Courtesy of Escobar Highland Farm

A Ahhh: the A – Z of The Year in Food in Review!

B The buzzwords this year were “bacon, bacon, bacon,” butchers, back-to-basics cooking, Balloon Boy Batali, Barefoot C. D. Bouley, D. Boulud and db Bistro Moderne. The Beer summit with O_bama sent bloggers a-blogging. Blight (as in tomato) and the Big Bee Buzz Off also made news. Bottled water fell in trickle down economy.

C New cheese course in restaurants resulted in food jobs for cave men. Terrance Brennan, Chef-Proprietor of Picholine Restaurant and Artisanal Bistro and Wine Bar was nominated as Le Grand Fromage. Cup cake sales surpassed Pop Tarts. Copia, Napa’s bankrupt center for wine, food and the arts, was in the soup after amassing $78 million in debt.

D Doughnut claims proved to be full of holes.

E Epstein (Jason) wrote Eating: A Memoir.

F What began as “sugar-free” morphed into “salt-free,” “calorie-free” and “cholesterol free.” ‘FREE for All’ became the brand new and improved marketing concept. Let Freedom Ring! “Farm to table” was considered a brand new concept though, admittedly, this is the way people have eaten since the beginning of time. (The cost of a home-grown tomato was estimated to be in the range of $100. Gardening also took up heaps of free time.)

G Gordon Ramsay swore innocence in alleged sex affair. Government legalized marijuana. Rumors suggested that the appointed leader of a new agency would be known as Mr. Pot Head. ‘Green’ was declared the only way to go for those who wanted to get in the pink.

H Hospitals began replacing the rules of hospitality; some treated themselves like ‘out patients.’ They opted for a diet of denial. Dem(ocrat)s preferred smoothies. Healthy cocktails became all the rage.

I I will launch my web version of the Great Food Almanac in the new year.

J In the movie, Julie (Powell) blogged but Julia (Child) mastered our hearts.

K Kellogg dropped immune-boosting claims for sugary cereal — sweet gesture. Kraft’s courtship of Cadbury was rejected. Chocolate lovers turned dark and bitter.

L Happy No ‘L’ to All!

M Michelle (Obama) planted a vegetable garden. Martha (Stewart) tried to dig out from a 3rd quarter $11.7 million debt. Mobile foods kept on trucking.

N NASA located ice on the moon; still searching for scotch on the rocks.

O Organic lost its charisma; “sustainable” was the newfound concept. Obits for Sheila Lukins (of the Silver Palate) and Café des Artistes were written. Gourmet (magazine) bit the dust. Tavern on the Green is now on life support, but soon will be resurrected.

P Po’ Boys were getting poorer. Petite sweets were big and getting bigger.

Q Q’s were forecast for health care reformers by grim death panels. Q’s were eliminated by self-serve check outs in supermarkets. Barbeques remained popular with Dads, who prowled their backyards with a beer and a spear.

R NRA (National Restaurant Association) pegged future profits to rising Tide. Many restaurants washed up, leaving line cooks out to dry. French Laundry Executive chef Thomas Keller ironed out his issues and revealed a softer side.

S This year we appointed two supreme judges: Sonia S(otomayor) and Sam S(ifton). One is a fed, the other is a foodie. Both were well grilled before taking their hot seats — one on the bench, the other on the banquette. Both thanked their lucky stars.

T T-baggers made a big splash. Tweeters’ ‘Rec.A.P’s got even shorter.

U U still here?

V tV Food Network cooked up only contests and conflicts that generate a stampede of students into culinary schools.

W Increased cooking school enrollment led to more cooks, less home cooking. WOW!

X XXX and XXXX designates grades of confectioners’ sugar that is dusted on Xmas cookies.

Y Yellow fins were sinking. Yellow tails are rising.

Z SEASONings EATings to all and to all a white knight! Zzzzzzz.. Tweet Tweet… The  Nd

Cordially,

Courtesy of http://chanpoetry.blogspot.com/2009/06/ticking-clock.html

I’ve been thinking about time, and how starved we have all become.

We no longer have time to read Gourmet magazine. Ruth Reichl said, “We pioneered writing about farmers and issues from the field, and we wrote about genetic engineering when nobody else was touching that. We wrote about trans-fat and it was important for me to do that.” She added, “The advertisers didn’t agree that this stuff was what readers wanted to read. So they buzzed off.”

When the death bell tolled, Gourmet had a circulation of 980,000. Every Day with Rachael Ray has double this number of subscribers. She commands a rapturous following. Short cut cooking is all the rage.

