Dining and Opining

After over two years in which this blog has been woefully silent, I'm going to try to pick it up again over at my website: annazeide.com/blog I hope to post semi-regularly there in the coming months, in anticipation of the publication of my book Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry with University of California Press in early 2018. Join me!

My good friend and colleague Kellen Backer has a fascinating new pictorial essay up on Refinery29 about the History of Brunch ! Check it out! You'll see examples of brunch menus and photographs from across the century, along with historical commentary about the social place of women in each of these eras. And even a glimpse of the [bleak] future: 1930s Menu: Tomato & Clam Juice Mocktail, Anchovy & Chutney Rolls, Black Bean Soup, Sautéed Kidneys, Indian Rice & Minced Celery, Fresh Fruits With Kirsch, Egg & Mayo Aspic*, Coffee 1960s Menu: Bloody Mary, Eggs In Ham Cups, Fried Apples, Jell-O Mold.      1980s Menu: Creamy Scrambled Eggs In Baked-Potato Boats, Pineapple Shell, Champagne, Coffee. 2115 Menu: Nutrient-Rich Sludge, Petri-Dish Protein, Freeze-Dried Fruits, Water. 

A recipe from a recent class I taught for the  Cowboy Cooking School  at Oklahoma State University ( see blog post here ):

A recipe from a recent class I taught for the  Cowboy Cooking School  at Oklahoma State University ( see blog post here ):

A recipe from a recent class I taught for the Cowboy Cooking School at Oklahoma State University ( see blog post here ):

I recently had the opportunity to teach a cooking class at Oklahoma State University's Department of Wellness, to staff and faculty members from across campus. On my birthday, no less! Despite the fact that there were some early morning childcare hiccups, and other stresses, the class went really well, with the support of OSU nutritionist Elizabeth Lohrman  and her graduate student aides, along with a receptive and inquisitive audience. I will share the recipes for the three dishes I made in subsequent posts, so that you can all make them at home!

I've just returned home from the always-fantastic American Society for Environmental History  annual conference. This year, it was held in Washington, D. C., and I had the opportunity to present some of my research, from my book-in-progress. My title slide: My session was devoted to environmental law in the 1970s, and the various papers came together really well, looking at environmental law from the perspectives of government, business, and citizens. It was a pleasure. But I also had the chance to catch up with old friends, and to listen to a lot of fascinating papers, some from my favorite scholars, some from those who are up-and-coming. There were a lot of great food-themed papers and panels. Just a selection, including mine: Anna Zeide , Oklahoma State University, Regulating Processed Food: The Canning Industry's Responses to Environmental Law in the 1970s Laura Ann Twagira , Wesleyan University, ‘ We Farmed Money’: Landscape Change, Women’s Food Production, and ...

I love this. Such a clever spoof on the language around technology (and food!). Introducing Carrot: http://www.introducingcarrot.com/ http://www.introducingcarrot.com/

Recently, some new friends who have a daughter slightly older than ours asked me if our 8-month old Nancy was eating jarred foods. I replied that she was indeed eating pureed foods, but I made them for her myself. They paused, not quite understanding, and rephrased, "But does she eat Gerber food?" In the end, it became clear that they had some unopened jars of baby food that their daughter no longer wanted now that she had moved on to finger foods, and they wanted to know if we would take them. But there was a clear disconnect in their initial questions and my answers, as if they didn't have a category for the kind of food that Nancy was eating--pureed like Gerber, but not Gerber. Their questions made me think that, in their minds, baby pureed food = jarred food = Gerber. My daughter Nancy eating homemade baby food To me, as someone who is at home in the kitchen, it seemed so simple and intuitive that, rather than buying many small jars of milled up sweet potatoes...

Oh my! So many things I like all in the same place: Jonathan Safran Foer. Chipotle. Short stories. Literature. Chipotle will now be printing small pieces of writing from great writers on its cups and bags, based on an idea proposed by Jonathan Safran Foer. As he describes in this Vanity Fair piece : “...I got to know quite a bit about the company, not in the process of doing this, but in the process of Eating Animals ,” he continued. “Chipotle was pointed to quite often, as a model of what scaling good practices might look like. The truth is, that’s not really why I did this. I mean, I wouldn’t have done it if it was for another company like a McDonald’s, but what interested me is 800,000 Americans of extremely diverse backgrounds having access to good writing. A lot of those people don’t have access to libraries, or bookstores. Something felt very democratic and good about this.” There will be stories by Foer himself, by Toni Morrison, Malcolm Gladwell, George Saunders,...

