Sneeze!

food and politics

2012-01-26T19:04:00.000-08:00

Sgt. White's Diner in Beaufort, South Carolina.

Last week I traveled to South Carolina as part of a team of University of Washington Communication Department faculty and students to report on the GOP primary for UW Election Eye, a blog partnership with the Seattle Times. What a privilege. Even though it meant functioning with 4 hours of a sleep a night, I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Our task was to collect stories of everyday South Carolinians, not just chase the political theater that saturates the state. What better way to seek our everyday stories than over food? With a recommendation in mind, I headed to Sgt. White's Diner in Beaufort, South Carolina. While two of my colleagues soaked up a Newt Gingrich rally in the historic town center, I drained two bottomless cups of sweet tea and packed away barbecue ribs, bacon fried corn, butter beans, and cornbread. It was a multi-napkin meal.

Sgt. Ron White himself was manning the ferociously hot pit, and we were soon engaged in a conversation around food, politics, and the military. Here is the full story of my visit.

Food and politics go hand in hand. Candidates gravitate to diners, watering holes, and picnics when the weather cooperates. Their tastes and food traditions become part of their narrative, and at times, their stump speeches. (Remember Clinton and his gigantic Arkansas watermelons?)

Take for instance yesterday's New York Times article on redefining Mormon culinary identity. Without Mitt Romney in the hunt for the GOP nomination, this article is a nonstarter. That would be a shame. I learned more about Mormonism in ten minutes than I've learned in the last two years.

As I read the article, it wasn't the Mormon teachings around ingredients or storage that compelled me most, or even the "funeral potatoes," which sounded addictive. Instead, it was the profile of a Mormon blogger who spent her three years in Japan (according to mormon.org, 52,000 missionaries are currently serving in 350 missions around the world), and now shares her recipes on her food blog. While the article made excellent reference to the iconic dishes-- green jello desserts, casseroles--my thoughts veered away from classic Americana to the breadth of culinary exposure many Mormons experience as part of their missionary work. Their immersion inevitably leaves culinary imprints, and now those varied kitchen repertoires gain audience as the food blogging community continues to grow.

And as a certain high-profile Mormon makes a bid for the White House kitchen.

"revolution is not a dinner party."

2012-01-25T08:55:00.000-08:00

Written by Sasha Gong and Scott D. Seligman

This past Christmas, one of the best gifts I received was the book, China in Ten Words, by Chinese novelist Yu Hua. The book is a non-fiction departure for Yu Hua and as the title suggests, stitches together ten personal essays using ten distinct words as chapter titles (People, Writing, Disparity, for example).

The book acts as a literary time machine, transporting the reader back to the China of 1966-1976, in the midst of Chairman Mao Zedong's "Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution," one of the most disruptive and damaging eras in contemporary Chinese history. Propaganda in all forms was a key feature of the Cultural Revolution, from enormous banners emblazoned with Chairman Mao's teachings, down to small details on everyday items. As Yu Hua writes:

"Mao's poems and quotations were everywhere, then. From city to village, from mud walls to brick walls, interior walls and outside walls, every space was covered with them, along with the gleaming image of Mao Zedong. On the bowls out of which we ate our rice was printed Mao's maxim, "Revolution is not a dinner party."

That's an understatement.

For millions of young urbanites, the Cultural Revolution demanded their rural relocation, and many spent the decade struggling to survive the scarce conditions of the countryside. Sociologist, activist, and author Sasha Gong remembers that experience vividly.

Gong spent much of the Cultural Revolution toiling as a subsistence farmer in Hunan Province, attempting to coax food for survival from the inhospitable land. Her new publication, The Cultural Revolution Cookbook, is not meant to romanticize this dark time in Chinese history. (This has become a current trend in China, as cities like Beijing now boast upscale Cultural Revolution-themed restaurants, a surreal and sanitized version of the historical reality.) Instead, the cookbook reveals the powerful tether that food--even in its most simple forms--can provide those of any society experiencing nightmarish upheaval. They become an act of survival, not just as pure sustenance, but a preservation of identity and normalcy.

National Public Radio recently interviewed Gong and co-author Scott D. Seligman, which included a selection of recipes that are accompanied by Gong's personal narrative.

Revolution is certainly not a dinner party, but no matter the circumstances, we all sit down for meals. The meaning and the message of the meals is up to those who create and consume them.

"the kitchen is my harbor"

2011-12-08T12:27:00.000-08:00

Image Courtesy of Book Larder

Last night I had the distinct privilege of attending a book reading at the marvelous Book Larder by chef and author Donia Bijan, an Iranian exile of over 30 years. Bijan is a gifted storyteller and held the crowd spellbound as she shared tales from her book, Maman's Homesick Pie, of meals, family, identity, and memory.

