And speaking of hot drinks, ever wonder how competitive baristas are? Well, wonder no more, because, apparently, there’s a competition where they prove their (hot) stuff.

And if you’re in the mood for small batch roasted coffee, here’s a Northern California company doing it right.

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Get this–there’s a new “Dinner Spinner” iPhone app from Allrecipes.com, the world’s #1 food site. 

Top features include:

• Search for meal ideas from thousands of Allrecipes.com’s most popular recipes
• Access detailed ingredients, cooking instructions, nutritional information, photos, ratings and reviews
• Give your iPhone a shake to watch the Dinner Spinner in action and generate dinner ideas for you 

Allrecipes’ Dinner Spinner also lets you share recipes with home cooks just like yourself for affordable and convenient meal solutions.

For more info, click here.

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If you’ve ever contemplated going vegan, now’s the time during World Go Vegan Days, which started October 25 and run through October 31.

Created by In Defense of Animals (IDA), World Go Vegan Days is an annual event to educate people about the vegan lifestyle. During World Go Vegan Days, IDA encourages people to become conscious of what – and who – they are eating, the effect it has on the world, and that a non-violent alternative exists.

Here are a few ways you can celebrate World Go Vegan Days:

• Order Vegan Starter Kits to distribute. Download a free copy here.
• Write a Letter to the Editor of your newspaper about vegan issues.
• Share a vegan meal with family and friends by hosting a vegan potluck dinner or restaurant outing. Be sure to invite people who aren’t vegan (get easy vegan recipes here).
• Since Thanksgiving is coming up in a few weeks, talk to your community food banks about providing vegan options such as Tofurkys. Consider buying a few Tofurkys, preparing them, and bringing them to your food bank or other similar gatherings.
• Ask your local newspaper to feature a story about the benefits of a vegan diet or the cruelties of factory farming.
• Adopt a World Go Vegan Days activist.
• Add a link to IDA’s World Go Vegan Days website from your website.

For more information, click here.

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Trish?a Yearwood is the latest in along line of celebrities to lend her mug to the Got Milk? campaign.

Her ad touts the nutrients in milk, which help maintain weight, as well as the protein, which helps build strong bones and muscles.

Yearwood joins many other famous Milk Mustache women, including Martha Stewart, Marg Helgenberger, Ali Vincent (winner of NBC”s “The Biggest Loser), Brooke Shields, Glenn Close, Laila Ali, Sara Ramirez, Mariska Hargitay, Kathy Smith, Beyonce and Tina Knowles, Elizabeth Hurley, Sheryl Crow and Serena Williams.

To check out some of the other ads, click here.

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A new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report sheds new light on food marketing to children and adolescents. The report, “Marketing Food to Children and Adolescents: A Review of Industry Expenditures, Activities, and Self-Regulation”, finds that 44 major food and beverage marketers spent $1.6 billion to promote their products to children under 12 and adolescents ages 12 to 17 in the United States in 2006.

The report also finds that the landscape of food advertising to youth is dominated by integrated advertising campaigns that combine traditional media, such as television, with previously unmeasured forms of marketing, such as packaging, in-store advertising, sweepstakes, and Internet.

These campaigns often involve cross-promotion with a new movie or popular television program.

Analyzing this data, the report calls for all food companies “to adopt and adhere to meaningful, nutrition-based standards for marketing their products to children under 12.”

The Commission obtained the data for this report through compulsory process orders requiring financial and marketing information from beverage manufacturers and bottlers; producers of packaged snacks, baked goods, cereals, and prepared meals; makers of candy and chilled desserts; dairy marketers; fruit and vegetable growers; and quick-service restaurants.

The report finds that approximately $870 million was spent on child-directed marketing, and a little more than $1 billion on marketing to adolescents, with about $300 million overlapping between the two age groups in 2006.

Marketers spent more money on television advertising than on any other technique ($745 million or 46 percent of the 2006 total.) But for most food products, they employed the full spectrum of promotional techniques and formats when advertising to a young audience: themes from television ads carried over to packaging, displays in stores or restaurants, and the Internet.

