It's a chilly morning - perfect for hot coffee, my cozy office and a sweater. Enjoy it while it lasts, I shall, because I'm hearing we'll be back to the high 80s later this week. I'm hoping the chilly weather will take some of the steam out of the legions of yellowjackets that overwhelm this part of Germany in August. Apparently this time of year is when the larvae stop providing the sweet goo the adult wasps crave, so they seek out picnics, bakeries and kitchens. Personally, I'm not a fan; I got really used to our wasp-free existence in California. I didn't miss them.
I've managed to fall down a rabbit hole of yogurt-making websites this morning, so I'm collecting notes and links and trying to decide the best way to start my first batch this week. Many of the recipes I've read suggest using a commercial yogurt for a starter, which seems like cheating, but since I don't know anyone who makes yogurt here in Deutschland, I may have to start off with this minor crutch. Full report to come. J eats one hell of a lot of yogurt, so I have a resident expert to do the quality judging.
I've been lucky enough to hook up with a good German baker through a friend in La Jolla. She and her boyfriend are obsessive home bakers, and she's hooking me up with some gorgeous-sounding German bread and pastry recipes. I'm so ready to roll on trying these, but it's been so damn warm that I can't imagine turing the oven on during the day, and the pastry/butter situation would be a nightmare. I realize that soon, very soon, I'll be whining about how the cold is kicking my thinned-out SoCal blood's butt, but at least I'll finally be able to turn on the oven and bake some good, dark bread and make a pot of soup without creating a sauna.
I'm working on an article about the relationship between sexual discovery and the transformation most of us experience from a simple, unchallenged childhood palate to a more refined, sensual enjoyment of food. Not an original topic by any stretch, but it's a useful exercise for me as a writer, and it'll double up as a good school assignment, too. But first, breakfast.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
Smackdown
Cheese or chocolate? Defend your position. With expletives, preferably.
(Ween fans, do your worst.)
(Ween fans, do your worst.)
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Dining solo?
When you dine alone in a restaurant, do you feel compelled to bring something on which to focus while you eat, like a book, or your laptop? Or do you avoid dining alone altogether? Or, are you a balls-out, to-hell-with-what-people-think solo diner? Do you feel like people will approach you if you don't look busy? How do you feel about eating out alone?
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Comfort food
Does everyone have a food they associate with happiness, relaxation, or well-being? When does comfort food earn that status - the first time you have it, or after years of happy events associated with this meal? Does it have to be a decadent food, or is it possible that for some, a healthy salad or bran muffin is comfort food? What feeling are we trying to achieve when we seek out and eat these longed-for items?
Also, what are your comfort foods, and why? Feel free to elaborate in the comments!
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Tell me about it
This place is going to be livening up, finally - stay tuned. In the meantime, I'd love to hear from you! What food topics do you love to read about? Do you enjoy service pieces and recipes? Are you interested in food policy, narratives and short stories that involve food, or straight-up reporting about food? What about articles about restaurants and chefs? Food reviews? Travel stories about food?
What else interests you? The comment section is open for business.
I'm assuming, of course, that you like food writing. Doesn't everyone?
If it's crap, then say it's crap, for crap's sake.
I'm not a foodie. I'm not even particularly adventurous when it comes to food. I tend to get into ruts - avocados, broccoli, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, oranges, cucumbers, apples, bread, tofu and cheese make up a big part of what gets eaten around here. I could quite happily eat just a handful of different things for every meal for days and days. I just enjoy simple, fresh, recognizable foods, prepared well. Good butter helps.
Nothing offends what food sensibilities I do have more than unmitigated crap that's being pretentiously presented as something better than merely acceptable. So airline food, for example, doesn't really bug me, because it's not being passed off as anything other than what it is. It's honest.
But, almost all chain restaurants bother the shit out of me. Don't call something "homemade" if it's not made there. Don't call pathetic, outdated attempts at a regional or national cuisine "favorites" - I'm betting they're not anyone's favorite anymore. Don't give a white tortilla filled with cheese whiz, exhausted beans, briny tomatoes and wilted lettuce a fancy Mexican name and pass it off as "authentic". It's not. It's crap, so stop pretending. It's unseemly, and everyone thinks less of you for it.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Southern Fried chicken in southern Germany
No, haven't made any. I'm going to, though, finally, and the reason I'm finally going to do this thing is this: I found a recipe that doesn't require that I fill an enormous pot with oil, immerse the chicken in said oil, and then be faced with loads of, well, OIL. I don't wish to store it, yet I don't want to use tons of oil only once. Plus, I sure don't know what to do with it when it's time to dispose of it. It's 100% because of this logistical problem that I have resisted making fried chicken at home. Even the temptation to try this recipe wasn't enough (thanks for the tip, though, TMC) - I mean, 6 cups of oil? I don't understand how people contend with things like that.
