Food city area

"Tomatoland"

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyTca-Wl2KIQRc5TBAnGrReoUR9RuRU_8nDG9umIyXBO2lOS4gPrwv2VAcrnrD5ETi1YtVYBgyikwK-NBbfATJGeV0weaKQTSfN6veumzrOth9J_Sq7UsfC4l6mdNqxPGI4q-A6YCoCBP9/s1600/tomatoland.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyTca-Wl2KIQRc5TBAnGrReoUR9RuRU_8nDG9umIyXBO2lOS4gPrwv2VAcrnrD5ETi1YtVYBgyikwK-NBbfATJGeV0weaKQTSfN6veumzrOth9J_Sq7UsfC4l6mdNqxPGI4q-A6YCoCBP9/s1600/tomatoland.jpeg" /></a>Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit by Barry Estabrook is a very focused book. Too focused. The tomatoland he describes is in Imolakee, Florida, and almost nowhere else. The most startling fact of the book is that Florida isn't really a very good place to grow tomatoes. The soil is sandy and poor in nutrients for the crop, and there are too many insects. As a result, the big growers who have considerable political clout have received exceptions from many regulations of the use of dangerous and disgusting chemicals on their tomatoes -- bad for consumers, much worse for field workers. The humanitarian issues of Estabrook's tomatoland include underpaying workers, cheating them of wages, exploiting their ignorance and frequent status as illegal aliens, ensuring that they are poorly housed and fed, carelessly exposing them to hazards like pesticides, and at worst, brutally enslaving them. He clearly explains that this is real and total slavery with only a slim chance of escape. He describes several lawsuits and campaigns for fairer treatment of workers, and profiles various victims and advocates. He's especially detailed about the well-known campaign to increase the pay of tomato pickers, and corporate resistance (from businesses like Trader Joe's, which I think by now has conceded) even to a token increment of a penny per pound of tomatoes. The culinary issues are predictable: why don't tomatoes have any taste? Estabrook describes the indifference of the major growers to whether their tomatoes do in fact taste like tomatoes. He acknowledges that no mass-market, high-quantity agriculture could produce garden-ripe, fresh-picked taste -- but goes to some length to clarify that the extremes of tasteless tomatoes could be addressed, and how a few experimental labs are working on tomato taste and on preserving and incorporating genes from wild plants that grow in South America. The large-scale growers, however, just don't care. Yes, organic farmers have some success, as do farmers in other places, but the demand for a cheap product overwhelms them. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>True, most tomatoes consumed in America are grown in Florida (the book is rich with statistics), and tomato-growing is an area of many important issues, humanitarian, political, nutritional, and culinary. However, I was disappointed by the lack of contrasting stories about organic farmers, farmers with alternate methods, or about farms in Canada, Mexico, or other states -- that is, the producers of the tomatoes that I actually eat when fresh local tomatoes aren't in season. He describes only one or two farms that serve a small part of the population of New York City, and a brief description of an organic farmer in Florida. In sum, the material in this book is important, but I wanted a broader look at the tomato.

"Tomatoland"

Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit by Barry Estabrook is a very focused book. Too focused. The...

