Maybe you haven’t heard of him, but Joe Baum was a legend, and so few today understand the profound impact he has had on the American dining scene and on how we eat today. Rozanne Gold has written a superb piece on Baum, and it’s required reading as far as I am concerned. Cool trivia: Gold worked for my dad for a few years before going to work for Mayor Ed Koch. I credit her with raising me with a keen awareness of where we come from, food wise. She is brilliant and her 1-2-3 series of cookbooks are superb as well.

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The NYCWFF and our Sunday event, Carts in the Parc, was a huge success and we helped raise millions of dollars for Share Our Strength and the NYC Food Bank that weekend. I was sorry to miss our own Mpls.St.Paul Magazine Taste event, especially the food truck meet-up that went down. Here are a few links to see what we did in NYC. I would love to see readers share their pics of the MSP Mag event with me on Twitter or Facebook.

The vid of my rendition of “The Weight” @ Carts in the Parc.

Doug and Bryan of www.biggayicecream.com sent me this ode.

The folks at www.foodrepublic.com had this to say.

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St. Paul is getting its first Smashburger on Wednesday, October 19 in Highland Park. There is a VIP Sneak Peek event for the Highland Park community to try the juicy burgers, tempting sides, and shakes on the house. That takes place the day before and my readers can sign up online for a chance to attend the VIP Sneak Peek and dine for free there. I like the burgers at Smashburger. It’s a good quick-serve concept.

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Speaking of quick-serve . . . Getting off the food system rant superhighway that I have been on lately is hard to do. I found this on MSNBC and while I knew much of this already I was stunned by the stats of the dismally poor amount of seafood that is actually inspected (single digits percentage wise) and the astoundingly high percentage of the stuff that’s rejected (about 50 percent) . So by that equation, the amount of poisoned food coming into our food system from overseas is as dire a situation as you can find in this country in terms of national health issues. Another great reason to buy American, to change the laws in our country requiring more inspections/inspectors, and more reason than ever to help our trade partners abroad solve their problems so that we don’t bear the ill effects of their ignorance or inability to solve their own issues.