Food Day: Seasons Eatings

Happy food day all. Lots of stories about cookies and chocolate and gift giving, probably because it's almost Christmas.

Getting past that, here are some stories of interest for a health conscious Jewish boy such as myself:

So you're ready to move past the box: The LA Times has a very interesting article about the process of becoming a Sommelier. Not only is this process very difficult, requiring the passing of several tests (the final exam has a 97% failure rate!), it's also fairly pricey.

However, a top sommelier job in LA will pay around $100,000.

So again, I'll plead...Agatha, take the damn exam!

With a name like that: How can you go wrong with a fruit called Yumberry? Seriously? The NYT food section reports that Yumberry, a fruit popular in China for the past seven thousand years, will be available here in the U.S. in juice form.

The juice is purplish, and has a sweet-tart flavor, akin to, "a lighter version of pomegranate or mulberry" and is loaded with antioxidant compounds.

Fruit of my youth: I get a little sentimental when I think about grapefruit. My grandfather had a ruby red tree in his back yard, and there's nothing like being about to walk outside and pick those things right off the tree. It also made the yard smell incredible.

Even if you don't have a tree to pick from, you can probably get them at your local grocery store. The Miami Herald has some great ideas of what to do with them, aside from eating them with a couple spoon fulls of sugar.

Brought to you by the National F*&king Pepper Association

From the twisted minds that brought you cheesecake in a cup...



If only all food advertising was like this.

Bite-sized desserts, so hot right now. Bite-sized desserts.

Even though this isn't exactly breaking news (Foodservice Monthly's blog Sauce on the Side posted this a couple weeks ago), the National Restaurant Association has come out with its What's Hot and What's Not survey.

Aside from allowing me to make the obvious Zoolander reference, it's a great way to make fun of your friends for eating tofu (which is only 25% hot as opposed to 59% not).

So what's hot right now?

Bite-sized desserts are knocking the casual dining super sundaes off the map with a 83% hot rating. Coming in a close second is locally-grown produce with 81% (and only 5% not), with organic produce, tapas, and specialty sandwiches rounding out the top ten.

And what's not?

Star fruit (62% not), fruit flavored wine (63% not), and anything deep or pan fried (with only 17% hot) were among some of the least favoried food items/techniques.

So what did we learn from this?

If you're opening up a restaurant, you'll probably want to open up a small tapas and specialty sandwich joint that serves local organic produce.

You probably wouldn't want to serve anything deep fried and chinese (Chinese food is only 22% hot).

So, after all those numbers, what food do you think is hot right now? What do you think is not? What's your list?

Lunch of Champions

You can keep your sandwiches and healthy salads. At our office, we eat cheesecake out of a cup for lunch.



That's how we roll.

I don't know what it is...but I'll eat it

I had skate wing at Zola last night.



I had no idea Skate looked like that. Needless to say, it looked a lot better on my plate, and tasted pretty good too.