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14.30

Mexican Food, American Promoters

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwctg23drYRaAvN2iSQ5ECli_TsGzL9GW7wMzNRvgfFwHuqeNXyr_rTf3_rEKtPLWit-FWZRRs54Ja_-salRUza5GWN6aC0BwqkxEytF2y7Qm9h8be_DyKjGNNE2CxitbcLpgsxyzhBEAP/s1600/taco-usa-how-mexican-food-conquered-america-gustavo-arellano.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwctg23drYRaAvN2iSQ5ECli_TsGzL9GW7wMzNRvgfFwHuqeNXyr_rTf3_rEKtPLWit-FWZRRs54Ja_-salRUza5GWN6aC0BwqkxEytF2y7Qm9h8be_DyKjGNNE2CxitbcLpgsxyzhBEAP/s320/taco-usa-how-mexican-food-conquered-america-gustavo-arellano.jpg" width="207" /></a></div> As I said in my most recent post, I couldn't resist reading Gustavo Arellano's new book Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. It's every bit as good as I expected. I liked the organization by food type. First, Arellano discusses the tamales that were sold by street vendors in many US cities in the 19th century.  Then chili, tacos, enchiladas, burritos, salsa, each becoming well-known, popular, and highly profitable in non-Mexican communities throughout the country. There's also a diversion into the history of a famous tortilla with the face of Jesus on it. The most salient fact about each popularization, is that Mexican restaurant owners or food vendors or more recently food trucks have developed the foods for American taste, but in every case, it was non-Mexicans who cleaned up by amplifying sales. Taco Bell, the late (unlamented) Chi-Chi's, Chipotle, etc. were all the result of a non-Mexican amplifying what Mexicans had invented. There's really no implication of theft, just that the non-Mexicans seemed to have had the capital and know-how to scale a good idea into a national or regional restaurant chain -- and make a lot of money. Similarly, Arellano describes how most high-profile grocery products like Old El Paso tortillas and salsa, Newman's Own, Pace, Gebhardts, etc. were developed by non-Mexicans, based on the recipes and expertise of Mexican cooks and sauce makers. Arellano also has a very interesting chapter called "How Did Americans become Experts at Writing Cookbooks on Mexican Food?" I never thought about this either. Non-Mexicans study regional cooking, become well-versed by interviewing Mexican cooks, and they write the books. The book reminds me of Jennifer 8 Lee's book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, which explores how Chinese food became so popular throughout the USA. Both authors have a fantastic grasp of the way Americans of many ethnicities think and how they form food tastes. Both present the experiences of ethnic food producers and what it means to them, not just to the consumers.

Mexican Food, American Promoters

As I said in my most recent post, I couldn't resist reading Gustavo Arellano's new book Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America...

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12.59

Where do tacos come from?

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcGd3JQ5iU24YwViz9yteQG52f-1gTXcLekFp0IXsY_rgWEf6mcaRxRCHtgIUHDogTnAIevR4jQ3EYaBR_97qIQwgzhWwVysXLmgQ2dNspNyrTpYtJJn5X5XuWbZdwC2WV3bi29EF9i1px/s1600/Mexican.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcGd3JQ5iU24YwViz9yteQG52f-1gTXcLekFp0IXsY_rgWEf6mcaRxRCHtgIUHDogTnAIevR4jQ3EYaBR_97qIQwgzhWwVysXLmgQ2dNspNyrTpYtJJn5X5XuWbZdwC2WV3bi29EF9i1px/s320/Mexican.jpg" width="317" /></a></div> How many really intriguing reviews does it take to get me to buy a book? I've been reading quite a few reviews of the newly published book Taco USA by Gustavo Arellano. Julia Moskin's review, featured on page one of the online New York Times (shown above), made me do it. From the reviews and amazon's Look Inside the Book feature, I'm convinced that Arellano will enlighten me about many features of American food  history. He emphatically says it's not a book about Mexico, and not a book about fancy "authentic" Mexican restaurants with that weird corn fungus and epazote. I wonder if he'll mention Xochimilco which used to be in downtown Detroit (maybe still is). And I wonder if it served his sort of American Mexican food or something else. Maybe the first reference I saw to Arellano's book was <a href="http://blogs.laweekly.com/squidink/2012/03/mexican_venn_food_diagram.php">L.A.'s Idea of Mexican Food vs. What Mexicans Really Eat</a> last March. A Venn diagram from the article appears below -- it's one of a series of Venn diagrams about what various ethnic groups eat and what we think their cuisine is about. It's a fun article, with quite a few other ideas about "real" Mexican food. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6eQ2mTz5smQCe0qS0oMv7MVVpRhZ7BgWpPC_kLlLWhjfy372BCFnXeCA0w6iVImOZC7vxQLKb_QpJnsvqHcqcGs7stdZXIzY1zbcEbO7x5ow_TNL1kbznxzILuY5rPydrSNJPtwYFqY8R/s1600/MexFood.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6eQ2mTz5smQCe0qS0oMv7MVVpRhZ7BgWpPC_kLlLWhjfy372BCFnXeCA0w6iVImOZC7vxQLKb_QpJnsvqHcqcGs7stdZXIzY1zbcEbO7x5ow_TNL1kbznxzILuY5rPydrSNJPtwYFqY8R/s400/MexFood.png" width="400" /></a></div> See "Gelatina" in the list of things that Mexicans in Mexico eat? It's Jello with fruit in it. Colorful. Who knew? The next thing I'm probably going to do: open my iPad to the Kindle app and start reading Taco USA. I'll write my own review some time soon.

