olive oil

The Hottest New Grocery Scam Could Be Lurking in Your Pantry Right Now

By Mandi Woodruff | Business Insider – Mon, Jan 2, 2012 2:55 PM EST

Celebrity chefs have made olive oil a $720 million business in the U.S., but a new book is blowing the lid off an industry that might be built in part on the backs of crooks.

That's the argument Tom Mueller makes in Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil.
“I was sitting in a dark bar with an undercover cop in Italy, and he was telling me about deals being cut with high-level politicians and millions of dollars in EU subsidies being misappropriated,” Mueller told the New York Post. “He was speaking in this hushed tone, and I had to laugh, because this was not black-market plutonium or drugs, this was olive oil.”
Mueller contends that because true olive oil is so pricey to produce, some companies have taken to doctoring bottles with chemicals and disguising cheaper oils with added flavoring.
[See also: What Will Be Cheaper in 2012]
Then they slap on fancy labels with buzzwords like "Made in Italy" and "Cold-pressed" and ship them to stores without any rigorous quality control from the FDA, he says.
It wouldn't be that big of a deal, except the knockoffs offer far fewer of the health benefits that made olive oil such a cash cow to begin with.
The Best Way to Tell a Fake From the Real Thing? 
Consumers spend an incredible $720 million per year on olive oil, according to the California Olive Oil Council. But, clearly, not all olive oil is created equally.
[See also: Healthy Resolutions and How to Keep Them]
Follow tips from COOC to be sure you know what you're buying:
Bottle color matters. True olive oil should be kept cool so bottles will be darker in color to extend shelf life.
Check the label. States like California place quality control labels from the COOC on all bottles of oil produced in the state. To earn a seal, a taste panel puts it through a vigorous chemical test.
Where you shop matters. Olive oil is definitely one of those products you never want to buy generic. Not all retailers keep a close eye on where they're sourcing their oils, so look for higher quality oils at specialty markets. When in doubt, check the label yourself to see its origin.
And don't believe everything you read. The FDA can't catch every bottle that hits store shelves proclaiming to be "Extra virgin" or "cold pressed," Mueller warns. If all else fails, try taking a whiff. True EVOO should smell a little fruity.

Food Prices

http://shine.yahoo.com/financially-fit/5-most-dramatic-food-price-hikes-2011-185000903.html

5 Most Dramatic Food Price Hikes of 2011

By Good Housekeeping | Financially Fit – Fri, Dec 23, 2011 9:42 AM EST

Over the past year in the test kitchen, we've noticed our grocery bills creeping higher and higher. Have you noticed the same thing at home? We dug around and found out which ingredients have been adding up:

1. Nuts: We noticed a price hike for pecans, and it turns out other nut prices jumped too. According to Market Analysts Mintec, the average wholesale cost of nuts, including almonds, walnuts, pecans, cashews, brazil nuts, pistachios, peanuts, and macadamias, increased 36% from April 2010 to April 2011.

Eggs

2. Eggs: The inventory of hens that lay the eggs we eat decreased in 2011, bringing egg prices up 22.8%. The good news is that eggs have always been budget-friendly and still are easy on the wallet.
Related: 6 Top Food News Stories of 2011

Apples

3. Apples: A host of reasons account for the 12.3% price increase and one of them is us, the consumers! We're buyin' up the delicious-and more expensive-varieties like Honeycrisp and SweeTango. That larger percentage of market sales contributes to the higher average price of all apples.

Potatoes

4. Potatoes: According to the Consumer Price Index, potato prices were up 11.9%. With twice the average rainfall in the east and cold spring weather across North America, crop losses and delays were significant. That, along with seed shortages, meant there were no bumper crops to drive down prices this past year.
Related: 5 Make-Ahead Holiday Appetizers

Oil

5. Fats & Oils: We don't tend to think about soybeans when greasing our skillets, but they're the reason our cooking oils cost more. Surging soybean prices in 2011 made the commodity prices of fats and oils go up 11.1%. Maybe that's a good thing as we start our New Year dieting...

How To De-Seed A Pomegranate

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/04/how-to-de-seed-a-pomegranate_n_995367.html?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl12%7Csec1_lnk3%7C116421#es_share_ended

John Reilly of The Culinary Institute of America explains that removing the seeds of a pomegranate begins even before you cut into the fruit. First you want to roll the pomegranate on the counter and squeeze it slightly to break up the inner membrane, which will help the seeds detach once you cut into it. Don't be too aggressive, however, or you'll crush the seeds inside and end up with juice. After rolling the fruit, he cuts it in half down the middle, then uses a spoon to scoop out the seeds. He then uses his fingers to separate the seeds from the membrane, putting cleaned seeds in a bowl.

Video Transcript

I'm Chef John Reilly from the Culinary Institute of America, and I'm going to show you this kitchen basic: how to deseed a pomegranate.

What we're going to do to our pomegranate is give it a little squeeze, and even pound it just a little bit. Then we're going to roll it - and you can actually hear it break up, some of that membrane that's inside. We don't want to go too far with this, though, or we'll start making pomegranate juice out of it.

We'll use a nice chef's knife and cut right across the equator of our pomegranate, and you see the juice come out already - oh, that's just beautiful, look at that!

The seeds are what's edible; the membrane and the outside of the pomegranate are not edible. Now we're going to take a spoon to our pomegranate and pop out the remaining seeds. Get your shell nice and clean; remove all your seeds. Now we're going to pick through and clean them, separating the seeds from the membrane. This takes a little bit of time - but as you can see, a lot of the membrane is broken up already, and we've got a lot of good seed that's left inside.

Now we've separated the seeds from the membrane, and the pomegranate is ready to be enjoyed.