WTTW-"Foods of Chicago: A Delicious History"

Sorry if this is a dup, tried to search for this, didn't see a thread on this.

Saw the preveiw episode on this the other night on WTTW, thought it was interesting, I got my DVR readied, maybe you wanna as well:
http://www.wttw.com/main.taf?p=1,37

when is this on? is it a series or a one time special?

I just checked online via tivo and they don't show it airing in the next few weeks.

Looks like it's Tuesday, November 27th, at 7:30pm.

Ralph Wiggum wrote:I just checked online via tivo and they don't show it airing in the next few weeks.

I taped the preview too - isn't it going to air on 11/26 or 11/27? Online TiVo is so frustrating for me - why don't they ever update the content on their homepage? Even when I am logged in, the times are always wrong.

fenger wrote:http://www.wttw.com/main.taf?p=1,37

And don't forget dessert: learn how Chicago was once the candy capital of America

There was a great story once
on This American Life about
a Bridge around Chicago that
smelled like chocolate (well,
at least the atmosphere around
the brigde) - until some busy-bodies
complained about the "air pollution".
Act 3:
http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=307

Pretty much everywhere within a mile of the Blommer's factory smells like chocolate, despite whatever filters they might have put in. Well, at least at some point in the day, it does.

Sometimes it's pleasant. Sometimes, especially when you're right by the factory, it's very acrid smell. I can't blame people who live nearby for complaining. It can be very, very, very bad.

That said, when I was working in the Loop and the chocolate aroma floated by, it made me happy.

I work on the west end of River North and there are still days around here when you step outside and it smells like the world's biggest brownie. One of the great things about working here

gleam wrote:Pretty much everywhere within a mile of the Blommer's factory smells like chocolate, despite whatever filters they might have put in. Well, at least at some point in the day, it does.

Sometimes it's pleasant. Sometimes, especially when you're right by the factory, it's very acrid smell. I can't blame people who live nearby for complaining. It can be very, very, very bad.

That said, when I was working in the Loop and the chocolate aroma floated by, it made me happy.

The problem is Bloomers has been at their location for a long time. Only recently has this industrial neighborhood become lofts with people living there. It is really akin to people who move into a subdivision next to a pig farm. Those odor generators were there long before it became a neighborhood.

If Bloomers are obligated to move, then I hope they make a killing in the real estate business. Every cloud has a silver lining!

The price of sugar has driven the candy industry away to Chicago and into Mexico.

Regards,

Oh, yes, I know. The residents knew going in that Blommer's was a major polluter in the neighborhood.

But, on the other hand, just because they've been polluting in that location for 100 years shouldn't (in my mind) be an excuse to not clean up their act.

Seems like with modern technology they can get some pretty advanced filters in there to reduce the pollutants, if they're willing to make the investment.

I dunno ... the previews for this looked awfully close to a cross between Alton Brown's "Feasting on Asphalt" and LTH GNRs (I think I saw Al's #1 Italian Beef in one shot).

gleam wrote:But, on the other hand, just because they've been polluting in that location for 100 years shouldn't (in my mind) be an excuse to not clean up their act.

I guess it dpepnds on your definition of pollution. If you're talking about air that smells like Chocolate, that's not pollution, that's a public service.

stevez wrote:I guess it dpepnds on your definition of pollution. If you're talking about air that smells like Chocolate, that's not pollution, that's a public service.

Right, but very often when you're near the building it doesn't smell like chocolate, it smells like burnt chocolate, which is a very, very different thing.

I saw Robert Adams Sr. in a promo trailer for this show. Very Cool.

Cathy2 wrote:The price of sugar has driven the candy industry away to Chicago and into Mexico.

