TracyFood

Monkey Monday: things I’m looking forward to 10 November 2008 7:35 am

Posted by Tracy in : baking, books, dessert, garden, geekery, good news, history, milk, monkeys, school, seasonality , 2 comments

It’s wonderful, having stuff to look forward to. Which might be why I so love food — there’s always another meal in my not-too-distant future, another chance to pursue my goal of always eating the most awesome option at any given opportunity. Cooking’s great for anticipatory goodness, too — the smells, the feelings, sneaking the occasional taste — and the knowledge that I’m making it happen is an added bonus. Gardening has similar joys. As I wrote in my extended review of Michael Pollan’s Second Nature,

What I love most about gardening (besides the delicious food, anyway) is the hope. Seeds always seem to put up sprouts the day after I’ve started to think they were eaten by birds, or worms, or that maybe they were just plain dead and I should have known better than to plant them to begin with. Every time I prune my rose bushes, I think maybe this time I’ve killed them, and instead they reward me with an abundance of flowers that still feels inexplicable (which just might have something to do with why I don’t prune as often or as ruthlessly as I should). Every time I eat something that grew in my garden with little more help from me than my own hands, tools, and attitude, I think, “This is as real as magic gets.”

And on that note, I am happy to report that I’ve found my first garden in New York City! (more…)

Monkey Monday: food irradiation, breakfast cereal, and more! 8 September 2008 1:46 pm

Posted by Tracy in : Marion Nestle, New York, books, breakfast, food safety, geekery, good news, milk, monkeys, news, politics, random, restaurants, school , add a comment

Um, not necessarily in that order. Breakfast first, right? Right. Here goes. I had cereal for breakfast for the first time in a very long time today. Not oatmeal (it’s still way too hot for that), Tracy granola with yogurt, like I love, but something more in the muesli genre (hand-me-down free food from my parents) with milk. Turns out this was a bad idea, one which reminded me why I quit eating cold breakfast cereal. I’m just not a big fan of milk, unless it’s transformed in combination with something delicious, like tea or ice cream ingredients. (I’ll make an exception in the case of hot and fresh chocolatey baked goods, and tomato soup. For some reason I really love the contrast between a glass of cold milk and the savory acidity of hot tomato soup. But I digress.) If grains are going to be soggy, I want them warm, and soaked in delicious stir-fry sauce or something — old milk doesn’t count. So I was still hungry after forcing myself to finish the sad little bowl of milk-soaked oats and whatever. All told, cold breakfast cereal is still not my favorite: anything besides granola leaves much to be desired.

In other news of the disappointing, today the Ethicurean reminded me that the FDA now allows irradiation of spinach and lettuce. (more…)

Happy birthday to me! 28 August 2008 11:18 am

Posted by Tracy in : books, eating, good news, health , 4 comments

Here’s some good news from the browser tabs I should’ve closed a week ago: for the past more than a month, the New York Times health blog, Well, has been reporting about researchers finally publishing some common sense about diets, weight, and health. I hope you all have read about this already, but it’s important enough (and makes me happy enough) that it seems well worth repeating. So here, some birthday gifts of good news: (more…)

Monkey Monday: a little school update. 25 August 2008 8:00 am

Posted by Tracy in : Marion Nestle, fangirl, geekery, good news, school , 1 comment so far

So school starts the first week of September, with orientation type activities the week before that (i.e. starting tomorrow). I’m still trying to figure out the exact details of new grad student fun and games (so far my quest to obtain a student ID have been fruitless) but in the meantime I’ve turned class registration lemons into delicious metaphorical lemonade, I tell you what. (more…)

Foto Friday: words in pictures 8 August 2008 10:21 am

Posted by Tracy in : events, friends, geekery, good news, meta, news, pictures, travel , 1 comment so far

Wordle is a shiny applet that takes a big list of words and arranges them into a pretty collage-thing based in part on the frequency words appear (users can mess with the fonts and colors and tweak layouts). It’s a fascinating game, and yesterday I spent a very long time giving it all the tags I’ve ever used on TracyFood posts, with the following result (finally saved a few minutes ago, after lots and lots of the aforementioned tweaking):