Some Good News: 20 Inspiring Stories In The Food World
Despite the disruptions and extreme challenges faced by restaurants, food producers, distributors, and farmers, there are good things happening in the food world. Civil Eats compiled a list of 20 uplifting stories in which “people across the country are still demonstrating compassion, ingenuity, and solidarity as they work together to solve problems and stand up for what they believe is right,” according to Civil Eats editors. There has been surge in community supported agriculture (CSA) subscriptions supporting regional farmers; there is more local, fresh milled flour available than ever before; community food co-ops and food banks have reshuffled to become stronger than ever; and there is a marked increased in access to healthy food in so-called “urban food deserts.” There is even a group of young adults flipping an abandoned North Carolina Prison into a sustainable farm.
BIPOC Bon Appetit Staff Depart From Popular Test Kitchen Video Series Citing Racial Discrimination
Bon Appétit magazine’s video series lost three employees of color nearly two months after management publicly pledged to work on dismantling racism within the organization. Priya Krishna, Sohla El-Waylly and Rick Martinez announced last week that they are leaving the Test Kitchen series after weeks of failed contract negotiations. Senior food editor Molly Baz also announced her resignation from the series in an Instagram post saying she would not appear on Bon Appétit’s YouTube channel out of respect for her colleagues. Test Kitchen manager Gaby Melian has also left the series due to unsuccessful negotiations. The departures came soon after Bon Appétit’s parent company, Condé Nast, named Sonia Chopra, the former managing editor at Vox Media’s Eater, as the new executive editor. The popular food magazine’s inequitable treatment of staff was first made public in June when staffers and contributors alleged racial discrimination. Assistant editor El-Waylly was the first staffer to call for the resignation of editor in chief Adam Rapoport, accusing the magazine of only paying White editors for appearing in the popular Test Kitchen videos. Despite her experience as a restaurateur and chef, El-Waylly said hired her for a $50,000 salary to help White editors who had much less experience. When a photo of Rapoport appearing in a racist Halloween costume resurfaced online, the editor in chief resigned his post. He had been Bon Appetit’s editor in chief for 10 years. In an interview with Business Insider, El-Waylly explained that her new contract offer on June 8 included a raise but wasn’t even close to what White co-workers were being paid.
On Second Thought: Trader Joe’s Decides Against Changing Its Food Product Names
After a Change.org petition earlier this month aimed to eliminate Trader Joe’s “racist” packaging, the company released a statement saying it was working toward doing just that. Now, Trader Joe’s has reversed course and says it will keep its product names such as Trader José’s for Mexican food, Trader Ming’s for Asian food, Trader Giotto’s for Italian food, and Trader Joe San for Japanese foods. In a statement on its website, the grocery store chain said, “We want to be clear: we disagree that any of these labels are racist,” and added, “We do not make decisions based on petitions.” San Francisco Bay Area high school senior Briones Bedell, who launched the petition, said she and her family frequently shop at Trader Joe’s and had always found the labels to be offensive. Despite the fact that more 5,000 people signed the petition, Bedell caught flak from conservatives for encouraging cancel culture and also from liberals for wasting time on a minor issue. Caught in the crossfire, Trader Joe’s has opted to make no changes to its product packaging.
New Carbon Footprint Label Appears On Food Packaging
Quorn, a major producer of plant-based products since 1985, has launched a new label on its food packaging to indicate the food’s carbon footprint. Quorn employs environmental scientists to calculate each product’s carbon footprint, and calculations are verified by the Carbon Trust, a third-party nonprofit certifying organization that has administered carbon footprint labels since 2007. Other food companies featuring carbon footprint labels include Quaker oats and Pompeian olive oil. Restaurant chain Just Salad also just announced that as of September 21 all its menu items will include a carbon footprint label.
A recent Tulane University study found that food production accounts for roughly 25% of greenhouse gas emissions, and 66% of Americans say they want to help reduce their carbon footprint to mitigate climate change, according to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. To help consumers achieve their goals, an increasing number of food manufacturers are including carbon footprint labels on their products. Even multinational food giant Unilever, which owns brands such as Hellmann’s, Knorr, Lipton, and Ben & Jerry’s, has committed to reduce the carbon footprint of its products by 50% by 2030.
How To Build An Outdoor Brick Pizza Oven For $50
Most outdoor brick ovens costs thousands of dollars to buy or hundreds to make. But you can easily build a simple pizza oven with store bought bricks. A combination of small and large bricks creates a fairly sealed firebox and separate cooking area for cooking pizza directly on the brick. You can even cook other foods in, say, a cast-iron pan. Building the oven requires 47 small red bricks and 2 large square bricks. Leveling your oven area is the important first step. You can even use a cup of water to eyeball level ground. Once you create a square foundation with the first layer of bricks, continue laying bricks four levels up, then lay on one of the large square bricks as the deck of the pizza oven. Add another three bricks in height, leaving a one-brick vent at the back for airflow, then lay down the second large brick over the top as the ceiling of the oven. With balanced construction and an air vent, the bricks will retain heat and move the heat over the pizza to cook both the top and bottom of the pie. You can adjust the amount of wood burned in the firebox to maintain a cooking temperature of about 750ºF. This homemade brick oven saves time and money and can even be disassembled and taken with you to reassemble elsewhere. Watch a video here and get full instructions here at Chef Steps.
