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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 comment

In 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…)

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 comments

Important 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…)

Hungry Tracy redux: eating local 20 April 2007 9:27 pm

Posted by Tracy in : agriculture, cooking, eating, environment, eugene, garden, hungry planet, identity, local food, school, seasonality, tea , 1 comment so far

Think of me when you’re eating whatever you want this weekend; I’ll be overthinking all my meals even more than usual. For class! You see, I’m supposed to consume only food and drinks that have been “grown or processed locally.” (more…)

What can I say? It’s finals week. 21 March 2007 10:58 pm

Posted by Tracy in : agriculture, environment, politics, responsibility, school, sustainability , 1 comment so far

My paper was going really well until about 7:30 PM or so, when I realized I had started to backtrack and revise earlier sections instead of writing onwards first. Oooops. Also I realized I was missing the UC Berkeley webcast about the 2007 Farm Bill, which would actually have been sort of relevant to the subject at hand:

What are the prospects of approximating sustainable agriculture on a global scale over the next half century? What models are already in place and what would need to change? Include some discussion of individual vs. institutional approaches.

Anyway. In case you’re curious, here’s the first paragraph of my final essay-in-progress, a response to these questions and my sustainable agriculture class in general. (more…)

(Cook)book review: Diet for a Small Planet 16 March 2007 4:13 pm

Posted by Tracy in : Warren Belasco, books, cooking, eating, environment, eugene, identity, people, politics, reviews, school, sundance, sustainability, vegan, vegetarian, work , add a comment

Holy monkey gods, y’all. Even the title of this entry should make it clear that I’m still a bit bewildered by my recent reading of Frances Moore Lappé’s 1971 classic, Diet for a Small Planet (it’s only partly a cookbook, is what I’m trying to say with those parentheses). As of Saturday 10 March, I have in fact read all of the non-recipe parts and skimmed most of the recipes, and my mind is still more than a little blown. On Monday, I turned in a review for my sustainable agriculture class, and since then I have been wondering how to adapt that review for TracyFood purposes. Here’s what I’ve got. (more…)