Every time I sat down to work on posts for Minced this past week I found myself distracted.  A need to bake bread would stop me mid-sentence or I’d go from editing photos to searching the internet for recipes for an upcoming camping trip.  And then, right when I felt like I couldn’t procrastinate anymore, I’d realized I’d stumbled upon a nice little list of tidbits that might piqué your interest.  Here they are for your delicious consumption.

– Looking for a good summer read? Poaching, the high seas, and a multi-month, 10,000 mile chase are all part of this New York Times article on illegal fishing.  Hungry for more? Bruce Knecht’s Hooked: A True Story of Pirates, Poaching, and the Perfect Fish tackles our appetite for sea bass and what it means for our oceans and the Patagonian Toothfish.

– I always appreciate John Oliver’s cheeky take on big issues.  His episode on Food Waste from a couple of weeks ago doesn’t disappoint, provides lots of laughs, and draws attention to an issue that should concern us all. Please note that the episode does contain offensive language.

– Thinking about what could be done with all that extra food that ends up in our landfills? See India’s solution to the problem of excess grains in this animated clip from the Pulitzer Center.  Just imagine what we could do if we put our food waste to work…

– It takes a good cookbook to make me want to turn on my oven in the summer and as luck would have it, I stumbled across not one, but two.  Peter Reinhart’s Artisan Breads Every Day and Jim Lahey’s My Bread: The Revolutionary No Work, No Knead Method are getting all the attention in my kitchen.  I’ve long been intrigued by Lahey’s no-knead approach to bread and he’s wowed me again with a pizza dough recipe that doesn’t need a stone. Reinhart’s cookbook has kept my kitchen stocked with fresh sandwich bread this July.  Many of his recipes make enough for two loaves and the dough for the second loaf will keep up to four days in the refrigerator meaning fresh bread all weeklong.  A good thing as homemade bread disappears quickly around here.

– We are gearing up for a family trip to Glacier National Park in a couple of weeks.  I’ve spent the last several months thinking about camping with an 18-month old and imagining all the ways that won’t will work.  Then I stumbled across this blog and now my sole focus is on how I’m going to make donuts at our campsite.  Priorities.

Recipes will resume next week. In the meantime, Minced blog now has its very own Instagram account: @mincedblog.  Check it out!