So today, as I was reading Splatgirl Creates, one of my very favorite food and arty projects blogs, I ran into this recipe, and I think it's a keeper. One inch of oil? I can live with that. And - fun bonus - chicken actually tastes like chicken here, not that strangely blank flavor I find most chicken at home seems to have. So: no vat of oil to contend with, flavorful chicken that was raised humanely and still tastes like chicken, and a three day project that leaves us with homemade fried chicken to enjoy for several days, with no oil storage/disposal problem? Done. Report to follow.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
One more reason I adore my badass husband
Poached eggs, homemade chipotle hollandaise, organic turkey, red peppers roasted to order, avocado* and - my sole contribution to the meal - homemade sourdough bread.Even better - he presented this to me just in time to start watching the Giants/Philly game. This is bliss, defined.
* I totally cheated here and bought imported, out-of-season avocados on sale at Trader Joe's the other day. I am weak.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
My new friends at Queercents
Queercents in on the bread making wagon, too! What a beautiful way to save money. Their recipe only calls for one rise, so all you beginners out there can cut your teeth on an easy recipe. (Really, though, the bread recipe I posted at Kimbaland is so, so easy, and so good.) It's from a regular feature they do called "Stretch Your Food Budget" that's totally worth a good perusal.
They also point out the helpful food budget guidelines available at the USDA website, which break down what you should expect to spend for food on a weekly or monthly basis based on household composition and which "plan" you'd like to follow: thrifty, low-cost, moderate or liberal. Let's just say that as proud as I am of how much we've cut down on our food expenditures, we must have started out in the "shamefully obscene" category (not listed, btw), and we're still somewhere between moderate and liberal. What the hell? At least, though, our groceries cost a whole lot less than eating out three or so times a week did. Two incomes - those were the days.
Of course, we try to buy local, and organic when we can, too,* so I don't think we'll be able to trim our food budget much more. But using more potatoes and root veggies is never a bad suggestion - yum - and they are as cheap as can be.
With that pittance of a post, I am off to make soup and cranberry sauce.
* Or at least what we think is organic. Yikes.
They also point out the helpful food budget guidelines available at the USDA website, which break down what you should expect to spend for food on a weekly or monthly basis based on household composition and which "plan" you'd like to follow: thrifty, low-cost, moderate or liberal. Let's just say that as proud as I am of how much we've cut down on our food expenditures, we must have started out in the "shamefully obscene" category (not listed, btw), and we're still somewhere between moderate and liberal. What the hell? At least, though, our groceries cost a whole lot less than eating out three or so times a week did. Two incomes - those were the days.
Of course, we try to buy local, and organic when we can, too,* so I don't think we'll be able to trim our food budget much more. But using more potatoes and root veggies is never a bad suggestion - yum - and they are as cheap as can be.
With that pittance of a post, I am off to make soup and cranberry sauce.
* Or at least what we think is organic. Yikes.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Demystifying bread, life
I love baking bread. I'm not particularly good at it or anything, but the process of making bread happen kind of fascinates me. The combination of being tight on cash and curious about bread is particularly satisfying, somehow - I think it's because baking bread is a lot more about getting back to basics than it is about developing a expensive food hobby. The ingredients are cheap, the process is relaxing, the house smells wonderful while bread bakes and the results are wholesome, filling and delicious. Even mediocre homemade bread is superior in every way to store-bought, and it goes well with another food that's both wonderful and super budget-friendly: homemade soup.
I'm finding that right now, while we're down to just one wage earner and trying to put money aside for the move, bread baking has gotten me more invested in what we're eating, and in shopping and cooking more sanely and economically. I don't know if it's the unhurried pace of bread baking, the time it allows me to think, the realization that something so reasonably priced can be so filling and nutritious, or if it's something less tangible than all of that, but to me, baking bread is centering in a way that not all cooking and baking is. I make better decisions when I bake bread.
I also like that bread's a reasonable metaphor for life. I like that it sets limits, but is still responsive and revealing. Of course, the quality of the bread you get to eat is dependent on the quality of the ingredients and the skill and care of the baker, but in a way that's somehow different than a souffle, or a roast. I know this sounds corny, but it teaches. How? Well, it's not fussy, but it demands that the process be honored, and that the procedure be adhered to until you're confident that you've learned enough to wing it a little. But it's easy on beginners, too, somehow - even minor (and some major) mistakes can result in good bread, depending on when and how you screw it up. Other times, well, you just have to start again after studying what went wrong, which is normally evident in hindsight. Each batch is a new opportunity. You gradually learn what works and fine tune as you go. Coolest of all: it's living, literally, and behaves that way, in that it reacts to humidity, temperature, touch and pressure.
