Dining and Opining

A very belated moving note

noreply@blogger.com (AZ) — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 19:47:00 +0000

After over two years in which this blog has been woefully silent, I'm going to try to pick it up again over at my website: annazeide.com/blog

I hope to post semi-regularly there in the coming months, in anticipation of the publication of my book Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry with University of California Press in early 2018.

Join me!

History of Brunch

noreply@blogger.com (AZ) — Sat, 09 May 2015 13:58:00 +0000

My good friend and colleague Kellen Backer has a fascinating new pictorial essay up on Refinery29 about the History of Brunch! Check it out!

You'll see examples of brunch menus and photographs from across the century, along with historical commentary about the social place of women in each of these eras. And even a glimpse of the [bleak] future:

1930s
Menu: Tomato & Clam Juice Mocktail, Anchovy & Chutney Rolls, Black Bean Soup, Sautéed Kidneys, Indian Rice & Minced Celery, Fresh Fruits With Kirsch, Egg & Mayo Aspic*, Coffee

1960s
Menu: Bloody Mary, Eggs In Ham Cups, Fried Apples, Jell-O Mold.

1980s
Menu: Creamy Scrambled Eggs In Baked-Potato Boats, Pineapple Shell, Champagne, Coffee.

2115
Menu: Nutrient-Rich Sludge, Petri-Dish Protein, Freeze-Dried Fruits, Water.

Fruit Salsa with Cinnamon Chips

noreply@blogger.com (AZ) — Wed, 06 May 2015 17:20:00 +0000

A recipe from a recent class I taught for the Cowboy Cooking School at Oklahoma State University (see blog post here):

Savory Vegetable Bread Pudding

noreply@blogger.com (AZ) — Sat, 02 May 2015 17:19:00 +0000

A recipe from a recent class I taught for the Cowboy Cooking School at Oklahoma State University (see blog post here):

Spring Pea Soup

noreply@blogger.com (AZ) — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 17:18:00 +0000

A recipe from a recent class I taught for the Cowboy Cooking School at Oklahoma State University (see blog post here):

Cowboy Cooking School

noreply@blogger.com (AZ) — Sat, 25 Apr 2015 17:08:00 +0000

I recently had the opportunity to teach a cooking class at Oklahoma State University's Department of Wellness, to staff and faculty members from across campus. On my birthday, no less!

Despite the fact that there were some early morning childcare hiccups, and other stresses, the class went really well, with the support of OSU nutritionist Elizabeth Lohrman and her graduate student aides, along with a receptive and inquisitive audience.

I will share the recipes for the three dishes I made in subsequent posts, so that you can all make them at home!

ASEH 2015: Canned Food and Environmental Law

noreply@blogger.com (AZ) — Sun, 22 Mar 2015 17:23:00 +0000

I've just returned home from the always-fantastic American Society for Environmental History annual conference. This year, it was held in Washington, D. C., and I had the opportunity to present some of my research, from my book-in-progress. My title slide:

My session was devoted to environmental law in the 1970s, and the various papers came together really well, looking at environmental law from the perspectives of government, business, and citizens. It was a pleasure.

But I also had the chance to catch up with old friends, and to listen to a lot of fascinating papers, some from my favorite scholars, some from those who are up-and-coming. There were a lot of great food-themed papers and panels. Just a selection, including mine:

Anna Zeide, Oklahoma State University, Regulating Processed Food: The Canning Industry's Responses to Environmental Law in the 1970s
Laura Ann Twagira, Wesleyan University, ‘We Farmed Money’: Landscape Change, Women’s Food Production, and Marketing in French West Africa, ca. 1944-1960
Nadia Berenstein, University of Pennsylvania, History & Sociology of Science, Contains Natural and Artificial Flavors”: The Nature of Flavor Chemistry in the postwar US
Maya Weinstein, IBM, Artisanal meets Industrial: the DIY High Fructose Corn Syrup Kit
Joshua Specht, University of California-Berkeley, The US Army Beef Scandal and the Rise of Industrial Food Production
David Roth Singerman, Rutgers University, Frozen Herring and Gilded Age Governance
Helen Zoe Veit, Michigan State University, Little Omnivores: Children’s Food in the 19th Century
Raechel Lutz, Rutgers University, Still Life with Vitamins: Mural and Meaning at the 1939 New York World’s Fair
Christian Steenstrup Warren, Brooklyn College, CUNY, Codfish, Cows, and Chemicals: An Un-natural History of Vitamin D Fortification in the United States
Jonathan E Robins, Michigan Technological University, ‘A strong, lusty and vigorous young giant’: Vegetable Fats and the Transformation of Global Food Industries, 1850-1950
Bryan McDonald, Pennsylvania State University, Ezra Taft Benson and the Birth of the World Food Network in the 1950s
Chad Ludington, North Carolina State University, To Terroir or not Terroir: A Global History of Cheddar Cheese
Michelle Mart, Pennsylvania State University-Berks, Shifting Values, Changing Laws: The Embrace of Organic Foods in the United States
Matthew Booker, North Carolina State University, Oyster Panics: Placing Responsibility for Food Safety in the 20th Century

