India farmers doing well, but having trouble in marketing products

PASHU PALAN MELA   –   The Tribune

Say sans processing units, they fail to export produce

Manav Mander

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, March 18

Farmers are thinking out of the box and coming up with various dairy and meat-based products, but marketing remains a major challenge before them.In the absence of processing units, these farmers sometimes fail to export their products. Farmers who had come to display their products during the Pashu Palan mela by Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University share that marketing was a major hurdle coming in their way.Doraha-based Sukhwinder Singh, president of Piggery Farm Association who has come up with his brand “Can Meat” said his brand sells chicken pickle, mutton pickle and pork pickle and has recently launched ready-to-eat non-veg snacks such as nuggets, seekh kebab and meat balls.“The shelf life of these pickles is 3 months and no preservatives have been used in it,” Sukhwinder said.“Marketing of products is a major issue before us. The university has helped us technologically, but we lag behind when it comes to marketing. The government should provide some incentives and launch some scheme for small producers so that they can market their products easily,” he said.He said more than 50 per cent of his clientage comprises NRIs, who pick their stuff or ask someone coming to their country to get these pickles. “The demand for ready-to-eat food is there, but when it comes to pickle, especially pork, people here are a little reluctant,” he said.Sukhwinder recently went to Germany, Italy and other countries and says there was a huge scope for these products, but sadly he was unable to export as he lacks proper processing unit.“Importers from other countries ask for proper processing units before placing orders so it becomes a major hurdle for us in grabbing the overseas orders,” he said.Diary farmer Resham Singh, who has recently launched processed milk, curd, butter, lassi and kheer, said marketing was a major issue faced by him. “My products are popular in the nearby areas, but I want to expand my business and grow my business on a larger scale. Marketing of product is a major problem I face at present,” he said.

Sally M. Kingsbury Sarcoma Research Foundation hosts annual rose sale

The SMKSR Annual Knockout Roses Sale is around the corner – April 16th and 17th. They are introducing two new roses this year – the Drift Rose in peach and the Cinco de Mayo in lavender/red orange. Of course you can also purchase the ever popular KnockOut double red, Grandma Yellow or Livin’ Easy Superstar Orange. Visit their website at www.knockoutsarcoma.org to order now.

Based in New Braunfels, Texas the mission of the Sally M. Kingsbury Sarcoma Research Foundation is to help fund research facilities dedicated to finding a cure for sarcoma cancer.

Since their inception in 2007 as a 501 c 3 organization, the Foundation has granted over $269,000 to sarcoma research  facilities, and have been listed in published medical reports acknowledging our contributions to new sarcoma cancer research.

Texas Tito’s President, Chris Snider, is proud to be an active member of the SMKSR Board of Directors.

Are You Going to Eat That Pickle?

By Philip Susser   –   The Cornell Daily Sun

On an unseasonably warm Wednesday morning, some friends and I sat on Collegetown Bagels’ patio, in true senior fashion, as I waited for a California Sunrise to be delivered to our table — the perfect start to, what was expected to be, a carefree and lazy weekday. As a senior, opportunities to engage in such free-spirited disregard of the humdrum, cyclical five-day week and two-day weekend are surely numbered. My friends were getting antsy, as I was the last to order in our group, and they had long finished their Zabs’ and assorted egg sandwiches. With relatively poor vision — and having forgotten my glasses at home — I avoided “people-watching,” the norm during such highly trafficked hours. Instead, I opted to fully engage with my table — an increasingly anxious and tense situation emerged as the CTB employees repeatedly scurried across the outdoor seating with everything but my guacamole infused meal. One by one, these so-called “friends” of mine unabashedly brought their compost-compatible plates to the garbage, hinting at an impending return to our Cook Street home. My Cali-Sunrise was nowhere to be seen. But, at the very moment I began to lose all hope of attaining any semblance of satiety that morning, and flirting with the idea of a quick trip to 7-11, I noticed something familiar, yet peculiar. A complementary vegetal treat, resting on a friend’s plate. Knowing this would contribute to the 30 to 40 percent of the total food supply that goes wasted in the U.S., I spoke up — “are you going to eat that pickle?”

While pickles have been around for thousands of years (the first recorded pickle was linked to Ancient Mesopotamia in 2400 B.C.) and have cultural implications elsewhere (in Fiji, pickles are a part of the courting process), they have a strong New York identity. Many are aware of the scores of fresh-faced immigrants in lower Manhattan, with unapologetically heavy Eastern-European accents, who made a living off such mobile and easily produced foodstuff. Poor tenement dwellers enjoyed the fresh taste of the pickle and, as is often the case with food and smell, the pickles were strong nostalgic devices, bringing them back, so to speak, to their home countries. The Pushcarts and various pickle institutions began to dwindle over the years. Gus’s Pickles, arguably the most esteemed storefront of them all, closed up their Lower East Side shop in 2002, and are now producing pickles at a much larger scale in a Bronx factory.

