photo credit: realSMILEY

Have you ever thought about where your food comes from and exactly how it gets to you? Sure, you got most of what you eat from your local grocery store. Or you might get some portion of what you need to survive from a restaurant or fast food joint. I have often been curious about where the food I’m eating comes from and what it had to go through in order to get to my plate.

Recently, I thought I’d look into some of what I was purchasing for consumption. As you may know, after 26 years I’ve started eating meat again. And with any yummy steak comes a light and fluffy baked potato (hopefully!) Just last week I picked up a bag of organic potatoes from the veggie department at my local Walmart. The journey my potatoes might have traveled from Farm Fresh Direct, LLC in Colorado:

The challenge with this “direct” route, is I’m pretty sure there is no way in hell that my potatoes only traveled 544 miles from Colorado to my local Walmart (I’m pretty sure that’s where I picked up the bag of organic potatoes.)

I plan on doing some analysis and have an email into their company to hopefully get a better understanding of just how much impact these good for me, good for the soil veggies really are. Hopefully, they were taken to a Walmart distribution center on the way from there to here.

The reason I got really interested in the journey my food takes came as a direct result of this post which discusses the Deconstruction of a Taco. This is truly an amazing story that details the diverse origins and routes of foods required to make a taco at a mobile food truck in San Francisco. Clearly a lot of work and energy went into ferreting out every last ingredient, including the spices used.

My biggest take away is that while it is not cheaper to eat locally, there are just some ingredients you cannot expect to get from the farms just outside of town. And I wonder if that’s simply an okay thing. Is it okay that we expect to get ingredients transported to us when they would otherwise never be grown nearby?

I have to answer this a big yes with a caveat. If you’re in business solely to make a profit then clearly making your tacos with the absolute lowest priced ingredients makes sense to your bottom line. If you’re competing to attract clients that take their environment seriously you obviously will have to charge more for your products.

Plus, unless I move to Costa Rica, I’m never going to be close to coffee producers. And I HAVE TO HAVE MY COFFEE! Please send my apologies to the planet!

Technorati Tags: agriculture, agronomy, baked potatoes, farm fresh, fast food, Food, food records, grocery stores, organic potatoes, potato, potatoes, transport food

Actually, not as strange as watching the toast girl but that’s a post for another time!

As I learn more about food, both from a local production perspective as well as techniques required to prepare it to be its most tasty, I come across interesting food related items. I’m thinking I might create a category here that recognizes these things and start a regular feature of bring some of it to you.

The embedded video below shows an interesting scene that takes place in a kitchen, presumably in either Japan or France. Not really sure which. Also not completely understanding the general message of what’s happening other than the main character is a Japanese actor that’s created an homage to Bridgette Bardot. In this woman’s interpretation, however, the character has arms made from baguettes. Go figure!

Anyway, here’s the clip. It’s actually entertaining even if it is out there on the extremes of food entertainment! I plan to find more of these quirky, yet interesting performance pieces and share them with you here at BoldlyGoing.com. If you come across anything that is just fun, out there, or entertainig in some way, please do me the favor of bringing it to my attention. I’ll be sure to link to you or your site, as you prefer. There is just so much fun going on in the world to think that food and cooking are just stuffy exercises performed in hot kitchens by grumpy, moody chefs. Really. If you come across them, send them on so we can share with the world of food lovers.

Enjoy.

(In case you cannot see the video, here’s the link to Baguette Bardot

P.S. If you speak Japanese it would be great to know the general gist of the song she sings. Thanks!

Technorati Tags: baguette, Food, french cuisine

Re-branding this site to local food from technology, social media, various other technical conversations can definitely be a tough nut to crack. Like many of the current readers of this blog, we all tend to follow similar “A list” types of online personalities. You know Chris Brogan, Darren Rowse, Brian Clark of CopyBlogger.com, Sonia Simone, Seth Godin.

I never cared to be one that simply posted echo chamber fodder after the big boys and girls published. After reading Seth’s post today, “Moving the line (the power of a zealot)” I was struck by just how it related to the prospect of local foods. Specifically how the industrialized food corporations in this country have moved that line closer and closer towards themselves.

photo credit: takomabibelot

Food today is not what it was even 25 years ago. Fewer companies control greater percentages of the food production in this country. Traditional farmers are barely recognizable. And fewer of them have the ability to support their farms, families and produce more than a few crops for the corporations. Local food banks see more of their stock filled with the non-perishable products able to sit on shelves for months and months.

