"foodwriter" news and stories

When I was in elementary school, I was always jealous of those kids who always had notes from their parents in their lunches. I had one friend in particular who's dad packed her lunch each morning. Without fail, he would jot a quick little note on her paper napkin, telling her to enjoy her lunch or that he hoped she was having a good day.

For those parents who still include little notes in their kids' lunches, there's now a slightly more nifty way to go about it. Get a set of these FoodWriter food coloring pens and scrawl a note or a smiley face on your child's turkey sandwich. I do believe that had my classmates had sandwiches doodled with designs, I would have been green with jealousy.

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Tired of reading about eating local? Mad that your friends are going on and on about the provenance of the sage leaves (heirlooms from my own garden, they are!) on the gourmet dinner they served you? Really sick of hearing about your college roommate's new chicken coop? Well, you may not be, but NPR commentator Amy Stewart, is.

In a piece that seemed more bitter than escarole picked past its prime, Stewart takes America to task for its focus on the word, concept, and media conglomerate behind "locavores." (In case you missed it, "locavore" was selected as the 2007 word of the year by The New Oxford American Dictionary.) She says local eating is just "another symptom of our deeply troubled relationship with food" and "our obsession with local food has gone far enough ... we have heaped all our fears and anxieties onto the dinnerplate." Umm... isn't that the whole idea of the local eating "obsession"? Isn't it that we've ignored our dinner plates too long? I thought that reconnecting with our food supply and caring about animal rights (not so much for the animals' sake as for our very health and life, mind you -- poor treatment of animals and vegetables is thought to be responsible for the majority of often-deadly foodborne illnesses we confront) was completely the point.

It sounds to me as if Amy Stewart is a little peeved she didn't get a book deal to pay for her groceries for a year.

Whether of not you live in New York City you will find much to learn, share and enjoy from a recently begun food blog called Not Eating Out in New York , by local writer Catharine Erway. In addition to writing on film and other topics, Erway has been spending her time since graduating Emerson college a few years ago working in various administrative jobs and, mainly, cooking. "The blog idea came to me when eating in some restaurant one day and realizing, you have no control over what they're putting in your food," she told me recently in Union Square Park . "They may say the food is organic, but you have no guarantee unless you follow the cook around the kitchen."