White Bread
March 16, 2012 § Leave a comment
I wrote a book about ultrasoft, mass-produced sliced white bread because I wanted to understand America’s fraught relationship to industrial eating in all its contradictory ferment. Over the past 100 years, few foods have been as revered and reviled as industrial white bread. -Aaron Bobrow-Strain
I’m eager to get my hands on this author’s new book, White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf. It sounds fascinating! And maybe a little depressing. Golly, the food-writing craze is just getting bigger and bigger, isn’t it? Here’s a link to Bobrow-Strain’s article “What Would Great-Grandma Eat?” which was adapted from his book.
Vermont’s Table and a scholarship opportunity
March 14, 2012 § 2 Comments
Hey all! I wanted to pass along this information because it sounds awfully fun. Sterling College in Craftsbury, VT hosts a program called Vermont’s Table, which they define as “an intensive academic program in sustainable food systems that includes practical culinary experience, frequent field trips, lessons in sustainable agriculture, and seminars in food writing and food entrepreneurism.” The program lasts for five weeks and is open to university students as well as adult learners.
The college is located a beautiful and food-focused region. Hardwick, VT of the book The Town That Food Saved is just down the road. GoodFoodJobs.com will be offering three scholarships for those who would like to attend. Application deadline is April 13, 2012. You can find more information by visiting the Good Food Jobs website: www.goodfoodjobs.com/scholarship/.
Perspective
March 12, 2012 § Leave a comment
But then we did not think of ourselves as poor. We did not accept it. We thought we were superior people and other people that we looked down on and rightly mistrusted were rich.
-Ernest Hemingway, “A False Spring,” A Moveable Feast
Chocolate cake with black raspberry green tea frosting
March 10, 2012 § 4 Comments
A food post! At long last!
I must confess upfront that this is not an entirely purist recipe. Why? Because for the cake I used (gasp!) a mix.
In my defense, it is an excellent gluten-free chocolate cake mix by Pamela’s. I am not gluten-free, though I think it’s wise to incorporate other flours into our diets. More importantly, my brother is gluten-free, and I wanted him to be able to have some. And in my (limited) experience with gluten-free baking, these mixes are such a nice foolproof way to go.
So.
I whipped up the mix with eggs, milk, oil. I added a bit of xylitol because it didn’t seem quite sweet enough.
And then the frosting. Oh. Easy and delicious!
RECIPE:
Cake:
Pamela’s Gluten-Free Chocolate Cake Mix OR
Your favorite rich chocolate cake recipe.
Frosting:
Two sticks butter (blend)
Several cups powdered sugar (blend in till it feels right. Taste liberally!)
Make some black raspberry green tea. Pour in small amounts of green tea, again, making sure that your consistency feels right. Adjust sugar as needed.
Open a packet of the black raspberry green tea and pour in! (If you have loose leaf, crush it into small pieces, and use about a tablespoon.)
Frost the cake once it has cooled.
Share with your friends.
The Meal: an international food-art project
February 24, 2012 § Leave a comment
The project: anyone who wanted to participate took a photo of themselves and what they happened to be eating at 12 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, February 24th, and sent it to the folks at Art House Coop.
I missed being able to participate by 1 hour and 45 minutes!
Apparently my head has been too deep into my own book to catch the food news, but at least I can still engage as an observer and a food-and-art enthusiast! And so can you. Check back to this site to see an exhibition of these meal self-portraits: Art House Coop
What a great way to get a slice of what is happening, of how people are participating in their local, regional, and global food systems, all around the world, in one moment of time.
Here is a photo of what I am eating right now, just for you all. And just to make me feel better. (I decided to leave out myself in my lazy Friday sweats.) Gingerbread in February. I see no problem with that!
So love the world
February 14, 2012 § 1 Comment
Thanks to Darling Magazine for bringing a handful of world-reaching nonprofits, and the business No One Without, to my attention. And another way to think about what this day can mean.
Permaculture is . . .
January 27, 2012 § Leave a comment
Because yesterday’s film made me curious, I snooped around. Here’s what I found:
Permaculture is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive systems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of the landscape with people providing their food, energy, shelter and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way. -Graham Bell, The Permaculture Way
A few resources:
Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture
Permaculture & Ecological Design Program (video below)
If you do a quick google search you’ll find many permaculture design courses and certificate programs out there. Ooh, I’m having that hungry-for-knowledge feeling, aren’t you?
Have any of you had experience with permaculture? Has anyone taken a course, gotten a certificate, or researched this approach to agriculture and living? I’d be eager to hear from you!
BBC’s A Farm for the Future
January 26, 2012 § 3 Comments
I’ve found something just right to watch while knitting! This documentary follows a woman’s return to her family farm, and her assessment of how the farm might belong, change, and contribute to the modern world and its complicated food system. It might be a bit dated, as it was produced in 2009, but I’m interested to see where it goes, nevertheless.
And I just want to stare at all the scenes of the British countryside.
I confess that I often wax pastoral. I can’t help it, even though I’m familiar with the sore muscles and sunburns and sweat that come with farming. But pastoralism can be dangerous if too rose-tinged. Rebecca Hosking, narrator/filmmaker/farmer prepares viewers early on for the reality that this farm business involves hard work, even “drudgery” – without a very big paycheck.
She says, “Dad often describes farmers as glorified lavatory attendents.” Smile. Sigh. This seems extreme. But I suppose I did muck a wheelbarrow’s worth of manure today.
Still. Something made her come back.
Here is Segment 1, thanks to YouTube:
You can watch the full documentary for free, here.
Thoughts on dirt
January 22, 2012 § Leave a comment
I have just started William Bryant Logan’s book Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth and am already getting caught up in a sense of wonder and gratitude. This bodes well! This is the sort of thing we reader-types live for. Here’s an excerpt from the prologue:
How can I stand on the ground every day and not feel its power? How can I live my life stepping on this stuff and not wonder at it? […]
Recently, I have been reading Exodus, wondering about Moses and the burning bush. Moses, it is written, “turns aside to see a wonder,” a bush that burns but is not consumed. Throughout my life, I had thought this a ridiculous passage. Why should God get Moses’ attention by such outlandish means? I mean, why couldn’t He just have boomed, “Hey, Moses!” the way He would later call to the great king, “Hey, Samuel!”
Now I know why. The truth, when really perceived and not simply described, is always a wonder. Moses does not see a technicolor fantasy. He sees the bush as it really is. He sees the bush as all bushes actually are.
There is in biology a formula called, “the equation of burning.” It is one of the fundamental pair of equations by which all organic life subsists. The other one, “the equation of photosynthesis,” describes the way the plants make foods out of sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water. The equation of burning describes how plants (and animals) unlock the stored sunlight and turn it into the heat energy that fuels their motion, their feeling, their thought, or whatever their living consists of.
All that is living burns. This is the fundamental fact of nature. And Moses saw it with his two eyes, directly. That glimpse of the real world–of the world as it is known to God–is not a world of isolate things, but of processes in concert.
God tells Moses, “Take off your shoes, because the ground where you are standing is holy ground.” He is asking Moses to experience in his own body what the burning bush experiences: a living connection between heaven and earth, the life that stretches out like taffy between our father the sun and our mother the earth. If you do not believe this, take off your shoes and stand in the grass or in the sand or in the dirt.
Kinds of Honey 