Top food stories of 2005 roundup, from bacon bandaids to banned balls

by Sarah Gilbert, Posted Dec 31st 2005 @ 12:00PM

bacon bandaids The year 2005 was a short one for Slashfood, as we were born in the late summer. But still, we wrote over a thousand posts on everything from, um, acorn squash to zucchini. And we were all blogging, and eating, and thinking about foods, food blogs and food news all year long. What dominated our search strings, our comment threads, and our intra-Slashfood buzz? This was it:

#5 Finding God in food. Grilled cheese, fish sticks and cinnamon buns. This may sound like the lunch menu at the local high school, but in fact these are all food items on which people claim to have found the likeness of God. Suprisingly, God shows up in mysterious ways on a number of food items.
#4 Food TV turns away from foodies. It was gradual, but the channel has changed over the past several years. A couple of major things happened this year that indicate a turn away from the original core audience - people who liked to cook - to a new and (for whatever it's worth) bigger audience. People who eat. The Food Network, it seems, is divesting itself of the foodies and embracing food, of the edible and eye candy variety. And this is such a shame.
#3 Finding food in strange places. We know there's always been weird food out there... But there are some places that even we, jaded food lovers that we are, don't imagine finding food. Let's take wounds, for one. In 2005, Slashfood discovered the Bacon bandaids. Take data storage devices, for two. This year we learned of the strange-yet-wonderful sushi USB drives.
#2 Around the world on the blogs. Throughout the year... food bloggers felt imbued with the passion to change the world in whatever small way we could, even if it was just creating pink recipes to honor the fight against breast cancer... In August, a huge number of bloggers worldwide participated in an exercise in locality, challenging each other to eat as much from local vendors and farmers as possible.
#1 Food lawsuits that rain on our plates. There are more than a few people out there who continue to give lawyers a bad name. Some of them got involved in the food world this year, working to ban silver balls, obtain a couple hundred grand for a fly in a bottle of water, or suing over hot coffee. For shame.