New Orleans Edible Schoolyard

Four members of the Association of Food Journalists journeyed to Samuel J. Green Charter School, which is in the middle of the gritty neighborhood where rapper Lil Wayne grew up. Attached to the school is the first Edible Schoolyard outside of the original founded by Alice Waters in Berkeley. The Green school had been taken over by First Line schools 10 days before Katrina. During the storm, the school took on eight feet of water in the cafeteria. Also before the storm, the school was a failing school for 20 straight years and was crammed with 650 students. Flash forward to now, and the school has a new cafeteria kitchen and a new teaching kitchen thanks mostly to the Ruth Fertel Foundation and the Emeril Lagasse Foundation. The school's garden doesn't grow enough food to supply the school's food needs. However, according to Edible Schoolyard director Donna Cavato, it was uphill work negotiating with food supplier Sodexho for nutritional foods and five daily servings of fruits and vegetables. The kids and their parents learn how to cook and to make things from the garden products. In fact, the kids sell soap, loofahs, pickled okra and peppers and other items they make at the monthly Freret Street market. The school is K through 8. Two grades a week rotate through cooking and gardening classes. A lot of the 450 kids in the school get 80 percent of their daily calories from the breakfast, lunch and two snacks they get at school. The cafeteria tables have fresh cut flowers and water pitcher so kids can learn sharing and get hydrated. They also make and eat food from the cultures they are studying. For example, Aztec pumpkin soup and quinoa pilaf. There are after school programs for kids who are below grade level in being business entrepreneurs.

After Katrina, when the school administration discussed their plans for the garden and improvements to the school, most of the parents were skeptical. Like a lot of school systems, New Orleans was long on promising and short on delivering through the years. When the garden went in and the outdoor classroom started being built, some of the parents wept. Cavato says that a lot of the parents are in poverty and had poor education, but you don't need a college degree to cook or garden.

The kids compost, use dishes and silverware to cut down on waste and the first graders use washcloths instead of napkins and help launder them. The round tables in the cafeteria encourage socializing and teamwork. As Cavato says, "If you have a place at the table, you have a place anywhere."

-- Claudia Perry, "official" AFJ conference blogger

AFJ 2009: New Orleans Food and Farm Network

Your blogger came back from the Association for Food Journalists conference, weighed herself and nearly passed out after seeing she only gained a pound. I've only recently found the energy to post on the conference's final activities. Saturday morning we boarded a bus with Daphne Derven of the New Orleans Food and Farm Network. NOFFN provides tools, gardeners and support for urban farming efforts in the city. Our first stop was at Marilyn Yank's Little Sparrow Farm. Yank works on the garden about six to eight hours a week and has work parties three or four times a year. She sells flowers to local restaurant and food to neighbors when things are in season. Post-Katrina, there are 65,000 vacant lots in New Orleans with some 35,000 undeveloped. The Little Sparrow Garden is bordered with hyacinth peas (see above right), which attract butterflies and other beneficial insects. NOFFN is also working with Covenant House to train 100 at-risk kids for food jobs and they will also help the house start 10 gardens of its own. The group is also working on education programs to certify more growers.

We left Little Sparrow to head to the Hollygrove Market. Unlike the usual CSA model of a hefty upfront payment and membership and core committees, the Market offers food for $25 a box (or bags; pick and bring your own containers). There's a swap table in case someone prefers satsumas to eggplant and other produce and locally made goods for sale at the Market. I tried the pea soup with tasso ham from Vintage Garden Kitchen. The Kitchen employs the developmentally disabled from ARC. You find out more and donate (this is not an AFJ endorsement, just a suggestion from someone who was impressed) at their Website.

There are also seven hens and a pair of contrasting farms at the Market. Kasey Mitchell (pictured above left) farms permaculture style, meaning his farm self-organizes according to nature's dictates. He doesn't mulch (a common practice in the area) and the plants nurture and protect each other.

If Mitchell is right-brain, Morgan Fry (pictured right) is left-brain all the way. He does commercial-style farming on a smaller scale complete with crop rotation, irrigation. From his arugula beds, he can usually get four crops with judicious replanting. Also on site is a tool shed where equipment can be borrowed by master gardeners and others. There is not a problem with theft, Derven says.