Judaism and Christianity have some pretty strong ideas about bread, the counterculture embraced bread baking as a way of opting out of the mainstream, and I don't know about you, but when I think of frontier women, I think of a spinning wheel, a butter churn and sleeves rolled up for kneading dough (plus a plow and a rifle). I like to think about how this simple food, made up of so few ingredients, is so unchanged that a baker who somehow got dropped into the 21st century from 1725 would be perfectly at home throwing a whole wheat loaf together with what's in my kitchen. Yes, I actually think about this stuff.
OK, specifics: I've made several batches of sourdough and a couple of batches of a couple of versions of oatmeal-molasses bread. The sourdough has been consistently tasty but nearly devoid of sourdough bite - a work in progress for sure, but a really yummy one. The oatmeal molasses, however, is really amazing stuff. It's making me look forward to the prospect of the heavy, robust German breads that are in our future. Substituting two cups of almond meal for two of the five to six cups of flour the recipe calls for was a good idea - I may try a batch with oat bran next. Or, I may try this one instead.
Back in my restaurant and catering days, I was forced to cook for devotees of the Atkins insanity. Think slabs of meat with cheese and eggs and basically no vegetables or bread. It was horrifying on so many levels, never mind terribly unhealthy and almost completely ineffective in the long run - plus, the smell of mayonnaise, bacon, beef and cheese, constantly, made me feel like I was working at McDonald's. I just couldn't get my head around that dopey trend and its ability to brainwash people into losing the sense to see the difference between shitty white bread, Kaiser rolls and other low-quality mass-produced garbage and actual food made with whole grains. I mean, just look at a handful of wheat flour, or smell the complex aroma of baking bread and then tell me that this food should be avoided. Are you kidding me? Never mind the bullshit inherent in telling people they shouldn't eat fruit.
Do yourself a favor. Stick the iPod in the dock, queue up This American Life, make a pot of coffee, pull down that dusty bread cookbook and bake. Bread is worth learning about, and it's a great teacher. If that doesn't do it for you, maybe the thought of this bread baker will - *swoon* - and hey, it worked out ok for him, no?
I'm finding that right now, while we're down to just one wage earner and trying to put money aside for the move, bread baking has gotten me more invested in what we're eating, and in shopping and cooking more sanely and economically. I don't know if it's the unhurried pace of bread baking, the time it allows me to think, the realization that something so reasonably priced can be so filling and nutritious, or if it's something less tangible than all of that, but to me, baking bread is centering in a way that not all cooking and baking is. I make better decisions when I bake bread.
I also like that bread's a reasonable metaphor for life. I like that it sets limits, but is still responsive and revealing. Of course, the quality of the bread you get to eat is dependent on the quality of the ingredients and the skill and care of the baker, but in a way that's somehow different than a souffle, or a roast. I know this sounds corny, but it teaches. How? Well, it's not fussy, but it demands that the process be honored, and that the procedure be adhered to until you're confident that you've learned enough to wing it a little. But it's easy on beginners, too, somehow - even minor (and some major) mistakes can result in good bread, depending on when and how you screw it up. Other times, well, you just have to start again after studying what went wrong, which is normally evident in hindsight. Each batch is a new opportunity. You gradually learn what works and fine tune as you go. Coolest of all: it's living, literally, and behaves that way, in that it reacts to humidity, temperature, touch and pressure.
Judaism and Christianity have some pretty strong ideas about bread, the counterculture embraced bread baking as a way of opting out of the mainstream, and I don't know about you, but when I think of frontier women, I think of a spinning wheel, a butter churn and sleeves rolled up for kneading dough (plus a plow and a rifle). I like to think about how this simple food, made up of so few ingredients, is so unchanged that a baker who somehow got dropped into the 21st century from 1725 would be perfectly at home throwing a whole wheat loaf together with what's in my kitchen. Yes, I actually think about this stuff.
OK, specifics: I've made several batches of sourdough and a couple of batches of a couple of versions of oatmeal-molasses bread. The sourdough has been consistently tasty but nearly devoid of sourdough bite - a work in progress for sure, but a really yummy one. The oatmeal molasses, however, is really amazing stuff. It's making me look forward to the prospect of the heavy, robust German breads that are in our future. Substituting two cups of almond meal for two of the five to six cups of flour the recipe calls for was a good idea - I may try a batch with oat bran next. Or, I may try this one instead.
