Photo: through my eyes only/Flickr
LOCAL BITES
Beer Summit
If you like beer, clear your calendar Friday and Saturday. Over 50 brewers will be convening in this great city for the Boston Beer Summit at the Park Plaza Castle. Tickets are $42.50, which in addition to samples also includes live music. Tickets can be purchased online.
Marathon Specials
Running the marathon Monday? Worried how you’ll do your carbo-loading Sunday? Not running the marathon, but still want to get your pasta fix? You have many options, but here are three specials: Avila Modern Mediterranean will be serving two $12 bottomless pasta bowls during dinner hours Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Da Vinci Ristorante has teamed up with New Balance and will be offering a special marathon menu Sunday. Clink restaurant, once the Charles Street Jail, will be offering pasta specials Sunday night, as well as a marathon breakfast menu if you’re going out early Monday. If you’ll be running Monday, be sure to bring your race bib wherever you end up eating, because many restaurants will give specials prices or extras to marathon participants.
Fueling the Run
So, apparently gorging yourself on pasta may not be the best way to fuel your body for a marathon. Read this article from Steve Bradt and Anne Trafton at the Harvard Gazette on the science of eating for a major run. Also, look at this related endurance calculator for a very personalized plan on how much to eat the night before.
Sustainable Agriculture
Fred Kirchenmann must have a lengthy business card: President of Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture; Distinguished Fellow for the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University; manager of his family’s 3,500-acre organic farm, and more. Harvard will be hosting a free lecture with Kirchenmann, a national and international leader in Sustainable Agriculture, April 25th at 4 p.m. at Harvard’s Server Hall. The lecture is free.
NATIONAL TREATS
Sweet Confusion
One of the first choices of the day is not so easy. Sweetening morning coffee requires careful deliberation – sugar (raw or refined), aspartame, honey, agave, and more. Just take it black, or use this entertaining chart over at Grist Magazine to debate the choice.
Toxic Sugar?
You might not want to make a sugar choice at all after reading this article from Gary Taubes at the NY Times. Pediatric expert in hormonal disorders and childhood obesity, Robert Lustig’s main argument is that “sugar should be thought of, like cigarettes and alcohol, as something that’s killing us.”
Goats
Check out this article at Culinate for practical advice on visiting a goat farm like “don’t get near the attack llamas that oversee the herds on many farms.” It’s also a great read for learning how Mark Scarbrough and Bruce Weinstein wrote their new cookbook Goat: Meat, Milk, Cheese.
Take a Picture
According to Claire O’Neill at NPR, food photography is nothing new. The proof is in the (photographed) pudding – see an exhibition of food photography over the years at New York’s Robert Mann Gallery through May 14th.