It’s National Coffee Day today, and in honor of the hard working, creative baristas out there, here are a few shots of beautifully created coffee drinks:

Photos: Alameda Musings, BeConfused, Watch Mojo, Words 4 Mind, Gold Coast Food Guide

The 1973 sci fi horror flick “Soylent Green” depicts an overpopulated 21st Century earth. With almost no more meat, fruit and vegetables available, people are starving. They must live on a synthetic food substitute, which turns out to be made from something too horrible for words.

We recently came across a real life story with chilling similarities to this dystopian fantasy. The Weston A. Price Foundation is in a lengthy legal battle with the Illinois prison system, where meat, cheese and flour is being replaced by a nearly inedible substitute.

This from their post on the topic:

When Rod Blagojevich was elected governor of Illinois in 2002, he immediately made a change in the prison diets. Beginning in January 2003, inmates began receiving a diet largely based on processed soy protein, with very little meat. In most meals, small amounts of meat or meat by-products are mixed with 60-70 percent soy protein; fake soy cheese has replaced real cheese; and soy flour or soy protein is now added to most of the baked goods.

In Asia, soy is almost always eaten in fermented forms like miso and tempeh. Soy protein isolate, meanwhile, hardly even qualifies as food. There’s a good post on this on Nourished Kitchen blog. Weston A. Price started receiving complaints about the effects on prisoners:

Complaints include chronic and painful constipation alternating with debilitating diarrhea, vomiting after eating, sharp pains in the digestive tract, especially after consuming soy, passing out, heart palpitations, rashes, acne, insomnia, panic attacks, depression and symptoms of hypothyroidism, such as low body temperature (feeling cold all the time), brain fog, fatigue, weight gain, frequent infections and enlarged thyroid gland. Since soy contains anti-fertility compounds, many young prisoners may be unable to father children after their release.

Up until Gov. B. took over, inmates in Illinois used to farm their own food. That program was a model of healthy rehabilitation for prisoners, imbuing them with a sense of connection to the earth and living things, and providing them with fresh meat, dairy products and veggies. Needless to say, it is now canceled. On Blog Talk Radio last week, Monda Williams spoke with a former Illinois inmate, James. His stories sounded like something out of a 1950s B Horror movie.

“There’s no more real meat in the prisons,” said James. “It hurts to eat it. I’ve seen guys losing 30 pounds because they can’t stomach the food. It’s intolerable. … forced cruelty.”

James had significant stomach problems, including bleeding and severe pain. The problems continued after he left prison and started on a new diet. He said he’d never had any stomach problems before the soy was introduced into the food.

Perhaps prisoners won’t get much sympathy. However, there is now talk of giving this type of “food” to school children, the elderly in nursing homes, and even the ill in hospitals. Let’s hope sanity prevails.

What happens when you get 100,000 people together over three days to taste food from over 80 street food trucks? Add in music, dance, cooking demos and literary performances, and you’ve got the face-stuffing, finger-snapping foodie extravaganza known as Eat Real Fest. The event was held over the final weekend in August in Oakland’s Jack London Square. Here’s the tape.

After a good dinner body and soul enjoy a peculiar happiness.
Physically, as the brain becomes refreshed, the face lightens up, the colors become heightened, and a glow spreads over the whole system.
– Brillat Savarin, The Physiology of Taste

Rumor has it that in France, people will often fast all day before a big meal in order to increase their enjoyment when it arrives. After a few months of working on this blog, I was already experiencing some palate fatigue. I considered joining The Gastronauts extreme eating club for a meal of live baby octopus, or confusing my taste buds with miracle fruit, which makes lemons taste like candy apples. Instead, I decided to fast.

What can I say? If you want to experience a blast-off of taste and food appreciation, fasting works, or did for me. In fact, it worked almost too well. Food — even simple fare like rice and broth — were tastier, more exciting, and more flavorful after I’d foregone eating for a day or three. The aromas were more tantalizing; the textures more toothsome. Wine brought on a state of joyful mellowness after just half a glass.

There were several surprises:

• Wine seemed to taste more acidic than usual.
• Food such as red meat tasted significantly stronger — almost to the point of being gamey.
• Sugary food like cake tended to taste too sweet.
• The smell of cooking was far more intense. I could almost taste it in my mouth as I inhaled the aromas. This made sticking to the fast more difficult, but the payoff was more intense.
• After about a week of intermittent fasting (skipping daytime meals), the hunger subsided. There was a tendency to eat less, and to feel so full so quickly that I wasn’t able to enjoy my food as much. This might be good news for someone who wants to use this as a dieting method, but bad news for those of us who are attempting to enjoy our food more. Thus, the lesson for me was to do a longer, two- or three-day fast on occasion rather than regularly skipping meals.

