Weekly Newsbits: GMOs in Your Kitchen, Swine Flu Renamed, Restaurants Resume Hiring!

Posted by Jennifer Heigl

A few of our favorite newsbits from today:

Rose over at A Little Bit of Green (which I found via Twitter from Real Food Media) has a great list of seven products you have in your kitchen that may be genetically-modified. I’m pretty surprised to see natural cleaning products on the list.

What do you do when there’s an unkosher flu going around? You rename it! Israel’s Health Minister, Yakov Litzman, has renamed the swine flu. I’m not sure if it helps or if it just offends a whole new group of people.

Could it be? Is it true? Nation’s Restaurant News is reporting that hiring is on the rise within the food and beverage industry. Though it’s still a bit low, at least 20% of restaurant managers who participated in a recent industry survey said they plan on adding to their staff over the next year.

Can The Obamas Save DC-area Restaurants?

Poor Barack! Not only does he have the wishes of an entire nation on his sturdy shoulders, from gay rights to education, there seems to be quite a bit of hope that he can kickstart the local restaurant industry as well! According to a recent CNN post, restaurateurs around the nation’s capitol are hoping the Obamas, well known for their date nights, will develop a new following for local diners. Throughout their residency in Chicago, the President and First Lady were often out and about at their favorite haunts. Since their arrival in Washington DC, some chefs, like Equinox’s Todd Gray, are even reporting a surge of reservations and congratulations after a presidential visit.

“They’re creating a huge buzz,” he said. “They’re out dining, They’re out supporting small family businesses, local-run businesses that in the end are the backbone of the American economy. And if that doesn’t give people hope, I don’t know what will.”

Can he do it? We’ll just have to see.

President Obama Adds Sustainable Chef to White House Staff

Posted by Jennifer Heigl

I was thrilled to read in the NY Times yesterday that in addition to keeping White House chef Cristeta Comerford, the First Lady’s spokesperson, Katie McCormick Lelyveld, has confirmed that chef Sam Kass has been appointed to assist in White House meal preparations.

With many notables in the sustainable food community hoping for a more eco-friendly administration, it’s encouraging to see that someone like Kass, who supports local food production and consumption, has been invited into the mix. A native of the Chicago area, and former private chef for the Obamas, Mr. Kass founded Inevitable Table, a private chef service combining food stuffs from local farmers and sustainable wineries in order to provide ‘clean simple quality food.’

You can read chef Alice Waters’s thoughts on the importance of a sustainable White House kitchen here.

Share Our Strength Launches “Operation No Kid Hungry”

Posted by Jennifer Heigl

In recognition of today’s National Day of Service, our friends at Share Our Strength are asking for your help to continue to fight hunger problems throughout the nation. Their newest campaign, “Operation No Kid Hungry” will continue to help raise funds for childhood hunger, encouraging communities to hold food drives for those in need within their own neighborhoods.

How can you get involved?

Share Our Strength has partnered with AT&T to offer two great ways that you can support and participate in “Operation No Kid Hungry”:

1. Donate by text! From now until March 1st, simply text “SHARE” to 20222 on your mobile phone and donate $5 to our fight to end childhood hunger in America. AT&T will match all text donations up to $100,000. Help us meet this challenge grant! You can find out more here.

2. Hold a food drive! Beginning January 19th, a national day of community service, help feed those in need by holding your own community food drive. Visit Share Our Strength to find a food bank and a list of the most needed nutritious foods.

PETA Prefers Kittens to Fish

Posted by R.K. Gella

Perhaps the shock value wasn’t as entertaining anymore.  Maybe the images of skinned seals, slaughtered cattle and chickens caged to the point of asphyxiation just wasn’t getting to the public’s stomach the way it used to.  Could it be that organized assaults and spray paint showers have become unfashionable?

This must be case, for PETA deployed a new persuasion against the capture and consumption of fish.

People don’t seem to like fish. They’re slithery and slimy, and they have eyes on either side of their pointy little heads—which is weird, to say the least.

We’re going to start by retiring the old name for good. When your name can also be used as a verb that means driving a hook through your head, it’s time for a serious image makeover. And who could possibly want to put a hook through a sea kitten?

Sea kitten.  Fish are now supposed to be referred to sea kittens?  It makes you wonder whose brainstorming over there.

Have you ever laid eyes on a monkfish?  It looks like a bizarre cross breed of an alien frog species and a vintage messenger bag.  There’s no way you could ever confuse it with a kitten.  It’s a delicious fish, hailed as the poor mans lobster for its divine succulence, but it doesn’t contain the slightest resemblance or personality of a kitten.  The sheer sight of it could be enough to dissuade you from eating it… maybe even more so than a kitten.

For the rest of the unfortunate looking aquatic animals out there PETA hasn’t forgotten about you.  PR is on its way.  Squid: renamed sea bunnies.  Crabs: sea hamsters.  Who could whack a sea hamster with a mallet?  And lobsters are now sea ponies.

In a related story, City Crab and Seafood in Manhattan, petitioned by PETA, pardoned a 140-year-old sea pony from their tanks on Sunday.  George, the crustacean’s nickname given by the restaurant staff, was released into Maine waters to live out his remaining years.  PETA said the next step would be to “ban catching [sea ponies] completely.”

Madoff Fraud Dissrupts the Season of Giving

Posted by R.K. Gella

Currently referred to as the infamous Madoff Fraud, the so-called Ponzi scheme perpetuated by investment banker, Bernard Madoff, has allegedly cost its victims a sum totaling around 50 billion dollars.  The damage has been catastrophic, forcing the closing of non-profits such as the Fair Food Foundation and attributing to the suicide of foreign fund manager Thierry de la Villehuchet, who last week was reported to taking his life after being “unable to resist the pressures that followed the eruption of the scandal.”

Now reports say the victims of the scheme were global, targeting top investors from the United States, Europe and Tokyo.

The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times also talked to Nancy Silverton this week, the highly regarded chef and baker, and owner of Pizzeria Mozza and Osteria Mozza in Los Angeles.  It turns out that Ms. Silverton was taken for all her investments, which would have included the $5 million she made from the sale of her La Brea Bakery in 2001.

“My father called my cell,” she said. “He said, ‘We’ve lost everything.’ I went into a kind of surreal shock.”

For Silverton, 54, and the many others like her, she’ll have to start over. “My entire retirement, my kids’ college funds, trust funds, were all invested in this. All I have is my restaurant now. We just can’t believe it.”

Bernard Madoff is free on a bail of 10 million dollars while authorities continue to investigate.