That same year, cross-promotions tied foods and beverages to about 80 movies, television shows, and animated characters that appeal primarily to children. In total, the companies spent more than $208 million, representing 13 percent of all youth-directed marketing, on cross-promotional campaigns. For some food categories, such as restaurant food and fruits and vegetables, cross-promotions accounted for nearly 50 percent of reported child-directed expenditures.

For example, characters from Superman Returns and Pirates of the Caribbean appeared in ads that were shown in movie theaters; and on television, product packaging, the Internet, and in-store displays. According to the report, food marketers created special limited-edition snacks, cereals, frozen waffles, and candies “in honor” of these movie characters.

In cross-promotional campaigns, television ads and packaging often directed viewers to a Web site where they could enter a sweepstakes to win a related premium, such as movie posters, character action figures, and cash. Consumers might also be directed to “advergames” (video games advertising a product), free downloads such as screen savers and ring tones, podcasts, and online video episodes known as “Webisodes.”

The report finds that, although there is room for improvement, the food and beverage industries have made significant progress since the FTC and the Department of Health and Human Services co-sponsored the Workshop on Marketing, Self-Regulation & Childhood Obesity in 2005.

The report cites the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, launched by the Council of Better Business Bureaus (CBBB) in 2006, for taking “important steps to encourage better nutrition and fitness among the nation’s children,” by changing the mix of food and beverage advertising messages directed to children under 12 and encouraging them toward healthier eating and better physical fitness.

To date, 13 of the largest food and beverage companies – accounting for the majority of food and beverage expenditures directed toward children – have adopted the initiative, pledging either not to advertise to children under 12, or to limit their television, radio, print, and Internet advertising to foods that meet specified nutritional
standards.

In addition, several major food and beverage companies have adopted the Alliance for a Healthier Generation guidelines, which are designed to lower the caloric value and increase the nutritional value of foods and drinks sold in schools outside the school meal program.

The report recommends that all companies that market food or beverage products to children under 12 adopt meaningful, nutrition-based standards for marketing their products – standards that extend to all advertising and promotional techniques, including, for example, product packaging and in-store marketing.

Companies also should improve the nutritional profiles of products marketed to children and adolescents, whether in or outside of schools; cease the in-school promotion of products that do not meet nutritional standards; and improve the quality and consistency of the nutritional criteria adopted for “better for you” products. The report also recommends steps to enhance the Council of Better Business Bureaus’ initiative.

Finally, the report recommends that more media and entertainment companies restrict the licensing of their characters to healthier foods and beverages that are marketed to children, so that cross-promotions with popular children’s movies and television characters will favor more nutritious foods and drinks. Media companies also should consider limiting ads on child-directed programs to those that promote healthier foods and beverages.

The Federal Trade Commission works for consumers to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices and to provide information to help spot, stop, and avoid them.

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On July 1, Starbucks announced it was closing 600 stores in the U.S and expects to open fewer than 200 new company-operated stores in the U.S. in fiscal 2009.

Click here for the list of stores that will close by the end of July. Closures will continue into FY09, and the determination of each store’s closure date will be dependent on several operational and contractual factors and events.

Each month, after closure dates have been communicated to all affected partners, Starbucks will post a list of the stores that are scheduled to close during that month.

Stay tuned…

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Wyoming Stew

Wisconsin Native’s Beer Cheese Soup

West Virginia Recipes

Washington Apple Cake

Macaroni Salad Virginia Style

Vermont Apple Pie

Utah Recipes

Daddy’s ‘If They’da had This at the Alamo we would’ha WON!’ Texas Chili

Tennessee Rubdown

South Dakota Sunflower Seed Cookies

South Carolina Sweet Tea

Rhode Island Red Clam Chowder

Pennsylvania Coal Region Barbecue

Oregon Salmon Patties

Oklahoma Brisket

Ohio Meat Pie

North Dakota Recipes

North Carolina-Style Pulled Pork

New York System Hot Wiener Sauce I

Enchiladas – New Mexico Style

Best Tuna Melt (New Jersey Diner Style)

