Good Food is Everybody's Business
You’d have to have your head in the dirt to miss all the garden books in every bookstore and garden center, not to mention on the Internet. Inspiring for sure! But this selection is not your garden-variety garden books! We’ve chosen seven books from the GoodFood World personal library not to help you design, construct, and grow your garden. They are to inspire your thinking.
Tom Baker (yes, that IS his last name) is an artisan baker and uses a wood fired “Earth Oven” to bake bread. He runs his business Loaf, a bakery and cookery school, from his home in Stirchley, Birmingham, UK.
Over the last several years, GoodFood World has ventured into a number of trade events, including a number of special segments: Produce, Natural Products, Food Service, Natural Food Stores, and Farming and Organic Production. It is eye-opening to see who attends, how trends are changing, and how attitudes to food and food production vary from venue to venue, audience to audience.
Fast-food chain McDonald’s has announced it plans to launch a fizzy fruit drink for children, Fruitizz. Oh, fun, fun! 12 spoonfuls of sugar makes the “healthy” drink go down! Starting to sound like doublespeak.
Spring is a tough season to try to subsist on garden vegetables, but it IS possible to do pretty well with salad greens and herbs.
In the face of daunting competition, an economic recession, and the unrelenting pressure by Walmart and other big box stores, small businesses continue to open and to flourish. Meet Sonia and Carlos, owners of Mendoza’s Mexican Mercado – they have the entrepreneurial drive that combines the old and the new to bring new flavors to cities like Seattle while at the same time providing familiar “food from home” for those relocated here from countries like Mexico. These family businesses are the “American Dream” – business ownership and community support.
Here in the Pacific Northwest a clam called a geoduck – pronounced “gooey duck” – is the butt of many lewd comments because of its unusual shape. Actually, it’s just a case of outgrowing that way-too-small shell! Geoducks are the largest burrowing clam in the world, and Washington shellfish growers have only been raising them since 1991. And now nearly 800,000 pounds of them seem to be missing.
Knowing where your food comes from – and getting to know your farmer – is a critical step in knowing what’s IN your food. Once you’ve decided to take the plunge and sign up for a CSA, how do you know who’s real? Success breeds competition and sometimes that competition is fudging it. Some of those CSAs you’re looking at are not REAL CSAs.
