and, now, the morning news.

1. tomatoes are off the "salmonella list." peppers have yet to have been cleared, but eat the tomatoes, kids! did anyone stop eating them? i didn't. i wouldn't survive. also, the fda has yet to clear tomatoes for the fall; they are truly unsure of what is happening.
2. the cost of corn is skyrocketing so much that farmers who use corn for feed can no longer afford it. businesses are closing. today, the nytimes did a story on the catfish farmers in particular. here's an excerpt:

Corn and soybeans have nearly tripled in price in the last two years, for many reasons: harvest shortfalls, increasing demand by the Asian middle class, government mandates for corn to produce ethanol and, most recently, the flooding in the Midwest.This is creating a bonanza for corn and soybean farmers but is wreaking havoc on consumers, who are seeing price spikes in the grocery store and in restaurants. Hog and chicken producers as well as cattle ranchers, all of whom depend on grain for feed, are being severely squeezed.

Perhaps nowhere has the rise in crop prices caused more convulsions than in the Mississippi Delta, the hub of the nation’s catfish industry. This is a hard-luck, poverty-plagued region, and raising catfish in artificial ponds was one of the few mainstays.

Then the economics went awry. Feed is now more than half the total cost of raising catfish, compared with a third of the cost of beef and pork production, according to a Mississippi State analysis. That makes catfish more vulnerable. But if the commodities continue to rocket up — and some analysts believe they will — other industries will fall victim as well. Keith King, the president of Dillard & Company, calculates that for every dollar the company spends raising its fish, it gets back only 75 cents when they go to market.

3. lunch bunch. i have been making lunch for kim and myself all week. tasty sandwiches of provolone, tomatoes, and cucumbers, zesty pasta salad, handfuls of cashews and grapes, homemade brownies. that's just the beginning. there are other goodies to be had from the farmers market, like apricots. yep. anyhow, i didn't make lunch today; i like to treat myself to a burrito each friday. whoohoo!
4. my camera battery is on its way back from canon, so soon there will be photographs of my food adventures again. i know you can't wait.