Back in my restaurant and catering days, I was forced to cook for devotees of the Atkins insanity. Think slabs of meat with cheese and eggs and basically no vegetables or bread. It was horrifying on so many levels, never mind terribly unhealthy and almost completely ineffective in the long run - plus, the smell of mayonnaise, bacon, beef and cheese, constantly, made me feel like I was working at McDonald's. I just couldn't get my head around that dopey trend and its ability to brainwash people into losing the sense to see the difference between shitty white bread, Kaiser rolls and other low-quality mass-produced garbage and actual food made with whole grains. I mean, just look at a handful of wheat flour, or smell the complex aroma of baking bread and then tell me that this food should be avoided. Are you kidding me? Never mind the bullshit inherent in telling people they shouldn't eat fruit.
Do yourself a favor. Stick the iPod in the dock, queue up This American Life, make a pot of coffee, pull down that dusty bread cookbook and bake. Bread is worth learning about, and it's a great teacher. If that doesn't do it for you, maybe the thought of this bread baker will - *swoon* - and hey, it worked out ok for him, no?
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
'Tis the night before Christmas, and I'm blogging while drinking wine. Cheers!
Time to talk about food yet again. But! Some of you might want to know that there's a new bag in the world, and I think it's the prototype for purse-style bags to come (there will also be a basic messenger bag and a basic tote). I'll be tweaking the pattern some, and adding a couple of pockets and features to this design - but this will be the way they look, more or less. So! Expect the first couple of samples to be ready early in the year.
Food item #1 - J made the most magical, amazing, non-psychedelic mushrooms I have ever had in my life the other night. Simplicity is so often the key to jaw-droppingly good eats, I swear. He browned a little unsalted butter, plopped a couple of sliced portabello mushrooms (including stems) into the pan, added a little more butter and some red wine and called them done. These mushrooms were INFUCKINGCREDIBLE. I swooned. Now, I've eaten some damn portabellos in my time - they were on the menu at Orbit's, in many forms and flavors - but these were just unreal. The very thought of them makes me long for another serving.
Food item #2 - I'm experimenting with the Oatmeal Molasses bread recipe today - I substituted Almond Meal for 2 of the 5 to 6 cups of flour the recipe calls for, and I finally used blackstrap molasses, as the recipe asks, instead of using up our regular molasses. The dough is on its second rise as I type this, and it looks and smells fantastic.* I am so glad I've been taking the time to make bread recently. It's profoundly fulfilling in a way I can't quite put my finger on.
Food item #3 - The United States of Arugula, by David Kamp. This is gonna take a while.
Here's one thing I took away from this book: we actually have a lot to be hopeful about. In the US, the availability of fresh, quality ingredients has increased dramatically since the 1940's. We're more adventurous diners than ever, and we have a wider variety of foods in our eating repertoire. At the same time, we're more able to make truly terrible food choices, because during this same time period, we've seen the rise of the factory farm, a constant grain surplus, farm subsidies, the cheap availability of chemical fertilizers and the resultant decline of the family farm. The result? Less expensive, less healthy and less sustainable ways to eat, at the same time as the availability of truly great food has increased. Kamp glosses over this parallel development at the very end of the book, but I think it's important - and here's why.
Lately I've been thinking a lot about making connections and cultivating consensus in order to progress, even when this involves making nice people with whom we may have significant philosophical differences - think Rick Warren, Walmart, McDonald's, Republicans, oil companies, etc. Kamp seems to have a similar opinion; he discusses a knicker-wadding in the food world when Rick Bayless endorsed a lower-fat, slightly healthier sandwich offering from Burger King a few years back. I don't watch enough television to know anything about the ad, and I don't think I've been inside a Burger King since high school, so I'm no expert on either (although it does sound like there were some issues with this "healthy" sandwich, including the fact that it contained HFCS). Honestly? I think a famous, food activist chef's encouragement when a huge multinational corporation that normally peddles absolute, irredeemable crap makes an effort to move in the right direction is a mostly good thing overall.
Peter Singer has given a hat tip to Chipotle, and I see this as a similar gesture. Not a ringing endorsement in his case, but an acknowledgment that buying meat that's antibiotic-free and has been sustainably and ethically raised is better than buying meat that's not - although Singer, of course, would rather we abstain from meat completely.
Walmart selling organic food? Well, they're a horrid company overall, with a nasty history of employee abuse, gender discrimination and a rap sheet a mile long for unsavory act after unethical policy - but they're greening their company, and they're demanding organic dry goods and produce on an enormous scale. What to do?
I'm not sure about the answers to these questions, and there are plenty of smart people who say we should absolutely not sully the cause of organic/slow food and locavorism by associating with such food bandits as Nestle, ConAgra and the like. As much as I want to embrace idealism, I simply can't when it comes to food - at least not completely. To me, the energy and climate crisis we're facing isn't going to be solved only by things like people getting to know the farmers in their area, giving up fast food, cutting back on meat and learning to cook - it's going to require changes on an organizational, corporate and governmental level. If we refuse to do business with shitty companies as they try to become less shitty, even if their motivation to be less shitty is to make shitloads of money (heh) than how are we gonna make these changes?
