Food city area

I still don't want to read them

A few days ago I read an <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/03/the-moral-crusade-against-foodies/8370/">article by B. R. Myers</a> in the current Atlantic, and commented that I wouldn't want to read several of the authors whose work he cited (<a href="http://regional-food.blogspot.com/2011/02/food-books-im-not-going-to-read.html">Food Books I'm Not Going to Read</a>). Now another Atlantic writer, Nicolette Hahn Niman, a proponent of the food movement, has written an answer:<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/food/archive/2011/02/defending-foodies-a-rancher-takes-a-bite-out-of-br-myers/71416/" title="Defending 'Foodies': A Rancher Takes a Bite out of B. R. Myers"> Defending 'Foodies': A Rancher Takes a Bite out of B. R. Myers</a>. She's quite upset about the broad-brush condemnation of "foodies" as self-indulgent, cruel, and out-of-touch. I have no doubt that there is a larger food-reform movement that supports more responsible agriculture and more healthful food choices. But I think she missed the point that there's a fringe of writers whose position has become so extreme. (And if I remember correctly some of her writing in the Atlantic is sometimes a bit extreme itself, as writing goes.) I take her point as stated here: <blockquote>"Myers utterly fails to establish any connection between the statements and behaviors he cites and the broad food movement sweeping this country. In fact, there isn't one. None of us who care about food system reform and healthful, ethical eating would defend such excesses, and we certainly are not inspired by them. Fundamental to today's American food movement is holistic thinking and respect—knowing where your food comes from, understanding its history before reaching your plate, and savoring it with family and friends."</blockquote>Of course Myers' examples of extreme self-indulgence and elitism don't reflect on everyone who proposes changes to the overall picture of American food production, delivery, and consumption. But I think her defense of foodies is just as extreme as Myers' attack, and just as misplaced. For example she cites a writer who says: "growing one's own food is not drudgery at all." Gosh, what a put-down of farmers. Maybe if what you grow is one incredibly productive little cherry tomato plant... never mind. And I'm still not going to read those new books -- I think Myers has a good point there.

I still don't want to read them

A few days ago I read an article by B. R. Myers in the current Atlantic , and commented that I wouldn't want to read several of the aut...

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05.39

Good Luck, David

<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9SsT8QGYLjMcnQHmLSiANFvQBW5gzp0hokvejznkLAi9T6f3Kn5Ywhz5FYCJ2cVa0oEHus2V4jvOG1dk9Q3Nvc1_5QdxFWjZc45KAXAywCkeo0UCruysLhfneO1ncOBSCRyDd9-eiuMUp/s1600/davidparty5058.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5575238538257348370" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9SsT8QGYLjMcnQHmLSiANFvQBW5gzp0hokvejznkLAi9T6f3Kn5Ywhz5FYCJ2cVa0oEHus2V4jvOG1dk9Q3Nvc1_5QdxFWjZc45KAXAywCkeo0UCruysLhfneO1ncOBSCRyDd9-eiuMUp/s400/davidparty5058.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" /></a> Len's student has completed his thesis, and he defended it today. As we've done for every student who finished his degree, we had a congratulatory party with a cake to celebrate David's next endeavor: a job at Google. He will start there after the end of the semester. As you can see, I'm not the world's slickest cake decorator, but I tried to pick up on the Google theme colors.

Good Luck, David

Len's student has completed his thesis, and he defended it today. As we've done for every student who finished his degree, we had a ...

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19.33

Food Books I'm Not Going to Read

The Atlantic has a review of several recently-published foodie books: <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/03/the-moral-crusade-against-foodies/8370/">The Moral Crusade Against Foodies: Gluttony dressed up as foodie-ism is still gluttony</a> by B. R. Myers. The author is very turned off by the foodies and their poses, as the article's title suggests. A few of the many foodie-writer crimes attested: <ul><li>First: "these people really do live to eat" -- and often to overeat, writes Myers.</li><li>Despite lip service to the contrary, they are often cruel to animals, and go as far as to participate enthusiastically in cruel slaughter of animals they are about to eat. One example: "Steingarten tells of watching four people hold down a struggling, groaning pig for a full 20 minutes as it bled to death for his dinner."</li><li>Foodies don't respect food traditions of others, especially when the traditions involve avoidance of specific foods: "Most of us consider it a virtue to maintain our principles in the face of social pressure, but in the involuted world of gourmet morals, constancy is rudeness. One must never spoil a dinner party for mere religious or ethical reasons."</li><li>Moral or ethical consistency is lacking, despite professions of same. An "affectation of piety does not keep foodies from vaunting their penchant for obscenely priced meals, for gorging themselves, even for dining on endangered animals—but only rarely is public attention drawn to the contradiction." They nevertheless claim moral superiority to those who merely eat to live: "the guilty smirkiness that once marked [their] default style has been losing ever more ground to pomposity and sermonizing."</li></ul>There's lots more. I accept the conclusion that foodie writers are a sorry lot. I'm not a big fan of most of these writers anyway -- though I think the author is too hard on Michael Pollan and maybe Alice Waters. I think that the interesting writing about food these days is in blogs and in fiction. I've tried some of the reviewed writers' earlier books or articles (Steingarten, Severson, Bourdain), and for the most part had already lost interest in what they have to say. Now I feel really free to skip them.

