Whenever women like a certain food or drink, that item often receives backlash from people who deem the product “unworthy”.

Taste recently discussed this reality by examining the rise, fall, and gendered branding rosé received through the past year.

Women and rosé

According to Taste, rosé is over. The publication takes that factious tone because since the wine has gained popularity amongst women, some male foodies, journalists, etc., have deemed the beverage a tastebud travesty.

Although a popular food trend turning “lame” is nothing new, rosé’s downfall has supposedly occurred because of the women who drink it.

Taste aptly reports that the “backlash” against rosé highlights the reality that often times, when a woman enjoys something, it’s ruined—think yogurt. However, when a man enjoys a trend, that trend is important.

“When men buy into food trends, they bring much-needed attention and success to what they’re consuming. Some sommeliers rolled their eyes after Sideways made male wine drinkers everywhere drop their Merlots for Pinot Noirs, but nobody was accusing Pinot Noir of overstaying its welcome,” reports Taste.

“And when men get into women’s trends, they elevate and legitimize them—or even create an entirely new market.”

A familiar story

This type of stereotyping has been true for a long while. That frustrates Katie Moseman, writer, photographer, and owner at Recipe for Perfection and Magnolia Days.

Moseman works with brands to create recipes used in marketing to a mostly female audience. She has extensive and on-going experience with responding to trends that appeal to women. “My personal pet peeve when it comes to women and food trends is that any recipe that’s labeled ‘easy’ is looked down upon,” says Moseman.

“If you call a technique a ‘hack’ (a much more masculine-sounding word than ‘easy’), it’s novel and genius. But call it ‘easy’ and it’s a cheap shortcut for harried moms. It’s insidious the way language is used to anoint what’s elevated and what’s debased.”

Moseman adds that there’s a large divide between what’s acceptable when marketing exclusively to women and what’s acceptable when marketing to a wider audience. “It’s almost like completely separate sets of adjectives are used,” she says.

“I’d like to see less condescending or cutesy language used toward women. And I’d like for being a ‘mom’ to become less of a stigma. Moms can like rosé and wear mom jeans while still being complex individuals who deserve respect.”

Women are changing the food industry

The food industry, in general, has traditionally been male-centric. This reality also influences how food industry influencers—view these women-centric food trends.

Recently, Anthony Bourdain, television foodie personality, said his praise of the food industry’s “meathead culture” was misguided. Bourdain once addressed how that culture shaped him and his career in his book, “Kitchen Confidential”.

Bourdain began to really speak out about the viral sexism in the restaurant industry—and really, Hollywood at large—after his girlfriend, Asia Argento, said Harvey Weinstein assaulted her.

“It’s probably too late to change the hearts, minds, and attitudes of generations of old-school male chefs,” says Bourdain, “but it’s definitely not too late to change their behavior, if only out of self-interest.”

Bourdain adds that others within the food industry will need to ask themselves, “what was I doing when this sort of behavior was going on around me? Was I the sort of person that people could confide in,” Refinery29 reports.

If this does happen, Bourdain thinks that the food industry and workplaces everywhere will change—drastically. “Maybe it’s too late for our children,” he says. “But I think our children’s children will grow up in a different world where instinctively they will find inexcusable the sort of workplaces that people of my generation saw as normal.”

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Get Drunk AF With Lady Gaga’s ‘Grigio Girls’ Wine Coolers
5 Vegan Wine Brands You Need To Try (and Why!)

The post Women-Centric Food Trends are Fine Because the Macho Food Industry is Changing: #NowWhat appeared first on EcoSalon.

Column Do our favorite healthy foods come at a social cost?

We live in a world where we care less about what’s good for us and more about what’s trendy and supposedly good for us. Instead of seeking out foods and ingredients that make us feel good, we just do what the latest food trend du jour tells us to do. Which is why you have way more people sipping on kale smoothies than chard smoothies. Poor little chard.

If that kind of decision making only lead to problems related to overdosing on almond milk cappuccinos (for the love of god: please just order black coffee) and discoloration from consumption of too many açai berries (I mean, that has to happen, right?) that would be one thing. But our taste for these sought after healthy foods, the foods that will solve all of our problems if only we add them to every single meal and snack in between, has an impact, far beyond our plates.

When society decides that a certain food is good for it, big business flocks immediately. And when big business is involved, you can be sure that something or someone is suffering.