And, you know, the book is just all-around awesome. I have a list about a mile long now of food writers I need to read. *Sigh* - nice.
* Later that afternoon: It's fucking awesome. Merry Christmas to us!
Food item #1 - J made the most magical, amazing, non-psychedelic mushrooms I have ever had in my life the other night. Simplicity is so often the key to jaw-droppingly good eats, I swear. He browned a little unsalted butter, plopped a couple of sliced portabello mushrooms (including stems) into the pan, added a little more butter and some red wine and called them done. These mushrooms were INFUCKINGCREDIBLE. I swooned. Now, I've eaten some damn portabellos in my time - they were on the menu at Orbit's, in many forms and flavors - but these were just unreal. The very thought of them makes me long for another serving.
Food item #2 - I'm experimenting with the Oatmeal Molasses bread recipe today - I substituted Almond Meal for 2 of the 5 to 6 cups of flour the recipe calls for, and I finally used blackstrap molasses, as the recipe asks, instead of using up our regular molasses. The dough is on its second rise as I type this, and it looks and smells fantastic.* I am so glad I've been taking the time to make bread recently. It's profoundly fulfilling in a way I can't quite put my finger on.
Food item #3 - The United States of Arugula, by David Kamp. This is gonna take a while.
Here's one thing I took away from this book: we actually have a lot to be hopeful about. In the US, the availability of fresh, quality ingredients has increased dramatically since the 1940's. We're more adventurous diners than ever, and we have a wider variety of foods in our eating repertoire. At the same time, we're more able to make truly terrible food choices, because during this same time period, we've seen the rise of the factory farm, a constant grain surplus, farm subsidies, the cheap availability of chemical fertilizers and the resultant decline of the family farm. The result? Less expensive, less healthy and less sustainable ways to eat, at the same time as the availability of truly great food has increased. Kamp glosses over this parallel development at the very end of the book, but I think it's important - and here's why.
Lately I've been thinking a lot about making connections and cultivating consensus in order to progress, even when this involves making nice people with whom we may have significant philosophical differences - think Rick Warren, Walmart, McDonald's, Republicans, oil companies, etc. Kamp seems to have a similar opinion; he discusses a knicker-wadding in the food world when Rick Bayless endorsed a lower-fat, slightly healthier sandwich offering from Burger King a few years back. I don't watch enough television to know anything about the ad, and I don't think I've been inside a Burger King since high school, so I'm no expert on either (although it does sound like there were some issues with this "healthy" sandwich, including the fact that it contained HFCS). Honestly? I think a famous, food activist chef's encouragement when a huge multinational corporation that normally peddles absolute, irredeemable crap makes an effort to move in the right direction is a mostly good thing overall.
Peter Singer has given a hat tip to Chipotle, and I see this as a similar gesture. Not a ringing endorsement in his case, but an acknowledgment that buying meat that's antibiotic-free and has been sustainably and ethically raised is better than buying meat that's not - although Singer, of course, would rather we abstain from meat completely.
Walmart selling organic food? Well, they're a horrid company overall, with a nasty history of employee abuse, gender discrimination and a rap sheet a mile long for unsavory act after unethical policy - but they're greening their company, and they're demanding organic dry goods and produce on an enormous scale. What to do?
I'm not sure about the answers to these questions, and there are plenty of smart people who say we should absolutely not sully the cause of organic/slow food and locavorism by associating with such food bandits as Nestle, ConAgra and the like. As much as I want to embrace idealism, I simply can't when it comes to food - at least not completely. To me, the energy and climate crisis we're facing isn't going to be solved only by things like people getting to know the farmers in their area, giving up fast food, cutting back on meat and learning to cook - it's going to require changes on an organizational, corporate and governmental level. If we refuse to do business with shitty companies as they try to become less shitty, even if their motivation to be less shitty is to make shitloads of money (heh) than how are we gonna make these changes?
And, you know, the book is just all-around awesome. I have a list about a mile long now of food writers I need to read. *Sigh* - nice.
* Later that afternoon: It's fucking awesome. Merry Christmas to us!
Monday, December 22, 2008
Back in the New York Groove
(That's a terrible Ace Frehley/Russ Ballard reference above. Sorry.)
So, it's been a while! Here’s what I’ve been up to, other than kvetching about politics and life in general over at Kimbaland.
