Crunchy Con

Recently in Food Category

Tuesday November 3, 2009

Categories: Food

Chocolate is evil

OK, it's not evil, but I'm one of those people who doesn't much care for the stuff. I don't dislike it -- why, I ate a Halloween-sized Butterfinger and Snickers at the office today, and loved it -- but if given the opportunity, I'll have whatever dessert is not the chocolate one. Yes, this has made me a social outcast, and the object of pity among many, but I have found my soulmate: Michele Humes. Excerpt:

Now, I don't dislike chocolate, per se--at least not milk chocolate--but I never seek it out. I can't recall ever eating my way through two or three courses and thinking, "Well, wouldn't something dense, dark, and fatty just hit the spot!" I have thought, in those moments, of a brisk sorbet; of rhubarb compote on cool, thick yogurt; of shattering a burnt sugar top to get at a grapefruit tart--but of chocolate mousse, no, never.

Tell it, baby. Screw you, chocolate, you Branson, Missouri of desserts, you desperate milquetoast Kenny G. crowd-pleaser. You know what? You are so over. La Dolce Michele writes:


On menus across the country, and to my selfish glee, the chocolate dessert is fast becoming the token item--so at Seattle's Spring Hill, a scoop of chocolate-banana ice cream is the lone concession to the chocoholic, and the clear subordinate to a buttermilk panna cotta with huckleberries and a balsamic-drizzled plum crostada. More plums at Chicago's Mado, where a stone fruit and pistachio crisp is dolloped with tangy crème fraîche. And in New York City, Locanda Verde's sundae-for-two, assembled from rhubarb sorbet, lemon biscotti and fresh berries, is the very antithesis of hot fudge.

Go read more of the lovely and exceedingly intelligent Michele's culinary advice at her blog. Michele, ma belle, since you live in Brooklyn, I want to encourage you to hie thee to Sweet Melissa's on Court Street and try the chevre cheesecake.

Saturday October 31, 2009

Categories: Food, The South

Soap, cornbread and the South

I just got off the phone with Regina Charbonneau down at Twin Oaks Bed & Breakfast in Natchez. I'd phoned her because she wrote this great piece on the Atlantic's Food Channel about making cane syrup in the South. I wanted to find out when Judge Bramlette's syrup making Saturday was going to be this fall. Anyway, because Natchez is only an hour north of St. Francisville, my Louisiana hometown, we share a lot in common, especially the experience of shocking Yankees and other non-Southerners by showing them that the crazy, only-in-a-novel stories that we've told them really are true. As my wife will tell you, "I thought he was a pathological liar until he took me down there and I met the people he had told me about. It was all true! They really are like that."

Turns out Regina and I know a couple of the same people, but she doesn't know David and Edie Varnado of Camp Topisaw, the Mississippi folks who hand-craft superlative soaps and candles. I never recommend any products on this blog that I don't use myself and believe in, so I can tell you that you can't go wrong ordering from Camp Topisaw.

Regina has a Southern food blog on the Atlantic's Food Channel. If you get around to making her cornbread pudding stuffed with mustard greens recipe before I do, you've got to tell me how it turned out. Here she weighs in on the sweet cornbread vs. savory cornbread controversy. Excerpt:

Cornbread in the South is about as controversial as gumbo. Everyone has a recipe and everyone has an opinion. I love cornbread, so I like both savory and sweet. I also like honey butter on my savory corn bread and jalapeno corn bread, andouille and crawfish cornbread, broccoli and cheese cornbread, cracklin' cornbread, sun dried tomato and bacon cornbread, and I especially like my recipe for cornbread pudding stuffed with mustard greens. When it comes to making cornbread dressing, there is no question you have to use savory cornbread. The one thing I do that is a little different and adds a touch of sweetness and helps the texture is add creamed corn to my cornbread batter. I like the texture and taste of sweet corn in the cornbread and dressing. I add heavy cream and eggs to create a custard texture that I like in a dressing.

I am pleased to report that Regina's recipe is mostly on the side of the angels -- the savory tribe -- in this dispute.

Wednesday October 28, 2009

Categories: Food

Stevia leaves me in the pink

The Double X folks put the artificial sweetener stevia to the test, and find it wanting. I'm with them. You can have my Sweet 'n Low when you pry my cold, dead fingers from around the pink packet. I don't like NutraSweet either, and have concerns about its safety (but not so great that I completely swear off diet Coke, which I drink one of a day). You?

UPDATE: A certain uppity chicken enthusiast who lives in Old East Dallas writes to say:

Dude, you have stevia growing in a pot in your backyard and a jar of dried stevia leaves in the fridge. And still you call it an artificial sweetener!?

Saturday October 24, 2009

Categories: Food

What are we cooking today?

What's on the stove today over by you? We've been down in my house with the creeping crud all week. It's not the flu, really, but it's flu-like. Julie has been especially hard hit, as I was last week. This week, for me, it's better because I'm reasonably ambulatory. But here we are at the weekend, and I want to cook, but my sous-chef (or am I her sous-chef; we haven't quite worked this out) is down for the count. I am trying to figure out what I can make that's good, and special, but not too demanding.

I'm defrosting a Windy Meadows chicken for roasting tonight. Windy Meadows is Mike and Connie Hale's family farm (you'll remember them from "Crunchy Cons") not too far from Dallas. Their chickens are nonpareil. If you buy high quality meat, such as the roasters from Windy Meadows, doing a first-rate roast chicken is very easy. Just puncture a lemon, stick it up the bird's butt, salt and pepper it, and stick it in the oven. I think I'll add a few sprigs of rosemary from the garden.

We have some Arborio rice left over from last weekend, and a little bit of Parmigiano Reggiano left on the rind, so I'll probably make a risotto to go with it. We also have some carrots in the bottom of the fridge, which I'll either steam or steam-saute' in chicken stock. I'm thinking of going by the store to buy some Savoy cabbage to make with it, or maybe some Brussels sprouts.

Autumn comfort food for the sick. It's all good.

I had hoped to make a sauerbraten this weekend, which is a German-style pot roast that's marinated for a day or two in vinegar and herbs, but the week got away from me. The weather is pleasant outside, and I'd also love to grill some German sausages, and drink some hefeweizen with some friends. But nooooooo, we've got to stay expectorated and droopy all weekend. Nothing left to do but go by the movie store on the way back from my cabbage run and lay in a supply of comfort movies as well.

How about you? What are you cooking this weekend (he says, as he takes his last swallow of Theraflu from the coffee mug).

Wednesday October 21, 2009

Categories: Agrariana, Food, Science

We made honeybee zombies

What's causing the honeybees to die? Here's an argument from Discover saying that in the name of industrial efficiency, we've turned them into weak-chinned inbreds. Excerpt:

The problem is hardly trivial. A third of the total human diet depends on plants pollinated by insects, predominantly honeybees. In North America honeybees pollinate more than 90 crops with an annual value totaling almost $15 billion. Indeed, that importance lies at the root of what went wrong. In trying to make bees more productive, apiarists have torn the insects from their natural habitats and the routines they mastered over millions of years. As a result, today's honeybees are sickly, enslaved, and mechanized. "We've looked at bees as robots that would keep on trucking no matter what," says Heather Mattila of Wellesley College, who studies honeybee behavior and genetics. "They can't be pushed and pushed."

