Freebie Friday Returns!

Freebie Friday returns with Google Goggles, a free Mobile App with many uses, both practical and fun. Google Goggles lets you use pictures taken with your mobile phone to search the web; it’s ideal for things that aren’t easy to describe. Scan a barcode, and you can find out about a product. Scan a menu in a foreign language, and you can get a translation. You can even take a photo of a landmark or a piece of art, and Google may be able to tell you what it is. This link will let you see Google Goggles in action.  


Google Goggles is being continually improved. According to the support page, right now it works best for printed text, barcodes, logos, and landmarks, and not so well for photos of animals or furniture. 

Here is perhaps one of the products most valuable uses. Do you have a stack of Sudokus you could never solve? Take a photo of one with Goggles and just see what happens! Or watch this video.

And, now that I have your attention, please read on for some news and a few important reminders of upcoming events:

UPDATES from NEW HAVEN

The Long Wharf Nature Preserve will remain intact! Connecticut DOT Commissioner  James P. Redeker has announced the reconfiguration of the Exit 46 plan which would have taken a portion of the preserve. You can read the details in an article from the New Haven Register. According to this article, Redeker said the new plan actually improves traffic flow and safety more than the original proposal! 

Elm City Market posted progress photos. There are now 650 members and counting.

DATES TO REMEMBER

September 17

Slow Food’s $5 Challenge 

Take back the 'value meal' by getting together with family, friends and neighbors for a slow food meal that costs no more than $5 per person.

and a special opportunity from Slow Food USA … during the month of September, you can become a member for whatever you can afford to pay. With over 25,000 members and 250,000 supporters, Slow Food USA is part of a global, grassroots organization which believes that food and farming should be sources of health and well being for everyone. Through national advocacy, local projects and bringing people together through the common language of food, Slow Food USA members and supporters are making it easier to access real food that is good for us, good for those who produce it, and good for the planet. Any donation this month will allow you to join … give it a try. 

September 21

5% Day at Whole Foods in Milford.

Whole Foods in Milford will donate 5% of all sales to benefit New Haven’s Common Ground High School. 

September 21

New Haven Green Drinks

6-8 pm at 

Cave A’ Vin, a newly renovated wine bar at 975 State Street, near Edward Street.

This evening’s program will be a departure from the norm. Instead of a speaker, it will be a “special fun event to get everyone to meet new people.”

September 24

Moving Planet 

At the 350CT event people will come to the New Haven Green via bikes, on foot, carpools, mass transit, anything and everything BUT carbon-intensive travel, for a central celebration with tables, music speakers, art, and a bike-powered outdoor screening of the movie Wall-E! The date is fast approaching, check out the ActNH site for opportunities to volunteer.


TGIF! Be sure to come back for my Meatless Monday post when I hope to report on a very successful $5 Meal!

Meatless Monday Adventures: Bacon Chocolate? Really?

The most e-mailed New York Times story of the moment is “While Warning About Fat, U.S. Pushes Cheese Sales.” An organization called Dairy Management (according to the article a marketing creation of the US Department of Agriculture) has teamed up with Domino’s to develop a new line of pizzas with 40 percent more cheese to help overcome the company’s reputation for worst tasting pies. One slice of this pizza contains as much as two-thirds of a day’s maximum recommended amount of saturated fat.

This story of contradictory messages prompted me to discuss a recent discovery of my own. What does it say about our eating habits as a nation when we pair one of the fattiest cuts of meat with rich chocolate to create dessert? I am talking about bacon here.

The kernel of this tale comes from an experience I had when the first Whole Foods in my area opened about a year ago. The store layout was unfamiliar and I found myself in what I thought was the baking aisle unable to locate a bar of unsweetened chocolate to use in a batch of brownies. An eager young store employee approached and asked if he could help me find something. “Yes, thank you, a bar of baking chocolate,” I replied. Off he ran to another aisle. While he was gone, I found what I needed. He returned to announce, “I know we carry it but I just can’t find where it is.” I showed him the bar, and what I thought he said in reply was, “Oh, I thought you meant bacon chocolate.” Bacon chocolate? I let this go and didn’t think about it again until I actually saw this product on my last visit to the store, on the counter in front of the coffee bar — Mo's Bacon Bar, one of several such bars marketed by Vosges chocolatiers.

Talk about calories and fat! The bar is 3 oz., 8 squares. The ingredients are applewood smoked bacon, alderwood smoked salt, and deep milk chocolate, 41% cacao. Each square has 57 calories, 6% total fat, 10% saturated fat, 1% salt, and yes 7% of your protein for the day, but what a price to pay for protein!  It is true that if you ate all 8 squares you would meet 56% of your protein requirement for the day, but you would also consume 456 calories, 48% of your total fat, 80% of your saturated fat, and 8% of your salt. With my calorie intake for the day targeted for the 1500-1800 range, this one little bar would provide nearly 1/3 of what I should take in. The price tag is rather high, too, around $8.00, which would buy a lot of produce, even at Whole Foods. 

The more I researched, the more I realized that I should not be that surprised by the appearance of this high end bar. Keep in mind that a single slice of cooked bacon by itself has 43 calories (71% from fat), 5% saturated fat, and 8% sodium. Yet chocolate covered bacon on a stick has apparently been a popular fair food item for several years. I also know that bacon has been an ingredient in a number of Top Chef recipes over the past few seasons. In fact, the internet is full of bacon dessert recipes.  

I don't care if it is carried by Whole Foods: that doesn't make it good for you. Mo's Bacon Bar will NOT be making my list of 10 things to stuff a stocking. 


I often blog on food or food issues on Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet.

Meatless Monday — Breaking News — A Day Late

Yesterday (Monday — better late than never) there was some really big news for lovers of meat without feet. Whole Foods Market announced that it is partnering with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch Program and Blue Ocean Institute to label all the wild-caught seafood in its North American stores according to the sustainability criteria determined by the Aquarium's science-based organizations.

Green (Best Choice), Yellow (Good Alternative) and Red (Avoid) labels will now be displayed next to EVERY item in the seafood case, and similar information (using Whole Foods' own criteria) will be posted for farmed seafood. You can watch the Whole Foods video here.




Whole Foods has also pledged to eliminate all Red label seafood by Earth Day 2013.

This is a big step forward. But I do find myself asking two questions:

1. Why carry the Red label fish at all?
2. What happens to the Red label fish if no one buys it? After all, if the campaign works, that is what will happen, particularly with a price tag of $23.99/lb. for Venezuelan yellow fin tuna steaks. 

Readers of this blog have been hearing about the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s handy Seafood Watch cards for some time. You can download one here (be sure to select the correct region). That way you can have one for easy reference wherever you shop or eat.

Whole Foods is not the only chain to have taken an action on how they source their fish. In late January, Target Corp. eliminated all farmed salmon from its fresh, frozen and smoked seafood sections at stores nationwide. Farmed salmon has been deemed less healthy than wild-caught salmon for a number of reasons, including the the high levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) found in supermarket samples. You can read Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s thoughts on the subject here.

Finally, there is good news for those of you who eat eggs. The blog Food Democracy Now announced on September 2 that Trader Joe’s and Fareway Stores Inc., have agreed to pull DeCoster-affiliated brands of eggs from the shelves of their combined 442 stores nationwide. DeCoster is the the owner of both Wright County and Hillandale Farms, the two Iowa farms linked to this summer’s salmonella outbreak. Food Democracy Now had organized an online campaign requesting this action.


PS I often blog on food or food issues on Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal  health and the health of our planet.”