You must stop reading this blog immediately and go purchase this book, preferably from a store such as Book Larder. I forwent sleep last night because I had to devour at least the first chapter. Given my commitment to bedtime, readers will appreciate the power this book holds over me.

At one point during the question and answer period, Bijan confided that while the perception of exiles is one of untethered "betwixt and between," food can be a reassuring constant. "The kitchen is my harbor" she said.

We were lucky to let down our anchors with her last night.

how far does your pie have to fly?

2011-11-12T06:05:00.000-08:00

Photo by Greg Coomer

Pie is my superpower.

With Thanksgiving around the corner, this is my superpower season. There is never a bad season for pie--it's one of the only reasons I'll run an oven in August--but November is when pies claim center stage and take a deep bow to thunderous applause.

And the photo above?

I've taken to enticing guest speakers to my class with the promise of a pie. Call it a "pie-ment" instead of a payment. No one has declined my invitation yet. My last speaker arrived on a motorcycle, having forgotten the edible gift that awaited. A few well-placed bungee cords later, and that pie was flying down the highway.

The only thing better than homemade pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving, is homemade pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving where the primary ingredients are produced by farmers in your community. Look no further: the Eat Local Network (brainchild of Melissa Borsting) assembles a box of bounty that includes all you need: from a pie pumpkin to a turkey.

All items are sourced from within 125 miles from Seattle and will turn you into the superhero of your holiday gathering.

food day feast

2011-10-25T22:47:00.000-07:00

Photo by A.V. Crofts

Did you know that yesterday was Food Day?

I know, every day is Food Day for those of us always dreaming about our next meal. Truth be told, if it wasn't for an informed colleague who tipped me off, October 24 would have passed without me getting a chance to celebrate over a roast duck and dumpling feast.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Here's Food Day in a nutshell, as described on their website:

Food Day seeks to bring together Americans from all walks of life—parents, teachers, and students; health professionals, community organizers, and local officials; chefs, school lunch providers, and eaters of all stripes—to push for healthy, affordable food produced in a sustainable, humane way. We will work with people around the country to create thousands of events in homes, schools, churches, farmers markets, city halls, and state capitals.

I lucked out: with a few keystrokes I'd signed up for a meal hosted by Chef Travis Bettinson, a Seattle-based pasta maker and personal chef behind Junip Foods. I closed up shop early at work and walked across the sun-splashed campus to the next neighborhood, where a whimsical jack-o'-lantern let us know we had reached the right place.

Travis had rolled and fried piles of pork dumplings, pinched and steamed dozens of curried potato momos, assembled chanterelle spring rolls, and roasted no fewer than four succulent ducks. All with ingredients sourced locally.

Travis was a natural host and a talented chef. There is nothing that makes me consider the gracious nature of hospitality more than a delicious meal--in this case prepared for strangers!--presented for your enjoyment.

So mark your calendars for 2012. I'm hosting next year.

delicious density

2011-09-04T23:57:00.000-07:00

Photo by A.V. Crofts

Everyone has their obsessions. One of mine is lake swimming.

My lake obsession shares space with pie, corduroy pants (any shade of brown, if you please), and the television show Friday Night Lights, to name a few.

Much of my summer was spent thinking about swimming or actually swimming in the lake photographed above. I swapped my urban lifestyle on the West Coast for a rural existence back East. Lakes become a form of entertainment, my exercise, a part of my social life, and border on a religious experience.

Regardless of which coast I'm on, I spend a good chunk each Sunday that I can with my nose buried in the New York Times. (Yes, I still get the Sunday paper tossed to my front porch. Six days a week of virtual news is enough for me. Give me inky fingers and the satisfying thwack of cracking open a section at least once a week.)

Today, while thumbing through the Sunday Review section I stumbled on this Op-Ed article by Ryan Avent, economics correspondent for The Economist. How does this article relate to gastro-cultural?

Brilliantly, it turns out.

Avent uses the example of a thriving Vietnamese restaurant scene to illustrate how urban density provides job creation and economic growth. As Avent explains, dense urban areas have a consumer demand for not just one Vietnamese restaurant, but many. This in turn provides job opportunities for more chefs and waitstaff, not to mention a larger customer base for food suppliers who provide the bean sprouts, limes, and rice noodles that Vietnamese restaurants rely on.

Here in Seattle, I have a choice of no fewer than nine Vietnamese restaurants a ten minute walk from my office. My Maine village doesn't boast a single restaurant, just an ice cream stand that serves decent fries and shuts down after Labor Day Weekend.

