...more recent posts
i guess i am not a vegan, skinny.....(nytimes)
The Maggots in Your Mushrooms
By E. J. LEVY
Published: February 12, 2009
THE Georgia peanut company at the center of one of our nation’s worst food-contamination scares has officially reached a revolting new low: a recent inspection by the Food and Drug Administration discovered that the salmonella-tainted plant was also home to mold and roaches.
You may be grossed out, but insects and mold in our food are not new. The F.D.A. actually condones a certain percentage of “natural contaminants” in our food supply — meaning, among other things, bugs, mold, rodent hairs and maggots.
In its (falsely) reassuringly subtitled booklet “The Food Defect Action Levels: Levels of Natural or Unavoidable Defects in Foods That Present No Health Hazards for Humans,” the F.D.A.’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition establishes acceptable levels of such “defects” for a range of foods products, from allspice to peanut butter.
Among the booklet’s list of allowable defects are “insect filth,” “rodent filth” (both hair and excreta pellets), “mold,” “insects,” “mammalian excreta,” “rot,” “insects and larvae” (which is to say, maggots), “insects and mites,” “insects and insect eggs,” “drosophila fly,” “sand and grit,” “parasites,” “mildew” and “foreign matter” (which includes “objectionable” items like “sticks, stones, burlap bagging, cigarette butts, etc.”).
Tomato juice, for example, may average “10 or more fly eggs per 100 grams [the equivalent of a small juice glass] or five or more fly eggs and one or more maggots.” Tomato paste and other pizza sauces are allowed a denser infestation — 30 or more fly eggs per 100 grams or 15 or more fly eggs and one or more maggots per 100 grams.
Canned mushrooms may have “over 20 or more maggots of any size per 100 grams of drained mushrooms and proportionate liquid” or “five or more maggots two millimeters or longer per 100 grams of drained mushrooms and proportionate liquid” or an “average of 75 mites” before provoking action by the F.D.A.
The sauerkraut on your hot dog may average up to 50 thrips. And when washing down those tiny, slender, winged bugs with a sip of beer, you might consider that just 10 grams of hops could have as many as 2,500 plant lice. Yum.
Giving new meaning to the idea of spicing up one’s food, curry powder is allowed 100 or more bug bits per 25 grams; ground thyme up to 925 insect fragments per 10 grams; ground pepper up to 475 insect parts per 50 grams. One small shaker of cinnamon could have more than 20 rodent hairs before being considered defective.
Peanut butter — that culinary cause célèbre — may contain approximately 145 bug parts for an 18-ounce jar; or five or more rodent hairs for that same jar; or more than 125 milligrams of grit.
In case you’re curious: you’re probably ingesting one to two pounds of flies, maggots and mites each year without knowing it, a quantity of insects that clearly does not cut the mustard, even as insects may well be in the mustard.
The F.D.A. considers the significance of these defects to be “aesthetic” or “offensive to the senses,” which is to say, merely icky as opposed to the “mouth/tooth injury” one risks with, for example, insufficiently pitted prunes. This policy is justified on economic grounds, stating that it is “impractical to grow, harvest or process raw products that are totally free of non-hazardous, naturally occurring, unavoidable defects.”
The most recent edition of the booklet (it has been revised and edited six times since first being issued in May 1995) states that “the defect levels do not represent an average of the defects that occur in any of the products — the averages are actually much lower.” Instead, it says, “The levels represent limits at which F.D.A. will regard the food product ‘adulterated’ and subject to enforcement action.”
Bugs in our food may not be so bad — many people in the world practice entomophagy — but these harmless hazards are a reminder of the less harmless risks we run with casual regulation of our food supply. For good reason, the F.D.A. is focused on peanut butter, which the agency is considering reclassifying as high risk, like seafood, and subjecting it to special safety regulations. But the unsettling reality is that despite food’s cheery packaging and nutritional labeling, we don’t really know what we’re putting into our mouths.
Soup merits little mention among the products listed in the F.D.A.’s booklet. But, given the acceptable levels for contaminants in other foods, one imagines that the disgruntled diner’s cri de coeur — “Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup!” — would be, to the F.D.A., no cause for complaint.