That is not to say that pickles do not still remain a widely appreciated treat. They are still very “New York.” The intensity of the sourness, the bruised bumpy exterior, the audible crunch — all in line with the grit and ferocity of the city that never sleeps. United Pickles, the aforementioned New York producer put it best: “Mention pickles in a conversation and talk naturally turns to New York City.” Stephen Leibowitz, the owner of United Pickles now finds himself in a niche market, wholly unique from the dime-a-dozen pickle businesses at the turn of the 20th century. He is the kind of guy who likely comes prepared to interviews with an arsenal of corny pickle jokes ready to go. “If you’re in a pickle, call United Pickle,” he says. It sounds like a late-night infomercial, but it’s got a ring to it. In case you were wondering, the origins of the idiom “in a pickle” are murky, yet some have attributed the phrase to Shakespeare.

Few foods in today’s day-in-age come with as much personality as the pickle. They are elusive and slippery, funny and phallic. Even just saying the word pickle is funny. Heavily processed food with ambiguous origins provides a sense of unease for the end-user. Where did this meat come from? Is this really chicken, or does it just taste like it? I can’t believe it’s not butter! But the pickle, particularly from factories such as United Pickle, provides a sense of authenticity and nostalgia, a taste of older and simpler times. Sure, there was rampant poverty, living conditions that make College Ave look like Park Ave and polio — but way back when, for just a nickel, you could walk up to a guy in the street and buy the best damned pickle in the country.

Much of the history of the pickle has been passed down generations, with little formal recording of the nature of its cultural relevance — quite different than the mountain of information that comes with the study of wines. And as I currently sit to prepare for a Wines midterm, I can’t help but reflect upon the interconnected nature of food and culture. Even something as seemingly mundane and ridiculous as a pickle can be studied and appreciated for its place in history. To put it even more broadly, oftentimes, the most interesting stories are those that aren’t always being told. A cognizance and proclivity of such overlooked information will be quirky, but it will also certainly not be trite.

A Perfect Afternoon Snack: How to Make a Fried Chicken Sandwich

By Patricia Tan   –   Parent Herald

What type of sandwich do you prefer? Chicken salad sandwich, egg sandwich, turkey sandwich or chicken sandwich?

Try a new, delicious friend chicken sandwich recipe today that is as easy as pie. Your afternoon snacks, dinner or any meal of the day don’t have to be boring. Here are some simple steps to make the perfect fried chicken sandwich.

James Briscione, the Director of Culinary Development School of Culinary Arts, says on The Daily Meal that a fried chicken sandwich has four basic components: bread, chicken, pickles and sauce. According to People, a soft potato roll for the bun will do. Nothing more, nothing less.

For the pickles, you may use your preferred type of pickles such as dill pickles. If you want to add extra spice to your fried chicken sandwich, you can also try making quick pickles by combining cucumber, vinegar, oil, brown sugar, salt and pepper.

For the main ingredient, the fried chicken, All Recipes notes that brining the chicken first before cooking is an effective way to help make the meat tender and juicy. This simple cooking technique makes a huge difference when it comes to texture and taste.

For the sauce, you may choose any kind of mayo. However, People recommends using an umami mayo. According to The Guardian, umami was recently recognized by Western scientists as the “fifth taste” after salt, sweet, sour and bitter.

There are a lot of recipes for the umami mayo that you could try. But for this simple sandwich, you can achieve the umami flavor by simply combining roasted shallots, garlic, shrimp paste and fish sauce (optional).  Spread some Umami mayo on each side of the buns, put the fried chicken in between, finish with some of your preferred pickles, and, voila, you have the perfect fried chicken sandwich.

 

 

Rabbi to reveal secrets to pickle making at Chabad of South Palm Beach

By Betty Nelander   –   Palm Beach Daily News

Daily News Staff Writer

A dilly of an event is planned for Sunday that will have participants puckering up.

That’s when the Pickle Factory, a kosher pickle-making workshop, will take place at 3 p.m. at Chabad of South Palm Beach, 224 S. Ocean Blvd., Manalapan.

Rabbi Pickle, also known asMendy Margolin, hails from pickle country — Brooklyn — and has a knack for preparing the sour, green and delicious cuke, according to the Chabad.

People will learn the history and art of pickle making, gain an understanding of the true meaning of kosher and leave the workshop with their own container of pickles, the temple says.

To date, Margolin has shared the joy and crunch of the Kosher pickle with more than 12,000 folks, young and old.

