From chicken (Gallus gallus) to Chicken McNugget

Banksy's Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill is a truly remarkable art exhibit that explores our connection with the animals we eat. "I wanted to make art that questioned our relationship with animals and the ethics and sustainability of factory farming, but it ended up as chicken nuggets singing," Banksy said in a statement. He must have read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma which I'm devouring right now. I've never enjoyed a work of non-fiction like this, nor learned so much. Pick up a copy. Below watch 21st century chicks enjoying their meal of bbq dipping sauce.

Halloween Burger King Style

Who is Burger King marketing to here? As a cartoon, the obvious answer would be children. But check out the tomato being mercilessly slashed in half by a Scream pickle. It's kinda messed up. Overtly violent. I don't care that the tomato is gushing ketchup instead of blood. Thanks BK. Happy Halloween.

Halloween at The Selby

Todd Selby is a photographer whose latest project is to go into cool people's homes, photograph them and post the photographs on his website The Selby. How do you know they are cool people? Well, just look at their homes. The portraits are beautifully shot and it's really interesting to get such an intimate glimpse of fresh apartments and houses. Above, Selby shot Jennifer Earle and Mike Gabel, a pair of entertainers in their London flat. I think this is a perfect food-themed costume.

Sarah Palin: Locavore

"Gun sales have been up this fall, and Tony Aeschliman of the Shooting Sports Association speculated that lack of work gives rural people more time to hunt and more incentive to 'put a deer in the freezer.' And by the deer carcass is where the shooters and the foodies meet."

In his Slate.com article, Michael Agger takes a step back from Palin-bashing to examine what the Alaskan Governor's love of hunting really means.

When Palin was running for governor in 2006, she told USA Today, "We hunt as much as we can, and I'm proud to say our freezer is full of wild game we harvested here in Alaska." You can't really hate on that (unless you think killing animals for food is wrong, in which case you still can).

Wine: Kami no Shizuku

Last week the NY Times ran an article about a comic book that had me salivating. The Japanese brother-and-sister team of Shin and Yuko Kibayashi have been writing the series "Drops of the Gods" for four years. The comic, centered around wine, has gained such a following in Japan and Korea that wine sellers often import wine based upon what the characters are drinking. The beauty of the story is that it uses the pairing of word and graphic image to describe wine in vivid and imaginative ways. (Click on the image to enlarge and read from right to left)
Personally, I believe the graphic novel to be one of the great art forms for exactly this reason. In comics, the old maxim 'a picture is worth a thousand words' is combined with the human necessity to describe and to name. Much like a steak paired with a good wine, words and images play off each other to tremendous effect as the act of story telling is enhanced by a showing of sorts.
The Times article goes on to describe the Kibayashi's as unabashed Francophiles who find American wines lacking in Old-world depth. This, to me, was fine, but what was truly disappointing is that the article states there are no English translations. I was horrified. Then I did my own snooping around and found that at least the first three chapters are translated. Enjoy!

Recipe: Mexican Lasagna

Quick, easy and better than expected (that's what she said) is how Naphie described Rachael Ray's Mexican Lasagna. This looks pretty good. I will definitely have to try it.

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 pounds ground chicken breast, available in the packaged meats case
• 2 tablespoons chili powder
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1/2 red onion, chopped
• 1 (15-ounce) can black beans, drained
• 1 cup medium heat taco sauce or 1 (14-oz) can stewed or fire roasted tomatoes
• 1 cup frozen corn kernels
• 2 green peppers chopped (Naphie felt the dish was lacking in the veggie dept.)
  
• Salt
• 8 (8 inch) spinach flour tortillas, available on dairy aisle of market
• 2 1/2 cups shredded Cheddar or shredded pepper jack
• 2 scallions, finely chopped

Directions

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
Preheat a large skillet over medium high heat. Add 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil - twice around the pan. Add chicken and season with chili powder, cumin, and red onion. Brown the meat, 5 minutes. Add taco sauce or stewed or fire roasted tomatoes. Add black beans and corn. Heat the mixture through, 2 to 3 minutes then season with salt, to your taste.

Coat a shallow baking dish with remaining extra-virgin olive oil, about 1 tablespoon oil. Cut the tortillas in half or quarters to make them easy to layer with. Build lasagna in layers of meat and beans, then tortillas, then cheese. Repeat: meat, tortilla, cheese again. Bake lasagna 12 to 15 minutes until cheese is brown and bubbly. Top with the scallions and serve.

Genetically Modified Tomatoes Stop Cancer

A European group of researchers have successfully expressed genes from the Snapdragon flower in tomatoes, resulting in deep-purple colored tomatoes with unprecedentedly high anthocyanin content at concentrations comparable to the anthocyanin levels found in blackberries and blueberries. The expression of the two transgenes increased the hydrophilic antioxidant capacity of tomato fruit threefold and a pilot animal study demonstrated that cancer-susceptible Trp53-/- mice fed a diet supplemented with the high-anthocyanin tomatoes showed a significant extension of life span.

"This is one of the first examples of metabolic engineering that offers the potential to promote health through diet by reducing the impact of chronic disease," says Professor Cathie Martin. Next step: testing it on humans. Read the press release here.

Is this exciting news? Yes, but it also raises a lot of questions. True we have been breeding plants since the beginnings of agriculture. And technology is such that we now have the power to alter plants on the genetic level, even introduce foreign genes into an organism. This has implications I've already briefly discussed concerning nutraceuticals. But in some ways, if eating a tomato is going to reduce the likelihood of cancer in the same way taking a bunch of pills would, then I vote for eating a nice salad. Nevertheless, the whole thing really raises some alarms.

Speaking of alarms, I've been reading the Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan and apparently there is so much wrong with the industrial food system of America that purple tomatoes might be the least of our worries. I highly recommend this book if you want to get educated (and horrified) about what we eat and how, as a nation, we are suffering from an eating disorder.