Category Archives: food
Presidential food preferences
Photo by Hugh Morton
Richard Nixon: Fresh fruit, avocadoes, gazpacho, cucumber mousse, cold poached salmon, cold shrimp and crab, cottage cheese, Rye Crisp, wheat germ, macadamia nuts, corned beef and cabbage, steak, spaghetti with meatballs, meatloaf, and beef stroganoff.
via All The Presidents’ Menus | The Awl.
I appreciate Calvin Coolidge and his love for Vermont goods.
Calvin Coolidge: Roast beef, Vermont pickles, Vermont chickens (raised in a yard he had built behind the White House over Teddy Roosevelt’s mint patch), curry of veal, pork apple pies, custard pies, and cornmeal muffins.
Carol Adams and the New York Times justifications for meat eating
The New York Times invited only prominent white men to discuss the ethics of eating meat. Blisstree remedy this by inviting Carol J. Adams, the preeminent feminist vegetarian ethical thinker writing today to respond. She begins by noting the invisibility of identity in the New York Times choices:
Let’s remember the insight about who is “marked” and who is not marked in our culture. Until Black Liberation and Women’s Liberation began to change consciousness in the late 60s and early 70s, white men were unmarked, that is, their whiteness and maleness were untheorized and unremarkable. We all have to resist a kind of “colonization of consciousness” in which we participate in maintaining what is normative because that is what we are used to seeing. The irony here is that the Times helps to create what is normative and who the experts are. Whoever is quoted in interviews and is invited to be a guest writer in the Magazine section, becomes more well known.
via Author Carol J. Adams Weighs In On The Ethicist’s All-Male Meat Panel.
And of course, the delicious core of the argument: that gendered representation is tied to how comfortable Americans are with meat eating. Adam’s continues:
Does it speak to the gendered politics of meat-eating? How much time do we have?
First, it begins with the presumption that meat eating as a normative practice can be defended, especially here in the United States. I don’t believe in general that it can be, not here in the United States.
Our culture is heavily invested in the identification of meat eating with manliness: The idea that meat protein is better for you; the notion that men need to eat meat to be strong (the countless vegan athletes who disprove this notwithstanding); the identification of veganism with women or with gay men (i.e., it is okay for those “kinds” of people to give up eating meat)! The fixation on hunting as being an important part of our evolutionary heritage is part of the sexual politics of meat, (and interestingly one of the panelists, Michael Pollan describes his very masculine experience of hunting wild animals).
Then there is the philosophical tradition from which much animal theory is written that emphasizes the rational and distrusts the emotional. I am part of a group of feminist writers arguing that a feminist care ethic helps us to see the important of choosing to be vegan. But if caring is disdained, then those kinds of arguments get drowned out in favor of the “rational.”
There is also the status of the other animals in a patriarchal world, one in which they are feminized and sexualized. (I argue in The sexual politics of meat that all animals are made female in image or language through meat eating.)
via Author Carol J. Adams Weighs In On The Ethicist’s All-Male Meat Panel Page 2 |.
Filed under Animals, capitalism, feminism, food, health, representation, vegetarian
Consciousness and eating animals
I’ve been a vegetarian for almost twenty years. For me it is easy, fun and a delicious. I no longer see vegetarianism as a sacrifice in any way. Eating is celebration and to eat vegetables is delightful.
Mark Bittmann, the New York Times food critic seems to be building a path to live with joyous cruelty-free food:
Many vegan dishes, however, are already beloved: we eat fruit salad, peanut butter and jelly, beans and rice, eggplant in garlic sauce. The problem faced by many of us — brought up as we were with plates whose center was filled with a piece of an animal — is in imagining less-traditional vegan dishes that are creative, filling, interesting and not especially challenging to either put together or enjoy.
My point here is to make semi-veganism work for you. Once a week, let bean burgers stand in for hamburgers, leave the meat out of your pasta sauce, make a risotto the likes of which you’ve probably never had — and you may just find yourself eating “better.”
These recipes serve about four, and in all, the addition of salt and pepper is taken for granted. This is not a gimmick or even a diet. It’s a path, and the smart resolution might be to get on it.
via No Meat, No Dairy, No Problem – NYTimes.com.
Kudos to Bittmann for the column, approach, and recipes. To have veganism be the suggestion for New Years resolutions is wonderful. The New York Times, one of the most venerable newspapers in North America offers a marker of the persuasiveness of vegan choice in the current public dialogue.
Filed under Animals, communication, food, health, representation
Gnocchi!
I was thinking about roasting the handful of nice organic potatoes for dinner tonight. But then the L.A. Times dropped the serious gnocchi science on me. I’ll let you know how they turn out.
The recipe hasn’t changed much over the years, and making the gnocchi is still a task that falls to only the most senior cooks in each of my kitchens. It can take them months or years of watching and helping before they get good enough to do it on their own.
via Tom Colicchio: How to make gnocchi – latimes.com.
Potato politics: senate and school lunches
You should know about Marion Nestle. She is a food scientist and scholar of eatin’. She kicks major ass in my opinion.
Her blog on food politics is quite good. Today she is taking up the subject of school lunches and the powerful potato lobby.
Please note: the proposal does not call for elimination of starchy vegetables. It calls for a limit of two servings a week (one cup is two servings).
What’s wrong with that? Plenty, according to the potato industry, which stands to sell fewer products to the government and could not care less about spreading the wealth around to other vegetable producersPotato lobbyists went to work (apparently the sweet corn, lima bean, and pea industries do not have the money to pay for high-priced lobbying talent). The Potato Council held a press conference hosted by Senators from potato-growing states.
The result? The U.S. Senate added an amendment to the 2012 agriculture spending bill blocking the USDA from “setting any maximum limits on the serving of vegetables in school meal programs.”
