Frozen Foreshadowing?

I LOL’d when I pulled this out of the freezer at my parents’ house tonight.  Could any product have a name that better fits the current state of the food industry than this?  Not unless it was bagged spinach called “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Lethal”.

Thankfully, Blue Bunny’s Peanut Butter Panic hadn’t done the complicated food chain tango with the Peanut Corporation of America so we could eat it without wondering if we should also be making funeral plans.  And it tasted pretty good, too.

Not the same

Girl Guide Biscuits in Australia

We’re in the thick of Girl Scout cookie season in the U.S. In fact, my article about them ran in today’s San Jose Mercury News food section along with the orginal Girl Scout cookie recipe.

I spent six months of my life researching Girl Scout cookies for my Masters of Gastronomy dissertation, and during that time I never got to eat a Girl Scout cookie for inspiration since I was in Australia and no one, not even my own mother, was kind enough to send a box to me. 

My husband did bring home two packages of  Girl Guide biscuits which just aren’t the same.  They’re good, they’re just not Girl Scout cookies.  There are only two kinds, shortbread and shortbread with a chocolate coated bottom and Australians aren’t barking mad for them like we Americans are for Girl Scout cookies.  In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find any mention of them anywhere in newspapers, on TV, or in general conversation.  I was as shocked as anyone to see this display– with nary a Girl Guide in sight–outside of a store in Glenelg last winter.

So America, don’t get complacent about your cookies.  Don’t let them become just another lame fundraiser kids have to do so that they wind up on the sidewalk outside of a tourist trap store next to a bin of koala and kangaroo socks.  Girl Scout cookies deserve better than that.

Define “Farmers’ Market”

Some people apparently have a pretty loose definition of a farmers’ market.  In my head, the name implies that, you know, actual farmers might be there selling things that came from the ground or off of trees– something that requires the seller of such goods to have some sort of contact with the earth.  I think the photo below is a pretty good representation of what one might expect to see at a place called a farmers’ market.

So, you can imagine my disappointment when I went to a “farmers’ market” in a posh Arizona neighborhood (Scottsdale) recently to find that there were no farmers there.  I wish I had taken photos to show the paucity of agricultural products at this so-called “farmers’ market”, but the whole scene was so uninspiring it never occured to me to pull it out. 

 I saw lots of jewelry, clothing and knick-knacks but NOT ONE thing even remotely resembling fresh fruit or vegetables unless you count the knit scarves the color of tomatoes and eggplant.  I even jovially asked the scarf stallholder if there was any actual food at the market and she did tell me that “the farmer” wasn’t there today.  I thought, “THE farmer? Meaning just one guy?”  Then definitely don’t call it a Farmers’ Market (note emphasis on the plural). 

She also helpfully pointed out the stalls selling chocolate, salsa, pasta sauce and olive oil.  At least it was food.  But even the olive oil was a bit disappointing.  All of it was imported- not from California-but Australia and Spain.  More disappointing still was finding out later in the week that there actually is some locally grown and produced olive oil in the Phoenix area, so why wasn’t it at this market instead?

My point isn’t to harp on this particular market.  I’ve found this lazy defintion of a farmers’ market in other places (like Wichita, KS in the prime growing season last year).  The point is, it shouldn’t be called a farmers’ market if you can’t buy fresh produce there.  Further to the point, the people who run these markets and those of us who shop at them should demand it.  Otherwise, many reasons for a having a farmers’ market (i.e. supporting local farmers, providing healthier food, providing a sense of place and seasonality) are rendered null and void and we might as well head back inside to the supermarket.

Food Allergies: The truth is out there

I’ve seen a couple of really interesting things about food allergies in the past 24 hours (in the NY Times and on Ruhlman’s blog) which confirm the sneaking suspicion I’ve had about them for a few years now: that they are often misdiagnosed and have something to do with our ridiculous standards of cleanliness.

I certainly would never deny that food allergies exist and can be dangerous– even deadly.  But I feel like, as a society, we’re out there almost looking for something to be wrong with our kids.  In the ’90s it was ADHD. In the ’00s it’s food allergies.  When kids go to school, the essential supplies have become backpack, pencils, crayons and a list of foods they can’t have.  It’s crazy.

I just hope these two articles are the start of something bigger– a wake up call to parents who are doing their kids more harm than good by trying to keep them excessively germ free and who go looking for trouble at the allergist because everybody else is doing it.