-- Claudia Perry, "official" AFJ conference blogger

AFJ 2009: Sugar In and Around Baton Rouge

While some members of the Association of Food Journalists breakfasted on churros and brandy milk punch, it was a croissant dipped in honey for your blogger. It would not be the last time something sweet crossed her lips. Before we get down to the granular level of the information we received on sugar throughout the day, I have to moan aloud about the candied bacon that was laid across an incredible crab and roasted beet salad that was part of our Sugar Barons dinner at Houmas House in Darrow. Can life get any better than candied bacon? I think not. Each course of the dinner featured some sugary aspect in honor of the industry that built plantations like Houmas House.

We began the day on the bus from New Orleans to St. Gabriel, where parts of the old women's prison have been turned into a sugar research station run by LSU. On the trip over, Charley Richard (pictured in blue shirt), whose consulting firm serves the international sugar industry, shared some facts about the growth of the sugar industry in Louisiana. It's one of four states producing sugar cane in the U.S. with Florida, Texas and Hawaii rounding out the quartet. The can production accounts for 46 percent of the production in the country with the other 54 percent coming from sugar beets in more northern states. For more industry information, Richard recommended the American Sugar Alliance and the American Sugar Cane League. The latter represents the Louisiana cane growers.


We tromped into the cane fields to watch cane being cut by a combine. Joining us Kenneth Gravois (left), who is the resident director of the station. Gravois also showed up the pollination of cane crossings that are more resistant to cold and disease. Sugar cane is a tropical plant, and Louisiana is temperate so the harvest can be threatened by all kinds of weather.

We saw a short slide show reinforcing what we had seen outside while eating biscuits dipped in cane syrup. There was also raw cane to try. Simple rule: Chew but don't swallow.

We drove to the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, which is the largest nutrition research center in the world. It's also part of LSU. George Bray, the founding director who is now the Tom Boyd professor of medicine. Bray shared a compendium of research on the effects of fructose on health, including the obesity epidemic, increased triglycerides, diabetes and metabolic syndrome. The introduction of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) as a sweetener in 1967 has paralleled the rise in obesity. Bray also noted that sucrose, which most of us know as table sugar, is just as high in fructose as high fructose corn syrup. Some food manufacturers are replacing HFCS with sucrose since some of the buying public is avoiding HFCS. His conclusion? Eat only naturally occurring fructose, which is found in fruits, vegetables and dairy products. Sugar-sweetened beverage consumption has been tied to weight gain.

Then Dr. Catherine Champagne presented on "Sweeteners in Nutrition and Cooking." Her information offered a breakdown of the pros and cons of each of the sweeteners, including the sugar alcohols. The memorable health risks of sweeteners included aspartame's phenylalanine, which harmful to people living with Phenylketonuria (PKU). The product carries a warning label. Saccharine can cross the placenta, but there have been no studies on its effect on babies in utero.

Champagne also presented maximum daily amounts for each sweetener in a chart. She and Bray also offered their e-mail addresses to anyone needing further information.

Our final stop at LSU was the Rural Life Museum. After a sharecropper's lunch and a lecture by Chef John Folse (top of page, holding meat) on the history of cane production which had a questionable timeline and a stunningly benevolent view of sharecropping, the members looked around the museum. Highlights included the dogtrot house, the syrup house and seeing the boiling syrup strained. David J.W. Floyd, the director of the museum, explained the syrup making process, noting that the principles were similar to evaporative stills.

-- Claudia Perry, "official" AFJ conference blogger

AFJ 2009: Writer in Residence John T. Edge

After an introduction by Times-Picayune restaurant critic Brett Anderson citing his stereotypical Southern, whiskey-swilling and eating skills, Association of Food Journalists writer in residence John T. Edge opened by suggesting an alternate title, “A Guilty White Southerner Eats His Way Through America.” Edge has chips on his shoulder – being a Southerner, writing about food (is it worthy?). The Southern part comes first with Edge riding his Schwinn from the farmhouse in Jones County to the Old Clinton BBQ for smoked pork cut by a cleaver by Miss Maddie. But Edge couldn’t recognize the black men who cooked the BBQ so he works under that debt of pleasure.

Edge’s father worked for the Federal courthouse and watched his father put away white men involved in illegal activities in civil rights. At school in Athens, Edge went to Bertha’s scarfing eggs and grits with the same white men, likely Klansmen, his father had tried.