My belief is the emerging local food movement, or being a locavore, is beginning, albeit, slowly, to move the line back towards the center. Away from the titans of the food industry. They, we, have a tough row to hoe, however. Why? Well quotes like this from Seth Godin help to exemplify the hurdles to overcome:

It’s not the principle, in fact, it’s just the degree of compromise we’re comfortable with and content to argue over.

The way I’m interpreting this as it relates to local food has to do with the skillful way industrialized food producers have made the argument about compromise. The world has to eat, so they have to produce massive amounts of product. Over the years, as we’ve become comfortable with more highly processed foodstuffs invading our pantry fewer of us are seeking out that which is grown or produced in our local areas.

There are quite a number of reasons for supporting local, smaller farmers and meat producers. My personal goal is to explore more of those issues in the upcoming weeks. For now, though, I make this point: if the locavore’s don’t begin to fanatically push the line back towards center, how comfortable can we eventually be just arguing over the compromises of processed foods?

The food industry would have us believe that the small town farmer is not able to feed us. My guess is that’s not completely accurate. In my next post on this topic, I’ll share some research from the various books and sites I’ve been reading the past 6 months.

My gut tells me that we can eat off the hard work done locally. It won’t always be the smorgasbord available year round at the grocery store. And it won’t be as cheap. But the food will be fresher. It will be better for the planet. Buying locally produced foods will help support the families who bring it to us. And eventually it might just redraw that line away from greedy corporate food interests.

Technorati Tags: food politics, local food, locavore, rural community development

photo credit: @joefoodie

Do you ever have brief moments where some seemingly out of the random blue mental event occurs and you’re flashing on a concept you had no recognition about just moments before? As I continue to inundate my brain and some other senses with all of this food stuff, I believe a slow, almost imperceptible transformation is occurring in how I’m conceptualizing what food really is.

Well, really is to me anyway. Speaking for others and their relationships to food is not something I’m qualified to do now. Or ever, I suspect. My journey thus far has made it clear that like most things in our world, you can lead the horse to water, but not have it produce a triple macchiato for you!

An overriding theme of the Michael Pollan book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals” relates to “real food“. He essentially boils it down to whether or not your grandmother would recognize that which you call food. Obviously, there’s much more to his theories, however, at the nutshell level of things, this really encapsulates the concept.

Would she recognize yogurt in the tube as a real food? Some of the products populating the interior grocery store aisles might have little if any recognition by our ancestors.

My question then becomes just what do we recognize as real food? How much processing and industrialization can be considered okay and not harmful to the status of ingredients which make up a food product?

Allow me to illustrate this grand maternal query with discussion of my breakfast today. Well, okay, if you follow me on twitter you know that breakfast was clearly timed during the traditional lunch hours. But what I had for “lunch” was very clearly breakfast foods, and if I’d asked the question “Would Grandma recognize my lunch?” the easy answer would have been, Uhm, no dude. Your lunch is any sane individuals breakfast. Hence the post title. Don’t hate me, you eat breakfast for dinner

On my plate were 4 eggs cooked sunny side up, with only a small bit of runny yolks. These are not organic, farm fresh eggs whose producers actually understand there is a real world outside that little hen door to the pasture. Please try not to tell me about how bad it was to eat 4 eggs at one meal. I did it. Enough!

There was 4 slices of 12 grain bread. Ironically, on the shelf at the store was 12 grain right next to 7 grain. I remember when reaching for a loaf do they think someone stands here asking themselves if they really need those extra 5 grains? Or the flip side of that question, I can get 5 more grains for the same price? What, they think me a sucker?

5 slices of bacon. No, not the super yummy real pork bacon, but turkey bacon. It’s good too. It really tries to be bacon. When you close your eyes and inhale the aromas of the frying turkey bacon, you can almost, for the briefest of moments convince yourself its real bacon. But it’s not. It is a nice substitute for those that have perfectly legitimate reasons for not wanting to eat pork bacon. But it’s not bacon.

Oh, almost forgot the hash browns. These came from a package, industrial sized pack, of the little hash brown patties. You know the ones I’m referring to? Little rectangles of frozen, previously, mostly cooked hashed potatoes about 3/8 in thick. Rounded corners.

