Archive for category food

Meat the Man

We spoke about fish yesterday, and today our Earth Week attention needs to be focused on beef. There are plenty of books and tales of unhealthy slaughtering conditions and unhealthy animals so what’s a consumer to do? First off we have the organic discussion followed by questions regarding sustainability. Whatever our budgets can afford, and yes, there are significant price differences. Beef has taken on a whole vocabulary full of words that distinguish one animal’s upbringing from another’s.

Upton Sinclair (The Jungle) started the dialogue about humane animal and slaughtering conditions early in the 1900s, and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) laid the cornerstone for the 2000’s, and now here we are at Earth Week 2010 still searching for healthy meats. Some nutritionists quickly chime in and say that the phrase, healthy meats, is an oxymoron as we need to limit our beef input significantly or eliminate such consumption. Let’s say we understand but recognize the reality includes beef. What are the best products to purchase? Where’s the beef? Maybe that’s not the question we need to ask, but whose beef is this?

In this age of numerous and ongoing beef recalls, food safety must be paramount in our decision-making.

If you purchase limited quantities of beef, then it is easier to justify your expenditures from top purveyors. In many instances, you will be surprised that their prices are not so-called, out of line. Many of these suppliers are individuals who trek to the farm markets to sell their prize products. The grass-fed movement has finally taken off, and for many it is the answer to the most humane question. If Wagyu or Kobe Beef meets your budget, then that natural route has a number of suppliers. As for organic and humane, consider a farm that specializes in such meats, such as Virginia’s Ayrshire Farm.beef-organic-fully-traceable-chuck-roasts-C13874

To help you locate who has the best beef for your money and to understand the range of beef possibilities, consult Local Harvest or Eat Wild, both of whom have devoted discussions and extensive lists of  suppliers who can provide the top-quality meats.

Sustainable, organic, humane: All words we need to consider when we have a beef discussion. Whether you purchase directly from the farm, visit a farm market, or spend your beef dollars at a grocer who purchases this top quality, this is the week you should organize your thoughts and ready your commitment.

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Small Bites and Sips

We’ve talked a lot about small plates (tapas, mezze) and noticed that this trend is not lost on the independents and the chains. Small plate menus have become a successful staple for Cheesecake Factory and California Pizza Kitchen. Diners can enjoy tastes that are less expensive and perfect for sharing. Some stalwarts might even congratulate the concept as being healthier as who needs those large portion sizes!

The small concept has traveled its way into other parts of the food and beverage chain. Study the power bar departments and you’ll notice that the mini bars have arrived. That’s even true with the gluten-free bars. The belief simply translates into smaller is better and less caloric. Maybe you need just a boost of power instead of a full-blown surge. How does 100 calories, zero sugar, and 6 grams of protein sound? Good, right. The small approach can quickly do the trick: A boost of energy or a taste treat. Maybe even the taste treat that works for anyone regardless of exercise or lack of energy. Minis.minibites Bites.

Other power bar companies are moving in this direction, too. After all who needs 200 calories when you can cut the caloric input in half and gain a similar advantage! Rather than tempt yourself with the big bar, go small.

As for beverages, we’ve seen the smaller Cokes and now wines and sparklers are growing the smaller is better category. If an early season picnic sounds perfect, then one of these small bottles of Prosecco or mini wines may be the perfect, enjoyable sip. Grab a plastic glass, and you’re good to go.

Small bites and sips, that’s a pleasant solution to large plates and overpours.

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A Simple Food Cover

As we all try to save money in any number of ways, we are always on the lookout for new products that might solve a simple problem. We consider plastic wraps wasteful and fear using them in the microwave (for good reason). We buy storage containers and then spend useless minutes searching for the accompanying lids, only to discover they do not fit as tightly on the second or third pass as they originally did. Aluminum foil is another expensive covering that increases environmental waste.

Worry no more. A new product, CoverMate Food Covers are just that: Covers. They may be the perfect solution to storage anxiety. That means they can fit tightly over a bowl, dish,  platter or whatever item is holding leftovers: No need to transfer food to another container. Besides their reusability, they also solve the microwave problem as they are microwave safe and have built-in vents that let steam escape during the reheating process.foodcover

To allay the greatest worry, they are BPA, latex, and PVC-free.

No more plastic wrap that promises to unroll easily and not stick to itself. These covers stretch-to-fit.

Food storage and food safety all in one simple marketing tool!

