Dining and Opining

A special treat today--a guest post by the husband, JH: When non-vegetarians ask me about my (almost) vegetarianism, I brace myself for one of two responses. First, there is what I like to call “the Oklahoma response.” This typically involves one form or another of deliberate crassness: either a reminder that meat tastes good, or a suggestion that caring about the well-being of non-human animals is naïvely soft-hearted. (My father's comments usually fall into this category, as when he gleefully tells people that my vegetarianism is merely “a fad” that the kids are following these days.) The second response is what I call “the Madison response.” The Madison response usually involves a lot of vigorous nodding, perhaps followed by an admission that my interlocutor is sympathetic to vegetarianism—maybe she/he even tried it once!—but an explanation that for one reason or another, she/he still eats meat, often with some degree of guilt.  My mother exemplifies one strain of t...

If you know me, you know I love salads and I love buffets. I love having a wide range of options to choose from, love curating my own collection of foods, love being able to control my portion size. And so, Sweet Tomatoes , a restaurant chain with locations in 15 states, satisfies me like few other chains can. The Salad Buffet Restaurant! This place has over 50 separate raw vegetable ingredients, plus prepared salads, hot pastas, soups, muffins, breads, and more. I first discovered Sweet Tomatoes when living in St. Louis, but because there are currently no Wisconsin locations, I can only enjoy it when visiting family in Georgia, or when passing through Schaumburg, Illinois, on my way to Chicago (who know Schaumburg, IL would ever be a destination?!) No two plates ever look exactly alike. But judging from these photos, the crew I was with had fairly similar salad ingredient preferences. I used to always say that you could learn a lot about a person by studying their salad ba...

My favorite blogger who writes about agricultural issues, hands-down, is Sharon Astyk . She writes beautifully, has a very sharp wit, and lives the kind of life I often dream of (has a farm in upstate New York, grows most of her own food with her husband and four children, uses only 10% of the energy of the average American family, writes for a living). Though I'm still eager to read her books ( Depletion and Abundance , A Nation of Farmers , Independence Days ), I follow her blog very closely and try to read most everything she has to say. This post, from the archives , is one that I think of often, and wanted to share it here, for all of you. It considers how sustainable eating and poverty go together, how good food doesn't have to be an elite privilege. Enjoy, and let me know what you think: Barriers to Eating Sustainably, Real and Imagined Posted on: April 5, 2010 2:16 PM, by Sharon Astyk During the period of my life when I was a professional smart-ass (ie, my ado...

Barry Estabrook, whose blog Politics of the Plate was nominated for a James Beard Award this year, has just come out with a book called " Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit : I just read one of his earlier articles on which this book is based, " Politics of the Plate: The Price of Tomatoes ," and I want you all to go read it, right now.  (Pause) Ok, now you're back? And you're shaken by the deft writing, stellar reporting, and gruesome facts?  A few excerpts: "Douglas Molloy, the chief assistant U.S. attorney based in Fort Myers, Florida... when asked if it is reasonable to assume that an American who has eaten a fresh tomato from a grocery store or food-service company during the winter has eaten fruit picked by the hand of a slave...said, ' It is not an assumption. It is a fact .'" And as for what we, as consumers, can do differently?  Estabrook writes, "Buying Slave-Free Fru...

Continuing the stretch of final GreenHouse events (with one more to go, tomorrow), our final Global Food for Thought Meal was focused on Ecuadorian cuisine and the Kallari Cooperative, a group of cacao farmers who also produce their own organic and sustainable (and delicious!) chocolate. Although for previous dinners (as with the ones focused on Tuscany , on Hunger , on Nepal , on Indonesian/Vegetarian cuisine ), the guest chefs or the Housing and Dining Services staff had come up with the menu, I actually came up with this Ecuadorian menu all myself, with the help of a lot of online research and a great blog I discovered that featured a lot of food from Ecuador. I developed a menu that featured a range of popular dishes in Ecuador, but that was also feasible, given the constraints of the Dining Services labor and resources: The plantain chips, aji criollo , pickled red onions , and mango juice: The ensalada mixta , locro with avocado, and cod ceviche : There wa...

So, I know I promised a post on soy this week, and there really is one in the works, but today it just seemed like I couldn't get by without mentioning Earth Day, and wishing you all a Happy Earth Day!  Image from www.nelsonearthday.net Even though my favorite blogger Sharon Astyk hates Earth Day (and I totally understand why),* we here in Wisconsin have a particular attachment to the holiday because it was started by our very own Senator Gaylord Nelson.  In September 1969, he "proposed a national teach-in on the environment to send a message to Washington that public opinion was solidly behind a bold political agenda on environmental problems." And this grew into the first Earth Day, observed across the country on April 22, 1970, which historians continue to view as a watershed moment in the history of environmental politics.  The quote above, as well as lots more historical goodness, is from a website that my oh-so-impressive friend Brian Hamilton...