Until next year!

"Introducing Carrot"

noreply@blogger.com (AZ) — Wed, 15 Oct 2014 01:15:00 +0000

I love this.

Such a clever spoof on the language around technology (and food!).

Introducing Carrot:

http://www.introducingcarrot.com/

Pureed Foods for Baby?

noreply@blogger.com (AZ) — Mon, 18 Aug 2014 14:00:00 +0000

Recently, some new friends who have a daughter slightly older than ours asked me if our 8-month old Nancy was eating jarred foods. I replied that she was indeed eating pureed foods, but I made them for her myself. They paused, not quite understanding, and rephrased, "But does she eat Gerber food?"

In the end, it became clear that they had some unopened jars of baby food that their daughter no longer wanted now that she had moved on to finger foods, and they wanted to know if we would take them. But there was a clear disconnect in their initial questions and my answers, as if they didn't have a category for the kind of food that Nancy was eating--pureed like Gerber, but not Gerber. Their questions made me think that, in their minds, baby pureed food = jarred food = Gerber.

My daughter Nancy eating homemade baby food

To me, as someone who is at home in the kitchen, it seemed so simple and intuitive that, rather than buying many small jars of milled up sweet potatoes that cost $1.50 each, I would buy one big sweet potato for $1.50, peel, chop, boil, food process, and freeze it in ice cube trays, yielding about ten times the amount of food for the same price, without all the packaging. Of course, even as I write that out, it's totally clear to me why many people would go with the former option. Yes, the DIY route may be cheaper, but it also requires a familiarity with simple kitchen tasks and access to equipment like a food processor and blender, freezer space, etc, in addition to being more time-consuming.

Ok, that may be the case for something that requires a little preparation, like sweet potatoes, but what about applesauce? One of the Gerber jars that we did end up taking off our friends' hands was of simple applesauce; ingredients: apples, water, ascorbic acid. When I looked at the large jar of "adult" applesauce in our pantry, I saw the same list of ingredients. Why not just pour some of that larger jar into a bowl to feed baby? Why buy the specially packaged and marketed "baby applesauce"? The same issue of access to equipment and kitchen knowledge no longer applies.

Encountering this difference in ways of feeding baby has made me think a lot about the creation of the category of "baby food." I'd run across this topic often when writing my dissertation about the history of the canning industry, as Gerber was founded in 1927 by Daniel Frank Gerber, owner of the Fremont Canning Company. But it was really having a baby myself that put the issue at the center of my awareness.

Thankfully, I don't have to go do the research on this myself, as one of my favorite historians, Amy Bentley, has already done so. Her new book Inventing Baby Food: Taste, Health, and the Industrialization of the American Diet will be coming out from University of California Press next month. I can't wait.

http://www.ucpress.edu/img/covers/isbn13/9780520283459.jpg

If you also can't wait, you can read the first chapter, or check out a video of a talk she gave on this subject (in which, I discovered, she describes the very same phenomenon of marveling over "baby" applesauce vs "adult" applesauce that I describe above!).

You'll have to check out the whole talk for yourself, but one of her opening slides makes this historical question of "How did the category of 'baby food' come to be?" especially compelling:

How and why did experts go from suggesting parents give baby solid foods at 6-8 months to 4-6 weeks? How did this change take place in just 20-30 years? And what happened afterward, to pull the age back from 4-6 weeks to the present-day advice of 4-6 months?*

Who knew that feeding Nancy would bring up such fascinating historical questions?