Nine months of the year I find the density of Seattle delicious. But for the other three months, fewer choices feed my appetite just fine.

real food good

2011-07-10T20:11:00.000-07:00

Photo by Anita Verna Crofts

I'm not a culinary isolationist.

While I don't expect to ever stumble across a bowl of southwestern Chinese rice noodles (mǐ xiàn, 米線) outside of the Mainland that comes close to the flavor and composition that is found on the streets of Kunming, I'd be the first to line up if such an eatery chose to open its doors in the USA.

Josh Ozersky's recent article in Time Magazine asks when the USA will apply our entrepreneurial spirit to designing a cuisine that instead of borrowing from our immigrant ancestors, blazes a unique gastronomical path. But given the staggering marginalization of the indigenous culinary traditions of this land, it's no wonder what we eat relates directly to whence we came. Just today, CNN's Eatocracy uploaded a video highlighting key chefs in this country who draw inspiration in the kitchen from their cultural heritage.

Case in point: Waldoboro, Maine, was settled by restless Bostonians in the 18th century but saw an influx of German emigrants in the mid 1800s. Fast forward a hundred and fifty years to July 2011, and Morse's Sauerkraut & Euro Deli is pickling cabbage in the proud German tradition--as it has since 1918.

En route back to Casco from Bass Harbor last week, my road trip companion and I ate half our body weight in Morse's homemade pickles, as well as bread dumplings, spätzle, potato perogies, house kraut, classic coleslaw, and red cabbage with apples. Did I mention there were four varieties of mustard on the table? The only disappointment was that they were sold out of soft pretzels.

Sure, it can feel illicit in lobster-land to step into a store where you half expect the servers to be sporting lederhosen, but these are Mainers in the kitchen, and this is their food.

So let's dispense with verbs: real food good.

And it is.

treme's taste buds

2011-06-15T04:13:00.000-07:00

Photo courtesy of Nisha Sondhe

Confession: I have not yet seen David Simon's heralded television series, "The Wire."Or "Treme."

[Insert gasp here.]

I know, I know. This represents a serious gap in my pop culture cred. But just because I haven't seen his shows doesn't mean I'm not aware of Simon's genius. So the recent New York Times article on the second season of "Treme," set in post-Katrina New Orleans, caught my eye.

The article reports on the culinary tradition emphasis of season two, with plot twists that involve the fate of a featured character, Janette Desautel, head chef of the fictitious restaurant, Desautel's. After temporarily shuttering Desautel's, she heads to New York City to seek work.

Two cities, two culinary personalities.

Last summer, I collaborated with portrait photographer Nisha Sondhe on a piece for Saveur Magazine called "Requiem for an Oyster." The photo essay featured chefs from New Orleans in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the impact on seafood that is the cornerstone of NOLA cuisine. Despite the challenges of the one-two punch of Katrina and Deepwater, Sondhe encountered optimism in the face of these challenges.

Does this optimism feature in "Treme"?

Clearly, it's time for me to tune in and watch to find out.

menu of thrones

2011-05-30T22:36:00.000-07:00

Lemon Cake by Joyosity

Last week I was asked to give a talk about how virtual worlds are expanding our understanding and experience of community. My examples ran the gamut from online forums for sock knitters to World of Warcraft.

Not more than a few days following that talk, I sat in on a lecture by Wanda Gregory, the director of the University of Washington's Center for Serious Play. Wanda's got heaps of game and virtual world cred: she's worked at Wizards of the Coast and Xbox 360.

During her presentation, Wanda shared the story about the new HBO series "Game of Thrones," based on the novel by George R. R. Martin.

The clever folks at HBO behind "Thrones" decided to use food to build buzz before the April 17 premiere. They knew the vivid role food played in the novel (which is part of a longer series) and that there were "Thrones" enthusiasts who likely read the novel with their stomach's grumbling, given the menus described on the page.

So, to link the virtual and place-based experience of the series, special "Thrones" food trucks rolled out in New York and Los Angeles two weeks before the series launch with dishes artfully created by Chef Tom Colicchio, down to the lemon cakes which appear to play a starring role in both the book and the series.

While "Thrones" is fantasy, it's a medieval fantasy, with gastro-fare of hearty stews, pickled vegetables, and I'm sure copious amounts of meed or ale (I'm guessing here on the booze, as I've not seen the show).

What could be more community building than food?

In this example, food bridges the printed page, to the streets, to the screen.

mmmmazanec

2011-04-23T16:18:00.000-07:00

Photo by Medhi

With Easter just around the corner, the number of articles trumpeting holiday dishes has skyrocketed: Easter pies in New Jersey, buckets of oranges and aquavit in Norway and Sweden, and a host of specialty button and braided breads from Greek to Polish.