Let’s take a look at coconuts for a minute. There’s no denying coconut in all of its forms – oil, milk, water – has been incredibly popular in the healthy food and lifestyle circles. In fact, as journalist Maddie Oatman recently pointed out in an article on the coconut craze on Mother Jones, between 2008 and 2012, the number of coconut oil products, both for cooking and for beauty, grew by 800 percent. But that all comes at a cost, and I am not talking about the cost of your $90 coconut oil facial moisturizer.

“In the Philippines, the world’s second-largest coconut producer after Indonesia, nearly two-thirds of small-scale coconut farmers live in poverty. Though harvesting the fruit requires a perilous climb, often up trees treated with harsh pesticides, they make just $3 a day at the height of the harvest,” writes Oatman. “Each coconut yields around 500 mL of liquid; a 12-ounce bottle uses about two-thirds of a nut. Of the $2 that you pay for a bottle of the stuff, the farmer makes between 7 and 14 cents. And don’t forget that all that coconut water must be shipped across the planet, adding considerably to the product’s greenhouse gas footprint.”

Standing in front of the grocery shelf, with only our personal interests in mind (I want something that’s good for me!), it’s easy to push these other costs out of sight and out of mind. But coconuts aren’t the only culprit.

According to the Almond Board of California, in 2013, almond product introductions were so big, that they outpaced overall food and nut introductions around the world, growing 35 percent compared with only 10 percent the previous year. Sales of almond milk alone come out at $700 million a year. Almond milk, almond flour, almond butter: all things that we choose to buy because we want to replace something else, often for the best intentions, but those intentions still have an impact. Almonds is one of many thirsty crops that despite being in the midst of a staggering drought, California farmers managed to have an all-time record year, selling $54 billion worth of crops. How? Because they’re reaching far down in to the groundwater, which is having consequences like sinking farmland. According to the New York Times, “scientists have no real idea if the groundwater supplies can last until the 2040s.”

Gluten-free is another healthy food trend that has boosted big business. Sales of gluten-free products are projected to grow upwards of $2 billion in the coming years. But has access to more gluten-free products made us feel any better? While cutting out conventional flour, stripped of its nutritional value, certainly has its benefit, switching out one processed product for another certainly doesn’t. Turn that gluten-free package around and if you see a questionably long list of ingredients whose names you can’t pronounce, put it right back from where it came from. Many of those products don’t benefit your health in the slightest, but they definitely help the businesses behind them prosper.

Which all brings us back to the question of our taste for healthy foods. As I wrote recently, when it comes to thinking about healthy foods, we can’t just think about me. Inevitably, we have to branch out and think about the us, about the good of not just our immediate community but our global one as well. If our healthy habits depend on externalized environmental and social costs, then they’re not really so healthy after all.

Kick your coconut water habit and get back to real water instead, from the tap, not bottled. Don’t want to eat gluten? Don’t buy the processed gluten-free cookies. Want to go on a plant-based diet? Find options that are locally sourced, and not imported all the way from across the planet. And when there’s an ingredient that you just can’t live without? Use it in moderation, not in every single meal, every single day.

There’s a solution to most of our problems, and that solution is real food. Food which doesn’t have a marketing campaign behind it, doesn’t have the word “product” in it, doesn’t come in sexy packaging and doesn’t make a whole lot of money for big business. If we really want to eat healthy, for us, for our community, for our planet, then that’s the route that we need to go.

Related on EcoSalon

Do You Have any Business in the Business of Health Coaching? Foodie Underground

Should You Care About the Water Footprint of Your Food? Foodie Underground

Are Big Food Companies Pushing an Exercise and Obesity Myth? Foodie Underground

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: Mike Mozart

The post Are Healthy Foods Good for Us or Just Big Business? Foodie Underground appeared first on EcoSalon.

Column What if we ate like it was 1994?

In a world where we are inundated with food trends (I’m looking at you, cronuts) and a handful of hip diets (the P word) it makes you get nostalgic for a simpler time. In fact don’t we often use the “eat food your grandmother would recognize” line? But what happens when we go back in time? Turns out you have to go back a long time before things get simple again.

I decided to go back 20 years to see what Foodie Underground would have written about – and what we would have been eating – in 1994.

According to a December 1994 article in the New York Times, “Fat is up, but so is low fat. Organic foods are growing; pretzels are, too. When it comes to vegetables, iceberg lettuce is still a favorite.”

Ah yes, the wonderful low fat era, that made us demonize fat and buy a bunch of products with high sugar content in the process. This was the “food product” era, when food science could solve everything. Which is probably why Snackwell’s, the line of reduced-fat cookies and crackers, outsold Oreos in 1994, which up until then had been America’s favorite cookie.

