"wisconsin" news and stories

From September 5th to the 14th, people in Wisconsin are encouraged to participate in the Eat Local Wisconsin Challenge. Participating involves spending at least 10 percent of your food budget on local foods. For the challenge, "local" does not simply mean that the food has to be from the U.S. Rather, it must come from Wisconsin or within 100 miles of your home.

If you're not sure where to begin, the website for the challenge offers a site where you can find sources for local food. The challenge is incredibly educational. It not only offers ways to incorporate local foods into your diet, but it also explains why that's important in the first place. Buying local is a good way to support community sustainability, local farmers, and your local economy.

An article from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel states that the Eat Local Wisconsin Challenge is about reducing our carbon footprint and simply eating better tasting food that's also healthier. What interests me about this challenge is that it's all inclusive. By targeting wealthy urban consumers, many local food challenges seem elitist. On the contrary, the Eat Local Wisconsin Challenge makes it seem affordable for everyone. If you know of similar challenges, let me know. I'd be curious to see how they compare.

A few years ago I helped a friend move to Milwaukee. When we arrived, she insisted that to get the true Wisconsin experience I had to have a "Leinie's." To be honest, I wasn't sure what the heck she was talking about until the cold bottle hit my hand. Though I can't say I did all that moving for a beer, having a new brew to try when I got to town certainly didn't hurt.

Wisconsin is a state that loves their beers: They have a professional baseball team called the Brewers for God's sake! But even so, locals have always seemed to take extra pride in the Leinenkugel's brand. Other locally based brands like Miller and Pabst became ubiquitous nationwide, but despite being brewed in Chippewa Falls since 1867, until only a couple years ago Leinie's was hard to find outside the Upper Midwest. Love it or hate it, Leinie's was their little regional secret.

But times are changing. According to the Business Journal of Milwaukee, Leinenkugel's (with the help of "super-brewer" MillerCoors) is in the final stages of a nationwide roll out that began with ominous sightings of Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat in not-so-Wisconsin-ish locales like New York City in late 2006. If you haven't had the opportunity to drink a Leinie's in your town yet, don't worry: You'll probably be able to find a taste of small town Wisconsin in a local refrigerator soon. Though that's assuming that true Wisconsinites don't disown it first.

[Photo Credit: leinie.com]

Ah, the ways we can display patriotism! Waving a flag, singing "The Star Spangled Banner," and, of course constructing a sculpture of Wisconsin celebrities, such as Bucky Badger, Musky (the state fish), a dairy cow, and more out of 5,000 pounds of Wisconsin cheddar cheese.

Sarah Kaufmann has been creating large and small sculptures out of cheese since 1981. This July 4th, Sarah is hand-sculpting cheddar cheese to design a scene (with a 15-foot circumference) of popular Wisconsin icons in a "Spirit of '76"-style parade. In the past, people have crowded around Sarah as she produced her cheese masterpieces. For the next couple of days, people can once again gather to see the cheese turn into three dimensional characters. Today through Friday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., the public is invited to the Madison, WI Sam's Club to taste the cheese and purchase their own piece of the 5,000-pound cheddar.

I thought Sarah was starting a patriotic trend. Apparently, carving cheeses has been done before as a way of expressing American patriotism. In 1802, Elder John Leland presented Thomas Jefferson with a four-foot wide 15-inch thick sculpted cheese to express his political support.

And just so you know, handcrafted cheese larger than 75 pounds is considered a mammoth cheese. View Sarah's mammoth cheeses in the gallery below. What do you think? Does this cheese look good enough to eat, or is it just a waste of food?

Here's something for all of you who love all things large and beer. As fans of So Good and Fast Food Critic already know, the world's largest six pack of beer can be found in LaCrosse, Wisconsin.

The statistics on this six pack are amazing: 688,200 gallons of beer, enough for 7,340,796 cans, "would provide one person a six pack per day for 3,351 years." The six pack was created by the City Brewing Company in LaCrosse.

My only question is did they drink all that beer before it went bad?

[originally via LiveMore.SeeMore.DoMore]

Growing up I ate my share of blue gelati, a sugary light-blue flavor of Italian ice. As far I can remember there was nothing great about the taste. The sole reason kids ate it was that it turned their lips, teeth and tongue an appalling blue.

It wasn't until recently that I heard of Blue Moon ice cream, a flavor that originated in Milwaukee, and was enjoyed by kids in the northern Midwest for the same staining ability that drew me and my little friends to blue gelati. But there's more to Blue Moon, which is said to have been invented in the late 1940s or 1950s. The turquoise colored confection is said to have a flavor that's been described as like the milk after a bowl of Froot Loops.

The folks at Chicago's Edgar A. Weber & Co., which now owns the formula, say the beguiling Blue Moon has a "cherry, citrusy, fruity-type flavor." Fans have tried to guess the ingredients and many have posted recipes on the web calling for such things as pineapple and curaçao. Weber & Co. won't reveal the secret ingredient, but says that a colorless version is used in medicines and beverages to mask bitter flavors.

Regardless of what the recipe for Blue Moon is, one thing remains true: it's only available in the northern Midwest. This coupled with childhood nostalgia has made the bizarre flavor a hot item for online ice cream stores, which charge upwards of $10 a pint.

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