I've had bread on the brain, so tomorrow I'm dusting off a recipe for mazanec, a Czech sweet Easter bread that a visiting scholar from Prague passed on to me many years ago. The version I was taught involves raisins, three braids coiled in a Dutch oven, an egg wash, and then dusted with toasted almonds just like the loaf photographed above.

My impatient streak means most bread recipes and I part ways when my eyes glaze over at the words, "Let the dough rise a second time..." I've perfected the "no need to knead" bread recipe that Mark Bittman wrote about in the New York Times five years ago--but even with this simplified version I cut out half the steps and just scrape the dough from bowl to dish and bake. Hasn't failed me yet.

But once a year (or once every five years or so) I'll willingly roll up my sleeves and take on a recipe that requires more ingredients than I can count on one hand and multiple risings. The flour will fly, I'll scrape at the bowl with vigor to introduce air into the dough, and we'll see how well I remember how to braid four strands (thankfully, I drew myself visual aids lo those many years ago). This cousin of the hot cross bun is worth the effort.

Veselé Velikonoce!

meat me in namibia

2011-03-11T14:05:00.000-08:00

Photo courtesy of Samantha Bailey

It's early morning here in Amsterdam, and I'll soon be on a flight headed to South Africa, with a final destination of Namibia. The trip is part of my work with the MCDM and I-TECH at the UW Department of Global Health: I'll be part of a faculty training team contributing modules on storytelling as a leadership tool as part of a leadership, management, and policy training with the University of Namibia.

But I have a second agenda: meat.

I'm interested in meat in Namibia because it's not a meal without it. I'm interested in meat in Namibia because cattle culture was a rich tradition before German colonization, but took on new dimensions afterward that still exist today. I'm interested in meat in Namibia because no one makes beef jerky, or biltong, like they do.

Finally, I'm interested in meat because in post-conflict countries, food often acts as a peacemaker.

So here we are, on the eve of "Anita's Namibian Meat Diary: Day One."

longevity noodles

2011-02-28T23:48:00.000-08:00

Photo by Gerritt Ziegler

There are 31 minutes left in February 2011.

Like this month, my entry will be short and sweet--an ode to the Year of the Rabbit.

When this comprehensive article on Chinese noodles appeared in the New York Times earlier this year, a friend forwarded it to me with the message, "Don't you wish the term 'Master Noodle Puller' appeared on your resume? There's still time."

Indeed, I do.

"Pull" is an appropriate verb for February. I've been pulled in many happy directions, I've pulled some rabbits out of hats, I pulled off a cross-country trip in 72 hours, I pulled into Dick's Drive-in at least three times, I dined on pulled pork at Cochon 555, and happily I continued a cavity-free streak at the dentist so no pulled teeth for me.

As the article above explains, Chinese New Year is a time for certain dishes to take center stage, and in the case of noodles, the longer they are, the longer your life will be--hence the term "longevity noodles." So find yourself a dish of this goodness and crown yourself a "Master Noodle Slurper."

Twelve minutes left in February 2011. There's still time.

piecycle! piecycle! PIECYCLE!

2011-01-23T10:04:00.000-08:00

Photos courtesy of Dawn Wright

[Please excuse the Queen musical reference. Quite easily one of the most annoying songs of all time, but in this case, it makes for an appropriate title.]

Today is National Pie Day (I know, I know, March 14 is the alternative Pie Day). As an avid pie baker and consumer, I am pleased to submit for consideration my nomination for a National Pie Day Hero:

Max Kraushaar, photographed above and known by his Twitter handle @thepiecycle, is a Seattle-based artist who on Friday and Saturday nights, makes homemade pie house calls in the University District on, you guessed it, his bicycle.

Kraushaar's been getting some good press lately, and I have a feeling with the current ascendancy of pie (High 5 Pie is less than a month old in Capitol Hill and Pie in Fremont is even younger. Cupcakes, beware: classic is back), he'll soon have a fleet.

Like ice cream atop a fresh slice of pie, Kraushaar is creating a perfect pairing: new media and old school deliciousness. Now I just have to work late one Friday or Saturday evening so I can sample @thepiecycle offerings while within his delivery zone.

It's high time for pie time.

the kiwi summer kitchen is the barbie

2011-01-13T11:05:00.000-08:00

Photo courtesy of Steve Sids1

Yesterday I was minding my own business and a chirp let me know I had a new text message. It came from an unspecified person with a 917 area code, but someone who clearly knew me. I've recently upgraded phones and for some inexplicable reason, it wasn't recognizing this particular number.