We can look back now and laugh at our silly young selves and say “but a processed cookie is still a processed cookie, just look at the ingredient list!” but we didn’t know any better. Oh and also, the vanilla cream sandwich was the best seller. Nothing says “healthy cookie” like vanilla cream.

According to that same New York Times article, “Of the most popular foods in the nation’s diet, whole milk, cola and margarine provide the most calories, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. Also in the top 10 are sugar, low-fat milk, rolls and buns, white flour, white bread, American cheese and ground beef.”

So you were looking at a plate with a beef hamburger, served with a can of coke, and probably with a margarine slathered roll on the side for good measure. Yum.

And oh how that diet did a number on us. According to the CDC, “In 1994, almost all states had prevalence of obesity less than 18%.” And in 2010, “almost all states exceeded 22% and 32 of these states exceeded 26%.” All to say that in terms of public health, things have only gotten worse, probably because we consumed a few too many rolls, and also for so long we internalized that “low-fat” message, in fact, many of us still do. That and the fact that we still haven’t kicked our addiction to added sugars; our consumption of which is at about the same level as in 1994.

But thank god the margarine craze is over. While people were already writing about the “questionable wisdom” of the low-fat diet, it still took people a long to come back to the though that real butter was probably better than a processed product is beyond me. Although some of us are now trying to keep that butter balance with healthy oils.

Baked brie was in, according to this 1994 dinner party menu from Saveur, and goat cheese was already topping salads, proving that people will always have a soft spot for French inspired food. You can thank Julia Child for that.

Apparently the first ever online purchase was a pizza from Pizza Hut. It was all downhill from there.

But with the low-fat foods in full swing and the organic food craze that was just starting, it would seem that we were in the process of trying to become more health conscious. Or at least conscious of nutritionism, which we all know has its flaws. As Michael Pollan so famously wrote almost a decade ago, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy.”

In 1994 however, we weren’t quite there yet. As a matter of fact, I am still not sure we’re all really there. Twenty years later and we’re still consuming food products like nobody’s business; we’re headed towards a public health crisis caused by antibiotic resistance and we’re obsessed with marketing claims – “oh! it has antioxidants in it!”

1994 was the year the the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) was  enacted by Congress, “following public debate concerning the importance of dietary supplements in promoting health.” That didn’t mean the FDA was fully regulating them, it just outlined how they should be labeled. In fact although dietary supplement manufacturing facilities must be registered under DSHEA with the FDA they do not have to get FDA approval before making or selling their products. Basically the manufacturers are excluded from all regulations that are used for over the counter and prescription drugs.

Since then they’ve boomed. Nowadays about 40 percent of Americans take a multivitamin, and we spend more than $28 billion per year on vitamin supplements. We’re now starting to come around to the fact that multivitamins aren’t really all they’re cracked up to be. And while our Standard American Diet leaves us in desperately lacking in nutrients, now we know that pills aren’t necessarily the way to get them. “Usually it is best to try to get these vitamins and minerals and nutrients from food as opposed to supplements,” Dr. JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told the Harvard Women’s Health Watch.

If a look back at food trends from twenty years ago teaches us anything, it’s the same lesson I keep repeating on Foodie Underground each week: eat real food. Definitely not low-fat pretzels. You don’t want to seem like you’re living in the ’90s now do you?

Related on EcoSalon

The No-Diet Diet Plan: Foodie Underground

Sugar Addiction and Nutrition Labels: Foodie Underground

Can We Stop Talking About Superfoods? Foodie Underground

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: Reuben Bedingfield

The post Bygone Food Trends: What if We Ate Like it Was 1994? Foodie Underground appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnIf only food conversations were this interesting.

“All I had to bring was this jar of homemade pickled carrots.”

“Oh the popcorn? Yeah, it’s the truffle oil that does it.”

“It was Sunday. So I got the pan-fried trout.”

These are all direct quotes that I overhead, or caught myself saying, in the last week. If you spend any time around food lovers, or are simply food obsessed yourself, and you will pick up on some humorous things. Absurd even. If ferment, infuse or are co-op are part of your vocabulary, you know what I am talking about. But don’t you just wish that the foodie world would take it to the next level? Here’s what you wish you had overheard.

“We have to harvest our sweat today so that we can make salted macarons tomorrow.”

“Your kombucha mother is so beautiful.”

“I finally got into the goat share program.”

“I am my cooking.”

“I couldn’t bear to sleep with him. He couldn’t even pronounce croissant correctly.”

“You need marrow? I know a guy with a freezer on the other side of town.”