Tonight, meanwhile, the Chabad will host a Cuban-Jewish Shabbat featuring Richard and Madi Brener, who will share their first-hand Cuban Jewish experience. Dinner will feature Cuban food and history.

Call 351-1633 or email office@chabadspb.org to reserve.

Texas Tito’s Sponsors World’s Only Pickle Parade & Palooza!

MANSFIELD, TX — When you think St. Patrick’s Day you think green, and what’s greener than a good old fashioned pickle?

And no one knows pickles better than Mansfield: The Pickle Capital of Texas.

Saturday they hosted their annual, Worlds Only St. Paddy’s Pickle Parade and Palooza!

“It’s the best! You know how they say, ‘Keep Austin Weird’? Let’s keep Mansfield a little weird, too!” said Kendra Myers.

Yeah and this town’s peculiar passion for pickles was on full display.

The ode to marinated cucumbers brought in everyone from Elvis impersonators to Pet Pig Owners.

“We do parades all over Dallas/Ft. Worth and some in town and out of town, but this is the best!” said Eric Ellis, a member of the World Famous Wheeling Elvi.

And what Pickle Parade would be complete without the Pickle Queens?

“It’s a secret process. It kind of is bestowed upon you. One day you just wake up and you have red hair and a tiara” explained one of the parade’s Pickle Queens.

So yeah it may seem like one of Texas’ strangest traditions, but as far as we can tell,  Pickles and St. Paddy’s go like peas in a pod.

Parading Pickles

There will be Elvis impersonators doing stunts on mini bikes, the Pickle Queens, Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and an Elvis tribute concert with Kraig Parker.

Mansfield, Texas’ St. Paddy’s Pickle Parade and Palooza will take over downtown Mansfield with nearly 100 parade entries, a pet parade, booths, bounce houses, concerts and a movie.

There will be Elvis impersonators doing stunts on mini bikes, the Pickle Queens, Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and an Elvis tribute concert with Kraig Parker.

This is a big dill for an event that “started four years ago on a whim to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day,” said John Pressley, president of the non-profit Pickled Mansfield Society that produces the event.

“It really has become a community tradition,” Pressley said.

The fun starts Friday night with a free showing of the original “Grease” film at 7 p.m. in the amphitheater in Town Park, 500 N. Main St. Early Saturday morning there’s a fun run, 5k and 10k that winds through the streets of Mansfield, starting at 8 a.m. To sign up or for more information, go to pickleparade.org.

The Pickle Palooza kicks off at 10 a.m. in downtown Mansfield. The community stage, which is new this year, will feature dance troupes, choirs and other local performers. There will also be a main stage with performances by Run 4 Cover, Parker and the MP3 band.

No St. Patrick’s Day parade would be complete without beer so be sure to check out the beer tent, sponsored by Fat Daddy’s and opening at 11 a.m., and lots of things to eat in the food court, which opens at 10 a.m. And there will be shopping in the 75 vendors stretched along Main Street. Official parade t-shirts are available at Ray’s Pharmacy, 1831 E. Broad St.

There will also be a pet parade on Oak Street at 10 a.m. with dogs dressed up in various costumes ranging from pickles to Elvis. Awards will be given out to the best dressed.

The full parade down Main Street starts at 1 p.m. and had about 90 entries last week and could have more by Saturday.

Children can enjoy face painting, bounce houses, rock wall climbing and other activities in the Pickle Playground.

“You don’t have to spend a dime,” Pressley said.

And everyone can mix and mingle with the Pickle Queens.

These 16 ladies, instantly recognizable by their green dresses, tiaras and red wigs, have become “Mansfield’s rock stars,” Pressley said.

Pickle Queen Paulette Uzee said it’s an honor being a part of the event, especially interacting with the children.

“They ask great questions about us being queens,” she said. “It just makes them feel good. That’s what we’re there for, to lift up the community.”

Attendance keeps steadily growing, too.

“The first year we had 5,000 people, then 10,000,” she said. “We hope to have 25,000 people come to Mansfield so they can see what we do there.”

They’ve learned from past events, too, with the new PlainsCapital Bank parking, which will offer free parking for 700 vehicles on a closed Main Street just north of downtown.

If all this doesn’t get you pumped, maybe Jennifer and her fellow Cowboys Cheerleaders will. A team of four cheerleaders will be in the parade, shaking hands and maybe even posing for selfies with fans.

“We’re excited to meet people who are Cowboys fans,” she said. “People are pretty diehard out there. Definitely expect us to be pretty excited.”

St. Paddy’s Pickle Parade & Palooza

7 p.m. Friday; 7 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday

Downtown Mansfield

www.pickleparade.org

Social media uproar over discontinued mustard pickles

If social media is any indication, many people in Newfoundland and Labrador aren’t taking kindly to the announcement that a popular brand of mustard pickles is being discontinued.

