Eat My Florida

I also could have gone with It’s Made Of People, or I’ll Have The Long Pig.

Serious Eats cuts right to the chase –Would you eat…People?

James Beard said (according to rumor) – “I believe that if ever I had to practice cannibalism, I might manage if there were enough tarragon around.”

If you do decide to partake in the new meat sensation that’s sweeping the nation, here’s a handy guide to butchering a human carcass, with a tasty barbecue sauce recipe. Yum-o!

Would you, could you, on a train? Would you, could you, eat some brains? And what would you make?

During a Memorial Day weekend packed with wholesome family activities, most taking place in the great outdoors, I reconnected with smores, that gooey fireside treat. Problem is, we were hanging out at the cabins in Myakka Park, where the AC blasts in the bedroom and the only fire comes from the charcoal grill cemented into the dirt out back. We all know that meat cooks best over glowing white coals, but marshmallows? That’s another story.

3 tips for smore preparation and construction after the break. (more…)

The restaurant/bar/video gamery/recording studio/money pit brought luminaries like Fat Joe and Fabolous to walk the red carpet at the opening of the restaurant chain’s second location last week. It must have been scheduled to coincide with an unprecedented lull in hip-hop song collaboration to attract those also rans.

Hey, wait a minute – second location? There’s that decrepit spot in St. Pete that bore the HipHopSodaShop sign for the past few years, never open and now for lease. And yeah, there’s also that desperate, empty building near USF that feels like some unpopular teenage fanboy is holding a perpetual wake for Biggie in a defunct Bennigans, complete with the Xbox from his basement. But that can’t be the flagship, can it?

I guess it sort of embodies “a business with a consciousness that embraces the totality of today’s young people.” Huh.

In a move towards increasing rents and building more green houses and red hotels, Parkshore Grill (300 Beach Dr.) owner Steve Westphal has just signed a lease at the (almost) location of Robert Irvine’s Ooze and Schmooze (400 Beach Dr.). He and Parkshore chef Tyson Grant plan on opening a restaurant, opting more for the bland 400 Beach than the grotesque moniker created by liar, liar Irvine.

“If only we could manage to land at 500 Beach,” explained Westphal, “we’d have all the green properties and could start charging an arm and a leg to anyone who happens to stop on one of our squares.” Westphal is in a tight race with Craig Chapman and Zack Gross to collect the most money from diners, free parking and beauty contest entries in downtown St. Pete, while avoiding the dreaded curse of jail.

I’ve been eying the new McDonald’s sandwich creation since it was launched a few weeks ago — fried chicken, pickles, on a “buttery tasting” bun. Sound familiar? Yep, it’s a direct shot across the bow of Chick-Fil-A’s signature sammy. In the interests of full disclosure, my first job was at the Chick-Fil-A in the Sarasota Square Mall when I was 15. Even after coming home drenched in aerosolized grease for six-months, I was more than willing to put away a sandwich and container of waffle fries. It’s still one of my favorite fast-food joints.

Today the NYT discussed the tendency that big fast food has of stealing good ideas from little fast food, so I thought it was high time to do a little head-to-head taste test. The results of my scientific research are after the break -

(more…)

After the previous post, I called the Florida Department of Children and Families to find out how Food Stamp usage has changed over the past year for our neck of the woods. Turns out that the Suncoast is leading the way on the drastic rise of families on Food Stamps. (The data indicates number of families, not number of individuals.)

Pinellas managed to fall below the 19% state average (odd to congratulate a county for only having 17% more hungry families), but Hillsborough is way past it. And Sarasota, uh, all I can say is … wow. Things are looking grim on the Suncoast. Check out the previous post for ideas on how to help out.

Last year I lived for a week on just $3 a day for food, the average amount that food stamp clients receive from the USDA to fill the grocery cart. It wasn’t easy, and it couldn’t end quickly enough for my taste. The real story wasn’t my gimmicky experience, though. It’s the large numbers of people who have to eke out three squares a day on the government dole. 26 million people last year. 200,000 people on the Suncoast. And those numbers are going up.

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported that Florida food stamp usage jumped 19% in the past year, which is over three times the national increase. Much of that comes from families who have dropped into the ranks of the working poor, with jobs that just can’t make ends meet in the current economy. When talking to food banks last December, one volunteer told me that he has people coming in for help who were donating items just a year ago.

Want to help? Donate food, cash, or time to a local food bank. Check America’s Second Harvest to find one near you.

Tampa Bay’s 10 has a piece about water conservation in restaurants. Apparently, Swiftmud (Southwest Florida Water Management District, ironic name unintentional) has started a new program — WaterPRO — aimed at reducing water waste in the food service industry. Hopefully, that doesn’t mean they’ll be serving more evil bottled water.