“We’re a new kind of DIY artisan butcher. We kill the cow in your kitchen so you get to really take part in the process.”

“I only drink a coconut and sparkling water blend. The effervescence seems to help me absorb the potassium better.”

“Is your butter hand churned?”

“I name all of my fresh eggs before I eat them. I find that when my food has a personal identity I enjoy it more.”

“Oh, please don’t take a picture of that, it’s so rude when people photograph during a meal.”

“We’ve been working on recycling the leftover coffee grounds into a new edible body treatment line.”

“This salt must be from the Northeast, I can taste the terroir.”

“Sorry couldn’t meet that deadline, I had a bit of a infusing fruit with fruit issue last night.”

“Don’t worry, I brought my own fennel seeds.”

“Do you think this sangria has too many floral elements in it?”

“I really would have rather had a fried egg in this spicy ramen broth than a poached one.”

“We’re starting a foraging club for weeds and non-native edible plants.”

“Instead of rose petals sprinkled on the floor, he dusted everything with organic spelt flour before proposing.”

“Canning really allows me to get to know my vegetables.”

“The truffle ice cubes were sort of disastrous.”

“I had an allergic reaction from that instant coffee she served me yesterday. The local espresso blend never gives me hives.”

“Does this camembert taste off to you, or has it just been too long since I was in France?”

“I can’t believe I have gone this long without candied thistles in my life.”

“Would it be possible to get that served in a mason jar instead?”

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, discovering what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

Image: henofthewood

The post Foodie Underground: Things You Wish You Had Overheard a Foodie Saying appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnA step-by-step guide to faking it in the food world.

The scene is starting to feel familiar. You’re eating a dessert out of a mason jar and you have spent the last 15 minutes listening to a conversation about the merits of mezcal in cocktails. “I just really can’t stand the taste. Put a drink in front of me and I can definitely tell you if it has it in it or not,” you overhear, and you internally swear for not having a good comeback.

A comeback that was just a little more…in-the-know.

Really, you just want to throw your cucumber and ginger-infused cocktail in that person’s face, but then again, the meal was good, and if you play your cards right, you can probably get someone else to pay for it. Wait for it…”I just love treating my friends to good food,” says another table-mate. You’re finally in the clear.

As much as you cringe at the word “foodie” – and don’t we all? – there are moments where it’s worth pretending you’re one: getting your meal paid for, scoring a date with someone who knows how to cook well, getting directions to a new restaurant scribbled on a napkin, finding someone to solve your dilemma of what to make with your leftover greens.

1. Class Up Your Water

Serve your water in a pitcher and put something in it. Cucumber, apple, blackberries, raspberries, vanilla beans; anything that will add a touch of flavor and show that you’re someone who can make even a glass of water taste unique.

2. Put Almond Meal in a Cake

Start easy and just replace a quarter of a cup or so. When you say “[insert name of cake] Almond Cake” it just sounds more intriguing.

3. Use a Formula

When you get invited to a dinner party and your friends are brainstorming what to make, pick a savory ingredient, like an herb or a cured meat – and a sweet ingredient like fruit – and then nonchalantly suggest putting them together. “Hmm…I don’t know…what about something with sage and blood oranges?”

4. Don’t Wrap Things in Bacon

So cliche. Unless of course it’s artisan. Otherwise opt for prosciutto.

5. Employ Key Expressions

Start with our vocabulary list and pick up lines, then make sure you say “locavore,” “artisan,” and some obscure French ingredient in every single food-related conversation you have and you will be good to go.

6. Befriend a Farmer

When you actually know the name of the guy you bought your eggs from, you will immediately one-up all your food-loving friends, no matter how many restaurants with “&” in the name they have been to lately.

7. Turn Into Food Paparazzi

Forget the ideal lighting, whip out that phone and start Instagramming your food porn. Don’t forget to hashtag your ingredients.

8. Add a Spice

Whatever you were planning on making for dinner, throw in some cardamom, fennel, anise or caraway. Then tweet about it.

9. Eat Kale Chips at Least Once

They’re easy to make and the fact that you haven’t had them yet really is just unacceptable.

10. Stay Current

Keep up to date on the current food trends and news, and find a few that you hate, then pepper your conversation accordingly. Examples: bacon sundaes, cinnamon challenge and bone luging.

11. Keep a Journal

Write down your food musings. Oh wait, on second thought, please don’t.

12. Embrace Olive Oil

Just keep a little travel-sized bottle on hand at all times and next time you’re out for ice cream, drizzle a little on top.

13. Take Your Leftovers to Work in a Mason Jar

Salad looks so much more appetizing when it’s in an individual glass serving.

