Dave Reichert is Washington’s Congressional representative from the 8th District, which is safely protected from the wilds of Seattle by Lake Washington. He is in a tough election battle with Darcy Burner, and they happened to speak at a PAC forum in the building complex where I work. The 8th District race is […]

New York Times*: Growers and grocers are using a synthetic gas called SmartFresh to slow ripening of 55-60% of U.S. apples, along with other fruits. The gas — which is undetectable after application, does not require a label, and “most likely harmless to humans, according to pesticide experts” (now that’s reassuring) — is a huge […]

I’ve made some discoveries recently.
First of all — I am not as good at pies as Man of La Muncha is. And the photos of the pies aren’t as good as his either. Damn that Man of La Muncha for raising the bar on pies.
Fine, he had one that looked like Mr. Yuck […]

New York Times*: For our fox/henhouse files — former FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford pleaded guilty last Tuesday to lying about stocks he owned in food, beverage and medical device companies he was in charge of regulating.
San Jose Mercury News*: Nutritionist and “What to Eat” author Marion Nestle has an op-ed about what it’s going to […]

One of the challenges of being half a blogging couple is that we discuss ideas, and then the first person scheduled to write in a week tends to use up those ideas. You wake, thinking idly of the post that is due the following day, only to discover that the other person has written […]

The New York Times has a rather cynical, market-oriented take on Whole Foods’ soon-to-be-debuting Animal Compassionate standards for meat, which join “free farmed,” “certified humane,” and other labels as a way for consumers to differentiate what treatment is acceptable to them. Such consumers, according to the article, are “sensitive carnivores,” foodies, and “recyclers.”
(What about blond-dreadlocked […]

USA Today: Got an opinion on whether cloned animals should be declared safe for human consumption? How bout if they’re unlabeled? Get thee over to USA Today, which has two reasonably well-argued pieces for and against, and join the lively discussion started in the comments section. Related: The Kansas City Star had an op-ed on […]

Signs of autumn are everywhere in Seattle. I woke early last week to find that the tree in front of our house had dropped its leaves, seemingly overnight. The rose bush has traded its summery flowers for fat red rosehips, and trees all over are responding to the chilly temperatures and shorter days […]

This Ain’t Livin’: Meloukhia finally gives up on waiting for the idiosyncratic newspaper Pt. Reyes Light to put her op-ed praising/defending the Light’s chicken slaughter article online, and posts it herself. Titled “An Ethicurean Dilemma,” it made us proud — not least because we know she wrote it in an hour after work at a […]

There was an advance screening of “Fast Food Nation” at UC Berkeley last week, followed by a freeform discussion with food detectives Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan. Because Pollan teaches journalism at Berkeley, I got to cover the post-screening chat for work, which to me is almost as great as getting paid to eat cheese.
I […]

Dairy Queen and I were recently talking about the delicateness of conveying Ethicurean views to friends who are not as focused on their food. We don’t, after all, want to be pushy or preachy.
In a sense, this is part of a larger anxiety in America right now about sincerity. Politically and spiritually, the climate is […]

AlterNet: Big Food watchdog Michelle Simon had an excellent piece about the meaninglessness of Disney’s food marketing announcement that we missed Wednesday.
San Francisco Chronicle: The criminal history of the particularly nasty little strain of E. coli O157:H7 to blame for recent deaths.
Times (UK): The U.K. government decides not to fight the European Commission’s new regulations […]

New York Times: Editorial urges Congress to create a single food safety administration that doesn’t just merge bureaucracies. (DQ: And that doesn’t punish small providers by forcing them to adopt unnecessary processes more appropriate to agribusiness factory models.)
BusinessWeek: Michigan authorities conducted a major bust of a raw-milk co-op, putting three family farms out of business […]

Last Sunday I made my first-ever batch of homemade apple juice.
Earlier in the week, Lady Persimmons, my friend and next-door neighbor, and I decided that Sunday night would be our apple date. I agreed to pick the apples beforehand from the two apple trees in our backyard, and Lady P would […]

Grist: Tom Philpott has a searing look at this country’s love/hate relationship with pesticides. Money quote: “Like the oil industry, agribusiness survives on its ability to privatize profits and socialize costs.”
Food and Wine: In what’s essentially a companion feature to Chronicle reporter Carol Ness’s “Back to the Ranch” article a few weeks ago, NY Times […]