Food

Three different restaurants in the Treasure Valley have been hit by hepatitis A this summer. The Central District Health Department has issued advisories for people who ate at these places on specific dates. But what is hepatitis A? And what can people do to protect themselves?

What if you could take a road trip and visit all your heroes, door-to-door? What if you could share a meal? And what if you could do it right in their own homes?  Our guest today embarked on just such a pilgrimage. 

Long-time Boiseans remember when downtown was a ghost town by 10 p.m. These days, BoDo after midnight is alive with food and revelry. We take a look at what's going on downtown after the witching hour.

Boise State University's Owen McDougal has been researching how acralymides develop in cooked foods. Acralymides can have carcinogenic effects on the human body and in California, a judge recently ruled coffee growers need to label the acralymide content of their beans. Idaho Matters will talk with McDougal about his work on acralymides and potatoes.

When it comes to cookbooks, most of them line up the familiar grouping of recipes – breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert and maybe a cooking tip or two. But one new local cookbook looks less at straight-ahead recipes and more at practical cooking techniques.

If you have a tree overflowing with fruit or a garden that needs some culling, a new website in the Treasure Valley could help you out.

Like any adventure centering on fried food, this one starts at a posh restaurant in Boise where the head chef has twice been nominated for a James Beard Award, commonly referred to as the “Oscar of cooking.”

Tuesday, Idaho Governor Butch Otter vetoed a bill to repeal the six percent sales tax on groceries. Wednesday, two lawmakers said that veto was invalid and the repeal now becomes law.

GOP Representatives Ron Nate and Bryan Zollinger say Governor Butch Otter’s veto came too late to be valid.

The Treasure Valley Food Coalition this week is asking the question, “why should we save farmland in Idaho?” As growth and development spread across the Treasure Valley, the coalition is starting a conversation about preserving farmland in places like Canyon County.

Boise-based Albertsons filed this week to offer stock for public sale. Albertsons became one of the largest food retailers in the country early this year when it closed on its acquisition of Safeway. 

During a talk he gave in Oxford, England in 2013, environmentalist and writer Mark Lynas apologized to the very audience he used to demonize: companies and scientists that work with genetically modified foods.

"As an environmentalist and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a health and nutritious diet of their choosing," Lynas told the crowd, "I could not have chosen a more counterproductive path and I now regret it completely."

You eat it all the time, but how much do you really know about chocolate? One Moscow woman is working to educate Idahoans about this fascinating food and will host a seminar on the subject Wednesday night in Twin Falls.

Chocolate has been used as a form of currency, medicine - even an aphrodisiac. The average American eats 12 pounds of it a year, yet Dr. Lauren Fins says many of us know little about its hundreds of years of history.

We’ve been following an Idaho non-profit over the years as it helps farmers in Guatemala grow more sustainable crops. We first learned of Semilla Neuva - that’s “New Seed” in Spanish - in 2011. The fledgling group was giving advice on farming techniques to Guatemalan farmers.

Most Idaho kids went back to school this week, meaning for many, a return to school lunches. Food in public schools has changed significantly since new federal nutrition guidelines were passed in 2010.

The Boise Co-op announced Monday that it would open a second store in the Village at Meridian.

Co-op marketing director Shannon McGuire says two surveys solidified managers goals of opening a second store.

“We asked our shoppers ‘what should we do, where should we go if we considered expansion?’” McGuire says. “And out of that came ‘yes, please do expand and go West.’”

McGuire says survey respondents picked Meridian as their top choice for a second store. The second-most requested store location was Nampa, and McGuire says that could someday become a reality.