I love microbrew. Ask any of my friends and they’ll tell you that I’m a proud beer snob and have been since first moving to Boulder in 1993. Colorado, along with states like Oregon and California, led the micro revolution in the ’90s and when I landed here I was absolutely staggered by the number and quality of local beers available to me. The state continues to be one of the the nation’s brewing leaders, with Denver/Boulder (as you’d expect) being at the epicenter. Some interesting facts:

• Denver ranks first in the nation in per capita beer production.
• Denver is second in the nation in number of total breweries in a city. Full story »

#13: The Frog Run by John Elder (2002)

My own experiences in Vermont constitute the worst times of my life, through no particular fault of the Green Mountain State. There, in a third-floor cinder block tenement in Montpelier, I spent most of my eighth-grade year living in fear of my mother’s drug-abusing boyfriend. A decade and a half later, I thought it ironic to find myself back there for a low-residency M.F.A. program, uncomfortable about facing the bad mojo from my past—little realizing that I was about to deal with more bad mojo there as my marriage began to unravel.

So my Vermont and John Elder’s Vermont strike me as two different places—different states of mind, at the very least. Full story »

Horses could once again be on the dinner menu for U.S. consumers overturning a five year ban that shuttered U.S. horse slaughterhouses.

Horse meat is considered a delicacy by those epicurean connoisseurs in places like France and Japan.

President Obama signed an Agricultural appropriations bill on November 18 that included a provision for funding inspections of horse slaughterhouses. Reports the Washington Times, ”The ban had been imposed in 2006 when Congress defunded the government’s ability to inspect plants that butchered horses for consumption. Without inspections, the meat couldn’t be sold, and the industry withered.”

The new bill included money for inspections, and that means horses are back, literally, on the chopping block. Full story »

Here’s a bit of a surprise–moldy applesauce going into baby food and school lunches. MSNBC fills us in:

A Washington state fruit processor that supplies the nation’s schools and a baby food maker is under scrutiny by federal health regulators for repackaging applesauce contaminated with several kinds of potentially dangerous, multi-colored molds, msnbc.com has learned.

Repackaging? What the hell is that?

Food and Drug Administration officials this week posted a warning letter to Snokist Growers of Yakima, Wash., saying the company cannot ensure the safety of moldy applesauce and fruit puree that has been reconditioned for human consumption.

Wait–I thought it was just repackaged. What is this? Full story »

Twitter.com/LeeCamp

by Emily West

If you want a more intelligent pet than a dog, try a pig. Pigs learn tricks quickly. They have even figured out video games. Scientists have compared pig intelligence to that of a 3-year-old child.

In factory farms, pigs have been observed going insane and committing cannibalism.

Factory farming should be illegal.

In factory farms, corporations raise thousands of animals in a confined area. Chickens spend their lives in about one square foot of space. Once they reach full size, they die in slaughterhouses that process thousands of animals each day. Factory farmers ignore animal health and welfare in favor of a cheap steak. Around 98 percent of America’s meat comes from factory farms.
Full story »

by Pat Hosken

Last week, Texas prison officials decided, after executing 475 people since 1976, its death row prisoners no longer deserve a last meal. You’re already taking away their lives, Texas. Don’t take away their dignity, too.

State Senator John Whitmire said the decision has nothing to do with cost, despite a tight Texas budget. The soon-to-be executed don’t deserve a last meal because they didn’t give their victims a chance for one, either, Whitmire said.

Yes, these inmates have killed or at least have been convicted of killing. But don’t dehumanize them; don’t say they don’t deserve their final nutrition intake.
Full story »

Can aquaculture save the world’s last wild food? That’s the question posed by the cover story of the July 18 issue of Time, which takes a look at the continuing collapse of the world’s fisheries. Fish seems so superabundant on our dinner plates that one can hardly fathom how we could possibly run out. After all, the ocean is so BIG.

Well, the deep blue sea is getting emptier and emptier, and even if the shoreline seems far away, the fisheries crisis is going to start hitting close to home—soon.

That’s the outlook, grim as it is, forecast by author Paul Greenberg in his recent book, Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food. Greenberg dives into the topic with gusto—in part, one has to imagine, because the oceanic crisis is so catastrophic. Full story »

My editor does not want me to post this blog. That should tell you something about the sensitivity around the topic I am about to discuss.

First, some background. Not too long ago I wrote a post in which I observed that pudgy Southern teen girls often grow up to be pudgy women. I expected some reaction, but I didn’t expect the reaction I got, which was to get pelted from every angle. The right and the left. Men and women. Old and young.  It was as if I spit into the ocean and caused a tsunami.

OK, at the bottom of the page before you post a blog there is a small box that says “Check to allow comments.” If you check that box, as I do, and write about controversial topics in provocative ways, as I do, then you shouldn’t whine (even though I do.) Full story »

Over the past few weeks I have been watching my waist, which is easy to do because every time I look, there’s a little more of it. Anyway, I came home hungry from the golf course today. I peered into the cupboard and reached for a small bag of Cheetos, but when I looked at the bag’s nutrition label and did the math, the calorie tally was just this side of 600—with 350 of them from fat. Bears should eat Cheetos before hibernating.