Edge went from University of Georgia to Mississippi to the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. The society wasn’t integrated but the food was – black-eyed peas and okra from Africa, chess pie from those Anglo-Saxons. When talking with writers here, he heard a reluctance to embrace their sense of place.

According to Edge, those of us who write about food work under a burden of pleasure. Food, not sex, is our most frequently indulged pleasure. Food is our greatest cause of disease and death, but the serious-minded dismiss it. Food offers a non-threatening way to discuss big issues. Warren Belasco wrote “Food: The Key Concepts” can get you up to speed on the basic concepts, but it is dense.

Edge introduced us to four key New Orleans stories, saying that knowing New Orleans well represents a certain cultural literacy. His first magazine piece was about the Lucky Dog Bordello, and Edge worked a Lucky Dog cart for four days leading up to New Year’s Eve for the celebrating drunks. Alice Clark took care of Edge and he wanted to convey a deep respect. Clark is dead now, felled by a stroke. Austin Leslie, proprietor of Chez Helene in Treme, was basis of Big Arthur in the television series “Frank’s Place.” Austin’s chicken was capped with confetti of garlic, parsley and pickle slices. Austin died in exile in Atlanta after Katrina. Thomas the shucker at Pascale Manale's, still gives the best patter of oyster shuckers including a mean impression of Mighty Mouse.

Edge read a section from a story about Middendorf’s in Manchac that is impossible to recreate here because its rhythms and use of language spring from the peculiar polyglot of Southern culture, food, absurd detail (Renaissance reproduction portraits all with the face of one party’s husband) and class. The economy of repetitive motion, family advice handed down and the tendrils of Katrina that cling to all food stories in the state are all there.

Sometimes dedicated patrons and writers ascribe too much significance to a restaurant. Take the read of the restaurant and the story to absurd levels (e.g. study of mules in Faulkner), Edge said.

-- Claudia Perry, "official" AFJ conference blogger

AFJ Bonnie Berube and Nutritional Analysis

Bonnie Berube presented on nutritional analysis and gave a handout detailing the information. This will be posted on the AFJ website since it is information dense and I would be hard pressed to summarize accurately in real time.

She did point out the gluten intolerance craze and other allergens have impacted nutritional analysis. IBS is the trendy new disease.

Berube has found some resistance to packaging things as healthy so she recommends using other terms.


While many people keep an eye on fat content, most of the average consumers do not pay as close attention to sodium and fiber content. Her company also does labeling, with one employee doing boudin.

Berube offered her website, www.brbconsulting.com, as a resource. For foreign foods, there are two options. If you're using ballpark shot or no physician needs the accurate information, you could use a substitution. But that can raise issues.

Berube was asked for a recommendation for a nutritional database program for food editors. her company has looked at programs through the years. She likes Nutritionist Pro, which is user friendly and gives sound information. They also have good technical support.

It was asked if Berube's firm did analysis by serving or by portion. Their company analyzes by portion, which may be multiple servings. Most restaurants don't want to reduce portions since they think customers will not patronize them. Also, look at the largest item on some platters. It's usually some fried item like French fries.

Creating multimedia food content at AASFE

Addie Broyles deconstructed Twitter and how its microblogging capabilities resemble watercooler conversation or church chat. You can link your Tweets to your blog and there is some software that helps with that. Facebook also a good way to reach out to users. Giveaways also connect with users. Perhaps extend membership in AJ to bloggers (Editorial comment: assuming bloggers meet basic ethical standards). Broyles says she puts recipes from blogs in print. She is struggling with how to compensate bloggers fur using content. Don't think of them as competition, think of them as resources.

Jill Silva of the Kansas City Star talked about adding online slide shows and videos to augment print content. Demonstrated video on making marshmallows with flash photography interrupting events. They try to post videos weekly. They did a food stamp buying story with vlogs and photos. They also did a multimedia Thanksgiving package with web recipes, pro Q&As, podcasts, message boards and videos plus archives of past Thanksgiving stories.


