Mega-Thanks to Culinary Freedom Fighter & Guest Blogger Baylen Linnekin!
Fridays are such sweet sorrows!
Hit & Run has been graced this past week by the presence of guest blogger Baylen Linnekin, the founder and head of Keep Food Legal, a nonprofit devoted to "culinary freedom," the idea that Americans should be able to buy, cook, and eat whatever they want.
It's a righteous cause and Linnekin has served up over a dozen tasty posts this past week on topics ranging from the politics of horse meat bans to Four Loko freakouts to work-arounds related to McDonald's Happy Meals. Read his Reason archive here.
If you're interested in the intersection of food, public policy, libertarianism, and the nanny state, I recommend that you check out Keep Food Legal and follow Linnekin on Twitter (and KFL too).
If you live in the greater Washington, D.C. area, you might also think about checking out a very special event that Keep Food Legal is hosting in Arlington, Virginia on Saturday, December 10 at 5.30 PM. The event will feature commestibles from some great food trucks and speakers such as:
Matt Geller, who heads the groundbreaking Southern California Mobile Food Vendors Association and is one of the leading and most successful advocates for the rights of food trucks to operate free from gratuitous regulations in this country, will be in town all the way from Venice, CA to serve as our featured guest speaker.
Doug Povich, co-owner of the Red Hook Lobster Pound truck, will speak about his experiences wading through the ongoing regulatory process.
Robert Frommer, an attorney with the excellent Institute for Justice—which helps food-truck entrepreneurs and other small businesses fight back against unjust regulations—will speak about IJ and the group's work on behalf of food trucks.
Linnekin's got one more post to go here at Hit & Run before we set him free from the rockpile that is guest blogging. While you're waiting to see just what comes out of the oven, check out this Reason.tv vid about how D.C. - the city on a swamp! - created a great food-truck scene by loosening its regs even a tiny bit:
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Good stuff this week Mr. Linnekin, keep up the good work!
He was a great guest and not stingy with the alt-text. Please come back again some day!
Liked it so much, I was beginning to think of you as a regular. Thanks much.
Baylen, you of the awesome name, I hope you continue to guest-blog once in a while and hang out in the comments. HERC references in the alt-text make you one of us.
Thanks Baylen - awesome and interesting posts all week long!
Excellent week of posts. Too bad there were no hat-tips with honorifics to commenters but hey you only had a week. You should apply for the job at reason, I hear the kochtopus lets you ride the monkepotomus.
I would like to continue the ball polishing on this thread; Mr. Linnekin your stories have been the highlight of H&R this week. Please come back often. Also, thanks for the Keep Food Legal blog!
Cheers!
Good work, Linnekin. (Although, quite frankly, I was expecting more recipes.)
Enjoyed it. Keep Food Legal seems to be a principled group that believes in all sorts of food freedom, not like some of these groups that are pro what they like (say, raw milk) while opposing other things (like GMOs).
When I want Lobsters, DC is fine. When I want crabs I go to Maryland.
When I want crabs I go to Maryland.
Err, OK.
Baylen was a real plus this week. Thanks, bro, and keep up the good fight!
If that little lobster roll from a truck weren't $18 I might try it.
Sorry, Linnekin, but not supporting you as long as you're shilling for animal cruelty (foie gras). Happy to support food truck operators, home jam producers, etc.
Srsly, you'd get more support if you ditched the pro-cruelty stance.
Hear that, Baylen? You're scrupulous standards have cost you a whole supporter!
Foie gras tastes good.
What does it taste like?
I've never had the chance to have any, but always wondered if it was good.
the hand of god made fois gras. Got to Etoile in Napa Valley's Chandon and try the seared Fois Gras. You will be elevated to the 35th stage of nirvanna.
p.s. It is fatty goose/duck liver. Contrary to what some morons may have told you they use two different techniques to make them fat. One is gavage (basically force feeding but not as cruel or violent as you may think) and the other is just getting fat geese/ducks...there is a dude in Spain that has attracted a lot of geese that fly to his farm, eat a crapload, and he harvests them...not very cruel if you ask me. But then I used to chop the heads off of chickens and hang them on the clothes line to drain before dipping them in boiling water to get all the feathers off and cutting open their assholes to carefully pull out all the innerds...who am I to say.
It's not like farmer's force feed the birds just for s&g's. They are slaughtered and eaten. It's food production.
The flavor is a blend of liver (metallic) and milk fat (butter). The flavor is not as strong as chicken liver, nor is it "chalky". The creamy texture is an equal component with the flavor. Overall, it tastes like a blend of sauteed animal fat creamed into butter. It tastes good.
Highly disagree. There are already enough groups out there that have your view.
Me, I'm overjoyed to find a group that is both pro-food truck and pro-foie gras.
Keep fighting the good fight Mr. Linnekin. Having the freedom to choose what you eat is about as fundamental a liberty as it gets.
Also, good columns, keep coming back with interesting stories.
Thanks everyone for the kind words here and the great (and often on-topic!) comments during the week!
the great (and often on-topic!) comments
Alright, this is getting embarrassing. We know better.
"The event will feature commestibles from some great food trucks?"
Nick, there's one "m" in "comestibles."