Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 61

weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

What's old is new again — Fin de siècle theme edition!

• You can pick an apple of a city tree! Seattle is building the country's first permaculture food forest. The city’s new park will be filled with edible plants, and everything from pears to herbs will be free for the taking. "People worried, ‘What if someone comes and takes all the blueberries?’ That could very well happen, but maybe someone needed those blueberries. We look at it this way—if we have none at the end of blueberry season, then it means we’re successful.”

• Kids are eating food worth eating! Local seafood has started to move boat to school in Oregon. "Right now, Sobell said, grants are key to making more local food available to schools. But even if they run out, she said she hopes the schools will keep their relationships with producers and incorporate some local food purchases into their budgets. 'This kicks it off and gives people new connections," she said. "Portland schools can still serve local, natural beef even if it's only once in awhile.'"

• Glamorous ladies of the evening ride lobster-driven stove chariots! Well, in our dreams and in the fabulous image above from Retronaut they do.

• If you've ever wanted to own a piece of French hospitality history, now is your chance. Legendary Parisian Hôtel de Crillon to Auction 3,500 Items "So what might you pick up? How about a bar created by César in 1982 (valued up to €12,000 [$15,424]) or a Philippe Starck for Baccarat “Dark Super” console table from the restaurant Les Ambassadeurs  (€15,000)[$19,280]?  Trop cher? Then perhaps a Christofle mahogany and silver-plate dessert trolley (€3,000 to €4,000 [$3,856 to $5,141]), a molded crystal and silver plated Lalique light fixture (€3,000 to €4,000 [$3,856 to $5,141]) or a large wood veneer, gilt bronze and marquetry Louis XVI–style desk from the lobby (€300 to €400 [$386 to $514]) would be just the thing."

• The Dead Rabbit in New York takes retro cocktails to a new level as an Irish bar based on three historic worlds of bartending and a gang of immigrant ruffians, with punchbowls lining the shelves, and teacups made to protect gentleman's waxed mustaches.

• And the finale to our edition, the excellent Portlandia Season Two anthem, The Dreams of the 1890's Are alive in Portland (video).

Go forth, drink bitters and ferment something!

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 57

weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

• From one of our favorite blogs, Laughing Squid "Malaysian artist Hong Yi has embarked on a project to create a piece of artwork out of food for every day in March. The results so far are quite excellent and range from reproductions of classic works to original creations. You can follow her project on Instagram."

• Britons are being urged to eat more wild venison as part of land conservation. "Deer populations are going through the roof, there is a population explosion and they are causing problems." They also happen to be delicious. 

• And you can conserve land in your own driveway with a home aquaponics systems. If Kijani Grows in West Oakland can do it, so can you. Check out this video.

• Jewish restaurateurs are revisiting Chinese dishes — and schmaltzing them up "There’s a Borscht Belt shtick about Jews and Chinese food,” he quips. “My personal joke is that I learned to speak Yiddish in the Chinese restaurant from my customers.” 

• And if you want even more Jewish-Asian fusion, try A Seder Spiced With Indian Flavors.

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 55

 weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

• Mermaids who ride lobster, and other glamorous menu art of decades past from Smithsonian Magazine. And if you're wondering what an oyster loaf is, read here. Hint, it's from San Francisco.
  

• AUA’s Resources Working Group is working with the Chicago Urban Agriculture Mapping Project to inventory and map the thousands of urban agriculture projects (urban farms, community gardens, residential vegetable gardens, school gardens, etc.) underway across the Chicago metro area.

• New web service Feastly says it's aiming to be the Airbnb of the food world, creating alternatives to impersonal dining the way that the travel rental company has created an alternative market to generic hotels. "We want to be in every city in the world so wherever you're traveling, you can find a home-cooked meal," Danny Harris, co-founder of Feastly, tells The Salt.

• One of our new favorite ingredients was highlighted in Tasting Table this week in a profile of Chef Joshua Skenes of Saison in San Francisco and his obsession with seaweed. Stay tuned for lots more on cooking with seaweed in our latest culinary project, New Gaelic Cuisine, a cookbook featuring the artists and ingredients of Scotland.

• Food waste, the eco-issue we all feel participate in, but it might be easier than you think to not throw out so much. Food writer Louisa Kasdon explains. "You know “sell-by” dates? Also known as “use-by” dates, or the more euphemistic “enjoy-by” dates. Whatever you call them, it turns out most of them are marketing malarkey with a slim relationship to ensuring that food is actually fresh and safe to eat."

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 53

weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

 

• Granny among the apples (above). French photographer Cerise Doucède creates photos of people posing amidst flying objects.

• Poetry among the cheese, New York City cheesemongers get funky with their ripe prose. A favorite from Bedford Cheese Shop: "Andante Dairy Nocturne Icelandic ponies. Japanese cats on the Internet. Yawning puppies. Toddlers who give each other hugs. Goats climbing all over everything. Pink and green macaroons. Red pandas. Sparkly nail polish. Do you get where I’m going? Cute things. This cheese is so perfect and cute and delicious you just want to marry it. Or buy one and eat it."

• Urban farming — it's not just for hipsters. In Nairobi, it's an important source of food and income, as PRI reports (audio clip and video).

• If you're a US city-dweller looking to grow your own food, where to get your urban farming supplies? A list: Portland, OR http://www.urbanfarmstore.com, Brooklyn, NY http://bigcityfarmsupply.com, Manhattan http://www.cityhydroponic.com, St. Paul, MN http://eggplantsupply.com/Home.htm, Seattle, WA http://www.seattlefarmsupply.com/?page_id=2, and Oakland, CA http://www.3rdsthydroponics.com

• In London, a new urban one-stop Farm & Shop

• Want to get even closer to the earth? Try the newest restaurant ingredient (at least in Tokyo) — dirt. Dirt and potato soup, dirt ristotto, dirt ice cream...

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 45

weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

• Pop culture food spin-offs abound with two new cook books. There's 50 Shades of Chicken (right) for when you feel the need to truss something, and The Unofficial Downton Abbey Cookbook for when you want to indulge your landed gentry side.

• Shining light of the urban food movement Growing Power has announced a $5 million grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to fund “community food centers” aimed at relieving hunger in five of the nation’s poorest areas: Detroit; New Orleans; Forest City, Ark.; Shelby, Miss.; and Taos, N.M. As Grist reported: "Growing Power’s urban projects are frequently the subject of news reports, but the rural ones are rarely described. In the case of the Mississippi Delta, for instance, Allen says, 'Most of the land has gone over to industrial agriculture. It’s devastated those towns, because most of the people used to have their own farms.' Now, he says the area is plagued by drugs, much in the way many urban areas are. And that’s all the more reason why Growing Power’s model can make a difference."

• Rural food deserts really do exist. There may be wide open spaces, but not a decent grocery store in sight. “There’s a lot of people that don’t eat well here...There’s a lot of poor people, too.”

• Fishing in New England is declared a disaster: “Despite fishermen’s adherence to catch limits over the past few years, recent data shows that several key fish stocks are not rebuilding.... Low levels of these stocks are causing a significant loss of access to fishery ­resources with anticipated revenue declines that will greatly affect the commercial fishery.”

• One agricultural sector on the rise is wine. PBS Newshour profiled a community college in Walla Walla, Washington that has created a winemaking degree that "fosters economic, environmental and cultural sustainability in and around the city of Walla Walla where vineyards continue to sprout."