W. Devon Ave. Chicago - Food Wonderland! Annapurna Simply Vegetarian

   W. Devon Ave. in Chicago is a culinary wonderland - a vibrant area of Indian and Asian restaurants, grocery stores (and one supermarket), bakeries and various household and clothing stores. This one of the vegetarian restaurants on Devon St. from 2012 -

ubiquitous food additives

Salmonella prompts processed-food recall
By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 5, 2010; A02
Thousands of types of processed foods -- including many varieties of soups, chips, frozen dinners, hot dogs and salad dressings -- may pose a health threat because they contain a flavor enhancer that could be contaminated with salmonella, the Food and Drug Administration said Thursday.
Officials believe the public health risk is low, and no one is known to have fallen ill as a result of the contamination. But manufacturers voluntarily recalled 56 products Thursday, and that number is expected to balloon in the coming weeks into what could be one of the largest food recalls in U.S. history.
"We don't know precisely how large this recall will get," said Jeff Farrar, associate commissioner for food protection at the FDA. "The potential amount of products . . . is very large."
Salmonella was detected early last month in one lot of the flavor enhancer -- hydrolyzed vegetable protein, or HVP -- made by Basic Food Flavors, as well as inside the company's Nevada manufacturing facility, the FDA said. The company, one of only a handful that make HVP, has an extensive customer list. The additive, which comes as a powder or a paste and is mixed into foods to give them a meaty or savory flavor, is similar to monosodium glutamate, or MSG.
The contamination is believed to date to September 2009, meaning millions of pounds of potentially tainted HVP -- all of which the company has recalled -- was shipped in bulk to foodmakers over five months. Many of those companies then sold their products to other clients, complicating the chain and making it hard for federal officials to gauge the scope of the problem.
"This can potentially be in over 10,000 products," said Michael Hansen, senior scientist at Consumers Union.
The FDA has posted on its Web site a searchable list of products being recalled by manufacturers. It can be found at http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/HVPCP/.
Federal officials said the public health threat is low because most products containing HVP are cooked during processing or carry cooking instructions for consumers, so any salmonella would be destroyed before the food was eaten. Ready-to-eat products, such as chips and other snack foods, would carry greater risks.
In recent days, FDA officials have told foodmakers that their products do not need to be recalled if they can document that foods containing HVP were heated to appropriate temperatures.
Because of the number of products involved and the uncertainty of the risk, officials have been struggling to find the balance between protection and alarm.
"They're trying to come to some reasonable decision about how to protect the public health but not be so cautious as to be ridiculous and throw out tons and tons of product that may be fine," said Don Schaffner, a professor of microbiology professor and food-safety expert at Rutgers University, who has been advising several foodmakers that bought HVP from Basic Food Flavors.
FDA officials declined to say Thursday when they or state health officials last inspected the Nevada plant, or whether the company had a history of sanitation problems. The FDA was still attempting to determine what caused the contamination.
The company did not return calls seeking comment.
The salmonella bacterium is usually found in animal or human feces. Most healthy people infected with salmonella recover without treatment but experience fever, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. Salmonella infections can cause serious problems and even death in the young, the elderly and those with compromised immune systems.
The agency learned about the problem after a foodmaker found the bacterium in a shipment of HVP and reported it under a new law that requires companies to notify the federal government if they detect contamination in a product or ingredient. Before September, the food industry was not required to alert the government to contamination.
"The FDA identified this before any major outbreak [of illness], and I think that is very good news," FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg said.
Joshua Sharfstein, deputy commissioner of the FDA, said the outbreak underlines the need for the Senate to pass a food-safety bill that has stalled since the House approved it last year. The bill would require companies such as Basic Food Flavors to take actions aimed at preventing contamination in the first place.
"We want to be able to set up preventive standards, so we don't have situations like this at all," Sharfstein said.




http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/04/AR2010030403863.html

Channa & Pumpkin Roti at Ritas / Georgia Ave NW, Washington, DC

      This channa and pumpkin roti is from 2009 but Rita is keeping at it on Georgia Ave in 2014. I have been loving various veggie rotis at Ritas since the 1980s. Good stuff.

Flying Fish In Memphis - Road Food Worth Eating

  Five years ago (or so), driving into Memphis in the evening, I found this spot. In the downtown area, walking distance to Beale Street and the Memphis Redbirds baseball stadium. I avoid the catfish in general, nothing about this catfish, but there other items on the menu. I liked the cole slaw and okra basket.

Farm Bill Recognizes Organic Farming and Fruit & Vegetable Farmers

    Organic food and beverage sales represented approximately 4 percent of overall food and beverage sales in 2010. Leading were organic fruits and vegetables, now representing over 11 percent of all U.S. fruit and vegetable sales.
Source: Organic Trade Association’s 2011 Organic Industry Survey 
http://www.ota.com/organic/mt/business.html



    At 11% of all US fruit and vegetable sales, organics can no longer be ignored.

Farm Bill Reflects Shifting American Menu and a Senator’s Persistent Tilling

By JENNIFER STEINHAUERMARCH 8, 2014

WASHINGTON — The farm bill signed by President Obama last month was at first glance the usual boon for soybean growers, catfish farmers and their ilk. But closer examination reveals that the nation’s agriculture policy is increasingly more whole grain than white bread.

Within the bill is a significant shift in the types of farmers who are now benefiting from taxpayer dollars, reflecting a decade of changing eating habits and cultural dispositions among American consumers. Organic farmers, fruit growers and hemp producers all did well in the new bill. An emphasis on locally grown, healthful foods appeals to a broad base of their constituents, members of both major parties said.

“There is nothing hotter than farm to table,” said Representative Bill Huizenga, a Michigan Republican from a district of vast cherry orchards.

While traditional commodities subsidies were cut by more than 30 percent to $23 billion over 10 years, funding for fruits and vegetables and organic programs increased by more than 50 percent over the same period, to about $3 billion.

Fruit and vegetable farmers, who have been largely shut out of the crop insurance programs that grain and other farmers have enjoyed for decades, now have far greater access. Other programs for those crops were increased by 55 percent from the 2008 bill, which expired last year, and block grants for their marketing programs grew exponentially.