This weekend, the NYT posted a story about the vast amount of food that American’s waste every year, as much as 27% off all food available for consumption. That happens at every step of the distribution pipeline, from factories to your refrigerator, resulting in almost 100 billion pounds of edible food hitting the trash can.

What’s worse is much of that — as much as 98%, according to the article — ends up in landfills, slowly moldering away and manufacturing methane gas. People go hungry, we waste money and the environment suffers. Triple whammy.

Here are some ideas to help cut your wasteful ways:

1. Eat what you buy. When planning tonight’s dinner, try to cook with the oldest food in the house, especially veggies that are past their prime.
2. Compost. For both wasted food and inedible scraps, composting stops overloading landfills and starts putting the valuable energy and nutrients back into the soil. Even better if you’re using the compost to fertilize a backyard vegetable garden.
3. Shop frequently. It might use up a tad more gas, but at least you’ll only be buying what you need for a few days, leaving you a better chance to consume as much as you buy. Goodbye, weekly trip to the grocery.
4. Support reclaimed food charities. Groups like Tampa Bay Harvest work with grocery stores, restaurants and others to pick up unwanted but edible food and get it into the hands of people who need it most. Encourage places you shop to participate, or you can sign up to volunteer. The organization has a great system that pairs volunteers with pick up and delivery routes close to their work and home.
5. Buy less food. The less you have, the less you’ll waste. Maybe it’s time to see the bottom of that vegetable drawer again.

I’m currently lining up chefs to participate in our Tampa Food Issue for June — the $20 Menu Challenge. All they have to do is create a meal for two with at least three courses and keep the ingredient list to under $20. (We did this last year in Sarasota, without the course requirements. Jose Martinez’ contribution was amazing.)

Not too difficult, in my opinion, but I had a chef yesterday who was shocked. “That’s impossible,” she explained, trying to wrap her head around the concept. “Maybe these people don’t want to eat very much?”

I suspect that she’ll come up with something after she thinks about it, but later that day I was telling China Yuan owner Peter Chan what she’d said. Maybe it’s just a stylistic difference, but he had different take on the matter. “If a chef told me that, I would tell them to go to hell!” he said. “You want dinner for four I can do that. You want dinner for eight, I can do that for less than $20.” Chan explained that he’s had to feed his family for a lot less than that in the past and he knows how to stretch a dining budget.

He’ll be providing us with some recipes for the issue, so if there’s anything special on his menu you want the details on, just drop me a line. And, if you know a chef who could turn a $20 bill into haute cuisine, let us know. We’ll add them to the list if they’re willing.

What can you do with $20?

Hopefully Molto Mario learned a lesson from that ill-fated Food Network show where he traveled through Italy with his nameless (at least, I don’t remember the name) pal through nigh unwatchable scenes of vaguely food-related hi-jinx. Even the clogged, redheaded demi-god of chefs couldn’t save that bland endeavor.

You may have heard that he’s since contracted to give the same treatment to Spain, albeit with better companions, a much bigger budget and thankfully free from the aegis of those tunnel-visioned goobers who run the Food Network. The result is Spain: On the Road Again, a PBS food show that appears, at least from this sneak peek recently plopped on Youtube, to be mostly about the lifestyles of the rich, famous and hungry. It’s set to air in the fall, in primetime, no less. Of course, PBS’s primetime might be Saturday at 9 a.m.

I love Batali. I like Mark Bittman (at least in print). I can even stand the waspy, prim Gwyneth Paltrow. But the show? We’ll see. Check it out above.

If you remember, DeSanto Latin American Bistro was reviewed negatively by both me and Laura over at the Times after they opened, so owner Doug Illman made the surprisingly smart move of closing the restaurant and hiring local super-chef Jeannie Pierola to come in and re-do the menu and train the staff to improve quality. Early returns I received from friends and readers were overwhelmingly positive. Not surprising, considering Jeannie’s talents and Latin food skills.

But wait. This weekend I received an email from a reader who has been frequenting DeSanto of late. Here’s what he said:
“Ate at DeSanto last night, my 3^rd meal there since JP’s arrival, blown away the first 2 times, last night – Awful. I asked what was up, they told me Jeannie was gone. Sounded like it happened all-of-a-sudden. Perhaps the owners couldn’t stand the heat (expensive ingredients) in the kitchen?”

I called over to the restaurant and they confirmed that Jeannie was gone from day-to-day operations, although she’s still consulting. That’s a bit sooner than the three months she was originally scheduled for, but the manager indicated that “she’s got a lot of her own things going on right now.” Maybe her own project is ramping up. Early rumors had her negotiating for space at downtown Tampa’s Skypoint, but that hasn’t been confirmed, and Jeannie’s been tight-lipped about it.

As for DeSanto, we’ll see if that one reader’s experience was an aberration or a sign of things to come. I’ll be checking it out soon.