I've been fixated on good food writing for the last several months, a reading exercise which has been immensely satisfying. It's been such a pleasant and affirming experience, in fact, and has left me so eager for more, that I’ve been reluctant to stop, review, and actually write anything about what I've read. I just want to keep reading and making connections, relaxing into description after description of great food and the lives and passions of creative cooks. Oh, and the adventures involved in opening and running restaurants and food stores, which are much more entertaining in print than in real life, trust me. I've also been loading up on food history and policy, restaurant reviews, narratives, personal histories of food writers and chefs and just generally hacking through my formidable Amazon wish list, which has become a virtual storehouse for the dozens of food-related books I covet.
Beyond learning about the wonders of fantastic food and people who’ve been innovators and advocates for better eating, I also want to really understand how farm subsidies work, and to see the way forward from the industrialized food chain. I want to imagine the potential technology has to improve solutions like food and resource co-ops and community farms and gardens, and to think about the ways that the collaborative networking software J was working on in grad school could connect people who need with people who have, and make "off-the-grid", non-corporate living much more possible for more people.
I’m also gathering notes and writing short essays about my restaurant; several of the essays in my MFA admission portfolio came from this growing collection. It has been a sort of awakening - there are so many things I would do differently if I had known more, or if I’d had access to more resources. I wonder how it all would have been different if I had been able to network with other merchants, and with farmers, organic suppliers and other sustainable businesses?
I’m also making a list of authors - both food writers and creative non-fiction writers in general - with whom I need to become much more familiar: Joan Didion, Calvin Trillin*, Craig Claiborne, Gay Talese, M.F.K. Fisher and Laurie Colwin**, just to name a few. Is it possible to feel that there’s so much to read, one couldn’t possibly have time (or the ability) to write?
So this is what I’ve been thinking and reading about, and what I’ll be writing about here. Much more to come.
* I do own and love his devastating book, “About Alice”.
** While rummaging through online food resources, I keep finding references to her. I've heard of her before, but I somehow wasn't aware that she was, among other things, a food writer. I'm intrigued; the snippets of information I've read about her work are all woozy with admiration and devotion. Anyone know more?
So, it's been a while! Here’s what I’ve been up to, other than kvetching about politics and life in general over at Kimbaland.
I've been fixated on good food writing for the last several months, a reading exercise which has been immensely satisfying. It's been such a pleasant and affirming experience, in fact, and has left me so eager for more, that I’ve been reluctant to stop, review, and actually write anything about what I've read. I just want to keep reading and making connections, relaxing into description after description of great food and the lives and passions of creative cooks. Oh, and the adventures involved in opening and running restaurants and food stores, which are much more entertaining in print than in real life, trust me. I've also been loading up on food history and policy, restaurant reviews, narratives, personal histories of food writers and chefs and just generally hacking through my formidable Amazon wish list, which has become a virtual storehouse for the dozens of food-related books I covet.
Beyond learning about the wonders of fantastic food and people who’ve been innovators and advocates for better eating, I also want to really understand how farm subsidies work, and to see the way forward from the industrialized food chain. I want to imagine the potential technology has to improve solutions like food and resource co-ops and community farms and gardens, and to think about the ways that the collaborative networking software J was working on in grad school could connect people who need with people who have, and make "off-the-grid", non-corporate living much more possible for more people.
I’m also gathering notes and writing short essays about my restaurant; several of the essays in my MFA admission portfolio came from this growing collection. It has been a sort of awakening - there are so many things I would do differently if I had known more, or if I’d had access to more resources. I wonder how it all would have been different if I had been able to network with other merchants, and with farmers, organic suppliers and other sustainable businesses?
I’m also making a list of authors - both food writers and creative non-fiction writers in general - with whom I need to become much more familiar: Joan Didion, Calvin Trillin*, Craig Claiborne, Gay Talese, M.F.K. Fisher and Laurie Colwin**, just to name a few. Is it possible to feel that there’s so much to read, one couldn’t possibly have time (or the ability) to write?
So this is what I’ve been thinking and reading about, and what I’ll be writing about here. Much more to come.
* I do own and love his devastating book, “About Alice”.
** While rummaging through online food resources, I keep finding references to her. I've heard of her before, but I somehow wasn't aware that she was, among other things, a food writer. I'm intrigued; the snippets of information I've read about her work are all woozy with admiration and devotion. Anyone know more?
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Personal vs. Corporate Accountability
I'm sure I didn't mention the insignificant-to-anyone-but-me news that my GPS crapped out on me this week, and that because I have basically no self control, I cannot run without my GPS because otherwise I'll go trotting off at an unmaintainable speed and be exhausted in a mile or so. So today, rather than spend the 20 minutes or so it would have taken to figure out J's less high tech (but at least still functioning) GPS so that I could go for a run, I decided to grab my iPod and my bike and go for a ride instead.
