Pelosi, a self-described “foodie,” sampled both a “sauteed shrimp over angel hair pasta with a mustard sauce, marinated tomatoes and crispy basil,” as well as a “red snapper with an aromatic broth, wilted greens and maitake mushrooms” and judged in favor of the shrimp, cooked by the Blue team manned by Kenny Gilbert, Amanda Baumgarten, Kevin Sbraga and Kelly Liken (Recap from HuffPo)
Well, hell’s bells! I don’t want to jump the gun, but is it time to start watching Top Chef!?!
BBC News profiled “My Life as a Picky Eater” yesterday, in which picky-eater Rhonda West opens up about her fears about food. Really interesting video, detailing how offended her peers are about the things she won’t/can’t eat. I understand some of the neuroses she describes, especially in regards to texture – there have been some times I have gotten the el serio heebie-jeebies about food. I really feel rather bad for her, though, seems like she is tortured by food.
I cannot get this inspiring phrase out of my head.
Why, the answer is True! And in poorer countries they produce 60–80% of the agricultural yield, according to Jeannette Gurung, director of the Washington-based Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and National Resource Management, in this piece by Women’s E-News. And it’s because even big food movers like the U.N. World Food Programme are looking to buy locally-grown food whenever possible. This means they are turning to smaller operations, which are more likely to be run by women.
In the past, said Gurung, aid tended to support agribusiness and overlook agriculture in development assistance. But when food prices spiked in 2007 and 2008 development organizations began to take a new approach that brought small-scale female farmers more to the policy fore.
“They were putting the emphasis on the wrong actors and there’s been a shift to see small-scale farmers as the real farmers of the world,” said Gurung in a recent phone interview. “And once they looked at small-scale farmers, they began to look at women.”
More and more countries and NGOs are keeping gender specific data, which can also help aid workers in the field to see situations where women farmers have less access to tools than men in the same area and work to get rid of that disparity.
In a compelling story (OK, not really) about the chef Roger Mooking, the writer was able to extract the following quotes, but never found out why the hell Mooking changed his name from Moo in the first place. HOW COULD YOU NOT ASK THAT?
“Working in a kitchen is like working in construction – on crack. “It’s also like being an air fighter pilot: Your mind is firing, people are cussing at you, you’re sweating. And then you come back for more the next day. There’s a mania to it. There’s also a self-destructive mania to creating things that don’t last. That world is a comfort zone for me.”
“These fritters are da bomb!”
“I want a cat woman in a tight chef’s jacket and her boots would have fat, red break-dancer’s laces and chef’s knives coming out of them.”
“Even when I was just out of the crib, I’d leave the house in Trinidad, naked, find my way to the other side of the island, and come back home, fully clothed, with a new haircut, like, ‘What’s up, man? What’s for lunch?’ I was always on the move.”
“I drive a Hyundai!”
“I may be chopping onions under really expensive lights and through a really expensive lens, but I’m still chopping onions! You know what I mean?”
When I got off the train yesterday I was handed a flyer. This in itself is not exceptional—in my neighborhood you are likely to get flyered for anything from the local craft collective to one of the 4,563,847,543 shows happening on any given night. But this flyer was different. It was a flyer for a winery.
I admit that I thought for a minute about which of my friends could have the wherewithal to execute an elaborate prank, gambling on when I might be getting home. However, upon further inspection, the leaflet for “Brooklyn Winery” is all too real.
Join the community at the Brooklyn Winery where you can make your own wine from grape to glass. Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, our winemaker and winemaking staff will guide you through the process to craft a great wine. Stop by, taste some wine, get your hands dirty, and become part of a unique experience in Brooklyn.
It’s not just a winery, it’s a DIY winery. After several all-caps texts to various people, I looked at the price list, which ranges from $5,700 for a barrel that will yield 300 bottles that are all your own, to the “Community Package,” where you buy part of a barrel for $300. You also get to design your own wine label. What a great creative outlet!
They have a lot of info about the land where their grapes are grown, etc., but nothing about the workers who will actually be picking the grapes and making the wine. That’s the problem I have with the artisanal obsession and the ingredientism–it ignores the people in the food chain, the ones who are preparing the wild salmon, or bagging the organic groceries, or picking the apples.
Also, hello, recession? Hello, NEW YORK CITY? If I wanted to live in Napa, I would. I just know the English Major Cheese Shop is in on this.
Glamour gorditas in Mexico City! Traveller tacos in Dubai! Vogue vitamin soup in Hong Kong!