Robin Davis of the Columbus Dispatch. The paper is family-owned. They melded other sections but left the food section to a standalone. They are only one left in Ohio and are down to four pages from eight. But they decided to cross brand and do a branded website, dispatchkitchen.com

Davis now does weekly television segments with the co-owned CBS affiliate. The station did not have a studio kitchen, but they built the Dispatch Kitchen in the North Market in Columbus (like the Farmer's Market in Los Angeles). They work with the Market on using the space. They usually tape on Wednesday mornings. The market offers cooking classes when the space is not in use.

The site has all of the print content but the recipe search is not functional due to the usual paradigm shifts. The video doesn't work on Macs, and is irregularly functional. Print ads are down, and consolidation is looming. They did three TV specials, including a holiday special that won its time slot. Online ads are on the increase.

Davis' face is associated with food in Columbus. She often gets recognized as lady on TV, lady on the Web and the lady in the newspapers. Ike affected Columbus with 300,000 without power for about a week. Readers were calling about food safety, and they did content on TV, in print and on the Web. The Red Cross asked her to present their food safety information because she was trusted and reliable. She is here and couldn't do it.

Broyles mentioned Google reader and RSS syndication (I'm not explaining them fully but go to wikipedia and all will be revealed). Davis says she hardly writes longer, award fodder pieces since she doesn't have time, spending 20 percent of her time on the TV side.

Integrating Food Coverage Throughout the Paper

The panel here featured Teresa Farney of the Colorado Springs Gazette, JoLene Krawczak of the Oregonian and former Atlanta Journal Constitution food editor Susan Puckett. Farney began by speaking about food news moving out of the food section. She collaborated with a metro reporter on a new ethnic grocery store where the other reporter conducted interviews in Spanish.

Susan Puckett said there was an expectation at the AJC of food stories moving out of the section as needed. She worked on a synergy with multimedia and the Web. She worked with online producers and became more nimble, resourceful and open-minded. The staff is now divided into print, online and newsgathering with writers producing stories across platform. Evening Edge aggregates content from dining channel, with quick fixes for busy people getting dinner on the table. A recipe database, which is searchable, is maintained by a staff member. Chefs do video "Dinner Dare" with video of them coming up with a quick dish. This evolved from a chef who became a "biscuit therapist," blogging in response to users' biscuit challenges. There was also a photo gallery, which did well.

Food never goes out of style and survives all economic situations.

Krawczak talked about extending the food brand beyond the paper. Food section moved from one floor down and now share a pod in the newsroom with the political team. The move increased cooperation and reducd poaching. Experiment was to develop a new mag from the food staff. Mix magazine was started by Martha Holmberg, former editor for Fine Cooking. Portland is an innovative food town. Staff did not increase. she has one-part time writer, two part-time editors and a part-timer in the test kitchen. Mag goes to nonsubscribers 30-45 young marrieds without children and singles, about 40,000 households. Publishes six times a year. Been successful. Have 2,000 subscribers, growing at about 200 per issue. Six thousands copies on newsstands. Goes for messy, funky look but sometimes it comes out more beautiful than planned.

Do restaurant trends. Other newsroom staffers want to write for the magazine. Has unified the newsroom. May repurpose reviews into capsules at the back of the book. Friday night dinner party reader throws casual dinner party and it's rewritten and published. It's the most popular feature in the magazine. Originally had to seed, but now people line up to do it. They use mostly staff photographers. There's a big freelance budget for Mix, and now share branding with the paper. Feature on Kitchens, which are a state of mind. Also includes a wine panel. Two other glossty magazines -- Northwest (do restaurant reviews) and Homes and Gardens Northwest (done by newspaper staff). Mix more about food and lifestyle.

Primary advertisers lto fo nontraditional food and drink ad, e.g. new condos, Macy's, wineries and restaurants have little ads.

The mags go to 40,000 people in in different target audiences, plus 5,000 on newsstands. Advertisers can do all three since they reach different audiences. Subscriptions are $10 for six issues $18 for 12 issues. Some readers complain if they know someone who gets it for free. The editor spends half her time on Mix, and is more efficient on the front end of the weekly section.


Mix has new website mixpdx. Ad ratio is 50-50 but she fights for 60-40 and it ends up somewhere in between.

