To Save a Species, Serve It for Dinner

I wrote on this topic a month or so ago, but check out this article on species preservation from the New York times.
“SOME people would just as soon ignore the culinary potential of the Carolina flying squirrel or the Waldoboro green neck rutabaga. To them, the creamy Hutterite soup bean is too obscure and the [...]

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Barbara Kingsolver’s memoir Animal Vegetable Miracle: A Year of Food Life chronicles her family’s story of moving from New Mexico to the southern Appalachians. In their new Virginia home they learn to live on the foods they grow and raise themselves. For one year, Kingsolver along with her husband and two daughters, take [...]

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tRAWditional FOOD

What is the most traditional way to eat? According to Raw Foodism, eating only raw and living foods is the most traditional and healthful diet. Brian Clement, a raw foodist and owner of the famed Hippocrates Health Institute in West Palm Beach, Florida spoke at a lecture I attended last night. Clement says, “the [...]

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And that’s the way the Matzo Crumbles

Passover began last night with the traditional Seder at sundown.  Passover, more than any other Jewish holiday, revolves around food.  Upon arriving to Seder there is an hour or so of rituals and prayers before the celebrants eat, and this delay can certainly build an appetite.  But Passover is about the food because the holiday [...]

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Out of the Yard and Onto the Fork

“MY peas are coming up — sugar snaps and snow peas — and the seeds I scattered out in my cold frame a month ago are now a blanket of baby greens. A few mornings ago, while weeding, I popped a tiny bok choy seedling into my mouth and let its peppery, sweet flavor explode [...]

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Mexican Cuisine: A food tradition worth some attention

Although Mexican food doesn’t possess the worldly prestige of French cuisine, its bright, vibrant, and layered flavors mark it as an epicurean culture worthy of more critical attention, and is certainly a cuisine worth salivating over.   
            Growing up in southern California, my love for Mexican food began at a young age.  Some form of [...]

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Sweet Tooth: Grom’s Genius Gelato

 
“When I first walked into Grom on Broadway at 76th Street a year ago, I was skeptical. Another chain trying to make it in New York City. Another lousy gelato shop tricking us into thinking it’s the real deal.
So, upon meeting the two young Italian owners, Federico Grom — who is tall, dark and handsome — and [...]

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Ignorance puts regional foods under threat

 
“YOUNG Britons are so out of touch with their culinary heritage, a quarter think laverbread is a loaf baked on hot volcanic rock.
A survey of 2,000 people by Country Living magazine, has shown that most of the 18 to 24-year-olds questioned were completely mystified by a list of the top 10 traditional UK foods that [...]

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Traditional Diets are Healthy: The Nutrition Transition As Proof

Oldways (the non profit of which I wrote in a previous post) is dedicated to replacing the highly caloric, low nutrient dense foods that are plentiful in the Western Diet — think fast food, soft drinks, and margarine — with whole foods that are abundant in traditional diets—think whole grains, vegetables, and olive oil.  This [...]

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Greek Revival

“In 1942, when Dannon introduced its yogurt in America, the product was such a flop that by 1947, the company began adding fruits and sugar to its tart, European-style cultured milk. “Americans wanted candy,” said Gary Hirshberg, a founder and the “C.E.-Yo” of Stonyfield Farm, a yogurt company in Londonderry, N.H.
And [...]

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