Five Friday Favorites-04/09/10

Five Friday Favorites posts feature news articles from the food world, recipes which look amazing, or anything I find interesting, want to share, or think readers might like too.
Leave a comment and tell me what you think!

Can you be Vegan and still eat oysters?
1. This is an interesting article about being “vegan” and eating oysters. The author thinks one can do both. It’s certainly a unique perspective which I’ve never considered. But the comments on the post…wow are people opinionated, or what? Why must we label ourselves? Sometimes I eat vegan, sometime I eat pork, do I have to give myself a label?

A “Nano-Batch” for a Cause:
2. The wonderful people who make Askinosie Chocolate are having an ebay auction to raise money for their Cocoa Honors program. Cocoa Honors is a local outreach program of Askinosie Chocolate in which a small group of students from Central High School in Springfield, Missouri will “seek to understand the cocoa industry within the context of the history, culture, and economy of Africa.  Over 18 months the students will have a complete “bean to bar” experience by sourcing the next origin of cocoa beans” at Askinosie Chocolate.

All of the proceeds from the auction will be donated to Cocoa Honors so the students can travel to either Liberia or Tanzania in the Summer of 2010 with Shawn Askinosie, founder of Askinosie Chocolate. “While there, the students, who have been working with us for several months on sourcing the beans and creating our next chocolate bar, will meet with their selected farmer group and perform a service project for the community.” basically, this means they are trying to raise money to bring these kids to Africa to see where the cocoa beans are grown and they are going to do a service project for the local community while there.

The auction is for a “nano-batch” of five bars of chocolate all hand-crafted from a one-kilo bean sample received from Lofa County, Liberia two weeks ago. According to Shawn Askinosie the tasting notes are the chocolate is “bursting with notes of red berries and jasmine, hints of roasted cocoa and coffee, with a long lingering earthy finish.” Yes, this is a lot of money for 5 bars of chocolate, but the proceeds go to a good cause and may be tax deductible.
Plus, you can say you have 5 chocolate bars that no one else in the world has!

Have the airlines gone too far?
3. This falls under the heading of “what the hell are they thinking?”
Spirit Airlines wants to charge for carry on bags. Seriously?? They also charge for checked bags, so what’s the point? Why not just charge more for the ticket? Who travels with absolutely no luggage at all? This news follows on the heels of European budget carrier Ryan Air which wants to change 1 euro for restroom use on the plane. That’s right, they want to make the plane’s toilets coin operated. What is the world coming to?

Container gardening resource:
4. I recently discovered a blog called Life on the Balcony, through a post about growing tomatoes in containers. This article has easy to understand explanations of different types of tomatoes (Hybrid, Determinate, VFNT) and recommendations for tomatoes which do well in pots. This is a great site for anyone looking to garden in a small space.

Food News Journal
5. If you are into food, then you must check out the daily email from Food News Journal. I subscribe and it’s the first thing I look at in my email every morning for my news from the food world. They offer a wealth of information all consolidated on one page. And I’m not just saying this because they listed one of my posts as “Best of the Blogs” on Thursday. I “heart” them, I really do.

So what do you think? Can you be vegan and still eat oysters? Would you be willing to pay for a carry on bag? Are you growing vegetables on a balcony or patio?