As the final harvests are reaped from the fields an interlude begins to transition us into the feasting season. The lights dim and the ageless story continues – our love affair with food.
The season beckons celebratory feasting and comfort dining, and yesterday the New Yorker’s annual food issue hit newsstands, filling the likes of NY Times food critic, Frank Bruni, with the urge to wax poetically:
I never throw away the New Yorker’s annual food issue, even if it came out nine months earlier. There may be an article I still haven’t gotten to, and I’m determined to get to it. Maybe I’ve read it all, but I feel that it’s a keeper, or that the best of the articles in it is.
It’s an issue that, I think, all food lovers look forward to and relish…
This year’s edition covers a scope of topics including the food crisis, microbreweries, Texas barbecue, cookbook authors, and localism in China.
Across the Atlantic… food is being observed in a whole new light. In fact, what was once considered a sight worth detesting is now becoming dinner.
Under the stresses of rising food costs, the European Union ended regulations banning misshapen or imperfectly grown fruits and vegetables from their markets.
On estimate, retailers were rejecting 20% of the produce delivered based on the former bureaucratic regulation.
The BBC reports that new regulations will take affect next summer, relaxing the standards on 26 types of produce.
The Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, Mariann Fischer Boel, said Wednesday’s vote by the EU’s fruit and vegetable management committee was “a concrete example of our drive to cut unnecessary red tape”.
However, not all produce will be reprieved. 10 significant types of produce, of which account for 75% of the EU’s produce trade will not be recognized under the new rules, included are apples, citrus fruit, kiwi fruit, lettuces, peaches and nectarines, pears, and tomatoes.
And back in the states cranberries are everywhere. From cocktail menus to dinner specials, what was once married to the unsavory image of gelatin in a can, the cranberry has been reinvented. The NY Times sheds some light on this indigenious berry that has taken its share of derision and praise.