Mind you, I like potatoes. They are thoroughly delicious when cooked well, have supported entire civilizations, and certainly can contribute to healthful diets. Two servings a week seems quite reasonable. So does encouraging consumption of other vegetables as well.
via Food Politics » One potato, two potato: Undue industry influence in action.
Not only is Nestle on point with this subject, but her remark about the potato lobby is correct. Remember the scene in Life and Debt where the struggling potato growers of Jamaica get a meeting with the U.S. potato lobby hoping to sell some potatoes. Instead the potato politicians are coming to sell Jamaicans subsidized potatoes.
Filed under colonialism, food, learning, propaganda
Packaged food juxtaposition: the New York Times edition
Artifact #1: (How suspect are packaged greens?)
The stuff bought whole and chopped on the kitchen counter is definitely more healthful.
This is because time, temperature and damage during harvest and packing can deplete vitamins and other nutrients. Vegetables begin to shed them the second they’re picked.
via The Food & Drink Issue – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com.
Artifact #2: (Michael Pollen answers reader’s questions)
Frozen vegetables and fruits are a terrific and economical option when fresh is unavailable or too expensive. The nutritional quality is just as good — and sometimes even better, because the produce is often picked and frozen at its peak of quality. The only rap is that freezing collapses the cell walls of certain fruits and vegetables, at some cost to their crunch. But this has no bearing on nutrition.
via The Food & Drink Issue – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com.
Nationalism and killing pigs
Interesting article in the LA Times about rising pork prices in China. Good opportunity for analysis from the article on nationalism and meat eating.
China, by far the world’s biggest producer of pork, is home to about half the world’s porcine population with 460 million pigs. That’s about seven times more than the United States, the second-largest producer.
But it hasn’t been enough to keep a lid on prices, which have risen steeply since the middle of last year. That’s when Chinese farmers reduced production in response to high feed costs and shrinking profit margins. A spate of hog diseases also cut into the supply.
China’s government is so sensitive to the country’s appetite that it maintains a strategic reserve of 200,000 tons of frozen pork. It has tapped that secret stash in recent weeks to increase supply. But analysts said it will make little difference in a nation that consumes 100,000 tons of pork daily.
via China’s pork shortage hitting close to home, affecting economy – latimes.com.
My first thought is that this indicates the importance of pork consumption to the idea of the nation. In the USA we keep some strategic oil reserves to ensure that there is a backup, but also to reassure Americans that their government is thinking about their oil future oil consumption. It reassures and encourages healthy consumption. Similarly, China’s frozen pig reserve indicates a selling of the idea of regular animal protein consumption to the citizenry.
After wondering if other meats will replace the value of pig in Chinese food, David Pearson, the article’s author, includes this reply:
Fat chance, said Shi Zhijun, owner of a Beijing restaurant that sells pork-filled steamed buns.
“Eating pork is good for people,” said the rotund 45-year-old, who uses pork for half the items on his menu. “Everybody should eat at least a half-jin [500 grams] every day. It’s very nutritious…. It helps people grow. If you don’t eat pork you will be very thin and weak.”
via China’s pork shortage hitting close to home, affecting economy – latimes.com.
This seems like another interesting western media strategy — the quirky ignorant quote from a foreigner. I’m not going to scrap with this idea on the factual basis — pork as health food is in fact silly. Instead, the quote’s inclusion seems like a key element of American media’s colonialist lens. The notion of exotic other people who don’t know better, is the foundation of judgement and intervention.
It is this precise notion — they don’t know what they are doing — that lends to the well-intentioned, but devastating difference and quite often some sense of we must help. The impulse to act to help is at the core of the colonial mission. Of course, a pork bun seller would never suggest that his product was harmful.
In this case, the geopolitics associated with China make it unlikely that the United States will send a chicken promotional team to China (although stranger things have happened).
Filed under Animals, capitalism, colonialism, food
James Beard and masculine barbecue
Thanks to booksinc for the image.
I’m almost done with Robert Clark’s biography of James Beard. Beard was a crucial figure in american cookery — celebrating local ingredients and providing American cuisine with a serious shot of epicurean style. Beard was also one of the first celebrity chefs and he took the corporate money for endorsements. It is an interesting read — at times it bogs, but the rewards from digging into the history of the people like this are the visibility of ideology in the text.
At one point in 1953, Beard is working out the rough ideas for a paperback on outdoor cooking. He writes the following to a collaborator:
Here is the idea: 1. Definition of culinary terms and barbecue terms and certain dishes . . . some of the mouthwatering terms men like. 2. Cold and hot weather menus and recipes featuring masculine dishes and fish and meat. 3. Recipes for sizzling platters and rotisserie junk. 4. A glossary of drinking terms–also how to use whiskey with recipes and man-sized portions (most men drink less than women but I supposed we must say man-sized–and be male). No fancy schmancy drinks but drinks which are good and full and really wonderful (152).
I’m fascinated by the clear articulation of what he expects to be successful. Again, Beard actually is the American chef who wrote the book on barbecue. But the articulation of masculine desire maps a series of assumptions and ideas about masculinity and men in the fifties.
Lets note James Beard’s obvious appreciation for communication and rhetoric. His idea of “mouthwatering terms,” points suggestively about a language keyed and cued to shared desire between men. It would be a worthwhile excavation to cruise through Beard’s half dozen barbecue editions and track the changes in language.
The connection between male entitlement and food has been mapped by Carol J. Adams. There is still work to be done about making these ideas visible. If you haven’t read The Sexual Politics of Meat yet, go get it out of the library.
It’s a worthwhile quote if only for the drinking commentary and the notion of “rotisserie junk.”
Filed under Animals, communication, food
Life of refinement 