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On milk and monopolies. 31 March 2010 1:22 pm

Posted by Tracy in : GMOs,agriculture,books,economics,geekery,milk,politics,reading,school , View Comments

So yesterday I spent some quality time (read: almost four hours) in the Rose Reading Room of the main branch of the New York Public Library, blasting through Nature’s Perfect Food: How Milk Became America’s Drink by E. Melanie DuPuis, for my food processing and industrialization class. Today I gave it three out of five stars on GoodReads (which I won’t link to because their shiny toys and WordPress do not get along, sigh) but that might have been a bit ungenerous on my part, perhaps an inevitable result of reading the whole darn thing in one sitting. Also I was maybe a little resentful to be reading DuPuis instead of Anne Mendelson’s Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages, which has been on my “to-read” list for something like two years now (and I know I love Mendelson’s writing; her Stand Facing the Stove: The Story of the Women Who Gave America The Joy of Cooking remains one of my favorite bits of food geekery ever). But I digress. Back to DuPuis, and why I might have to upgrade her book’s rating. (more…)

Ask TracyFood: should I freak out about genetically modified foods? 10 March 2010 11:05 pm

Posted by Tracy in : GMOs,Marion Nestle,agriculture,books,economics,environment,food safety,food snobbery,friends,geekery,health,history,politics,science,sustainability , View Comments

So I got a message from the splendiferous Ms. Lara earlier today:

Hey, Tracy! Someone on FB is arguing that GM crops are categorically horrible and bad and whatnot. Can you send me some informative links to help educate her (and myself!)? (I seem to recall you linked to an article about the death of an agriculturalist who saved millions of lives with his crops, so of course I thought of you…)

Many thanks to my favorite foodie!!
-L

Well. How could I resist the chance to go all run-on sentence on that? (more…)

Monkey Monday: news and upcoming awesomeness 14 September 2009 3:46 pm

Posted by Tracy in : Marion Nestle,agriculture,events,fangirl,geekery,local food,news,nyc,politics,school , View Comments

Holy 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 but long story short, if you believe that the solution to world hunger is baking a bigger pie, then thank Norman Borlaug for providing extra flour for the crust. For what it’s worth, Borlaug was also a fan of the “fewer place settings” approach to solving hunger, but was much less successful in arguing for population control. Me, I still hold out hope for teaching everybody better table manners, and yes, I’m paraphrasing Belasco wildly here, and wish I had a copy of his book handy because I’m pretty sure he’d want me to give credit to his sources, too.

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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…)

Monkey Monday: plans and schemes. 24 August 2009 9:59 am

Posted by Tracy in : agriculture,cooking,eating,events,fangirl,meta,news,nyc,pictures,vegan,vegetarian , View Comments

So I haven’t been blogging very consistently these past few months (to put it mildly), but I think I’ve come up with a bit of a solution: more picture posts! This solves both the “not blogging much” problem by also solving the “enormously behind on writing about all the food pictures I’ve taken in, well, a long time” and the “must strain to write more than a paragraph on the same subject” problems. Brilliant! Or so I hope. Anyway. Here’s a few TracyFood-worthy odds and ends from my recent readings.

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First, it’s been awhile since I’ve given props to Isa “The PPK” Chandra, but her most recent post was super-awesome for writing and cooking inspiration both. I mean, c’mon. Tempeh Helper: Just Like Mom Used To Never Make? Brilliant. Also, her chickpea-noodle soup was pretty much the best thing ever while I was rocking a gnarly cold this weekend. So yay Isa! Here is a picture of a recent meal I made from your awesome book Vegan with a Vengeance, which I shamelessly plug every chance I get:

Jerk seitan with coconut rice and garlicky collard greens.
Jerk seitan with coconut rice and garlicky collard greens.

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Report: “Room to Grow” mini-conference at NYU, 4 February 2009 10 February 2009 1:31 pm

Posted by Tracy in : agriculture,environment,events,garden,geekery,local food,nyc,people,school , View Comments

As you probably guessed from the title of this post, on Wednesday 4 February 2009, I attended the “Room to Grow: Envisioning Urban Agriculture at NYU” mini-conference. It was a great way of getting up to speed on gardening efforts around campus, and inspiring pictures of city farms and gardens always do a Tracy good. Plus I got to plant kale in a nifty newspaper pot (you can bet I snagged an extra to dissect, in the hopes that I can learn the relevant origami), hang out with other NYU gardening geeks, and there was tasty food, much of it locally grown. All told, it was a fabulous evening. (more…)