AFJ pirates board feature and Sunday editors vessel

The AFJ membership were surprisingly talkative at 7 a.m. as they rode over to the ZaZa hotel in the Museum District to join up with the Association of Sunday and Feature Editors. Caffeine was essential. We introduced ourselves and then Matt Thompson from the Minneapolis Star Tribune talked about user generated content and how to incentivize contributions. Twitter, the microblogging platform, was also discussed, including how to use hash tags (example #afj08) to highlight events. He noted that Twitter has a narrative flow, and users do remixes (or mashups if you're really cutting edge).

Naturally, Power Point was involved. Thompson also notes that having user write captions or having users comment on a particular topic (best cocktail in the Cities, for example). He also talked about service features (best breakfast, downtown lunch) being wikied, that is, users updating and commenting continuously.

He then moved on to the topic of general features, grouped under a heading such as $1,000. 48 Hours. The Twin Cities. What do you do? Winner got $1,000 to enact the weekend. Specialty reporting takes the same approach to niche topics. He recommended wefeelfine.org, an aggregator of emotional states from blogs around the world.

Thompson also offered the idea of a best feature section, which would be the top blog in the area. His awards are taking place in the area of user generated content.

Michael Bauer from the San Francisco Chronicle talked about how that organization is using multimedia. Because they are in a JOA, the sfgate website had different standards for city and suburban restaurant reviews. Bauer worked out an agreement to standardize practices. Bauer blogs and has done so for about 2 1/2 years. he's garnering 150,000 page views a month. The blog made him less of an asshole in the public eye.

They do service, including video of 10 basic cooking techniques, oyster opening and cleaning squid. Also folding egg whites. Resources are not quite there, including a recipe database that could include 20,000 locally generated recipes. He sees newspapers as being able to combat the East Coast-centric quality of the national sites, and highlight the best of the region.

Bauer does a weekly newsletter which does repurpose some print content. Also added virtual tours of the Top 100 restaurant with a 360 degree view of the restaurant. To try to keep list current, removing closings and updating. As a result, tourists e-mail for recommendations. Also do tasting reviews in the Travel section of the site.

Holiday pages are big. They offer a Turkey Training Camp with video. The food and wine content draws 1.2 million page views a month.

When asked how to use print to drive traffic to the website, Thompson said Vitamin is printed weekly and offers meetups and other events to bond with the user community.

AFJ in Houston Day Two recap

First of all, the second day of the conference was nonstop knowledge absorption and bus time. We started at the Omni with a pair of sessions with noted editor Judith Jones (John Updike, Julia Child) talking about the world of cookbook publishing and how the rise of celebrity chef cookbooks is more or less dumbing down the cookbook. For those of you who want to check out more of Jones' wisdom, your humble blogger debuted her Flip video camera and uploaded the 14 segments to AFJ's own YouTube channel. The sound isn't great but it's worth checking out.

After Jones, Marion Nestle, author of Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine, gave an enlightening presentation on food safety as it affects our animal companions. The AFJ published a biography from some of Nestle's detractors that made her sound like the scourge of the food industry. She's not. She's woman committed to digging down into the quicksand of research studies, corporate practices and chemical mayhem exacerbated by the emerging free market in the developing world. She also informed the assembled of the existence of a food study and food science library at New York University which is open to the public. Since your blogger lives 12 minutes away by subway, she'll check it out and post about the collection once she gets home to New Jersey.

After Nestle and Jones, we all boarded a bus down to Alvin, home of Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan, to visit Rice Tec. The company is famous for its Texmati rice and also for developing different hybrids and seeds. We toured their greenhouses, which lost their roofs during Ike, and saw their labs where they test rice for water absorption, gelatinousness and other properties important to consumers. We ate BBQ before the tour that included Texmati rice and beans as sides.

Then we were off to NASA to check out space food. NASA is located in Clear Lake, which is about 20 minutes north of Galveston. More damage from Ike is evident in this part of town with blue tarps everywhere and broken trees by the road side.

The visit to NASA expanded on much of what Michele Perchonok talked about in the tech food session on Day One. We were shown how some of the food is packaged and how to control liquids in space. A favorite astronaut meal is freeze-dried shrimp cocktail which has something of a kick due to horseradish in the cocktail sauce. There is some sensory impairment in space so food needs to convey tastes.

After that, we bused to Central Market in the Highland Village to check out its stunning array of products. I found out the fish guy was originally from Ivory Coast. I have also run into immigrants from Senegal and other West African countries. I would predict more African food restaurants in Houston in the near future.

