More on Lunch Lugging

If you're not picky about pastels, check out the Fit & Fresh line of food storage products, my favorite being the "Lunch on the Go" system. It's a veritable matriyoshka of food storage, with two small containers for side dishes or dessert, a main container for a sandwich, salad, or leftovers, and an ice pack to keep it all cold. You can even use the lid as a plate. The added bonus is that if you're a fat shit like me, the Fit & Fresh compartmentalized system helps to control portions, and small meals mean small containers means it's pretty easy to carry to work.

Clock Punchers

My friend Jeff over at the rad blog 52 Projects has a "Brought My Lunch" contest going on right now. It's simple enough--bring your work to lunch, take a pic of it, post it to his flickr group, get a chance to win a prize.

Coincidentally, over the last 2 weeks I've been trying harder to bring my lunch to work. This is for the obvious reasons, of course: healthier, cheaper, less waste. One thing I'm looking into is a convenient way of transporting multiple items to work without taking up a ton of space (being a New Yorker, I always have enough crap to carry to work everyday). One solution I'm looking into are these Mr. Bento boxes. They're a bit pricey, but I'm hoping to find a cheaper alternative. If anyone has any suggestions, holla back.

Food Miles

I buy most of my food locally at Farmer's Markets. I do it for a lot of reasons (most of them heavily influenced by Michael Pollan and the like). I am, however, extremely skeptical of the concept of "food miles." The short story is that I think it is a highly oversimplified idea and that the people who follow it with a sort of religious ferocity simply refuse to recognize the complexity of the issue (include accounting for economies of scale and the efficiency derived therefrom) and the extremely difficult overall empirical calculations that must be considered for any individual piece of food.

Anyway, I am not saying anything that hasn't already been said on blogs in the past year, in large part as part of a discussion to an Economist article reacting to Pollan's Dilemma. But the only reason I am mentioning now is to call attention to a thoughtful editorial in the Times a few weeks back that some of you might have missed.

Local Food Mags

Interesting piece in yesterday's New York Times about a consortium of local food magazines:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/29/dining/29maga.html?ref=dining

For those of you who live in New York and want to pick up a free issue of Edible Brooklyn, check out this link for locations: http://ediblebrooklyn.net/pages/articles/fall2006/pdfs/whereToFind.pdf