14. Only buy Americanos From Places That Roast Their Own Coffee

And please be sure to make sure that they’re ethically sourcing their beans. Better yet, find a coffee roaster that delivers by bicycle.

15. Know the Names of Three Food Blogs

And who writes them, what they tend to make and which recipe was recently published that you “just can’t believe you had lived without.”

16. Memorize Specialties

Think of three places you have traveled to, nationally or internationally. Then figure out what their specialty dish is, and even if you’ve never had it, don’t be afraid to ask “have you ever had *** in ***?”

17. Carry a Spork and a Pair of Chopsticks for Eating at Food Carts

Only your own cutlery will do.

18. Make Your Own Wine Labels

The $5 stuff just got so much better, if you printed it with Helvetica, that is.

19. Put Coconut Water Ice Cubes in Your Cocktail

Why go for regular H2O when you can have something that’s the l’eau du jour?

20. Eat Good and Real Food. Always.

Cut the word “foodie” from your vocabulary and appreciate food for food’s sake. Because when all is said and done, it’s just that simple.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, discovering what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

The post Foodie Underground: Quick Fixes to Pretend You’re a Foodie appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnWhen simple just doesn’t suffice.

“Why is bone luging a thing?”

It was 3:30 on a Monday afternoon and this had to be the oddest text of the day.

“I did not know if this was a new foodie thing to do,” my friend followed up by way of explanation.

When you write a column on food, your friends and colleagues often take it upon themselves to one-up you on knowing what the latest and hippest thing in the food world is. And they’re often pretty successful.

I had no idea what bone luging was. So I looked it up.

For starters, the fourth Google option upon searching “bone luging” was a site called How Hipsters Date. I clicked hestitantly, slightly turning my head and squinting with both eyes the way you do when you’re watching a scary movie, in fear of what would pop up on the screen. You just never know.

Called “the new drinking fad food writers love to hate,” by Gothamist, bone luging combines the trend of bone marrow with the obsession of taking shots in ways reminiscent of college days. It’s simple: Eat the marrow out of a transected piece of bone, then use the empty bone to direct a shot into your mouth.

Cue disgusted shivering.

Tasting Table claims the trend hails from Portland – the little foodie bubble that I like to call home – and although I have never been to Metrovino which has bone luge on their menu, I can envision several local hot spots offering it sooner or later.

If you’re shaving fennel and serving crispy pig ears, a bone luge is really only so far away.

There is a lot of talk of food trends, but sometimes I wonder if trends are really trends at all, or simply the odd creation of a socially networked generation that’s obsessed with creating more internet fodder. Journalist Felicia Heaton went to the efforts of making a how-to guide:

Bone Luge How-To

Part 1: Order the bone marrow. Scrape it from the bone and eat it by spreading it on toasted bread. Or, if you’re die hard, suck it right off the spoon.

Part 2: Pick a liquor or fortified wine to compliment the marrow.

Part 3: Grab your smart phone in preparation for the obligatory Bone Luge photo.

Part 4: Pick up the bone as a funnel, pouring the drink at the top and watch it flow down the hatch. (Don’t forget to snap the photo!)

Part 5: Share your work via social networking.

Because would a food trend even be a food trend without the internet and people uploading photos of themselves in semi-compromising situations [note: most bone luging photos are not the most becoming, and it’s not because of the 80s ski sweaters]? There is a bone luge Tumblr page and a hashtag. Give it a few weeks and it might end up going the route of bacon. Just read the manifesto. I can’t wait for the “Sh*t Bone Lugers Say” video to come out.

Is anyone else sick of food trends? What happened to regular artisan goat cheese made from happy animals and organic farms with farmers trying to make a difference? Have these admirably foodie foods gotten lost in the mix of smoke-infused cocktails and bartender mustaches?

As the same friend who tipped me off to bone luging in the first place said, “Can’t I just go somewhere that doesn’t serve complicated things?”

Social media and the internet have allowed us to connect with food lovers, influence the discussion on food politics and be inspired to eat better, but it’s also a wide world of cats eating cupcakes, which I am certain isn’t doing a damn thing for advancing the food movement.

Bad trends happen to good people. Keep in mind that taking the joy of food out of the equation and replacing it with the need to jump on the latest bandwagon isn’t hip or underground, it’s just trite and disappointing. When someone offers you some bone marrow and tequila, feel good about saying no. Because when it comes to food, you should keep it simple, stupid.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, discovering what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

Image: thegift73

The post Foodie Underground: When Food Trends Go Wrong appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnNew to Foodie Underground? Here are 5 of our favorite articles to get you started.

