Category: Food

Requiem for Johnny Apple

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Todd Purdum:

With his Dickensian byline, Churchillian brio and Falstaffian appetites, Mr. Apple, who was known as Johnny, was a singular presence at The Times almost from the moment he joined the metropolitan staff in 1963. He remained a colorful figure as new generations of journalists around him grew more pallid, and his encyclopedic knowledge, grace of expression — and above all his expense account — were the envy of his competitors, imitators and peers.

Mr. Apple enjoyed a career like no other in the modern era of The Times. He was the paper’s bureau chief in Albany, Lagos, Nairobi, Saigon, Moscow, London and Washington. He covered 10 presidential elections and more than 20 national nominating conventions. He led The Times’s coverage of the Vietnam war for two and a half years in the 1960’s and of the Persian Gulf war a generation later, chronicling the Iranian revolution in between.

Apple’s cuisine articles over the years were a treat – particularly when he sampled things I’d never touch. Apple visited Sheboygan in 2002 to write about brats.

Fools to the Farm

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Daniel Griswold:

A hearing in the House Agricultural Committee last week highlighted everything wrong with U.S. farm policy. In preparation for writing the 2007 farm bill, House members heard from 17 witnesses representing every possible farm lobby —from cotton to corn, sugar to potatoes, rice to eggs, and sorghum — but not a single spokesperson for the interests of the American people as a whole.


Fewer than two percent of Americans farm for a living, and only a third of those farmers receive subsidies. Yet the interests of subsidized and protected farmers dominate every farm bill discussion in Washington. The broader interests of the United States and the other 98 percent of Americans are systematically ignored.


The biggest losers from U.S. farm policy are taxpayers. From 2000 to 2005, Congress spent an average of $17 billion a year in direct payments to farmers. That’s real money, even in Washington. Most of those payments did not go to small “family farms,” but to large operations and agribusinesses, including some Fortune 500 companies. Indeed, according to the Environmental Working Group, the top 10 percent of recipients collected two-thirds of the payments on offer, and the top 5 percent collected 55 percent.


Trade barriers and domestic price supports also force tens of millions of families to pay higher food prices. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, U.S. farm programs transferred an average of $10.5 billion a year from U.S. food consumers to producers from 2003 through 2005. That amounts to an annual food tax of $140 for a family of four — a regressive tax that falls most heavily on poor families that spend a larger share of their budgets on foo

Nice Article on Barneveld’s Botham Winery

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Doris Hajewski:

When Peter and Sarah Botham recently installed a new 3,200-gallon tank at their rural winery, they stepped back, looked at it and realized that it holds more wine than was made in the first year of the business.


“It’s hard to keep up,” said Peter, as he forked grapes into a device that separates the fruit from the vines. “I’m really thrilled about the potential, but it’s a little scary.”

He was talking about a new agreement the couple signed with Badger Liquor Co., a large distributor that will put Botham wines into stores around the state soon, including the Copps and Pick ‘n Save supermarkets.”It’s hard to keep up,” said Peter, as he forked grapes into a device that separates the fruit from the vines. “I’m really thrilled about the potential, but it’s a little scary.”

He was talking about a new agreement the couple signed with Badger Liquor Co., a large distributor that will put Botham wines into stores around the state soon, including the Copps and Pick ‘n Save supermarkets.

Reduce Foreign Oil Consumption: Buy American Olive Oil

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George Raine:

Cesar and 34 other California Olive Ranch field hands each seek to plant between 1,200 and 1,500 trees during a seven-hour workday, a tough quota. “You get used to it,” he said.

California Olive Ranch is already the largest orchard for olive oil production in the United States, and the largest milling facility, producing 25 percent of California’s olive oil. Now it is more than doubling in size with the planting of 500,000 olive trees on its 883-acre site in Glenn County

Dinner Potatoes: Fresh from Eau Claire via the Farmer’s Market

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Dashing around the Farmer’s Market early Saturday morning, I picked up 5lbs of potatoes. The (late teen/early 20’s?) daughters were moving a bit slow as they organized the vegetables and filled my bag with red potatoes. I inquired about this and one mentioned that they “got in late”, then had to get up at 2 for the drive to Madison. I asked where their early morning journey began? Eau Claire – 178 miles.

If It’s Good for Philip Morris, Can It Also Be Good for Public Health?

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Joe Nocera:

“We don’t make widgets,” Steve Parrish likes to say, and that acknowledgment strikes me as a good place to start this story. Parrish, whose title is senior vice president for corporate affairs, is a highly paid executive at Altria Group, a New York-based holding company that is the 10th-most-profitable corporation in America. If the name of the company doesn’t strike you as terribly familiar, that’s because a few years ago the company changed its name. It used to be called Philip Morris, a name that still attaches to two of its holdings, Philip Morris USA and Philip Morris International. (Altria also owns Kraft Foods.) So, yes, let’s stipulate right up front: Steve Parrish represents the country’s leading tobacco company, whose best-known brand, Marlboro, is so dominant it accounts for 4 out of every 10 cigarettes smoked in the United States. Last year, Philip Morris USA alone made $4.6 billion in profits. What was it that Warren Buffett once said? “You make a product for a penny, you sell it for a dollar and you sell it to addicts.” They most certainly don’t make widgets.

Kraft is parent of Madison based Oscar Meyer Foods.

Life in the Fast Food Lane: Rockwall Texas Culvers

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Frank Bruni:

Flame, or at least a suggestion of grilling or broiling, matters. That’s a principal reason a Whopper bested a Big Mac, cooked on a griddle. It’s why the new roster of one-third-pound charbroiled Thickburgers at Hardee’s tasted better than the steamed slivers at Krystal, a White Castle analogue in the South.

Buns matter. The large, doughy one on the classic Whataburger created ample space for three slices of tomato and a sense of heft that felt good in the hands, good in the mouth. The generously buttered, crisply toasted ones on Culver’s burgers, called butterburgers in honor of those buns, exalted whatever they encased, which included seared, loosely packed patties with more charred edges and, as a result, more flavor.

Bruni last covered the 2004 Bush campaign. Perhaps there’s a lesson in this.