For The Love of Food

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.

Before we get started, I want to send you over to Quirky to help a little more with our farmers market bag design. We’ve already picked a winner, but now we’re looking to add features that will take it from awesome to super duper awesome. I know some of you are brilliant, so please come by and submit your ideas and modifications. Even if you don’t have anything to add, please vote on your favorite features.

After a lot of time off, we have some wonderful and inspiring stories this week. 3 simple recipes could set you up for life in the kitchen, more farmers markets are staying through the winter, and the “all carbs are better than all fat” dogma is finally being kicked to the curb.

I read many more wonderful articles than I post here each week. If you’d like to see more or just don’t want to wait until Friday, be sure to follow me on Twitter (@summertomato) or the Summer Tomato Facebook fan page. For a complete list of my favorite stories check out my links on Digg. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

Links of the week

• 3 Recipes to change your life and the world <<Just getting started cooking and eating healthy? It’s much easier than you think. All it takes is 3 basic recipes to get started, according to Mark Bittman. (New York Times)
• More Farmers’ Markets Expand To Year-Round <<How awesome is this?! Seems voting with your fork (and dollar) is actually working. Don’t worry America, better food and markets are heading your way–all year! (Huffington Post)
• A reversal on carbs <<Hopefully this is not news to anyone here, but it’s good to see that science is finally overtaking decades of nutrition dogma. Truth FTW! (Los Angeles Times)
• Americans Falsely Believe Their Diet Is Healthy <<Possibly related to the above stated dogma, 90% of the population of the most unhealthy country ever thinks they’re doing a darn good job in the nutrition department. Yikes. (Discovery News)
• Bread at top of UK sodium-rich food purchases <<BS of the week. The BS here is not the finding (it’s hard to argue with), it’s the conclusions drawn by the scientists and, therefore, the journalist. Data says a bunch of crappy processed food is filled with sodium–bread being highest on the list–and the conclusion is not that we should eat less crap, but that we should ask food manufacturers to add less salt. Somehow I doubt everyone would become magically healthier. (Medline)
• Year In Dieting: Distraction, Noise Cause Overeating <<More evidence that being present and eating mindfully can help curb overeating. (NPR)
• Phys Ed: Does Exercising Make You Drink More Alcohol? <<Cause and effect still isn’t sorted out, but isn’t this interesting? I know for sure it applies to me and most of my friends. (New York Times)
• Fishy diet comes with lower risk of stroke <<Good news for fish eaters, bad news for vegetarians. It’s still not clear what exactly in fish makes it so healthy, but isolating omega-3s hasn’t helped much. (Medline)
• The Five Obstacles to Eating Right <<This looks like it might prove to be an interesting series on the obstacles to healthy eating. Probably worth following along. (Slate)
• Stovetop “Sous Vide” Episode 1: The Best Duck Breast Ever <<Sous vide without spending $450? Yes please. (Food Wishes)

I’ve talked before about how much thought and preparation I put into getting all my farmers market produce home undamaged. Though the tactics I use work decently well, they are by no means perfect and are more than a little bit of a hassel.

To address my farmers market bag problem more directly I’m partnering with Quirky, and we need your help. Call upon your inner super genius to help us design a new farmers market bag that will let me shop at the farmers market without coming home to a bag of crushed tomatoes.

If you aren’t familiar with Quirky, they turns great ideas into amazing products. For this Brief project they have been cool enough to wave the normal submission fee. So if you have an idea for a revolutionary new farmers market bag, submit it at Quirky by next Monday. The winning design will be chosen on Friday, December 10, and will be produced and sold to shoppers.

Submit your ideas here

Learn more about the Quirky process here

The official write up on my project is below. Watch the video for more info about my bag problem.

I can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Brief #9: Let’s Make The Perfect Farmers Market Bag

For this week’s Quirky Brief, we’re partnering with Darya Pino, a San Francisco-based scientist, foodie, and writer. Her popular blog, Summer Tomato, offers tips and advice on healthy eating, especially for foodies in urban areas.

When we first met Darya, she told us all about a food shopping problem that drives her crazy. Whenever she shops at her local farmers market, she inevitably comes home to bruised produce.

She’s taken to bringing two separate bags – a big one for heavy stuff and a smaller one for delicate fruits and veggies — along with a Tupperware set for isolating vulnerable produce and a handful of biodegradable plastic bags for separating purchases.

Four different products, just to go shopping? There’s gotta be a better way to port produce.

Quirky community and Summer Tomato readers, let’s unite to create the perfect farmers market bag.

We flew out to San Francisco to check out the problem firsthand at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, and we captured the crux of it in the video. Watch it, and once inspiration strikes, head to the Invent tab on Quirky.com to submit your idea for free!

Submit your ideas at Quirky