In the beginning, honeybees and their partners, the flowers, drove an explosion of natural diversity. While most bees preferred a specific type of plant, honeybees were equal-opportunity pollinators--"pollen pigs," beekeepers called them. The most socially complex of the bees, they thrived in colonies led by the egg-laying queen, who ensured the genetic fitness of her progeny by breeding with multiple male drones from other colonies.

All that began to change in the early 20th century, when farms and orchards started enlisting honeybees to pollinate their crops. Bees that were adapted to harvesting pollen from a variety of plants suddenly spent a month or more at a time surrounded by nothing but almond or apple trees. Farmers eager to increase their crop yields turned to commercial beekeepers, who offered up massive wooden hives stocked with queen bees genetically selected to produce colonies of good pollinators. These breeding practices slashed the genetic variety that helps any species survive infections, chemicals, and other unforeseen threats.

Sunday October 18, 2009

Categories: Food

Once again, Alaska triumphs at the table

We're still working our way through that amazing halibut and salmon my friends in Eagle River, Alaska, sent home with me in August. Tonight we prepared halibut according to a Basque recipe. It involved cooking down in olive oil white...

Wednesday October 14, 2009

Categories: Food

Michael Pollan's favorite food rules -- and yours

Not long ago, Michael Pollan asked New York Times readers to send him their favorite rules for how to eat well and healthily. He got an overwhelming response. Here's a link to his favorites. What are your favorite food rules?...

Saturday October 10, 2009

Categories: Food

Saturday in the kitchen

It's not even noon yet, and the lamb is already in the oven, nestled snugly on a bed of fresh rosemary, thyme, savory, bay leaves and garlic, and bathing in white wine. You should smell my house right now --...

Friday October 9, 2009

Categories: Food

Cooking this weekend

As I write, it's raining like crazy outside. A powerful cold front is coming through. This will occasion the first autumn-like weather we've had yet this season. Not cool enough to make a fire yet, but still enough to make...

Thursday October 8, 2009

Categories: Food

South Park vs. Chipotle, or, Chipotlaway

I just had yet another utterly satisfying lunch at my favorite everyday restaurant, Chipotle -- today it was the chicken soft tacos, if you must know -- and returned to digest and to watch this from the evil blasphemers at...

Tuesday October 6, 2009

Categories: Food, Media

Gourmet and the death of magazines

I feel kind of guilty for not rending my garments over the death of Gourmet magazine, which is being closed down by Conde Nast over its money-losing ways. I am almost always sad to see a magazine close (caveat: I...

Sunday October 4, 2009

Categories: Food

E. coli in your ground beef

Today's NYTimes has a front-page stunner tracking the burger that left a dance instructor paralyzed after a bout with E.coli. The long piece shows in detail how unsafe the US meat industry is. This passage is particularly alarming: Ms. Smith's...

Tuesday September 22, 2009

Categories: Culture, Food

Joel Salatin: Greatness

TAC has a profile of the crunchy-con farmer-hero Joel Salatin up. Excerpt: Agriculture-school faculty who visit Polyface tell Salatin that they are "glad to prove the veracity of [his] model," but immediately ask him, "How much money can you give...

Sunday September 20, 2009

Categories: Food

My food weekend

I didn't want the weekend to pass without mentioning some excellent stuff we ate this weekend around the house. Last night, I had another occasion to remember Alaska warmly, by defrosting a big halibut steak my friends there sent home...

Friday September 18, 2009

Categories: Food

Soy gevalt! Attack of the man boobs!

What does Your Working Boy eat for breakfast almost every day? A bowl of steel-cut oatmeal with flax seed meal and two heaping tablespoons of soy protein powder. It's beyond delicious for a crunchy boy like me, but now comes...

Thursday September 10, 2009

Categories: Food, Health care reform

Michael Pollan on health care reform

Light blogging from me this morning. I have two big assignments due by day's end. If you want to see what I've been reading re: Obama speech analysis since five a.m., check out the Big Story, which I've built and...

Monday September 7, 2009

Categories: Food

Following my bliss ... and my appetite

We've spent the holiday weekend visiting my family in south Louisiana. Driving back today, around the time we crossed the Texas border, I began to think about how I was going to reward myself for the grueling eight-hour hegira (it's...

Wednesday September 2, 2009

Categories: Food

Factory farming and swine flu

Just got this from a longtime reader who is not a fan of organic meats, on economic grounds. She writes that this is the best argument for spending more money on pasture-raised meat. Excerpt: Factory farming and long-distance live animal...

Tuesday September 1, 2009

Categories: Food

Grinding baby chicks alive

Does your egg producer do this? Yep, almost certainly. From the story: According to Mercy for Animals, male chicks are of no use to the industry because they can't lay eggs and don't grow large or quickly enough to be...

Friday August 28, 2009

Categories: Food

Michael Pollan still shopping at Whole Foods

Michael Pollan sent me the following e-mail, and has given me permission to republish it here: I saw your post and link to David Frum's column. for what its worth: John Mackey's views on health care, much as I disagree...

Friday August 28, 2009

Categories: Food

Step up for Whole Foods, Michael Pollan

I'd like to add my voice to David Frum's shout out to Michael Pollan, asking the Great One to stand up for Whole Foods -- which now faces two union boycotts....

Wednesday August 26, 2009

Categories: Food

Why did Julia Child hate Julie/Julia blog?

If you saw "Julie & Julia," you know that the Julie Powell character was crushed to learn that Julia Child didn't like her blog. This is never explained, and we're also led to believe that Child's longtime editor Judith Jones...

Wednesday August 26, 2009

Categories: Disease, Food

Does exercise make you fatter?

Or at least have a lot less to do with weight loss than we think? It could be true, according to scientists. Excerpt from Time magazine: "In general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless," says Eric Ravussin, chair in...

Monday August 24, 2009

Categories: Food

Julia Child: No. 1 on the best-seller list

Here's good news: Almost 48 years after it was first published, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" by Julia Child is finally topping the best-seller list, bringing with it all the butter, salt and goose fat that home chefs had...

Wednesday August 19, 2009

Categories: Food, Politics (general)

Whole Foods boycott will fizzle

Megan McArdle explains why. Ha-ha!...

Monday August 17, 2009

Categories: Economics, Food

Balko bounces Whole Foods boycotters' rubble

In his latest post, libertarian Balko keeps making the Whole Foods boycotters come off as complete nitwits. Excerpt: 3) That's the crux of why I think the boycott is ill-considered, reactionary, and foolish. You're saying, "These opinions are so horrifyingly...

Sunday August 16, 2009

Categories: Economics, Food

Idiotic Whole Foods boycott gains steam

So says Radley Balko, who is rightly appalled at how stupid the lefties mounting this assault on the company are. Excerpt: Let me see if I have the logic correct here: Whole Foods is consistently ranked among the most employee-friendly...

Saturday August 15, 2009

Categories: Food

"Julie & Julia"/It's Julia Child's birthday!

Today is a major Marian feast day for the Orthodox and the Catholics. For us, it's the Dormition; for the Catholics, it's the Assumption. Though we understand what happened on this day slightly differently (I think), we both celebrate the...

