TracyFood

Eek! Missed a day! 11 July 2007 10:40 pm

Posted by Tracy in : Morning Glory, books, food snobbery, identity, movies, reviews, seasonality, vegan, vegetarian , trackback

I completely forgot to write anything for TracyFood yesterday because of the record-breaking heat which made me fall asleep at 7 PM because there was literally nothing else I could do. Really. That’s what I get for going home too early (i.e. at the very hottest part of the day) instead of staying at Peter’s nice air-conditioned office at the U of O, where I wrote a mushy epilogue to our late June/early July bike trip adventure. Tonight has been much less deathly hot, but my brain is still a little fried from a perfect storm of heat, jet lag, culture shock, and so on and so forth. So. A few more random thoughts, some of which I should have mentioned on Monkey Monday:

I am really looking forward to Ratatouille, and not just because it’s a shiny-looking cartoon movie about cooking by the director of The Iron Giant, although that doesn’t hurt. Although I was looking forward to it before for those reasons, recent reviews like this one on Slate and Frank Bruni’s at The New York Times have me all excited for a different reason: if I read them correctly, Ratatouille is a movie about the virtues of being a food snob. Now I don’t mean food snob like somebody who rejects food for reasons of social status or class, and I also don’t mean whiny bitch picky eater. In fact, I think I have a manifesto to write about food snobbery versus whiny bitchitude, because TracyFood is all about supporting one and rejecting the other.

Debbie showed me these awesome knitting-themed vegan cupcakes and I thought some of you might enjoy them, too (Ellen in particular).

I have begun rereading all the Harry Potter books in preparation for the series grand finale, and as always the food is getting my attention. When I read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (it still bothers me that they changed the title from Philosopher’s Stone for the U.S. editions) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in Dutch, I was struck by how very Dutch (and non-British) all the food at Hogwarts seemed, but this time through in English I’m wondering how much of that impression was my own imagination coloring things. On the other hand, I remember reading an article somewhere that claimed the U.S. editions changed little subtle things like scones into muffins or whatever, so who knows? Penny (or anyone else who’s read Harry Potter in multiple languages), did you notice any weird cultural translation, especially of the culinary sort?

In other pop culture-style news, Peter and I watched Stranger Than Fiction over the weekend, and it was fun: passed the Bechdel test with Emma Thompson and Queen Latifah (so awesome), proved that Will Ferrell can do white face as well as red nose comedy, and Maggie Gyllenhaal is adorable, even if one thing about her character was for me the movie’s falsest note. Sexy punk rock radical anarchist baker like that? Should totally be a vegan, or at least vegetarian. Yet she gives Will Ferrell’s character milk and cookies, and later one of the Emma Thompson voiceovers mentions her making him meatloaf. Um, no freaking way. Yes, I am nit-picky, and also I have maybe lived in Eugene for too long.

And on that note, I should get to bed since I’m working the opening shift in the kitchen of my favorite punk rock radical anarchist vegan/vegetarian café tomorrow, in around eight hours actually. Good thing I got all that sleep yesterday, and am still waking up at odd hours to enjoy the parts of the day not completely crushed by epic heat.