Where do tacos come from?

How many really intriguing reviews does it take to get me to buy a book? I've been reading quite a few reviews of the newly published bo...

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17.01

Mysterious Edible Mona Lisa

Mysterious Edible Mona Lisa

Depicted here on the blog The Amateur Gourmet -- but who is she, this mysterious woman made of something edible but unidentified. Is she wa...

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11.24

Meat

The New York Times recently ran an online essay contest about the ethics of eating meat. Thousands of entries were reduced to six finalists, published here: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/04/20/magazine/ethics-eating-meat.html">Put Your Ethics Where Your Mouth Is</a>. Among them, one point of view favoring ethical meat consumption created a real learning experience for me. The surprising argument in favor of ethical meat-eating is that farming vegetables is impractical without animals. Here is the paragraph, by a former vegetarian, that I find most convincing: <blockquote>"I became interested in growing vegetables and found myself apprenticing on a farm in Massachusetts. Still a vegetarian, I was surprised to learn that we amended soil fertility by applying bone and blood meal, both slaughterhouse byproducts, and we regularly dipped young transplants in fish emulsion. I realized then what farmers have known forever: the domestication of animals and the cultivation of vegetables go hand in hand. Growing vegetables is an inherently extractive process, removing nutrients from the soil, so a sustainable system requires other inputs to replace them. Every backyard gardener knows that animal manure enriches the soil, so it should come as little surprise that the animal-vegetable connection is so basic that it’s built into the words themselves: the word 'manure' is rooted in the Latin manuopera, meaning manual work. Through my first season on the farm, I gradually came to terms with the idea that using animal byproducts made good sense, especially in contrast to the alternative of synthetic chemical fertilizers."</blockquote>This author concludes: "There is an ethical option — a responsibility, even — for eating animals that are raised within a sustainable farm system and slaughtered with the compassion necessitated by our relationship."  Another excellent article among the top six states: <blockquote>"While most present-day meat production is an ecologically foolish and ethically wrong endeavor, happily this is changing, and there are abundant examples of ecologically beneficial, pasture-based systems. The fact is that most agroecologists agree that animals are integral parts of truly sustainable agricultural systems. They are able to cycle nutrients, aid in land management and convert sun to food in ways that are nearly impossible for us to do without fossil fuel. If 'ethical' is defined as living in the most ecologically benign way, then in fairly specific circumstances, of which each eater must educate himself, eating meat is ethical, in fact NOT eating meat may be arguably unethical."</blockquote>And I also find this statement of the issue enlightening: <blockquote class="tr_bq">"We need to seek balance in our land and in our kitchens. However, I also ask my vegetarian friends to consider that if they are eating eggs, then someone had to cull the roosters or mature hens, and I hope those animals were not wasted. If they are drinking dairy, someone had to cull the males from the herd, since a world where every animal is maintained would be unsustainable. And if there are no animal inputs on the farms, then that energy has to come from fossil fuels and other nonorganic sources."</blockquote>I'm familiar with the usual discussions of animal welfare, planetary welfare, and global human welfare. I had often heard these questions, asked by several of the contestants: <ul><li>Is it ever ok to slaughter a living being?</li><li>Do cows or pigs or chickens know what's happening to them?</li><li>Is meat eating "natural" for humans?</li><li>Does a vegan diet in humans lead to brain damage or other deficiencies?</li><li>Does the raising of grain-eating animals for some populations cause other humans to starve for lack of the grain that feeds the animals?</li><li>Is large-scale meat agriculture ruining the planet because of rain-forest destruction, methane gas production, toxic runoff, or whatever?</li><li>Is small-scale meat-raising sustainable and would it be less ruinous to the planet?</li></ul> But I found the common-sense approach of asking about farming vegetables without animals very fascinating.