In addition, money to help growers make the transition from conventional to organic farming rose to $57.5 million from $22 million. Money for oversight of the nation’s organic food program nearly doubled to $75 million over five years.

Programs that help food stamp recipients pay for fruits and vegetables — to get healthy food into neighborhoods that have few grocery stores and to get schools to grow their own food — all received large bumps in the bill.

The new attention and government money devoted to healthy foods stem from the growing market power of those segments of the food business, as well as profound shifts in nutrition policy and eating habits across the country.

“This is my fourth farm bill, and it’s the most unique I have ever been involved in,” said Senator Debbie Stabenow, the Michigan Democrat who negotiated, prodded, cajoled and finally shepherded the bill through Congress over two and a half years. “Past farm bills pit regions against regions. I said that we were going to support all of agriculture.”

The bill also eased a 75-year-old restriction on growing and researching industrial hemp, paving the way for several states to begin pilot growing programs for this variety of the cannabis plant, which can be refined into oil, wax, rope, cloth, pulp and other products.

At the same time, hunting programs were protected in the farm bill, which attracted the rare approbation of the National Rifle Association. The bill also ties conservation requirements to crop insurance benefits, which many environmental groups praised. “I think this is the new coalition,” Ms. Stabenow said.

While still in the shadows of traditional farming, organics are the fastest-growing sector of the food business. Support for that movement has traditionally come from Democrats in Congress, but the organic farming provisions in the bill had broad support from both parties.

“We kind of overperformed with younger new members of Congress on both sides of the aisle,” said Laura Batcha, the executive director of the Organic Trade Association.

Ms. Batcha pointed to a provision sought by her organization to exempt organic producers from having to pay assessments for certain marketing programs, which received broad backing from both Republicans and Democrats. The support surprised her, she said, but showed the popularity of organic products.

“I think we should let consumers make their own decisions about what kinds of foods they purchase,” said Representative Reid Ribble, Republican of Wisconsin, who is a member of the House Agriculture Committee. “And if there’s a market for organic products, we should support it.”

Over all, healthy food has become more politically popular because of efforts to combat childhood obesity and diabetes and a growing national interest in the farm-to-table movement promoted by the first lady, Michelle Obama, and other national figures.

“The average member of Congress, whether they are urban or suburban, knows that is what their constituents want,” said Ferd Hoefner, the policy director of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. “Even the most ag-centric member of the Agriculture Committee knows that is what helps sell the bill when it gets to the floor.”

For farmers of fruits and vegetables, oddly referred to in ag-speak as specialty crops, the ability to participate in crop insurance programs, which were expanded as direct payments to farmers were ended, is a major victory.

John King, a co-owner of King Orchards, which specializes in Montmorency cherries in Central Lake, Mich., was previously able to get insurance only for his apples. His cherries, peaches, nectarines, apricots and raspberries went uncovered.

In 2012, the combination of a bitterly cold winter and a March heat wave resulted in Mr. King’s greatest losses in the farm’s 34-year history, wiping out all of his stone fruit and a third of his apple crop. “Crop insurance did not even cover half my labor bill for the year,” said Mr. King, who has already signed up for the maximum insurance for 2014.

“Over the years the big-program crops have been able to get what they want while for specialty crops it has been, ‘Tough luck as you freeze,’ ” Mr. King said. “Well, we grow the stuff people eat and want to eat, and we do need some financial cover from this increasingly precarious weather situation.”

On the farm bill, Ms. Stabenow was able to come to an agreement with her Republican counterparts in the Senate as well as the House, where the most conservative members sought large cuts to the food and nutrition program that makes up about 80 percent of the bill.

Ms. Stabenow had to fend off the most conservative House members, who at one point wanted drug testing for food stamp recipients. (Ms. Stabenow told them that she would agree only if every recipient of farm bill dollars was also tested.) But she also had to deal with some liberals who pushed back against any cuts to the food stamp program, including a provision that had allowed some states to inflate residents’ food assistance by counting the costs of utility bills that residents did not actually have.

“I appreciate passionate advocates,” Ms. Stabenow said. “But I believe it helps to be the first one to call out situations where there is not accountability.”

Ms. Stabenow was so persistent, her colleagues, supporters and Senate aides said, that some senators began to fear her approach as she moved purposefully between the Republican and Democratic cloakrooms just off the Senate floor. The clerks there would bet over drinks whether she could get her bill passed.

In general, the bill reflects the diverse agricultural landscape of Ms. Stabenow’s home state, which plays a leading role in movements like community gardens in schools and offers a program that gives food stamp recipients double credit for food and vegetable purchases — a model for the federal farm bill.

“I give her a lot of credit,” Mr. Hoefner said. “She made it clear from the get-go that these items needed to be in the bill.”

A version of this article appears in print on March 9, 2014, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Farm Bill Reflects Shifting American Menu and a Senator’s Persistent Tilling.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/us/politics/farm-bill-reflects-shifting-american-menu-and-a-senators-persistent-tilling.html

Farm bill: Why don’t taxpayers subsidize the foods that are better for us?

