Anyone that pays any attention to the food world has seen a plethora of articles on the rise of the food cart and very conceivable iteration of that concept. Those who have read this blog before know that I love the idea of eating low of the food chain and particularly invasive species. Now chef in San Francisco, Monica Martinez, is taking the food cart and sustainable food to a new level by opening an edible insect food cart.
You can’t get much lower on the food chain than insects and I’m sure no one knows what the carbon footprint of raising insects, but they can’t be anywhere near beef or chicken. So it is a win there. My one personal experience with eating insects was with fried bamboo worms in Thailand. They were actually quite good and had I not known they were bamboo worms I would have just thought they were little, salty fried crisps of some sort. Given that, I’m looking forward to trying the moth larvae tacos.
I don’t normally post about specific companies and what they are doing in terms of sustainability because it tends to turn into an advertisement, but this latest news from Chipotle combines three of my favorite things: Willie Nelson, animation and sustainable food. So, they get a post (a bit overdue too).
The news is that Chipotle has started a charitable foundation called Chipotle Cultivate Foundation, to help support sustainable food and agriculture organizations. To kick it off they drafted Willie Nelson of all kinds of fame and most notably in this case one of the founders of Farm Aid to sing Coldplay’s “The Scientist.”
It’s nice to hear the Green Restaurant Association has just released a guide to their green restaurant products. They have had a list of their endorsed green restaurant products on their website for a while now, but this new lists contains companies and products that didn’t necessarily pay to be endorsed.
The guide was specifically created for the National Restaurant Association Show coming up on May 20-24 and highlights companies exhibiting at the show. I applaud this guide because back in 2002 when I started doing research for this website the GRA required you to become a member in order to get access to their database of green products. That was actually one of the things that prompted me to create sustainablefoodservice.com. I thought and still think that information on sustainability whether foodservice or otherwise should be free to the world.
One of my favorite topics is the concept of eating invasive species. I have yet to do it myself, but there is new cookbook out to help.
A show called Ecotrope on Oregon Public Broadcasting just did a spot on eating invasive species and the new cookbook titled “The Invasive Species Cookbook: Conservation through Gastronomy,” by J.M. Franke.
They include a few recipes on their website at ecotrope.opb.org.
The green crab and Kudzu recipes sound good, but I’m not so sure about the mud snail… Happy eating!