Meat

The New York Times recently ran an online essay contest about the ethics of eating meat. Thousands of entries were reduced to six finalists...

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06.54

Barbie's Kitchen

Barbie's Kitchen

Alice's Barbies turn out to have a kitchen; one of them agreed to show me the refrigerator. I like this better than the earlier Barbie k...

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06.41

Passover is Coming Soon

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/6875265634/" title="jwc9377 by mesander2000, on Flickr" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; "><img alt="jwc9377" height="480" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7116/6875265634_6bd9109c8c_z.jpg" width="640" /></a> Last night I attended a wonderful baking demonstration by Lori Shepard, chef and owner of a catering company called <a href="http://www.simplyscrumptiouscatering.com/">Simply Scrumptious Catering</a>. <div> </div><div>Above, you can see the demo table which had been painstakingly prepared by Lori (left) and Esther, our hostess. Throughout her demo, Lori fielded questions from attendees, who included novice cooks as well as those who were highly experienced. She showed a number of techniques, such as beating the egg mixture for a Mexican flan, folding the dry and then the wet ingredients into beaten egg whites (to prevent them from deflating), tapping a pan of cake batter before baking (to remove oversize air bubbles), and turning a cake upside down with a bottle in the center of a tube pan (to prevent the cake from sinking as it cools). Lori showed us an incredible variety of Passover desserts. Some were conventionally kosher for Passover; others were ultra-kosher, meaning they not only were free of flour, corn products, and leavening, but didn't even contain any matzo products. Though I do not change dishes or remove any foods from my home or from my diet during Passover, I was fascinated by the demo. Passover, I believe, ties all Jews together, whether they are secular and minimally observant like me, or like Esther, who is highly observant. Esther reminded us that among many meanings, Passover represents the birth of the Jewish people. In her view, the careful and limited diet at Passover represents the care with which one feeds a newborn baby! <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/6875268842/" title="jwc9381 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="jwc9381" height="480" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7187/6875268842_9f05d92cec_z.jpg" width="640" /></a> The ingenuity of Passover desserts also fascinates me. Without careful thought, what baked goods could be made without flour or leavening? And for those who keep kosher there's the added requirement that a meat meal (the usual choice for the Seder) include only non-dairy desserts. Well, in the photo above, you can see three classics -- left to right: sponge cake, carmel fudge torte (in Lori's extraordinary version), orange and nut torte with non-dairy frosting. Everyone was offered full-sized portions of every dish -- I opted for small bites, but we were made welcome to also take home what we couldn't eat. My friend Abby is the master of the nut torte, but otherwise among the versions of these desserts, Lori's were far better than most that I remember. These three cakes, along with some extraordinary brownies, were waiting for the participants when we arrived; we also watched demonstrations and tasted several other baked goods. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/7021369097/" title="jwc9376 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="jwc9376" height="480" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7259/7021369097_561dfd3b1d_z.jpg" width="640" /></a> Also on the demo table, were both basic and unusual ingredients for Passover baking. The usual: matzo cake flour, nuts, eggs, coconut milk (to substitute for heavy cream), lemons, and oranges. Unexpected: confectioner's sugar made without cornstarch; vanilla extract made without grain alcohol; specially handled chocolate and cocoa powder. For pie crusts, Lori makes her own graham crackers from Passover ingredients -- another unexpected item. Lori's Simply Scrumptious Catering provides meals or pastry for weddings, family reunions, business meetings, holiday parties, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, and many other celebrations. Menu choices include a variety of ethnic and American dishes; while she offers kosher catering, she also does lots of work outside this area.</div>

Passover is Coming Soon

Last night I attended a wonderful baking demonstration by Lori Shepard, chef and owner of a catering company called Simply Scrumptious Cate...

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10.17

Food city area

"Tomatoland"

Mexican Food, American Promoters

Where do tacos come from?

Mysterious Edible Mona Lisa

Meat

Barbie's Kitchen

Passover is Coming Soon

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