By Tamar Haspel, Published: February 18

Read the farm bill, and a big problem jumps right out at you: Taxpayers heavily subsidize corn and soy, two crops that facilitate the meat and processed food we’re supposed to eat less of, and do almost nothing for the fruits and vegetables we’re supposed to eat more of. If there’s any obligation to spend the public’s money in a way that’s consistent with that same public’s health, shouldn’t it be the other way around?
The problem dates back to the bill’s inception in the 1930s, when farms raised livestock and grew a mix of crops, including staple crops (corn, wheat, oats, barley) and what the bill calls “specialty crops” but what the rest of us know as fruits and vegetables.
From the 1930s to 1980, subsidies alone weren’t substantial enough to significantly change the mix of crops on farms, according to Vincent Smith, professor of economics at Montana State University and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “In 1980, we introduced crop insurance subsidies of substance that began to change the ways in which farmers manage risk, and to discourage diversification,” he says. And then we increased them until they became very substantial, and farmers, at least to some extent, farmed to the bill the way teachers teach to a test.
What’s important about how we subsidize farms isn’t necessarily the overall dollar amount — it comes to 5 percent to 10 percent of the market price of most of the subsidized crops — it’s that it takes some of the risk out of farming grains and oil seeds, but not fruits and vegetables.
Farming is inherently risky. Weather, insects and disease, over which you have limited control or none at all, can wipe you out. One of the ways farmers manage risk is to plant variety. Okay, powdery mildew got your strawberries, but the broccoli’s going gangbusters. For farmers, crops that are given guaranteed protection from both losses and price drops are lower-risk propositions.
Farmers, like the rest of us, have bills to pay and children to feed. (Full disclosure: My husband and I farm oysters and have benefited from the farm bill’s conservation program.) A guaranteed source of income is attractive. That’s one of the reasons that, of the 300-million-plus acres planted with food (other than grass, hay and forage for animals) in this country, half are corn and soy. Another 50 million are wheat. Only 14 million are devoted to fruits and vegetables, from peas (1.2 million acres) to mangosteens (1 acre, which I’d dearly love to visit).
The 2014 iteration of the farm bill, signed into law this month, changes the way farmers are subsidized, and if you’ve read one thing about it, it’s probably been that direct payments — annual checks based on production history — have been discontinued. But calling the two programs that replace them “crop insurance” isn’t quite accurate, says Smith, because there are no premiums and no policies. Farmers choose between Price Loss Coverage (PLC) and Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC) and receive payments when price (for PLC) or revenue (for ARC) drops below a benchmark.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that PLC and ARC will cost about two-thirds of what direct payments cost, but the accuracy of that estimate depends on assumptions about the future price of commodities, something any commodity trader will tell you is notoriously hard to predict. Any analyst who could do it accurately would make his fortune in commodity futures, quit his analyst job and buy a lovely home somewhere sunny, where they grow less corn and more mango­steens.
PLC and ARC, together with a few other commodity programs, are slated to cost $44.4 billion over 10 years. Traditional crop insurance will continue, with government paying 65 percent of the premiums, and that’s another $89.8 billion, for a total of $134 billion for commodities over a decade.
And how does the bill help specialty crop growers? Robert Guenther, senior vice president of the United Fresh Produce Association, counts the ways. There’s help with research, provisions to include produce in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and school lunches, export enhancements, grants and a few other things. Total expenditure: $4 billion over 10 years. There is almost no insurance, and there are no subsidies, but many fruit and vegetable growers wouldn’t have it any other way.
“We’ve taken a different approach from the commodity growers,” says Guenther. He explains that specialty crop farming, because of its variety, doesn’t lend itself to the same kind of regulation. And he says many farmers prefer the flexibility that comes with independence to the conformity required by regulation, even if the regulation comes with cash. Asking the Agriculture Department to compare Washington apples with Florida oranges, and regulate appropriately, would be asking a lot. (There are also contractual agreements, outside the scope of the farm bill, that reduce risk for many specialty growers.)
It’s worth noting that, although producing more vegetables at lower prices looks good from a public health perspective, it’s not in the interest of the farmers already growing vegetables.  Specialty growers supported the rules that, until now, prevented commodity growers from devoting some acreage to fruits and vegetables; this year’s farm bill allows commodity farmers to use up to 15 percent of their acreage for specialty crops without losing benefits. Because growing interest in local produce gives them a market, some will undoubtedly do that, and one study, published last year in Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, concluded that “the removal of the planting restriction may have a non-trivial impact on U.S. fruit and vegetable production.”
I asked Guenther what he thought about the competition. “As long as these growers are willing to play by the same rules that current producers play by, they’re welcome to join the club,” he replied.
The extent to which the farm bill has shaped agriculture is hard to quantify, and the degree to which changing it can reshape it is hard to predict. According to Patrick Westhoff, director of the Food and Agriculture Policy Research Institute, “If you subsidize something, you get more of it.” Neither Westhoff nor Vincent Smith, however, is convinced that if you stop subsidizing it, you get much less.  But a 1 percent decrease in the 160 million acres of corn and soy translates to an 11 percent increase in the 14 million acres of fruits and vegetables. (Whether that would translate to increased consumption is, of course, another question.)
There might be a way to promote production of fruits and vegetables while also protecting the interests of the farmers already growing those crops. Although specialty growers haven’t pushed for commodity-like plans, Guenther says they would like to see more focus on insurance. Smith points out that most of the risk to specialty crop growers comes from weather, and many private weather insurance products are available now that can cover a wide variety of crops. Many farmers don’t buy them because they’re not subsidized. If we were to change that, says Smith, “it would probably increase production, and there would be some price effect.” How much? “Anybody’s guess.”
Changes to the farm bill can have consequences both here and abroad, and we have to proceed cautiously. We can’t pull the rug out from under farmers whose choices have been influenced by the bill, and we have to consider the price and supply of the grains and oilseeds that feed the developing world. But we also need to move away from a system that requires taxpayers to spend billions underwriting a system detrimental to public health.

 
Haspel, a freelance writer, farms oysters on Cape Cod and blogs at www.starvingofftheland.com


http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/farm-bill-why-dont-taxpayers-subsidize-the-foods-that-are-better-for-us/2014/02/14/d7642a3c-9434-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html

Living Off The Land - Los Cantaros Taqueria, Emeryville, California

      As is often the case for me, a little more pork on the menu than I would like but what is a non-meat eater to do? When on the road living off the land, must be adaptable. Los Canteros Taqueria in Emeryville, California proved to be a gem of a find close to closing time at 9pm - not the latest but well beyond the lunch crowd. Veggie burrito, fish taco - the standard order and here I can have a beer too...... 

 

Glocal - domestic mangos and croissants -

Croissants and a baguette from Catania Bakery






And domestic mangos....... I was quick to notice this mango at Whole Foods - grown in California and organic too. As can be seen from the prominent CA Grown label, that the the mango is from the US is a big part of the marketing.








American mangos and croissants twists concepts of foreign / local / global cuisine. So what is global when it becomes local? Glocal?

Louis' Lunch - New Haven, Connecticut - Hamburger History

   The original hamburger sandwich? Who knows? Is it any good????
   We made this a stop on a drive on I-95 that went through New Haven in 2010 - kids thought the burgers are great! I had felafel across the street as the vegetarian alternative.......  Well worth stopping at - especially if you like beef......

