By Eleanor Pierce
One of the things I find most exciting about this time of year is farmer's markets.
See, I live in Central Oregon, where the High Desert climate limits the growing season, so these open air markets are really a summertime affair.
And from the first local strawberries to the last of the summer corn, they just make me happy.
And honestly, so do some of the other not-so-healthy foods of summer, from snow cones to burgers and brats. I guess I'm just an incorrigible foodie.
So naturally, while I was rounding up a few of my favorite news items for this week’s FeedBlitz: Rewind the Week, a couple of them jumped out at me, because they were about what I'm sure you can guess is one of my favorite topics: Food, glorious food!
The Potato Salad Heard Round the World
You may have heard that the crowd-funding site Kickstarter has changed its rules. Until recently, Kickstarter rules favored—and vetted—serious creative projects.
But the company decided to simplify and boiled down its rules to just these:
"Projects must create something to share with others. Projects must be honest and clearly presented. Projects cannot fundraise for charity, offer financial incentives, or involve prohibited items."
And the biggest news to come out of all of this? One man has generated, as of Wednesday afternoon, more than $71,000 to make potato salad. "Zack Danger Brown," as he gives his name, wrote "Basically I’m just making potato salad. I haven’t decided what kind yet."
In the risks and challenges section, he added, "It might not be that good. It’s my first potato salad."
The Internet, tickled by his deadpan humor, gave far beyond the $10 budget Zack Danger Brown set. And despite the prohibition against raising money for charity, some commentators are saying he should give the money he's raised to charity, perhaps to a food bank.
Now, if potato salad's not your thing, don’t worry—there are plenty of other Kickstarters you can donate to.
Prototype Device Measures Calories in Your Food
So often, technology is blamed for making us fatter. It's as though we're all pushing toward an inevitable Wall-E future, with all of us staring at tiny computers and being whizzed around on hover chairs … but sometimes technology's advances fall on the side of health. Fitbits and the like are increasingly popular (I use an UP band), and they can help us stay active by giving us a better sense of how much we're moving—in fact, some of us can get a little obsessed with our health technology.
But food is one are where it's been a little more difficult to get a handle on how we're doing … there are apps for tracking what you eat, but you still have to do some guesswork. Was that a tablespoon of butter, or a teaspoon? How big was that scoop of chicken salad, and was it made with low fat mayo?
A prototype announced by GE may be on the way to solving these problems for us, and helping us get an accurate count of the calories on our plates. It uses microwaves to measure calories by analyzing the water, fat, and mass of the food.
One big drawback of the prototype: Currently, the food has to be blended in order to be properly analyzed. Great for smoothies, not-so-great for burritos. There's no word yet on when this device might be market-ready. We'll just have to wait, and keep guessing …
Grain Takes Farmer's Phone on 7,000 Mile Voyage
Most of us, at one point, have dropped our phones somewhere we really wish we hadn't. One farmer in Oklahoma thought he'd lost his phone for good when he dropped it in his grain silo, but nine months later, he got a call from Kashima, Japan.
Kevin Whitney told his local TV station the person asked for him by name, and asked "Did you lose a cell phone?" A factory worker in Japan found the phone in a grain shipment from the U.S., and because Whitney hadn't locked it, the worker was able to track him down.
Mashable reported that the phone was undamaged, and Whitney was able to recover the photos he'd taken at his daughter's wedding. And, in case you're wondering, the phone was protected by a Speck case—the company tweeted about the story, using the hashtag #speckinthewild.
That's it for this week, everyone, I've gotta run, I think I hear an ice cream truck outside!
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