Tuesday August 11, 2009

Ignatius Reilly eats

Ignatius Reilly is alive and well and eating in Baton Rouge -- and blogging about it under a false name....

Friday August 7, 2009

Categories: Food

Hey Alaska Boy, what's for dinner?

So glad you asked. Julie's in the back garden now gathering fresh basil for a pesto that will cover the baked halibut. And we're making an Alice Waters salmon recipe that calls for baking it wrapped in fresh fig leaves,...

Thursday August 6, 2009

"Julie and Julia" reviews coming in

The NYT raves about "Julie and Julia." Excerpt: Not that Ms. Ephron's breezy, busy movie traffics in such sweeping historical ideas, except occasionally by implication. Nor does she infuse the happy, well-fed life of her Julia (the main source for...

Sunday August 2, 2009

Categories: Economics, Food

Fair trade

What do you think about the "fair trade" movement? I confess that I have never thought much about it at all, until my recent visits to the UK, where you run into fair trade products all the time. There was...

Sunday August 2, 2009

Categories: Food

Popeyes populism

Popeye's populism -- (n.) The idea that caring about cooking, especially home cooking, is an aristocratic pursuit unworthy of democratic man, and the parallel idea that one's authenticity depends on the extent to which one partakes of fast food or...

Saturday August 1, 2009

Categories: Culture, Food

Julia Child's "French Chef" as soulcraft

Oh, have I got good news for you: The NYTimes Magazine's cover story this weekend is Michael Pollan writing about Julia Child and how Americans cook today. I am busy packing for my Alaska trip this afternoon, but I absolutely...

Friday July 31, 2009

Categories: Britain, Food

Organic isn't healthier; buy it anyway

The Food Standards Agency of the British government has released results of an exhaustive comparative study -- the most comprehensive ever -- of food grown organically, versus conventionally, and has concluded that organic meat and produce is only marginally more...

Monday July 27, 2009

Categories: Food

Julia Child in France/Julia birthday dinner

In DFW Airport, i couldn't find a magazine I wanted to read, but a paperback caught my eye in the airport bookstore: it's a reissued version of Julia Child's 2005 posthumous memoir "My Life in France." My dear Francophile readers,...

Thursday July 23, 2009

Categories: Food

Food and purposeful eating (Erin)

Continuing our "retrospective" (if you can say that of a book that's three years old) look at Rod's book, Crunchy Cons, we next come to the chapter on food. I think that this chapter has, in some ways, been among...

Wednesday July 22, 2009

Categories: Food

The foods we hate to love (Erin)

When I was writing the post below about Dr. Benjamin, I started thinking about Rod's post yesterday about food critic Frank Bruni's lifelong struggle with weight. As Bruni's article shows, it's possible to know perfectly well that one's food and...

Tuesday July 21, 2009

Categories: Food

Once a fat kid...

Frank Bruni, the New York Times' restaurant critic, on his lifelong struggle with weight. Excerpt: During physicals in doctors' offices, I averted my eyes from the scale and instructed the doctor not to tell me the number. Usually the doctor...

Wednesday July 15, 2009

Categories: Food

An oenophilic tragedy

A future Episcopal Bishop Fulton J. Sheen wins a prize for her precocious broadcasting abilities, and you know what her reward in part consists of? A bottle of "union-made wine." What on earth? Chateau de Gompers? Feh....

Thursday July 9, 2009

Categories: Food, The South

Behold, the perfect summer cocktail

I was blessed to spend about three hours this evening drinking and talking with two good friends, Rawlins and Bill H., whose comments you see from time to time on this blog. Bill took us to a semi-out-of-the-way Dallas bar...

Wednesday July 8, 2009

Categories: Food

Remembering the better Michael Jackson

Two years ago, the real Michael Jackson died -- the legendary beer journalist and advocate, I mean. Here's his WaPo obit, which discussed how incredibly important he was, and how he bears a great deal of responsibility for the fact...

Friday July 3, 2009

Categories: Food

Eating in the Colorado Springs area

Hey folks, if you live in or visit the Colorado Springs area, where I'm wrapping up my stay, make the short drive to Manitou Springs to eat at Adam's Mountain Cafe. It's a bona fide Slow Food restaurant, and the...

Thursday July 2, 2009

Categories: Food

Can't trust the USDA organic label

The WaPo brings us news of more government chicanery on behalf of big agribusiness: Three years ago, U.S. Department of Agriculture employees determined that synthetic additives in organic baby formula violated federal standards and should be banned from a product...

Wednesday June 24, 2009

Yankee eats unhappily at Paula Deen's

I confess that I can't watch Paula Deen's cooking show. Too fakey-fake Southern for me. To my taste, she's the personification of the ersatz-country tchotchke room at Cracker Barrel. Well, a Yankee writing for The Atlantic moved to Savannah, went...

Wednesday June 24, 2009

Categories: Food

Summer cocktails

The New York Times today publishes its guide to summer cocktails. I noticed just this morning that I have a couple of Texas peaches that need to be eaten today, so I'm going to make one of my habanero-fruit-ice blender...

Saturday June 20, 2009

Categories: Food

Eat healthy, eat fresh, eat cheap

It has been asserted often here by commenters that eating fresh fruits and vegetables is simply too expensive for ordinary people. I thought about that last night when Julie and I sat down to dinner at home. We didn't have...

Thursday June 18, 2009

Categories: Agrariana, Food

Wendell Berry: "I'll go to jail over NAIS."

Food Renegade has an audio recording and the text of a recent set of public remarks at a federal "listening session" in which Wendell Berry vowed to go to jail if he has to in protest of the proposed National...

Thursday June 11, 2009

Categories: Britain, Food

Chelsea buns and other English pastries

Just down the street from my hotel here in Cambridge is Fitzbillies, a well-known Cambridge bakery. One of their specialties is the Chelsea bun. It's like a cinnamon roll on steroids. I was told I needed to try one, so...

Wednesday June 10, 2009

Categories: Britain, Culture, Food

The English constitution

At the risk of making an utterly banal point, and eliciting howls from the Laird his own badass self, I have to say that I have been impressed, if that is the word, with the heroic constitution of my British...

Friday May 15, 2009

Categories: Food, Religion (general)

Pray before meals

E.J. Emanuel is a religious Jew who prays before meals, but he thinks all of us, even if we're secular, should give some form of communal thanksgiving. Excerpt: Travel to any developing country and you witness how difficult, literally slow,...

Thursday April 30, 2009

Categories: Food

His strange new vegetarian world

Max Fisher decided to become a vegetarian. His family thinks he's lost his mind. Excerpt: I'm a vegetarian, you see, and learning to accept that many people will never accept my lifestyle is just part of living without meat. In...

Saturday April 25, 2009

Categories: Food

Food shortages ahead?

Via Sharon comes this Scientific American magazine report by Lester R. Brown about the prospect that food shortages could cause serious global instability. Excerpt: For most of us, the idea that civilization itself could disintegrate probably seems preposterous. Who would...