Food Books I'm Not Going to Read

The Atlantic has a review of several recently-published foodie books: The Moral Crusade Against Foodies: Gluttony dressed up as foodie-ism ...

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10.48

Sunday Afternoon Tea

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/5444008248/" title="bkclub5057 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="bkclub5057" height="480" src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5097/5444008248_b5093cc51e_z.jpg" width="640" /></a> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/5444007962/" title="bkclub5056 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="bkclub5056" height="480" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4118/5444007962_a7e3766a31_z.jpg" width="640" /></a> My book club's meeting this afternoon was a semi-planned meal. Nine of the ten of us brought food and drink -- I was the odd one and brought the plates, napkins, etc. The combination of sandwiches, hummus, deviled eggs, vegetables, fruit, and sweets was wonderful. We also created our book list and meeting schedule for the next year. I'm looking forward to reading The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie, Just Kids by Patti Smith, Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Shiff, I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, and eight more.

Sunday Afternoon Tea

My book club's meeting this afternoon was a semi-planned meal. Nine of the ten of us brought food and drink -- I was the odd one and bro...

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18.57

Happy Birthday Alice!

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPqnT6P3ehG7H49WdkVhcdQ7VResysImXdLSphN6rY-nNWBaj2aVF2O5EAvJfvI2PPeTogV7jvnjYXKZyDOpHlQWJtDyAs8t_patruT_9Vgd4RDEI5RoNbqykK9ZiIbOkRPa_vqQHQ-p0/s1600/abcake2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPqnT6P3ehG7H49WdkVhcdQ7VResysImXdLSphN6rY-nNWBaj2aVF2O5EAvJfvI2PPeTogV7jvnjYXKZyDOpHlQWJtDyAs8t_patruT_9Vgd4RDEI5RoNbqykK9ZiIbOkRPa_vqQHQ-p0/s320/abcake2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> From the Harry Potter cookbook: the cake Hagrid made Harry when he was eleven. Converted to a cake for Alice the Harry Potter fan: <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihWnXEPvoEICZ94elKKL2XUwAksjbgLVo_pke9lHL4rJYL2HrEFSxHU-IERhqr0RjCSUHF1oznkCaWKz364rTP_pk0ECZeoa8jOncVmIFva0M3ExxhwmmMA4JbRg9BmyWBFwfyqRW7obY/s1600/abcake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihWnXEPvoEICZ94elKKL2XUwAksjbgLVo_pke9lHL4rJYL2HrEFSxHU-IERhqr0RjCSUHF1oznkCaWKz364rTP_pk0ECZeoa8jOncVmIFva0M3ExxhwmmMA4JbRg9BmyWBFwfyqRW7obY/s320/abcake.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>

Happy Birthday Alice!

From the Harry Potter cookbook: the cake Hagrid made Harry when he was eleven. Converted to a cake for Alice the Harry Potter fan:

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09.31

Pamuk's "Museum of Innocence"