If you’re new to EcoSalon, you might not be completely familiar with the weekly Foodie Underground column. Yes, it’s about food, but it’s about all those things that are helping to shape the underground food movement, and take it from unconventional to mainstream. It’s not about fancy restaurants – although we do have respect for those that are pushing the envelope, truly serving local and committed to sustainable practices or expensive delicacies. Foodie Underground is a place to explore “democratized foodie-ism.” What’s happening at hole-in-the-wall joints and food carts across the country and how we can take advantage of it. Most importantly, how these evolutions and trends are shaping our food policy in general.

Ultimately, we all need to eat, and food lovers exist in all circles. You don’t need a big budget to eat well, just an eye to seek out what’s good, both for you and the environment. Our hope with Foodie Underground is that you’re inspired to push your own food boundaries just a little more; forage for mushrooms instead of buying them, host a locally sourced supper club or plant a neighborhood garden that your entire community can enjoy.

You may not think you love food, but we promise that Foodie Underground will at least give you some food for thought.

Here are some of our favorite reads to get you started.

“Appreciating Simple Food” – It’s easy to get caught up in ingredients and recipes, as we try to ensure that we’re eating well. But sometimes, we forget the most important thing of all: keep it simple and appreciate food for food’s sake. “So forget complex recipes, forget the latest gluten-free baked goods, just take some time to eat good, simple food with friends, maybe even throw in a bottle of wine for good measure, and give honor to the sustenance that your body needs.”

“Foodie Feminism” – Women are pushing boundaries in the food world. Female restaurateurs, farmers and bartenders are proving that we play a significant role in the food movement. “We as women have a lot of power, and when it comes to food, we have the potential to think smartly and creatively rather than be boxed in by conventional expectations.”

“The Replacements” – Cupcakes are a subject of serious contention for EcoSalon staff, but no matter what your take on the baked good, we can all agree that the trend has some competition. Macaroons, pies delivered by bicycle and a handful of other sweet treats are giving cupcakes a run for their money.

“Cycled Coffee” – Foodies have an affinity for caffeine, and not only are they conscious about where it comes from, but they also are concerned with how they get it. Enter the cycled coffee crowd: people making a business of combining coffee and bikes. Love this idea as much as we do? Check out our San Francisco Food by Bike Foodspotting Guide.

“It’s Not What We Eat, It’s How We Eat It” –  “Before we had food science, we had food culture,” Michael Pollan said at a lecture in Portland earlier this year. We’ve become so obsessed with individual properties – omega 3’s, antioxidants, etc., that we’ve lost track of the bigger picture. So how do we change it? Start thinking about how you eat just as often as you think about what you eat.

Happy reading!

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, discovering what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

Image: Anna Brones

The post Foodie Underground: 5 Articles You May Have Missed appeared first on EcoSalon.

Column“Local” is the new “global” and fancy is put on the back burner for simpler, more laid back food.

It’s time to rejoice foodie undergroundists: fancy fusion with unintelligible names that make you feel self-conscious about your culinary prowess are out and simple, fun foods are back in.

You may have noticed the rise of hole-in-the-wall joints in your town, and the increasing use of farmers market produce in local menus, both out at restaurants and at home dinner parties, but our transition from haute cuisine to something a little more democratized is now official. According to the recent San Pellegrino Top 50 Restaurant Awards, local is the new global and these days we’re much more apt to opt for fun and informal food than anything with à la in the title.

Some of that success might be equated to the down economy, but fortunately it looks like the trend is sticking no matter what the size of people’s pocket books.

But the expansion of this more relaxed gastro scene does not seem to have slowed down as the economy has bounced back; quite the reverse in fact. Casual, fun dining, with a genuine focus on good and exciting food, is simply too successful.

If the study holds true, this means serious changes to the dining industry. Fancy, Michelin 5 star will always stick around, but an increased obsession with local and low-key could mean great things for budding culinary crafts-men and women. To get the opinion of the new generation of chefs, The Wall Street Journal asked acclaimed 25-year-old chef Stevie Parle of Dock Kitchen in London what he thought.

“People no longer enjoy themselves very much in posh restaurants, where it feels like you are eating with your grandfather. One good trend is that people no longer associate an expensive meal with a posh one. People can come to my restaurant and spend £80 a head on good wine and the like but they don’t expect it to look super fancy or all the dishes being miniature and perfectly laid out on the plate.”