In short, fasting can spark a new appreciation for food and eating. It brings you back into contact with the very thing that made you love food in the first place: the luscious smells and flavors, the time and concentration that it takes to prepare a meal worth eating, the connection with family and friends. The simple act of biting into a crusty slice of bread with fresh, creamery butter left me feeling deeply content.

I began to understand why so many religious traditions include some kind of fast. By holding off on the pleasures of the flesh, my mind and spirit were invigorated. I was reminded of what is most valuable and important in life. I also gained some small understanding of what it is like to not be guaranteed three meals a day. For all of this, I am grateful.

South Africa has been in the spotlight of late due to the World Cup, but it is much more than that. It is a country this is remaking itself before the eyes of the world. With Worthwhile Wine, Tom Lynch is taking part in that transformation, importing fair trade, sustainable South African wines to the United States.

We met Tom at the 2010 Wine Bloggers’ Conference held this summer in Walla Walla, Washington. He had an energy about him that was impossible to miss — a certain light in the eye of someone who is following his heart. He is guided by the “triple bottom line” concept coined by author Andrew Savitz, which seeks to harmonize people, profit and planet. Many South African wineries are committed to environmentally sound practices, as well as the empowerment of black employees.

South Africa also happens to be a great place to make wine, with multiple climates and soil types that support the growth of almost any varietal. The wines Tom brought to the conference stood out for their earthy, bold notes. The whimsically named “Dark Lady of the Labyrinth,” a pinotage he imports from Doolhof Winery, was a hit with many during the red wine “speed tasting.” Here are some of the Twitter comments:

Mecaela: @WorthwhileWine pouring some Pinotage with a twist*- breakfast: bacon, syrup, coffee! Try Doolhof! #wbc10
vinifico No. 8 is South African: Dark Lady of the Labyrinth NV Pinotage blend. Bacon, smoke, coffee and dark fruit. Wow. Bloody tasty. $19 USD #wbc10 5:46 PM Jun 26th
WCWineGuy WTH- a Pinotage?! ’09 Doolhof Dark Lady Pinotage: Fried bacon fat, decent fruit, smokey, not bad! smells like my kitchen #WBC10 5:51 PM Jun 26th
mommyisdating He said good with cheeses. I thought he said “Jesus.” I may be a born-again pinotage lover. #worthwhilewines #WBC10

It’s clear when talking with Tom that he has been personally changed by people and spirit of South Africa. This may be the true definition of worldliness. We, too are changed by this brief and unexpected encounter.

The author, enjoying cake at Canter's LA

She sent for one of those squat, plump little cakes called “petites madeleines,” which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell. And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me.
–Marcel Proust, “Remembrance of Things Past”

This past February my husband took me to the Napa Valley for my birthday. The high point, dinner at the vaunted French Laundry in Yountville. I knew I would enjoy it, but what I had not counted on was the path it would set me on.

For all the sophistication of our surroundings, the experience was akin to a journey back to childhood. Not because the food itself was anything like the kind of thing I ate as a kid, but because the flavors and tastes were so intense. It was like being five all over again.

Remember how, as a kid, food had a way of exploding in your mouth? The first lick of a vanilla ice cream cone on a hot summer day. A spoonful of tangy tomato soup. Burgers off the grill. When you’re young, food is loaded with flavor. Sometimes too much. The sharp bite of a raw onion, the slithery slime of overcooked spinach — all of this leads to such childhood behavior as slipping peas to the dog or hiding them surreptitiously in one’s napkin. But oh, the intensity! When you get older, it all dampens down. For me, it went almost to zero.

Not that night. Everything I put in my mouth zinged and popped. The eating process itself — lifting a fork and placing a bite of food into my mouth, chewing and swallowing — had a shiny unpredictability about it. I’d had caviar a few times in the past, but somehow I’d never understood that this was more than just salty sea eggs. The delicate, tingly burst between the teeth. The whistle, then whisper of flavor. The sea opening its briny curtains and offering a peek into our primordial origins. And the pairings!