Thursday April 23, 2009

Categories: Economics, Food

How to save money on food

I promised an open thread for readers to share tips on how to eat good food inexpensively -- this, in response to the belief that it's difficult if not impossible for folks to eat fresh and/or homemade food on a...

Tuesday April 21, 2009

Categories: Food, Orthodoxy

I can't believe I ate the whole thing

You'd think I would have learned by now, having gone through one Great Lent already following the proper rules of fasting -- that is, eating no dairy and no meat. But nooooooo.... Mr Cheeso T. Carnivore had to shove steak...

Tuesday April 21, 2009

Categories: Conservatism, Food

Alice Waters, elitist villain?

At National Review Online, Julie Gunlock lights into Alice Waters and her food movement, saying that it's phony and elitist, etc. John Schwenkler to the rescue. Excerpt: Is it really that impossible to wrap one's mind around the idea that,...

Sunday April 19, 2009

Categories: Food, Orthodoxy

Hey Grandpa, what's for Pascha dinner?

(If you get the "Hee-Haw" reference, you probably grew up in the South like me.) So, we staggered in from the Paschal liturgy afterparty at about 5 a.m., and fell into bed. Woke up elevenish and had my first cup...

Thursday April 16, 2009

Categories: Food

Corby's real life tea parties

Corby Kummer writes about tea parties I can really believe in: those focused on actual tea you can drink. I'm really more of a coffee guy than a tea drinker, but I am slavishly addicted to a particular kind of...

Thursday April 16, 2009

Categories: Food, Orthodoxy

What's in your Pascha basket?

Many Orthodox Christians prepare a special basket for Pascha, of special food to be blessed on Pascha night and eaten throughout Bright Week, the week after Pascha. Julie and I were talking last night about what we're going to put...

Wednesday April 15, 2009

Categories: Food

The best fake sugar

The New York Times had a long, interesting piece today about the war between artificial sweeteners. Me, that's all I use in my coffee and tea, unless nothing else is available. I can't stand sugary soft drinks, and would rather...

Thursday April 9, 2009

Categories: Food

Overlawyering our fresh food to death

Walter Olson at Overlawyered sounds the alarm about what Washington's proposed food safety reforms may do to small farmers, farmers markets and suchlike. Excerpt: What could possibly go wrong? The answer, it seems, is "plenty". Patrick, and the other writers...

Thursday April 2, 2009

Categories: Agrariana, Food

Texas and NAIS

Attention Texas crunchy cons: A message about the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) from the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance. They need us to get on the phone to our legislators in Austin.: The clock is ticking on our chance...

Wednesday March 25, 2009

Categories: Food, Gardening

Favas, king of all beans

Leslie Halleck is growing fava beans in her backyard. So is Julie Dreher, provided that stupid dog of ours can be kept out of the raised bed. Man, I love me some favas. So meaty and delicious. I like 'em...

Monday March 23, 2009

The Obamas need chickens

Livestock on the White House lawn? It's been done before. Yesterday we were talking with some friends about why home vegetable gardening and raising livestock became so strange in American culture. We discussed how, as the country got richer after...

Sunday March 22, 2009

Categories: Food

The power of Michael Pollan

At the end of this long, informative NYT article about the influence in the current moment of food-culture reformers like Alice Waters, Marion Nestle, Eric Schlosser and others, some really encouraging information about the great Michael Pollan's influence in high...

Friday March 20, 2009

Categories: Agrariana, Food

NAIS, H.R. 875 and small farms

There's been lots of anxiety over various pieces of legislation and proposed regulations that would harm small farms -- this, in the name of food safety. In my column this week, I talk about these issues. In a nutshell, there's...

Friday March 20, 2009

Categories: Agrariana, Food

Lawyer vs. bacon

A view from Caleb Stegall's recession....

Friday March 20, 2009

Categories: Food, Gardening

White House kitchen garden

Three cheers for First Lady Michelle Obama, who will break ground today on a kitchen garden on the White House lawn! Excerpt: Such a White House garden has been a dream of noted California chef Alice Waters, considered a leader...

Friday March 20, 2009

Categories: Culture, Food

Mock fat people for their own good?

That's what Englishman Frank Skinner says. Excerpt: At school, I laughed at the fat kids like everyone else. It was safe in those days because there weren't so many of them. We, the army of the thin, called them Fatty...

Tuesday March 17, 2009

Categories: Food

The Atlantic's new Food Channel

The Mighty, Mighty Corby Kummer has just launched a new Food Channel on The Atlantic Monthly's website. It's as good as you imagine it would be, if you know Kummer's work. I advise you to visit it warily, because it's...

Monday March 16, 2009

Categories: Food

Gluten-free, casein-free

When John Schwenkler e-mailed me this link to a cookbook for "The Paleo Diet," I thought, "Oh great, now I get to eat what they serve in the Chronicles cafeteria." But no, it's a cookbook for making food that's both...

Thursday March 12, 2009

Categories: Agrariana, Food

NAIS & the high cost of industrial food

On a related front, the NYT has this week been great on its op-ed page, publishing information about the high cost of our industrial food system, and the cheap meat it provides. Today, Nick Kristof writes about how industrial hog...

Thursday March 12, 2009

Wal-Mart vs. Whole Foods

They just opened a beautiful new Whole Foods Market in my Old East Dallas neighborhood. I stopped off this morning to get breakfast for Julie on the way back home from taking one of our kids to his school. Poor...

Tuesday March 10, 2009

Food and the depression

Mark T. Mitchell poses a troubling question: Finally, if an economic collapse is a distinct possibility, what will people do? A couple months ago, my wife and I went to New York City. As we strolled around the streets of...

Friday February 27, 2009

Categories: Food

Worst food product ever?

The horror ... the horror. I had thought that the delicacy coffee beans that first get pooped out by a civet cat was the worst food product ever. Turns out it's only No. 10 on this list. And to be...

Thursday February 26, 2009

Categories: Culture, Food

Crunchy, hairy, foodie, creative Brooklyn!

The headline for this must-read story in the print edition of the New York Times is a Dreherian dream: NOW IN BROOKLYN, THE 19TH CENTURY Handmade food, and earnest cooperative vibe and plenty of facial hair Excerpt: These days, with...

Saturday February 14, 2009

Categories: Food

Valentine's Day

Happy birthday to me, my forty-second. Alarmingly, my waistline spent the last year trying to catch up with my age. Harrumph. You kids get off my lawn. Be that as it may, my birthday present is to spend a good...

Thursday February 12, 2009

Categories: Culture, Food, Sexuality

Junk food and junk sex

Oh, possums, here's the crunchy-con mother lode: Mary Eberstadt's long reflection on food, sex and cultural change. She writes: Of all the truly seismic shifts transforming daily life today -- deeper than our financial fissures, wider even than our most...

Wednesday January 28, 2009

Categories: Food

Bacon Explosion!

Food of the Gods! What Elvis is eating in heaven! Excerpt: He bought about $20 worth of bacon and Italian sausage from a local meat market. As it lay on the counter, he thought of weaving strips of raw bacon...

Friday January 23, 2009

Categories: Food

Facebook as Fatbook

I walked out of a sushi restaurant tonight with a Catholic pal staying with me, and I felt like somebody ought to harpoon me. We'd just had a great dinner with Mark Shea and another friend, and boy, did I...