I politely texted back a version of "I'm sorry, who are you exactly?" and was immediately chided by one of my closest friends.

Oops.

This brought into focus the fact that we had not spoken in far too long. Time zones and the happy swirl of life can all conspire.

Oddly, it was when this friend was farthest away from me physically that were in the best touch. A decade ago she married a Kiwi--New Zealander-- and they eventually moved from the U.S. to Wellington, where her husband had family. We set up monthly phone call schedules and kept at it with near religious consistency, despite the time difference between "the rock" as she called NZ and Seattle.

Now that we're a mere 3 zones apart, it's like we operate in totally different solar systems.

Some of my favorite memories of all time involve a trip I took to NZ to visit her and her hubby. It was exactly this time of year, and I fled the winter and darkness and after the longest flight of my life, ended up on the tarmac in Auckland, squinting into the sunshine.

It was this trip that I was introduced to the Kiwis delight in--nay devotion to--the "barbie" or barbecue. I remember sitting under fresh lemon trees on the South Island, getting ready to tuck in to the latest feast of grilled meat, with fresh strawberry shortcake to follow, made with berries we had picked that afternoon. A spirited game of croquet had formed our appetites. I had a backpack and a round the world ticket. Everything was possible and all was before me.

It seems appropriate that this article on the history of NZ's love affair with outdoor cooking from the New Zealand Herald popped up the very day that my friend texted me. Kismet.

This weekend I'll be calling my friend--her cell phone number now properly named and stored. It's wintertime in the hemisphere we both call home now, but we can pretend it's summer when we speak.

PS. The beaches in NZ really do look as gorgeous as the photo.

persimmons and popovers

2010-12-27T09:04:00.000-08:00

Photo courtesy of Koshyk

Photo courtesy of Uberculture

Two days before Christmas this year, my uncle arrived at a family dinner with a flat of plump persimmons.

I had just read Michelle Huneven's marvelous essay in the Los Angeles Times, where she beautifully recounts Christmas meals of past and present (along with the blending of Jewish and Christian tastes and celebrations), and makes mention of the persimmon tree in her front yard. She describes the tradition of referring to persimmon trees as "Christmas trees," as they lose their leaves this time of year in southern California and their edible orange ornaments remain.

It seemed fitting that here I was, gathered in the holiday spirit and nibbling on the persimmon fruit my uncle had lovingly peeled and sliced.

Huneven spends another section of her essay praising the glory of popovers, which is an adoration I share:

"I still love popovers with a great primal longing. Popovers signal an end to waiting, their successful ballooning still seems a small domestic miracle, a visitation of culinary grace."

To those not in the know, this devotion may appear exaggerated, but I assure you, it is not. Popovers play a starring role in my Thanksgiving menus for exactly these reasons.

The star of Christmas morning across my extended family is Rum Ring, a baked confection that most closely resembles an enormous glazed doughnut liberally scattered with toasted pecans. My mother acts as the Rum Ring Fairy, making her annual pilgrimage to the bakery and then distributing boxes of these much-anticipated sugar bombs to our various households.

Rum rings are polished off in one sitting--at least in this family--but their meaning rings us into 2011.

"curtain twitching"

2010-12-15T05:06:00.000-08:00

Photo courtesy of Stacy Bass

How could I not write about an article that compared food blogging to the marvelously descriptive title above, "curtain twitching"?

Don't worry, I had to look up "curtain twitching" as well to confirm my hunch was on the mark.
(The term is one you associate with neighbors perched behind their parted curtains and peering down on the street below--often looking for trouble brewing.)

Julia Clark, who writes at A Slice Of Cherry Pie and is founder of the UK Food Bloggers Association (UKFBA), made the association and I believe had a more innocent dynamic in mind: food bloggers part the curtain into restaurants for the rest of us via the screen of our choice.

The Scotsman article spotlights a few key personalities in the Scottish blogging world, but also traces the rise of food blogging in North America and the growth phase it's experiencing now in the UK. It's an informative read on an industry that is growing faster than a souffle falls once out of the oven.

As the numbers of food bloggers continue to grow, it is natural that the definition of what it means to be a food blogger will expand as well. For instance, you'll rarely, if ever see a recipe or a restaurant review on my blog, but I still consider it a food blog. Happily, there is plenty of room at the table for all of us.

Keeping with the Scottish theme today, I'll wrap this up and reach for a wedge of the best Scottish shortcake I've ever eaten--homemade and I've been told, exceptional in taste thanks to one secret ingredient: love.

food for thought

2010-11-24T07:18:00.000-08:00

Photo Courtesy of Prince Roy

Given the season, I could fill a post describing items currently jockeying for space in my refrigerator: pucks of pie dough, turkey, pumpkin puree, stout carrots, half a celery root, jars of jam, leeks, and cranberries.

