Recipe: Russian Dressing 29 September 2009 10:51 am
Posted by Tracy in : books,cooking,recipes,salad,seasonality , 1 comment so farIt’s fall, gentle readers. I am reluctant to admit it after such a weird summer, much of it cold and wet. But the sun barely shone into my food sociology class at 5 PM yesterday, and not just because it was overcast. The days are now shorter than the nights in this hemisphere, and that’s that. Still, I’ve been craving salad, perhaps because I haven’t eaten it much the past season what with the weird weather and salad-meister Peter being across the country. So last week I made this dressing, since although salad is one of my summer foods I wanted something a little richer and autumnal than my standard vinaigrette. I worked from a recipe in my beloved Moosewood New Classics, kinda like Tracy Granola is based on New Classics, only perhaps even more so — for both recipes, I open the cookbook to the original recipe’s page, then change almost every ingredient’s measurement to my personal tastes. All of which is to say, please, tweak my version to your heart’s content. For more food for thought about how cookbooks are written and how that may not have much relation to how they’re used, check out Rachel Laudan’s recent-ish post about Julia Child, Elizabeth David, and other visions of French food. I liked it very much. And now, on with the recipe. (more…)
Monkey Monday: readings in review. 28 September 2009 11:56 pm
Posted by Tracy in : anthropology,eating,geekery,nutrition,random,reading,school , add a commentOkay, party people, I was going to write a top ten list awesome food-related things I’ve read in the past week, but I am coming up against my self-imposed midnight deadline and I’m suddenly stupid tired, so here’s the bits of the list I managed to write up before my brain shut down:
From the readings for my food sociology class last Monday:
Not all harmful conditions are considered social problems. Consider nutrition. Medical authorities argue that the typical American diet contains undesirable levels of fats and cholesterol…. This diet endangers the well-being of individuals, who face greater risks of heart disease; and it also threatens societal well-being by forcing Americans to devote a growing share of their national income to health care. Yet the nutritional inadequacies of the American diet rarely appear on lists of social problems even though the condition fits most objectivist definitions.
—Joel Best, “Introduction: Typification and social problems construction,” Images of Issues: Typifying Contemporary Social Problems. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1989
Look at the date on that! Twenty years ago, in my lifetime, at a time in my life I can clearly remember, food clearly defined as not a social problem. Fascinating! (more…)
Whole Wheat Bread Machine Bread, in words and pictures 25 September 2009 9:27 am
Posted by Tracy in : baking,bread,food snobbery,kitchen gear,pictures,recipes,vegan,vegetarian , add a commentThis Foto Friday I would like to present you with the bread machine recipe I have been using most frequently this summer. It’s adapted from a recipe that came with our current bread machine, the Breadman Ultimate I learned to stop worrying and love, pictured here with the bread ingredients, on our kitchen counter:
A bit crowded on the counter, yes.
Gastro-culinary highlights of the long weekend. 23 September 2009 3:33 pm
Posted by Tracy in : breakfast,consumerism,cookies,dessert,eating,events,fish,food snobbery,not even vegetarian,nyc,restaurants,seasonality,summer,sundance,travel,vegetarian , 2 commentsFor the purposes of this post, the long weekend ended about fifteen minutes ago, because I’m a big slacker. Peter and I got up unholy early on Friday morning for a visit to the not-yet-frozen north, by which I mean his parents’ cabin on Osgood Pond, which is in Paul Smiths, NY, outside Saranac Lake, not far past Lake Placid — and if you haven’t heard of any of those places, that’s okay: the whole point of this expedition was to hang out with friends on a nice mini-vacation in the middle of nowhere.
In my opinion, we succeeded mightily. There was paddling — both canoe and Adirondack guide boat — and relaxing in front of a wood-burning stove, both with and without games. Also there was tasty food. (more…)
Monkey Monday: news and upcoming awesomeness 14 September 2009 3:46 pm
Posted by Tracy in : agriculture,events,fangirl,geekery,local food,Marion Nestle,news,nyc,politics,school , 2 commentsHoly cats, readers. I take a little break from class readings to check the news, and find out that Norman Borlaug is dead. Cue big hot flashbacks to my UO sustainable agriculture class, two and a half years ago. If you don’t know his name, maybe you’ve heard of a little agricultural transformation called the Green Revolution? The Nobel Peace Prize? You get the idea. End of an era and all that. I find myself wanting to reread Warren Belasco’s Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food
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Suddenly I’m not as interested in snarking about Michael Pollan’s “big food versus big health” fantasy New York Times op-ed. Suffice it to say I think the diet industry would be the real winner in that fight. And speaking of dieting, I have more than a few bones to pick with the cover of this week’s New York Times magazine. Stay classy, guys. Especially since freaking Newsweek is all over how B.S. like that is the real public health problem. Gah. And that’s without getting into the NYT Mag article that goes with that cover. Seriously what now? (more…)