Veggie Variety!! 16 Vegetarian Items At Dukem

Dukem - on U St NW, between 11th and 12 - More vegetarian options than I have ever seen at an Ethiopian restaurant although not all of them are explained on the menu -

My Tofu House - San Francisco, California - Menu

Curious about this restaurant - I drove by a few times and picked up this menu. The frequent pork on the menu had me suspicious but on deeper reading of the menu some interesting vegetarian items. Hope it is still in business when I return.

 

Here is a link to their web site - 

http://mytofuhouse.org/

Pathogens Everywhere

D.C. farmers markets highlight an array of food safety issues

By Esther French, Mattea Kramer and Maggie Clark, Published: July 22

Outside the Department of Agriculture headquarters on Independence Avenue SW, government workers and tourists shop for fresh produce, poultry, popcorn, baked goods and hot lunches.

Like farmers markets across the country, this one sponsored by the USDA is thriving, propelled by a national craving for fresh food and the perception that locally grown food is healthier than food mass-produced by big agriculture and sold in grocery stores.

But commercial tests found pathogens on raw chickens sold by a Virginia farmer at the USDA market; the pathogens could be harmful if the poultry is not properly cooked, according to an investigation by News21, a national university reporting project at the University of Maryland. The same was true of poultry sold by a Pennsylvania farmer at a Vermont Avenue NW market.

Both farmers were exempt from USDA inspections because they process fewer than 20,000 chickens a year, although farmers operating under the exemption are not permitted by USDA regulations to sell their products across state lines, officials said.

A USDA spokesman said the department has suspended poultry sales by the vendor at its market as it conducts an investigation.

The director of FreshFarm Markets, the nonprofit organization that operates the market on Vermont Avenue, said FreshFarm requires USDA inspection of all meat for sale at the market. Ann Yonkers, the director, said she was unaware that the farmer’s chickens were exempt from inspection and asked him to stop selling them.

The findings from both markets highlight seams in the federal government’s efforts to keep the country’s food supply safe through a maze of federal, state and local laws that can be confusing even for the people charged with enforcing them. They also illustrate the danger for consumers who think they can find refuge in markets selling food grown locally.

Despite the interest in food from local growers, scientists say small does not mean safe. “From a food-safety point of view, there’s no inherent reason why large production is, on balance, more dangerous than a small family farm,” said Bill Keene, a senior epidemiologist at the Oregon Public Health Division.

Benjamin Chapman, a food-safety specialist at North Carolina State University, said that in some cases small farms may be less safe. “We’re finding that there’s less pressure on a vendor at a [farmers] market to implement risk reduction because the perception is that the product is safe already,” he said. “At a grocery store, growers have all these specifications they have to hit, but that’s absent in the farmers market.”

Tests conducted for News21 by the Baltimore division of Microbac, a federally certified laboratory with locations nationwide, found salmonella in three samples of chicken being sold at the USDA market by J&L Green, a farm in Edinburg, Va.

“Our process as a whole is sanitary when operated correctly,” said Jordan Green, one of the farm’s owners. “Mistakes do happen.”

Green said he had recently noticed his plastic bags of fresh chicken leaking at the farmers market. He said it was hard to keep bags from tearing and, as a result, he was moving away from fresh and toward frozen poultry.

Leaky poultry juices present a cross-contamination hazard at a farmers market, where shoppers may also be buying peaches or lettuce and placing their purchases in the same canvas bag. Because produce is often eaten uncooked, pathogens would not be killed.

At the market on Vermont Avenue, Microbac found campylobacter on chicken sold by Garden Path Farms of Newburg, Pa. Emanuel Kauffman, the farm’s owner, said he believes his farming practices are safer than big agriculture’s.

It is not against the law to sell raw chicken with salmonella or campylobacter. Regulators instead have placed the responsibility on consumers to understand the importance of cooking thoroughly and avoiding cross-contamination of other foods. A USDA official said the department’s consumer education efforts are vigorous and ongoing.

But the government’s efforts have failed to reduce the number of salmonella infections in 15 years, even as other food-borne illnesses have dropped.

Salmonella, which doesn’t discriminate between small and large farms, is a pathogen sometimes found in the intestinal tracts of birds and other animals. On chicken farms, it can spread from bird to bird or can be introduced by wild animals. During slaughter and processing, salmonella on one chicken can contaminate many more.

Salmonella is invisible, odorless and tasteless, so even the most careful farmers might not know their chicken carries the pathogen, unless they test for it.

The same goes for campylobacter, which is even more prevalent in chickens. The pathogen is one of the leading bacterial causes of diarrhea in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Microbac also found salmonella or campylobacter in chicken parts sold by another local vendor and two grocery chains a short distance from the U.S. Capitol.

Altogether, five out of seven markets and grocery stores tested positive for campylobacter, and two of the five also tested positive for salmonella. It demonstrates how easy it is to find pathogens — no matter which market or grocery store a consumer patronizes.

In 2009, an annual Food and Drug Administration retail meat study found 21 percent of chicken breasts contaminated with salmonella and 44 percent with campylobacter.

The findings come at a time of increased federal concern over food-borne infections linked to the two pathogens, which the CDC says are two of the most commonly reported causes of food-borne illness.

A 2011 CDC study estimated that 1.8 million people are sickened, 27,000 are hospitalized and 400 die each year from both pathogens combined.

Because J&L Green, the Virginia farm selling chickens at the USDA market, operates under the exemption for small farms, no government inspector had looked at the way Jordan Green and his wife, Laura, raise and slaughter chickens, Green said. The USDA generally reviews exempt operations only if it receives a complaint.

Farmers decide whether they want to operate under an exemption from inspections. They do not, however, have to notify the USDA that they have claimed an exemption. The agency does not keep track of exemptions. However, state governments can have their own rules. Virginia, for example, requires farmers to fill out a two-page application, which Green said he did not know about but has now submitted. He also has paid for his own salmonella tests.

When the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service accepted J&L Green into its farmers market this year, officials failed to catch that he was not registered for the Virginia exemption he claimed and that he was breaking federal and state rules by transporting exempted poultry across state lines for sale.

The farmers market manager, Velma Lakins, said she was aware that J&L Green Farm labeled its chicken as exempt. She said she thought that exempted chicken could be transported across state lines, as did two regional USDA officials interviewed by News21.

