Photo: Images_of_Money/Flickr

Beef is as American as apple pie.

So, in essence, argues Alex Loud below. But high-quality beef is not a dinner — or a school lunch — option for many Americans due to price. This leads us to the crux of the issue behind the so-called “pink slime” controversy.

In my last post I alluded briefly to the battle over Pink Slime (or “LFTB” for Lean Finely Textured Beef, if you’re inclined to be precise). I want to say a bit more about it now. The debate over the stuff — if you can call it a debate — has in the last few months taken on that farcical you-couldn’t-make-this-crap-up quality that typifies much of our public discourse these days.

By way of a recap, the anti-Slime movement began with a call from celebrity chef Jamie Oliver to label LFTB as an ingredient in foods (it’s currently considered ground beef). From this, the Pink Slime story was picked up by the blogosphere, which then gave way to the involvement of the network news shows. It’s at this point — perhaps not surprisingly — that everything went batsh*t crazy.

In less than two months we’ve seen competing websites, news stories, experts, scientists, government officials and celebrities all spouting wildly divergent views. LFTB maker AFA has filed for bankruptcy while the company that invented the stuff, Beef Products Inc., has shuttered three plants, laying off thousands of workers. The Governor of Iowa has even demanded a Congressional investigation into the slandering of the Slime (not into the safety or nutritional content of LFTB, mind you, but who’s been saying mean things about it). More…

Photo: Elizabeth Hathaway

As all of us website-surfing, blog-reading, iPhone users know that, in this digital age, it is almost too easy to stay in touch with Mom. Since I moved to New York City six months ago, not a day has gone by when my mom and I have failed to exchange text messages, emails or a quick phone call.

But this does not starve off homesickness. I’m grateful I can call my mom when I’m standing in a crowded Trader Joes on Monday night and ask her what to buy. But then she’ll tell me she’s in the middle of taking salmon off the grill or putting a chicken in the oven, and I’ll wish I was back home at the kitchen table. People say you can find anything you’ve ever wanted or needed in New York City, but I can’t find my mom’s cooking.

So, on this beautiful sunny weekend, with summer right around the corner, I felt a pang when I checked my email and saw a picture sent from my Mom of one of our oldest family recipes: Rhode Island Clam Chowder. The newspaper article shown above, published in May of 1965 in the New Haven Register, features my Grandmother talking about her family tradition of making clam chowder based on of her own mother’s recipe.

Both of my grandparents grew up on the island of Jamestown, RI, where they had to take a ferry to school everyday. More…

Photo: ketrin1407/Flickr

LOCAL BITES

Tea, Anyone?
Well, not just anyone. Your mom, perhaps, in honor of Mother’s Day? Show you’re thinking ahead: Thursday, June 7, a proper Afternoon Tea will be served on vintage china at the Commander’s Mansion, Watertown, complete with imported clotted cream and jam. Tea will be followed by a book reading/ signing with local author Katrina Avila Munichiello, author of A Tea Reader: Living Life One Cup at a Time. Hats are encouraged, but not required. Guests to be welcomed by the Gilded Harps. Tickets $24/pp.

New Couple in Town
On May 15, Finale Desserts will host a Craft Beer Tasting at the Park Plaza Hotel, featuring a selection of beers paired with seasonal desserts. Bryan Green, representative from the Great Brewers Guild, will discuss the variety of beers and how they pair with each dessert created by Executive Pastry Chef Nicole Coady. Here’s one pairing, to whet your appetite: Duvel Golden Ale with Fresh Fruit Tart. Tickets: $19.99/pp. To make a reservation, call 617.623.3233.

A Watershed Moment
Whole Foods continues with “Do Something Reel,” a monthly series of provocative documentaries about food and environmental issues. “The Apple Pushers” inaugurated the series in April. This month’s film is Watershed: Exploring a New Water Ethic for the New West, directed by Mark Decena, narrated by Robert Redford and produced by his son, James Redford. Watershed is available for viewing at the festival’s website and on Whole Foods’ Facebook page. $5.99/viewing through the end of May. More…

Photo: ktylerconk/Flickr

Food news at WBUR touched on some controversial issues today.

