MNN - Mother Nature Network

It’s Friday afternoon, and that means it’s time for me to give you a little weekend reading from around the web. Here are a few food related items that I thought might interest you.

THE tech revolution has been a long time in coming to the kitchen. Our coffee machines are so advanced that they can practically drive us to work, but Internet-controlled toasters and Web-enabled refrigerators became punch lines.

 

One high-tech cooking tool, however, has transformed the kitchen lives of many Americans: the cellphone.

 

It has become the kitchen tool of choice for chefs and home cooks. They use it to keep grocery lists, find recipes, photograph their handiwork, look up the names of French cheeses, set timers for steak and soft-boiled eggs, and convert European or English measurements to American ones.

Nothing says fresh and healthy like a salad. But if your life is a little hectic and you find it difficult to find the time to prepare a salad among other items for dinner, you’re not alone. Even if you do have time, how do you keep the salad fresh? You don’t want to deal with soggy lettuce or stop at the store a few times a week just to keep fresh produce on hand, so it’s helpful to know how to prepare a salad in advance so that it won’t lose freshness and keep you from making multiple shopping trips.

Panel, workshop, presentation, and roundtable proposals are solicited for The Second Annual Rural Heritage Institute at Sterling College, a three-day series of experiential academic workshops scheduled for June 16-18th 2009.

 

This year’s theme, Food, Farms, and Community focuses on the changing connections between rural communities and their food sources. The local food theme will be highlighted by discussions, field trips, and hands-on workshops featuring food historians, agricultural scientists, farmers, policy makers, journalists, artists, chefs, and food activists.

Finally, MNN’s family blogger, Jenn, did a post on making your own peanut butter. In light of the peanut butter and peanut butter product recalls, you may just feel safer making your own, and Jenn shows us how to do it easily.