Dammit, Snacktime, they’re stealing your ideas!
Paula Deen has a cruise, everyone! It’s $1529 a person! Included for no extra cost are the Deen Beach Olympics, which I can only imagine is a lot of ham throwing!
Thanks to the illustrious Oliver Thring for unknowingly tipping me off.
Avery Fisher Hall – Photo from Carnegie Rocks!
WWD’s Memo Pad reports that Bon Appétit is going to have a cafe in Avery Fisher Hall for fashion week from Sept 12 – 16. Because food only meets & marries fashion for 4 days a year, then they get divorced publicly. So what will it consist of? A bunch of chi-chi stuff, bien sûr!
Stumptown coffee and pastries from the likes of Le Bernadin’s Michael Laiskonis and Christina Tosi of Momofuku Milk Bar in the morning; lunch between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., and a “wine bar” with small plates from Daniel Boulud and Mario Batali offered from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. For lunch, the magazine has enlisted Rick Bayless, Cat Cora, The Lion’s John DeLucie, Emeril Lagasse, Bill Telepan, Laurent Tourondel, Michael White, Marc Murphy and Missy Robbins to create meals inspired by the world of fashion, a twist devised by Smith.
Considering the James Beard Awards worked quite nicely at Avery Fisher, it seems like a fine fit, and I gotta say – good Conde Nast brand integration, etc. However, the following quote irks me:
“Everyone likes fashion, but food is 300 times as big,” said Smith, who was hired away from Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. by rival Condé Nast to head up an epicurean group in April. “When I got [to Bon Appétit], I asked the marketing team, ‘Have we ever thought of marrying food and fashion?’
Seriously, come onnn. It’s like everyone forgot GOURMET MAG WAS WHERE FOOD MARRIED FASHION GAH. Quit trying to make Bon Appétit happen.
A few excerpts from a stellar piece on The Awl by Claire Zulkey, “The Rich Are Different, They Eat More Money.”
Following food trends is secretly an upscale way of justifying eating things you probably shouldn’t. No, a hamburger or glass of pop or cupcake now and then won’t kill you, but the point of a craze isn’t moderation: if you’re really going to consider yourself up on the soda trend, you’ll know the difference and have opinions on Brooklyn Soda Works versus P&H Soda versus Fort Defiance and so on right now. Get in on it while it’s hot: it’s fun, it’s old-timey! It’s not going to be fashionable for long so you need to get in there and try it and have your say. Being part of the communal tasting moment is part of the experience, but it’s a luscious bonus that the majority of the experience is eating something sugary, fatty and/or delicious. Eating indulgently somehow seems less sinful when it’s the thing to do. Eat a cupcake because you feel sad: that’s sad. Eat a cupcake because the gals on “Sex and the City” did it: well, now you’re living the life. That’s aspirational eating. It’s not so bad for you if you had to wait in line for it and pay a shit ton of money for it and do it in high heels.
There seem to be two issues at play these days when it comes to what makes foods “good” and “bad” (of course poor, innocent foods are not actually “good” and “bad” the way, say, the Holocaust was “bad” and eight hours of sleep is “good,” but you can’t deny that certain foods are more nutritionally valuable than others): calories and content. Take a Hostess Twinkie and then a “Twinkie” that is not actually a Twinkie but a dessert created by a trained pastry chef out of the finest ingredients in the kitchen of an exclusive restaurant to look like a Twinkie (this sounds like a great challenge for “Top Chef”). Many of us wouldn’t be caught dead eating a Twinkie: we’ve all been told that Twinkies never age because they’re made of wicked unnatural ingredients, Twinkies are filled with whale blubber, Twinkies will give you cancer. Yet you’d pay $12 for the honor of eating the “Twinkie,” even though they both may have the same amount of calories.
There’s a double standard when it comes to food that’s calorically bad for you. Hell, there’s a double standard even when it comes to food that’s good for you. Those of us who allegedly can afford it and “know better” aren’t supposed to eat baby carrots anymore: we’re supposed to go to the farmers’ market to purchase beautiful fresh-from-the-dirt carrots with green tops, or have them delivered to us in a weekly produce co-op box. You don’t cram them in your face to fill the void and grimly just take it because the food suits its purpose and is filled with these goddamn vitamins and nutrients—you thank Gaia for the soil and the sun that brought it to you and consider yourself one of the “good ones” next time you read a Michael Pollan article.
Try reading it without a kneejerk defense of “That’s not me!” and “I don’t do that” or even “Those assholes.” Just read it and think.