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Another Twitter Tuesday! 8 November 2011 11:24 pm

Posted by Tracy in : America's Test Kitchen,diet stress is a health hazard,events,fangirl,fast food,food safety,food snobbery,health at every size,media,meta,news,Twitter Tuesday , add a comment

Hey, so like I confessed yesterday, I really didn’t know what to blog about today, only then suddenly, to my surprise and delight, the Twitters, which I kinda sorta really hadn’t been watching since last Tuesday, came through for me in a big way. Check these out! First and foremost, my former classmate Shanti with news that makes me want to make horrible puns about sticky messes:

Shanti Elise Prasad (@shantielise)
If you eat honey, this may blow your mind. Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn’t Honey… foodsafetynews.com/2011/11/tests-…

I’m having a little trouble wrapping my head around this story, personally, because as far as I can tell from the article, the definition of “honey” being argued about here is whether or not (for example) the sweet golden goo in the plastic bear has pollen in it. But the article’s scandal-monger-y lede:

More than three-fourths of the honey sold in U.S. grocery stores isn’t exactly what the bees produce, according to testing done exclusively for Food Safety News.

really rubs me the wrong way. Because with the possible exception of some wild-caught fish, pretty much no animal product sold in U.S. grocery stores is exactly what the animals in question produce. It’s all processed one way or another. (more…)

What I’m up to: awesome weekends. 26 February 2010 11:30 pm

Posted by Tracy in : consumerism,eating,events,fangirl,friends,fun,movies,not even vegetarian,nyc,photos,pictures,pizza,random,restaurants,reviews,school , 1 comment so far

So this weekend Peter’s out of town for macho male bonding stuff which I sincerely hope does not involve getting buried by the snowicane or whatever I’m supposed to call this mess of wet and cold slushing everything up all over the place for the snowiest NYC February on record, wow (shouts out to Ansley for that fun fact, and also a pretext for delicious, delicious lunch at Veselka this afternoon, nom nom nom). But seriously, just look at the poor planters at our building’s entrance, for monkeys’ sake:

Entrance to our building, with lots of snow.
I think the super’s whole family has been worked keeping that path clear these past 36-odd hours.

Anyway. I have two excellent reasons to brave the frozen wilds of New York City this weekend, and I am going to tell you all about them, starting… now.

The Foodprint Project

To be perfectly honest, I’m not 100% sure what The Foodprint Project is, but there are so many awesome people involved that I cannot wait to be a part of it any way I can. And oh darn, hearing awesome people talk about the art and culture and politics of urban food systems and more? Geez, it’s like exactly what I came to grad school for, only free and I get to design my own homework! So that’s tomorrow, Saturday, February 27, from 1 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., at Studio-X, 180 Varick St., Suite 1610, New York, NY 10014.

Just Food’s CSA in NYC conference!

Ok, I do know what this event is about, which means the conference should be pretty freaking awesome. Community Supported Agriculture is the answer, doncha know, and I am eager to learn more about how it works in NYC and how I can help, because: awesome.

So that’s my plans for this weekend, but last weekend was pretty excellent, too, so (more…)

Monkey Monday: recently closed browser tabs ahoy! 8 February 2010 1:21 am

Posted by Tracy in : eating,fangirl,food snobbery,geekery,Harold McGee,news,random,reading,school , add a comment

Go go gadget Google Reader, still shortening my attention span after all these years:

* * * * *

This link to one blogger’s notes about December’s Food and Climate Change Summit is to remind me to blog up my own notes about that event already, geez I am such a slacker yadda yadda.

The Fat Nutritionist continues to rock harder than oh, I dunno, but something that rocks really hard.

Michael Ruhlman takes on the idea that people in the U.S. are too stupid to cook with (and I quote exactly): The World’s Most Difficult Roasted Chicken Recipe. Now if only everybody had the time and mental energy to cook more often, I think something like Heaven might emerge. Even for people who don’t like to cook, because I for one like inviting people over for dinner. (more…)

Yet another (very) belated Monkey Monday post 20 January 2010 3:47 pm

Posted by Tracy in : consumerism,eating,fangirl,food snobbery,geekery,Marion Nestle,media,monkeys,news,nyc,politics,random,reading,school,writing , 1 comment so far

All right, it’s my first day of spring term, so I’d better close some browser tabs and make ready to go back to school. I think I’m getting into the right headspace: for instance, when I saw the Salon Food feature about whether Indian food will finally get trendy this year, my first thought was, “I wonder if (NYU food studies professor) Krishnendu Ray has seen this.” Only then of course it turned out that he was the very expert interviewed for the article. Go figure?

Likewise, I thought of Marion Nestle when I spotted the above-the fold front-page story about the FDA taking another look at bisphenol-A (BPA) in Saturday’s New York Times. Of course, she’s all over this story and the BPA issue in general. Personally, I’m just relieved to see coverage of this story beyond “here’s what you, personally, should do if you only care about the health of you and your family, forget the rest of the world.” (more…)

Monkey Monday: coming up for air edition 14 December 2009 8:08 am

Posted by Tracy in : events,fangirl,geekery,health at every size,Marion Nestle,news,nyc,politics,school,sustainability,video,work,writing , 3 comments

Hey, so it’s finals week from now until my last paper is due on the 23rd (which is an awful deadline and I sincerely hope to be done before then) and in the meantime I’ve been a big slacker which is why I haven’t posted and blah blah blah excuses excuses. Last week was ten thousand kinds of awesome, though.

On Monday morning, I went to an awesome event at The New School, celebrating the NYC FRESH initiative, which had not yet officially passed City Council, although it did on Wednesday. FRESH is Food Retail Expansion to Support Health, and it’s a mix of zoning and tax incentives for full-service grocery stores in certain underserved neighborhoods (Northern Manhattan, the South Bronx, Central Brooklyn and Jamaica, Queens). Not only must the stores devote a certain amount of square footage to fresh produce and other whole foods, they are required to accept EBT and WIC (which is really only common sense if they’re actually going to serve the lower-income communities that food retailers often avoid) and publically, transparently commit to good labor practices, so that people who work at those stores can afford to shop there. So awesome. And (more…)