New Hampshire Recipes

Nevada Recipes

Nebraska Raisin Bars

Montana Tonic

Aaron’s Missouri Burger

Mississippi Mud Brownies

Minnesota Mail Carrier Cookies

Cornish Finnish Michigan Pasties

Massachusetts Straub Chili

Maryland Crab Cakes II

Shirley’s Maine Clam Chowder

Louisiana Shrimp Creole II

Kentucky Style Fried Green Tomatoes

Kansas Tomato Sandwich

Iowa Maid-Rites

Indiana-Style Fried Cabbage

Illinois Recipes

Idaho Potato Cake

Hawaiian Spareribs

South Georgia Biscuits

Florida Strawberry Muffins

Delaware Blue Crab Boil

Connecticut Recipes

Colorado Mexican Pizza

California Smoothie

Arkansas Sin

Arizona Chicken

Firecracker Grilled Alaska Salmon

Good Ol’ Alabama Sweet Tea

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Urban growth, overcrowding and population explosions, oh my!

According to experts, by the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth’s population will reside in urban centers, and conservative estimates are that the human population will increase by about 3 billion people during the interim.

More people and larger urban areas (the dreade sprawl) mean less farm land.

Enter Vertical Farming

By using cutting-edge technologies, the hope is that Vertical Farms will be an efficient (cheap to construct and safe to operate) alternative situated in the heart of the world’s urban centers.

If successfully implemented, they offer the promise of urban renewal, sustainable production of a safe and varied food supply (year-round crop production), and the eventual repair of ecosystems that have been sacrificed for horizontal farming.

Advantages of Vertical Farming

• Year-round crop production–1 indoor acre is equivalent to 4-6 outdoor acres or more, depending upon the crop
• No weather-related crop failures due to droughts, floods, pests
• All VF food is grown organically: no herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers 
• VF virtually eliminates agricultural runoff by recycling black water
• VF returns farmland to nature, restoring ecosystem functions and services
• VF greatly reduces the incidence of many infectious diseases that are acquired at the agricultural interface
• VF converts black and gray water into potable water by collecting the water of evapotranspiration
• VF adds energy back to the grid via methane generation from composting non-edible parts of plants and animals 
• VF dramatically reduces fossil fuel use (no tractors, plows, shipping
• VF converts abandoned urban properties into food production centers
• VF creates sustainable environments for urban centers
• VF creates new employment opportunities

Here’s hoping that in my lifetime, there’s a tall building in my hometown that’s full of growing veggies, rather than parked cars.

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Whether you’re a vegetarian, or you just want to get your daily dose of the good stuff, there’s no reason you have to relegate yourself to eating meat on the road.

Websites
There are several good websites that will help you plan where to eat when you’re on the road, whether you’re sticking close to home or venturing into a new city.

vegdining.com
happycow.net (I used this one when travelling cross-country!)
vegeats.com
veganfriendly.com

There are also stand-bys at a few major fast food chains that will see you through in a pinch.

Subway Veggie Delight
Burger King BK Veggie Burger
Taco Bell Fresco Bean Burrito

Isn’t it nice to know that no matter where you go, there’s something good (for you) to eat?

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If you’re a honey fanatic like I am, maybe you already know that there’s been a decline in the U.S. honeybee population as of late, and that decline is wrecking havoc.

Known as Colony Collapse Disorder, the decline is a major concern because bees do a lot for our ecosystem, including produce food (about a third of what we eat depends on pollination!).

You can help the cause by purchasing honey-based items from Burt’s Bees and The Savannah Bee Company.

Burt’s Bees is funding the Honeybee Health Improvement Project, which helps beekeepers research and develop ways to strengthen the immune systems of bees.

The Savannah Bee Company buys beehives in third world countries (partnering with Heifer International, an amazing place to buy feel-good gifts for the planet), all to help promote the sustainability of bee colonies worldwide.

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