Wednesday January 21, 2009

Categories: Food, Technology

Cooking with your iPhone

NYT reports that professional chefs and home cooks have integrated their iPhones into their kitchen routines. Excerpt: Restaurant chefs have a proud history of technophobia -- their attitude was: if it can't cook a steak or smell a fish, I...

Tuesday January 13, 2009

Categories: Food

Squirrel-eating poseur alert!

Squirrel has become the fashionable new meat in the UK, it is reported -- this, because the American grey squirrel is crowding out the native Beatrix Potter squirrels. A New York Times writer tries her blue-state best to eat the...

Saturday January 3, 2009

Categories: Family, Food

Lang zal ze leven

Celebrated Julie's 34th birthday tonight at Eno's, a great gastropub in the Bishop Arts District of Dallas. Good food, cold beer (Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA...is there a better beer anywhere in this country?), and Champagne with the unspeakablyy delicious...

Wednesday December 24, 2008

Categories: Christmas, Food

Holiday spirits

Tonight is present-wrapping time, and I'm thinking that after vespers, it's time to have a little Christmas cheer. What are you planning to drink for Christmas? I'm probably going to go find a decent but inexpensive bottle of sparkling wine,...

Wednesday December 17, 2008

Categories: Barack Obama, Democrats, Food

Obama disappoints at Agriculture

Comes news that Obama has picked ex-Iowa governor Tom Vilsack as his Agriculture Secretary. How depressingly conventional. Vilsack is Mr. Big Agribusiness, and his selection is a sign that Obama has no interest in changing the US food system. King...

Monday December 15, 2008

Categories: Food

Eatin' in the Seventies

In 1974, Weight Watchers prepared a series of recipe cards, illustrated documents that embody the ne plus ultra of Seventies suckitude. Do not go to this site to see them. I repeat: do not. It will not end well for...

Thursday December 11, 2008

Categories: Food

Should we have a Department of Food? (Erin)

In an op-ed in yesterday's New York Times, Nicholas Kristof writes that Obama shouldn't name a Secretary of Agriculture, but a Secretary of Food--and he makes a good case for the proposed change: A Department of Agriculture made sense 100...

Saturday November 29, 2008

Categories: Food

Marcella Hazan hates chefs

Well, not quite, but she hates what the idea of chef-ness has done to our culture. In today's NYT, the grande dame of Italian cooking says that the worship of the chef in contemporary society hurts us by implicitly devaluing...

Thursday November 27, 2008

Categories: Food

What did you eat today?

OK, now I've got the food stupids, that tryptophan-induced state of loginess so familiar around this time every Thanksgiving Day. So, what did you eat? Julie and I cooked all day, and here's what we came up with: Turkey. It...

Friday November 21, 2008

Categories: Agrariana, Barack Obama, Food

Obama, food policy and a White House dinner

My latest column on NPR.org calls on Barack Obama to change food policy, written as a "Dear Mr. President" letter. Excerpt: We have to quit subsidizing agribusiness. We need policies that encourage the building of local food economies, not ones...

Monday November 17, 2008

Categories: Economics, Food

How secure is our food supply?

James Surowiecki, writing in the New Yorker, says that globalization of the food market has increased efficiencies, giving more people more food cheaply. But when things go wrong... : The old emphasis on food security was undoubtedly costly, and often...

Thursday November 13, 2008

Categories: Barack Obama, Food

Obama putting politics above Pollan?

Obama is considering appointing Iowa governor Tom Vilsack as his Ag secretary. So much for change foodies can believe in. If this Big Corn appointment goes through, you'll know that Obama's remark about how he'd read Michael Pollan's great "Open...

Thursday October 30, 2008

Categories: Democrats, Food, Race

Two consoling things about an Obama win

1. Obama's reading Michael Pollan, and taking him seriously. Excerpt from O's Joe Klein interview: I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollan about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is...

Wednesday October 15, 2008

Categories: Food

Finding God in a beer glass

Mmm...sacrilicious.... A welcome story about the connection between beer and divinity. Excerpt: ''It's the oldest story ever told -- the struggle between good and evil,'' said Arthur, 35, a product of Catholic schools in his native San Diego. ''There is...

Friday October 10, 2008

Credit crisis and food shortages

Yesterday we were talking on this spot about whether or not you're seeing food shortages and panic buying at supermarkets locally. One reader said she saw evidence of this in Alaska, but nobody else seemed to have anecdotal evidence of...

Friday October 10, 2008

Categories: Food

Michael Pollan: Letter to the Farmer in Chief

Absolutely terrific piece by Michael Pollan in this Sunday's NYT Magazine! It's his letter to the next president, calling on a thorough revolution in food policy. Settle in for a great, great read -- and notice his implicit shout-out to...

Wednesday October 8, 2008

Categories: Britain, Food

Brit organic farmer hates "food toffs"

I wish to identify myself with the remarks of Guy Watson, a successful organic gardener and entrepreneur in England. Excerpt: How would you sum up your food philosophy? It's fairly simple. Eat good quality food, prepared with love and grown...

Tuesday October 7, 2008

Categories: Culture, Food

Against reverse food snobbery

I have mentioned in this space many times the half-anger, half-amusement with which I greeted a conservative friend chastising me once in her kitchen that it was all well and good that the Drehers can afford to eat organic and...

Monday October 6, 2008

Categories: Decline and fall, Food

Preparing for the worst

Sharon Astyk, on what to do with the time we now have before it all starts to fall apart. Excerpt: Maybe you don't know what your role is. Maybe you do have a little time or energy that could be...

Wednesday September 24, 2008

Categories: Culture, Food

Mediterranean gets fat

Remember the Mediterranean Diet, the traditional way of eating common to Greece, Crete and environs? It's heavy on olive oil, whole grains, fruits and fish, and low on red meat, refined sugar and flout, and the kinds of things that...

Wednesday September 17, 2008

Categories: Family, Food

Six food mistakes parents make

Dang, I think I make most of these with my kids. Especially this one: Pressuring them to take a bite. Demanding that a child eat at least one bite of everything seems reasonable, but it's likely to backfire. Studies show...

Sunday August 31, 2008

Save the Turbo Dog from Gustav!

In the name of all that is good and holy, won't somebody go to the Abita Brewery and guard its precious stores of beer from the storm and the marauding postapocalyptic hordes?! How stupid was I to come to St....

Friday August 29, 2008

Categories: Food

The Omnivore's 100

A British foodie site has come up with a list of what it calls The Omnivore's 100 -- a hundred foods that everyone should try at least once in their life. I've posted the list on the extended entry, with...

Friday August 22, 2008

Categories: Food

Status for sale from Wine Spectator

Speaking of status-seeking and food, John Schwenkler tips us off to a delicious scandal about a prankster who made up a crappy reserve wine list from a non-existent restaurant, and submitted it to the Wine Spectator for approval, paying the...

Friday August 22, 2008

Categories: Culture, Food

Sushi and status-seeking

Here's a great story about how a couple of high school girls in Manhattan did DNA testing on sushi samples purchased in stores and restaurants, and found that consumers were often paying top-dollar for cheap imitations. Excerpt: They found that...