Smucker Foods of Canada Corporation has decided to no longer produce pickles under its Zest and Habitant labels.

Many have taken to Twitter and Facebook to voice their disappointment, and share photographs of themselves stocking up on the popular product.

Some people got creative, and penned poetry — like this Ode to the Mustard Pickle which states, “Dear Mr. Zest and Habitant, why do you have to go? You are so sweet and mustardy, and we just love you so.”

Others, like Gregory Crane, used the gift of song to sum up his feelings on the subject.

The province’s Heritage Foundation has started collecting mustard pickle recipes, in an attempt to preserve the traditional treat.

Even local politicians have suggestions on how to handle the ordeal.

The effects of the pickle crisis have seeped into popular search engines.

Some think it will go down in the history books, calling the situation the Great Mustard Pickle Disaster of 2016.

And forget stocks and bonds, some see great investment opportunities in the mustard pickle market.

Not to mention potential black market opportunities for selling the pickles.

One person said they stocked up on 96 bottles of the Sunday side dish, and will sell them for inflated prices on the popular online classifieds site Kijiji.

But be warned: The seller said they “will not accept Jamie Oliver stamps as a trade.”

The province-wide panic even made national news headlines.

You can’t go to a grocery store without seeing something like this.

Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have truly bonded over the shared experience.

New Braunfels Career & College Fair Tomorrow

The Chamber’s Business-Education Partnership Committee is hosting the 3rd Annual Career & College Fair on Tuesday, March 8 from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the Civic Convention Center. Nearly 40 booths will be set up with representatives from area businesses, colleges, universities and technical/vocational training facilities on hand to talk with students and their parents about the post-secondary opportunities that are available to them. The fair is free to attend and provides a great venue to learn about what lies ahead for students preparing for life after graduation.

Chris Snider with Texas Tito’s is currently the Chairman of the Business-Education Partnership Committee which acts as the education advocate for the community, acting on the recommendations of the Mayor’s Higher Education Task Force.

‘Love, Loss’ And Spicy Pickles In Padma Lakshmi’s New Memoir

By NPR Staff – NPR

Padma Lakshmi is probably best known as the host of the TV show Top Chef on Bravo, but she’s also worked as a model and an actress. Lakshmi was born in India, and moved to America to be with her mother, who’d moved to the States after the breakup of her arranged marriage.

Raised between two countries, she developed a love of food and family. And then, in her 20s, she met and fell in love with the author Salman Rushdie.

“He’s an extremely brilliant and charming and layered and complicated man,” she tells NPR’s Rachel Martin. “If you’re someone who’s like me, and especially Indian, it’s sort of like meeting Hemingway in your twenties, you know?”

Lakshmi came out the other side of that marriage, had a child, lost a partner to brain cancer — and still kept working on TV and writing cookbooks. She writes about it all in a new memoir: Love, Loss and What We Ate.

Interview Highlights

On being a supertaster

From my earliest childhood memories I can remember being in the kitchen, and my grandmother and my aunts and my older cousins, and my mother, certainly, all taught me about food. I only found out recently from a scientist in Seattle at the Science Museum that I am a supertaster, and I never knew that was actually a thing … I bring it up because from a very early age, I was always very curious about eating foods that normally toddlers don’t eat. Very sour things like mango and tamarind, very bitter things like fermented foods or certain Asian vegetables. And you know, you don’t really give a bowl of fiery indian pickles to a 2-year-old! And yet I was climbing up on my grandmother’s shelves in the kitchen like a monkey, sort of like a temple monkey, to try and get at the pickle jars … I think my young palate needed that stimulation.

On coming to America at the age of 4 and eating nothing but rice

I was very used to a lacto-vegetarian Hindu Brahmin diet, and so I found it hard to eat American foods. So we would have to seek out restaurants that had rice — whether it was a Chinese restaurant or a Mexican restaurant, or whatever. And luckily we lived in New York City, and I experienced the city through my palate, and it was an exciting place to grow up as a child. It gave me great independence, but it also allowed me to really experience a lot of the world in a much less sheltered way than I would if I was living anywhere else.

On how Top Chef has changed the way she cooks and eats

Getting to rub shoulders with all of these great chefs, from Thomas Keller to Daniel Boulud to Jacques Pepin and on and on, it does inform my thinking about food — I mean, how could it not? But our show is really about professional chefs who command a kitchen that puts out 200 plates of food that are all different, and hot, and come out at the same time. But, you know, it has informed me immensely. I would consider myself a culinary spelunker, and I love nothing more than to go to a new town or city, and discover that city through its food.