Inmates in El Dorado County jail in South Lake Tahoe entered 18 culinary categories in this year’s county fair and took home 17 awards.

Since 2007, inmates have entered their goods into the El Dorado County Fair. They received 10 first place and seven second place ribbons.

The purpose of the program is to teach incarcerated individuals usable job skills for when they are released. Inmates earn college credits.

They are taught cooking methods, baking and pastry, catering, and sanitation to name a few.

Slow Food Lake Tahoe is putting on a canning clinic in Truckee on Aug. 8 from 10am-2pm.

The clinic will cover the basics of water bath canning, which is suitable for preserving all sorts of foods, including pickles, jams and tomato sauce. The clinic will also be touching on additional options of preservation with pressure canning.

The class will be taught by SunMie Won an avid local gardener and expert canner. This is a hand-on workshop with all equipment provided. Participants will take home samples, plus information and tips to get started on canning projects at home.

A simple garden-fresh lunch will also be included.

Tickets are $25, or $15 for Slow Food members. They are available online.

By Sindya N. Bhanoo, New York Times

Farming may have originated 23,000 years ago, thousands of years earlier than previously thought, according to a new study.

Researchers discovered a large number of seeds at an ancient hunter-gatherer site known as Ohalo II on the shore of the Sea of Galilee in Israel.

Many of the seeds had scars, a mark that distinguishes domesticated species from wild forms.

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By Leigh Weingus, Huffington Post

Your major coffee habit may help reduce your risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, according to a study.

Researchers found that habitual coffee drinkers — meaning those who had more than 1.5 cups per day — were half as likely to develop Type 2 diabetes over a 10-year period as casual coffee drinkers, who had fewer than 1.5 cups per day.

The researchers believe that the inflammation-lowering antioxidants found in coffee beans may account for the difference. Blood samples taken from the study participants revealed that habitual drinkers had lower levels of the inflammatory marker serum amyloid.

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By Margot Sanger-Katz, New York Times

After decades of worsening diets and sharp increases in obesity, Americans’ eating habits have begun changing for the better.

Calories consumed daily by the typical American adult, which peaked around 2003, are in the midst of their first sustained decline since federal statistics began to track the subject, more than 40 years ago. The number of calories that the average American child takes in daily has fallen even more — by at least 9 percent.

The declines cut across most major demographic groups — including higher- and lower-income families, and blacks and whites — though they vary somewhat by group.

As calorie consumption has declined, obesity rates appear to have stopped rising for adults and school-aged children and have come down for the youngest children, suggesting the calorie reductions are making a difference.

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By Allison Aubrey, NPR

Sixty-five grams of added sugar. That’s how much you’ll find in a 20-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola.

But can you picture 65 grams? It’s about 16 teaspoons worth of the sweet stuff.

The Food and Drug Administration wants to make it easier for Americans to track how much added sugars we’re getting in the foods and beverages we choose.

So, in addition to a proposed requirement to list amounts of added sugars on the Nutrition Facts panels, the FDA is now proposing that companies declare a daily percent value, too.

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By Jon Verive, Los Angeles Times

A new bill signed into law by California Gov. Jerry Brown will let you sample beer before you buy it at your local farmers market.

The bill amends an October law that allowed local breweries to sell beer at farmers markets. When the new law goes into effect in 2016, breweries will be able to host an “instructional tasting event on the subject of beer at a certified farmers’ market.”

After last year’s law passed, many breweries were reluctant to apply for the special permits since they were unable to offer samples of the beer.

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Sugar Bowl Resort kicks off its summer Lake Mary Cabin Dinner Series on July 19.

Sugar Bowl and chef Alan Davis will host 12 dinners throughout the summer.

Dinner dates and nonprofit partners are:

July 19: Truckee Donner Land Trust

July 25: Excellence in Education

July 26: Donner Summit Historical Society

July 31: Humane Society of Truckee-Tahoe

Aug. 2: Truckee Tahoe Aim High

August 7: Tahoe Nordic Search & Rescue

Aug. 9: Truckee Trails Foundation

Aug. 16: Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation

Aug. 23: Donner Summit Area Association

Aug. 30: Sugar Bowl Academy

Sept. 6: Donner Summit Business Group

Sept. 13: Sierra Avalanche Center.

Dinners run from 5:30-9pm each evening and are open to the public. To make reservations, call 530.426.7002.

The Food Bank of El Dorado County will be in South Lake Tahoe to host a free farmers market and mobile good pantry on July 22 from 10-11am at the American Legion Hall, 2748 Lake Tahoe Blvd.

The Food Bank will provide one allocation per household. Income guidelines are online.

For more information on how to give or get help, call 530.621.9950 or email info@foodbankedc.org.

By Jim Shahin, Washington Post

Internet videos and cookbook recipes make grilling corn seem as easy as basic arithmetic. Cob on the fire + cob off the fire = classic summer bite. But the ear of corn I was holding might as well have been a calculus problem.

Why? Because after studying those videos and recipes, I was more confused than ever. Each method is different, but all promise the same outcome: perfection.

To determine once and for all the best way to cook corn, I challenged myself to cut through the elephant’s-eye-high thicket of information and get down to the basics. That’s where things really got complicated, and where the calculus comes in.

Throughout an entire month, I tested more than 30 ears of corn in every conceivable way: husks on. Husks off. Wrapped in aluminum foil. Placed directly in the embers. On the cold side of an indirect fire. And on and on.

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