Below is a little story my college roommate Deepani wrote to me for my birthday. She lives in Tanzania, and writes evocatively about her first experience "sourcing" her own meat. Enjoy!  Kim and Deepani The first story I have is about our little farm that lives in the backyard garden. It's getting harder and harder to keep track now, but I think we have something like 2 hens, 3 cockerels, 6 ducks, 3 ducklings, a dog called Kim, and a cat called Mini. After many weeks of confident talking but with little action, a couple of weekends ago, Gary and I screwed up the nerve and sourced our own meat from our own backyard, all by ourselves. In more graphic terms, we caught, slaughtered, plucked, butchered, cooked, and ate a duck from our backyard flock. As meat eaters, we thought that it appropriate the we should involve ourselves in the process of what it means for an animal to become the food that we eat, and as caretakers of a flock of fowl, we finally had the chance. Sti...

 Researchers at the Medical University of Graz, in Austria, recently published a study that included an analysis of vegetarian diets ( available in PDF here ). Lots of European papers (and a few in the U.S. as well) are reporting on the study with titles like, "Vegetarians are 'less healthy' and have a poorer quality of life than meat-eaters" . Frequent D&O reader and my husband, JH, responds to the study:  . . . It's worth noting that this study has some pretty significant limitations: it only followed 330 vegetarians, all of them Austrian, and apparently didn't attain a representative sample, as over 75% of the subjects for the study were women. So, I think we should take this one with a pretty big grain of salt (while of course open-mindedly waiting to see if any of these findings are replicated), especially given the fact that the general consensus among folks who study nutrition goes sharply in the opposite direction.  So, for exampl...

Food and Water Watch recently launched their Healthy Farms, Healthy Families campaign to end antibiotic misuse. They are calling on specific cities to pass city-wide resolutions urging Congress to take action on this issue. Madison is the latest city in which they're working. You can help by signing the online petition to support this work in Madison. Ask the city council to pass the resolution urging Congress to ban the misuse of antibiotics on factory farms! What's the issue? Antibiotics are for saving lives, not for saving factory farm profits Antibiotic resistance is coming to be a serious public health crisis right now in the U.S. Last fall, the Center for Disease Control reported that two million Americans contact antibiotic resistant infections, and at least 23,000 people die as a direct result. Antibiotics are a foundation of modern medicine that we all take for granted, but it's clear that if don’t act now, antibiotics may not work for us the next ti...

Now, for something a little lighter, check out these food-inspired valentine cards : Find, and send, the whole spread here . Which are your favorite? UPDATED: Even more foodie valentines here, at the Kitchn!

There's big news in the [agricultural] justice world, as Walmart signed on to the Fair Food Program, which protects laborers and human rights in the US produce industry.  Walmart representatives John Amaya and Tom Leech, and CIW’s Lucas Benitez and Gerardo Reyes Chavez [plus Nely Rodriguez, not pictured] sign historic agreement at a Lipman Produce farm outside of Immokalee, FL. The Fair Food Program was initiated by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. According to its website, CIW is a "worker-based human rights organization internationally recognized for its achievements in the fields of corporate social responsibility, community organizing, and sustainable food. The CIW is also a leader in the growing movement to end human trafficking due to its groundbreaking work to combat modern-day slavery and other labor abuses common in agriculture." Several other retailers have reached agreements with the CIW in the past, but Walmart's participation is huge, given th...

Recently, a friend shared this Intelligence Squared debate on the motion: "Don't Eat Anything With A Face" . Four experts debated the pros and cons of vegetarianism from a variety of perspectives. The whole video is worth watching, for sure: I liked the opening comments from the moderator, in which he highlighted the oft-cited (but still oft-ignored) reason that many people are comfortable with meat-eating: they just avoid thinking about it.  He said, "The simple act of eating a hamburger is, when you really think about it, one of the great acts of human denial, because what is a burger? It's edible protein in the shape of a disk every single time. And you can order it rare, you can order it well done, you can dress it up in ketchup, you can put a little onion hat on top of it, you can push it around on your plate, you can leave half of it behind, and never once have the thought cross your mind, as you're chomping away, I wonder what she looked lik...

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...

Big news around here. Last week, I successfully defended my dissertation, In Cans We Trust: Food, Consumers, and Scientific Expertise in Twentieth-Century America ! This was a real milestone in its own right, and deserves many words--about how exhilarating it felt to bring the writing experience to a close, to have five brilliant committee members discuss my work and guide my thoughts on revisions for the book manuscript, and to have many friends and colleagues support me. But, for now, let me share the snacks I baked for the defense: my dissertation in mini-quiche form: You see, each of my dissertation chapters is framed around one particular canned food: Chapter 1 takes on Borden's condensed milk, Chapter 2 agricultural breeding in Wisconsin peas, Chapter 3 botulism in black olives, Chapter 4 grade labeling in canned tomatoes, and Chapter 5 postwar concerns about canned tuna. So, I combined all five of these foods into baked mini-quiches. Tangible, edible dissertation chap...