I feel really bad for doing another "Tasting Menu," but I started working with someone I admire a whole lot in my spare time. It's eating into my writing time. Well, that and the fact that I have all these things I'm trying to write introductions for and I hate the intros I come up with right now. I think I killed a dozen last week.

First "course" is a bit on how what the mother eats during pregnancy can influence a child's palate. This is actually really interesting and supports some other work done at Monell and INRA on how child's taste preferences are formed early on.

Over on Grist is a thought provoking piece on flavor and nutrition. There's a common belief that taste buds are linked to finding nutritious foods, but no one has ever really looked at nutrition of a food and its flavor. Currently the USDA doesn't differentiate, nutritionally, between an AgBiz tomato and one grown by a small farm. But, the green market/small farm tomato tastes better than the mealy, watery, tasteless things that hit supermarket shelves.

The great thing about summer is the produce that's in season. The bad thing about all that produce are the damn fruit flies. Everywhere. I don't normally keep Fly-Nap around in the house, because the stuff stinks and reminds me too much of Bio1 and Genetics. However, there is an alternative. It has been working great. Now I can enjoy my figs in peace.

Genetically modified crops, pesticides, organics and the politics are fairly contentious. In some areas it is a downright ugly debate. And while I believe in the science that leads to GM crops, the implementation of GM crops leaves much to be desired. A good case of this is a good product, it could lead to something better, but Monsanto/Syngenta/ADM are real dicks about how their stuff is grown. Thus leaving a bad taste in the farmers who buy from them and their neighbors. That said, it's nice to see a case of GMO contamination ending up with the contaminators sued, and not the people whose crops were contaminated.

Cargill recalled a bunch of contaminated ground turkey, if you hadn't heard. I kind of want to know who is buying ground turkey and why? Maybe it's just California, but the whole bird is usually cheaper (lb for lb) than the ground product.

And finally, I've indulged in some pretty pricey stuff before, but I'm not sure I want to pay $250 for ice cream with flecks of gold. That's a pretty good bottle of wine, a couple bottles of good wine, a few ounces of caviar or a couple textbooks. Right now I think I'd pay for the books first.