Tagged: Eating In

Maybe it’s all the knives, or the blood. But there’s something a little eerie about a slaughterhouse on wheels.

I’m Sean Hurley with this Edible Minute

If you raise chickens, or lamb, or hunt deer for food, you might need the service of a good roving butcher. Like Ray Garcia of Cabin View Farms in Littleton. Solo, he can process about 200 chickens a day in a home built rolling abattoir:

Ray: It’s a Wells Fargo Trailer. We have stainless steel tables, stainless steel sinks. If it wasn’t for a lot of the custom facilities throughout New Hampshire, a lot of people wouldn’t be raising things.

While building his own mobile butchery was Ray’s first step toward keeping things clean and safe, Ray wanted more assurance. So he went to the USDA:

Recent food scares from lettuce, spinach and peanut butter show that we are far away from keeping out food safe. We’ll look at the issue of food safety, what’s being done in New Hampshire and the debate over making standards even tougher.

Guests

• Joyce Welch, administrator for the Department of Health and Human Services' Division of Public Health Services Food Protection Section
• David Plunkett, Senior Staff Attorney with the food safety program of the Center for Science in the Public Interest
• Richard Uncles, Director of the Division of Regulatory Services for NH Department of Agriculture Markets,and Food

We'll also hear from

All this week NHPR has been taking you to dinner.

Today, we move on to dessert… on our plate, apple pie.

The apple is one of the most common fruits.

As part of our series, “Eating In” NHPR’s Amy Quinton looks at the path an apple takes to get to your plate.

The apple has been around a long time…just think of Adam and Eve… and would we have so many adages about it?… “An apple doesn’t fall far from the tree…one bad apple spoils the whole bunch…an apple a day…” you get the picture.

Or maybe you don’t…picture a ripe…perfectly green Granny Smith apple. (bite)

Ah…its crunch..its tangy sweetness..it’s also a variety that’s one of the most commonly cooked.

The recession took a big bite out of the household food budget. How did the lean times change us? This hour on Working It Out Live, we follow the chain of food through this economy. We’ll be hearing about how families changed how and where they shop.

Food prices rose as incomes fell. For some, that led to a healthier diet. For others, it meant more chips and soda. Restaurants took it on the chin. Grocers tended to do a little better but they’ve had their struggles too – caught between rising costs and penny pinching shoppers. The food pantries have been swamped and the pressure to keep up with increasing demand has stretched the generosity of many communities. We want to hear from you. Tell us what you did to stretch a food dollar or to help people in your town.

All this week, during our Food series, we've been using terms like organic, localvore, and sustainability.
But a couple of poultry farmers in Barrington want to add another word to the mix.
They want people to talk about Heritage....specifically heritage fowl.
It's part of their campaign to ween Americans from poultry factories and get them back to eating the eggs and meat our grandparents would recognize.
NHPR's Keith Shields brings you this last story in our series, Eating-In

As you enter the Yellow House Farm in Barrington, you’re greeted by a fowl philharmonic.

(sound up)

All this week in our series “Eating In”, NHPR has been looking at food – where we get it today and where it might come from tomorrow. For a lot of people, the economy forced them to take a second look at how they spend their food dollar -- whether that meant going to restaurants less or changing what they buy at the store.

Through the Working It Out web site, NHPR’s Jon Greenberg came across a woman who found herself headed towards a total food makeover.

SFX – dogs barking

There’s isn’t a lot of money in the first place in the doggy daycare business. But that’s how Veronica Forbes makes a living for her and her two sons. They live in a small cape, in need of a bit of care -- on the outskirts of Dover. It’s been in the family for generations.

All this week New Hampshire Public Radio is following some of the most commonly eaten foods back to their source.

So far, we’ve heard about potatoes, pasta and the source of ground beef.

In our next installment NHPR’s Dan Gorenstein looks at the cheese that melts so good- mozzarella.

Ok, so you have a few friends over, like NHPR reporter Josh Rogers did a few weeks back.

Have a few drinks.

Do a little cooking.

And Barbara Gannon of Sargento says odds are somebody is bound to sprinkle some mozzarella on something.

“Meatball sandwiches...stuffed shells, cantaloni.”

Mozzarella is so popular the USDA says it’s become America’s favorite cheese, surpassing cheddar a few years ago.

To wrap up “Eating In”, this week’s series on food, we invited our program director Abby Goldstein, quite the foodie, to talk about her grilling lesson this week with cookbook writer Kathy Gunst.

Kathy Gunst is a cooking teacher and author and co-author of thirteen cookbooks. Her latest is “Stonewall Kitchen Grilling”.

Abby has a devotional attachment to her grill and agreed to have kathy come to her home and try out some of the new recipes.

When the farmer shuts down his combine, there’s nothing left but a stubbled plain. You might think the harvesting is done. But that’s when the gleaners appear - to begin the second harvest.

I’m Sean Hurley with this Edible Minute.

Like the Robin Hoods of produce, the gleaners take from the rich soil, and give to the poor. But the gleaners aren’t vegetable pirates. They work with and alongside the farmers:

Nicole: You gotta carry buckets with you through the fields, picking up small things. You’re constantly bent over on your knees for the whole day.

That’s Nicole Phillips, who organizes the gleaning effort for the New Hampshire Food Bank. Every Sunday during the harvest, she mobilizes a group of 10 to 30 volunteers.

Food is something we share over a table, but in the virtual world, food bloggers are sharing recipes, reviews and culinary tips across the web.

NHPR’s Webmaster and Word of Mouth Internet Sherpa Brady Carlson has been checking out New Hampshire’s crop of food blogs and is here to share some of his favorites.

An Awesome Choice of Food Blogs:

Tucker Cummings: A Brave New Breakfast

Melomeals: $3.33 A Day: Delicious and Healthy Vegan Meals Food for $3.33 A Day

In the course of the great recession, household incomes went down and food prices went up. The combination did no favors for the American diet. Sales for the least expensive snack foods climbed. As part of our week-long look at food, NHPR's Jon Greenberg digs into some cheap calories.

SFX - Crunch

Along with Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs, count the potato chip as one of the big winners of the recession. John Dumais, president of the NH Grocers Association, says, many of his members would have had a much worse year if it hadn't been for sales of snack foods.

DUMAIS: It’s increased their sales 20% in many cases.

This is part of a nationwide trend. If it had fat, salt and didn’t cost too much, sales went up.