Orhan Pamuk's most recent book, The Museum of Innocence, is the complex story of a man's obsession with a woman and all objects that he associates with her. It is also a very revealing exploration of Turkish life in a modernizing world -- the action takes place between 1975 and about 1985, before the current Islamist political success (and in some ways indirectly comments on this trend). The story is told by the obsessive central character, and is entirely from his perspective. For him, ideas from Europe and old behaviors from the conservative past complicate the relationships between men and women as well as the function of family life. The narrator and his friends and family enjoy wealth, education, European fashions, and the results of the 80 year modernizing tradition of reform dating back to Ataturk. They look down on backwards and unsophisticated (and often poorer) families in which women still cover their heads. However, the narrator senses in himself and others a tendency to want women to be both modern and sexually liberated and at the same time to be willing to play more traditional roles as wives, mothers, girl friends, and even as workers. The women in his view are aware that some men, having slept with their fiancees prior to marriage, never really respect them after marriage, and in condemning them find an excuse to bully them later. They discuss a variety of such ideas. "Do you people know why boys in this country never learn how to flirt with girls?" asks the narrator's brother. "There's nowhere to flirt. We don't even have our own word for 'flirt.'" (Kindle location 2491) The narrator has both a fiancee and a beloved. The beloved is a poor family connection whose reputation was ruined by her having participated in a beauty contest; she works selling imported clothing and other stylish items in a fashionable boutique. Her job further reduces her status in the world of wealth and class to which the narrator belongs; when he wants to insult her he refers to her as a "shop girl." His fiancee, however, is beautiful, has studied in Paris, and has a very wealthy family. Through weakness, he lets both affairs proceed, until the beloved runs away from him and marries in desperation. The narrator's obsession first leads him to hole up in an old wooden vacation house on the Bosphorus with his fiancee, and finally leads him to spend virtually every evening for 8 years having dinner at the home of the beloved along with her parents and her husband; occasionally he also eats with his own widowed mother or in a restaurant. The plot is complicated -- but through these dinners we get a picture of Turkish family life even in such a strange and fraught relationship. (There's no question that this triangle is disfunctional, not a cultural thing.) <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/89/2828/1600/istanbulhotelview.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/89/2828/400/istanbulhotelview.jpg" style="cursor: pointer;" /></a> As usual, I paid a lot of attention to the many precise descriptions of the menus at the homes and restaurants. I'm a lover of Turkish food, so I especially enjoyed the food details, as well as enjoying the memories of my own trip to Istanbul: above, a photo of the Bosphorus from our hotel window. From the old house with his fiancee, the narrator could see the ferry boat on the Bosphorus leaving the dock, "and there at the wheel we would see the mustached captain with his cap; so close that he could see the crackling mackerel at our table, and the eggplant puree and fritters, the white cheese, the melon and raki, he would cry, 'Good appetite.'" Then, in the morning "we would go to the Ferry Station Coffeehouse for tea with simits -- sesame rolls --- ... we wold cultivate the peppers and tomatoes in the garden; toward noon we would rush over to the fishing boats just returned with fresh fish to buy greay mullet and sea bream...." (Kindle location 3785-96) Or later, at dinner with his beloved and her family "we ate macaroni with meat sauce, yogurt with cucumbers and garlic, tomato salad, white cheese and then the ice cream I'd brought ... and put straight into the freezer on arrival." (Kindle location 7810) The boutique where his beloved once worked becomes a food import shop: "coils of Italian salamis were now hanging, and wheels of hard yellow cheese, as well as the European brands of bottled salad dressings, the pastas and soft drinks just entering the Turkish market." (Kindle location 8477) The long tale of the narrator's obsession builds up by way of details about many things; the varied choices of food descriptions illustrate how this story is told. I can't begin to do justice to the depth and complexity of the author's presentation of a singular character in a setting that's so familiar to the author but so exotic to the reader. I think I found it more readable than any of Pamuk's previous books, which I have always enjoyed.

Pamuk's "Museum of Innocence"

Orhan Pamuk's most recent book, The Museum of Innocence , is the complex story of a man's obsession with a woman and all objects tha...

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09.53

Analyzing the New Food Guidelines

More and more critics and writers are commenting on the new food guidelines, some constructively, some not so much. I haven't read them: they are enormously long. However, I found this article on the constructive side: <a href="http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/71280/">The War on Pizza: The federal food police single out the sacred slice—and pick a smart fight</a>. Author Jane Black points out that "pages 25 through 27 of the USDA’s report" explain that pizza "is Americans’ No. 2 source of saturated fat and solid fats, .... Pizza is also the No. 3 source of sodium, beating out cold cuts and even bacon. After 'grain-based desserts' like cakes and doughnuts, it’s the second-biggest source of calories for children and adolescents in a generation that has so far distinguished itself only on the scales." So, she concludes, pizza deserves to be criticized, and it's far from unamerican to suggest that we could do well to reduce our pizza portion size. Her conclusion: "This isn’t a White House plot to take away your pizza. It’s an effort, and an uphill one at that, to save us from ourselves." Lenny has been making a delicious version of pizza with thin crust, feta cheese, and just a smear of tomato paste and olive oil on the crust. It's closer to the yuppie pizzas that were at one time trendy in LA -- I think originally introduced by Wolfgang Puck when he was more a chef and less a big-food personage. Sadly, even this delicious though spartan version has loads of calories. <blockquote>Dear government, It's just too easy to eat more pizza instead of less. Respectfully, Mae</blockquote>

Analyzing the New Food Guidelines

More and more critics and writers are commenting on the new food guidelines, some constructively, some not so much. I haven't read them:...

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05.25

Food city area

I still don't want to read them

Good Luck, David

Food Books I'm Not Going to Read

Sunday Afternoon Tea

Happy Birthday Alice!

Pamuk's "Museum of Innocence"

Analyzing the New Food Guidelines

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