Wednesday August 20, 2008

Categories: Food

The war over raw milk

This summer, we were visiting some Baltimore area friends when one of them took a bottle of milk out of the fridge. It was labeled "Pet Food." She poured herself a glass and drank it. It was raw milk, but...

Tuesday August 19, 2008

Categories: Food

Do not tell my wife!

Via Andrew Sullivan comes news of a German-shepherd-sized cow that's perfect for the backyard garden and gives 16 pints of milk per day. Perhaps if we get one, we can make extra money providing poo to the person who posted...

Friday August 15, 2008

Categories: Food

Bizarre food

For complicated reasons, cable TV has returned, probably temporarily, to our house. (Really, don't ask). And can I just say that, um, (looks around guiltily) ... I love it! I mean, like licensed joyologist Helen Madden, I love it I...

Wednesday August 13, 2008

Categories: Culture, Food

Superbugs and the culture of excess

You've all heard of MRSA, but Dr. Jerome Groopman reports in the New Yorker on a number of other drug-resistant infections emerging from American hospitals -- and on how few weapons we have to fight them with. Medical authorities he...

Thursday August 7, 2008

Categories: Culture, Food

The relativist vegan

Megan McArdle is a vegan, but she's not mad about it. And she wishes some people would get off her case. Excerpt: But this isn't enough for many of my critics, who want me to never mention being a vegan,...

Saturday August 2, 2008

Categories: Food, Gardening

This Lawn is Your Lawn

Here's a cool video from a man who is trying to encourage the next president to plant a kitchen garden on the White House lawn, to set a good example. More power to him! In this short video, set to...

Saturday August 2, 2008

Categories: Food

New dishes, cheap dishes

Inspired by the thread below on low-cost family cooking strategies, I decided to try a couple of simple lentil recipes today, cooking enough to store for the week ahead (we Orthodoxes are in the Dormition fast now through the middle...

Thursday July 31, 2008

Categories: Conservatism, Food

Conservative blindness on ethical eating

Daniel Larison says that most conservatives intuitively understand the importance of cultivating virtuous personal habits for the sake of the common good, and would even admit that maintaining an institution like the family meal serves an important purpose beyond the...

Thursday July 31, 2008

Categories: Culture, Family, Food

Low-cost healthy family cooking

Kevin asked in a thread below if we could have a new thread devoted not to arguing over fat, but simply to sharing experiences and advice on how to cook healthy food for families on a budget. Great idea! Let...

Thursday July 31, 2008

Categories: Culture, Food

"They" made her kids fat

Because the increasingly fat residents of South Central Los Angeles lack the will to choose not to eat junk food, the city has decided to impose a one-year moratorium on the opening of fast food restaurants there. Excerpt: Rebeca Torres,...

Thursday July 31, 2008

Categories: Family, Food, Gardening

Meet the chickens

Meet Dorothy. She's one of our three new chickens (Cleopatra and Pat Buckley -- the glamorous, intimidatingly self-possessed, fashionably black-clad one -- are her sisters). I'm reconciling myself to their presence. They're really something to watch scratch around the...

Wednesday July 30, 2008

Categories: Culture, Family, Food

Fat children and bad parenting

You saw, I guess, the NYTimes story last week about the huge number of American children having to take drugs to control obesity-related medical conditions (Type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, etc.). Obesity rates in children over the past 20 years...

Thursday July 24, 2008

Categories: Conservatism, Culture, Food

Morono-con populism

You read, I hope, John Schwenkler's excellent essay from The American Conservative in which he laid out a conservative case for taking food seriously as culture. Well, here's a ridiculous response from a right-winger who basically says to Schwenkler, "You're...

Tuesday July 22, 2008

The lazy locavore

I know, I know, it's fatally easy to laugh at rich people who want to be locavores, but don't have time to garden or to go to the farmer's market, and who therefore hire people to do it for them....

Monday July 14, 2008

Categories: Conservatism, Food

Michael Pollan, Burkean conservative?

You've read my lengthy American Conservative interview with Michael Pollan, yes? As I've said here before, the great Pollan was surprised to learn that there are conservatives who are right there with him (and he admits to being a traditionalist...

Monday July 7, 2008

Categories: Conservatism, Food

The case for culinary conservatism

The new issue of The American Conservative is a must-read, not only because Your Working Boy interviews the great Michael Pollan in its pages. It also features this wonderful essay by John Schwenkler, making a case for why traditional ways...

Monday July 7, 2008

Categories: Conservatism, Culture, Food

Rod Dreher interviews Michael Pollan

My feature-length Q&A with Michael Pollan is now up on The American Conservative's website. I think y'all will really like it. Hope so. Here's an excerpt: POLLAN: ...I always saw myself as being to the Left of center, although whenever...

Thursday July 3, 2008

Categories: Family, Food, Not the Onion

NYC foodies face the apocalypse

Terry Mattingly, who saves everything, forwarded to me this e-mail I sent him on October 12, 2001, one month after the 9/11 attacks. I publish it here to let you know that I am married to the perfect woman for...

Tuesday July 1, 2008

Categories: Consumerism, Culture, Food

Elites and good eating

Caleb Stegall has some typically interesting remarks in his review of Michael Pollan's food journalism. This especially caught my eye: Simultaneously exploited and neglected in this debate are the virtues of the actual philistines. Conservatives defiantly celebrating their double-whopper and...

Monday June 30, 2008

Categories: Food

11 Best Foods You Aren't Eating

A list from the New York Times. How many of these are you actually eating? Beets, cabbage and Swiss chard are all among my favorite things to eat. Sardines, not so much. Anybody want to talk about a food most...

Thursday June 19, 2008

Categories: Food

[Erin] The un-crunchy banana

One of the areas where Rod and I sometimes disagree is on the topic of food, and in particular what the crunchy-minded ought to do about such things as organic products, local purchases, and the like. For instance, when Rod...

Monday June 16, 2008

Categories: Economics, Food

Flood, food

The bad news keeps coming out of Iowa, where 20 percent of the grain crop is now lost to the floods (and, it seems, all of the corn). Excerpt: At a moment when corn should be almost waist-high here in...

Friday June 13, 2008

Categories: Food

You can't eat oil

While thinking about the Midwest floods, give some attention to this from Stratfor.com: The world has been obsessed with oil prices. That's as it should be, but it is clearly time to make room for an additional obsession. Corn prices...

Tuesday June 10, 2008

Categories: Food

Stunning summer cocktail breakthrough!

A "eureka!" moment here at Your Working Boy's home laboratory. On these scorching summer days, it can be a comfort to have a frosty vodka cocktail at the end of a long workday. This afternoon, I discovered a bevy of...

Tuesday June 10, 2008

Categories: Food

Cowpooling

From WordSpy: cowpooling pp. Purchasing a whole cow or side of beef from a local farmer and sharing the cost among multiple families. [Blend of cow and carpooling.]...

Tuesday June 3, 2008

Categories: Food

Donut elitism

Which is the "conservative" donut, the Dunkin' kind, or Krispy Kremes? The argument is made that Dunkin' Donuts are the true conservative donuts, and Krispy Kreme aficionados are a bunch of pantywaist elitists. Well. I shall ever defend the Kreme....

