Eat at Joe's!

And The Newest West Village Tenant-To-Be Is... Pop's

According to one of the principals at Pop's, the restaurant will move from its original location to a new one in West Village by this spring.  Principals signed a lease yesterday (23 October 2009), and the next few weeks will be taken up building out the new, larger kitchen.  The new dining floor should seat between 200 and 250 people, and there will also be private party rooms for private functions.  The restaurant will have frontage on Main Street, and back doors opening onto a pool area.  I'm also told the new place will try out a lunch menu.  

Pop's will be staying in business at their Peabody Place location until opening at West Village.  Additionally, Pop's Backdoor will continue to run their pizza delivery operation from Peabody Place even after the restaurant proper moves.  

Good luck, folks.  

Guglhupf, Dinner, & Maxfield Parrish

Guglhupf, who added a nice café onto their baking side a long time ago, will have that café open for dinner for the first time tonight (6 October 2009).  The café has always looked really neat inside, but now it has some new lighting:

I couldn't help but be reminded of Maxfield Parrish's "The Lantern Bearers":

 

All images should link to larger copies, but Maxfield Parrish with a cellphone I'm not. :)

 

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Guglhupf
2706 Durham-Chapel Hill Boulevard
Durham, North Carolina     27707
919 401 2600
http://www.guglhupf.com/

_Gourmet_ Magazine Bites The Dust

Condé Nast to Close Gourmet, Cookie and Modern Bride

You'd Think There'd Be Plenty Of Room In Australia

Free-range egg claims don't add up 

[via Rantz in Australia -- thanks!]

Community Supported Seafood

Last year I worked on a huge post about community supported agriculture programs and their ilk.  Alas, it never made it to publication, as I had a computer die, along with all my research.  Maybe that was when I first heard of DukeFish and their effort to start a local community supported fisheries program.  Apparently, it's gotten rolling: it's called Walking Fish.  You can sign up using this form (PDF alert), and mail it in along with a check for your desired share.  Seafood will come from near Beaufort, NC in Carteret County.  

Beaufort is also the home of the Duke Marine Lab, and probably has more than a few DukeFish people down there.  Neat how that works out.  :)

Edit: story in today's Herald-Sun.

We Get Links

For what it's worth, I so totally don't have anything to do with this.  I usually try to stay out of things that aren't food-related here, and I don't think I've ever owned anything more sophisticated than a rubber band gun.  But I do think it's kind of a shame for people to have to go to such lengths to complain about traffic in their neighborhood.  I also think it's misguided to characterize any of the activist folks I know in that neighborhood (and I know a lot of them) as violent enough to actually shoot paintballs at passing cars.  Other than signs in a traffic circle often used for creative expression, there's no evidence anyone has done or will do anything like shooting paintballs at cars. 

By the way, I don't live in Duke Park. 

Thanks for indulging me in this interruption.  We now return you to your previous sporadic stream of food-related posts. 

Farmers Market Polls Update

I posted back in June about a couple of national farmers market polls, and encouraged people to vote.  Durham does pretty well sometimes, even if they do get our name wrong.  :)  However, we're not doing so well this time around.  The Durham Farmers' Market is 3rd in one poll (although the Carrboro Farmers' Market is 2nd — our vote is being split!).  In the other, we're in the "Large" category, and we're 15th out of 20 (Carrboro's market, also "Large," is 17th).  Geez, I really thought I could Whip you Gentle Readers into a Voting Frenzy.  Oh Well.  :)

Like Duncan Hines, not Betty Crocker

This is not a joke: Oscar Meyer, the third person in his family to run the family meat business (now part of Kraft), is dead at 95.  Would that we had more successful family-owned businesses and fewer conglomerates.  

How Local Is Local?

Speaking of local food:  How do you know your "local" food is really local?  If you grow it yourself, you know.  If you buy it from a farmer, you know.  If you buy it through a CSA or at a farmers' market, you can feel pretty confident, I guess.  If you buy it at a grocery, you maybe can't be so confident.  And when you buy it at a restaurant — say someone says the asparagus or beef in their stir-fry is local — how do you know?  Eventually, you have to trust someone, but as the chain gets longer and longer, the web of trust extending from your mouth to the land — that local dirt — gets more and more tenuous.  If Frito-Lay buys potatoes from someone 300 miles from their factory, then ships their potato chips another 300 miles to you, is that local?