They're like star actors in a play, and each time I swing open the door of the fridge they look at me as if to say, "Are we on yet?"

Many of these ingredients will headline in dishes that are steeped in this country's Thanksgiving tradition, while some will be transformed into dishes that are specific to my family. For instance, it wouldn't be Thanksgiving without my grandmother's carrot souffle and cranberry sherbet.

These two particular recipes live on simple 3" x 5" cards that my grandmother typed out and gifted to me when I graduated from college, presented in a throw-back metal recipe box. Today's
"metal recipe box" might be a laptop, but in my kitchen, I make space for both.

In China, the direct translation for the word "computer" is "calculation machine," or in slang, "electric brain." When I was first learning Chinese, I loved the literal approach the language took with these 20th century technologies. (A telephone was a marvelously named an "electric talking machine.")

China straddles the worlds of antiquity and modernity, and often it is the chords of culinary tradition and memory that link the two. The New York Times published an article this month about the state of cuisine in the Chinese province of Sichuan, known for its feats of edible heat. In particular, the article was tracing contemporary restaurant trends in the capital, Chengdu, where eager diners can shell out big bucks for soft shell turtle at upscale establishments, or stick to the Chinese equivalent of a greasy spoon, where hot pot and fiery tofu dishes rule.

While it took thousands of years for the potato to make its way from Peru to the imperial kitchen in what was then referred to as Peking (scholars figure potatoes reached China in the 17th century), spuds are now a staple and China is the top producer of potatoes in the world. The potatoes cultivated in early settlements in New England arrived by way of Europe. Before industrialization, food was the stuff of globalization.

Today, a plate of tu dou si (which translated into English reads "potato threads") captured in the photograph above, is as comforting to a Sichuanese as a serving of mashed potatoes is to this Seattleite.

laptops in the kitchen

2010-11-14T14:21:00.000-08:00

Photo Courtesy of Craig Cillitoe/Sydney Morning Herald

I can remember a time--not that long ago--where the thought of a laptop in my kitchen seemed akin to installing a dj station in the corner. Why would I put such expensive technology in a space where I chopped, stirred, boiled, and baked? Surely I'd just wreck the poor thing when it took an unexpected plunge in the sink. Danger seemed to lurk in every corner, and my laptop stayed banished to the more serene sections of the house.

No longer.

While I don't haul pigs across my kitchen like the lad photographed above, I do hunch over my laptop on the kitchen counter like the other lad in the photo, looking up just how many teaspoons of lemon juice a recipe needs, or what temperature I should set the oven for. But it doesn't stop at just cooking. The laptop is my yellow pages, my calendar, my mobile work station, and my megaphone, so when I head to the kitchen, the laptop comes with me.

As many of our lives become more digital, behaviors adjust. Which is what is going on in the photo above, which ran in the Sydney Morning Herald as part of an article on how technology is impacting the food industry--both producers and consumers. Chefs now tweet with the best of them, reservation systems migrate online, and as this particular article reports, restaurants are now uploading their wine lists for tablet technology as a way of engaging customers in new ways and deepening the relationship they have to a restaurant.

While some argue that technology has diminished the personal touch--and in some realms I would agree this is true--in other areas like the restaurant industry, it has expanded the access and experience.

crowdsourced cookbooks

2010-10-18T06:01:00.001-07:00

Image courtesy of Discovery Education

Most people shelve their cookbooks in or near the kitchen. This makes great sense. I've been known to stack cookbooks arm's length from my bedside for nighttime reading. A good Nigel Slater easily elbows out novels or must-read nonfiction. No matter the genre, when an author crafts a powerful narrative voice, the read is compelling.

A good story gets me every time.

What Amanda Hesser has done at the New York Times is compile a cookbook with hundreds of narratives: the reader's. As she outlines in her recent New York Times Sunday Magazine article, instead of combing through thousands of recipes herself, Hesser invited readers to help her navigate by telling her their very favorites. This invitation provided Hesser and her assistant, Merrill Stubbs, five years of treasured recipes to comb through, test, and then whittle down to a reasonably sized collection.

Hesser's article does a great job of not only highlighting the particular process of how this upcoming cookbook came to be, but she also takes it one step farther and discusses the role that social networks and new media are impacting the way we eat, cook, and source our food. Her crowdsourced cookbook is just one example of the rich possibilities at play here.

