Bio News

Some recent news about putting biology to work in areas I get excited about. Biofuels (specifically biobutanol) and aquaponics (aquaculture + hydroponics).

(Biofuels)
DesMoinesRegister: Ethanol plants may shift to biobutanol

GCC: Study finds biomass-to-liquids fuels could be economically competitive at current price levels

SciAm: First Dedicated Biorefinery Could Wean Hawaii Off Imported Oil

Record-Eagle: Teacher to launch biodiesel fuel plant

(Aquaponics)
UpNorthLive: Grand Traverse Academy Starts Aquaponics

HuffPost: A Tour Of Chicago's Amazing Vertical Farm

The Plant is a fish hatchery, hydroponic garden, commercial kitchen, and brewery for both beer and kombucha tea. Perhaps best of all, the waste from one part of farm serves as raw material for another, making it a net-zero energy system...

 The Plant (official site)

Elegant Recipe Meta-Search

Gojee

[via Swiss-Miss]

Down With Cows

Dear Coasties - you're welcome.

I've been a long time fan of bison as a beef replacement. See:
Stupid Cows

Now foodies on the Cosasts are taking it up as the latest food trend according to the NYT:
Plains Giants Have Foothold on Tables

What happened, producers and retailers say, is that the buffalo, the great ruminant of the Plains — once endangered, now raised on ranches by the tens of thousands — has thundered into an era of growing buyer concern about where food comes from, what an animal dined on and how it all affects the planet.

Trendsetting consumers and restaurants on the East and West Coasts caught on. Grass-fed, sustainable and locally grown, obscure concepts to most people 15 years ago or so when the buffalo meat market first emerged, became buzzwords of the foodie culture.

Alton Brown Is A 5 Tool Threat

Editor, director, producer, writer, star.

USAToday has an in-depth profile of AB who is doing a tour to promote his latest book: Alton Brown barely has time to enjoy his 'Good Eats' green

Related news: Good Eats hits Hulu (yeah!!!)

Alton Brown Links

[this post has been sitting in Draft status for over a year, finally getting around to it]

MemphisFlyer: Alton Brown Fish Recipes

Gizmodo: Alton Brown: Safe and Scary Kitchen Hacks

FastCompany: Alton Brown's Essential Kitchen Gadgets

Eater: Alton Brown on Being a Vessel, Next Iron Chef, and His Faith

Zap2It: Alton Brown talks 'Good Eats 2' celebrity chefs

Iron Chef! Iron Chef!

Via Wired: Food: How Iron Chef America Engineers a Visual Feast

Charcoal Versus Propane In Terms Of Fuel Costs

As I was grilling burgers last night I wondered if it really made sense for me to splurge for a Napoleon PT 450 RBI.



I could buy a lot of charcoal for the price of a new propane grill. I wondered though, over the long term, what is the price of a tank of propane versus a bag of charcoal?

Google found this: The Home Barbecue: Charcoal or Gas

A 5 gallon cylinder of propane costs anywhere from $15-$35 to fill (or swap) depending on the time of year and your location. You may get 12-20 meals out of a single tank depending on how big the meal and what you're cooking. That works out to an average of about $1.35 per meal. The 21-lbs bag of charcoal I just finished lasted about 12 meals at a cost of roughly $10, or $0.83 per meal. With the lighter fluid adding about $0.15 per meal. Monetarily, it is much cheaper to barbecue with charcoal.

So, it looks like there won't be a Canadian made Napoleon grill in my near-future.

Eating Non-Fat Is Nonsense

Or Atkins was right.

Via SciAm: Carbs against Cardio: More Evidence that Refined Carbohydrates, not Fats, Threaten the Heart

An Easier Way To Pick Seafood

GOOD has a new transparency up: Which Fish to Eat?

The easiest thing to remember is first look for U.S. Farmed, then these species: Arctic Char, Barmundi, Catfish, Cobia, Tilapia, Rainbow Trout, Striped Bass (not ill tempered), Clams, Bay Scallops, Mussels, Oysters, and Spiny Lobsters.

They are not listed, but Crawfish are good and sustainable option too.

More Seafood News

Following up to the the last post, The Latest From The Seafood Watch Program.

TheAtlantic: Save a Reef--Eat a Lionfish

FC: Target Steps Up for Sustainable Seafood

The Latest From The Seafood Watch Program

I always have the Seafood WATCH pocket guide in my wallet. Be sure to get the new 2010 version.

And now there's an iPhone app.

