The road to chef was also earth-spanning. He got a job in the faculty club at UC Berkeley to help support his way through college and ended up as the manager. After attending college in the ’70s, he followed a girl to Paris and while there he bummed around and got work cooking in some restaurants.

If you are like me, you’re drawn to restaurants that offer meals you can’t duplicate in your own kitchen. When it comes to steak or Italian entrées, however, my ability to prepare these foods at home rivals any restaurant’s versions.

The term “new South” has been bandied about forever. Long before the end of the Civil War, Southerners have been passionate about their way of life, celebrating it, preserving it, sharing it. After all, sharing is just “good manners”. And while the name of the publication may throw some people off, this is a magazine with a mission: “Garden Gun.

Bread forms a bond that cannot be easily broken. Even while working as a travel writer for a Birmingham based regional magazine, Joe Rada, aka “Bakery Boy,” retained his childhood love for the work and lifestyle of a baker.

To be sure, the recent Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has caused consumers to think twice about the source of their seafood. While government and British Petroleum sources assure consumers that the marine life is safe to eat, many shrimpers and fisherman will tell you about their uncertain future.

Graziano will be a part of a panel discussion following the screening. Also present will be Scott Silver of Jones Valley Urban Farm (JVUF), Amanda Storey of the United Way’s Healthy Kids, Healthy Community Grant and Maureen Alexander, Child Nutrition Program Director for Shelby County.

As the wheels of the school bus start turning again this month, school gardening programs seem to be cropping up in curriculums all over Birmingham. Offering students hands-on lessons in farming and nutrition, several local campuses have instituted student-groomed plots.

As summer heats up, Birmingham is keeping it cool with a hearty helping of frozen yogurt. Already home to a handful of recently-opened yogurt bars, Birmingham and its surrounding areas are projected to host more than a dozen additional locations within the year. Yogurt consumption has increased more than any other food in the last decade, according to NPD Group Market Researcher Harry Balzer in an interview with National Public Radio. It has a “health halo surrounding it,” and it defines what Americans want from the food supply, he says.

Scheduled to stop in Birmingham at this Saturday’s Pepper Place Market, the tour will bring nine of our local chefs together with Alabama farmers to give market customers a taste of the possibilities buried in our good dirt.

According to Angie, the Jackson site was started by a foodie and small business marketer who wanted to use social networking technologies, including blogs and Twitter, to get new people through the doors of locally owned eateries in Jackson.