Lovingly prepared treats, but are they safe?

​The Minneapolis Food Swappers, a group committed to sharing homemade and foraged foods in what one of their organizers had referred to as an "alternative food economy," has been contacted with concerns by the Department of Health and the Department of Agriculture. The departments question the types of  food the swappers are sharing and whether or not a swap constitutes a sale. At the swap we attended, food items included fermented pickles, kombucha, and backyard-collected eggs, items that could, if not properly prepared, cause food-borne illnesses.

What comes next for the swappers?

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Lucia's was acknowledged for its great service. See who else made the list

​Zagat posted its picks for local restaurants with the best service last week. No surprise, the back of the house matches the front of the house; each restaurant is well regarded for serious attention to the food coming out of the kitchen. They are, in the order listed by Zagat:

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"Are you still working on that?"

​The front of the house is what makes the back of the house dance in the footlights. What would Meritage be without Desta Klein? It's her touch of genius to create an atmosphere in which the lovely French-kissed food coming from the kitchen is delivered to the right table at the right time with the right flourish. At 112 Eatery, Nancy St. Pierre's leadership out front provides a stage for showcasing chef Isaac Becker's culinary highlights. One happy similarity between these two very different restaurants: wait staff who understand the food and the customer.

The flip side, of course, is the restaurant where it seems wait staff are brought in off the street. The attitude seems to be: If you're breathing, you can wait tables. And due to the code of niceness to which we have sworn allegiance, Minnesotans are forced to put up with the most annoying conversations when all we want is a good meal and a pleasant experience. To wit:

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www.bigesoul.com

The last place you want your name to show up: CJ's column.

​I wish I were telling you that Big E had resurfaced in a new kitchen, serving up his killer neo-soul fare. Unfortunately, the latest news with E has to do with his name coming up in CJ's StarTribune gossip column.

Russ King, of the now-defunct band New Congress, and Stephanie Devine-King, who was a singer and manager of the group, got married at Bunker's on September 11 and told CJ that their caterer, Eric Austin--a.k.a. Big E--arrived so late they were forced to go pick up dinner from Famous Dave's and Lunds.

The parties dispute the timing: the newlyweds say they told E to arrive between 4 and 6 p.m., while E maintains they told him to bring it around 7-ish. When the caterer showed up a little after 8, he and the groom apparently exchanged a few harsh words in the parking lot. Guests did eventually get jambalaya and wings to supplement their Famous Dave's barbecue.

Sounds like both parties should have had an agreement in writing. Bummer that the snafu mucked up the King's special day, but is this really what amounts to gossip in this town?

image courtesy of www.freakyfast.com

Minimum wage, yes. Tattoos, no.

​If your delivery man looks especially limp and bedraggled when he arrives with your Ultimate Porker on 7-grain, it might be because he's required to navigate the sweltering summer soup in pants and long sleeves.

Jimmy John's, the Champaign, Illinois-based sandwich chain, has long had a policy requiring employees to cover up their tattoos on the job. Until recently the policy hadn't been very tightly enforced, but a series of communiques from corporate headquarters has franchise managers tightening up on visible ink.

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Wikipedia

Don't eat that: Dog meat cooking in Southeast Asia

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Earlier this week came news that a homeless man named Nathan J. Kittoe, in Madison, Wisconsin, was in trouble with police for attacking a woman in a local park for trying to stop him from killing a goose, which he was planning on having for dinner.

Mr. Kittoe's first alleged mistake, of course, was drawing a knife on a middle-aged lady. But his second was messing with the goose. Canada geese are federally protected migratory birds, and while geese have long been considered good eatin' (think A Christmas Carol, or the expression "his goose is cooked"), nowadays slitting their necks in a public park could be a federal offense.

In fact, for a species so dependent on protein, humans have a lot of rules about what we're not supposed to eat. Whether the reasons are religious or cultural, many perfectly edible animals are off the table, so to speak, when it comes to consumption. Here is our list of the Top 10 forbidden foods.

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​Resistant to comply for months, Marshall-based frozen foods company Schwan's is now being forced by federal court to comply with a subpoena issued last fall by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission related to a discrimination claim filed by a former employee.

U.S. District Court Judge Janie S. Mayeron ordered the company to release personnel information going back several years that could be pertinent to Kim Milliren's accusations that company employees harassed her and did not allow her to graduate from a management training program.

The company has until March 29 to comply with the order.

Some background from the EEOC:

On July 3, 2007, the EEOC's Minneapolis Area Office received a charge filed under Title VII by Milliren, alleging that she was discriminated against on the basis of gender and subjected to sexual harassment and retaliation during her employment with Schwan's Home Service. Milliren was selected to participate in Schwan's General Manager Development Program, a training program that trains candidates to be location general managers at its warehouse depots throughout the country. Since that time, the EEOC has been investigating whether Milliren and other women were subjected to sex discrimination in the General Manager Development Program.

​Six former Drink servers and bartenders say their former employer made them eat the costs of walk-outs, unsigned credit card receipts, and register shortages in a class action filed this week in Hennepin County District Court. The suit says supervisors also altered time sheets in order not to pay them all the hours they worked. Since they only made minimum wage to begin with, the practice meant they made even less than minimum wage.

Among other things, the suit says management would sporadically "announce that the 'till was off' and would require all bartenders who were working to pay ... to make up for the alleged shortages, which generally ranged from $40 to $200" and "refused to provide documentation of the ... shortages."

Drink has locations in both Uptown and downtown. Spin Nightclub, which is under the same ownership as Drink, is also named in the suit. The six employees worked for both the Updown and downtown Drink locations.

Listener42/Flickr

​USA Today's been hitting the food safety beat hard lately. First, it went after school food, and now it's set its sights on airports. Could the paper be inching its way up in credibility? Among its findings:

More than 40 percent of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport's reviewed restaurants had at least one "critical" health and safety violation. And more than 75 percent of those reviewed at D.C.'s Reagan National Airport did. Among the grosser overall revelations:

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jetalone/Flickr

Mmm ... norovirus.

​More than a dozen Minneapolis Public School employees filed suit this week in Ramsey County against Subway, claiming they were sickened after eating "party" subs they bought from a Roseville shop two years ago. The 16 plaintiffs all similarly claim that they suffered nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, cramps, and various aches and pains in the days following their consumption of the sandwiches.

A subsequent Minnesota Department of Health investigation concluded that two of the store's employees, who reported being sick in the days before they prepared the party subs, were responsible for the outbreak. The plaintiffs, described by the suit as "pipefitters employed by the Minneapolis Public Schools," seek more than $50,000 in damages for their claims of the sandwich chain's negligence and liability.

According to the suit, norovirus causes an estimated 23 million cases of acute gastroenteritis in the United States each year. The virus may be spread through vomit or feces as well as human-to-human contact.

Blech. Here's hoping the store's cleaned up its act since then.