Regards,

Sugar trades for about 20 cents/lb commercially. Mexican sugar might be 15 cents. Lets suppose candy is 50% sugar. That would save makers about 2.5 cent/lb of candy. How much does Brach's candy cost? $5.00/lb? I think the industry has other much more substantial input costs...taxes, labor, environmental regs, etc. I would guess.

teatpuller wrote:

Cathy2 wrote:The price of sugar has driven the candy industry away to Chicago and into Mexico.

Regards,

Sugar trades for about 20 cents/lb commercially. Mexican sugar might be 15 cents. Lets suppose candy is 50% sugar. That would save makers about 2.5 cent/lb of candy. How much does Brach's candy cost? $5.00/lb? I think the industry has other much more substantial input costs...taxes, labor, environmental regs, etc. I would guess.

Sugar, which is artificially high in this country, is an issue. There are always other factors, though sugar cost is a big player in this issue.

Regards,

SCUBAchef wrote:There was a great story once on This American Life about a Bridge around Chicago that smelled like chocolate

We used to take the waterbus from Ogilvie for outings to downtown, and for years Sparky would swear to anyone who asked that we rode to Navy Pier on Willy Wonka's chocolate river.

Right, but as teatpuller said, sugar in this country goes for about $0.20-$0.25/lb. Very little candy, from what I've seen, is sold at price points where the $0.10-$0.15/lb savings is meaningful. My guess is that labor costs had more to do with it.

Food and Drink Weekly wrote:Speaking at the annual Agricultural Outlook Forum in Arlington, Va., Jack Roney, staff economist for the American Sugar Alliance, told participants that the 18 cents per pound price of U.S. sugar -- versus the eight cent price at which sugar is available on the glutted world market - is not prompting the exodus of U.S. candy companies.

"It's not the sugar," Roney said. "There is about one cent worth of sugar in a pack of hard candy that costs consumers 60 cents. Clearly, it's the other 59 cents that drive decisions on factory locations."

The costs of wages, taxes, energy, and labor are the main motivators for U.S. candy companies that have been choosing to relocate to Mexico and Canada, Roney said. The wholesale refined sugar prices are actually higher in Mexico than the United States, but companies relocating there are generally paying laborers a quarter of what they paid in this nation, he added.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFcfIJtEDcM

Just so you know the food of Chicago show will feature my bakery, Delightful Pastries on its segment, so I am really excited about it.
It will air November 27 at 7PM.

Just read this interview with Geoffrey Baer on the Chicagoist site. Looks to be an interesting program. I was kind of surprised to see that he hadn't had a "real" taco before. It seems they have been around forever and everyone has a favorite place, but I guess that lack of knowledge keeps places like Taco Bell in business.

http://chicagoist.com/2007/11/19/interview_wttws.php

The price of sugar is high, but unfortunatly most candy is made from
corn syrup and other corn derived sugars. The price of these are even higher due to the burnung of ethenol and plastics made from corn. The price of corn has risen 25% in Mexico this year. This in a country who's staple is corn.

I liked the show a lot. It was long enough that it wasn't "dumbed down." I thought it was particularly strong on the Chinese migration patterns. I was also really happy to see all the commercial coverage--the story of Jay's was completely new to me. Always nice to see Robert Adams happy and Cookie Monster got great coverage. I'll be interested to hear if anyone pledged and got the cookbook--I'd love a review of it.

I'm ready for episode two--Thai, Japanese, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, African and all the rest.

Definitely an interesting lens through which to see Chicago history...

Baer just revealed his source for most of his recommended eats on an interview with WGN-AM's Bob Sirott about 45 seconds ago - a little community into "the dingiest spots imaginable" - LTHForum.com!

Well, they did let us knowit was going to happen...

"...dingiest spots imaginable" For some odd reason, that phrase makes me happy

I watched around 2/3s of the show...enjoyed it. Was not the typical chicago hot dog, deep dish pizza, italian beef only type show (though they all deservedly had their part in the show). As usual with Baer documentaries there was a lot of great history provided and there was a diverse selection of food and ethnicities featured.