Also at the USDA market, C&T Produce of Fredericksburg, another vendor, was observed selling unrefrigerated eggs, even though egg cartons bore USDA-mandated labels stating that they should be refrigerated.

Lakins said in an interview that she saw the eggs in coolers with ice packs. But Craig DeBernard, who co-owns C&T with his wife, Tracy, said he had not known the eggs had to be refrigerated and did not do so. C&T has stopped selling eggs at farmers markets during hot summer months and will sell them in an iced cooler in the fall.

Esther French, Mattea Kramer and Maggie Clark are fellows with News21, a university journalism program run in cooperation with the Carnegie Corp. and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-farmers-markets-highlight-an-array-of-food-safety-issues/2011/07/18/gIQAROXZTI_story.html

Should Street Vendors Charge Sales Tax?

Food trucks may lose their sales tax exemption

By Jonathan O’Connell, Friday, March 11, 10:56 PM

In almost any weather, food trucks trawl the city's commercial areas, greeted by hungry office workers in search of the lobster rolls, cupcakes and tacos that have become intensely popular since the mobile eateries recently began proliferating en masse.

The truck owners peddle their edible wares, however, without doing something the city's brick-and-mortar restaurant owners must do: pay sales taxes.

But that could change.

D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) plans to introduce legislation Tuesday, March 15, that would end the sales tax exemption for food trucks, requiring them to pay the same 10 percent tax as restaurants and other prepared food sellers.

“What the bill is intended to do is charge sales tax for all vendors, not just the food trucks but everybody,” Evans said.

The number of food trucks has grown dramatically in the last two years and Evans, chairman of the council's finance and revenue committee, said the system of charging them just $1,500 per year in fees, devised in the early 1990s, is obsolete. According to the city, there are now 488 “roadway vendors,” which include food trucks, ice cream trucks and other food sellers operating on the National Mall. There are an additional 642 “sidewalk vendors,” which include many long-running hotdog and T-shirt stands. All of the vendors currently pay the $1,500 annual fee, but Evans's bill would require them to all pay sales taxes instead.

Evans also said the current system is “no longer fair or working” for brick-and-mortar restaurants, which in addition to sales taxes also often pay for additional services from business improvement districts. But he said he was open to discussions about how best to both level the playing field and collect badly needed tax revenue from mobile vendors. “I recognize that there are a lot of issues involved here,” he said.

Kristi Whitfield, co-owner of the Curbside Cupcakes food truck, agreed that the guidelines are antiquated and need updating but said a sales tax would hurt her business -- and not just because of the costs that she would pass on to customers. Not having to compute a sales tax, for instance, allows her to only handle bills (no coins), keep her line moving and see many customers. “So much of what we do has to do with respecting people's time and operating efficiently,” she said.

Whitfield also called the idea that food trucks have a competitive advantage over restaurants an “illusion,” pointing to limits on the size of food trucks, where they can stop and how they can restock. “There are a myriad of benefits that restaurants have in regard to stocking and points of distribution that food trucks don't have,” she said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/capital_business/food-trucks-may-lose-their-sales-tax-exemption/2011/03/11/ABK1WXR_story.html

Organic farmer Heinz Thomet is fanning the flames in southern Maryland

By Tim Carman
Tuesday, January 4, 2011; 2:45 PM

At 6:45 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 11, when Heinz Thomet should have been harvesting product for the Dupont Circle FreshFarm Market the next day, the farmer noticed flames poking through a boiler-room wall on his Next Step Produce farm. He grabbed a fire extinguisher, but the gusher of flame-suppressing foam never materialized. Two other extinguishers were duds, too. Thomet finally read the fine print on his red canisters.

"If those things are sitting for two years, all the material inside can just settle on the bottom, and it really doesn't do anything anymore. So ideally, they say on the small print to shake that thing every other week," says the owner of the 86-acre farm in Newburg, in Charles County. "You have no idea how helpless I felt then."

Sixteen minutes after he spotted the blaze, Thomet called 911. Rather than wait for the trucks, the farmer decided to crank up his irrigation system and serve as his own volunteer firefighter. The real brigade, however, rolled into Next Step before he could get the water flowing. It was 7:13 a.m.; his boiler room and adjacent woodshed were engulfed in flames.

To Thomet, the crisis required radical thinking: At that point, he figured he would be better off letting the fire have its way, consuming the entire boiler-room structure and all 17 cords of firewood stored in the shed. That way, he would have to spend less time demolishing and removing whatever useless charred pieces remained of the wooden building, which housed the furnace that heated his home and his two greenhouses.

The Newburg Volunteer Fire Department viewed the situation from the opposite perspective: There was a fire, and it needed to be extinguished. The supervisor at the scene was not interested in Thomet's proposal to let the blaze die on its own.

A supervisor "basically says to me that I called 911, they're here to put it out, and I should step aside. And [because] I didn't jump, then he calls the police," Thomet recalls. "What I learned, in retrospect, is when you call 911, you have no more rights."

Clifton Butler, assistant fire chief with the Newburg crew, has a different recollection of events. Sure, Thomet asked the supervisor to let the building burn, he says, but the farmer's approach was, let's say, not so diplomatic. He was "yelling and screaming," Butler remembers. "He called us idiots and everything else. . . . Told us we're stupid. Everything he could think of, he called us." (Thomet, for his part, denies he treated the firefighters with such disrespect.)

Whatever the case, Thomet's request stood no chance against the hardware amassed on his property. Trucks and pumpers from Newburg, La Plata, Cobb Island, Bel Alton, King George County, St. Mary's County and even the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Dahlgren, Va., all carefully maneuvered down Next Step's narrow, winding, uneven dirt-and-gravel driveway, more than a half-mile long, and converged on the scene. Together, the trucks had about 6,000 gallons of water. It still wasn't enough to extinguish the fire, Butler says.

"We can let this thing burn once we get it to a controllable stage, but right now [the fire was] too far gone for us not to calm it down, because then we'll have everything on fire. The woods and everything will be on fire," Butler recalls. "I mean, those flames were standing probably 25 to 40 feet in the air."

