The Enviromental Working Group, a non-profit that investigates toxins in consumer products, recently released a report that DuPont’s supposedly “green” replacement for Teflon is probably no safer than the PFC-rich chemical compound that it’s replacing. The EPA apparently pressured DuPont to stop using a chemical called PFOA by 2015 in Teflon and other non-stick items (which are everywhere–pizza boxes, paper plates, bags containing greasy chips) because they found it to be a carcinogen. DuPont just rolled out a new chemical; however there have been no studies that prove that it’s any less harmful than the original. (Actually, it looks like there’s no data in either direction, better or worse.) If the new chemical also breaks down into PFCs, we’re back where we started. (It may be too late anyway–PFCs apparently stick around for 50,000 years.) What a great excuse for an All-Clad shopping spree!

I had a Sunday breakfast fit for royalty–a fried peacock egg. Rather, a fried peaHEN egg. Not as huge as a goose egg or as rich as a duck egg, it was still dramatic and lovely. And it’s just impossible not to feel special breakfasting on peafowl eggs. I had the pleasure at my friend’s family’s beautiful digs in Bucks County, PA, where they have an assortment of birds whose diverse eggs always make for a memorable meal. What you see here are two peahen eggs with some tiny little eggs from the lone chicken hen left, among a veritable gang of exotic roosters, after a recent and apparently grisly fox attack. Read on… »

This toxic tomato scare seems to be making more of an impact than I thought. I saw two people at lunchtime yesterday fastidiously remove the tomatoes from their sandwiches, which I thought nothing of until two of my friends thought twice about eating a bit of tomato later that evening. I’m always incredibly suspicious of “food scares,” since they are usually the result of the evening news taking a few instances of foodborne illness and turning it into a nationwide panic. (For a little perspective, some 277 people recently got salmonella from tomatoes. According to the CDC, 76 million Americans get some form of food poisoning annually, more than 300,000 are hospitalized, and 5,000 die.) The affected folks recover from their food poisoning, and then we are spared the headlines (”Attack of the Killer Tomatoes”–groan–like 50 times per Google News) until the next outbreak. Meanwhile, the larger issue remains: our industrialized food-handling system that enables these outbreaks. Rather than sporadic panic, why not a sustained, close examination of how our food gets from farm to table? In a press release in response to the Great Tomato Scare of 2008, Edible Communities co-founder Tracey Ryder points out that “eating from sources close to home is one way to avoid exposure to widespread foodborne illnesses…If there is a problem with a locally grown crop, consumers can trace their food back to its source very quickly.” An excellent point! It’s certainly been a boon to local farmers here in NY, and that’s good news.