Of course 20-somethings aren’t dictating the future of cuisine, but the growth in food interest from the younger generation is certainly having an impact. This crowd, not necessarily raised in the pantries of fine dining establishments, has a genuine love for good food, and semi-broke 20-somethings are just the type to come up with the innovation and ingenuity that the food world is currently craving.

There are plenty of 20-something foodie blogs out there, proving that it is possible to enjoy, and create good food, without a traditional training. Ultimately, they represent the growing group of “real people that love real food.”

And that’s just what might change the food industry.

It’s empowering to know that food change could come from the ground up. No longer dictated by big restaurants, it’s the smaller, more local operations that are making a difference and the rest of the world is taking notice.

Trading haute cuisine for fun cuisine doesn’t have to mean that the quality will change. Fun food isn’t all hot dogs and cupcakes, it’s simply more about dishes that don’t take themselves to seriously. Food for the sake of food, where a salad is a salad – preferably grown on the restaurant roof top – and ordering a burrito can be done with 0% guilt because the taco truck uses all organic, locally sourced ingredients.

Look out for food that continues to push the envelope, and if you think being a food lover is equated with pretentiousness, think again, because as it turns out, the most popular stuff coming out of the food world might just be coming out of your own backyard.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, discovering what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

Images: Wootang01, Ed Yourdon, Anna Brones

The post Foodie Underground: Haute is Out, Fun is In appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnArtisanal ice cream is keeping the summer streets hot.

It’s June, which means you’ve only got one thing on the mind: summer (or at least that’s what I spend my time daydreaming about as we approach the equinox). Long days, dinner parties in the garden and plenty of warm weather drinks. Seasonal bliss to the max.

So let’s talk food. Take a moment and imagine a hot, sweltering summer day. Then think of the most iconic American food image that comes to mind. What is it? Better say ice cream. But what was once a classic has taken an underground turn, being infused with lavender, mixed with beer and topped with sea salt, making it a go-to classic with an artisanal twist, perfect for the foodie summer you’re about to embark on.

I remember my first time at Bi-Rite in San Francisco, where salted caramel reigns and the definition of artisanal ice cream was practically created. A staple of the Mission District, the line around the block sort of says it all: San Franciscan locals and tourists alike are obsessed with artisanal ice cream. And they’re not alone.

Ice cream is so hot on the foodie list, that hip new shops can’t even stay open because of ice cream mavens eating up all the inventory. That’s the case in Brooklyn where Ample Hills Creamery, which boasts a handmade Stout ‘n’ Pretzels blend, had to shut down four days after it opened. Apparently that’s how long it takes to sell out of 130 gallons of homemade frozen cream.

Last week in London you could score a cone on a floating ice cream truck, the HMS Flake 99, putting the ingenuity of most food carts to shame, while in Portland, Salt & Straw embodies the “farm to cone” ideal, whipping up batches of ice cream with local ingredients like Rogue Creamery Blue Cheese and Olympic Provisions charcuterie. A calm spoonful of exotic green tea ice cream? Compared to the creative combinations of this summer, that seems so early 2000’s.

Forget the organic, specialty flavor pint cartons at your local co-op though; when it comes to ice cream, any self-respecting foodie is buying it from the source, or local markets. At Ashland Farmers Market you can pick up a pint of Chocolate Oatmeal Stout from Artik Creamery and at the Brooklyn Flea Market you’ll find yourself drooling over shaved ice from People’s Pops, flavored with syrupy goodness like organic lemon and rhubarb cinnamon.

And if ice cream stands are too mainstream for you, there’s always ice cream from the back of a tricycle. Still not sure about investing over a few bucks a cone? All you need is a good how-to guide (snark included) for how to best enjoy the artisanal treat.

Of course the ultimate in artisanal anything is mastering it yourself. Start with sorbet, which entails a whole lot less work and really only requires a freezer. My current “must try” recipe comes from Food & Wine:

Sour Cherry Lambic Sorbet

Ingredients:

1. 3 cups pitted sour cherries (18 ounces)
2. 3/4 cup Sugar Syrup
3. 1 cup cherry lambic beer

Instructions:

1. In a blender, puree the cherries until smooth. Stir in the Sugar Syrup and the cherry lambic beer. Pour the sorbet base into an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
2. Pack the sour-cherry lambic sorbet into a plastic container. Press a sheet of plastic wrap directly onto the surface of the sorbet and close the container with an airtight lid. Freeze until firm, 4 hours.

Then again, maybe artisanal ice cream is just the new cupcake, and after we gorge ourselves on too many blends of cream, eggs, sugar and ice, we’ll be desperately hoping that those smarter than us will be putting the recipes to good use, like fighting terrorism. But for now, let’s just enjoy that cone of bacon-java-sea salt bliss.