Monday June 2, 2008

Categories: Culture, Food, Gardening

The Aristotelian organic farmer

I spent part of the weekend refamiliarizing myself with Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" in preparation for this morning's interview with him (which will be published in an upcoming issue of The American Conservative). Michael seemed amused to learn that...

Wednesday May 28, 2008

Categories: Food

Your summer drink list

James Poulos is a sophisticated tippler, and helpfully provides his summer drink list here. I was pleased to discover that he's also an aficionado of gin and grapefruit juice, which I've been a seasonal fan of for many years. I...

Tuesday May 27, 2008

Categories: Food

Sic transit gloria cassoulet

Terrible news on the culinary front, about one of my favorite restaurants: I've written you previously on only one topic--cassoulet in Paris. We've shared our admiration of the wonderful cassoulet at La Table du Perigord. Bad news: I have just...

Monday May 26, 2008

Categories: Food

The forgotten kitchen

Paul Roberts, author of "The End of Food," writes that we Americans may not all be able to grow our own food, but we can certainly quit outsourcing its preparation: Beyond the occasional backyard garden, few of us have the...

Monday May 19, 2008

Categories: Culture, Food

Wasting food and US piggishness

Here's a pretty startling and shaming piece from yesterday's NYTimes, about how much food we Americans waste (Europeans too, by the way): Grocery bills are rising through the roof. Food banks are running short of donations. And food shortages are...

Wednesday May 14, 2008

Categories: Food

Michael Pollan speaks at Google

Looky looky, Michael Pollan speaks at the Google campus! Thanks to reader Matthew B. for passing along this link:...

Friday May 9, 2008

Categories: Food

Bush: Don't inspect that meat!

Let's say you're the owner of a slaughterhouse, and you want to test all the beef leaving your facility to make sure it has no signs of mad cow disease. Your customers expect that. Well, guess what: the Bush administration...

Thursday May 8, 2008

Categories: Food

Contra Catholic vegetarians

Father Wilson sends along this oldie but goodie from Dom Bettinelli's blog, recounting Father George Rutler's 2003 letter to the editor of Crisis magazine, responding to something or other argued by the Catholic Vegetarian Society. This is one of the...

Monday May 5, 2008

Categories: Food

Rawlins eats street food

Our friend Rawlins Gilliland got fed up with people in Dallas thinking there's no such thing as street food around here, so he set out to prove them wrong. His is a wonderful account, which deserves praise if for no...

Thursday May 1, 2008

Categories: Food

George W. Bush: Localist?

From the president's press conference this week: By the way, the high price of gasoline is going to spur more investment in ethanol as an alternative to gasoline. And the truth of the matter is it's in our national interests...

Thursday May 1, 2008

Categories: Food

Factory farming makes no economic sense

Kara Hopkins at The American Conservative recalls a right-wing friend saying he doesn't care what people say about the morality of factory farming, he likes cheap meat, and that's that. But now: A new report by the Pew Charitable Trusts...

Saturday April 19, 2008

Categories: Food

The global food shortage

Story in the NYT about how the rising price of food is sending organics into the stratosphere. Some organic farmers are returning to planting conventionally, because they can't afford organic agriculture anymore. I was wondering what organic food I'm not...

Wednesday April 2, 2008

Categories: Food

The silver lining in high food prices

The high cost of food these days has mostly to do with the skyrocketing cost of grain and of transportation. Here's the silver lining: because of this dynamic, locally-grown produce and grass-fed meat is becoming more affordable. Excerpt from a...

Tuesday April 1, 2008

Categories: Food

The sugar-free me

Laura Moser details her attempt to go sugar-free, despite her sweet tooth. Excerpt: Over the course of that month, a pattern emerged. After about six days on the wagon, I would leap out of bed gripped by a raging obsession...

Tuesday April 1, 2008

Categories: Culture, Food

Worship locally, eat locally?

A journalist friend writes to bleg about a story she's working on: It's about how--and why--faith communities are connecting with the local food movement, sustainable agriculture, CSAs, etc. My perfect source would be a church that maintains a communal garden...

Monday March 31, 2008

Categories: Food

Reluctant Vegan: Man's "anthropological error"

After a hiatus, I've started posting again at the Reluctant Vegan blog. Just put up a short reflection on factory farming in light of John Paul's teaching in Centesimus annus on how man, making the "anthropological error" of assuming that...

Thursday March 27, 2008

Categories: Food

Destroying Chile's salmon industry

What a sad, significant story: factory farming of salmon in Chile may be about to destroy that nation's salmon industry, its third-largest. From the Times: A virus called infectious salmon anemia, or I.S.A., is killing millions of salmon destined for...

Wednesday March 26, 2008

Categories: Food

Chipotle & Joel Salatin team up

Reader Peter in NYC sends a long, very encouraging Washington Post story about how Chipotle, the Mexican restaurant chain that's a personal favorite of Your Working Boy's, has started buying pork from farmer Joel Salatin, a star of "Crunchy Cons"...

Monday March 17, 2008

Categories: Food, Orthodoxy

Slow Food and Slow Prayer

Over at my Reluctant Vegan blog today, I talk about the value of taking the hard way, likening the Slow Food movement to something you might call "Slow Prayer." And you won't believe what damnfool I did Sunday afternoon in...

Thursday March 13, 2008

Categories: Food

Fight idolatry; eat good food

Over at my Reluctant Vegan blog today, I post an excerpt from Robert Farrar Capon's "The Supper of the Lamb" in which the good priest explains why it is sinful to see food only in terms of calories -- and...

Tuesday March 11, 2008

Categories: Food

Gluttony and the Reluctant Vegan

Over at my special Lenten food-culture-spirituality blog Reluctant Vegan, I've got up a short Pollan-flavored meditation on Gluttony ("The Forgotten Deadly Sin"), and how it's really not about fat alone, but our society's obsession with orthorexia ("correct eating). And a...

Monday March 10, 2008

Categories: Food, Orthodoxy

On the convenience of forgetting

From my Lenten column in yesterday's Dallas Morning News: Eastern Lent, with its command to abstain from animal products, forces us to confront how much we depend on the sacrifices of living creatures to sustain our own lives. For Orthodox...

Monday March 10, 2008

Categories: Food

Microwave not the Supper of the Lamb

New post up over at my Reluctant Vegan blog, in which I talk about Fr. Robert Capon's great cookbook and paean to sacramentalism, "The Supper of the Lamb," and how its message connects to the Catholic technology critic Albert Borgmann's...

Sunday March 9, 2008

Categories: Food

The other Reluctant Vegan

I just discovered that someone else calls her food blog The Reluctant Vegan. It's a good site, and I'm sorry I inadvertently poached her name. Well, the Orthodox Reluctant Vegan will find a new name next year. Meanwhile, check out...

Sunday March 9, 2008

Categories: Food

Eating like an American

According to a front-page report in the NYT this morning, the world's farmers have the pedal to the combine metal, yet can't keep up with the demand. Excerpt: The world’s grain stockpiles have fallen to the lowest levels in decades....

