Dunkin Starbucks

It was five in the evening, and I sat down in the airport terminal, close to tears…

I needed to take my mind off of my troubles so I bought, as many a stressed Seattleite has done, a cup of coffee…

I bought a cup of coffee from a place multiple New Yorkers have raved about…Dunkin Donuts

I took a discerning sip, hoping to glean some kind of notes of almonds or blackberries…or something…I cooled the scalding hot coffee down for a second before swishing it around on my palate – ready to listento what it said…

And then I heard a one word description…

“jalapenos”

I’d been suckered…fooled…tricked and swindled…I knew what the result was going to be before I tried the coffee, but I was hoping for a personal miracle…I was hoping I’d be different…

Over time, I’ve been the butt of a number of these culinary swindles — I went to a sake bar on the LES that seated three people at a table large enough for two gnome children, threw our food at us rudely, and then complained to me about their meager tip before asking me to “never come back here okay”…

I went, on the raving recommendation of a friend of a friend who went years ago – loved the place and recommended it heavily…had I checked out the reviews it received – I would have been wary prior to eating there…

But I have also had more pedestrian experiences where the total bill didn’t reflect the actual value of the meal I ate… Where for months I regretted spending that amount of money on the food because it honestly wasn’t worth the dollars spent…

Pedestrian experiences where I wondered why I’d bought that five dollar super-tanker mocha with three syrups from starbucks -when all I really wanted was a shot of coffee that didn’t taste like someone brewed stale toast and burned it…

Times where the food was so underwhelming, so unimaginative and boring that I thought I might vomit it back up while I was in the bathroom and it would have at least been a story to tell…

If I could get this lesson across to budding restauranteurs I would…

Your food is likely not imaginative enough, likely not cool enough to keep people coming back. It’s why the industry is so fickle. Restaurants that make it long term are the restaurants that are not only profitable, but that also surprise the customer and leave the customer feeling like there was a substantial amount of value created…

I think I can count the number of times the experience while eating out – from food to conversation – has been worth the money I spent. These were times when the conversation was excellent and the food and waitstaff were superb as well as the ambience worth the money I spent. The only times I’ve ever felt like it was worth it was when I felt like my life had been enriched by the experience that I’d just had.

And while I don’t think its’ possible to have a life-altering experience every time you go to your local taco stand – the food and service should always make you feel like the money you are spending is worth it…

Very Random Thoughts – # 1

I can’t help but wonder if people would eat less sodium, fat, sugar, and other calorically dense, nutritionally empty foods if they drank a glass of water immediately before each meal.

I wonder if it would have any effect on the taste – and what that might do…

Regarding my last post…NSFW

Was only a half joke…

Well, more like a 95% joke.

My “secret” – I eat as much fruit as possible before eating anything else.  I literally stuff my face with fresh fruit everyday.

Now it takes some getting used to (a tiny amount) but in conjunction with working out for 25 minutes every day/every other day I’ve lost a nice little bit of weight.

Also, my waist size has gone down.  Mostly because I’m much more…regular…

In fact (and this is not something the ladies will like reading…so just skip this little paragraph) I’m so much more regular that I took a crap today and the poop FLOATED.  ALL OF IT.  And it stayed stuck together, a full 14″ (that’s an estimate, but I have the pictures to back it up, email me if you want the link)…

Anyways, as far as the timing thing goes, there’s only two things that are “special” about it…

First, always eat right after you get up, and second, try to move at least one meal to right after you work out…

That’s all…

Waste Not Want Not

I was shocked today when I read a story in Reuter’s talking about the propensity of Briton’s to waste food. Some of the more shocking finds were:

* Briton’s wasted about 6 billion tonnes of food annually.

* Stopping the waste would result in a CO2 emissions reduction of 18 million tonnes annually, the same as    taking 1 in 5 cars off of the roads in Britain.
* The amount of discarded food would fill London’s Wembley Stadium EIGHT times.

Now I’m no saint as far as wasting and throwing away food, and I’m not at all suggesting that this is a problem that is limited to only Britain, but I couldn’t help but think about the implications of this seemingly harmless habit.  Everytime you throw away food, you are a) driving up the prices for everyone else and b)keeping good food out of the hands of people who probably need it. Like homeless people.

You are also driving up the price of oil and adding to carbon emissions.

I never even thought about the latter two as consequences of not eating your lima beans…

It makes me wonder if there could be a better way to prevent that type of waste from occurring.  Something like smaller packaging, purchasing food in bulk in a futures type of manner.  Local food co-op purchasing.

One of the things that I notice that I’ve wasted is eggs and canned vegetables.  Both of these are heavily packaged foods and no single person is going to eat an entire can of jalapeno chilies.  It just doesn’t happen.  Now that isn’t to say that you might not NEED an entire can of jalapeno chilies from time to time, just usually if you make something like chili and you make enough for yourself for the week, oftentimes the packaging size is incongruous with how much you are going to actually need.

