GMOs A Thing Of The Past, Artisan Butchers, Laughs, & More

Ah, another Thursday, another post full of delectable links you’ll want to enjoy!

This week’s line up features some of the most interesting articles I’ve ever read touching on politically incorrect nutrition, disappearing real food traditions, and the coming shift in biotechnology agriculture research. Considering how thought-provoking and heavy those posts were, I decided to throw in a laugh (thanks to The Onion) and a tasty recipe to balance it all out.

Hope you enjoy!

Whatever happened to butchers? There used to be one in the kitchen of every major hotel or restaurant and on every street corner. Now, in the era of gigantic USDA certified processing plants, butchering animals has become a lost art. Even the “butchers” at your grocery stores have been relegated to taking pre-cut meats out of large plastic wrapped containers and basically transferring them to smaller, more attractively packaged plastic wrapped containers. Tamar Adler at Civil Eats shares the story of an artisan butcher, and what he’s doing to keep this food tradition alive.

I make salmon tacos about twice a month. My family loves them. One day, I’ll post my frugal and tasty recipe, but in the meantime, you can experiment using Kelly The Kitchen Kop’s Easy Recipe For Fish Tacos.

Newsweek reports that the newest trend for biotech corporations like Monsanto is a fundamental shift away from developing transgenic, GMO foods. Apparently, they now realize that “Conventional breeding still does better [than GMOs] at building up qualities that require a complex suite of genes, such as the ability to fight off certain insects or to resist drought, which involves a host of genes that determine the way plants take up and manage water.” I think it may have to do with GMO crop yields not being nearly as high as predicted, plus the general anti-GMO sentiment common in most of the world. So what’s on their horizon? Using normal “traditional” breeding practices, but speeding them up using the tools of modern biotech science. Read the full article for the run down.

And last, but not least, the laugh you’ve been waiting for! “Green-washing” companies is all the rage these days. Frito Lay now advertises their “local” potato chips while Monsanto runs ads claiming they’re “committed to sustainable agriculture.” The Onion News Network gets on board with a hilarious piece on Taco Bell’s all-new menu. WARNING: This is pretty funny! You may catch yourself laughing out loud.