So I ate a banana instead. I was so pleased with this sensible diet choice—I make one about every fortnight—that I decided to have a salad for supper. This was that magic diet moment I had been waiting for: I was going to start transforming myself into a nutrition superstar. Full story »

I try to be a good, responsible human being. Some examples: I recycle. I support local and used book stores. I try to buy my fruit at a farmer’s market, but when I do go to a grocery store, I always pick out the organic fruit.

It’s this last point I’d like to discuss.

It would be easy for anyone to create a quick, common sense list of things you’d think I probably wouldn’t want to find in my fruit, or really in any of my food, ever. Let’s try.

1) Mold
2) Pesticides
3) Bugs of any kind

Pretty simple, pretty standard, pretty predictable. Not asking for much here.

Now let me show you how it’s gone the last few times I’ve bought organic raspberries.

Full story »

It’s not like a major theme, usually, but writers of near future science fiction usually have one or two major disease outbreaks as one of the plot devices, even if it isn’t a major factor in the story. It’s always fun to speculate on the future, and it’s a good bet that there will be something along the lines of the Kansas City Flu, or the Helsinki Virus, both of which have figured in someone’s novel. Or it could have been the Kansas City Virus and the Helsinki flu. It’s fun to make up catastrophic disease names, and it’s so easy—pick a location, any location, really, and put it in front of the words “flu” or “virus”, and suddenly you’ve got a plausible near-future event. Hey, look, the Seattle flu wiped out one third of humanity. Who knew? But it wasn’t nearly as deadly as the Capetown virus, which took out the other two-thirds.

All good speculative fun, in its own weird way. The problem is that life often has a tendency to imitate art. So now we have this new form of e. coli bacteria (technically, Escherichia coli O104:H4 (STEC O104:H4)) that has killed a number of people in Germany and elsewhere (17 dead, and over 1,600 ill so far, and counting). And, contrary to earlier reports, it appears that the bacteria did not come from cucumbers in Spain. In fact, no one seems to know where it does come from. Full story »

Whom do we trust when we’re looking for information? Increasingly, research shows that Americans are more likely trust friends, peers and word-of-mouth over “experts.” For instance:

• A 2007 eMarketer survey of the most trusted sources of information for US consumers was topped by “friends, family and acquaintances” and “strangers with experience.” These sources outranked “teachers” and “newspapers and magazines.”
• A CDC study shows that moms trust pediatricians the most, but that they trust “friends and family” more than everybody else, including parenting books, employees in the doctor’s office, and newspaper and magazine articles. Full story »

Everything starts somewhere. For us, getting in shape started with bread pudding.

“I don’t think it’s normal to eat that much bread pudding,” I said. “I wonder if anybody else celebrates International Bread Pudding Day?”

“I’m still not convinced that holiday exists,” said Nancy, “But it is winter in Connecticut, and you need your winter fat.”

“Har, har. My feet are cold. Do I have socks on? I don’t think I can move.”

And I didn’t move for hours. I sat there like a gorged tick. Later that evening, I was able to push myself upright and stagger to bed. I’m lying. I staggered to the refrigerator for a few more bites of bread pudding. Hey, IBP day only comes once a year. The next morning everything had changed. Full story »

Savannah’s acting city manager found a loophole in the city’s ordinance banning local Girl Scouts from selling their cookies in front of founder Juliette Gordon Low’s historic home.

The loophole is another city ordinance that allows the city manager to permit sidewalk sales at city residences.

Common sense did prevail. Local Girl Scouts will be at their tables selling cookies at busy Oglethorpe and Bull Streets this weekend. The Girl Scouts still have to pony up to their civic responsibilities as part of the deal as noted in the letter from the city manager.

Kudos to acting city manager Rochelle Small-Toney.

In the “you’ve got to be kidding department,” Savannah, Georgia area Girl Scouts and brownies can no longer sell their cookies in front of the Juliette Gordon Low Home. Low was the founder of the Girl Scouts of America.

Why? Because under a Savannah ordinance, the cookie sale is considered street peddling, a violation. The ordinance reads: “Sec. 4-1001. To be used for public purpose only. No person shall use the streets, sidewalks, lanes or squares of the city for private purposes of any sort. They shall be used only as public ways and for the public purposes for which they are intended.”

Full story »

Just last week we were reading various reports about sharply rising food prices and demonstrations that were turning into riots in a number of countries. And then we had a revolution in Tunisia, toppling a dictator (western supported, of course) who had been in power for decades. And now we’re reading about concerns about a domino effect of the potential collapse of a variety of mideast dictatorships or kingdoms. And, true to form, we’re already seeing some governments furiously lowering food prices in an attempt to forestall more rioting—in fact, Algeria has already done so.

Let’s be clear about this—this should not have come as a surprise. What is surprising, perhaps, is that the demonstrations and rioting in Tunisia were actually successful in driving out a hated government—although what will replace it remains a bit unclear. Full story »

As the griddle began to heat up, it made a single loud crack. Then it sat silent for a couple minutes as I mixed my batter, then it cracked again.

Nothing broke. My griddle just likes to protest every time it wakes up.

I watched the little orange light next to the heat controller: It would go out once the griddle heated to 400 degrees.

I still had a few lumps in my batter to mix out, so I was in no big rush. I mix mine from a box of Bisquick. Nothing fancy. A couple eggs. A cup of milk. I’m golden.

I don’t do pancakes from scratch the way my dad’s mother used to. Full story »