Anyone else have a similar experience at DeSanto in the past week? Or any gossip about Jeannie’s new project? Inquiring minds want to know.

I put in calls to two local farms that either sell at or run their own markets to see what crops are coming to market this weekend. Break out the cookbooks and start planning next week’s menus based around the freshest local produce around, bought from the hands of the people who pulled it from the ground.

Worden Farm
(Based in Punta Gorda, this organic CSA sells extra produce at Sarasota’s Downtown Farmer’s Market from both their farm and other local farms)
According to Eva Worden, they’ll be bringing: onions, potatoes, cooking greens and lettuces, watermelon, squash, lots of herbs, sunflowers (”mother’s day this weekend, of course”), Florida peaches from a neighbor (”the white ones are the best, but they.re tender and bruise easily”), tomatoes, beautiful crop of asian eggplant, sungold tomatoes (sweet cherry tomatoes), grapefruit, cabbage, carrots, beets, radishes, leeks, scallions, green beans, maybe some of the purple beans, and maybe cantaloupe.

Tomorrow I’ll post up the list from Sweetwater Organic in Tampa.

In today’s issue I dug into the World Food Crisis, ending with a prescription for a few little things we can do to limit our impact on the shortage of grains that’s causing hunger and poverty in dozens of countries. One suggestion was to limit your consumption of factory-farmed meat. Meat production has vast environmental impacts, isn’t good for the hapless animals and consumes about 40 percent of all the grain grown in the world. (For more on the Crisis, check out past blog posts.)

Can you avoid factory-meat without turning vegetarian? Sure, but it takes some effort. Buying locally-raised meat, preferably grass-fed, reduces the impact of large-scale production until it’s almost as eco- and hunger-friendly as giving up your steaks and chops. Plus, it tastes better and connects you with your food source.

Numerous local farmers and small ranchers have gotten into the act of providing the Gulf Coast with neighborhood meat. You usually have to buy in bulk — beef is often sold as whole, half or quarter cow — so you’ll need room in the freezer, or an extra cold box in the garage, and you may want to get together with family or friends to split up a big buy.

Here are a few places to try out. I’ll add more as I find them, but f you know of others, drop me a line.

Rosas Farms, 13450 N. Hwy. 301, Citra, FL, 32912, 888-353-9912 or rosasfarms.com — 100% grass-fed beef, boar, buffalo and a lot more, raised on an organic farm jsut south of Gainesville.

Amazin’ Grazin’ Beef, 941-745-5630 — This new operation in Bradenton sells 100% grass-fed beef raised by real-life cowboy Lee Sly. There will also be wild tilapia and acorn finished pork.

Plan It Earth, 15433 County Rd. 39 S., Lithia, 813-784-2727 — Grass-fed, grain finished beef.

• Ethical Seafood – “The portrait he paints is grim: oceanic dead zones that, because of pollution and overfishing, can no longer support organic life; salmon farms polluted by pesticides and disease; ruthless bottom trawlers with nets that can destroy entire ecosystems.” [Salon]

• Deadliest Catch – “Of all the dishes served in all the restaurants in all the world, you could argue, the particular seafood delicacy I’ve come fourteen time zones and 6,800 miles to ingest is the one that’s most likely to kill me dead.” [NY Mag]

• Not So Deadly Catch – “And a group of scientists served it in March at a Tokyo tasting event for some 40 chefs and restaurant-related businessmen. All ate. All survived.” [NYT]

• Paula Deen, Sweatshop Promoter – “Protesters like Al Sharpton, Reverend Jesse Jackson, Susan Sarandon and Danny Glover are expected to show-up and chastise her affiliation with Smithfield, a North Carolina-based food plant notorious for brutal, inhumane working conditions.” [Serious Eats]

• Chain Restaurants? “Surprisingly decent” says the NY Times – “Their saintly patience might have been tied to the balmy weather, or perhaps to the knowledge, deep in their cholesterol-imperiled hearts, that the meal ahead would involve giant portions and joyous noise.” [NYT]

• “Shortages are reaching crisis proportions in even the most highly developed regions, and they’re quickly becoming commonplace in our own backyard, from the bleached-white bathtub ring around the Southwest’s half-empty Lake Mead to the parched state of Georgia, where the governor prays for rain.” [Wired]

• “I go alone during the day to collect my water from the lake but I get scared because there are bandits along the road and dangerous gases that come out from the lake.”[Guardian]

• “Long-term refugees like Fathiya, in well-established camps, do not live in immediate fear of hunger. But they must devote about every hour of the day to the job of getting their families fed.” [Guardian]

• “Under a little-known international treaty called the Convention on International Civil Aviation, signed in Chicago in 1944 to help the fledgling airline industry, fuel for international travel and transport of goods, including food, is exempt from taxes, unlike trucks, cars and buses.” [NY Times]