Tom Ashbrook of On Point hosted an hour-long conversation about the future of food with Josh Schonwald, a journalist, indoor aquaponic farmer in Chicago, and author of The Taste of Tomorrow: Dispatches From the Future of Food.

Schonwald’s main thrust is that science shouldn’t be considered a ‘dirty’ word when applied to food production, especially if we plan on adequately feeding the 9 billion mouths (estimated) that will eventually grace our planet. We’ll need a changed palate and a changed attitude towards food — especially as it relates to genetically-modifed agriculture.

Is this alarmist? Is this necessary, even — meaning, will we need to enhance our food with nutrients in order to ensure enough nutrition for everyone? Listen to the conversation here.

Next up, Robin Young of Here & Now spoke with Gene Logsdon, long-time farmer and author of Holy **: Managing Manure to Save Mankind. As unpalatable as it may sound to some, Logsdon reminds us that the pitchfork-wielding farmer takes animal waste and turns it into the food that sustains us. That virtuous cycle — grazing animals and letting them fertilize the land for more crops — makes manure our greatest and most misunderstood natural resource. Finding ways to turn all our waste into fertilizer is crucial to our survival, Logsdon argues, and he sees a future when companies might actually pick up refuse from homes and sell it to farmers. Listen to the interview here.

Less controversial than enthralling, oyster farms in Duxbury, MA, pump out fabulous-tasting, environmentally-friendly bivalves. Radio Boston co-host Meghna Chakrabarti visits Island Creek Oysters with chef Andy Husbands of Tremont 647 in the latest installment of the show’s “Farm to Fork” series.

Photo: SheriW/Flickr

LOCAL BITES

A Mother’s Day Tea
Starting with a selection of recipes from Barre, MA, that date from the turn of the last century, the ONCE kitchen kids are going to recreate a classic afternoon tea. This means cakes, cookies, sherbet, tisanes and finger sandwiches – of course! – all served on Mother’s Day, May 13, 4-6pm at Naga in Cambridge. Tickets are $45/person for treats, beverages and a hand letter-pressed card on which to create your personal culinary heirloom to share with a loved one far away.

A Quiet Brunch, Kids in Tow
Aura Restaurant at the Seaport Hotel, which specializes in elegant dining for moms and dads with structured activities for the waynes, has it in spades this Mother’s Day if brunch (11-3pm) is what you’re after. The Kids Place 4 Fun will help kids of all ages make special Mother’s Day crafts, and Jewelry by Karel will be on site if more gifts are needed. Tickets are $55/adult; kids under 12 eat for free. To reserve call 617.385.4300, or go to OpenTable.com. Read the details and menu here.

Food Hugs
The tagline of Eat Boutique is “Food That Hugs You Back.” For Mother’s Day, they’ve got a box of handmade goodies that your mom savor in her own sweet time, hand-written card, included. Here’s a hug, Mom! More…

Photo: jenny downing/Flickr

If there was a single message that attendees walked away with on Sunday at the New England Seafood Teach-In, it was this: eat responsibly.

A familiar call. We know, we know — we should all eat responsibly. But what does this actually mean in the context of fish?

When it comes to sustainable seafood, the waters are muddied by myriad factors, not the least of which is the chain of decisions you make (or don’t) when you elect to eat fish. Here’s a sampling: ‘where will I buy it…which fish will I choose…how does that taste…was it farmed or wild caught…was the way it was caught hurt the sea floor, the future of the fishery, other marine wildlife…how much of all this matters to me?’ And don’t forget your wallet.

Sunday’s Teach-In taught us, in essence, that eating fish responsibly means setting priorities and deciding whom to trust. But the two are wedded. And here’s the kicker, repeated more than once by different participants at the Teach-In: any fish you see in the case is a priori “sustainable” because the government regulates it, heavily, to be such.

Taken in combination, all this is enough to make you throw up your hands in despair were it not for seafood’s being so darn tasty, so darn healthy and so utterly important a protein for a majority of the world’s population. More…

Photo: USDAgov/Flickr

As schools grapple with ways to make their lunches healthier, they face another challenge as real as budgetary constraints: getting kids to eat them.