While I expect that Hesser's voice will bind her upcoming cookbook, the book will benefit
from many narratives, woven together.

eating your environment

2010-10-05T13:19:00.000-07:00

Photo Courtesy of University of Washington
College of the Environment

Malcolm Gladwell has a piece in in the most recent New Yorker where he questions the ability of online social networks to mobilize groups for social change. I won’t comment on his premise here, but I will say that online social networks are a great platform for mobilizing groups to buy a taco. Or an ice-cream cone.

Pulled pork sandwich, anyone?

The food truck revolution (see my last post) is closely tied to the social network revolution. As mobile dispensers of good things to eat, food trucks rely on customers tracking their routes via their personal mobile devices. You can catch Molly Moon’s ice cream cones in your neighborhood on a Wednesday, and then Marination Mobile on Thursday. Legendary food writer Jonathan Gold of the LA Times just published a piece about food trucks in LA that drew attention to customers who “obsessively monitor [the] Twitter feed” (“tweaters”) of particularly beloved trucks.

But social media is covering more than just food trucks.

Starting tonight, our MCDM students will be both filming and blogging the UW College of the Environment's series "Food: Eating Your Environment," a lecture series that sold out within days of being announced. Tonight's lecture, "Can Science and Technology Secure Global Food Resources?" by Gebisa Ejeta, the 2009 World Food Prize Winner, is the first of eight, ranging from food security to biodiversity to nutrition.

truckin'

2010-09-17T09:29:00.000-07:00

Photo Courtesy of ddaarryynn

It's hard to miss the explosion of mobile food trucks in Seattle. From ice cream to kimchi, there is very little you can't find to eat on four wheels. I'm still waiting for some entrepreneur to launch a SW Chinese cuisine cart--Yunnan Province boasts purple sticky rice cooked in pineapples, "Across the Bridge Noodles," and a wok-fried cheese called "Ru Bing" that melts in your mouth. The grub would sell, I tell you. But I digress.

I first blogged about the Seattle-based truck above, Marination Mobile, in July of 2009 for Saveur, and the scene has just continued to gain traction since--both regionally and across North America.

Case in point: Grumman 78, a fresh taco truck that is taking on Montreal's strict rules banning selling food on the street. The Montreal Mirror ran an article with the wonderful title, "Tacofying City Hall," about the folks who launched the truck and their efforts to stay within the law while bringing fresh and light Mexican food to the land of heavy creams and poutine. (Everything is better with gravy and cheese curds slathered over it, isn't it?)

Beyond tempting our taste buds, mobile food trucks have launched a hungry armada of "tweaters," as they leverage Twitter to grow their business, connect with customers, and create a brand. Mobile Chowdown 5 here in Seattle celebrates this vibrant truckin' community and its digital following on October 1.

I'll be there with the MCDM on the "Geek Row," so come on down!

nobody bakes a cake as tasty...

2010-09-11T10:38:00.000-07:00

Image courtesy of www.tastykake.com

Earlier this summer I was visiting my neighbor the day before flying to Philadelphia for a family reunion. My neighbor's daughter was also visiting, and as soon as she heard I was headed to the City of Brotherly love, the conversation turned to Tastykakes.

Naturally.

Tastykakes are an iconic Philly food tradition--though I realize some might argue the point as to whether a Butterscotch Krimpet, illustrated above, is truly food. Their trademark jingle (see the title of this post) is a fixture in the brain of anyone who grew up in the greater Philadelphia area. They've also been in the news lately, as the New York Times reported recently on their plans to open a new factory location in the gussied up Philadelphia Navy Yard.

It turns out my neighbor's daughter had spent a year living in Philadelphia and became addicted to Chocolate Juniors, one edible delights of the Tastykake family, though perhaps not as famous as their krimpet cousins. I vowed to send her some upon my arrival, and true to my word, three family packs of Chocolate Juniors graced her doorstep a week later.

Soon after that the New York Times ran a story about how the ease of internet purchase power does not replace for some the act of kindness that brings "food souvenirs" from afar:

"Although Internet buying makes sense — why haul a treat through Customs if a computer click brings the same result? — plenty of purists favor lugging over logic. For them, a treat bought at its source and carried home by their own (or a loved one’s) hands is somehow more genuine, more delicious, more earned, than one secured in an easy, remote transaction on the Web. This is particularly true now, with the height of summer travel upon us. Food souvenirs are food, but they’re also souvenirs, and as such are evocative of people and places."

When I got back to Seattle, I learned that two boxes of the Chocolate Junior's had been happily eaten, and one remained. It is being rationed, as it is the last.

