Food

Eighty-eight big name environmental and food activists — including Omnivore’s Dilemma author Michael Pollan, famed restaurant owner Alice Waters and Minnesotan Winona LaDuke — have written to President-elect Barack Obama urging him to appoint America’s first “sustainability Secretary of Agriculture.” And among their list of six candidates they include Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, a former employee of Minnesota’s ag department and co-founder of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

It’s officially the first weekend of summer. And for many that means get-togethers, beer, noisy neighbors, beer, DIY BBQs and OMG ROFL.

Ah, BBQs. They ain’t what they used to be. Cheap beer and brats are so 2006. And remember those low-budget corn chips that cost, like, $2.89? Man, I wonder whatever happened to those. Those [...]

Ethanol critics have widely bashed the corn-based fuel for its role in inflating food prices worldwide. But a fascinating article in Der Spiegel, a German news magazine, says classic supply and demand can’t fully explain the recent food inflation phenomenon.

Aggressive hedge-fund investors have played a significant and underreported role in bidding up the price of [...]

Minneapolis is a culinary war zone, according to Anthony Bourdain — a place where the dark forces of big-box chain restaurants do battle with the ambitious chef and the neighborhood restaurants.
This argument resonated with the packed house at the Triple Rock Social Club, as City Pages food critic Dara Moskowitz announced while introducing Bourdain [...]