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How Do You Want Your Coupon?

officescissorsIt does not take rocket science to analyze what food establishments whether they be cafes, full-service restaurants, quick shops, or grocers are doing to capture our attention and our food dollars. We have to eat, and it seems we continue to figure out ways to economize the approach.

Restaurants have special dining out nights and chains, even those with just a few locations in a city, have frequent diner cards. Sometimes those benefits get extended into doubling or tripling their value on certain slow nights, that used to be translated as Mondays but midweek is starting to look a lot like a Monday! All this in an attempt to reward the faithful and expand the inner circle of loyalists.

These are just like frequent shopper cards which offer a reduced price on set items to the loyalists. Just scan and save is their mantra.

Does it work? Does it fill the tables? Depends who you ask and the price point of activity. The dollar:value equation becomes the heart of the analysis. Most people like a deal.

As for newspaper inserts, some weeks the number of coupon books weighing down the delivery is astounding, as in 4-5 different coupon catalogs. So it should come as no surprise that we ended the decade with increased coupon usage. The question always remains: Will the consumer trade up to a brand with a cents-off incentive and a doubling-off strategy from the market or stay with the new shopper’s friend, the house brand?

Then there’s the whole social media approach to couponing regardless if it’s for a restaurant or a grocer. If you become a Facebook fan, give over your email, or join their special mobile coupon connection, you will be inundated with money-saving offers. You name the service or the business, they want your fan loyalty and in turn, you will be rewarded, or turned off. You decide.

Clipping still has its friends, but new strategies are making more immediate inroads.

Smart eating has an infinite fan base.

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Sustainable Action

We talk about the importance of sustainability, the preservation of a food so that it is not depleted. Most often we are in the fish and seafood universe as we have done a wonderful job of depletion; a terrible job in the sustainability column. There have been numerous outreach programs from various chefs that have said NO More: As in no more tuna for fears of overfishing.

The problem is a global one. We can do all this wonderful work domestically from our top-tier US chefs, but the issue does not get resolved if only a few of the world’s major players are on the program. This week we had good news in the sustainability column from Target and Safeway: Target, with help from the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch guidelines, will no longer buy and sell farm-raised salmon. They plan to sell only wild-caught Alaskan salmon.

By following this road, they hope to contribute to keeping the ocean cleaner, free of pollutants from the myriad of factory fish farms. This is all part of Target’s growing emphasis on the food side of its business. Safeway turned to the marine conservation group, FishWise to have them help set up a stronger sustainability policy. They will no longer sell red snapper, monkfish, or grouper until there is a proven ample supply of these fish. They will also concentrate on providing traceability information. This latter fact is part of a growing food trend that says, tell me everything you can about a product. Give me its roots; its history.p_sushi

Here’s a little primer of connections that can serve as a fish road map: A new Pocket Guide is available.

As more companies get on board, we are more likely able to sustain our supply and enjoy fresh fish.

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Citrus Appeal

So many fruits; so many vegetables; so many choices. Let’s go back to basics; after all this is the year all the prognosticators said would be a year we return to basics.

Nothing is more basic (OK, acidic, got me there) than a lemon or a lime. There are varying levels of acidity among these two groups. The pink lemon, yes, it’s pink inside and besides eliciting an “ooh” response for its surprise beauty, has a similar taste to the conventional yellow. This year also seems to have produced ample availability of Meyer Lemons. Not just at fancy stores where a single “regular” lemon can prove costly, but bags of Meyer Lemons at the same price as the more common, so-called traditional lemon. Two very different products. The Meyer has a sweeter taste as it combines the flavor of a Mandarin orange and a lemon. Lovely as a boost to an otherwise, plain sparkling beverage or with any number of specialty desserts.

Then there is the lime universe. Limes are the go-to citrus for avocados and turning them into guacamole as their higher acidity levels prevent the cut avocado from turning brown right away and boost its flavor profile when chopped for guacamole or as the marinating base for ceviche dishes. Then there are the Key limes which look like mini limes but have a higher acidity quotient. Although Key West likes to claim complete credit for their origins, they are not solely grown at the tip of FL. Don’t worry if you crave Key Lime pie, there’s plenty of bottled product available at the supermarket.

I haven’t forgotten the orange, so many varieties, the grapefruit, and its newly popular cousin, the sweeter pummelo, Try them all. They help brighten the long, dark days of winter.image_half_orange

Citrus: So simple but with such definitional complexity.

So many choices: An easy winter refreshment.

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Twitter Alert

Check out two posts:

Johnson & Johnson recall expands.