Saturday March 8, 2008

Categories: Food

Goodbye fromage, my old friend

Tonight, on the eve of Cheesefare Sunday, the Reluctant Vegan is having his Farewell to Fromage meal: a triple-cream delice de Bourgogne, an aged Gouda, and some sort of hard Italian cheese made from buffalo milk. And bread. And butter....

Saturday March 8, 2008

Categories: Food

Reluctant Vegan blog launches

I've just posted the first entry on "The Reluctant Vegan," my Lenten blog at Dallasnews.com. I invite readers of this blog who have an interest in issues of food culture, morality and spirituality to come over and be a part...

Thursday March 6, 2008

Categories: Food

"In Defense of Food"

Can I tell you how great Michael Pollan's recent "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto" is? I'm reading it now to get ready for next week's launch of The Reluctant Vegan, a blog I'm going to write on Dallasnews.com...

Wednesday February 20, 2008

Categories: Food

Life is too short to eat margarine

Life is too short to eat margarine. Really and truly. One of my indulgences is to drop $3 for a brick of Somerdale English butter at Central Market. It's too expensive to use for cooking, but spread it on bread...

Wednesday February 20, 2008

Categories: Food, Orthodoxy

Organic farming, organic religion

In "The Omnivore's Dilemma," I came across a passage in which author Michael Pollan discusses the organic theory of agriculture. To simplify radically, the insight the early organic farmers -- especially Sir Albert Howard, the English agronomist who developed the...

Monday February 18, 2008

Categories: Food

Poisonous fruits of factory farming

It turns out that a slaughterhouse's cruel practices are behind the massive nationwide recall of beef, the largest in US history. Excerpt: Officials estimate that about 37 million pounds of the recalled beef went to school programs, but they believe...

Monday February 11, 2008

Categories: Culture, Food

Honey, you done been overserved

There's a bill before the Mississippi legislature that, if passed into law, would prohibit restaurants from serving the obese. Ha! Like that'll ever get passed in a Southern state. Anyway, how stupid is that? I'm all for healthier eating, but...

Wednesday February 6, 2008

Categories: Food

Bitten by Bittman

This is great news: the chef Mark Bittman has just launched a blog on the NYT website. It's called "Bitten," and features a daily recipe from the chef, as well as his musings on cooking and eating. If you're an...

Wednesday January 30, 2008

Categories: Culture, Food

A nation of fatties

I was whining to my wife last night about how much weight I've put on this winter. The reason isn't hard to figure out. I quit exercising, and I've been eating too much sugar and carbohydrate. I had to go...

Wednesday January 30, 2008

Categories: Culture, Food

Re-thinking the meat guzzler

I am an enthusiastic carnivore. I love meat. I mean, I really love meat. My dad, a child of the Depression, wasn't upset if we kids didn't eat all our vegetables, but we couldn't leave the table unless we'd eaten...

Thursday January 24, 2008

Categories: Food

Against cloned beef

I'm with Verlyn Klinkenborg: who, exactly, benefits from screwing around with livestock genetics like this? Is the further industrialization of our food production really the way we ought to be going? Klinkenborg says: To me, this striving for uniformity is...

Thursday January 10, 2008

Categories: Food, Republicans

Huck on food

When people think of Mike Huckabee and food, they think about all the weight he lost. But they should also think about his ideas on agriculture, including these, from his website: We must be able to feed ourselves as part...

Tuesday December 25, 2007

Categories: Christmas, Food

The House Without a Christmas Meat

Boy, did we screw up this year. We bought a Smithfield ham for our Christmas dinner a traditional, salt-cured country ham. I followed the instructions for soaking it overnight prior to cooking, but still, it tastes like we're eating a...

Sunday December 16, 2007

Categories: Food

Christmas gift for wine lovers

A few years ago, when I was starting to get into wine, I walked over to my neighborhood wine store in Brooklyn -- it was (and is) a very good one -- and asked Judy Rundel, one of the helpful...

Monday December 10, 2007

Categories: Food

The greatness of Western civilization

Which civilization on the planet besides ours could create the Martini Pickle? I ask you. You gotta watch that video. UPDATE: Geek that I am, I'm going to acquire for Christmas one of those home vacuum-sealer systems. I've alreadyspent too...

Thursday November 29, 2007

Categories: Culture, Food

Crunchy monks & the Beer Phone

This one's a beaut: beer-brewing Trappist monks in Belgium have created a beer so highly prized they can't (and won't) make enough of it to meet demand ("It would interfere with our job of being a monk," one of the...

Wednesday November 21, 2007

Categories: Food

[Erin] Confession

I recall that last year on Thanksgiving Rod had posted one of his joie de vrie posts about the food, the cooking, the spirit of it all. I also recall a comment from an anonymous, but frustrated, woman whose cooking...

Wednesday November 21, 2007

Categories: Food

[Erin] Can I get a price check on Thanksgiving?

Ah, the day before Thanksgiving. Time to settle back, put the finishing touches on your menu plans, and begin preparing some of the desserts or baked goods for tomorrow's feast. Unless, of course, you're buying the whole thing pre-made. Don't...

Wednesday November 14, 2007

Categories: Food

Cipriani's just desserts

Many people have had the experience of going to an expensive restaurant and being completely ripped off by the quality of the food and/or the service. But very few people indeed have had the opportunity to deliver a punitive strike...

Friday October 26, 2007

Categories: Food

My kingdom for some protein powder

The deal is that I love me some steel-cut oatmeal in the ayem. And I love to dose it with a couple of heaping tablespoons of protein powder. Whole Foods used to carry a perfectly delicious soy powder, flavor of...

Tuesday October 23, 2007

Categories: Food

Small Farmer Liberation Front

Via Brad Plumer comes this WaPo report showing how food safety regulations are gamed to help big agribusiness, and oppress small farmers. Excerpt: The growing defiance from small farmers illustrates their increasing frustration with rules that they say penalize them...

Thursday October 11, 2007

Categories: Family, Food

Saving the family farm

We all know, says Megan McArdle, that the system of agricultural subsides this country has are wack, but we should be careful about wanting to see the family farm go by the wayside: My mother grew up on a small...

Friday September 28, 2007

Categories: Food

Crunchy Cretans

Richard Barrett sends along this fascinating NPR story about the astonishingly good health of the people of Crete, and how it relates to their diet. Excerpt: Just three years after [World War II], American scientists arrived on the Greek island...

Wednesday August 22, 2007

Categories: Food

Of church and steak

I knew when I opened my NYTimes Dining In section this morning that the crunchy-con nation would love this story, brilliantly titled "Of church and steak." Sure enough, several of you have e-mailed it to me. It's about faith-based farming,...

Advertisement

Search This Blog

About Crunchy Con

Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.

feed icon Subscribe

RSS Feed

Receive updates from Crunchy Con

Advertisement

Advertisement


About Beliefnet

Our mission is to help people like you find, and walk, a spiritual path that will bring comfort, hope, clarity, strength, and happiness. More about Beliefnet.

Legal

Copyright © Beliefnet, Inc. and/or its licensors. All rights reserved. Use of this site is subject to Terms of Service and to our Privacy Policy. Constructed by Beliefnet.

Advertisement

Report as Inappropriate

You are reporting this content because it violates the Terms of Service.

All reported content is logged for investigation.