--

*Perhaps a topic for another post, but I was really interested to learn that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the leading experts on all things baby, is presently officially split in their stance on when to introduce solids. Their Nutrition Committee says 4 months, their Breastfeeding Committee says 6 months; the AAP thus agrees to disagree.

Chipotle's “Cultivated Thought”

noreply@blogger.com (AZ) — Fri, 16 May 2014 15:10:00 +0000

Oh my! So many things I like all in the same place:

Jonathan Safran Foer. Chipotle. Short stories. Literature.

Chipotle will now be printing small pieces of writing from great writers on its cups and bags, based on an idea proposed by Jonathan Safran Foer.

As he describes in this Vanity Fair piece:

“...I got to know quite a bit about the company, not in the process of doing this, but in the process of Eating Animals,” he continued. “Chipotle was pointed to quite often, as a model of what scaling good practices might look like. The truth is, that’s not really why I did this. I mean, I wouldn’t have done it if it was for another company like a McDonald’s, but what interested me is 800,000 Americans of extremely diverse backgrounds having access to good writing. A lot of those people don’t have access to libraries, or bookstores. Something felt very democratic and good about this.”

There will be stories by Foer himself, by Toni Morrison, Malcolm Gladwell, George Saunders, and many others!

Some are available here for reading. Or go to your local Chipotle and check it out! (even though, when I go to Chipotle, I tend to forego a bag for my burrito and have my own water bottle with me, so I'm not sure I'd encounter the cup or bag if I didn't know to look out for them).

"Sourcing Meat" From the Backyard

noreply@blogger.com (AZ) — Wed, 07 May 2014 17:38:00 +0000

Below is a little story my college roommate Deepani wrote to me for my birthday. She lives in Tanzania, and writes evocatively about her first experience "sourcing" her own meat. Enjoy!

Kim and Deepani

The first story I have is about our little farm that lives in the backyard garden. It's getting harder and harder to keep track now, but I think we have something like 2 hens, 3 cockerels, 6 ducks, 3 ducklings, a dog called Kim, and a cat called Mini. After many weeks of confident talking but with little action, a couple of weekends ago, Gary and I screwed up the nerve and sourced our own meat from our own backyard, all by ourselves. In more graphic terms, we caught, slaughtered, plucked, butchered, cooked, and ate a duck from our backyard flock. As meat eaters, we thought that it appropriate the we should involve ourselves in the process of what it means for an animal to become the food that we eat, and as caretakers of a flock of fowl, we finally had the chance. Still, it ranks among one of the most difficult things we've ever done together. Using only a sharp knife puts you very close to the deed, and in fact, it was rather an emotional act, and Gary wasn't able to hold back tears as he cut the throat. It was raining at the time, and I remember feeling the mixture of cool rain and warm blood on my hands.

After, we plucked all the feathers off the bird, which is a much more painstaking process than I realized, and once that was done, I had to stick my arm inside to remove the entrails. It was amazing seeing how small the parts are that keep a being alive.

By the time I cooked the duck the next evening, it was almost--but not quite--easy to forget that it had been a living creature the day before, because by then, it looked exactly like what you can get from a supermarket--a whole duck, covered only by its own skin.

Eating it was a kind of celebration: here is food that gives us life, though we took a life in order to eat. One of us mentioned what slaughtering a cow for beef would look like, done this same way, by ourselves, and we sat there in awed silence thinking of the sheer immensity of such an undertaking with our own hands. How could we possibly! And yet, people do it, every single day. And we, we eat these creature every single day too.

On the Austrian Vegetarian Study

noreply@blogger.com (AZ) — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 02:20:00 +0000

Researchers at the Medical University of Graz, in Austria, recently published a study that included an analysis of vegetarian diets (available in PDF here). Lots of European papers (and a few in the U.S. as well) are reporting on the study with titles like, "Vegetarians are 'less healthy' and have a poorer quality of life than meat-eaters". Frequent D&O reader and my husband, JH, responds to the study:

. . . It's worth noting that this study has some pretty significant limitations: it only followed 330 vegetarians, all of them Austrian, and apparently didn't attain a representative sample, as over 75% of the subjects for the study were women.

