- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The bees did it.
Well, they enabled it.
Take a look at one of May Berenbaum’s favorite honey recipes and you’ll know why she calls it “Apiscotti” or “Bee-Enabled Biscotti.”
Seven of the 12 ingredients (butter, honey, almond extract, nutmeg, cranberries, cherries, and almonds) depend on the pollination services of the honey bee, Apis mellifera.
May Berenbaum, professor and head of the University of Illinois Department of Entomology, kindly shared the recipe below.
You may know her as an entomologist, an administrator, a honey bee researcher, a book author, a columnist (American Entomologist), an opinion...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Four years ago, a multi-state outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 in fresh baby spinach gripped the nation. Nearly 200 people in 26 states came down with the disease. Two elderly women and a 2-year-old boy died.
The outbreak was also devastating for the industry. The contaminated spinach was traced back to Central California, where growers produce 80 percent of the nation’s leafy greens. Scientists, farmers and regulators worked together to restore public confidence in products that are widely considered part of a healthy diet. Regulators and farmers created the California Leafy Green Marketing Agreement to establish a culture of food safety on leafy greens farms and...
- Author: Jim Coats
Harvest time in California is almost a year-round affair in one area or another: winter lettuce and spinach in Salinas, early spring strawberries along the South Coast, summer squashes, herbs, and tomatoes galore, hays and grains as long as the dry season lasts, and countless other food and fiber crops through the year.
Like grapes, walnuts, apples and olives, the almonds get their turn in autumn. On the right day, you can watch as a Rube Goldberg-like machine rolls through a local nut orchard, grabbing hold of tree trunks one by one and shaking them so hard it'll rattle your bones, but just hard enough to knock loose practically every nut on the tree without damaging its trunk. A sweeper follows next, gathering up nuts in their...
- Author: John Stumbos
A new winery, brewery and food-processing complex began operations this fall at UC Davis. Part of the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science, the technologically sophisticated facilities will be used to teach students, conduct research, and solve practical problems related to foods, beverages and health.
The south wing of the new complex is home to the August A. Busch III Brewing and Food Science Laboratory, which includes the brewery, general foods-processing plant and milk-processing laboratory. The complex’s north wing houses a new teaching-and-research winery. The complex is adjacent to a 12-acre teaching-and-research vineyard and across a courtyard from the departments of Food Science and Technology,...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The season of sweets begins for many children at the end of October with a large bag of trick-or-treat candy, and then continues in earnest with the traditional candy-giving holidays of Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Easter. Children's access to so much candy has many parents asking how much is too much.
Candy occupies a very tiny slice of MyPyramid, the USDA’s dietary guideline. MyPyramid places candy in a category called “extras.” For children aged 2 to 8 years old, it recommends no more than 170 calories per day of “extras” – which would be two-thirds of a Snickers bar, one pack of Starburst or 17...