On my plate, I believe grandma would know that I was indeed eating breakfast (for lunch) and be able to identify the various foods. Maybe not the bacon. It does look like a caricature of bacon, so she’d be able to guess what it was supposed to be.

More importantly, however, to the concept of eating foods grown and raised locally, is whether she would have recognized how my meal had gotten to my plate from its various points of origin. Would she recognize the industrial farming practices that produced my eggs from animals whose sole purpose is to lay egg after egg with little to no consideration for the hen’s quality of life?

Would she even begin to understand that the bacon-like product on my plate was simply manufactured bits and pieces left over at the bottom of the barrel after turkey meat is harvested and ever divided into one form or another? Many of those forms being meat substitutes like this very bacon.

The hash browns? I’d bet she couldn’t even predict what continent they were grown on nor how long it had been since they were pulled from the ground (by a mechanical arm most likely).

And the bread. I’ve never seen a homemade loaf look as perfect as store bought bread. My herculean efforts and breadmaker product never even comes remotely close to that product I pull out of a bag.

But she would recognize what was on the plate. And that’s exactly how the industrialized food businesses of our modern world want it to be. Real food has but a distant memory imprinted, somewhere, in our brains. Food manufacturers only need to do just enough with sights, sounds, and smells of what ends up on the plate to fool even my grandma into believing she is actually eating breakfast (for lunch!)

So, yeah. All that ran through my head as I ate my lunch (er, breakfast.) Was it the best I’d ever had? Can’t honestly say that it was. Definitely not the worst meal by any stretch of the imagination. I just don’t know that it was a “Real Food Meal“. And it is real food that I’m hoping to start experiencing much more regularly.

Hopefully, you’re interested in learning more about real food that is locally grown using sustainable, ethical, and healthy practices. If you are, be sure to subscribe to the feed for this site. My plans are to continue sharing what I learn on being a locavore, as well as how to cook that food and make it the most yummy real food you can eat.

Hoping to hear your thoughts, if you have any, on the concept of how the food industry has manipulated your grandma’s perceptions of food.

Have a great weekend!

Possibly related items of interest on Amazon.com

Technorati Tags: breakfast, industrialized food, Michael Pollan, real food

photo credit: rutlo

So there appears to be a previously overlooked benefit to my sinus challenges of late (and let me apologize for continually bringing up the state of my head!) A symptom I’m suffering is that the muscles which allow me to move my eyes left and right (without turning my head that way) are fatigued and motion makes it hard for me to focus on an end point.

Okay. But with care and by slowing down, I’m able to get around, to the store, bank, etc. I try to do all that late at night with less traffic and light (seems to bother me right now.) Don’t worry, though. I don’t think I’m much more of a concern on the road that normal

I make it to the grocery over the weekend. As much as I wanted to buy something fresh, natural and yummy to cook I just knew I wasn’t going to be able to stand and focus (literally!) long enough to do a meal justice.

(Please don’t share this with anyone. I’ll deny it vehemently!)

I end up buying some of the store’s deli cooked chicken (fried. Of all things ) A loaf of crusty sour dough (best part of the meal.) And a bottle of Central California Coast Pinot Noir. Oh, and a bottle of Oregon Pinot as a back up in case the first was not very good. (I’ll relay the atrocities of the wines in another post. Have to remind myself I live in Northern Arizona. They no not how to handle wines, apparently.)

The point of all the above blather is that while in checkout line I strike a conversation with the gentleman behind me. I noticed a nice array of yams, carrots and some other fresh veggies. Remarking that he must be planning something nice and yummy, he took a gander at my purchases.

I actually tried to cover the fried chicken with my reusable tote bag (see how I referenced that so you wouldn’t completely hate me ) but he caught site and commented that I must be “taking the night off from cooking”.

Ugh. Yup. Caught. Busted. I tried to explain that it had been a long week (I’d just gotten off the day job, away from home for 8 days.) He nodded politely as folks born in other countries tend to pleasantly do to those of us that think fried chicken is a food group. Just to clarify, I do not think that fried chicken is a food group!

In an effort to regain some sense that I was worthy to even speak to this man with fresh vegetation I pointed out my wholesome, and bound to be yummy Pinot Noir sampling.

He just smiled and nodded appropriately somehow sensing that these wines would end up being undrinkable. I’m sure their was inner laughter occurring as well.

Would love to hear your favorite grocery store checkout story. Drop a comment when you have a chance.