Foie gras counterpunched by a sweet dessert wine called Jurancon. French Meursault with sea urchin. Pow! Bang! On and on the meal went, and with it, a light bulb in my head. I felt like one of those people who suddenly, after a heavenly night with the lover of their dreams, finally gets “what all the fuss is about.” Here I was, 43 years old, and I was finally getting what all the fuss was about when it came to the palate. I was tasting my food for the first time. Or, should I say, tasting it once again.

On a recent episode of “No Reservations,” Food Porn 2, Anthony Bourdain turns to chocolatier Jacques Torres and begins waxing philosophic about how the hot chocolate he’s drinking reminds him of his mother taking care of him when he was little. He quickly adds, “of course, your chocolate is so much better than my mother’s.” And surely now, if he were to hunt down the powdered Nestle Quik and bottled milk of his childhood, mix them together and heat them on the stove, they would not taste anywhere near as good. They might not even remind him of his childhood. Proust notwithstanding, my experience is that as adults we need the flavor cranked up in order to make it taste the way it once did.

So perhaps what really makes a foodie is a willingness to dive headlong into that nostalgia. To remember, in spite of or perhaps because of the years, what the act of tasting used to do to us. Several years ago, when my nephew Diego was about a year old, we took a walk around the back garden of his house. He began to dig with his hands into the soft earth. Before I could stop him, he shoved a handful of soil into his waiting maw, a wicked grin spreading across his face. He didn’t spit it out or make a face. He kept smiling as I did my darndest to clean it all out before he swallowed too much of the stuff. But it was clear to me that he had to — just had to know — what that rich, earthy smelling stuff felt like on his tongue. I don’t know where that curiosity goes. But having recovered a scrap of it, I am much changed.

You know the times they are a-changin’ when a food truck entrepreneur wins “Best New Chef” from Food & Wine. But that’s just what happened to Roy Choi of LA’s Kogi BBQ. Once known as “roach coaches,” food on wheels operations are getting a new lease on life. Even HBO’s “Entourage” has given the craze a nod, showing Matt Dillon eating some of Baby’s Badass Burgers.

How did all this mobile foodie madness spring up — seemingly overnight? It’s the perfect storm: an economy that is driving demand for cheap, delicious eats. An adventuresome generation that’s grown tired of corporate burgers. A phalanx of food trucks left unused as the movie industry picks up stakes and moves its operations to cheaper locales such as Budapest. All of it neatly tied together with the rise of Twitter, which allows food trucks to be tracked down wherever they choose to park and serve.

We set out to chronicle this long tail phenomenon, traveling to Los Angeles for four days of near constant food truck chasing. To our surprise, the standout was La Oaxaqueña, an old school taco truck that is more or less permanently parked on Venice Boulevard. But there were other winners — such as the bacon ice cream brioche sandwich from Coolhaus, the short rib tacos from the now famous Kogi BBQ, and a very decent grilled cheese sandwich from (what else?) The Grilled Cheese Truck.

Below are links for trucks featured in this video. Many more can be found on Roaming Hunger.

La Oaxaqueña
Kogi BBQ
Coolhaus
Grilled Cheese Truck
Buttermilk Truck
Komodo
Mrs. Beasley’s Cupcake Van

Special thanks to:

The Daytons & Peros for their kind hospitality
Razi Ben-Ezzer for music

We are in beautiful Walla Walla, Washington for the Wine Bloggers’ Conference. Much of the action is happening online, on Twitter, to be precise. Here’s how it’s rolling.

Click Here

This weekend we’ll be joining 300+ others who will converge on the little town of Walla Walla, Washington for the annual Wine Bloggers’ Conference. To prepare ourselves, we’re packing extra water bottles, reading up on Washington wines, and generally girding ourselves for an onslaught of tasting, talking, tweeting, slurping, spitting, spewing, reading and bleating about all things grape. We can’t wait!

Meanwhile, here are a few pre-conference posts we thought summed up the spirit of the thing nicely (pun intended):

Bean: 10 Last Minute Tips For Walla Walla Wine Bloggers Conference 2010
Seriously good tips. (Reposted by Joel Vincent)

Wild Walla Walla Wine Woman: Reunions, Family and Wine Bloggers
Really, the name of this blog would be enough for us. As it happens, the post is lovely.

Luscious Lushes: WBC 101!
This is from last year but is just as relevant and helpful as ever. We plan to take all (or, okay, most) of this advice.

DrinkNectar: Wine Bloggers More Than The Average Joe
Wine blogging really has come a long way!

Follow the event on Twitter through the hashtag #WBC10. The activity has already started, and no doubt it will reach a fever pitch as the conference gets under way. See you there.