E. J. Levy is a professor of creative writing at the University of Missouri.
take a look at this cool wylie dish from opinionated about dining
http://www.opinionatedaboutdining.com/Home.php?homepage_page=2
Italy bans kebabs and foreign food from cities (uk times)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article5622156.ece
We ate at Babbo last night, warm lamb's tongue vinaigrette with hedgehog mushrooms and a 3 minute egg - delicious. pig foot milanese w/ rice beans and arugula, beef check ravioli - yum, and grilled quail with scorzerona and saba(grape must?), Barolo wine. very happy
Hey MB, jiml, and sarah: do you have any thoughts about your meal at Allen & Delancy? Worth it?
two places i want to eat most
Michel Bras http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/dining/11gard.html
and Alinea
What is Dirt Candy?
What is dirt candy? Vegetables, of course. When you eat a vegetable you’re eating little more than dirt that’s been transformed by plenty of sunshine and rain into something that’s full of flavor – candy from the dirt. Dirt Candy. It’s also the name of my restaurant, which opened about three months ago, after a long, long battle with the forces of evil.
I’ve worked in many of the vegetarian restaurants in New York City. I went to the Natural Gourmet Cooking School, was a chef’s teaching assistant at Angelica’s, managed the kitchen at the late Terra 47, was the first chef at Moby’s teahouse, Teany, went from being a line chef to chef de cuisine at Pure Food and Wine and was the Chef de Cuisine at Heirloom (R.I.P.). I also consulted at Blossom and Broadway East (a long time ago). With Dirt Candy I’m trying to do a vegetarian restaurant my way. Most vegetarian restaurants are lifestyle-driven, not chef-driven, and their aim is to present healthy food that conforms to vegetarian principles, often by serving basic meat recipes with soy products replacing the meat portion of the dish.
I don’t care about your health. And I don’t care about your politics either. But I do care about cooking vegetables. Most of the best vegetarian dishes I’ve eaten have been at non-vegetarian restaurants. The gnocchi at Il Bagatto, the vinegar potatoes at Grand Sichuan, the fried watercress salad at Sripraphai (they’ll lose the chicken and shrimp if you ask). I’ve always wanted to work at a place that put cooking vegetables and doing amazing things with them first, and put lifestyle, health and political choices second. It didn’t take me long to realize that if I wanted a place like that I’d have to build it myself, so I did. Just as BLT Fish is dedicated to seafood, and Peter Luger’s is dedicated to steak, Dirt Candy is dedicated to vegetables. It’s taken us almost a year to get here, but we’re finally open, so either sign up for our mailing list (here) or keep checking back to this blog for updates about menu changes and news.
Was lucky enough to be taken to Gotham Bar and Grill last night. I've actually never been before (also Union Sq. Cafe, but that's another post.) Food was great. The room is very nice if a little bit 80's. But what really got me was the crowd. Wednesday night at 8:00 and the place was rocking. Completely packed. And it ain't cheap. Good for them.
any one else doing the neti pot thing?
edible landscaping
Where was that coffee making thread? I can't find it so I'll start a new one here. We decided to stick with our french press and forgo the technivorm mostly due to price. But does anyone know anything about the aerobie?
chip of the month
ginger tea
ginger juice
ginger smoothie alternate version
Why we should all eat more veggies
1) Individual Health.....While you might be the lucky one that can eat meat 10 times a day and live to 90, its pretty universal that the more you flex in the plant world the more healthy you are.
2) Planets Health........Its amazing how much goes into making meat, mining the ocean floor just its right, etc etc
I have made it s far in 09 doing just about 5% animal (dairy/meats), I love my pork, bay scallops, heritage chickens and hope we have some to share with my grankids if I have any and can live long enough to MEAT them:>)
AMSTERDAM, N.Y. (AP) -- After he finished his lobster dinner, an upstate New York man apparently was still hungry for seafood so he swapped the lobster shell for crab legs -- and now he faces a petit larceny charge.
Montgomery County Sheriff's deputies said a 57-year-old man brought back a reassembled lobster shell to his local Price Chopper store and claimed the crustacean was spoiled.
The store manager was about to let him trade the lobster for a $27 bag of king crab legs when he discovered the lobster was just a shell. Deputies said the man ran from the store clutching the crab legs when he was confronted.
Deputies said the man had already devoured the crab legs when they caught up with him at home. He was given an appearance ticket to answer the larceny charge in court.
Finding Out Where Your Food's From: The Food Map
There's room at the Inn. We've got reservations at the Inn at Little Washington. I was told that gentlemen often choose to wear jackets, but there's no formal dress code. Fortunately, the party will not include any gentlemen. Ample slots were available for a 4-top on multiple nights. Economy? Upstaged by events Big Washington?