So, I think we should take this one with a pretty big grain of salt (while of course open-mindedly waiting to see if any of these findings are replicated), especially given the fact that the general consensus among folks who study nutrition goes sharply in the opposite direction. So, for example, the Academy for Nutrition and Dietetics (the largest organization of food and nutrition professionals in the world) published a position paper on this a few years ago and found, based on a huge meta-analysis of the relevant science, that vegetarians were healthier than nonvegetarians in a number of areas, including lower rates of heart disease and cancer. Their official position is that "appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes."

An independent meta-analysis published in the peer-reviewed journal Public Health Nutrition in 2012 concluded that "vegetarian diets have not shown any adverse effects on health" though they do note that "restrictive and monotonous vegetarian diets may result in nutrient deficiencies with deleterious effects on health." So, vegetarians do of course have to be smart about what they eat. But then, so does everyone else.

Help stop antibiotic misuse on factory farms!

noreply@blogger.com (AZ) — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 18:10:00 +0000

Food and Water Watch recently launched their Healthy Farms, Healthy Families campaign to end antibiotic misuse. They are calling on specific cities to pass city-wide resolutions urging Congress to take action on this issue. Madison is the latest city in which they're working.

You can help by signing the online petition to support this work in Madison. Ask the city council to pass the resolution urging Congress to ban the misuse of antibiotics on factory farms!

What's the issue?

Antibiotics are for saving lives, not for saving factory farm profits

Antibiotic resistance is coming to be a serious public health crisis right now in the U.S. Last fall, the Center for Disease Control reported that two million Americans contact antibiotic resistant infections, and at least 23,000 people die as a direct result. Antibiotics are a foundation of modern medicine that we all take for granted, but it's clear that if don’t act now, antibiotics may not work for us the next time we get sick.

There are several different reasons why these lifesaving drugs are losing their effectiveness, and a major one is overuse. While most people are aware that antibiotics are over-prescribed in humans, few realize that the vast majority of antibiotics in the U.S. are used in industrial agriculture.

Right now, 80 percent of the antibiotics used in the U.S. are used for raising livestock. These drugs are routinely fed to animals that aren’t even sick to make them grow faster and to compensate for filthy living conditions. This type of routine use of these drugs creates a perfect breeding ground for bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, many of which are the same drugs we rely on to treat infections in people. The antibiotic-resistant bacteria that develop on factory farms can spread throughout our environment and the food supply, putting us all at risk whether or not we eat meat, and regardless of where we live.

To make matters worse, regulators don’t even collect basic data about antibiotics used on factory farms, let alone effectively regulate how these critical drugs are used. This lack of information and monitoring is a serious threat to the usefulness of antibiotics in the treatment of infections, and the Food and Drug Administration’s voluntary efforts are simply not enough to protect the effectiveness of antibiotics in human medicine.

The fact that nothing is being done to protect antibiotics, despite scientific consensus about the severity of the problem, is a political issue, which is why we need legislation to save antibiotics and stop their misuse on factory farms now. There are two bills in Congress that would ensure antibiotics are only given to animals when they’re sick: Preventing Antibiotic Resistance Act (PARA, S. 1256) in the Senate, and Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA, H.R. 1150) in the House.

But we know that we have to demonstrate overwhelming public support for them to be passed.

That’s why Food and Water Watch launched their Healthy Farms, Healthy Families campaign in cities across the country this spring, with the goal of passing the first seven city-wide resolutions urging Congress to take action on this important issue. In February, Providence, Rhode Island became the first city to pass this historic resolution, with several other cities poised to follow close behind.

In Madison, Wisconsin, the movement is clearly gaining momentum and making significant steps toward landing on the desk of our city council. With over 500 petitions, 75 photo petitions, and a growing coalition that 22 local health professionals, farmers, and organizations have already signed on to, it’s clear that Madison citizens want our elected officials to step up to the plate for our public health and ban the misuse of antibiotics on factory farms. The campaign, comprised of dedicated community members, is planning big steps in the upcoming months, including presenting the resolution to the city council and hosting a large public forum on public health and our food system. Though we are making progress, we cannot win without demonstrating the overwhelming public support.

You can help!

Sign the online petition asking the Madison city council to pass the resolution urging Congress to ban the misuse of antibiotics on factory farms!

