P i s t a c h i o

Charming installations bring to mind an XTC classic.

1000 Umbrellas

Great find this morning.

Sorry for the opening advert to the Tostito video [like it's even my fault], except for the partial tag line that I’m going to rip off.

That’s it — the post title.

Thanks for sending me there, Matt Jennings, terroirist and Prince of Porc. That’s what they call him for being the Boston winner of Cochon555. [Could Toronto please sign up for this? We can certainly kick some charcuterie butt.]

Can business to be smart all the time?

Calling all food-makers. Give it a shot. The markets are saying simplicity is flying off the shelves.

Additives industry, don’t know what to tell you.

Take your R&D in another direction?

Leave it to Bittman to clear things up so eloquently.

Stopping for a quick cup at the new Tim’s in my hood, I noticed their new recycle bins.

They’ve designated where cups can go and where lids can go, which I hope will go a long way toward quelling the kerfuffle. A gargantuan volume of take-out coffee cups is messing up the great progress we’re making on keeping the city’s solid waste under control.

The core issue concerns the cups’ plastic coating. Our processing can’t accommodate their slower rate of breaking down compared with other waste in their category.

Today’s Globe reports that the deadline For Tim’s conversion to a greener cup might be delayed.

Some jaw-dropper stats from the report: 

• 1 million: Estimated takeout coffee cups generated in Toronto each day
• 152,858: Number that leave the city
• 336,883: Number brought in
• 1,184,025: Net daily that end up in Toronto’s waste
• 357,575,550: Annual total
• 4,291 tonnes a year: Weight of those cups
• 715 tonnes a year: Weight of their plastic lids

Source: Report for city by Entec Consultng Ltd., obtained by The Globe and Mail

The Canada Goose is a health hazard.

– Senator Nancy Ruth

This isn’t what I had in mind when I was considering in my last post how two problems could add up to two solutions.

Pissed that too many geese and their detritus are spoiling her cottage property, the senator took the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to task.

The geese should be shot and cooked and served to the poor, she said, or more specifically, as she explained to the media later, shot, plucked, inspected and sent to food banks.

And hey, it’s not just the fecal matter washing into her lake. It’s a problem near her Toronto home, too.

“We cull other animals,” she insisted, “why not these?” She might have a point, if it weren’t for her shameless sell-interest.

I wonder what else is going awry in the senator’s personal life that we can enlist the goverment to set right?

From the Globe archives comes this story about how a Toronto problem could solve a prairie problem.

If we can suck up cold water from the bottom of Lake Ontario to efficiently cool the finanical district’s sky scrapers during air conditioning season, we can do what these farmers propose.

Maybe not then, but wouldn’t we consider it today?

25 YEARS AGO:

The Globe and Mail reported that organic food farmers in Saskatchewan, faced with a spring plague of grasshoppers, proposed a solution to the Toronto gull problem - wing the birds out to the Prairies. The farmers were undaunted by the formidable task of catching and exiling the gulls, which were soiling Toronto’s waterfront. “If science can put a man on the moon, it should be able to transport gulls from Toronto to Saskatchewan,” said a representative of an organic producers marketing co-op.

We’re already feeding a lot of people.

Crystal Mackay, Executive Director of the Ontario Farm Animal Council

Crystal Mackay thinks we could be feeding many more. As host of  last week’s symposium about how to grow farming, she said we’re ready for it.

One quarter of the Canada’s farms are in Ontario. The province is home to a third of the national population, and less than two per cent are farmers. As a case study in enterprise, we can look at how 50 percent of our pork is exported to the US.

We have the soil, climate and infrastructure to support a much larger industry, experts said. But then came the lament that not enough people wanted to go into farming. Manufacturing is going down the tubes, but agriculture isn’t likely to fully compensate. We’re going to need seed money, they said.

The investment fund established two years ago to promote the commercialization of local farming is just the beginning.

A wave of decentralized farming has begun. and it’s going to be huge.

Easy to digest news about the business of food.

Updated daily, from global sources.

Follow it here.

But for starters, it’s here.

Trans fat ban in BC hits October 1

Consumer spending down in Q4 2008, first decline since 1995

Enviro-ocean group declares that the seas are hungry for fish

Thanks Adhocracy. Mozel Tov.

Sarkozy’s favourite meal at Le Bristol, where he dines a couple of times a week, is a starter of stuffed macaroni with black truffle, artichoke and duck foie gras, which costs about $100.

Associated Press

For starters, an economic crisis during which the guardian of rarefied cuisine says to its family: Why can’t you be more like your expat brother Jean-Georges in New York? “He does a three-star prix fixe lunch for $28,” says Michelin France’s Director Jean-Luc Naret. Actually, JG is only one in a band of peers lining up killer deals.

Main course, the heart of fine-dining, pumping with the life-blood of corporate spending [about to hit an endangered watchlist, but still sustaining].

To finish, with sweet irony: a declarative coup de gras from Le Bristol’s chef, Eric Fréchon, the only star upgrade [from two to three]  given by Michelin France this year. Says Fréchon: “In the past, we used to turn people away. Today, we aren’t doing that any more.”

Great news for the cheese course: a ripening democratization of grande cuisine.