Bakers Against Racism Raises $1.9 Million For Social Justice
What started as a doughnut sale to help furloughed immigrant restaurant employees has blossomed into the global fundraiser Bakers Against Racism. The organization was started by Willa Pelini, Paola Velez, and Rob Rubba, and word spread quickly in the culinary and social justice communities. Since late May, more than 2,500 bakery owners, pastry chefs, and home cooks around the world have participated in the decentralized online bake-sale fundraiser.
Part of the success of Bakers Against Racism is the universal appeal of baking. While chefs are well known for community activism, bakers and pastry chefs are not as widely known, even though bake sales for civil rights causes have a long history among African Americans. “Just being a minority in the kitchen and in life turns you into a natural activist,” said Thai-American Dianna Daohueng, the culinary director for Black Seed Bagels in New York City.
Through its online bake sales, Baker Against Racism has raised nearly $1.9 million so far, benefitting Black Lives Matter chapters and other social justice groups. “I don’t know policy, I am not a lawyer who can get people out of prison, but I can make cookies,” said co-founder and pastry chef Willa Pelini. “And maybe if I sell someone cookies, it can open a conversation about why we are making them.”
The Surprising History of Biscuits and Gravy
Biscuits and gravy now seems to be a ubiquitous dish in diners, cafes, restaurants, and food trucks. But it has humble and difficult beginnings born out of circumstance and necessity. In the late 1800s in Appalachia, biscuits were referred to as “beaten biscuits” because the batter was repeatedly beaten and folded. The work of making biscuits often fell to enslaved cooks or domestic servants, according to food historian John Egerton in Southern Food: At Home, On the Road, In History. Biscuits back then were sturdier and less flaky, so gravy added sustenance and made the biscuits more palatable. As for sausage gravy? “Biscuits with ‘country’ or ‘white’ gravy scratched together from sausage, pan drippings, flour, and milk were affordably made from the foodstuffs that were in low supply after the American Revolutionary War,” writes Heather Arndt Anderson in Breakfast: A History. Gravy ingredients changed over the years depending on what was affordable. During lean times, gravy was often made without meat or cream, or it was made with pan-fried ham drippings and brewed coffee for “redeye gravy.” But biscuits have always been staples. While they have historical origins in the American South, biscuits eventually became something you could pop out of a can to bake anywhere in the country.
A Primer On World Barbecue From India to Russia
The appeal of outdoor cooking is shared around the world. Charcoal and wood are the most popular fuels worldwide, but cooking techniques vary widely. In the Philippines, chicken or pork are often “half-grilled, half-marinated” in a mix of lemonade (usually lemon-lime soda), soy sauce, and sugar cane vinegar (or watered-down cider vinegar), along with garlic, pepper, and sometimes banana ketchup. In the Caribbean, barbecue cooks spend years perfecting jerk chicken, usually served with callaloo and fried plantains. Indian and Pakistani barbecue is incredibly diverse, but here’s a taste: Punjabi-style chicken wings marinated in ginger, garlic, fresh turmeric, honey, green chilies and lime juice, then grilled over charcoal. Or try what food writer and chef Romy Gill suggests: simple skewers of cubed meats marinated in a paste of ginger, garlic, green chilies, and garam masala. In Russia, even brutally cold weather conditions don’t stop Russian traditions of cooking over fire. Baked potatoes may be tossed on the grill and loaded up with sour cream and dill, particularly to accompany a meal of shashlik pork kebabs marinated in beer or Georgian-style beef marinated in red wine, tomatoes, and onion. And in Peru, the submerged firepit known as the pachamanca cooks entire meals, including unique skewered kebabs known as anticuchos.
Why Perilla Oil Is Key For Korean Cooking
Chef David Joo was making kimchi pancakes but couldn’t replicate the taste until he phoned his mother, who provided him with the missing ingredient that made the Korean dishes of his childhood come to life: perilla oil. Available toasted or untoasted, this unique oil is made by cold-pressing the seeds of the perilla plant (a.k.a. Japanese shiso). According to Joo, it tastes “nutty, earthy, with a licorice-anise finish.” Joo, the executive sous chef at the Peninsula New York, says his family drizzles it over bibimbap, over stir-fried fish cakes, and over sauteed spinach, among other things. He prefers richer-tasting toasted perilla oil for most cooking, marinating, and finishing. Just avoid extremely high heat to keep the toasted variety from burning and turning bitter. Joo especially likes to use toasted perilla oil in the hotter months, as it complements lighter vegetable dishes and the fat amplifies flavor, even in dishes that aren’t strictly Korean. Try it on grains such as freekeh or drizzled over fresh tomatoes, burrata, and basil.
Trader Joe’s to Eliminate Racist Packaging
The popular grocery chain Trader Joe’s uses other names on its in-house brands, such as Trader Ming’s for Chinese food products and Trader José’s for Mexican foods. After a recent Change.org petition requested revisions to that “racist packaging,” Trader Joe’s has agreed to make changes. The petition, started by 17-year-old Briones Bedell, garnered more than 2,000 signatures and came on the heels of similar changes made by other food brands such as Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben’s, and Eskimo Pie. Kenya Friend-Daniel, Trader Joe’s national director of public relations said that the California-based grocer had already started to phase out some of these product names before the petition was created and realized that although its quirky approach to naming “may have been rooted in a lighthearted attempt at inclusiveness, we recognize that it may now have the opposite effect.” Friend-Daniel added, “With this in mind, we made the decision several years ago to use only the Trader Joe’s name on our products moving forward.” The products in question will simply be renamed as Trader Joe’s.
