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 ›

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 ›