Many magazines are folding. Newspaper circulations are plummeting. USA Today is the top selling newspaper with a circulation of 2,528,4372. The Wall Street Journal has the second highest subscriber base with 2,058,3423. The venerable New York Times is in third place. It has fallen to 1,683,8554. The Los Angeles Times has only 1,231,3185 readers while The Washington Post has plummeted below a million daily readers. These are among the top 100 newspapers. Number 100 on the list has barely 120,000 readers. The advertisers mostly have migrated online.

Sales of cookbooks, (and all but a precious few hard cover books), are languishing. A Kindle can provide a reader with thousands of books at a mere price of $9.99. Literary classics, like Wuthering Heights and the Complete Works of Shakespeare can be delivered in a few seconds at a cost of  just a couple of dollars.

All this is troubling news indeed for food writers.

The good news though, is there are plenty of other opportunities. This is the information age where bloggers like 101 Cookbooks are creating new universes. (According to Google, there are currently 12, 847, 478 food blogs, but who’s counting!) There’s also  work to be found writing: for supermarket publications; compiling food celebrity profiles; collaborating with chefs to write legible recipes; setting up shop as a restaurant reviewer or a publicist; seeking a position as a culinary librarian or an acquisitions or copy editor, fact checker, proof reader or indexer.

Or, perhaps…a culinary literary agent, who is required to spend his or her days reading, rewriting proposals and going out to lunch. Literary agents are among the few who take authors out for lovely, long lunches, (though usually only once).

Time is at a premium. Serve it yourself and do it yourself is the way to go today. Scan your own groceries. Fill your own gas tank. Check yourself onto the airline and out of the hotel. Find your own telephone number. Buy and sell, online. Earn a degree online. Do your own pregnancy test. Prescribe your own medicine. Heal thyself.

We have stopped cutting our own hair, cleaning our own clothes and looking after our own children. We have largely also stopped cooking. If a microwave “dinner” takes more than three minutes from freezer to table, forgeddabout it!

I mention all these things to emphasize how important it is to keep up with changing trends. It is essential then to identify which sectors of the food and hospitality industries are thriving and which may require a dive into treacherous waters.

The two messages we are receiving loud and clear are: Keep it short and surely you can’t be serious. (Observe the TV Food Network programming.)

So tweet tweet. I am AAK. (Asleep at the Keyboard.)

LOL (Lots of Love)

IC

“Who am I and what am I doing here?!” This question was raised by a former running mate of a former presidential candidate.

I hear it echoed constantly from students enrolled in culinary school, particularly career changers who have risked everything. They’ve laid down their Blackberries, gilt-edge securities and taken up pastry bags and palette knives. Every so often, though, waves of panic crash over them and they begin to doubt their decision. They ask themselves that age old question…”Am I nuts?!”

The feeling passes swiftly when once again they glimpse that elusive ray of hope that propelled them into the land of cupcakes in the first place.

I just saw such a Eureka moment alight on the face of a student. He is an older guy, (old in the culinary school world means anyone who can remember the name Ross Perot, who was the aforementioned former presidential candidate.)

This “older” student had a former life as an investment banker working at the top echelon of a recently-crashed bank. He was earning a mighty impressive salary and making decisions about billions of millions. In his spare time, he liked to bake cookies. And decorate them. He graduated to bread baking, cakes and pastries. He prowled the aisles of the specialty food trade shows and restaurant and hotel trade shows. He devoured food magazines. He was addicted to the TV Food Network. He attended food festivals with the ardor of a dedicated foodie. Then. Suddenly. He had a “Road to Damascus” moment. He was struck with the idea he must give up everything and enroll in a professional school.

That’s how I came to meet him.

He was experiencing a moment of self-doubt but he had a class project to complete. He had to write a profile of a famous person about which must has been written. Not everything has been complimentary. Rumor had it that I knew her. I did. So do many others. I recommended other sources of information. He persisted. He was well-prepared. He came armed with dozens of questions. I declined to answer. He persisted. I answered.

That’s how I came to suggest he would be a great interviewer. He could transfer the research skills he had acquired as a financial analyst to become an on-camera interviewer. He would need in-depth culinary knowledge and the technical vocabulary to guide the interview authoritatively. With this ability and his professed passion for writing, he could extend his on-air food people interviews to the print media. He could write a Dead Beat column…obituaries of famous expired foodies. His contacts with the top tier of gastronomy would enable him to know where all the bodies are hidden.

I suggested he start immediately by writing a blog, as the thing almost all of us like to do, is to talk about ourselves. I was confident he wouldn’t have any trouble making contacts. His universe of food folk interviews will include not only celebrity chefs, but also the director of the purchasing department on the Queen Mary 2, the scientist who devises the food for NASA astronauts, SaltWorks, the entrepreneurs who traffic in truffle salt … he could even talk to cooking school teachers.