Thursday, January 28, 2010

Kimchi Festival IN THE NEWS AGAIN! (boston.com)

In Dishing, her regular blog on boston.com, Boston Globe food reporter Devra First writes about the Greater Boston Kimchi Festival:

Kimchi: the new cupcake? So posit the folks behind the upcoming Greater Boston Kimchi Festival. Kimchi is everywhere these days, though perhaps not quite as ubiquitous as cupcakes, and I say yay. For the fermented spicy cabbage that is a mainstay of the Korean diet is one of my favorite foods…

For her full blog, click here:

http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/food/dishing/2010/01/kimchi_the_new_1.html

Greater Boston Kimchi Festival details:

Date and time: March 21, 2010, 3PM-7PM
Location: Theodore Parker Unitarian Universalist Church, Boston
Press inquiries: kimchi-press@lactoferment.com
For more information: kimchi-info@lactoferment.com
Web: http://kimchi.lactoferment.com/

Monday, January 18, 2010

T.W. Food: Totally Local (this Wednesday)

It's winter. Something is falling out of the sky here in Boston. Is it crushed ice? Grab your cocktail glass! Whatever it is, it freezes solid as soon as it hits the ground, or your windshield, or your dog.

How on earth can anyone eat local food in Boston at this time of year?

Well, I have blogged about the winter farmers' markets and some of the food events that are happening around town…

But here's the easiest way to eat local food:

Go to T.W. Food in Cambridge for their Totally Local dinner on Wednesday night (January 20th).

Most restaurants boasting "local food" give you some local vegetables, or some local meat, or maybe some locally-made pasta or something. T.W. Food goes way beyond this. Not only are all of the meat and vegetables local…but so is the wheat that went into the bread. So are all of the sweeteners (honey, maple syrup, and fruit—no sugar to be seen). So are the cooking fats (butter, for the most part; there are no olive trees in New England).

In other words: Totally Local.

So if you are curious to see what a brilliant chef can do with local ingredients in the dead of winter, now's your chance to find out.

(In the interests of full disclosure, I must reveal that T.W. Food is my favorite restaurant in Boston, and that the food there is awesome.)

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Greater Boston Kimchi Festival IN THE NEWS

The West Roxbury - Roslindale Bulletin has published an article about the Greater Boston Kimchi Festival and Workshop. Click on the images below to see the article. Event info follows.







January 24, 2010, 1PM-3PM: Kimchi Workshop
March 21, 2010, 3PM-7PM: Greater Boston Kimchi Festival
Location: Theodore Parker Unitarian Universalist Church, Boston.
Press inquiries: kimchi-press@lactoferment.com

Registration for workshop & other inquiries: kimchi-info@lactoferment.com
Web: http://kimchi.lactoferment.com/

 

Lionette's Market Sold; Jamey's "Last Diatribe"

Lionette's Market—the Boston retailer offering the greatest variety of local, grass-fed meats, plus excellent assortments of local cheeses and produce—has been sold. The new owners, the Otto family, plan to continue to carry the same sorts of products.

Jamey Lionette announced the sale via email. Along with the announcement, he included a "diatribe" (his word). If you like the flavor of his writing, you can read more in Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed, which also includes excellent essays by Prince Charles, Carlo Petrini (the founder of Slow Food), Vandana Shiva (an outspoken food activist), and others. Here's the last bit of Jamey's diatribe:
We must pay the real prices for real food.  Cheap food, like our decadent-climate-burning-lifestyles will be gone in our lifetime.  How?  Either because our planet is no longer suitable for humans to live on it, because of civil unrest, or because we decide to live a sustainable lifestyle instead of a decadent one.  We know the first option will happen, and soon.  As much as we want to deny or ignore it, we are in the 11th hour in our planet’s future with climate change and pollution.  As for the second option, we saw a small glimpse of that almost two years ago when there was civil unrest and food riots in 3 dozen countries around the world.  As for the latter, let’s hope we can get it together.  It seems to be the best option.  But for sure, no one will every live a more decadent lifestyle and eat as much crap food as our present society is.  The question is how will it be stopped?  — Jamey Lionette

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Boycott Forbes Magazine

Fact is stranger than fiction. I couldn't have made this up. Forbes Magazine just named Monsanto "Company of the Year" for 2009:

http://www.monsanto.com/monsanto_today/2010/company_of_the_year.asp

The award came in the same issue as this extraordinarily shallow article, which reads like a press release:

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0118/americas-best-company-10-gmos-dupont-planet-versus-monsanto.html

(Is that journalism?)

In my opinion, Monsanto poses the greatest risk to our food supply of any corporate or governmental entity on the planet. Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed, edited by Vandana Shiva, is an excellent collection of essays that explores some of the issues quite eloquently, and from a few different perspectives. Or, for those who prefer a video format, I offer The World According to Monsanto:



If you don't have time for the book or the video, you can search the Internet for monsanto is evil and see what you get.

I'm already boycotting Monsanto to the best of my ability, so it's time to boycott Forbes.



Or perhaps it's long past time to boycott Forbes. Here's the opening paragraph of this article written by Forbes editor Michael Noer in their 8/22/2006 issue:
Guys: a word of advice. Marry pretty women or ugly ones. Short ones or tall ones. Blondes or brunettes. Just, whatever you do, don't marry a woman with a career.
It doesn't even matter to me what the rest of the article says, or what the context is. Opening like this is utterly beyond the pale, even though it was no doubt intended to be "controversial" or "provocative". For the magazine to have published it says quite a bit about their attitude. And for them not to have acknowledged their mistake, but instead to have dignified it with a "counterpoint" written by a woman, says even more.

Please cancel my subscription to your magazine. And I will no longer be advertising with you. Thank you very much.