Technorati Tags: Food, grocery store, Pinot Noir

photo credit: HiMY SYeD / photopia

Plummets, I say! And that’s fine. The nearly 300 or so RSS subscribers were probably wondering if I was ever going to get around to writing on some sort of a regular basis. Well, I’m going to be but it will be less and less about technology, social media, and other online related stuff.

Instead, I’ll be focusing BoldyGoing.com on food. The real stuff, according to Michael Pollan. I cannot wait to jump in with both feet on sharing my thoughts, feelings and maybe a video now and then showing the crazy things I plan on doing in the kitchen!

So, unsubscribe if you must. Un-follow me on Twitter. Do what you have to do. But those that stick around? You’re in for some yummy fun times.

And I’ve been playing with this tag line. Drop me a comment and let me know what you think,

“What are you cooking for?”

(Some of you will know what that’s a derivative of. If you think you know, leave a comment with your guess. If you’re right I’ll send you a cookbook from my overflowing collection! Cheers!)

Technorati Tags: rss subscribers, twitter

This was just me playing around with my food! Actually, I wanted to see what sort of quality my old Samsung NV7 camera could shoot. Have to say I was not unimpressed. The key, I think will be to use my tripods and do better with lighting. Oh, I suppose shaving and having less of a rats nest for a hair cut might also improve the visuals!

Oh, and a little YouTube optimization for you. When I uploaded this footage, I originally named it Steak & Potatoes. A few days afterward I got my new Bluray Disc player with Netflix and YouTube connectivity. Just had to run the cat 5 cable to the back of the box. In fact, I’ve not even watched a Bluray disc yet, but I just got Sideways in from Netflix, so I can hardly wait!

Anyway, I mention the naming of the video because I was a total failure at searching for it through the Bluray box. Apparently the application they use is pretty much the same as the mobile app that you’d use on your smart phone. And even though Google owns YouTube and they are the worldwide leader in search, they have a tough time with the Ampersand! So, in the future, I won’t be using anything other than easily searchable letters and (maybe?) numbers. If you have any insight on this sort of thing, please leave a comment so we can all learn more about optimizing our video titles. Thanks!

Technorati Tags: Food, video, YouTube

Image via Wikipedia

Still only a few hours left in the contest being run by soon to be released Vidli.com. If you spend any time at all reading the posts here at BG, you likely know that I’ve been participating in their Social Media challenge. They designed an interesting way to weed out the wannabe Social Media “expert” types from those that can actually produce results.

The rules? Simple: sign up, get URL that points people to Vidli’s Beta Invitation sign up form, get people to sign up for their free beta program to be launched early 2010. The top five referrers are then invited to talk with Vidli folk in order to be further considered for the new position they are hiring for.

Some saw this as an exploitation of unemployed workers to further Vidli’s cause. Obviously, even in a losing effort, I never considered this to be taking advantage of me. Just like my response to those that argue Boxing is an exploitive sport: no one makes fighters step into the ring and compete based upon mutually agreeable rules and regulations.

Hell, even Nelson Mandela is on record as being a big fight fan. It’s true!

Anyway, if you are into making videos for whatever topic or niche, being able to monetize them is usually a lofty goal. Sure some of them are simply created to market other products or brands, but of the billions of videos viewed everyday online, only a super small percentage have any sort of video monetization associated with them.

If Vidli.com lives up to its self professed promises, the opportunities for you Camtasia, Pling, screen grabbing, Audacity recording junkies to make some money seems quite good.

Even though I didn’t get into the top five, I know the methods I chose to employ in this contest were sound, longer tail applications of using both social media marketing and solid content creation. There were several contestants that started emulating my techniques after they observed my efforts in action. Must be something to that, you know?

In a nutshell, this pursuit isn’t over. 2010 is just a few hours away. As such, I’m already working on taking advantage of this exercise in its fullest. As those products are ready, I’ll be sure to post information here for you lucky friends of mine that subscribe to this feed. If you don’t subscribe to this feed, no worries, just click here.

If you were among the 35 who took the time and put forth the effort to sign up thank you so very much. I am grateful that you efforted to help me out. Promise to make you proud!

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Technorati Tags: social media marketing, Video Monetization, vidli.com

photo credit: AMagill

From ripping off live MMA to trying to figure out just what works and doesn’t regarding the monetization of online video, today’s stories are all about searching for the answers.