In my opinion, this is the organic problem all over again.  The "USDA Organic" definition has already been causing backlash for a while, and it's still going on.  It's probably resulted in more use of terms like "biodynamic," and maybe to a lesser extent in the interest in truly local food, and in the web of trust it implies.

Suggestions, O Gentle Readers?  Whom do you trust, and how do you do it?  Are we reduced to that supposed quotation from Stalin: "Trust, and verify"?  

More Awesomeness

Recall for Beef Products Expanded

Durham Central Market Memorial Day Potluck

Durham Central Market is having a potluck and fundraiser this Memorial Day (this coming Monday, 25 May 2009) from 5 to 8 pm.  It's at the Durham Farmers' Market pavilion in Durham Central Park.  Read more details at the event posting on the DCM blog.  

FWIW, DCM is at over 450 members.  They're shooting for at least 1200 before hopefully opening a co-op store sometime next year.  If you like, read about who they are, or look into joining.  They also have an RSS feed for the blog.  

"Scenes of Long Acquaintance"

This has very little to do with food, but... hey, it's my blog, right?  :)  MJ Sharp has an exhibition at the Bull City Arts Collaborative until April 24th called "Scenes of Long Acquaintance."  Most of the exhibition there is long-exposure, available light, large format photography.  If you go by, make sure to go to the bathroom and check out the picture hidden back there.  You'll understand the extremely tenuous food connection once you get to the show.  Hours are on the BCAC "Upfront Gallery" page. 

I should have mentioned the exhibition earlier, when it opened last month, but my immediate impetus is that MJ is also having an Open Studio this Sunday (5 April 2009) from 1 to 4 pm at her studio space at Northgate Presbyterian Church on Roxboro Road (map).  She'll be selling a lot of "as is" work prints, so if you like her stuff, you might be able to pick something up for less money than her regular work. 

Wow, I really would love a quarter's worth of Spam squirted thru a little metal tube

http://gastromatic.net/

[Via Wine Authorities, after they clearly had too much to drink.  Dude.]

We Have Successfully Infiltrated the Highest Levels of the United States Government, Part II

While I realize the POTUS and his family have, um, somewhat more resources than a lot of us, hearing about their vegetable garden is still heartening: '“There’s nothing really cooler,” Mrs. Obama said, “than coming to the White House and harvesting some of the vegetables and being in the kitchen with Cris and Sam and Bill, and cutting and cooking and actually experiencing the joys of your work.”'

Stew was, of course, all over this; no word yet on whether chickens will be taking up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  :)

Which raises a question in my mind: what would you do to have local vegetables or meat?

[Title from here.]

It's Nuts II

FDA: Peanut processor found salmonella, shipped anyway

BTW, the (PDF) recall list is up to 29 pages.

Action and Secrecy in China

Death sentences given in Chinese milk scandal

On the one hand, I'm glad that China seems to be taking adulteration of the food supply seriously.  On the other....  With the trials (like other things in China) being hidden so much from view, it's hard to get a real sense of what's going on.  Were the executed actually at fault?  What else was going on? 

I guess the real bar to be crossed is for the adulteration to stop.  With as much of that as has happened, and as opaque as Chinese society seems to be (at least to me), it's going to be hard for me to feel any trust for a while.  

“Before we get barbecue, I have a few words to say about the economy.”

From Examiner.com:

2008 in review: top ten food stories and quotes from the presidential campaign trail

And a Merry Christmas to you from the staff and management at Eat at Joe's!  :) 

We Have Successfully Infiltrated the Highest Levels of the United States Government

According to the New York Times, "Mr. Obama looks like the first foodie president since Thomas Jefferson."  Whether Obama is a "foodie" or not, the article is a nice broad survey of what some other people would like to see the President-elect do with respect to the US and food.  It remains to be seen whether any substantive policy changes will come to pass.

Election Day Feeding Frenzy

Eat at Joe's! would like to join the [edit: Post-]Election Day frenzy by listing places giving out free food or the like.  Unfortunately, most of the ones I know about are chains: Starbucks, Krispy Kreme, and Ben & Jerry's come to mind.  I do know Six Plates is offering $2 Lamby Joes if you bring in your "I Voted" election sticker.  If you know of anyplace else doing something similar, please leave a note in the comments.  (Apparently some localities have laws against offering Election Day enticements, even if those offerings are non-partisan.  I have no idea what local law is on the matter, so let's be careful out there.)