It’s the classic hot dog/hot dog bun package conundrum.  Hot dogs packaged in groups of 12, buns in groups of 8.  Either way you end up purchasing WAY more of something than you need.  It’s “good” business, unintelligent economics.

So how can one solve that problem?

Reusable food containers.  Stop dispensing milk in disposable cartons.  Start putting milk in nalgene bottles.  Start making small, standardized, lightweight, leak-proof containers.  Start putting things like milk, yogurt, eggs, flour, bread, and processed vegetables and fruits in them.  Make grocery stores the place of packaging instead of the factories.

How does that help?

Well, for one it cuts down on the amount of space and equipment and energy that is dedicated to packaging in food processing plants.  That has immediate price benefits for not only consumers but also for food manufacturers.

Secondly, it reduces the amount of energy used to transport and refrigerate packaging.  If packaging is 2-3% of the weight of many foodstuffs, there is a large amount of energy that goes to refrigerate it.  There is also a large amount of energy that goes to transport it from place to place.  Imagine if we could reduce the amount of energy output/CO2 emissions by 2-3% with one policy solution.

Another thing that happens, is by putting packaging in the domain of grocery stores, you give businesses an incentive to encourage consumers to recycle.  If you put packaging in the area of the grocery stores, you not only lower the costs of their inputs, but you also give them the power to near permanently lower the amount of packaging turnover…

By doing this, you reduce not only the amount of energy and money that goes toward making packaging, but also the amount of energy and money that goes towards eliminating packaging.

It’s an interesting thing because it almost makes me wonder why our government hasn’t seen fit to tackle this problem.  I’d think that Republicans, with their family values and business/economics “accumen” would be all over this problem.  I’d think they would be trying to cut fat everywhere they could, both in businesses and in consumers – use terminology that they like – tax breaks for grocery stores who would implement recyclable packaging equipment into their locations.  Tax breaks for food manufacturers/processors who want to transport food in less packaging/do less packaging in their locations.

Another reason this would be good business?

By marketing the change in processing location as a strategy/tactic to reduce consumer prices and make food sales more environmentally sensitive/benign you tap into a LARGE reservoir of consumer sentiment and worry.  You motivate consumers to shop at your locations (even if it means driving farther).  You differentiate yourself from the competition in a meaningful and long-lasting manner.  You derive a great deal of “halo effect”.  The lens through which you are viewed is seemingly cleaned off.

Want more business?  Want more profits?  Want less costly food?  Want less pollution? Want less costly transportation bills?  Want less legislative oversight and control?  Want a better brand?

Waste Not Want Not..

Urban Agriculture: Health and Security – Part I

I’m reading the book Omnivore’s Dilemma right now.  It’s absolutely an amazing book, and his chapter about Polyface Farms, a 550 acre sustainably run farm, committed to local food sourcing has me absolutely transfixed by its’ efficiency and output.  I’ve found myself wondering how one could produce as much food as he does in an urban area.  It’s honestly helping shape my opinion of commercial farming – making me think that in a sense it is wrong.  I feel that biodiverse subsistence farming is a much better option unless you place constraints on the ecological impact of large-scale monoculture.  I read a statistic that says agriculture is responsible for 1/3 of our fossil fuel use in America and transportation is responsible for another 1/3.  We use massive quantities of energy to raise, harvest, and transport food.  But there are many alternatives for raising and harvesting food, and there are many alternatives for the transportation of food as well.  Our country has without a doubt suffered a huge loss of biodiversity, something which will undoubtedly make our food sources less robust and more vulnerable to disease, pestilence, or natural disaster.  Food security is the same thing as national security.  In addition, our current agribusiness principles do not properly account for differences in food quality (nutrition or microbial safety).  Unfortunately the market is differentiated solely on price.  And there are producers out there that do not want to include information as to the manner that their animals have been raised including a) where they were housed, b) the way they have been slaughtered and butchered, c) the way they were fed and kept healthy, d) the lifestyle they led including amounts of exercise and what pathogens they were exposed to, and e) how fast they were grown up.  I’d like to think of a way that I can manage to incorporate concerns of locality, microbial/parasitic safety, nutritional value, and environmental and economic sustainability into a system of agriculture for urban people.

With 50% of our people in America in cities (don’t quote me on that…) we need to figure out a way to include them in our food decisions and give them accurate information that will help them make long term decisions.  People would like to vote with their dollars and I am a proponent of that.  The first thing I propose is a marketing panel for livestock – they should be required to submit information about their feedstock sources, pharmaceuticals they have received, slaughterhouse ratings, and macro/micro-nutrient profiles.  I would also like to know the distance the meat traveled…This promises to be a long series of posts as I research this topic…hold on to your seats!!!