Monkey Monday: I really should get to bed edition 21 May 2007 1:38 am
Posted by Tracy in : CSA, agriculture, books, convenience, cooking, eating, garden, monkeys, politics, reviews, school , add a commentBut I just wanted to say: I am happy to report that I have found another good book about local food, and it is Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (written with her husband, Steven Hopp, and daughters Camille and Lily — they all appear on the back cover author picture, but Lily was too young for a book contract and so couldn’t get her name on the front cover, just very cute hands full of heirloom lima beans). I was a little worried during the early chapters, especially when they mentioned the very disappointing Coming Home to Eat by Gary Paul Nabham but I skipped ahead a little and found plenty to look forward to, so I kept reading — and was well-rewarded. I had hoped to finish Marion Nestle’s Safe Food in time to make it the subject of the book report due for Urban Farm on Thursday, but I think Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is my new winner. Of course, some (probably extended) version of whatever I turn in will make it onto TracyFood. (more…)
Monkey Monday: post-whirlwind trip edition 14 May 2007 11:59 pm
Posted by Tracy in : Marion Nestle, Michael Pollan, Morning Glory, books, convenience, eating, environment, monkeys, restaurants , add a commentIn this edition of Monkey Monday, I will attempt to predict my entries for the coming week. Short version: lots and lots about my trip this weekend, including food logs because there’s nothing like traveling to shuffle the usual eating patterns, something about cookies because I still feel like I owe them to everybody at Morning Glory who made it possible for me to take the weekend off, a book review (probably Gary Paul Nabham’s Coming Home to Eat, which I returned to the library before my trip and started purging from my mind with the far superior Second Nature by Michael Pollan and Safe Food by Marion Nestle, both of which deserve their own reviews in good time), and a recipe, to keep back on my Sundance recipe adaptation plan.
Other weekend trip-type thoughts: (more…)
Just for comparison: one “normal” day’s food (no work, no locality restrictions) 26 April 2007 2:56 pm
Posted by Tracy in : CSA, Morning Glory, anthropology, books, breakfast, cheese, convenience, cooking, eating, eugene, hungry planet, local food, salad, school, tea, vegetarian, work , add a commentLike I mentioned on Tuesday, on work days there’s essentially no way I could stick to a local food diet, or any other except vegetarian, by virtue of the fact that Morning Glory is a meat-free zone (there’s even a little sticker next to the door that says so!) Still, I wrote down everything I ate on Monday and Tuesday for comparison to this weekend’s locavore experiment (in case maybe my food habits have changed dramatically since my original hungry Tracy experiment, and here’s what I ate on Tuesday: (more…)
Shameless nerditude: Belasco’s culinary triangle 25 April 2007 10:27 pm
Posted by Tracy in : Michael Pollan, Sidney Mintz, Warren Belasco, anthropology, convenience, cooking, culinary triangle, eating, identity, responsibility, school, vegetarian , add a commentSo. Warren James Belasco is a historian and professor of American studies at the University of Maryland who writes about food — and very well, I might add. I read his 2006 book, Meals to Come: a History of the Future of Food over winter break, and today I finished his 1989 book, Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture took on the Food Industry, because it was due back at the UO library today and I wanted to return it on time rather than provoke the wrath of our housemate The History Librarian. Belasco is the co-editor of Food Nations: Selling Taste in Consumer Societies, a collection of excellent academic papers about food and its marketing which was also due today. (Eventually I would like to review all these books on TracyFood, because I am a colossal geek.) In my Fall 2006 food and culture anthropology class (ANTH 365 at the University of Oregon), we used Belasco’s “culinary triangle” model of food selection to describe and discuss the way individuals approach the question of what to eat, and I find myself wanting to refer to Belasco’s terminology on TracyFood a lot, so I’m going to define it here for future reference. (more…)
Monkey Monday: “eat local” weekend food logs 23 April 2007 8:22 pm
Posted by Tracy in : America's Test Kitchen, CSA, anthropology, breakfast, cheese, convenience, cooking, dessert, eating, environment, eugene, hungry planet, local food, milk, monkeys, responsibility, school, seasonality, sustainability, tea, work , 2 commentsImportant finding number one: Quitting caffeine cold turkey is not for the faint of heart like me. I had a raging headache by around 2 PM Saturday and gave in and had some freaking tea already around 8 PM, after which sources report I was much less hellish to be around (and I will concede that it was much more pleasant to be me, oh yes). But! Aside from that tea and some salt and some cumin, everything else I ate this weekend was grown or manufactured in Oregon, with the exception of some russet potatoes from Washington, because I miscalculated the amount of spuds it would take to get me through the weekend. The single lamest part of the experiment (besides the whole wanting to kill everything for lack of caffeine) was that I got totally insanely possessive about my food, because there were so few things in the house that fit my (admittedly totally arbitrary) dietary parameters. The caffeine-withdrawal-induced crankiness almost certainly didn’t help with my food possessiveness, to put it mildly. Anyway. On to what I ate! (more…)
