Grim Reaper Blog

One in six Virginia children live in families that struggle with hunger. Across the state, schools are ramping up efforts to ensure students are getting the meals they wouldn’t have otherwise — especially breakfast. Through the end of the year, Virginia schools are competing for prizes and recognition through increased school breakfast participation. The second annual Virginia Breakfast Challenge encourages state schools to get more students to eat breakfast through a program — “Breakfast After the Bell” — that aims to break the stigma of eating school breakfast. In the first Virginia Breakfast Challenge last year, 1,325 schools participated and about 25,000 more students had school breakfast compared with when the challenge started.  http://thefoodrevolution.org During the 2016-17 school year, Virginia schools served about 10 million more breakfasts than four years prior. The numbers are improving, but there’s still room for

Substantial amounts of salt could be removed from food after the government’s scientific advisers recommended that replacing it with potassium-based equivalents instead would improve public health. A committee of experts has urged ministers to ask food producers and supermarkets to look into how they can replace sodium with what is known as “potassium-based sodium replacers”. The scientific advisory committee on nutrition (SACN) has concluded that replacing between 15% and 25% of salt (sodium chloride) in food with potassium chloride would help reduce the risk of stroke and heart attack.  http://sustainablefoodworks.com Potassium is a mineral that is found naturally in fruit, vegetables, pulses, milk, nuts, seeds, fish and shellfish. It has been proven to reduce high blood pressure – a key cause of heart problems – and is given to some patients as part of their recovery from cardiac surgery. SACN has spent the last four years looking into potassium-based alternatives to sa

A TOP chef has revealed the simple mistakes that people make when cooking pasta with tomato sauce. It may be a simple and comforting staple dish, but it seems that we’ve been prepping our pasta all wrong. Celebrity chef Scott Conant. One chef believes there’s a very specific method when it comes to prepping pasta with the perfect tomato-based sauce.  http://sofood.me Scott Conant, who runs New York’s Fusco restaurant and who has been dubbed “the Maestro of pasta,” shared his guide to making perfect “pantry pasta” with  My Domaine . The ultimate secret, according to Scott, is adding a splash of the pasta water to the tomato sauce to bring out the “perfect” flavour. A handful of bucatini is perfect for one person, Scott Conant says. Picture: SBS Source:Supplied Conant says a tight handful of Bucatini (thick spaghetti style noodles) is the perfect amount for one person and says that just less than 10 minutes is the optimum time for cooking this type of