Outwester.com

2007 James Beard Awards

Kudos to the winners, and their lucky patrons.

The Beard Awards honor the finest American food - USATODAY.com.

Taste a Big Apple dipped in fine chocolate - USATODAY.com

We're off to New York in three days. May need to amend the agenda: Taste a Big Apple dipped in fine chocolate - USATODAY.com.

Travelers Tales: the World is a Kitchen

Kimchi 김치
Originally uploaded by Nagyman.

kimchi
Living in Korea, kimchi was the staple. Back stateside, the cravings panged. First I bought it, then I made it, to make Mr. Cho proud.

Food and travel are deliciously intertwined, and cooking is a great way to get immersed into a culture. I learned it making kimchi in my Fort Mason backyard, and love to reconnect with true tales of food cultural immersion.

The World is a Kitchen, the new Travelers Tales anthology, bridges cuisine and culture in 37 stories from writers around the world. With an extensive directory and fab accompanying website, the book speaks to its growing community.

36 Hours - New York Times Google Map

Weekend travelers take note - Google Maps and the New York Times have partnered to create the 36 Hours - City by City guide.

 

A compilation of the Times' popular Friday Escapes pieces, the guide offers a map of America with rolliver tags indicating its archive of destinations. Articles cover offerings in less-heralded cities for travelers and smaller getaways towns, framed from Friday happy hour Friday to a late Sunday brunch.

Whether Houston hip hop or Minneapolis theater, Carolina bluegrass or Lake Tahoe trekking, the guide contains surprises worth investigating before you depart.

Coffee Travel the Fair Trade Way

Post-lunch Friday, so its time for a coffee jolt. While we're lucky enough to have Peet's Fair Trade Blend on drip here at Lonely Planet USA, not everyone has access to such satisfying beans. Not only is the hybrid Central American/Indonesian blend smooth, rich and full-bodied, it supports one of our key sustainability initiatives: fair trade coffee.

It's a simple concept: fair trade coffee indicates a willingness to pay coffee farmers -- who work long, demanding hours in developing nations worldwide -- a fair wage for their toil and labor. By agreeing to compensate farmers at a minimum rate of $1.26/pound, and providing technological and financial assistance for switching to organic farming, coffee importers become fair trade certified.

Importers in turn can offer products that meet not just higher ethical and environmental standards, but deliver to consumer truly superior quality and flavor.

Fair trade also helps coffee farmers who've been drastically impacted by changes to the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which has flooded international coffee markets and dropped the wholesale coffee price by two-thirds, good for consumers but devastating to coffee growers.

In particular, Nicaraguan farmers have been decimated, though they're trying to work through things as evidenced in this Fresh Cup magazine piece, A New Nicaragua.

Progresses aside, the situation needs continuing support. Take action for fair trade by voicing your opinion, or shopping with thought, or take it a step further by joining the harvest on the Global Exchange Reality Tour Nicaragua: Fair Harvest Exchange Program.

For more coffee info, try the Coffee and Conversation weblog. For all your Nicaragua travel needs, check out the new Lonely Planet Nicaragua guide.