New food, events, products: Some good, some not so much

By Barb Randall

The Lake Oswego Review, Jul 29, 2010

SUBMITTED PHOTO

Raspberries are ripe now and perfect to eat by themselves. Randall shares recipes today for Raspberry Red Wine Sorbet and Raspberry Mint Vinegar.

As you might expect in a newspaper office, I receive hundreds of e-mails each week from publicists promoting their clients’ foods, food- related products and events.

Some of these are really exciting – such as Willamette Olive Oil’s second annual Olio Nuovo Festa “New Olive Oil” Celebration coming up Nov. 19 through 21. This event honors the age-old Italian traditions of harvesting olives for the first press of artisan olive oil. I’ll share more information as the date draws near.

As alluring as many of these teasers are, others need more investigation. You be the judge of whether or not they are choice items.

Let’s look at the Looftlighter, a tool from Sweden that ignites charcoal in under a minute without matches or lighter fluid.

The promotional material tauted it as “the cleanest, quickest, safest, and easiest way to light your grills, smokers and fire pits.” I hit the reply button and accepted their offer to give one a spin with my own barbecue.

I can remember, back in the day we used briquettes, having a metal chimney in which we stacked the briquettes, doused ‘em with lighter fluid and then lit. Before that we used an electrical wire coil that looked not unlike a branding iron. It was plugged into an outlet (always posed a bit of a problem at tailgaters and other remote cookouts) and the coil was buried below the briquettes. It took a long time to get the coals where you needed them for cooking.

The Looftlighter is a metal tube punctuated with holes to allow airflow surrounding an interior heating unit. A 15-second touch of the tip to wood or briquettes followed by about a minute’s blast from about six inches results in crackling fire.

It eliminates the use of lighter fluid, along with their odors and tastes. It doesn’t throw flames and has an automatic on-off switch. The metal casing does cool more quickly than the wire coil of our old starter.

But why don’t we have a charcoal grill anymore?

It’s hard to use briquettes spontaneously. Even if the briquettes light quickly, it still takes time to build a bed of coals. With gas or propane you can heat the grill while you prep the food and get dinner on the table in 30 minutes easily.

Briquettes are messy and can absorb moisture, so they have a limited shelf life.

But for those who use charcoal, I thought the gadget would be great, provided they had an electrical outlet near their grill and didn’t mind shelling out $79.95 for the unit.

If you want to learn more about the Looftlighter visit www.kotulas.com or call 877-LOOFT-60.

Another release was reporting on a study by Latitude, an international research consulting firm that “explores how new information and communications technologies can enhance human experiences.”

They were spreading news about their recently conducted study that shared personal narratives about a time when shoppers needed more information while grocery shopping.

The goal of their study was to learn how technology could be applied in innovative ways to help people access food information at the moment of purchase to assist good decision-making and to create a more intelligent store experience.

Latitude’s study polled just 93 respondents. Key findings of the study showed that:

n “In the context of food-shopping, over half (56 percent) of participants expressed a primary information need relating to ‘background’ product information (health, food origins, organic, farming practices, food safety or ingredient), while 31 percent desired information that was logistical in nature (location in store, price, inventory). When shopping for food offline, the drive to discover new products is secondary to basic, in-the-moment ‘information’ needs.”

n “Convenient access to both background and logistical (often store navigation) information is highly desired for a positive retail experience; seamless integration of digital information into physical spaces recurs as a commonly implicated solution and mobile object recognition (e.g. augmented reality) emerges as a new platform for embedded information.”

n “Regardless of the type of information sought, participants (3 in 10 – which is 6X the number who actually use smartphones while shopping) were equally likely to suggest a mobile phone solution, while 43 percent of these participants specifying the use of a mobile app.”

n “Sixteen percent of the participants suggest mobile QR codes, barcodes, or RFID scanning as a solution to their own information problems, desiring to access background ‘Web’ information about a product instantly through device-driven interactions with the product itself.”

My thoughts on the study: Do we need an app for that? Couldn’t they just ask their grocer?

The tail is wagging the dog, friends. Yes, we need technology but we also need to recognize when it is time to unplug, turn off the screens, call instead of text.

An app can’t convey the relief the farmer feels when the crop finally matures, the satisfaction the fisherman feels at bringing his catch to market, or the pride of the artisan cheesemonger or baker over a prize winning batch of goodies. Even if an app can tell you how to make a dish, it won’t impart the tweak that only experience can add.

Apps can’t take the place of personal connection.

I think recent UO grad Matt Hundhammer has the right idea. He evaluates everything in life by its vitalness and nearness. That might be how I evaluate those many e-mails: Is the product truly vital to our being? Is it near – does it come from within my requisite 100-miles or does it draw us nearer together?

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