TracyFood

Recent reading roundup! 20 May 2008 10:31 am

Posted by Tracy in : books, geekery, news, vegetarianism , trackback

While I’m playing catch-up (must run to work very soon!), here’s a not-so-small selection of awesome things I’ve read or bookmarked to read so far this month, sort of organized into themes. I did my best to start and end with fun things, with a good mix of light and heavy in between.

* * * * *

Donation Derby is the webcomic about rising food prices by Dorothy Gambrell of Cat and Girl. I keep thinking I want to to write about all the news reports about what’s getting called the “global food crisis”, but then I keep getting distracted. I’d settle for being able to concentrate long enough to finish an Open Letter to all the bioethanol bumper stickers I keep seeing on cars around Eugene. Hippies, please stop. You are not even wrong about this.

Speaking of rising food prices, I have been meaning to read Food is a Feminist Issue at Feministe for quite some time, and I keep fricken forgetting. Sigh.

On the same subject, Paul Krugman’s Grains Gone Wild is a nice scathing summary of the situation:

You might put it this way: people are starving in Africa so that American politicians can court votes in farm states.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering: all the remaining presidential contenders are terrible on this issue.

Bam. I’ve bookmarked a lot of articles about this issue, but I think I’ll end this listlet on that strong note.

* * * * *

Check out Convenience, at Daily Prandium. The whole blog is a fun read (and not just because I’m currently scouring the internet for every last scrap of information about the NYU food studies master’s program) but I subscribed to the RSS feed after reading this essay (a word I use with a happy nod to its French origin).

* * * * *

Although it was published in April, I only recently got around to reading former White House chef Walter Scheib’s New York Times Op-Ed contribution Hail to the Chef. It’s about the media’s weird obsession with what Presidential families cook as well as eat, and I liked it quite a bit. Scheib’s answer: they really don’t cook much, so quit asking for cookie recipes. Or at least make a point of asking potential First Gentlemen such delightfully trivializing questions, too, okay?

* * * * *

TastingMenu has been even more fantastic than usual lately. For me particular highlights have been The Flavor of Color (about why I have been known to employ beets and turmeric rather than serve food that’s gray), the more philosophical Taste vs. Flavor; Splitting Hairs and a bread pudding recipe so luscious-looking that it’s got me determined to make brioche at some point in the not-too-distant future, if only so I can put the leftovers to an exciting new use (which is saying something, since brioche is right up there with challah as the best possible base for French toast).

* * * * *

In news of the weird, Vanity Fair magazine has a big piece about the Devil — I mean, the Monsanto Corporation. I haven’t read it yet, but I’m pretty sure the article’s very existence means something deeply profound about the state of agricultural and food politics in the world today, even if I’m not exactly sure what.

* * * * *

I had another “what does this mean about my world?” moment when I found out aboutBruce Sterling on Slow Food, which I haven’t read yet, but discovered through a People’s Grocery blog post with the awesome title Slow Food: Elitist, Irrelevant or Just Too Defensive? Win.

* * * * *

Finally, just to end things on a light and happy (and meatless) note, I found some good pieces about vegetarianism on Slate last week. First, there was a review of Tristram Stuart’s Bloodless Revolution (a history of vegetarianism) by Laura Shapiro, whose books get cited in so many of my favorite food history reads that I’ve been meaning to check her stuff out for years. But I found that review because it was linked to Taylor Clark’s completely awesome “Meatless Like Me”, a good-humored attempt to bridge the gulf between vegetarians and omnis, by pointing out the stirringly obvious fact that the two eating patterns are really not all that different. To which I can only say: Amen. Right in the middle there is where I live.

* * * * *

And that’s all for today. I gotta go to work.