Common Sense
“Everyone’s opening up these fucking farm-to-table bullshit restaurants. How else are you supposed to cook? You’re supposed to get the best ingredients possible. Do you want a pat on the back?”
- David Chang
“Everyone’s opening up these fucking farm-to-table bullshit restaurants. How else are you supposed to cook? You’re supposed to get the best ingredients possible. Do you want a pat on the back?”
- David Chang
not sure why i hadn’t found this earlier. the videos are particularly good.
If you’re somebody who’s interested in communicating big ideas, food is one of the most powerful tools you’ve got. It’s a universal, irresistible hook—the most common denominator. You can get people to think about economics, sociology, physiology, psychogeography (?!)—anything you want, really—if you simply connect it back to food. Not food policy!—I mean the real, tactile experience of food in the field and food on the plate.
good read.
The scientists were interested in the activation of the striatum, an area rich in dopamine neurons and involved in the processing of hedonic rewards. (When your striatum is excited, life is good.) Sure enough, obese people tended to have reduced activation in the striatum after sipping the ice cream treat, which led to increased consumption. In other words, they kept on consuming the milkshake in a manic search for satisfaction.
A second study found that, over time, people with a polymorphism that leads to reduced dopamine receptors in the striatum also tended to put on weight, suggesting that obesity is, at least in part, triggered by a shortage of neural pleasure. Of course, this contradicts the popular (and deeply unfair) cultural stereotype of obesity, which assumes that people who are overweight are gluttons, unable to resist temptation. In fact, they are the opposite of gluttons: The reason they eat too much is because they don’t enjoy their food enough. They keep on sipping the milkshake precisely because it isn’t pleasurable.
Maybe this is why Americans need ever larger portion sizes: Because we didn’t make the milkshake ourselves, because that dinner only required a few minutes of work, we need to consume more calories to get the same baseline of satisfaction.
Regardless, Pollan’s book brought up many questions and thoughts. He speaks of the age of Nutritionism, a time period we are currently experiencing where reductionist science has taken food and divided it up into macro and micro-nutrients (e.g. Carbs, proteins, fats being macro and vitamins and minerals representing the micro) in order to figure out how certain things work. This boom in Nutritionism has perhaps complicated things more than not. I’m not putting down reductionist science but in this case it tends to make a bigger problem rather than a smaller one. What the studies that they do can’t measure is how different nutrients might react along with others. Different combination’s produce different results. We all know too much sugar isn’t a good thing and that it spikes insulin, but if eaten with or after eating fat, the absorption process is slowed. The division of all of these nutrients has produced “food” products that advertise a certain health claim. “Nutritionism is, in a sense, the official ideology of the Western diet” (Pollan 11). Our food has become divided and industrialized in order to fit and supposedly match the fast track of “progress” that we think we are on.
Alex Ratcliffe-Lee: In Defense of Food
when was the last time you saw proper MLA citation in a blog post? my fam is winning at the bloggin’ this week.
tomorrow, alex heads back down to philly after break from dancing & classes. all six of us had dinner for the last time probably until katie’s birthday in a few weeks.
mom told her story again about great grandma ackerman’s sister, who worked at grand central station as a reservations agent, memorized the timetables for the entire united states rail system.
i also whipped up some apple sauce raisin cake. mom and pop’s wedding cake. from the recipes of grandma eliza taylor ratcliffe (1900-1986), edited by mom and eva taylor barclay in 1993:
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 1/2 cups applesauce (homemade or McIntosh store bought)
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and a little more
- 2 cups flour
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
- 1 cup raisins
- Pinch of allspice
- No eggs
- Preheat oven to 325o - 350o
- Cream butter and sugar, add applesauce and spices.
- Add flour.
- Bake in greased and floured 13”x9” pan until cake leaves sides of pan and springs back when you touch the top. Leave in pan.
- When cool ice with white butter icing.
“I’m sorry, I don’t measure very much, so can’t help you too much, experience is the best teacher, do it when you are not having company.
Lots of love, Grandma”
Aunt Eva says Grandma always put a good meal on the table even though dinner was always being interrupted by people coming by to talk to Grandpa because he was in politics. Many evenings dinner was rushed because Grandma had to have her sons, Bob and Jackie, dressed and ready to go with Grandpa to the Preakness Farmers’ ball games. Grandpa managed the team and Uncle Roy played on it. Grandpa always had to have his sons along with him at the games.
nice evening with the fam.
Jack LaLanne was here, too, with his juicer. I wasn’t here for it, but colleagues who were said that he didn’t know how to use the machine and he got a little grabby with the women. One wanted to slap him, but you don’t slap Jack LaLanne.
classic memory from bill pitcher. he’s documenting the record move newsrooms. emphasis mine.
And while President Obama said goodbye to President Bush, Rachael Ray was making tandoori chicken in 30 minutes.
bill pitcher covers what was on Food Network during today’s festivities.
Join Blue Hill Chefs Adam Kaye, Josh Lawler, and Trevor Kunk as well as local farmers and artisanal brewers for a special evening in the country featuring fresh and cured sausages and meats, all paired with a selection of locally brewed beers. Begin the evening with fellow sausage and beer lovers over cocktails. The five course tasting dinner follows, featuring both Blue Hill Farm and Stone Barns pigs and other locally raised meats.
i really want to go to this.