Whole Foods One Day price knockdown sale–it’s Friday. Today: Extra large shrimp, $7.99–normally $15.99.

One positive; the other expanding negative news.

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Hold the Wheat; Eat the Popcorn

Popcorn_Bowl-thumbThe “other” flours are finding new-found popularity in this heightened allergy world that quickly points the finger at wheat products, especially whole wheat. Not just obvious, allergic reactions, but there’s plenty of medical discussions and research about behavior-altering reactions from the wheats. Did you know you could buy rice flour, potato starch flour, or tapioca flour? Pay attention, these products, and other similar non-wheat flours, are not that difficult to find anymore; they are gaining greater visibility on grocery shelves.

If you want to make a traditional bread or pancake recipe, you need to approximate all-purpose flour (primarily, regular wheat) with the above ingredients or a combination of them. For instance, if you are using rice, potato starch, and tapioca flours, you achieve the accustomed flour milled consistency by following a 6:1:1 ratio or 2 C rice flour, 1/3 C potato starch flour, and 1/3 C tapioca flour. Sure there are lots of recipes that call for extra thickeners, but the most basic simulation uses the flours in and of themselves.

We bash corn products continually as the villain in high fructose corn syrup and its alter-ego, obesity, but wheat has clearly achieved its own villainous persona. As more people experience allergic responses to certain foods, nutritionists frequently recommend eliminating wheat products all together. When you go on a wheat-free diet, where do you get the all-important fiber?

Figure out the foods you can handle and consider the obvious ways to get fiber into your wheat-free diet. If other factors are not interfering, then fresh fruits, vegetables, and nuts should do the trick.

You can easily tolerate the wheat-free lifestyle, if you plan ahead and think about how much fresh popcorn you want daily!

That just might do the trick.

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Good Gluten Info

When you make the rounds looking for tasty, not cardboardy, gluten-free products, you are assured of one common theme: High Prices. No matter where you shop, a bag of pretzels, gluten-free, is almost the equivalent of two or three regular wheat-laden bags. There are always deals and coupons for the latter category to ease you into snack nirvana.

Not for gluten-free products: The mark-up is significant. Finding the tasty ones (Glutino) and other snacks (Lundberg) make shopping a little less of a challenge. Interesting that Glutino just adjusted its product packaging, giving more prominence to its label. If grocers would just figure out where to place the G-F line (does it go in a section of an aisle by itself or does it comingle with similar products?), we could shop without so much interweaving among the aisles.

As for new packaging and heightened awareness, General Mills boldly showcases the term “Gluten-Free” on many of its familiar products. The big news is the introduction of its new website to help us broaden our G-F knowledge base: Live Gluten Freely. They have taken the guesswork out of a lot of label reading.list_logo_fruit

One can only hope that other large manufacturers will follow suit and do a product listing of G-F items and help us shorten shopping time.

Now if one of them would only do something about the pricing, more people might feel comfortable about making the healthier switch!

Hello, can you hear me?

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Trends-Supermarket Edition

HM_Button2We’ve talked a lot about restaurants lately, but the food world has plenty of supermarket news worth noting, too. As more people eat at home, which explains the difficulty restaurants face, grocers have found inventive ways to pick up the slack. Last week Wegmans reported that their $6 meals were doing extremely well (entree and 2 sides), and that with each new store opening they’ve added more seating for shoppers who want to stop and eat before they go home (or continue shopping).

Target, which has been increasing its food options, just announced that they were redoing their branded Archer Farms label and making it more nutritionally conscious. Their Simply Balanced products moves the company further into the important private branding aspect of shopping.

One of the funnier reports has to do with self-checkout, the opportunity to avoid long lines and entrust scanning to yourself. A Villanova University report found that customers prefer no one around or waiting while they are doing self check-out. Being self-conscious is an underlying trait coming from using the machines. Maybe we are not as adept at scanning as we think!

Kroger decided that all the angst about product information and where produce (basically salad) is grown can be alleviated by introducing traceability technology. By using the Harvest Mark system, consumers can uncover the food’s origin’s. This is one more step in enabling the consumer to feel good about what they purchased as now they have comforting information in addition to the usual ingredient and date stamped information.

All of these programs are in direct response to consumers filling out good data and reporting their shopping concerns to the companies. In turn the companies receive high marks for understanding the importance of making changes and being flexible during these trying times whether dealing with food safety, nutritional information, or cost-effective marketing.

As more people concentrate food dollars at the supermarket instead of dining out, it is fitting that markets are adjusting to the marketplace.

We love this type of news!

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