The James Beard Foundation Awards committee, which just announced an open call-for-entries for the 2009 James Beard Foundation Awards (i..e., foodie awards), has a brand spanking new medallion to hand out next year, an award for blogs "focusing on food, restaurants, beverage, or nutrition." Wonderful! Any site you want to see win the first-ever JB Best Blog award? Yeah? Then, go here to vote. We're praying The Food in my Beard walks away with the prize. Fingers crossed. (Eater) more ›

Culinary legend James Beard has some prestigious awards named for him, and announcements of the winners are slowly being revealed. The winners of the Journalism and Broadcast Media awards have been announced, and the Chron came up big. Seriously, I know we're like the San Francisco Chronicle cheerleading squad lately -- but that paper won several awards and we're big fans of the winners: the Food Section itself won (section F, take a bow), while Janet Fletcher won for "Newspaper Feature Writing With Recipes" for this article. more ›

We gobble the various food sections up each Wednesday. These are our favorite tidbits from today's offerings: more ›

Hungry Planet, the latest book by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio, visits 30 families in 24 countries to take a look at what they eat. The book's subtitle is What the World Eats but the authors are a couple from Napa, the publisher from Berkeley: this is a local effort, and we can chauvinistically be proud of the James Beard Foundation award it just received. Each family in the book is photographed with all the food they would eat in one week displayed on the dining room table, or whatever substitutes for a dining room or a table. The effect is striking as one can see at a glance how much, or how little one family eats in different countries. more ›

Sunday and yesterday, the James Beard foundation announced their annual awards for 2006 in a posh ceremony. We (a) did not win for our excellent food coverage; and (b) were not invited, which is fine, because we would not have been able to go to New York. Keep not inviting us, as long as you don't give your hardware in our backyard, we don't even care. Losers. Whatever. Even our Gothamist siblings were (a)-and-(b) snubbed, despite holding home court, so at least we have a shoulder to cry on. Or vice-versa. more ›

Stacey over at Contraversion links to a hilarious spread in the New York Times magazine. The picture you're looking at is not the work of some photoshop geek. That is a real tattoo on the arm of a real chef who obviously adores Alice Waters. Why? Chef Nino Mancari of Delaware's Fish On! explains: ''I wanted to do a tribute to American food...'Eventually I'll get James and Julia, and with Alice it'll be the holy trinity.'' more ›