Foodie Valentines

noreply@blogger.com (AZ) — Fri, 07 Feb 2014 22:02:00 +0000

Now, for something a little lighter, check out these food-inspired valentine cards:

Find, and send, the whole spread here.

Which are your favorite?

UPDATED: Even more foodie valentines here, at the Kitchn!

Walmart Supports Coalition of Immokalee Workers

noreply@blogger.com (AZ) — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 18:53:00 +0000

There's big news in the [agricultural] justice world, as Walmart signed on to the Fair Food Program, which protects laborers and human rights in the US produce industry.

Walmart representatives John Amaya and Tom Leech, and CIW’s Lucas Benitez and Gerardo Reyes Chavez [plus Nely Rodriguez, not pictured] sign historic agreement at a Lipman Produce farm outside of Immokalee, FL.

The Fair Food Program was initiated by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. According to its website, CIW is a "worker-based human rights organization internationally recognized for its achievements in the fields of corporate social responsibility, community organizing, and sustainable food. The CIW is also a leader in the growing movement to end human trafficking due to its groundbreaking work to combat modern-day slavery and other labor abuses common in agriculture."

Several other retailers have reached agreements with the CIW in the past, but Walmart's participation is huge, given the retailer's enormous market power. There is significant hope that this move will help expand the Fair Food Program beyond Florida and beyond the tomatoes that have been the primary focus of the CIW so far.

I'm very happy to hear this news.

Read more of the responses to this move from Michael Pollan and others, here.

Debate: Don't Eat Anything With A Face

noreply@blogger.com (AZ) — Sat, 14 Dec 2013 04:16:00 +0000

Recently, a friend shared this Intelligence Squared debate on the motion: "Don't Eat Anything With A Face". Four experts debated the pros and cons of vegetarianism from a variety of perspectives.

The whole video is worth watching, for sure:

I liked the opening comments from the moderator, in which he highlighted the oft-cited (but still oft-ignored) reason that many people are comfortable with meat-eating: they just avoid thinking about it.

He said, "The simple act of eating a hamburger is, when you really think about it, one of the great
acts of human denial, because what is a burger? It's edible protein in the shape of a disk every single time. And you can order it rare, you can order it well done, you can dress it up in ketchup, you can put a little onion hat on top of it, you can push it around on your plate, you can leave half of it behind, and never once have the thought cross your mind, as you're chomping away, I wonder what she looked like, the cow this burger came from. I wonder where she lived. I wonder how she died. Our thoughts just don't go there..."

This debate encourages us to think about those questions, to engage with the ethical, environmental, nutritional, aesthetic issues involved in our daily acts of consumption.

Watch, and let me know what you think!

Turkey at Thanksgiving

noreply@blogger.com (AZ) — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 15:30:00 +0000

In his book Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer offers this thought: "If this entire book could be decanted into a single question—not something easy, loaded, or asked in bad faith, but a question that fully captured the problem of eating and not eating animals—it might be this: Should we serve turkey at Thanksgiving?"

Should we serve turkey at Thanksgiving?

This is his whole book in a sentence. The chapter goes on to explore the dark side of turkey production in the U.S. (Read short versions of similar stories here, here, or here).

But in classic Foer fashion, he leads up to this "single question" with a personal take on the meaning of Thanksgiving and of storytelling. The way he recounts his own Thanksgiving memories, and their embeddedness in some bigger ideas about a good meal, is beautiful:

. . . Two dozen or so mismatched chairs circumscribed four tables of slightly different heights and widths, pushed together and covered in matching cloths. No one was fooled into thinking this setup was perfect, but it was. My aunt placed a small pile of popcorn kernels on each plate, which, in the course of the meal, we were supposed to transfer to the table as symbols of things we were thankful for. Dishes came out continuously; some went clockwise, some counter, some zigzagged down the length of the table: sweet potato casserole, homemade rolls, green beans with almonds, cranberry concoctions, yams, buttery mashed potatoes, my grandmother's wildly incongruous kugel, trays of gherkins and olives and marinated mushrooms, and a cartoonishly large turkey that had been put in the oven when last year's was taken out. We talked and talked: about the Orioles and Redskins, changes in the neighborhood, our accomplishments, and the anguish of others (our own anguish was off-limits), and all the while, my grandmother would go from grandchild to grandchild, making sure no one was starving.

