Dining and Opining

In his book Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer offers this thought: "If this entire book could be decanted into a single question—not something easy, loaded, or asked in bad faith, but a question that fully captured the problem of eating and not eating animals—it might be this: Should we serve turkey at Thanksgiving?" Should we serve turkey at Thanksgiving? This is his whole book in a sentence. The chapter goes on to explore the dark side of turkey production in the U.S.  (Read short versions of similar stories here , here , or here ). But in classic Foer fashion, he leads up to this "single question" with a personal take on the meaning of Thanksgiving and of storytelling. The way he recounts his own Thanksgiving memories, and their embeddedness in some bigger ideas about a good meal, is beautiful:  . . . Two dozen or so mismatched chairs circumscribed four tables of slightly different heights and widths, pushed together and covered in matching cloths...

The last couple of weeks have been filled with a number of big news items in the food world, plus lots of interesting musings. Some especially worth checking out: Washington State Votes Down GMO Labels : The FDA Moves to Ban Trans Fat in Processed Foods: Fascinating video series explores the journey from field to fork: How Does it Grow? Agricultural Innovation Prize promises $100,000 for great agricultural ideas (a good friend of mine is running this excellent program!)  Time Magazine's 13 Gods of Food And a useful companion piece: Goddesses of Food Finally, to get us in the seasonal spirit: 50 Vegetarian Thanksgiving Main Dish Recipes What else have you all been reading lately? 

Slow Food Madison is throwing a wonderful event next week: A Food Swap! I unfortunately can't make it, but encourage local readers to attend. The ticket site indicates that there are only 22 tickets left. Reserve yours now! Loyal Dining and Opining followers will remember that a few friends and I threw our own food swap a couple of years ago, which I described in this post . It was a real success and I've been wanting to see something like it at a bigger scale for several years now. The details for the Slow Food event are as follows: What : A Food Swap is an event where members of the community come together to trade homemade, homegrown, and foraged food with each other. Attendees directly trade their goods with one another as a way to diversify the foods in their pantries and make connections with other members of the local food community. When : Monday, November 11th 6:00pm.  The event will probably last about 1.5-2 hours.  Where : Goodman Center 149 Waubesa Stree...