After ogling the displays at Central Market, were retired to the Central Market kitchen to sample barbecue from Pizzatola's, beers from the craft brewers St. Arnold and Shiner, local cheeses from Houston Dairymaid and chocolates from Vosges and Paper Bag Chocolate. We talked about and experienced beer and food pairings.

Taste of Houston AFJ Day One

After talk of Texas, Tang and taxation of resources, we needed to eat. So the AFJ attendees sampled food from eight of Houston's best restaurants -- Indika, Reef, Hugo's, Cafe Annie, T'afia and Beavers, Brennan's and The Grove. The best sports of the evening were Judy Walker and Dale Curry of New Orleans, who were very gracious about the blogger's knocking over a flower vase and soaking our table with water. Even more gracious was Addie Broyles of Austin, whose tote bag ended up covered in wine thanks to the chain reaction from the vase. Who could be in a bad mood after such food? The quail and little stuffed doohickeys (this a technical foodie term based on a recent paradigm shift and focus group research) from Indika were dazzling, as was smoked quail on a corn base from the Grove, Brennan's arrayed some tasty Texas cheese with honeycomb mayhew jelly and tasso ham. Robert Del Grande from Cafe Annie offered scallop with polenta and something green and fabulous (recipes will be posted so please excuse the blogger's imprecision). The fried brownie with peanut butter and such was glorious as was the flourless chocolate flan with chipotle, ice cream with a dulce de leche style cream and more chipotle in the syrup. It was an incendiary set of flavors that played well together. Hugo's was the perpetrator. Call them guilty of goodness.

Texas wines from Inwood Estates Vineyards in Dallas and McPherson Cellars were poured. The McPherson Viognier was a stunner, the psychotic teenager of a grape without the nose ring and the scary friends. The McPherson Sangiovese was intriguing but could stand a bit more bottle age to this mind. The Inwood Chardonnay-Palomino blend was light on oak and had some melon and honey notes, but at $79.50 a bottle, the QPR is not too good. The tasting notes will be posted on the AFJ website and I will blog about the wines on my own blog.

Anyway, there's more to come. Please feel free to correct or add comments.

AFJ in Houston Day One Session Three

Thanks to apple retrieval, I missed a little bit of the first part of "The High Price of Food," moderated by Robin Davis of the Columbus Dispatch. Rosalinda Benner, RD/LD, the corporate dietitian for the HEB Grocery Company, said the average family has cut out 70 per cent of its eating out. The store is trying to help the takeout-dependent learn how to cook simple, fast, nutritious meals. HEB stocks its stores in accordance with local demographic patterns, so North San Antonio won't have the same foods as South San Antonio. By eating takeout, people are used to instant gratification, so they must learn to cook and budget. She offered a handout with several tips such as shopping for weekly specials, getting family members to take a team approach to food preparation, saving grocery receipts to track spending, doubling recipes and freezing leftovers, don't take the kids shopping and eat before you go. HEB does community outreach with recipe cards and a seasonal magazine with recipes and advice. She has seen sales of organic food drop in the tight economy.

Brian Greene, president and CEO of the Houston Food Bank, offered some sobering statistics about food and income. Lowe income families spend 32 percent of their income on food compared to 11 percent for families of average income. For fuel, the numbers are 11 and 4 percent, respectively. The food bank gets food donated by grocery stores like HEB of their overstock and surplus commodities from the USDA. Restaurants are not a large source of donations since their kitchens are very efficient. However, the Bank through an affiliate does take excess hotel event food. Thanks improved resource shifting learned by FEMA post-Katrina, the Food Bank did well during Ike in Houston, and still sending food to communities south of Houston and Galveston which were harder hit.

Factors affecting food banks (you can check feedingamerica.org to find one locally) are less excess inventory at grocers, fewer surplus commodities (the Houston Food Bank got 2 million less pounds last year than in previous years as farmers reduced production due to falling prices and rising costs).

Brian Anderson, a livestock and dairy economist from Texas A&M, laid out the intricate interplay between oil, corn, ethanol and livestock and dairy prices. Nitrogen fertilizer is derived from natural gas and hay prices are at record highs. All of the commodities futures markets experienced the same rapid devaluation as the stock market. We're just seeing the beginning of the price increases since there's a lag between calving and slaughter of 16-18 months. You will see lower beef prices in the short term, but pork and chicken will rise. Supplies will also be reduced as production costs rise.

