• Environmental Working Group
• Chicken's carbon footprint, by category

The results were a little surprising. The meat with the smallest carbon footprint was ... canned tuna. The meat with the biggest was lamb, then beef, then ... cheese, which created more overall emissions than pork.

Lentils had the greenest carbon footprint, with tomatoes running a close second and 2 percent milk third-to-greenest.

The study gets to a pretty granular level, and there were more surprises there. Forty-four percent of farmed salmon is thrown away, accounting for its high post-farmgate carbon footprint. Five percent of meat is thrown out by retailers. Composting meat at home doesn't significantly reduce its carbon footprint. Less dense cheeses like cottage cheese have less impact because they require less milk.

There are even more micro details, and if you want to read the results, go here.

The takeaway was this: Meatless Monday is good for reducing carbon footprint. A four-person family skipping meat and cheese one day a week is the environmental equivalent of not driving for five weeks. Or skip a single burger each week and that's like line-drying your laundry half the time, or driving 320 fewer miles.

Almost as important as doing without was the way you can shop: buying only what you need prevents loss to "plate waste" and spoilage. So if turkey lunch meat, pork chops, or even peanut butter and yogurt, just sit in the fridge or cabinet until they spoil, you and the environment are better off leaving them with the retailer.

Some trucks fly under the radar for months and surprise those of us who are supposed to be in the know. Others announce their impending entry into the food scene with a splash and then are never heard from again. Little Filipino ring a bell to anyone? Even the old stalwarts are hard to keep track of because outside of a few regular events like Food Truck Tuesday and Live on the Green, they could be anywhere on any given day.

It's reached the point where I can no longer follow the multiple Twitter feeds that are necessary to track down a place to chase for lunch, much less the Twitter feeds of all my friends who are talking about the trucks. I used to depend on the excellent Nashville Food Trucks blog to keep me abreast of the daily goings-on, but that site seems to never be updated in time for my lunch hour at 11:30. I know that the operators of this site have other things to do with their lives, and I'm sure there's no money involved, so I cannot be too critical of their efforts. I'm sure they are still very useful to afternoon Yazoo denizens and late night Five Pointers looking for a nosh.

The newest player in this "Where's Waldo" game is Roaming Hunger. This site is a local outpost of a national website that tracks food trucks in at least 20 cities. They display the Twitter feeds of local trucks as well as incorporating some sort of geo-location information. There are still some bugs in the machine as I got all excited to read that Taste of Belgium was adding a bricks and mortar bistro, until I realized that they were tracking the Twitter feed of a ToB truck in Cincinnati. I'm not willing to make that long of a drive to try their chicken and waffles. ...

The interactive map is also a little bit screwy, since it features a daily listing of where the "I Dream of Weenie" truck is. Y'all let me know if that one ever moves anywhere, considering that they have built a deck around it and turned it into a small building.

Gojee.com uses tech to help you find tested recipes matching ingredients you have on hand.

I told Gojee I had squash, cabbage, tofu, chick peas, feta cheese, sausage, eggplant and quinoa, and it offered recipes for a grain-stuffed bell pepper recipe, a harissa chickpea salad and a baked zucchini fritter with feta. Gojee even told me which ingredients I lacked.

To perform these neat tricks, Gojee mines the blogs of several dozen trusted bloggers like Taste and Tell, Tartelette, 5 and Spice, Food52, WhatWouldCathyEat, Fresh365 and many more.

But wait, there's more. Gojee also lets you refine your preference to eliminate recipes containing anything you dislike (cilantro, meat, beets, jalapenos) and zeroing in on specifics you prefer. Gojee has added a feature that will let you register loyalty cards, and it will offer suggestions based on your recent purchases. That's where it crosses the line to creepy, for me, anyway.

It's early yet, and there will surely be kinks to work out. For starters, someone needs to tell Gojee there's a difference between winter squash and summer squash. Also, the "I Crave" and "I Dislike" tabs would be more helpful if it let you tell Gojee what styles of food (soup, sandwich, casserole) you prefer or don't. And even after I added flounder, whole wheat penne, tortillas and carrots to my "on hand" list, Gojee cheerily yielded the same five recipes as it offered before I added the ingredients.

While it's still novel, Gojee would make a fun dinner party: Ask guests to register for Gojee and sign up, then bring a dish made from a Gojee-suggested recipe. The tutorial is just five steps, and the tour guides itself.

You've heard about it, others have raved, now learn for yourself how to cut and trim pork from a hog at home at a Miel processing class on July 11.

You'll get two hours of how-to, then dinner and wine (for a total of about three hours), and you'll go home with some of the meat you butchered. It'll be a great way to supply yourself with some very nice meat and learn more about the cuts you buy and eat.

Cost is $150 per person, and the class is limited to eight students. Miel is located at 343 53rd Ave. N. Call 298-3663 for a reservation.

• cucinaparadiso.wordpress

Each class is limited to only six students so that everyone can get their hands on the food during preparation. Your $45 gets you the class, a dinner that you help create and accompanying vino.

The menus are from all over Italy: Venice, Naples, Rome, Tuscany, Sicily, Milano, the Riviera. In this series students will also be making fresh pasta for almost every class.

Check out the syllabus:

Do you guys ever have those weeks where you basically forget to go grocery shopping and then end up making weird things with whatever odd and ends are in your refrigerator because you're too hungry and impatient to restock once the dinner bell rings? Well, I'm at the end of one those weeks and the cupboards are bare — Fort Maloney is down to a box bran flakes, a jar of mayonnaise and some dried seaweed. Not exactly the makings of a decent meal.

But I'm also super-duper distracted with a pile of passed-deadline music assignments that are pulling my brain in 8 billion different directions — I'm writing features on outlaw country, local hip-hop, Colombian psych-dance and an indie-prog band — and the thought of stepping into a grocery store and actually having to make decisions is epicly intimidating.

Which is where you guys come in — I need your suggestions so I don't do anything stupid. The famished mind thinks weird thoughts, and I have the sneaking suspicion that if I were left to my own resources I'd come home with nothing but ground beef, birthday cake and tonic water. (No seriously, those are the three things I'm craving right now. And I'd kind like to eat them at the same time. No, I'm not pregnant, just a little unstable at the moment. Did I mention I'm hungry?)

So, my beloved Bites-sters, what ya got for me? Recipes, ingredients, quick-witted barbs about my spazzy state of being are all welcome and all appreciated — get at me in the comments. In the mean time I'll be making myself a mayonnaise and bran-flake sushi roll.

Sounds like a good reason to try out their new turkey burger to me. Report back here what you thought of it and if that warm, fuzzy feeling you got from helping out children in need was indeed the perfect condiment.

But where do you go the rest of the year to satisfy an appetite for Chinese food?

In a break between the dramatic lion dance and the fashion show at CAAN's recent celebration, another diner told me that his family of Asian heritage likes Fulin's restaurant. And Lucky Bamboo gets frequent mentions whenever the subject of Chinese food comes up — especially with reference to dim sum.

But as much as people love to talk about Chinese food, the conversation generates very few strong recommendations for local Chinese fare. Does anyone have any updates to share? Or should we just start looking forward to next year, when CAAN rings in the Year of the Dragon with another roaring meal?

Consider picking up a special Cinnamon Chili Heart chocolate from Olive and Sinclair. I know that Olive and Sinclair has grown to become much more readily available than when they first released this addictive flavor, but I still hoard it like a tweeker on A&E whenever I find it.

For $12.99 each, you can certainly afford to buy one of the few hearts I didn't scoop up at Whole Foods.