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Edit:  Maybe I can keep up a list:

• OnlyBurger: Post-Election special (5 November 2008)
• Six Plates: $2 Lamby Joes
• Watts Grocery: Cupcake

God, Not Again

How many times does this have to happen?

Chinese baby milk scare 'severe'

Chinese dairy knew milk fault weeks before recall

"Chinese infant formula sold illegally in ethnic markets in the United States may be tainted with the chemical melamine"

I assume the Chinese government will execute a few people and think that will take care of the problem.  Unfortunately, it won't, as they've already tried that without success. 

How do you instruct over a billion people in a country not known for openness on how to do things right? 

Behold!

The aborning Durham Central Market.

Edit: Maybe I should have made it clear that you were all to go there and buy shares. 

... or you can put the baby in some new bathwater....

Folks who've lived in Durham for a while may know we have a food co-op, originally called the "Peoples Intergalactic Food Conspiracy #1," IIRC.  Those of you who've had anything to do with the co-op may also have noticed that it's, well, moribund.  It used to be a lot less so when it was, oh, there instead of here, but I guess that's water underneath the cheese case now. 

Also, those of you who live in the area bounded by, say, Buchanan, I-85, 147, and 70 know your grocery buying was impaired quite a bit when the Northgate HT closed, and still more when the Avondale Plaza WD closed.  You know this because you were happy when the Compare at Avondale opened, or because you had to shop at Whole Foods more, or you were really pissed when the third incarnation of Fowler's closed, or perhaps just because you couldn't walk anywhere to buy groceries anymore. 

Happily, there have been some people working to bring another food co-op to Durham.  While there's no definite location yet, they're incorporated, with a working name of "Durham Central Market." I believe it's to be somewhere in the above-mentioned area.  Perhaps it'll be near downtown, even.

Three cheers for the Durham Central Market!

The "Farm Bill"

Speaking of food prices, I'm going to delve into politics here, which is probably a mistake, but who the hell decided that all mistakes were bad?  :)

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Last week, the U.S. Congress passed a bill increasing its -- our -- obligations to the tune of about $60 billion/year over the next 5 years.  The bill has popularly been called a "farm bill," but as the NYT points out, it could more appropriately be called a "food bill."  Why?  Over 2/3 of the bill's spending is not for the farm subsidies that some complain about.  Instead, that 2/3 plus some -- over $40 billion/year -- is in extra money for things like food stamps. 

I don't know how you folks feel about food stamps, or U.S. agriculture in general.  But in my opinion, the U.S. has been doing almost crazy stuff for 30 years or more to both keep the price of food down and keep U.S. farmers in business.  Folks in the U.S. spend much less on food than those in other countries: usually less than 10% of our money goes directly for food.  That's pretty cheap.

But it's about to get worse.  Hell, it's already getting worse, as any casual trip through a grocery store will tell you.  Wheat, which not too long ago was $3/bushel, is actually retreating from highs near $12 to about $11/bushel.  Other commodity crops are almost as bad.  Why?  It's complicated, but it seems (among other things) as if the price of food is responding to other governmental acts over the past year or so influencing the use of agriculture for energy generation: more ethanol from corn, say.  But that means less land for growing other crops, including food.  (Gas, if you haven't noticed, is flirting with $4/gallon.)

I don't know why Congress waited a year to see what any intelligent person who looked at the right numbers could have seen: food is going to continue to get more expensive.  Maybe Congress is doing the right thing, or maybe not.  But I do think that agriculture is the linchpin of the American economy: people, both here and abroad, depend on the US for food.  Maybe Congress's latest tinkering will be good, or maybe it won't.  But I hope it helps. 

"Oh, my aching..."

Well, this looks like fun, for those who enjoy such things: 

"Have you ever thought about eating an order of bacon cheese fries and running 2 miles only to have to eat more food?"

Edit: Must... include trendy... Facebook event URL... get proper street cred....

Lies. It's What's For Dinner.

McCain "Family Recipes" Lifted from the Food Network.

Paul Prudhomme Did Not Explode

It's a damn good thing these folks missed, otherwise he would have gone up like Mr Creosote: 

Paul Prudhomme scratched by falling bullet

More seriously, I know things are not great down in New Orleans since Katrina, but being accidentally shot on a golf course is pretty bad.