Emilie de Griottes’ Pantone Tarts

Pointed out via a raven
“French food designer Emilie de Griottes for a special feature in french culinary magazine Fricote developed dessert tarts that recreate Pantone color swatches. Berries, carrots, lemon, candies, and other foods are arranged upon a tart base, whose bottom is iced in white and marked with the Pantone color represented…’
See more of her Pantone Tart creations here.

Caren Alpert’s Microscopic Photography

Life Saver, 17X Magnification

via a friend
Read Caren Alpert’s artistic statement here, and visit her gallery here.

Chicago Brewery Goes for Zero Waste

via utne reader
“A growing number of beer makers are incorporating green practices in their brewing operations, but a couple of brothers setting up a brewery in Chicago are setting their sights even higher, reports the Chicago Reader: They’re aiming for a zero-waste facility. The key is that the New Chicago Brewing Company is not a freestanding operation but part of The Plant, a former meatpacking facility that is being renovated to house a bunch of symbiotic businesses under one roof. One makes pickles, one makes kombucha tea, and one is an aquaponics operation that will produce tilapia, greens, mushrooms, and herbs…”
Read more here and here.

Our food varieties are dwindling. So why should you care?

via writesforfood
“…Most of us in the well-fed world give little thought to where our food comes from or how it’s grown. We steer our shopping carts down supermarket aisles without realizing that the apparent bounty is a shiny stage set held up by increasingly shaky scaffolding. We’ve been hearing for some time about the loss of flora and fauna in our rain forests. Very little, by contrast, is being said or done about the parallel erosion in the genetic diversity of the foods we eat. Food varieties extinction is happening all over the world—and it’s happening fast. In the United States an estimated 90 percent of our historic fruit and vegetable varieties have vanished. Of the 7,000 apple varieties that were grown in the 1800s, fewer than a hundred remain. In the Philippines thousands of varieties of rice once thrived; now only up to a hundred are grown there. In China 90 percent of the wheat varieties cultivated just a century ago have disappeared. Experts estimate that we have lost more than half of the world’s food varieties over the past century. As for the 8,000 known livestock breeds, 1,600 are endangered or already extinct…”
Read the rest here.

Sir Kensington’s Gourmet Spiced Scooping Ketchup

via notcot
“Some things were thought to be unachievable. Gourmet spiced ketchup may now be crossed off such lists…”
Be sure to go to the notcot site here to read about the beginning of their introduction to Sir Kensington’s, and visit the playful Sir Kensington’s site itself here.

Guide to Food Ingredients

via vrg
“The Vegetarian Journal’s Guide to Food Ingredients is a partial listing of common food ingredients taken from an ongoing VRG food ingredients project. The objective in this booklet is to provide an easy-to-read, useful list of ingredients commonly found in many foods and beverages that indicates whether they are vegetarian, vegan, or non-vegetarian. The guide is unique in that we place emphasis on the commercial sources of ingredients most commonly used today while mentioning other possible sources of ingredients.”
Find out more here. A free app available for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad can be found here.

The FD&C Color Palette

via idsn

“As designers, we know color is important. But when food is your medium, color can be powerful enough to influence taste—and affect health. Say hello to Blue No. 1, Yellow No. 5, and Red No. 40. These numbers make up part of an artificial color palette approved by the United States’ Food and Drug Administration. First introduced in 1906, the FDA’s Pure Food and Drug Act (and later the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act) was put in place to ensure the safety and wholesomeness of food products. Before this, more than eighty dyes were used to color food, without regulation—the same dye could be used to color both clothing and candy. Currently, the FD&C color palette features seven colors that can be used in the production of food, along with two additional colors for limited use. . . ”

Read the rest here.