• “I could theoretically do all that, but what would be the point when I know full well that halfway around the world there lives my evil twin, some carbon-footprint doppelgänger in Shanghai or Chongqing who has just bought his first car (Chinese car ownership is where ours was back in 1918), is eager to swallow every bite of meat I forswear and who’s positively itching to replace every last pound of CO2 I’m struggling no longer to emit.” [NY Times]

The New York Sun reported this week that major retailers like Costco have recently imposed purchase limits on commodity foods like rice, oil and flour. It’s spotty, on a store by store basis, but people are noticing and some consumers (as well as restaurant owners concerned about rapid price hikes from distributors) are hoarding. And worldwide garin reserves are at an almost all-time low, resulting in a supply chain that has very little inventory to draw from. In the Sun article, survival blogger and former Army intelligence officer James Rawles noted that “even if people increased their purchasing by 20%, all the store shelves would be wiped out.”

Maybe Bush will recall troops from Iraq to start baking bread, a la Egypt’s Mubarak.

Rationing food. Hoarding food. Here in the US. Huh.

[Classic photo by Margaret Bourke-White. Look back at the past few weeks of Eat My Florida for more on the World Food Crisis.]

Although it’s tied up in the courts thanks to a last minute injunction, this week was supposed to be the start of the New York City Department of Health initiative mandating posted calorie counts on the menus of any restaurant chain with more than 15 outlets nationwide. Here are some of the early reactions, thanks to a few chains that kicked it off despite the delay — NY Times, NY Post, Village Voice, Midtown Lunch.

If only Florida could be so enlightened. Sadly, here in the Sunshine State you have to dig deep in the murk to find out the impact of your morning Frap and scone, or the taco salad at the Bell. Here at Eat My Florida, we want to make it easier for you to wallow in the angst of your dining decisions, so here’s a list of links to the nutrition section of every chain in the area. Here’s a teaser — bloomin’ onion = 2275 calories.

Eat it and weep:

• Burgers: McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Evos, Krystal, Five Guys, Whataburger, Hardee’s, Fatburger, Sonic, Steak N Shake,
• Chicken: Chick-Fil-A, Popeye’s, KFC, Pollo Tropical, Church’s,
• Other Fast Food Sandwich Joints: Arby’s, Subway, Miami Subs, Quiznos, Blimpie, Jersey Mike’s, Jimmy John’s,
• Other Fast Food: Taco Bell, Long John Silver’s, Chipotle, Moe’s, Panera, Boston Market, Pei Wei Asian Diner, Panda Express,
• Pizza: Hungry Howie’s, Sbarro, Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, Godfather’s, Dominos, CiCi’s,
• Breakfast, Smoothies, Coffee and Sweets: Dairy Queen, Baskin Robbins, Dunkin Donuts, Krispy Kreme, Smoothie King, TCBY, Einstein Brothers Bagels, Starbucks, Denny’s, IHOP, Bob Evans,
• Casual Dining Chains: Buffalo Wild Wings, Hooters, PF Chang’s, Chilis, TGIFiday’s, Outback, Applebee’s, Olive Garden, Ruby Tuesday’s, Carrabas, Sonny’s, Red Lobster

Who’d we miss?

Sadly, he’s only replacing him on the Food Network’s Dinner Impossible. The show will also be extended to 60 minutes, now that there’s no pinheaded Brit to get on the viewers’ nerves.

If only this accomplished Cleveland chef, beloved by fellow Ohioan Michael Ruhlman and recently crowned the new Iron Chef America, would take a look at liar-liar-pants-on-fire Irvine’s abandoned project in downtown St. Pete, too. We could use a real celebrity chef in the area, especially one with chops like Symon, in spite of the soul patch.

Whaddya think, Mike? [cleveland.com]

• “Bake 7 to 12 minutes or until edges are golden brown. Cool 1 minute; remove from cookie sheets to cooling rack. Store tightly covered.” Win a million dollars. [Pillsbury]

• “It’s nearly Earth Day: Time to consume more to save the planet.” [Ad Age]

• “I don’t believe that anyone has asked Bill Clinton what he’ll be looking for in a chef should his wife become president or what he’ll serve at his first state dinner. (As his family’s former chef, I can’t resist affectionately suggesting that this is probably for the best, given his predilection for comfort food.)” [NYT]

• WORLD FOOD CRISIS: “In Haiti, protesters chanting “We’re hungry” forced the prime minister to resign; 24 people were killed in riots in Cameroon; Egypt’s president ordered the army to start baking bread; the Philippines made hoarding rice punishable by life imprisonment.” [Economist]

• WORLD FOOD CRISIS: “What biofuels do is undeniable: they take food out of the mouths of starving people and divert them to be burned as fuel in the car engines of the world’s rich consumers.” [New Statesman]