Thanksgiving is the holiday that encompasses all others. All of them, from Martin Luther King Day to Arbor Day to Christmas to Valentine's Day, are in one way or another about being thankful. But Thanksgiving is freed from any particular thing we are thankful for. We aren't celebrating the Pilgrims, but what the Pilgrims celebrated. (The Pilgrims weren't even a feature of the holiday until the late nineteenth century.) Thanksgiving is an American holiday, but there's nothing specifically American about it—we aren't celebrating America, but American ideals. Its openness makes it available to anyone who feels like expressing thanks, and points beyond the crimes that made America possible, and the commercialization, kitsch, and jingoism that have been heaved onto the shoulders of the holiday.

Thanksgiving is the meal we aspire for other meals to resemble. Of course most of can't (and wouldn't want to) cook all day every day, and of course such food would be fatal if consumed with regularity, and how many of us really want to be surrounded by our extended families every single night? (It can be challenge enough to have to eat with myself.) But it's nice to imagine all meals being so deliberate. Of the thousand-or-so meals we eat every year, Thanksgiving dinner is the one that we try most earnestly to get right. It holds the hope of being a good meal, whose ingredients, efforts, setting, and consume are expressions of the best in us. More than any other meal, it is about good eating and good thinking.

And more than any other food, the Thanksgiving turkey embodies the paradoxes of eating animals: what we do to living turkeys is just about as bad as anything humans have ever done to any animal in the history of the world. Yet what we do with their dead bodies can feel so powerfully good and right. The Thanksgiving turkey is the flesh of competing instincts—of remembering and forgetting.

. . . This will be the first year we celebrate in my home, the first time I will prepare the food, and the first Thanksgiving meal at which my son will be old enough to eat the food the rest of us eat. If this entire book could be decanted into a single question—not something easy, loaded, or asked in bad faith, but a question that fully captured the problem of eating and not eating animals—it might be this: Should we serve turkey at Thanksgiving? [p. 244-245]

For those of you who haven't read Eating Animals, I'd highly recommend it. And I hope this passage from Foer and a consideration of factory farm production of turkeys gives us all something to mull over as we plan our menus in the week to come.

To find local, ethically-raised turkeys in your area, check out Eat Wild.

Or, go turkey-less for the holiday! I'll be sharing my own vegetarian Thanksgiving/Hanukkah menu later in the week.

Some other Thanksgiving food related links worth checking out:

From the Washington Post, A short course on the history of 8 Thanksgiving foods
From a small farm in Wisconsin, an exploration of the real price of a turkey
And fellow historian Neil Prendergast's reflection on the Thanksgiving turkey in historical and environmental perspective in his Environmental History journal article, Raising the Thanksgiving Turkey: Agroecology, Gender, and the Knowledge of Nature

Items of Interest

noreply@blogger.com (AZ) — Mon, 11 Nov 2013 19:12:00 +0000

The last couple of weeks have been filled with a number of big news items in the food world, plus lots of interesting musings. Some especially worth checking out:

Washington State Votes Down GMO Labels:

The FDA Moves to Ban Trans Fat in Processed Foods:

Fascinating video series explores the journey

from field to fork: How Does it Grow?

Agricultural Innovation Prize promises $100,000 for great agricultural ideas
(a good friend of mine is running this excellent program!)

Time Magazine's 13 Gods of Food

And a useful companion piece: Goddesses of Food

Finally, to get us in the seasonal spirit: 50 Vegetarian Thanksgiving Main Dish Recipes

What else have you all been reading lately?

Slow Food Madison Food Swap

noreply@blogger.com (AZ) — Sun, 03 Nov 2013 23:35:00 +0000

Slow Food Madison is throwing a wonderful event next week: A Food Swap!

I unfortunately can't make it, but encourage local readers to attend. The ticket site indicates that there are only 22 tickets left. Reserve yours now!

Loyal Dining and Opining followers will remember that a few friends and I threw our own food swap a couple of years ago, which I described in this post. It was a real success and I've been wanting to see something like it at a bigger scale for several years now.

The details for the Slow Food event are as follows:

What: A Food Swap is an event where members of the community come together to trade homemade, homegrown, and foraged food with each other. Attendees directly trade their goods with one another as a way to diversify the foods in their pantries and make connections with other members of the local food community.