Why offer broccoli and whole grain rice, if the kids are just going to bring rice krispee treats and fruit roll-ups in for lunch? Here & Now resident chef Kathy Gunst is trying to change the attitudes kids have about food.

After joining First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign in 2010, Kathy teamed up with Central School in her hometown of South Berwick, Maine. Instead of just lecturing to them about the benefits of foods like kale, Kathy has recruited the kids into the kitchen. She says by getting the kids to cook healthier food, they’ll get excited about it. And discover, it’s actually better than the pre-packaged, frozen meals they often eat.

Listen in today at noon to catch Here & Now Resident Chef Kathy Gunst.

Photo: soelin/Flickr

It’s my last day at Public Radio Kitchen as I prepare to move from Boston to New York City. I’m graduating college, I have a job, and I’m looking at financial independence for the first time in my life. All of that is exciting, right? I should be thrilled!

But I can’t help but feel a sense of loss. You know, maybe I’ve learned all I can from school. But sometimes I wonder what else Boston has to teach me.

Growing up as I did around New York, I developed a certain snobbishness toward other cities. When I decided to study at Boston University, I was worried that I’d find Boston boring. It wasn’t big. It didn’t have record-breaking skyscrapers. It had old churches and colonial history and lots of colleges. It was “charming.” It had the Red Sox, duck tours, The Departed, “tonic.” It was outdated old money clashing with horrible poverty. It was New England. Most of all, I sensed a total lack of importance. New York is the center of everything – a genuine hub. Boston, to me, seemed like an afterthought, a distant second among the three great northeastern cities (sorry, Philly).

I was such an idiot. More…

Photo: Avia Venefica/Flickr

In the run-up to the New England Sustainable Seafood Teach-In this Sunday at Harvard, PRK speaks below with Paul Greenberg.

Paul is the author of Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food, published in 2010. He won a James Beard Award in Writing last year for the book, which is now a NY Times bestseller, and he lectures widely on the topic of sustainable seafood. Paul’s keynote address will open the Teach-In this weekend.

To continue getting our head around the issues– particularly complex for New England – we asked Paul a few questions upfront. More…

Photo: izik/Flickr

Fish. We’re encouraged to eat more of it. We’re encouraged to eat local. Heck, we’ve even been warned that if any imported food is going to make us sick, it’s likely to be seafood. Still, over 75% of the fish Americans consume comes from abroad.

Now, a high-profile grocery chain — Whole Foods –has announced it will no longer carry seafood from New England waters unless it’s caught in what Whole Foods considers a sustainable manner. This means no more gray sole, no more skate, and Atlantic cod only if brought in by gillnets or hook and line.

The new policy reported in Sunday’s New York Times is controversial, not the least with some of our region’s fishermen struggling to turn a profit in a difficult industry. US Senator Scott Brown has also weighed in.

So, where does it all leave us, the consumer? Whose opinions should we trust? Where does it leave our region’s fishermen and the health of our local fishing industry? And what about the health, in numbers, of New England’s prized fish stocks?

Some of these questions will be answered this Sunday – or at least grappled with in a substantive way – at the New England Sustainable Seafood Teach-In organized by locally-based Let’s Talk About Food. Collaborators are the New England Aquarium, the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, the Museum of Science, Chefs Collaborative and the Cambridge Science Festival. Notably, Whole Foods is one of the event sponsors.

Public Radio Kitchen will be present on Sunday to report on the Teach-In. But we’re also anticipating the tangle of issues which undoubtedly will be raised during the panel discussions and keynote speeches.

Today, we publish a series of questions posed to Roger Berkowitz, President and CEO of Legal Sea Foods, who will participate on one of Sunday’s panels. Legal’s is an institution here in the Boston area (“If it isn’t fresh, it isn’t Legal!”), and growing gangbusters along the East Coast. It’s a restaurant business and a fish company. What does its CEO have to say about the state of New England seafood? More…