Around The Culinary World

Good afternoon everyone! It's the start of a brand new week. One that sees the end of the Thanksgiving holiday and ushers in the beginning of December and the Christmas season. The temperature is dropping and it probably will not be too long before we start seeing large, white, fluffy flakes falling from the sky. Yuck.

It's what you get when you live in the midwestern US, however, and the fact that we've reached November without any snowfall (yet) is an accomplishment by itself.

With the start of the new week comes our newest feature - 'Around The Culinary World' where we share interesting news articles and tidbits about the culinary world and cooking in general. We received a good response from the debut of this feature last week - so we plan to keep it running for the foreseeable future. Without further ado - here's this week's 'Around The Culinary World'

The USDA is considering approval on a new type of genetically modified food. This time, the apple gets the star treatment. This particular offset of the humble apple is 'anti-browning' meaning that when you slice the apple it won't brown. You can get the full details HERE. In my opinion, genetically modified foods should be approached with caution. It just seems too early, to me, to know for sure if they truly harmless. This article mentions the concern growers have if these modified apples begin to pollinate with normal apples. The developers assure us that nothing will happen - but until we can say with 100% certainty that it WON'T happen - I'll take a wait and see approach. Frankly, I don't think genetically modified foods should be approved without 100% certainty that there will be no side effects.

You may have heard that the unemployment benefits of many long term unemployed are expected to expire this week. How does this change the culinary world? Food banks are anticipating seeing increased demand and decreased supplies for the coming months - during a time when they are already stretched too thin by high demand. It's an interesting and eye opening article. You can check it out HERE .

Apparently the bad economy isn't stopping some people from spending lavishly - the Associated Press has a story about a Macau billionaire who dropped $330,000 on two white truffles. The truffles, weighing in at nearly 3 pounds combined are from Tuscany and Molise. That's a lot of money for some fungus. Read the full details HERE.

Is rich, pure chocolate one of your guilty pleasures? It might not be - at least not in the way you expect. According to the European Union, there is no such thing as pure chocolate. Read the full details HERE.

And finally, in the "I can't make this stuff up" category for today - a French farmer is in trouble for feeding his ducks...marijuana. Yup. Now I've heard it all. The farmer has a great reason for it though - I bet the cops don't here this one everyday - check out the farmer's reason and the full story HERE.


There you have it folks, that's what's happening around the culinary world for November 29th, 2010. Maggie and I have a full week of recipes planned - after taking a nice long week off for Thanksgiving we're ready to get back to cooking again. Maggie will be cooking Tuesday and Wednesday and I'll be finishing off the week on Thursday. Be sure to stop by tomorrow evening to see what Maggie has cooking. Until then,

~Cheers