The weak dollar has increased exports (Russia is a big market for dark poultry meat). However, corn is used for farm raised fish as feed so the prices will be impacted. Even cheap and reliable turkey will increase in price. If all beef were grass fed, production would decrease by 50 percent (editorial comment: This would be a bad thing?). Also, with research on using other forms of biofuel besides corn-based ethanol (in West Texas getting fuel from algae is being studied) is on the horizon.

As one attendee noted, "I could be squeezing algae for a living." However, there were better things to come

AFJ in Houston Day One Session Two

"The Future of High Tech Foods" was moderated by Nancy Stohs of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Michele Perchonok of NASA shot down a long held misconception that Tang was designed for NASA. It just happened to fit with NASA's needs and is still in use. They need food to be safe, acceptable (no crumbs in the switches) and use resources carefully. Astronauts usually lose muscle and bone density in flight. The space shuttle astronauts used 4 lbs. of food per person a day. The new Orion spacecraft, which will resemble a bigger Apollo capsule with 4-6 astronauts, will only allow for 2.5 lbs. There's no refrigeration in space so the foods must be shelf stable. They use freeze-dried foods, thermostabilized foods and some existing dried foods repackaged in vacuum sealed packaging. The astronauts find the foods are not as flavorful mostly because microgravity reduces smell conveyance. Also, the food is not piping hot. And, the astronauts are congested and swollen, leading to a phenomenon known as "Charlie Brown face." Plus, they are stressed by being away from the familiar. One astronaut never eats mac and cheese at home but craves it in orbit. Water is an issue due to weight and storage but recycling even of urine for longer missions, will become standard. As Perchonok pointed out, "We recycle urine on Earth, it's just someone else's urine."

Gene Lester, a research plant physiologist from the USDA, presented a handout on comparing studies of nutrients of organic vs. conventional foods. Some of the studies he went over in his handout were not statistically significant, and there was only a minor different between the types if the soil profile was comparable. He also talked about additional funding being available from the new Farm Bill for the next five years to research food crops more thoroughly.
Quote of the day: "We know more about outer space than what's going on six inches under the soil where most of our food comes from."

Marcia Walker, vice president technology and microbiology with Fresherized Foods, talked about ultra-high pressure food processing as a way to eliminate pathogens in raw produce. They produce Wholly Guacamole, which has an average shelf life of 30 days compared to chemically stabilized guac of 7-10 days. The pressure is about 100,000 psi compared to 60,000 psi at the deepest depths of the ocean. The machinery costs about $1.8 million and can process 215 liters per batch. There's a new, larger machine that can hold 350 liters. The capacity depends on the packaging. Hormel is using the technology for sliced deli-style meats and it's shown some promise with salsa.

This was a fascinating session and it was nice not to hear anything about molecular gastronomy. Any other attendees who remember more about the Q&A feel free to comment. I really needed an apple.

AFJ in Houston Day One Session One

Hello all and sundry. I'm Claudia Perry, a new member of AFJ and I have volunteered to post daily from our convention in Houston. I mostly write about wine. If you're curious, you can check out my blog.

Anyway, there are only 40 of us registered this year,which probably says a lot about the fate of print media and the economy of late. A few attendees mentioned section-front ads and consolidation with the daily features sections as unnerving but increasingly common practices.

Since everyone suffers from eye fatigue from reading on a screen, I'll summarize the three sessions that were held today in separate entries. All were held in Salon B here at the Omni Hotel, and, as is typical in Texas, it was as cold as a meat locker. Wraps and hot beverages may be essential in the coming days.


Session 1 "Texas Food Past and Present" featured Dai Huynh from the Houston Chronicle as moderator, with "Dishes of the Wild Horse Desert" author Melissa Guerra, Chronicle restaurant critic Allison Cook, Houston Press restaurant author and cookbook writer Robb Walsh (coming soon "Sex, Death and Oysters") and cook book historian Elizabeth White from the Texas Medical Center library.

