"economy" news and stories

Whoopie pie -- a regional Maine/Pennsylvania/Midwest cookie with two round cakes and a frosting center -- is having its moment in the sun. With recipe!

With restaurants closing left and right due to the economy, chef jobs are really, really hard to come by. Like, 300 people will apply to a single $25,000-a-year, no-benefits job.

Eric Asimov reviews the wines of Spain's Bierzo region.

The Temporary Vegetarian offers a recipe for cauliflower with raisins, almonds and capers guaranteed to woo even die-hard cauliflower haters. I happen to recall that Slashfood readers have a few cauliflower recipes up their sleeves too.

Recipe for a blood orange olive oil cake with yogurt.

The Minimalist tunnels through pork loins with a wooden spoon and stuffs them full of figs.

Eating "mountain oysters" at the International Comstock Mountain Oyster Fry. Hint: Mountain oysters are NOT oysters.

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After college, I took a job bussing tables at a very high-end restaurant attached to a very expensive country inn near my hometown. It was the kind of place where you had to stand with your arms spread at the beginning of a shift and submit to having the maitre d' inspect your cuffs and the knot in your tie (even women had to wear ties).

I'd been working there for a few weeks when I noticed that employees were throwing away massive platters of food from the wedding buffets that took place nearly every weekend afternoon -- I'm talking untouched trays of smoked salmon, artichoke hearts, blinis with caviar and mini lemon souffles. I also noticed that the wait staff would pour the remaining pitchers of fresh-squeezed orange juice straight down the sink after brunch. Finally, I asked the head waiter why we didn't just save the food to eat at employee mealtime.

"Because, if we allowed employees to eat leftover food, pretty soon you'd all be eating whatever you wanted straight out of the fridge," he told me sniffily.

What, like untrained dogs?! I gave my two weeks notice the next day.

I was reminded of that incident when I read this New York Times post, about a man fired from Whole Foods for trying to save and eat a tuna fish sandwich that was about to be thrown away. Whole Foods claimed that the man's behavior was "misconduct," which means, in addition to having lost his job, he'd be denied unemployment benefits. The man, Ralph Reece, challenged the misconduct ruling and won.

Good for him, I say. Not only is keeping employees from eating leftover food degrading and wasteful, the "misconduct" charges were, according to Reece's lawyer, souped up in order to save Whole Foods money for not having to pay unemployment. And this from a company that is supposed to be one of the best places in America to work!

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Could mom n' pop pizza parlors end up being the last survivors of the economic meltdown? Anastacia Marx de Salcedo, writing in Salon, says so. She writes:

The titans -- national hawkers of furniture, shoes, clothing, computers, auto parts, electronics, jewelry and embarrassingly themed steakhouses -- are toppling, fatally bloated by mergers, acquisitions, leveraged buyouts and roll-ups. But amid the colossal corpses strewn on the corporate battlefield, a ragtag army of small businesses soldiers on: the pizza industry, 76,355 restaurants strong across America.

But pizza still belongs to the mom n' pop joints, as corporate chains just can't get ahead in the pie biz. Major chains account for just one third of the pizza business in the U.S., and that number has been falling for years. Why? For one, their crust stinks. Either make it from scratch, or don't bother. Secondly, pizza is in thrall to regional preferences, which chains can't meet. Thin crust in the East, deep dish in the Midwest, wood oven with creative toppings out West.

If we double our annual pizza consumption, pizza industry spending would rise to $172 billion a year, more than 150 times the $1 billion allotted for small businesses in the Obama stimulus plan, says Marx de Salcedo, someone tongue-in-cheekly. But eating moregood local pizza is never a bad idea.

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File this under "durrrr:" Some items on Dairy Queen's new "Sweet Deals" menu will actually cost 8 percent more than buying individual items off the regular menu, reports Consumerist. For example, a grilled chicken wrap which costs $1.39 on the regular menu costs $3 for two on the "Sweet Deals" menu, which was presumably created in response to the recession. That's $0.11 more for each chicken wrap. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it does make you wonder whether this was a deliberate on the part of Dairy Queen to squeeze a few extra cents out of customers who aren't exactly thinking about multiplying chicken wrap prices in the drive-through lane. $0.11 times several thousand per day does add up quickly. Or maybe I'm just being paranoid because my savings account interest rate has dropped for the fifth time in four months...

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Despite the economic downturn, the kosher food market is soaring, reports the LA Times. And it's not because the Jewish community is growing, but because non-Jews increasingly view kosher food as a higher-quality product, marketers say. Sales of certified kosher foods have risen 64 percent in the past five years, earning a total of $12.5 billion in 2008. Some 28 percent of new food and dairy products launched in the U.S. last year were certified kosher. Kosher foods must confirm to Jewish laws dictating methods of slaughter and prohibitions against mixing certain foods, like meat and milk, and must be approved by a rabbi. Thus kosher food factories may have more stringent manufacturing regulations than non-kosher factories. "Kosher food has gained the reputation of being more carefully produced and thoroughly inspected than non-kosher food," says Marcia Mogelonsky, an analyst at the market research firm Mintel, which tracks food trends. The kosher meat industry, though, has not been without its share of scandal - Agriprocessors Inc., the country's larget kosher meatpacking company, was exposed last year for having illegal and unsanitary conditions in its Iowa facility.

Do you look for the kosher label when you buy food?

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