When: Monday, November 11th 6:00pm. The event will probably last about 1.5-2 hours.

Where: Goodman Center 149 Waubesa Street Madison, WI -- ask at the desk which room

How: Reserve a free ticket and bring along as many/few items you would like to trade. Think home-canned goods, baked goods, fermented deliciousness, homemade beer, wine, or infusions, eggs from your backyard chickens, infused oils or vinegars, foraged dried or fresh herbs, sausages or home grown meats. Anything that you have created that is edible we would love to have you bring! Expect these items for sure, and much, much more:

    Garlic scape pickles
    Strawberry jam
    Pastured chicken
    Curried cauliflower pickles
    Homemade wine
    Pickled brussels sprouts
    Dilly beans
    Garlic powder

Dissertation Chapter Mini-Quiches

noreply@blogger.com (AZ) — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 02:48:00 +0000

Big news around here. Last week, I successfully defended my dissertation, In Cans We Trust: Food, Consumers, and Scientific Expertise in Twentieth-Century America!

This was a real milestone in its own right, and deserves many words--about how exhilarating it felt to bring the writing experience to a close, to have five brilliant committee members discuss my work and guide my thoughts on revisions for the book manuscript, and to have many friends and colleagues support me. But, for now, let me share the snacks I baked for the defense: my dissertation in mini-quiche form:

You see, each of my dissertation chapters is framed around one particular canned food: Chapter 1 takes on Borden's condensed milk, Chapter 2 agricultural breeding in Wisconsin peas, Chapter 3 botulism in black olives, Chapter 4 grade labeling in canned tomatoes, and Chapter 5 postwar concerns about canned tuna. So, I combined all five of these foods into baked mini-quiches. Tangible, edible dissertation chapters!

The building blocks:

Not sure it all tasted so good when mixed together, but at least it looked pretty:

And when served on the big day alongside home-baked apple muffins (with apples from the local Appleberry Farm) and mango peach juice, the quiches served their purpose perfectly!

How would you represent your own academic or professional work in edible form?

Madison Area Food Summit

noreply@blogger.com (AZ) — Sat, 12 Oct 2013 17:00:00 +0000

A really interesting event worth checking out!

Register and more info: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/8411728707/efbnen

2013 Food Summit
Connecting with the Land

October 24th 5:30 pm - 8 pm

Fitchburg Public Library

5530 Lacy Road, Fitchburg, WI

Registration fee: $5 (by Oct. 15) or $10 (after Oct. 15 or at the door)

Please bring a non-perishable item for the Fitchburg Food Pantry

Food Summit Agenda

5:30-6:00 Great local food and Welcome by Mayor Shawn Pfaff
6:00-7:30 Panel of local and international speakers to address food sovereignty, facilitated by Jack Kloppenburg
7:30-8:00 Thank you by Supervisor Jenni Dye, Chair of Dane County Food Council

Event Partners include:

Dane County Food Council
Madison Food Policy Council
City of Fitchburg
Community Action Coalition of South Central Wisconsin
Outside the Bean
Dane County UW-Extension

CSA at work!

noreply@blogger.com (AZ) — Thu, 10 Oct 2013 19:15:00 +0000

I was really inspired by this post that our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm, Vermont Valley, just posted on its blog, and wanted to share it here:

"Our Produce in the Community"

In addition to producing delicious, abundant shares for its CSA members, Vermont Valley vegetables are finding homes at the Goodman Community Center's Seed to Table program and Thanksgiving Baskets Project; in lunches of the Mt. Horeb Area School District; at Badger Camp serving those with developmental disabilities; at the Second Harvest Foodbank of Southern Wisconsin; FairShare CSA Coalition's Bike the Barns event; the AIDS Network AIDS Ride; the First United Methodist Church Food Pantry; and the Middleton Outreach Ministry.

All of these diverse homes for fresh, local, seasonal vegetables--all within our community! Such promise!

It makes me just dream about the possibilities for connecting local farms with varied venues for getting that produce to as many different audience as possible.

Gratifying, authentic connections.

Veggies processed and ready to freeze for the winter at Mt. Horeb schools:

Homemade Bread Love

noreply@blogger.com (AZ) — Sat, 28 Sep 2013 16:07:00 +0000

I've written before about gifts of food and how powerful they are in conveying love.