Several weeks after those flames finally were extinguished, tempers have settled, too. At least for now. Because even though Thomet might not still be spitting bullets over the fire departments' performance, he's still swimming against the current. The contrariness he apparently displayed on Dec. 11 is part of the same take-no-prisoners personality that fuels his continuing resistance to traditional farming practices in Southern Maryland.

Thomet, 51, and his wife, Gabrielle Lajoie, 33, run a certified organic farm amid a sea of conventional ones. They are outsiders here, in farming practice and in personal history. Thomet hails from Switzerland and Lajoie from Canada. He grew up on a farm that was "by default organic," says his wife of five years. "That's just the way things used to be." Lajoie, by contrast, studied natural science in college in Quebec but discovered she preferred the warm soil to cold calculations. She moved south in 2000 and went straight into farming in Maryland. Both developed their attitudes about farming outside the influence of American industrial agriculture.

Which apparently is obvious to the locals. As one resident told me with classic rural understatement, the people in the area describe Thomet and clan as "out of the ordinary."

The thing is, the locals probably don't know the half of it. They're aware of Thomet's unkempt appearance: the wild hair and the ragged, graying, Greek-godlike beard. They've probably even heard him rail about big ag (a favorite subject), and they've, of course, taken notice of Thomet's protests any time neighboring farmers want to spread sludge on their fields. But the locals might not know that the couple and their three young daughters are all vegans. Thomet, in fact, essentially hasn't touched meat since 1984, not long after he moved to America almost on a lark. "It's the only New Year's resolution I ever kept," he quips.

Their lifestyle flows right into their farming practices and products. Unlike many of the growers around them, Thomet and Lajoie show little interest in conventional Southern Maryland crops, whether soybeans, corn, wheat or that old standby, tobacco. Instead, they've researched and experimented with fruits and vegetables, trying to learn which will thrive on this unusual patch of land, where the weather and the tributaries of the Chesapeake combine to keep the soil warmer in winter. Over the years, the couple have found that their farm can grow ginger, persimmons, callaloo, Jerusalem artichokes, figs and even an occasional surprise such as cardoons.

Along the way, they've developed a loyal fan base among chefs, including Dean Gold of Dino and Nora Pouillon of Nora, and among customers who shop at Next Step's one and only farmers market outlet, at Dupont Circle on Sundays. Next Step's popularity, says FreshFarm co-director Bernadine Prince, lies in its broad mix of products and its practice of biodynamic agriculture, in which Thomet and Lajoie consider everything they do and how it affects the soil and environment. "It's a very holistic approach to farming," Prince says.

Gold e-mails that "My favorite product from him is his fresh young ginger. This is ginger before it develops the brown skin that allows ginger to be cured. No one else is crazy enough to grow it here, and it tastes better than the stuff I used to get in the Japanese supermarkets in LA."

Since the fire, FreshFarm has been collecting money for Next Step via a donation button on its home page at www.freshfarmmarket.org , and a number of Dupont regulars already have earmarked contributions to the Help Heinz Fund. As of last week, four donors had given $1,000 to the fund, which will defray the rebuilding costs not covered by Next Step's insurance. Thomet says his carrier will cover about half of the $40,000 needed to replace the old wooden boiler-room structure with a metal free-span, or pillar-free, building. He also needs to replace about $1,600 in seeds lost to the fire.

As he squats next to his rainbow chard in the larger of his two greenhouses, Thomet catalogues the injuries to this sensitive plant, which prefers a warmer environment than the one this boiler-less room can now provide. He yanks up a leaf and pulls the stalk apart to reveal cell damage: The chard has become rubbery and shriveled. This is not Dupont-worthy produce. Just as troubling, the bitterly cold temperatures in December damaged or slowed the growth of Thomet's winter greens in his unheated high tunnels. For the first time they can remember, Thomet and Lajoie will have little kale, collards, Swiss chard or spinach at market in January. They will have to sell off their stockpiles of sweet potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes and butternut squash instead.

What's more, Thomet will not be able to start growing his transplant onions in the greenhouse until the boiler room is rebuilt. He probably won't even be able to seed his transplant tomatoes in mid-January if the structure is not in place by then. All of that could have consequences to his income, although Thomet says he has not fully considered the impact. In fact, he doesn't seem worried about it, as if this were another way he stands apart from his peers. He doesn't fret the bottom line.

"Yes, it is a financial loss," he muses, as if for the first time. "But will I have no bread on the table? No."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/03/AR2011010305513.html

Winter Street Food In DC

I saw the Red Hook truck a few days ago - I still can't see standing in line in any weather to pay that much for a sandwich.


Food trucks fight a cold economy

By Tim Carman
Wednesday, December 22, 2010; E03

Back before our weather became a blunt instrument, battering us with its remorseless chill, the Red Hook Lobster Pound truck enjoyed a customer demand that had the depth and urgency of a Depression-era bread line. This month, however, the hungry masses that once huddled around this Maine seafood shack on wheels evaporated when a cold front dropped temperatures into a range better suited for antarctic mammals, not patrons of Washington street food.

Still, Red Hook's sales in December have not declined dramatically compared with sales in the warmer months, says Leland Morris, president of Red Hook's D.C. operations. He has a theory about that. "What I've noticed is strategy," Morris says. "The line comes in waves now. . . . People watch from their offices, and when they see the line shorten, they'll move down."

Morris offers the explanation with such nonchalance that it has the ring of truth. Two days later, as snow starts to blanket the District's streets for the first time this season, several customers outside the TaKorean taco truck on L Street NW confirm Morris's theory.

"I work right up there," says Daniel Mandell, pointing to an office building in the 2000 block of L Street. "I can see how long the line is. I waited until it was more reasonable."

It would appear the District's emerging food-truck market could use more persistent patrons like Mandell. If you discount Morris's happy accounting - and even the Red Hook president will admit, when pressed, that the cold has had a "slight impact" on sales - many of the mobile vendors are hurting this month. Operators of four trucks say their sales have dropped by 40 to 50 percent from peak numbers. "My guess is most of these trucks are going to be losing money in winter," says Justin Vitarello, founder of the Fojol Bros., whose own rolling empire is earning about 60 percent of its summer sales.

