christophe thinks out loud

A complete list of San Francisco restaurants that supply sporks as part of their standard dining utensiles

Naan 'n Curry.

No, cluck this.

I'm not sure that I am entirely ready to buy into the vegetarian lifestyle, let alone the vegan one, but as long as we're talking chickens, United Poultry Concerns clearly has their heart in the right place.

Getting My Fix

There I was, in Portland. It was late at night, but I had to do it. I walked from my safe hotel down to the bad part of town, blocks away. Tucked between the dive bars and night clubs was the door I was looking for. I was jonesing, badly, and I needed my fix.

Fortunately, Voodoo Doughnuts was open.

I consider myself something of a doughnut aficionado, but I have never been to a doughnut place where I thought, “Am I hip enough to buy doughnuts at this establishment?” Until tonight. But I did it anyway. Doughnuts were involved.

And they were wonderful; light and fluffly and not overpoweringly sweet. This is a doughnut store with soul. This is a doughnut store with in-store music events. This is a doughnut store that is open from 10pm to 10am. How cool is that? And when was the last time, when ordering a nut-and-chocolate frosted cake doughnut, you were asked, “Regular or vegan?”

(And, really, how many independent doughnut places are left? Krispy Kreme, of the massive expansion and financial shenanigans, is now making their doughnuts so drenched in glaze that I can barely eat them, which is saying something. Winchells? The less said the better.)

So, the next time you are in Portland, check it out. The dirt doughnuts were especially good.

The Definitive Article on Country Crock Plus

Outside of a technical article in a food industry magazine (those are cool), McSweeney's has published the definitive article on Country Crock Plus Calcium and Vitamins.

Good to Eat, and Good for You

Wired News has a very good, balanced article looking at the pros and cons of genetically-modified food, and a new approach that reduces some of the risks involved in GM, while retaining the benefits.

The reality is that just about everything we eat (with the exception of, perhaps, edible fungus) is “modified” through years of selective breeding. Wheat has required human intervention to breed for the last few thousand years; modern cattle are a pale shadow of their ancestors.

So, what’s the problem with GM?

• The benefits to the consumer are tenuous; mostly, it’s the farmer and the seed companies that get the goodies from GM. That’s one of the main reasons that GM has found the most success in “ingredient” plants like soy (edamame notwithstanding). Saying that Roundup Ready soybeans are great because you can drench the field with herbicide like it was bubblebath doesn’t make me want to put the stuff in my mouth.
• People understand breeding. They don’t understand GM. The seed companies completely blew the PR battle by trying to make GM sound like it was something you could do at home with a high-school chemistry kit. They also painted anyone who raised issues with the technology as a moronic neo-luddite, rather than just addressing the concerns head-on.
• Although it’s admittedly a bit naïve, people think that a nice unbroken chain exists between the plants they grow in pots at home and those that spring out of the ground in large farms. GM plants seem like alien experiments, not nice tomatoes that you might find around the house. When you order seeds from Burpee, you don’t have to sign a long licensing agreement.
• This might just be me, but being specifically prohibited from replanting seeds from a plant that you grew seems like an absurd violation of the whole idea of fair use (and agriculture, for that matter).

Personally, I’m not impressed by some of the more hysterical anti-GM arguments. But while glowing fish are nifty enough, I’m not quite prepared to eat them.

At a Snail's Pace

The Slow Food Movement has been around for a while now, promoting the use of locally-produced, high-quality food . . . and the down-shifted cultural values that respect such things. It has expanded over the years to include branches all over the world, and an educational foundation. The idea of getting a Master of Food degree sounds very appealing.

Although Slow Food makes a direct point about producing food organically, just buying things grown locally is one of the best ecological decisions one can make. It is a bit absurd to buy organic produce if that produce has to be imported (at tremendous energy cost) from thousands of miles of way, akin to driving your Hummer across town to drop off the recycling.

Myco-Art

A few weeks ago at the SF Farmers Market, I was looking through a stall filled with all sorts of wonderful kinds of mushrooms and other fungus, and thinking, "What in the world do you do with all these?"

It did not occur to me to grow them into artwork. This is what separates me from the artists.

However, this did occur to artist Philip Roth, and the result is his show "Organized," at Machine Project in Los Angeles (via Boing Boing).

(Did you know that mushrooms will save the world?)