I am such a dork that I listen to NPR, PRI, American Public Media and other talkie podcasts rather than music when I run or cycle, because it seems like such a great opportunity, you know, when I'm not doing anything else, to learn something from the gazillions of wonderful podcasts that I never seem to have enough time to listen to otherwise, somehow.
So - today, I listened to this episode of Deconstructing Dinner, and was blown away by Eric Schlosser. I read his book, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal a few years ago, and was impressed, entertained and horrified - and I learned a lot. But hearing him speak really got me thinking about how a lot of what I've been reading about food has been making me feel.
About forever ago, I posted at Kimbaland about how much I felt that stressing personal responsibility and individual action in the interest of changing how we impact the environment was overwhelming me, and how I felt that so many "normal" actions we take as consumers are fraught with guilt and conflict. Schlosser doesn't let us off the hook, of course, but he stresses collective responsibility and, even more importantly, corporate responsibility. He uses McDonald's as an example, and goes to town on the society-level problems that result from large corporations externalizing costs like health care and pollution.
I need to listen to it all again and take some notes, but in the meantime, give it a listen if you're interested. It's given me a lot to think about.
I am such a dork that I listen to NPR, PRI, American Public Media and other talkie podcasts rather than music when I run or cycle, because it seems like such a great opportunity, you know, when I'm not doing anything else, to learn something from the gazillions of wonderful podcasts that I never seem to have enough time to listen to otherwise, somehow.
So - today, I listened to this episode of Deconstructing Dinner, and was blown away by Eric Schlosser. I read his book, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal a few years ago, and was impressed, entertained and horrified - and I learned a lot. But hearing him speak really got me thinking about how a lot of what I've been reading about food has been making me feel.
About forever ago, I posted at Kimbaland about how much I felt that stressing personal responsibility and individual action in the interest of changing how we impact the environment was overwhelming me, and how I felt that so many "normal" actions we take as consumers are fraught with guilt and conflict. Schlosser doesn't let us off the hook, of course, but he stresses collective responsibility and, even more importantly, corporate responsibility. He uses McDonald's as an example, and goes to town on the society-level problems that result from large corporations externalizing costs like health care and pollution.
I need to listen to it all again and take some notes, but in the meantime, give it a listen if you're interested. It's given me a lot to think about.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
It's 11:25 already?
I rashly volunteered to do some transcription for a radio show I am devouring episodes of called Deconstructing Dinner. Happily this gem is available via iTunes, so the fact that they are primarily broadcast in Canada doesn't keep me from the amazing goodness that they put together every week.
The thing I love about this show is that the discuss food in a way that I haven't really found elsewhere. They talk about policy, ethics, farming, science, the processed food industry and the social justice aspects of food rather than recipes, wines, good restaurants and cookbooks. I love shows that do that stuff, too, but to me, the exciting and interesting thing about food, beyond eating it, is to study and understand how it relates to privilege, capitalism, corporate control, politics, geography and such. I'll admit, I also like to hear the word "processed" pronounced with the long "o", and I sometimes imagine that the host is wearing hockey pants and eating poutine. But I am immature like that.
I've also been giving some thought to our household's rank at the Global Rich List, and all that it implies, and I'm thinking about getting involved in a blog carnival over here.
And today - I'm making a bleu cheese and wild mushroom tart with whole wheat crust, a batch of seitan, and maybe even some dessert bread.
The thing I love about this show is that the discuss food in a way that I haven't really found elsewhere. They talk about policy, ethics, farming, science, the processed food industry and the social justice aspects of food rather than recipes, wines, good restaurants and cookbooks. I love shows that do that stuff, too, but to me, the exciting and interesting thing about food, beyond eating it, is to study and understand how it relates to privilege, capitalism, corporate control, politics, geography and such. I'll admit, I also like to hear the word "processed" pronounced with the long "o", and I sometimes imagine that the host is wearing hockey pants and eating poutine. But I am immature like that.
I've also been giving some thought to our household's rank at the Global Rich List, and all that it implies, and I'm thinking about getting involved in a blog carnival over here.
And today - I'm making a bleu cheese and wild mushroom tart with whole wheat crust, a batch of seitan, and maybe even some dessert bread.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
An introduction to where I'm going with this
Ah, a post! Finally a post!
Do any of my fellow bloggers ever realize that you have a ton to say, and hardly any ability to pare it down to a manageable post? Or that you think you have something to say, but you're sure you don't know enough yet, or you think you need more data? Is the stack of books on a topic that interests you getting so high that you feel like it will be months before you post again if you put it off until you've sufficiently educated yourself on the topic?
Well, I'm a dork, so all of these things are happening to me right now.
Here's what I've been thinking about, based on the books and articles I'm reading, and on the couple of podcasts (Deconstructing Dinner, a Canadian program, and The Splendid Table) I've been listening to while I run, write and cook.
