blog roll for a snowy sick day

what's better than a sick day that is pre-empted by a snow day?
what did you say? it's also groundhog day? why i can't think of anything quite as lovely!

here are a few wonkerific food policy blog posts to read on a snow day, a sick day or both:

• First up, a bit more detail about why I'm always railing against Trader Joe's- their private label shenanigans. I do shop there myself, but don't appreciate the groupthink around TJ's being god's gift to the (sub)urban grocery shopper. they have some good stuff, some of it at good prices, but they also have a lot of processed crap that you don't really need to buy.

• Marion Nestle's more in-depth second peek at the new 2010 Dietary Guidelines.

• A pretty neat new "crowd-sourcing" project called 20ate from Roger Doiron, who brought us Kitchen Gardeners International and the White House Organic Gardening Project. To counteract the snack food industry's bullshit new "national snack month," it asks us to use social media to sign on to promote a healthy snack for each of the 28 days of February, to replace the processed ones they are pushing. This is definitely something I can get behind, having developed a decent arsenal of fairly healthy homemade snacks over the past few years, most of which are baked in the oven or the stove. Here's to hoping I'll keep posting about them all month! #20ate

And drumroll please.....
Today's favorite. Not sure if this is the inaugural edition of Mark Bittman's revamped NYTimes gig or just a special number, but it's just as lovely as today is. Most people heart Mark Bittman's recipes. I heart his succinct way of writing the nuanced messages about food and society that are so desperately needed in the blogosphere and the public sphere. Keep it up, Mark! Maybe you should testify at a Congressional hearing like Stephen Colbert did!