So why do these chuck wagons continue to roll during winter? Simple: They have bills to pay, such as commissary and vehicle storage fees, and people to keep employed. "The reason is to make a living," says Mike Lenard, owner of TaKorean, "and for the people who work for us to make a living."

It might not be clear from the streets, but mobile vendors such as Vitarello and Lenard serve a different kind of seasonal cuisine, the kind whose revenues fluctuate dramatically with the seasons. The businesses that occupy this unusual category typically have been ice cream parlors, frozen yogurt shops and the like, but with more four-wheel eateries roaming the streets, the group now includes food trucks, no matter what they serve. What's more, their seasonal economic disorder is complicated by something that often gets romanticized by the media: Many food truck operators have no experience in the hospitality business.

The D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs has long known that. One DCRA official, in fact, told me last week that, historically, almost nine of every 10 new street vendors have no business experience. They just have an idea - and ambition. That can be a problem when it comes to budgeting for, and surviving through, the lean seasons, when revenues shrink but expenses don't. Starting early next year, though, the DCRA will launch its Small Business Resource Center, a private-public partnership that will bring together local nonprofit and economic development groups to help new entrepreneurs map out their future and perhaps even get them through tough times.

Coming to grips with the limitations of mobile vending is enough to make the average food truck owner issue a small, bitter laugh. Why not? As the hired guns for bricks-and-mortar restaurants continue lobbying the D.C. Council for ways to neutralize what they say are the food trucks' "unfair advantages," these street operators continue to contend with elements that few restaurateurs ever face. Such as workplaces where the temperature is only a few degrees warmer than the air outside. Or customers who don't want to feel their faces turn numb just for the opportunity to buy lunch.

One of the recurring issues for truck operators during winter - aside from updating their menus with soups, chowders and other warming dishes - is the status of their ordering windows. Should they remain open, which allows the frigid air to whoosh into the vehicle, or should they be shut when no one's in line? It would seem like a no-brainer, right? Shut that sucker tight and stay warm. But operators say it's not that simple.

"If the window is closed, the message you're sending is that you're closed for business," says Kristi Whitfield, co-owner of Curbside Cupcakes. Only the most seasoned food truck customer or someone seriously hankering for a cupcake will dare approach a closed window, she says, a fact that can affect the bottom line.

For that reason, most truck workers keep the window ajar, which forces them to find other ways to seek and retain heat. Most operators adopt Whitfield's approach of dressing in layers. On a particularly frigid Saturday this month, Whitfield swears she sported six layers of clothing under her apron (although she admits her wardrobe was largely dictated by the fact that she also had to work the downtown outdoor holiday market). Those extra garments can have their drawbacks. Ask Fojol's Vitarello, who had to affix his trademark fake mustache over a ski mask.

Others, such as Stephan Boillon, the owner and chef of El Floridano, rely on the heat generated by griddles and steam tables to keep warm. Boillon's case might be the most extreme. Because he installed solar panels to run his kitchen, allowing him to turn off the truck's engine and save fuel costs, Boillon cannot rely on the vehicle's in-dash heater to provide extra comfort. It can get cold fast in his truck, but the owner has devised a solution: He shuts off the kitchen's exhaust fan for a couple of minutes. "It heats right up," he says.

Such improvisations could help these curbside restaurateurs survive the coming months. They might even help them thrive, if you consider Vitarello's story. Last winter, during Snowmageddon, the Fojol Bros. truck found a way to navigate the clogged streets between its Hyattsville commissary and Dupont Circle, where it was one of the few operations selling food to the snowbound. Vitarello hawked 120 meals during one lunch. "The winter can play to your advantage," he says.

Of course, what should not be lost in this discussion of food truck operators braving the cold is the fact that they are not the first street vendors to suffer through Washington's winter. They're just the ones who attract the attention of media-savvy foodies. Vendors such as Ethiopia Asreshegn were huddling against the elements long before the gourmet food trucks stormed into town. Asreshegn has been squatting at the corner of 12th and L streets NW for a dozen years now. She operates a hot dog cart, that clunky symbol of street food's past.

Inside her cart, Asreshegn has sealed herself off from the cold, her window shut tight. No one, I'd venture to guess, thinks she's closed for business. I ask her how much she has made today while sitting inside her frigid tin can, her skin buried underneath three sweaters, three pairs of pants and a puffy parka.

"$50," Asreshegn says. So why do you do it? Why not just stay home and stay warm? Her answer mirrors those of her motorized peers. "I don't have a choice," she says. "I have a family."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/17/AR2010121706633.html


http://takorean.com/

Indian Veg On K Street

I never tried Nirvana but wish I had.



Dosas to order at Nirvana Express in International Square

By Tom Sietsema
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 21, 2010; 12:16 PM

Vegetarians, and others of us who like to eat lower on the food chain on occasion, felt abandoned when the family-run Nirvana went dark on K Street NW this past summer. Where would we go for our dosa fix?

Not far, as it turns out. Four months before the Indian establishment closed, husband-and-wife owners Jawahar and Doler Shah quietly opened Nirvana Express, a small counter in the International Square food court serving lunch Mondays through Fridays.

There are no seats. Orders can be eaten at one of the dozens of nearby tables in the basement setting near the Farragut West Metro.

The abbreviations at Express continue with the selections. Unlike Nirvana, this kitchen doesn't serve anything as elaborate as banana peppers stuffed with a paste of coconut, coriander and mint. But the Express peddles those crepelike dosas, which you can watch being made to order on the griddle behind the counter. Spinach dotted with cubes of house-made cottage cheese is one of several agreeable ways to fill a floppy, hubcap-size envelope of cooked-till-crisp batter made from rice and bean flours. (You can get a dosa stuffed with falafel, but I find that the fritters taste flat.)

Two bucks buys you a samosa the size of a baseball; beneath its crisp shell is a comforting core of potatoes and peas. For $7, you can get a combination plate: your choice of a curry with basmati rice, the flatbread known as chapati and the yogurt dip raita. The last part of the deal tames the heat you might pick up in the zesty pumpkin and eggplant curries, two of the entrees I look forward to seeing on the rotating menu at this Indian outpost.

Carl Domingo, the former manager of Nirvana who holds the same job here, says that "we were doing well" at the now-closed restaurant.