I got to experience a dose of this the other day when I came in to my office to find this note on my desk:

And this beauty:

It was such an unexpected treat, and one that made me feel cared for in ways that went far beyond just the bread itself. It got me to thinking about how closely tied food and love are, what it means to feed another person, how we convey a deep sense of investment when we sustain others in that way--whether it's a volunteer shift at a soup kitchen or a mother breastfeeding her own child.

I, for one, would almost always prefer a gift of food to most others. It is edible, temporary, supportive.

So I took that beautiful loaf and turned it into a beautiful sandwich, savoring every bite:

Here are a few others' takes on gifts of food:

BBC: Love bites: Is food the risk-free gift?
29 Homemade Food Gifts from Martha Stewart
And a great big Pinterest board of food gifts

What's the best gift of food that you've ever gotten?!

Vegetarian Korean Burritos

noreply@blogger.com (AZ) — Mon, 23 Sep 2013 02:56:00 +0000

I'm pretty proud of these beautiful jars of kimchi that I made with a friend a few weeks ago:

We used the recipe of David Chang, founder of Momofoku, though we cut the garlic in half (and I went light on the dried shrimp). Here I am, with the sliced, over-nighted napa cabbage in my right hand, and the other veggies and flavorings in my left hand.

Although the kimchi is delicious in its own regard, the real reason it's blog-worthy is that it is a crucial ingredient in one of my new favorite foods: the [vegetarian] Korean burrito.

Picking up on the Korean/Mexican fusion trend that has made it so big in Los Angeles through the Kogi BBQ Taco Truck, my friend TY and I came up with this winning combination of flavors, all wrapped up in a burrito. I'm constantly craving them these days, and am pretty much always ready for more. Here's a rough attempt at a recipe, though it's very flexible. Let me know how yours turn out!

Vegetarian Korean Burritos

(serves 6-8)

1 block firm tofu
seasonings for tofu (soy sauce, chili paste, etc.)
1 onion, diced
4-5 cups cooked brown rice
1 pint kimchi (using David Chang's recipe or another, or buying pre-made), chopped
1 can beans (soybeans, black beans, or navy beans work well)
3 cups crunchy veggies, sliced thinly (cabbage, carrots, radish, cucumber, bell pepper, onion, etc.)
8 tortillas
4 T mayonnaise
1 T sriracha
a handful of cilantro leaves, chopped (optional)

Drain tofu and squeeze gently between your heads* to get rid of excess water. Cut into 3/4" cubes. Toss with a mixture of soy sauce, chili paste, and oil and bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 20-30 minutes, until golden and firm (can use a toaster oven for this step if you have one).
Meanwhile, saute onion in 1 T oil over medium high heat, until softened and beginning to brown. Add cooked rice and chopped kimchi, stirring to combine.
Prepare other ingredients. Drain and warm the beans. Slice your crunchy vegetables thinly to make a sort of slaw mixture. Mix mayonnaise and sriracha in a separate bowl until pink and spicy. Warm tortillas until they are pliable.
When you are ready to assemble, spread about a 1/2 T of the mayo-sriracha mixture on a tortilla, layer on the kimchi rice, baked tofu, beans, slaw mix, and cilantro (if using). Tuck in both ends, and roll up! Repeat for all 8 tortillas. Dive in!
These burritos keep well for several days if you wrap them in foil after assembling. But they are really delicious right away. And you have any leftover ingredients, mix them together for a quick fried rice!

* You could see if you could find a friend who would lend you his/her head so that you could squeeze the tofu between your heads, but my mom gently points out that perhaps it would be better if you used your hands.

Chipotle vs. Big Food

noreply@blogger.com (AZ) — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Chipotle has come out with a great little film that I'm totally saving for use in future classes. It's called "The Scarecrow" and is worth three minutes of your time:

Eliza Barclay over at NPR's The Salt has a great article on this video: Taking Down Big Food is the Name of Chipotle's New Game.

She offers a review of the commercial, and of the aesthetic that Chipotle is trying to convey with its alignment with small food vendors and against the sterile corporation.

It raises fascinating questions about what "Big Food" actually is, and how Chipotle does and does not fit under that label? Does being "Big" make a food company part of "Big Food"? Does "Big" here stand in for all kinds of other values that Chipotle does not espouse.

What do you think?