an open cupboard

Some photos from my recent trip to New York City. Can you guess what they are and where they were taken?

Here are some links to some food-related stories and content I’ve been looking at recently:

• Short films on food from the Media that Matters Film Festival (by way of Slow Food)
• 10 restaurants around the world worth the cost of the plane ticket, by the late R.W. Apple (by way of Rebecca’s Pocket)
• The dilution of organic standards by agribusiness (not quite news, but a good reminder nonetheless: by way of mercola.com)
• A list of sustainable agriculture links (by way of mercola.com)

Upcoming events in the San Francisco Bay Area:

• Litquake Lit Crawl: Writers on Food and Wine, Saturday October 14, 8:30pm-9:30pm. The San Francisco literary festival includes a lineup of foodwriters at Laszlo Bar, MCed by Shuna of Eggbeater (by way of Eggbeater)
• Food for Thought: Filmmakers Lilach Dekel and Rod Bachar travel 15,000 miles over 5 months to document where exactly their food comes from (sponsored by commonwealth.org, to be screened in San Jose on November 8)

From savetheinternet.com:

“This is about Internet freedom. ‘Network Neutrality’ — the First Amendment of the Internet — ensures that the public can view the smallest blog just as easily as the largest corporate Web site by preventing Internet companies like AT&T from rigging the playing field for only the highest-paying sites.

But Internet providers like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast are spending millions of dollars lobbying Congress to gut Net Neutrality. If Congress doesn’t take action now to implement meaningful network neutrality provisions, the future of the Internet is at risk.”

Click here for more information.
Click here to sign the petition to keep the web democratic.

Salon.com recently ran an interview of Peter Singer, an ethicist whose latest book “The Way We Eat” examines modern agribusiness and ethics.

In the interview, Singer brings up an interesting point regarding the local food movement:

“California rice is produced using artificial irrigation and fertilizer that involves energy use. Bangladeshi rice takes advantage of the natural flooding of the rivers and doesn’t require artificial irrigation. It also doesn’t involve as much synthetic fertilizer because the rivers wash down nutrients, so it’s significantly less energy intensive to produce. Now, it’s then shipped across the world, but shipping is an extremely fuel-efficient form of transport. You can ship something 10,000 miles for the same amount of fuel necessary to truck it 1,000 miles. So if you’re getting your rice shipped to San Francisco from Bangladesh, fewer fossil fuels were used to get it there than if you bought it in California.”

Of course, part of eating locally is supporting local farmers, artisans, small businesses, and the local economy itself, in addition to reducing the use of fossil fuels. Singer touches on this issue as well:

“My argument is that we should not necessarily buy locally, because if we do, we cut out the opportunity for the poorest countries to trade with us, and agriculture is one of the things they can do, and which can help them develop. The objection to this, which I quote from Brian Halweil, one of the leading advocates of the local movement, is that very little of the money actually gets back to the Kenyan farmer. But my calculations show that even if as little as 2 cents on the dollar gets back to the Kenyan farmer, that could make a bigger difference to the Kenyan grower than an entire dollar would to a local grower. It’s the law of diminishing marginal utility. If you are only earning $300, 2 cents can make a bigger difference to you than a dollar can make to the person earning $30,000.”

Singer reminds readers that sustainable agriculture is more complicated than it seems, balancing myriad issues such as local production and trade, fuel conservation, green farming practices, the fair treatment of animals, fair trade, and so on.

Update: A midwestern reader comments on Singer’s statements regarding the local food movement.

Rose Levy Beranbaum has some words of wisdom on her blog regarding the purchase of cake pans. Apparently, manufacturers of cake pans have been shrinking their products, so your 9 inch loaf pan may not actually be 9 inches long. Worse, its volume may be less than that of a traditional loaf pan. If your recipes produce too much batter for your pans, this could be the reason. Berenbaum recommends shopping for kitchen products with a tape measure. Excellent advice, and something I’d never have thought of.