food, page 3.

for those of us who are not really into typical gifting, today is just for you. check out these alternative gifting ideas; and consider something totally original, and green. alot of todays suggestions are from The Daily Green - Thanks Guys.

U.S. residents are wasting food like never before.

While many Americans feast on turkey and all the fixings today, a new study finds food waste per person has shot up 50 percent since 1974. Some 1,400 calories worth of food is discarded per person each day, which adds up to 150 trillion calories a year.

The study finds that about 40 percent of all the food produced in the United States is tossed out.

Meanwhile, while some have plenty of food to spare, a recent report by the Department of Agriculture finds the number of U.S. homes lacking "food security," meaning their eating habits were disrupted for lack of money, rose from 4.7 million in 2007 to 6.7 million last year.

About 1 billion people worldwide don't have enough to eat, according to the World Food Program.

Our friend Shelly Roche at Bytestyle.tv has created a new application for use on the Apple iPhone.  Based on her research and the article I posted back in July on reading food labels to find out if your food is GMO, Shelly has build a new iPhone app to do this for you, on the go.

So if you're in the store looking at some peaches and aren't sure if what you're seeing is organic, GMO, or synthetically sprayed, this can help.  Just put the short little PLU number into your phone and viola!  It tells you everything you can know about that fruit from that number: GMO or not, organic or not, etc.

It's a cool little app and it's available now from iTunes.  To find out more, visit the Fruit Decoder website at this link.

  From our earliest days, we as a society have learned how to binge on certain foods.  As hunter-gatherers we had to be opportunistic for certain foods were only available for short periods of time.  Our heritage was to eat whatever was currently available, for it would often disappear shortly. Once there was a period of lack, if a windfall materialized our ancestors would gorge themselves on the windfall.  Although we are not advocating binges and our first priority is to eliminate them from our behavioral pattern if we suffer from them, because binges do seem a natural part of our heritage, perhaps the goal is to learn how to deal with them.

   Today food binges are typically triggered by stress in our lives and can be controlled by regaining control over our emotions and reactions to life events so calmness pervades.   However, this could require a long process of spiritual and personal growth.  Meanwhile, if you cannot seem to avoid weight-gaining food binges, I suggest that you try for yourself a binge with two limits:

1.   eliminating non-binge foods while in a binge (in other words, stop eating other things as well so you limit yourself on calorie intake),

2.   adding low-calorie "rabbit food" at or near the beginning of each binge session.  High fiber is the best choice in that it will help promote satiation so the binge will be significantly shortened.

In a strange and poignant way, the departure of Ronald McDonald and company is like a release from the yoke of runaway capitalism and unrestrained greed, of over-processed fare and empty calories. Farewell, golden arches: you won't be missed.

As the days get longer, it's time to dip into the treasure chest of darn toot'n good food and pull out one of my all time favorites – a beef and pasta dish I shall call "Beef Jonas", because if actors and Chef stunt puppets get to name dishes after themselves, I might as well name one after myself.

This dish has a very loyal following at the House on the Hill, it's still served (though not on the menu for over a year) a good two dozen times a month. It came from a need to devise something quick and tasty after a little ordering accident and is best served with a side of garlic bread and maybe a green salad.

You'll need:

Beef Chuck Short Ribs – those cuts are rather tough and therefore cheaply available. It's simply the beefy part of the muscle trimmed from the shortribs themselves. Your local megamart should have them for about two-fifty a pound.

Onions – I generally use one onion per 2 lbs of meat, enough to feed four people.

Bacon – no comfort food dish is complete without bacon. We'll use it to get some additional textures and a whole new level of flavors into our dish. I use about 1/2 lbs per 4 lbs of beef.

Pasta – personally, I prefer Rotini pasta, since its spirally shape holds our thick sauce rather well. Alternatively any ribbon pasta will do. I try to have about a 60:40 ratio of pasta to beef.

Chicken, Beef, or Veal Broth or Stock