Main talking points: Guerra, an eighth-generation Texan , says state's food history started in 1845 and was shaped by things that were free, flourishing and favored. The South Texas natives were identified by how they looked and what they ate. There were 107 indigenous groups along the Rio Grande. There are at least seven ecosystems in Texas and multiple microclimates. Key to the food is mesquite wood and chile pequine, a small native pepper that was distributed by bird migration and the seeds dropping where they fell from the birds.
The Border cuisine was meaty and cheesy since water and refrigeration were scarce. Interestingly, McAllen and Brownsville are now mad for sushi. One indigenous group, the Mariami, followed the pecan harvest north and brought the nuts back for trade from Fredericksburg. Guerra expects a rise in Texas cooking similar to the Cajun boom in the 80s.

Cook, who in the interests of full disclosure is a Facebook friend, recalled an early Houston restaurant called Sonny Look's Sir-Loin Inn, which featured a knight on a live horse at the door and the owner wearing a coat covered with sequined crustacaeans. Culinary highlight was butter compounded with strawberries, a nod to Helen Corbin of "Texas Caviar" fame. Two major forces in restaurant development in Houston, lifting of immigration quotas in 1965 and liquor by the drink becoming legal in 1972. Houstonians like exuberant flavors, big portions and nothing too subtle about their cooking. In the 80s the arrival of the "New" Southwestern cuisine was somewhat precious and rigid but the cultural culinary mix is now more relaxed and natural. Houstonians look at Tex-Mex cooking as nursery food eaten for comfort and usually on Friday nights, which may be due to the TGIF need for a margarita, but could also be related to the high school football (that last observation is mine not Cook's).

You're seeing a sensory overload such as shrimp stuffed in a jalapeno wrapped in bacon, which Cook says put flavors in conflict but is pretty tasty. She also noted that Texas craft cheese is where California was a few years ago.

White has collected Texas cookbooks pre-sesquecentennial (1986 if you're not from here). The first Texas cookbook was published in 1883 and included a recipe for yacht pie, as if to demonstrate the Houston level of sophistication. Gale Horton put together the first recipe collection in Galveston in 1855. White identifies seven regions of Texas cooking.
The Coastal Prairie influenced by rice, sugar soy beans and cotton. Cottonseed oil was the second largest crop in Texas at the beginning of the 20th century. Rice production improved with the arrival of Japanese growers in 1904 with tolerant varieties and expertise. The Lower Rio Grande Valley produced its first grapefruit crop in 1904. There was also a nonkosher Jewish cookbook published in Houston in 1920s with ads for butchers selling pork and bacon. White thinks this was the community's way of proving they weren't imsular.
The Piney Woods of East Texas were abundant in game, cropland, wood for smoking and
were also influenced by Southern cuisine and Louisiana cuisine.

The Panhandle was hot, dry, sunny and had little water so wheat, cattle and cotton drove the economy. There is very little population and farming didn't really take off until widespread irrigation in the 20s.
The Prairie Lakes (think Dallas-Fort Worth) produced Thomas Munson, who originally hailed from Denison. He was one of three Americans who sent root stock to France during the phylloxera epidemic of the 1860s.

The Hill Country was thickly settled with Germans with three German language cookbooks from 1915 coming from New Braunfels. White has not found any Spanish-language cookbooks, which may be due to cultural factors such as literacy and access to printing (last observation also the blogger's, not White's) Corbin introduced Texas Caviar in Austin in 1931. San Antonio, home of Fritos, also gave us Frito pie and the first Bermuda onions in the state.

The Upper Rio Grande Valley is pretty much the cultural mezcla (mix if you're Spanglish challenged) of Mexico and Texas as found in El Paso and influenced by Juarez.

Robb Walsh sees Texas food as the division between haute and folk culture. He noted that oyster culture in Texas is very blue collar whereas places like New York and San Francisco, that effectively murdered their native crop, it's become a hoity toity experience. Two-thirds of the oysters in the United States come from the Gulf Coast. He thinks Texas does folk cuisine best.

For the various BBQ traditions of Texas (Walsh is leading the travel writers around next week), the best examples in Houston are Thelma's on Live Oak downtown near the convention center (African American style), El Hidalgese on Long Point (Mexican barbacoa), Pizzatola's on Shepherd, Goode Company BBQ on Kirby(German links) and Que Huong in the wilds of Southwest Houston on Bissonnet for Vietnamese style.

More later. I've got to go eat.