We’ve perused the internet and chosen interesting and informative content about local food, cooking, living in Bucks and nearby, and beyond.
Let us know what you think by adding a comment below or emailing us at info@BucksCountyTaste.com. Enjoy!
Helping with food
In the last months, we’ve faced exceptionally devastating natural disasters in the US and nearby. Hurricanes, wildfires, flooding. Many of my friends have shared how fortunate they feel living here in the Mid-Atlantic where we get hit less often by these kind of crises. What can one do to help, not just in Puerto Rico, California, Florida and Texas, but at home too?My friend, Sally, helps to cook lunch every week at the Centenary Methodist Church in Lambertville on Wednesdays. “It’s what I do best,” she explains. “I may not be able to do other things, but I can cook.”
Cookbook author Julia Turshen makes her contribution by cooking too. “Along with voting and volunteering…I bring lasagnas to phone-banking meetings, roll rice-and-bean burritos for canvassers to eat on the go and drop off corn muffins at protests.”
My friend Emily said almost the exact thing to me this past Saturday. “I don’t do house-to-house canvassing, or cold calls, but I can cook.” Recently she brought food to a “meet and greet” candidate meeting at a local home.
Chefs around the country are donating their efforts, skills and time to help others. Washington chef José Andrés recently spent a week in Puerto Rico cooking meals in hot-tub-size paella pans, Turshen reports. “With his team, working out of mobile kitchens, restaurants and food trucks, he’s prepared more than 50,000 meals and counting.”
Turshen also highlights Atlanta’s Erika Council who gives profits from her dinners to fund programs that teach computer science to underserved children, as well as two organizations in Brooklyn who use culinary training as a way to give some folks a leg up: Drive Change hires formerly incarcerated youths to work on food trucks, and at Emma’s Torch, refugees receive paid culinary training, English lessons and assistance in finding restaurant jobs.
Looking for ways to help? Here are just a few:
- Fast Company has a great list of ways to help victims of the fires in Northern California, including donating to food pantries.
- Puerto Rico’s power grid has been devastated and approximately 80 percent of the island’s total crop value destroyed. While FEMA and the USDA are working hard to deliver meals, you can also donate to organizations like the Red Cross, United for Puerto Rico, and the Puerto Rico Real-Time Recovery Fund (all monies go to rebuilding infrastructure), to name but a few. See a more extensive list here.
New breweries notch wins at Great American Beer Festival
[Michael Klein, Philadelphia Inquirer]
Delaware Valley breweries took home an impressive number of medals at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver this year. Of particular note, says Michael Klein, were two new breweries. Spellbound Brewing in Mount Holly won gold among 70 entries in the Wood- and Barrel-Aged Beer category. Bonn Place Brewing in Bethlehem double-medaled, scoring a silver in Ordinary or Special Bitter with Mooey, and a bronze in the English-Style Mild Ale class with Nemo.
And Bucks County’s own Neshaminy Creek Brewing Co. in Croydon, won the bronze for a second year for their smoke beer, Croydon is Burning. Read Michael Klein’s full article here.
Is Food the New Internet?
[Leah Koenig, Food52]
Where is the local food movement going?
Kimbal Musk, the pioneering internet entrepreneur, “believes the country and the world are poised to scale the ‘real food’ movement up in a big way,” reports Leah Koenig. Musk sees tremendous opportunities for “tech- and entrepreneurially minded people to make a difference in the way we grow and consume food.”
As consumers begin to demand “real food” – fresh, organic, locally sourced and minus a lot of ingredients that sound like a pharmaceutical advert, Musk says that this is the time “for entrepreneurs—in partnership with farmers and food producers—to find creative ways to bridge the gap between supply and consumer demand for ‘real food.’”
Read more here, including the many innovative food projects that Musk is supporting.
What are you reading about local food? Drop us a line and share an interesting story that you’ve found.