Startup companies like Vidli.com will definitely need to be way on top of their game if they are going to go head to head with the Ooyala’s, Apple’s and Ustream’s of the video delivery world.

We shall see! In the meantime, here’s what seems to be more pertinent snippets about licensing video and delivering profitability and ROI to the content owners and network operators. Just click through on the headlines to read their entire stories.

The Future of In-Stream Video Advertising for Yu and Me

On the topic of measuring performance for online video advertising campaigns, Jayant agrees that what may be considered acceptable performance metrics for many interactive ad formats does not necessarily translate in terms of measuring the complete success of a video advertising initiative.
“In the search business and in the display business, the primary metric people use is clicks… In video, depending on the campaign, a click may not be the best metric… You have a myriad of things that you can try…”

Apple TV Talk, Talk, Talk, Talk

Once again, talking about Apple’s future as a multichannel video distributor is all the rage. But people familiar with the discussions between Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and video programmers over a possible subscription package say the talk is far ahead of the action, one reason why details are still murky. If the subscription package could be pulled off with an announcement from a single player, I have no doubt Disney (NYSE: DIS), which isn’t commenting about this but multiple sources tell me is open to the idea, would be first in line.

UFC targets online piracy. Let’s just hope it doesn’t go all RIAA on us

It’s been a running theme for the past few years, and as more and more people get faster Internet connections, and as video compression technology continues to improve, we’re going to be hearing a lot more about it. I refer, of course (of course!), to illegal streams of live sporting events. Whether you’re firing up TVAnts on Sunday to watch Arsenal take on Aston Villa, or trolling USTREAM for a live feed of WWE’s Royal Rumble, or looking for MMA-TV to watch this month’s UFC pay-per-view, you are, in fact, breaking the law. Not only are you breaking the law, but you may even be taking money away from the companies/teams/sports you purport to support. But is that all there is to it?

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Technorati Tags: Apple, Television, Video Monetization, vidli.com

As I’ve reported here over the past weeks, Vidli.com, The Official Video Licensor is launching in early 2010. They hope to provide the copyright owners of videos with the ability to monetize them with licensing fees. This instead of the current generally accepted model of placing ads in front of, during and after the playing of the video.

The other way to generate revenues to charge for subscriptions to a site that plays all of your favorite videos. In veiled promises, both Youtube and Ooyala have indicated they are leaning towards pay to watch models “in the near future”.

None of the video delivery networks are yet willing to make the stand on just when they are going to start charging visitors to watch videos they serve. It’s clear this business model, one which Vidli.com hopes to compete in is heading somewhere. Vidli just hopes it’s towards profitability.

Some of today’s pertinent stories about video monetization, pay per view (or pay per video as Ooyala’s calling it now), and video licensing:

YouTube Is the Top Social Media Innovation of the Decade

YouTube didn’t even exist for more than half the decade, but a perfect storm of increasing bandwidth, advances in Flash, and the rise of social networks (where YouTube content could be embedded) made 2005 the perfect time for the site to make its debut. The growth was meteoric, and within 18 months, the website became one of the most trafficked on the web and the company was sold to Google for $1.6 billion

Video Monetization via Pay Per View – Ooyala Interview

I Interviewed Bismark Lepe, Founder and President of Products for the online video platform Ooyala , about how their solution also allows content providers to make money from their “premium” video content via subscription models and pay-per-video (PPV) models – or what I refer to as, “video for sale.” I caught up with Bismark after his session at the recent Streaming Media West / Online Video Platform Summit in San Jose, California, where he was speaking on the panel, Defining Online Video Platforms . As the session preview stated, “There have never been more people publishing online video, and there have never been more online video platform solutions on the market. But with so many choices, it can be confusing to decide what services are right for your online video initiatives.”

YouTube Paid Video Could Come “In the Not Too Distant Future”

YouTube is serving up more than a billion videos per day and all of them are free. That could change soon, says YouTube executive David Eun. Eun, who runs partnerships for Google’s site, confirmed earlier reports that YouTube is looking to stream movies and/or TV shows that aren’t available on the site now and won’t be supported by advertising. So someone, either consumers themselves or a sponsor who picks up the tab, would need to pay for them directly. When? “In the not too distant future,” Eun says–while leaving enough wiggle room for Google (GOOG) to avoid actually saying that it is committed to any particular plan.

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Technorati Tags: google, Ooyala, Video Monetization, vidli.com, YouTube