It’s good. I swear.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, discovering what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

Images: Anna Brones

The post Foodie Underground: We All Scream for Artisanal Ice Cream appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnBeing a junk foodie has never been so hip.

It’s always good to leave your bubble. In Portland, Oregon, my bubble is food related and consists of farmers markets, New Seasons and buying quinoa in bulk. But for the past few weeks, I’ve been on the road, which has necessitated numerous gas station stops. Entering a gas station in general is rare for me, and the experience is much like sitting down to watch an hour of regular television and getting completely sucked in by the commercials. A sensory overload of sorts.

These interstate gas stations and mini marts offer much of what you’d expect: bad coffee, beef jerky sticks and an assortment of chips and high fructose corn syrup packed candies. In fact, I certainly don’t expect to find examples of fine cuisine at trucker stops, but the amount of strange food products above and beyond the standard is mind-blowing. Consider Tum-E Yummies, a 100% fake drink that’s the color of a neon set of Crayolas, a gummi spread of Mexican inspired food and a two pound bucket of cheese balls. How can it be that people really eat this stuff?

But it’s not just late night road trippers in need of a sugary fix. Even in a world of organic and local, junk food is all the rage. In fact, at a recent monthly supper club with my usual gathering of like-minded foodies, there was a plate full of crab bruschetta. Lovely. Until I overheard the maker of said bruschetta say, “You know what I rolled the crab in? Ranch Pringles.” I cringed.

You can go so far as to call it “Gourmet Junk Food.” Twinkie Napoleon, Mountain Dew Jelly and Fruit S’Mores – there are plenty of recipes waiting to go around, making the simple fried onion, green bean and mushroom soup casserole look tame. These days even lollipops have celebrity status and you can send all kinds of junk food gift baskets to your nearest and dearest. No matter what your personal take on the trend, from five star restaurants to books, being a junk foodie, for better or for worse, has never been so hip.

Andrew Freeman & Co.’s annual Trend List for 2011 was spot on when it announced that “Munchies are moving to the forefront as chefs reinvent junk food in gourmet ways.” The list cites Cereal Milk Ice Cream at Momofuku Milk Bar in New York City as one of the examples of culinary destinations taking a stab at classing it down, but there are certainly many more restaurants and chic bistros out there incorporating junking their gourmet, like the Junk Food Platter at Simon L.A and deep fried Twinkies spotted in Honolulu. In Philadelphia you can even take a Junk Food Tour, which touts a First Class tour and dining experience.

Incorporating bad foods into classier creations isn’t just happening out and about at finer restaurants. The real gourmet junk food movement is happening right at home. Just look at Mini-Mart a la Carte. This book probably has its greatest following in the hipster crowd, but bad food is unfortunately back, from Vienna sausage pigs in a blanket to Sardines Rockefeller. I’ve been drawn to perusing this book on several occasions simply because of mere disgust; reading the recipes are akin to staring at a traffic accident, when you know you should look away but you can’t.

And while Mini-Mart à la Carte certainly doesn’t attempt to label itself as a cookbook for foodies, Junk Foodie does exactly that, taking advantage of the word with which so many of us use to define ourselves. A cookbook for “the lowbrow gourmand,” it’s all about taking office snacks and turning them into something classier, like Oreos and Hot Tamales blended together to make an Aztec Coffee Cake. The author, Emilie Baltz, is quick to remind us that nothing in her book is good for us, but that somewhere in between the aisles of jelly beans and potato chips, we can find inspiration for new creations.

Need some real inspiration? Head on over to Fancy Fast Food, a blog devoted to fast food makeovers that look almost like they could be served with a white starched napkin and your finest silver. Except for the fact that some of these photos, which turn combo meals like Popeye’s Fried Chicken into Spicy Chicken Sushi, might induce some gag reflexes.

Foods and desserts that incorporate some of the worst ingredients that the food industry has to offer? Bring your bismuth.

Of course, no matter how conscious we are about the negative effects of these junk foods that we’re cooking with, we’re still popularizing products that shouldn’t have a place in a healthy food society. I doubt you’ll see Alice Waters making a homegrown, organic spinach salad sprinkled with crumbled Doritos anytime soon.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, discovering what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

Images: Junk Foodie, Anna Brones, Anna Brones, Chronicle Books, Junk Foodie

The post Foodie Underground: A Penchant for Gourmet Junk Food appeared first on EcoSalon.