Real Food

Confituras: Paying It Forward

/ Ren

Today launches day one of Confituras’ Kickstarter campaign to support their most ambitious venture to date: a community kitchen, a women-in-food educational incubator program, and a Jam & Biscuit retail showcase…all in one.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1133355970/confituras-is-building-a-community-kitchen-and-ret
 
Building community – Here in Austin we are part of a vibrant, local food community – we are proud members of Slow Food Austin, the Austin chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier, and have been voted local heroes by the readers of Edible Austin in 2011, 2014, and 2015. We have also been recognized by the food community nationally, winning 4 Good Food Awards over the past 5 years for our seasonal preserves. The Austin Food & Wine Alliance awarded confituras a culinary grant in 2013 for our ‘Preserving Austin’ project, which is an emerging oral history program that refers to both preserving the local, seasonal bounty and preserving our own local canning history and heritage. We have cultivated meaningful relationships within our little food community and we’re making big plans to stick around and put more roots into it.

Join Confituras tonight to start off their Kickstarter fundraiser with a bang!
Hosted by Salt and Time Butcher Shop and Salumeria
at 1912 East Seventh Street, Austin
Wednesday, September 23rd, 5-7 pm

Read more at Farmhouse Delivery

Austin Fermentation Festival 2015

/ Ren

Austin Fermentation Festival 2015

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MEDIA CONTACT: Kate Payne, 347-933-0403 [email protected]

Austin Fermentation Festival, October 25th, 2015, Austin, TX

Keynote Speaker: Jennifer McGruther of Nourished Kitchen

October 25, 2015 (AUSTIN, TX) – Texas Farmers’ Market and Presenting Sponsor Barr Mansion announce the 2015 Austin Fermentation Festival with keynote speaker, blogger, author, and traditional foods advocate Jennifer McGruther.

The Austin Fermentation Festival is an educational event that celebrates all things fermented in Central Texas and will run from 9am – 4pm at Barr Mansion (10463 Sprinkle Road, Austin, TX 78754). Proceeds from this event will benefit the Texas Farmers’ Market Farmer Emergency Fund, which offers financial assistance to TFM farmers and ranchers in times of environmental, personal or other crisis.

The day will include a series of fermentation workshops (covering topics such as kimchi, kefir, cheese making, charcuterie, beer, sourdough, vinegars and lacto-fermented vegetables); a community culture swap; a kraut mob; fermented foods and product vendors; book sales; festival-inspired lunch for purchase from local purveyors; fermented beverages and alcohol; a mini farmers’ market; and live music.

Attend by securing general admission or VIP tickets at http://fermentatx2015.eventbrite.com, where online donations to this fundraiser event are also accepted. Vendor applications are accepted here bit.ly/AFFVendorApplication2015 and workshop presenter applications accepted here bit.ly/AFFWorkshopApplication2015.

For more information, please visit http://texasfarmersmarket.org/austin-fermentation-festival/.

Vegetable Farmer upcycles & transforms a Tyson chicken farm!

/ Ren

America’s punitive approach to food

/ Ren

Yesterday, a US-government appointed scientific panel released a 600-page report that will inform America’s new dietary guidelines. These guidelines only come out every five years, and they matter because they truly set the tone for how Americans eat: they’re used by doctors and nutritionists to guide patient care, by schools to plan kids’ lunches, and to calculate nutrition information on every food package you pick up, to name just a few areas of impact.

But this panel and their guidelines too often over-complicate what we know about healthy eating. They take a rather punitive approach to food, reducing it to its nutrient parts and emphasizing its relationship to obesity. Food is removed from the context of family and society and taken into the lab or clinic.

The Big Fat Surprise

/ Ren

Listen to an intro by the author

Paperback: 496 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition (January 6, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1451624433
ISBN-13: 978-1451624434

 

The Big Fat SurpriseIn The Big Fat Surprise, investigative journalist Nina Teicholz reveals the unthinkable: that everything we thought we knew about dietary fat is wrong. She documents how the low-fat nutrition advice of the past sixty years has amounted to a vast uncontrolled experiment on the entire population, with disastrous consequences for our health.

For decades, we have been told that the best possible diet involves cutting back on fat, especially saturated fat, and that if we are not getting healthier or thinner it must be because we are not trying hard enough. But what if the low-fat diet is itself the problem? What if the very foods we’ve been denying ourselves—the creamy cheeses, the sizzling steaks—are themselves the key to reversing the epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease?

In this captivating, vibrant, and convincing narrative, based on a nine-year-long investigation, Teicholz shows how the misinformation about saturated fats took hold in the scientific community and the public imagination, and how recent findings have overturned these beliefs. She explains why the Mediterranean Diet is not the healthiest, and how we might be replacing trans fats with something even worse. This startling history demonstrates how nutrition science has gotten it so wrong: how overzealous researchers, through a combination of ego, bias, and premature institutional consensus, have allowed dangerous misrepresentations to become dietary dogma.

With eye-opening scientific rigor, The Big Fat Surprise upends the conventional wisdom about all fats with the groundbreaking claim that more, not less, dietary fat—including saturated fat—is what leads to better health and wellness. Science shows that we have been needlessly avoiding meat, cheese, whole milk, and eggs for decades and that we can now, guilt-free, welcome these delicious foods back into our lives.