But the Shahs were not, at least physically. Both are in India for a break, he says.

They plan to return to Washington next month, after which they hope to begin serving breakfast at their carryout and (yes!) open something bigger than Express but smaller than Nirvana, in either Dupont Circle or Capitol Hill.

1825 I St. NW. 202-223-0123. dcnirvana.com. Lunch combinations and dosa wraps, $5.50 to $8.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/21/AR2010122102787.html

Hannukah Donuts!!!!!

Another miracle of Hanukkah: Fried jelly doughnuts
Customers rush and gush over Md. kosher bakery's holiday treat

By Michelle Boorstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 11, 2009

In sitcom Boston, barflys have their Cheers. In Kemp Mill, the heart of the region's Orthodox Jewish community, the observant have the Kosher Pastry Oven.

A place where headgear is a baseball cap with "Nationals" in Hebrew lettering or a yarmulke knitted with American flags. Where there's a spare prayer book on the counter if you forget every word to a particular meal-related blessing. Where everyone knows your name.

And where, during the holiday of Hanukkah, which begins at sundown Friday, your sunny little strip mall cafe transforms into a mob scene. That's because the Kosher Pastry Oven has some of the region's best-known sufganiyot, a fried jelly doughnut that has migrated from Israel to America as a standard treat for the eight-day holiday.

Starting in a trickle earlier this week and building to a gush Friday, Jewish people have been coming to the Pastry Oven, where the subject of holiday food triggered debate about linguistics, religion and family.

"The story behind the sufganiyot is a military one," stockbroker Lew Sosnowik said Thursday morning to Joel Davis, his daily synagogue-and-breakfast partner, of Hanukkah's historic meaning.

"But the victory was a spiritual one!" insisted Davis, an accountant.

"Every story is dependent on the raconteur," Sosnowik added while a woman told a clerk that she was about to drive her order to her children in New York City. It's not unusual for sufganiyot from the Pastry Oven to be taken aboard planes bound for California or Florida.

In the back, order slips were being added to the dozens already taped to the fridge: for 100 sufganiyot, three dozen, 18 (a lucky number in the Jewish faith), 36 (double that), in Hebrew, English and Spanish for the different staff. Up front, at the counter, trays full of sufganiyot kept replacing empty ones. Discussion among customers bounced from the etymology of the word (biblical Hebrew?) to the Hanukkah food best-known to Americans: the latke, or potato pancake.

Both are not coincidentally dependent on oil, which is central to the miracle at the center of the Hanukkah story: a lamp used to rededicate the Temple in the 2nd century B.C. had only enough oil to burn for one day, yet it burned for eight.

As President Obama appeared on a television in the background, giving his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, customers debated: Can latkes be made in butter, instead of oil? Or does that change their meaning? ("It's not a latke," tsked Davis.) And what about the sufganiyot fillings: Are the caramel and cream varieties you can get easily in Israel or New York better than the classic jelly?

At the helm of the scene is owner Arie Eloul, a Moroccan Israeli pastry chef with an impish smile and knowledge of kashrut, or Jewish dietary law, so deep even those in the most Orthodox garb ask guidance from a guy who drives on the Sabbath (which you're not supposed to do) to synagogue (when he goes).

Eloul expects to sell 10,000 sufganiyot (at $1.25 apiece), and places including Shalom Kosher Market in Wheaton and KosherMart in Rockville are also doing brisk business.

Meanwhile, regulars popped in and out of the kitchen to say hello to Eloul and his wife, Shula. Despite a dinner menu that features $24 sea bass and homemade tiramisu, the vibe at the Pastry Oven is informal. Although the posted opening is 8 a.m., by 7:30 tables are already populated by regulars including Sosnowik and Davis, as well as writer Marla Fogelman of Silver Spring, the New York-bound woman who meets a group of other female writers there each week.

Holidays -- and holiday food -- of course mark the passage of time, and customers talked Thursday about rituals changed with spouses passed on, children scattered. Hanukkah celebrations that might once have been at home with family are now at synagogue dinners with friends.

For Jerry Sandberg the Pastry Oven's jelly sufganiyot are a fine, if limited, alternative to the variety he gets in Brooklyn, where he grew up and where his relatives still live. That said, he knows everyone at Eloul's and comes every other day during Hanukkah.

"The only down side here," he said Thursday, "is you've got to make sure you get here before they run out."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/10/AR2009121004167.html

Good Hot Sauces

Jamaican Espresso

Fair Trade Cacoa Marketing - Rasta In Italy

From Italy, summer 2009, I bought this Cacao - Fair Trade, organic...... While the man on the box is not clearly Rasta, the implication is Rasta - the tam, red, gold and green (with shades).... I made hot chocolate with it - good stuff.




Packaged as Cacao, Amaro in Polvere, it is farmed according to principles of biological agriculture in the Dominican Republic and Bolivia (neither with large Rasta representation). It is sold by the Green Spirit label.

Antibiotics In Fish

Ala.: Unapproved substance found in fish imports

The Associated Press
Thursday, November 5, 2009 8:14 AM

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- Alabama Agriculture and Industries Commissioner Ron Sparks on Wednesday extended a two-year-old order banning the sale of untested fish from Vietnam and China in Alabama.

Sparks said Wednesday the new order comes after catfish from China and basa from Vietnam tested positive for fluoroquinolones, an antibiotic used in humans, but not approved for fish. Basa is a fish that tastes similar to catfish and is found in southeast Asia.

Sparks said his department's labs found the substance after testing fish from China and Vietnam that were marked as having already been tested. He said fish from the two countries can still be sold in Alabama, but only if they have been tested. Even then, Sparks said Alabama officials are allowed to order their own tests.

"We're going to stop it and it will never make it to dinner plates in Alabama," Sparks said of fish that tests positive for the antibiotics. "Personally I would not eat it. I would not recommend it."

Department of Agriculture chemist Joe Basile said the danger to humans eating fish containing the substance is that people might build up an amount of fluoroquinolones in their systems and allow bacteria to build up a tolerance to the antibiotic.

The antibiotic was also found in a small amount of fish imported from Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand. The order banning sales was not immediately extended to those countries.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/05/AR2009110501460.html