I have grown to dislike the word "foodie", first of all. To me, this word has a couple of problems. First, it defines people who are interested in food as radically different in some way - I mean, shouldn't we all be interested in food? Second, it gets applied to people who are middle-to-upper income nearly exclusively, which is a similar problem to the first, in that it makes caring about food the providence of just a few people; food hobbyists, if you will.
I am also finding that I keep reading and hearing a few key phrases: that we need to get to know the people who grow and produce our food, we need to reconnect with our community and our region's food traditions, that we need to know what's in season in our area and where items come from and how they are grown, and that by not doing these things, we are losing part of our identity because so much of being human is knowing what food means to our culture and what our particular food traditions are.
I don't disagree with these statements; in fact, I think these issues are vitally important. But starting the conversation with concerns like these reinforces the idea that "foodies", understood here as "people who have time to care about fancy food and have the money to pay for it" are the only ones who need to concern themselves with food. After all, who has time to care about such seemingly lofty concerns when they're pulling two nights a week at a second job, or finishing up a degree while working full time and raising kids? Overworked, geographically mobile people who have full time employment and kids to raise are not likely going to have the time or the inclination to go on field trips to local farms or to seek out food-related connections in their communities, as important as these actions are.
If those who care about these issues want to involve more people in the very important changes that need to occur to save us from a toxic, unstable, unethical and oppressive industrial food system, we need to start raising awareness with issues that have a more visceral and perceptible impact on consumers. Defining the problem in terms that seem elitist (and I mean this in the real sense of the word, not the new definition coined by the Republicans) and using words like "foodies" won't bring most people into the movement, but a good understanding of what terminator technology entails might.
The next few posts will be addressing the things I think are better suited to encouraging people to make positive change. Things like food security, and the very real prospect of widespread crop failure. Or social justice issues, the environment, and water scarcity in California - a state that currently feeds much of North America. I'll be learning as I post, and hopefully if I get something wrong, or I misunderstand or misinterpret important points, I'll consider it a learning experience and correct it later - or be correct by a reader, perhaps. More tomorrow.
Do any of my fellow bloggers ever realize that you have a ton to say, and hardly any ability to pare it down to a manageable post? Or that you think you have something to say, but you're sure you don't know enough yet, or you think you need more data? Is the stack of books on a topic that interests you getting so high that you feel like it will be months before you post again if you put it off until you've sufficiently educated yourself on the topic?
Well, I'm a dork, so all of these things are happening to me right now.
Here's what I've been thinking about, based on the books and articles I'm reading, and on the couple of podcasts (Deconstructing Dinner, a Canadian program, and The Splendid Table) I've been listening to while I run, write and cook.
I have grown to dislike the word "foodie", first of all. To me, this word has a couple of problems. First, it defines people who are interested in food as radically different in some way - I mean, shouldn't we all be interested in food? Second, it gets applied to people who are middle-to-upper income nearly exclusively, which is a similar problem to the first, in that it makes caring about food the providence of just a few people; food hobbyists, if you will.
I am also finding that I keep reading and hearing a few key phrases: that we need to get to know the people who grow and produce our food, we need to reconnect with our community and our region's food traditions, that we need to know what's in season in our area and where items come from and how they are grown, and that by not doing these things, we are losing part of our identity because so much of being human is knowing what food means to our culture and what our particular food traditions are.
I don't disagree with these statements; in fact, I think these issues are vitally important. But starting the conversation with concerns like these reinforces the idea that "foodies", understood here as "people who have time to care about fancy food and have the money to pay for it" are the only ones who need to concern themselves with food. After all, who has time to care about such seemingly lofty concerns when they're pulling two nights a week at a second job, or finishing up a degree while working full time and raising kids? Overworked, geographically mobile people who have full time employment and kids to raise are not likely going to have the time or the inclination to go on field trips to local farms or to seek out food-related connections in their communities, as important as these actions are.
If those who care about these issues want to involve more people in the very important changes that need to occur to save us from a toxic, unstable, unethical and oppressive industrial food system, we need to start raising awareness with issues that have a more visceral and perceptible impact on consumers. Defining the problem in terms that seem elitist (and I mean this in the real sense of the word, not the new definition coined by the Republicans) and using words like "foodies" won't bring most people into the movement, but a good understanding of what terminator technology entails might.
The next few posts will be addressing the things I think are better suited to encouraging people to make positive change. Things like food security, and the very real prospect of widespread crop failure. Or social justice issues, the environment, and water scarcity in California - a state that currently feeds much of North America. I'll be learning as I post, and hopefully if I get something wrong, or I misunderstand or misinterpret important points, I'll consider it a learning experience and correct it later - or be correct by a reader, perhaps. More tomorrow.
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