That is, until my next trip to Philly.

seven loaves

2010-08-17T05:48:00.001-07:00

Photo by Evan Siegle of the Green Bay Press-Gazette

You know you're in Maine when on Saturday you go to a Lobster Bake (two lobsters, a baked potato the size of a Nerf football, roasted onion, corn on the cob, roll, salad, and watermelon for $26--no one starves) with live entertainment that does a decent rendition of "Sweet Home Alabama and a silent auction that offers the gamut of possible loot: from Cheese Nips to Ski Boots.

Then on Sunday you take your leftover lobster (they give you two, after all) and make Lobster Rolls and then reduce everything that's left of your lobsters down into stock--even though it makes your entire home reek like a roadside Lobster Pound. The Lobster Roll recipe I used called for lime juice, and man did it make that dish sing.

Lime juice: it is the key to all happiness.

Happily, my haunt in Maine is an easy drive to Portland. Sure, some folks head to Portland for lobster, or one of the many eateries that are causing sensations across the land. Me? I go for the bakeries. I'm a sucker for anything that gets baked in an oven: bread, cookies, brownies, pies--I'll take ten of each, thanks. Some of my favorites are going to get a nod on Saveur's website soon, so stay tuned.

With bread on the brain, my curiosity was immediately whetted when I read about baker and restaurant owner J.R. Schoenfeld, who keeps the locals fed and happy in upstate Wisconsin. Schoenfeld has founded an initiative called The Seven Loaves Project, and the story goes something like this: Schoenfeld traveled as part of delegation to Rwanda and was moved to establish a bakery that would not only serve to supply fresh bread to far-flung villages that are distant enough from bakeries in the main cities, but would also build job training opportunities for village residents.

This is a great example of the transactional becoming transformational--and through bread! No matter the product, it can be a tool for change.

cultivating communities

2010-08-07T17:48:00.000-07:00

Photo by Ron1478

It's a good life, my life in Maine.

No watch on my wrist. Lots of chances to swim. Great friends. And fresh fruit and vegetables for days.

Corn that's sweet and pops as you devour it off the cob, slender Japanese eggplants, soft raspberries, and mountains of rainbow chard. It's good stuff.

Lucky me that my ancestors settled this land 200 years ago and I benefit today.

This morning I joined my mother on a road trip from our farmhouse to North Windham for the weekly farmers market--a modest little operation tucked behind a church off Route 302. We're talking six stalls or so that sold perishables, and maybe two additional stalls that sold crafts or plants. It's not the see-and-be-seen mobfest that is the Ballard Farmers Market in Seattle, but it's not quantity, it's quality that matters at a farmers market.

The stall that caught my eye didn't lure me initially with their vegetables (though they were abundant and gorgeous) but rather, the couple who were staffing the booth. It was as if I'd beamed up to Khartoum and found myself in Omdurman Market, not rural Maine. Turns out they weren't Sudanese, but Somali--her henna and his skullcap fooled me--and they farm with a project called Cultivating Community out of Portland, Maine. Cultivating Community describes itself this way:

Cultivating Community's mission is to strengthen communities by growing food, preparing youth leaders and new farmers, and promoting social and environmental justice. We use our community food work as an engine for high-impact youth and community development programs that reconnect people to the natural and social systems that sustain us all.

This is a mission statement I can get behind. It contains some of my favorite words: "food," "leaders," "community," "reconnect," and "sustain."

Each summer I return to land that my family once farmed, contrasted with my Somali vendors who are first-generation Maine farmers. Their food fed me tonight, and I am grateful for it.

city of gastronomy

2010-07-21T18:33:00.000-07:00

Photo by Moxieg

It looks like the United Nations wants to get in on the gastro-game.

Agence France-Presse reported last week that Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province in China, was granted the title "City of Gastronomy" by UNESCO, the arts and cultural arm of the UN. It's the second city to receive such a heralded designation, with the Colombian city of Popoyan being the first. (Uh, who knew?)

Chengdu is where, in 1991, I slurped frogs legs from a roiling spiced hot pot that was so ferociously spicy I cried, much to the amusement of the vendor, who kept a steady stream of bottled orange soda coming to dull the pain. As Fuschia Dunlop notes in the AFP article, street vendors such as my hot pot guru, are few and far between now in glitzy 21st Century China's Chengdu.

Sadly, these UNESCO appointments are often a last-gasp attempt at preservation--so here's hoping that more vendors start peppering the wide boulevards of Chengdu, ready to represent the spectrum of culinary delights the region is known for throughout the world.

Since I know you're wondering, "How do I get my city a UNESCO designation?" I am happy to provide you with a checklist courtesy of the UNESCO.

If I sat on the UNESCO committee and unicorns roamed the streets of Seattle handing out free popsicles, my nominations would be Istanbul, Kerala, Naples, and Addis Ababa.

What are yours?