TracyFood

Foto Friday: Coffee experiment! 18 November 2011 1:25 pm

Posted by Tracy in : food snobbery,fun,geekery,kitchen gear,milk,photos,pictures,reading,recipes,sundance,taste test , add a comment

So yesterday I posted the following picture to Twitter and Tumblr via Instagram on my iPhone (remember that comic I shared on Tuesday with a character reading news from “this thing I can’t put down to save my life”? Yeah, that’s me. Anyway):

Exciting!

And today I’m going to elaborate considerably on that picture. Because that’s just how I roll. (more…)

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

Posted by Tracy in : agriculture,books,economics,geekery,GMOs,milk,politics,reading,school , add a comment

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…)

I may have created monsters last night, readers. 9 February 2010 11:49 am

Posted by Tracy in : cooking,eating,fun,geekery,history,photos,pictures,potatoes,random,reading,school,silly,writing , 4 comments

One is the paper due in my industrial food class tomorrow, which is currently in very drafty form, full of rambles like:

…Hotchkiss comes in, pretending that change is this magical uniform unstoppable force kind of thing, but fortunately we also have the MIT book reminding us that there was no shortage of immovable objects — and sometimes those immovable objects were people, even if sometimes those people were embodying social forces (*cough* PATRIARCHY *cough* I am looking at you, Professor Sedgwick, you jerkface you. *cough cough cough*)

Yeah, I’ve got some revising to do. But anything written is better than nothing, and editing things to make them suck less is way easier than writing, so hey, I’ll take what I got.

Last night’s other little monster, I am happy to report, was of the edible persuasion, and I got pictures.

I’m posting both because the real color is somewhere in between too dark without flash, and weirdly over-lit with. Also, because more fries!

Homemade French fries, from (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…)

Random old news of awesomeness. 2 February 2010 5:50 pm

Posted by Tracy in : diet stress is a health hazard,eating,geekery,Harold McGee,health,health at every size,nutrition,pictures,random,reading,science,weird,whoops , add a comment

Sometimes it’s especially good to celebrate good things, and today’s post is dedicated to just that. I am supposed to be reading about the role of women in the invention of food science during MIT’s early years, which makes thinking good thoughts all the more important. Sample bit o’grumpy-making:

In his autobiography… Ellen [Henrietta Swallow Richards]‘s husband, Robert H. Richards, stated that “Ellen Swallow wanted a Doctor’s Degree, but although she worked hard for two years, she had to give up the idea. This was probably one of her greatest disappointments in life. It seems to me possible that some of the difficulties may have arisen from the fact that the heads of the department did not wish a woman to receive the first D.S. in chemistry.”

—Richards, R.S., His Mark, cited in Goldblith, S.A., Of Microbes and Molecules: Food Technology, Nutrition, and Applied Biology at M.I.T., 1873-1988, pp. 20-1

Graaaar! (Also, way to write about your partner like she’s a stranger, dude.) As far as I can tell, Ellen H. Swallow Richards was a stupendous badass and entirely too awesome for the jerks at MIT who wouldn’t admit her to the faculty (she was the Institute’s first female student—a Special Student category seems to have been made up entirely for her—and the first female member of its Instructing Staff), let alone let her complete a Ph.D. Also, if I read one more “Ms. X married Prof. Y, so he was probably her thesis advisor,” I may have to go into hysterics or something. Sigh. Hence my need to write about some good news!

Most of the stuff in this post isn’t particularly new, because I’ve been behind on all kinds of news for basically a year now, but if you’re like me, and have trouble keeping up with stuff, or just want to read about stuff that’s happy once in a while, then you’re in luck. Geekery ahoy! (more…)