But the big news is reported by SciAm: Sea Change: Environmental Group Gives First-Time Nod to Sustainable Salmon-Farming Method

Jeff Varasano Is Serious About Homemade Pizza

All it takes is 16 easy steps, a coal or wood fired brick oven, and making your own cheese and sauce.

Yet I love the authenticity of web sites like this.

See: Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe

Alton Brown Makes A List Of His Five Favorite Cookbooks

Via the WSJ: Best Cookbooks

His list is:

The Joy of Cooking

The Frugal Gourmet

Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

Outlaw Cook

Ratio

Foods You May Want To Avoid

See Yahoo: The 7 foods experts won't eat

1. Canned Tomatoes
2. Corn-Fed Beef
3. Microwave Popcorn
4. Nonorganic Potatoes
5. Farmed Salmon
6. Milk Produced with Artificial Hormones
7. Conventional Apples

Interview With Rick Bayless

I was introduced to Rick Bayless (lots of recipes at his web site!) while watching Top Chef Masters and thought he was very deserving of the win (and I was also pleased that Oprah's smarmy personal chef was knocked out early on). I look forward to using some of his simple Mexican recipes to add some heat this winter.

Via the ChiTrib: Rick Bayless, under fire

It Is Best To Not Pick Wild Leeks

From TheGlobeAndMail: Locavores, beware

When you pick a ramp, you take the entire plant, including the bulb. Once the bulb is gone, there is nothing left of the plant; it will not grow back the next year. The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority considers it to be "a species of conservation concern." And eating a nice sized bulb could be the equivalent of dining on an old-growth cedar. "It's a really, really, slow-growth plant. A bulb could be 18 to 20 years old,"

Organic Farming Assistance

See TH: Obama Offers Farmers $50 Million to Go Organic

You Are Fat Because Of What You Eat

Duh.

See PhysOrg: Increased food intake alone explains the increase in body weight in the US

How much of the obesity epidemic has been caused by excess calorie intake and how much by reductions in physical activity has been long debated and while experts agree that making it easier for people to eat less and exercise more are both important for combating it, they debate where the public health focus should be.

A study presented on Friday at the European Congress on Obesity is the first to examine the question of the proportional contributions to the obesity epidemic by combining metabolic relationships, the laws of thermodynamics, epidemiological data and agricultural data.

"There have been a lot of assumptions that both reduced physical activity and increased energy intake have been major drivers of the obesity epidemic. Until now, nobody has proposed how to quantify their relative contributions to the rise in obesity since the 1970s. This study demonstrates that the weight gain in the American population seems to be virtually all explained by eating more calories.

Local And Organic Is Not Sustainable

To feed the world's people you need industrial agriculture. It is a matter of scale.

Must reading for people who think the local food movement will solve all of our agricultural problems.

MJ: Spoiled: Organic and Local Is So 2008

Consider what it would take to make our farm system entirely organic. The only reason industrial organic agriculture can get away with replenishing its soils with manure or by planting nitrogen-fixing cover crops is that the industry is so tiny—making up less than 3 percent of the US food supply (and just 5.3 percent even in gung-ho green cultures like Austria's). If we wanted to rid the world of synthetic fertilizer use—and assuming dietary habits remain constant—the extra land we'd need for cover crops or forage (to feed the animals to make the manure) would more than double, possibly triple, the current area of farmland, according to Vaclav Smil, an environmental scientist at the University of Manitoba. Such an expansion, Smil notes, "would require complete elimination of all tropical rainforests, conversion of a large part of tropical and subtropical grasslands to cropland, and the return of a substantial share of the labor force to field farming—making this clearly only a theoretical notion."

Orange Juice Is Packed With Orange Flavors

Alissa Hamilton is promoting her book Squeezed: What You Don't Know About Orange Juice (Yale Agrarian Studies Series)

Boston.com has an interview: Q&A with Alissa Hamilton

IDEAS: What isn't straightforward about orange juice?

HAMILTON: It's a heavily processed product. It's heavily engineered as well. In the process of pasteurizing, juice is heated and stripped of oxygen, a process called deaeration, so it doesn't oxidize. Then it's put in huge storage tanks where it can be kept for upwards of a year. It gets stripped of flavor-providing chemicals, which are volatile. When it's ready for packaging, companies such as Tropicana hire flavor companies such as Firmenich to engineer flavor packs to make it taste fresh. People think not-from-concentrate is a fresher product, but it also sits in storage for quite a long time.

Via BoingBoing