Photo: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com/Flickr

LOCAL BITES

Share Your Strength: Help End Hunger
Taste of the Nation Boston kicks off next Thursday, April 19, at 7pm at Hynes Convention Center! This is a fundraising event for Share Our Strength and its nation-wide campaign to end childhood hunger in America. The evening will feature over 70 of Boston’s great restaurants, 30 wineries, specialty cocktails, a silent auction and live entertainment. (Read the local backstory on SOS from PRK: Why Cooking Matters).

A Premeditated Riot
Wine Riot Boston is returning to the Hub next weekend. Beginning Friday, April 20, 7-11pm at the Park Plaza Hotel, you can work your way through 250 wines from all over the world — tasting, pairing, app’ing (is that a word?), getting educated and interacting in booths (no joke, that’s what they’re sayin’). Read more about this planned Riot, and buy tickets online.

Get Reel, Whole Foods
This month Whole Foods Market launches its “Do Something Reel” film festival — a series of “provocative” documentaries about food and environmental issues. First in line is “The Apple Pushers” (immigrant entrepreneurs / urban food deserts) which will be shown on April 22 in various theaters around the US. A live panel discussion will stream afterwards from Austin, TX. Click here for info on the Boston screening.

Drumlin Farm and…Chocolate
Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary in Lincoln is hosting an “Evening of Chocolate” on April 27, led by Drumlin Farm’s Tia Pinney and Walter Plante, co-founder of New Leaf Chocolates (and blogger behind Koko Buzz, featured here at PRK). Knowledgeable and passionate, Plante will share where cacao is grown, how chocolate is made, how to care for it and factors that influence its flavor and texture. Registration required.

Mobile Food Fest Now Mobilized
Last October, the tents of Occupy Boston supplanted the food trucks scheduled for appearance in Dewey Square for the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy’s “Mobile Food Fest.” With those tents gone, the Fest is back on track and big: it’s slated for May 5, with 22 trucks participating. Read more and mark your calendars.

NATIONAT TREATS

Timeline of Pink Slime
James Andrews, writing for Food Safety News, has pulled together this trajectory of what happened when in the evolution of LBTP (lean beef trimmings product, or so-called “pink slime”). The newest poll out shows that over 80% of the American public is aware of what “pink slime” is. Of that group, over 75% is “at least somewhat concerned” about its use.

Lawns and Salmon
What do they have in common? If you live on the West Coast, pesticides used to treat lawns, road shoulders, orchards and golf courses are thought to be threatening the survival of West Coast salmon. HuffPost Food reports on the “biological opinion” just released by NOAA Fisheries Service, commenting on the deleterious effects of three pesticides, in particular, in common use. The public has til April 30 to comment on the opinion.

Skip Lunch
…unless you want recommendations on what to eat and why which “taste like paste.” This is how Dwight Garner, writing for the NY Times, describes Tyler Cowen’s new book An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules For Everyday Foodies. Another quotable quote from the reviewer: “…[r]eading Mr. Cowen is like pushing a shopping cart through Whole Foods with Rush Limbaugh.” Curiosity piqued? Read on.

Do YOU Take Antibiotics to Grow Bigger?
Some of the animals we, as a nation, eat do take meds. Meaning, they’re fed antibiotics as part of a growth promotion strategy. Yesterday, however, the USDA announced the launch of a plan aimed at reducing the administration of such drugs to animals. The plan is voluntary, but at least one veterinary scientist comments that it can have a “real effect on farmers’ practices.” NPR’s The Salt reports.

GLOBAL TASTINGS

The View from Abroad
For those of you following the “pink slime” controversy here at home, it might interest you to read a sample of the BBC’s coverage of the issue and fall-out. Jamie Oliver — a Brit, after all — made the stuff before our eyes. And so it began.