Gridley, Calif. It was lying in the middle of a narrow country road, stretched stiffly across the pavement; Peter swerved slightly to avoid its body.”
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Food TV: are we being served?

Found by on Monday, 7th February 2011
Tim Hayward, Guardian's Word Of Mouth
» Tim Hayward, Guardian's Word Of Mouth
Good to see what happens when a popular food writer stops scoffing…
“A couple of weeks ago I posted a piece here on a new TV programme, Michel Roux’s Service. I wanted to kick off a discussion about UK service standards and was mildly scathing about the BBC’s decision to make another programme in the “reality” genre – promoting it around the “personal journeys” of real people and “quest” of a celebrity. I have to admit, having been glued to the Sky+ for every episode, that I was wrong. Of course, I completely stand by the assertion that whoever penned the deathless line “Michel Roux sets out on a personal mission to train eight young people as front-of-house superstars” on the BBC website should get 12 points on their Artistic Licence and have their typing fingers cut off, but the programme itself was brilliant from start to finish.”
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On Location: LAUSD puts celebrity chef Jamie Oliver on no-film diet

Found by on Sunday, 6th February 2011
Los Angeles Times
» Los Angeles Times
La La Land is teaching Jamie what it means to live without an access-all-areas pass
“British chef Jamie Oliver’s food revolution is giving LAUSD officials a case of indigestion. The Los Angeles Unified School District has suspended all filming of reality TV shows in district schools after a standoff with the celebrity chef, who had been filming his ABC show “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” at West Adams Preparatory High School in South Los Angeles for the last two weeks. This week the district denied Oliver’s license to film at another school, Manual Arts Senior High School, which, like West Adams, is operated by MLA Partners Schools, an organization that runs schools in South L.A. under a performance contract with LAUSD. A person close to the production said that district Supt. Ramon Cortines would approve the permit for Oliver’s show only if he could guarantee that he knew everything about the production and that it would paint the district in a positive light.”
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Why don’t we drink pigs’ milk and eat turkey eggs?

Found by on Sunday, 6th February 2011
Stefan Gates, BBC Food blog
» Stefan Gates, BBC Food blog
“I am OMNIVOREMAN! I see it as my genetically programmed evolutionary duty to eat everything that I possibly can, from rotten walrus and palm weevils to insects and hamster food. The ability to eat pretty much anything has been vital to the survival of the human race. When certain foods like fruits became scarce, we were able to turn to others such as roots – by comparison the koala eats eucalyptus and little else, so when eucalyptus becomes scarce, the koala dies. With the world population expected to reach nine billion by 2050, we desperately need new resource-efficient food sources to sustain the human race, so exploring and experimenting is still vital to our survival. So why are there some foods that must be available, but which we never seem to eat? Here are my top five…”
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Working A Kitchen Shift At #meateasy

Found by on Saturday, 5th February 2011
Food Stories
» Food Stories
The truth behind dem burgers…
“On Wednesday night I worked a shift in the #MEATEASY kitchen. Not so much as a cook, they already have a team of chefs; what they really needed was a Kitchen Gimp. I embraced the role. The structure of the kitchen goes like this: you?ve got your Grill Boss who obviously manages the grill, your Fryer in charge of um, frying stuff and then your Burger Bed Prepper plus various other brilliant people in between. At the bottom of the food chain, you?ve got your Kitchen Gimp. That?s me. Turns out I was born to play the role and I fully entered The Zone.”
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