FoodLink Roundup: 09.29.08

Last week, Cupcake was located among the pumpkins in Red Hook Farm, Brooklyn. Where in the world is Cupcake this week? Post your guess in the comments.

Kick off Rosh Hashanah with Sephardic savories
Sephardic treats for the New Year holiday.

Ancient Yeast Reborn in Modern Beer
Best thing to come out of amber since the velociraptors in Jurassic Park.

An Urban Farmer Is Rewarded for His Dream
How refreshing it is to read some good news this week...

What the 21st Century Will Taste Like
Chef David Chang has an epiphany about a diet for a smaller planet. Once again, old ideas become new realizations.

Mediterranean Diet Declines, and Weights Rise
An increasingly "American-style" diet produces a generation of tubby Greek kids. So sad!

T. rex's closest living relative found on the farm
Oh, how the mighty have fallen!

New food links — and another postcard from Cupcake — every Monday morning on missginsu.com

Voting with Our Dollars, circa 1946

Follow the money, they say, and truth will reveal itself. So as we wrap up this week of 1946, let's take a quick look at where we put our dollars back in the day.

When the charts below were compiled, a national mania for chicken had not yet spread across this country. Beef really was what was for dinner. Frozen meals didn't exist. There were markets, but supermarkets were a new phenomenon. In the weekly food expenditures chart below, you'll probably notice a few differences from your own budget.



I understand thrift and home economics, of course, but I've always been a bit mystified by complaints about food expenditures. Do you really want your dinner produced by the lowest bidder?

For a great number of us the answer is, and has been, "Yes! I'll eat the cheapest things available. Bring on the 99-cent menu!"

As oil prices increase, food prices will undoubtedly rise.

Will those prices rise to the percentage of income we see at the close of the 1940s (a'la the chart below)? Probably not anytime soon. In the postwar period of the late '40s, we faced the Malthusian dilemma and chose cheap and plentiful.