Today's notes on national stories, local trends, random tastes, and other bycatch dredged up from the food media.1. No more sales of live chickens. SF Appeal and other sources report that, after years of protest, a group named
LGBT Compassion has managed to get Raymond Young Live Poultry and Bullfinch Quail banned from the Heart of the City farmers' market, effective May 27. The two farmers have sold live poultry at the market for years, mostly to Asian buyers, who take the live birds home in paper bags and then kill them. The sale is, and continues to be, legal according to city law.
It's not clear whether the ban is the direct result of the protests or from a lawsuit that one of the protesters is filing against a Young salesperson (and, by extension, the farmers' market) for allegedly attacking him. It's also not clear why Assemblyman Leland Yee and Mayor Ed Lee, who have both brought up the issue of culture when announcing their opposition to the proposed
shark's fin ban, are staying out of this issue. Does it affect too few people? And why is this group, if it's really concerned about animal cruelty, not protesting a slaughterhouse, a factory farm, or even the Safeway meat counter? Apparently it's more important to penalize anyone brought up to believe that the meat you slaughter is better than the meat you take out of the freezer and defrost.
2. iPad cookbooks. We're still at the dawn of the era
of the iPad cookbook ― publishers are just starting to figure out how to
take advantage of notebook computers' visual and video capabilities.
And Notebooks are so much easier to perch on a stand in the kitchen and
read from than a laptop ― which means they're more likely to get
splashed. On City Pages' food blog, Rachel Hutton finds a Minneapolis
design company that has come up with disposable iPad sleeves for kitchen use.
3. Tequila history. Those of you who aren't nursing your annual Cinco de Mayo hangover might want to read Felisa Rogers' short history of tequila
on Salon. Rogers gives credit for the spirit's evolution to Filipino
sailors, Huichol distillers, Prohibition-era tequila runners, and Don
Cenobio Sauza.