It took me a couple of nights to get through it because it was so evenly paced-- 4 minutes on this, 4 minutes on that; I actually thought if it had gone more in depth onto one or two things, done some interviews that lasted a couple of minutes, not bites of 6 seconds, it would have had better pace. (TV just has this idea it has to move, move, move, but an even pace, no matter how fast, will weary you more than an occasional bit that drags.)

That said, I thought it was a good overview and will send flocks of WTTW watchers to try parts of the city they've never tried before. Obviously hardcore LTHers have little left to be surprised by-- the total number of restaurants I didn't recognize or couldn't guess was probably half a dozen throughout the show-- but I did learn some historical stuff I didn't know and the factory shots of Tootsie Roll, Jay's, etc. are endlessly cool. (At my wife's first law firm, one partner was an attorney for the Tootsie Roll folks, and he used to come back from meetings with a bag of fresh, warm Tootsie Rolls. Try and beat that as a power perk, Governor Thompson.)

I felt it was a little superficial on the subject of immigration. Partly I wish it had talked to more of the real folks, in depth. For instance, for Greektown it interviewed Alexa Ganakos, who wrote a very good Chicago Greek cookbook/history. That's fine that it did but at the same time, I knew Alexa at Leo Burnett 15 years ago, she's a modern, media-savvy person, so talking to her is not exactly like talking to the grandma or grandpa in the kitchen who came off the boat with two dollars and a name of someone to ask for work. I would have liked to see them dig deeper into those communities, which they did in a couple of cases maybe (Polish maybe got the best of that, including Cookie Monster). It may seem odd coming from me, but I would have liked a little less food and a little more of the people. I also felt that sometimes the ethnic-neighborhood focus was a little disconnected-- yeah, there's an Indo-Pak community on Devon, and a Russian Jewish community on Devon, but we would never know that they're basically the same community which, given the state of the world in 2007, is pretty cool too.

Oh well, I guess I just outlined how I would have done it, which means, how I should go out and do it now. That's fine too. A good program, another blow struck for the cause that great dining in Chicago is not just Alinea or Gibson's, let alone Cheesecake Factory on Michigan Avenue, but a rich tapestry of neighborhood dining. Send it to friends to get them to come visit by making them desperately hungry. If Geoffrey Baer gets ideas from here (and to judge by the program, that seems clear enough), then maybe next time one of the exotic communities he should visit is right here.

Mike G wrote:...so talking to her is not exactly like talking to the grandma or grandpa in the kitchen who came off the boat with two dollars and a name of someone to ask for work. I would have liked to see them dig deeper into those communities, which they did in a couple of cases maybe (Polish maybe got the best of that, including Cookie Monster).

I think they did a nice job with that in relation to Chinese immigrants. The fried rice meal with the grandmother was nice and I learned something about the origin of "Cantonese" dining: how most of the cooks were immigrants from a food-poor region, had little or no cooking experience, and were essentially taking poor-people's food and adding more meat to it.

I'm not through the whole show yet.

Best,
Michael

gleam wrote:

stevez wrote:I guess it dpepnds on your definition of pollution. If you're talking about air that smells like Chocolate, that's not pollution, that's a public service.

Right, but very often when you're near the building it doesn't smell like chocolate, it smells like burnt chocolate, which is a very, very different thing.

I live about as close to Bloomer as you can get and find it a marvelous experience. On occasion there are some off-odors, but I liken it more to scalding milk (maybe for milk chocolate?) than burnt chocolate. Its rare that I smell any burnt odors. In general though, when you catch it at the right time it feels like you are walking through a brownie. My dogs always perk up there ears and lick at the air when we walk by.

They have recently installed filters to reduce the particle emissions due to some neighbors complaining and calling in the EPA. Fortunately the smell still gets out.

I assume they will sell out some day since almost every other plot of land is being/has been developed as condos, but until that time I will enjoy our chocolate smelling neighborhood.