I spend a lot of time writing for or thinking about this blog. And I also spend a lot of time wondering exactly why I devote this time to Dining & Opining. And although I haven’t yet figured out all the answers to this question, one resounding reminder of an answer came in the form of the comments on Friday’s blog post : because it feels damn good to start a conversation with thoughtful, smart, intellectually-honest folks even when there doesn’t always seem to be space for that kind of conversation in real-life interactions.  I felt so stimulated by the responses to my meat substitutes post that I’ve been thinking about it all weekend, with the wheels in the brain turning more fluidly than they have in a while. Which isn’t to say that I have lots of answers to the puzzles posed during that e-conversation, but that my mind feels active and dynamic in the all the ways one could hope for. So, for that, I thank all of you who read and engaged with the thoughts I posted on Frida...

Because I want to make sure people read them, I'm re-posting the super-thoughtful and provocative comments that three readers posted in response to yesterday's post , and that I hope to respond to in some fashion soon: Megan said:  Great post. From a practical standpoint, I'd say I solve the problem by almost always making my own "meat substitutes" from less objectionable ingredients. And by not relying on meat substitutes most of the time. (Caveat, I am only mostly vegetarian: I sometimes eat fish that are on the Monteray Bay Seafood Watch green list--though I know that's not a perfect source.) But given the choice you put up there, the hamburger is probably more environmentally sound in that instance. Back when I first stopped eating meat, I told myself that I would still eat it if traveling somewhere where vegetarianism was nearly impossible, or if I would seriously offend a host. And somewhere along the way I have come to feel that eati...

Yesterday, I wrote about some of the thoughts I was having during a Vegetarian Global Food for Thought Meal (aptly-named, eh?!) about the place of meat-eating/vegetarianism in a global, environmental context. And today I’d like to follow up with some of those thoughts, reflecting a little on the kinds of thorny situations vegetarians sometimes get themselves into. I guess it’s a little backwards for me to be writing about some of these challenges to the traditional views of vegetarianism before actually writing a post about my vegetarianism itself (it’s like when environmental historians try to undermine the idea of “nature” to people who aren’t environmentally-inclined in the first place*), but hopefully I will get back to the latter at some point and hopefully many of you are at least acquainted with the myriad reasons that a vegetarian diet often makes the most sense. (If not, read these 49 reasons ** or Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Against Meat” essay as starting points). Perhaps...

When Justin and I met, one of the first dishes he cooked for me was his favorite food, his Mom's Taco Salad. This was a dish she'd often made when Justin and his brother were little--something that was quick to make and that satisfied her two tortilla-loving boys.  It's remained a favorite ever since. The traditional recipe was a mixture of ground beef (later, in the vegetarian days, Morningstar veggie crumbles) cooked with taco seasoning, kidney beans, lettuce, tomato, crumbled tortilla chips, cheese, and Kraft Catalina dressing. This would all be combined and then spooned into tortillas to be eaten burrito-style. But after Justin introduced me to this Taco Salad, it took on some subtle changes in response to my veggie-loving ways, and came to look something like this: Mom's Taco Salad 1 medium onion, chopped 10-12 white mushrooms, sliced To taste: garlic powder, chili powder, oregano, salt, cayenne pepper 1 bag Morningstar veggie crumbles 1.5 cups cooked kid...

For the past week, in omelettes and egg sandwiches and baked goods, we've been enjoying these beauties, in shades of warm brown and soft blue-ish white: And while enjoying our food, we've also thought about the beauties (both human and galline ) who provided these eggs for our pleasure: Meet Phoenix (on the left in the photo above) and Big Red (in the middle). They're a couple of fine birds, who live just a mile away from us, in a surprisingly cushy coop, where they bed down in warm straw and are fed delicious sprouts: It's been really exciting for us to find a source for eggs that are produced by chickens tended by two of our good friends, whose chicken-raising practices are impeccable.  Finding food producers we trust so deeply is high on our list of priorities, and this has been a really welcome start on the egg front, though Phoenix and Big Red aren't quite producing enough to carry us all the way through (we'll have to wait for their family's expan...

Nearly every Saturday night, Justin plays guitar and sings folk and indie songs for two hours at a sandwich chain on State Street, Potbelly Sandwich Shop . And nearly every Saturday night, we split a Big Pizza Sandwich on Wheat with no pepperoni, but with mushrooms, cheese, tomato sauce, lettuce, tomato, hot peppers, and Italian seasoning. It's the standard--the thing we always get, unchanging from week to week. And yet, last week, I approached the Potbelly to find this sign on the front door: And although the Potbelly was apologizing, I was jumping up and down with excitement and clapping my hands, saying yeah! Finally an acknowledgment by a chain restaurant that foods change from season to season! That there's no reason that we should expect to have the same toppings on our sandwiches, day in, day out! That our food comes from a place where it is grown in the ground (usually)! And that the ground in which this food is grown is part of a larger ecosystem, a larger environ...

The list below is re-posted from the awesome site www.defendwisconsin.org , run by the TAA .  Because there has been such an outpouring of support for the protests and rallies by local businesses, it's important for us to thank them with our patronage. The following Madison businesses, among others, have provided food or other supplies for the sit-in and sleep-in at the capitol: Art Gecko (608) 280-0853 Capital Centre Market (608) 255-2616 Cargo Coffee (608) 268-0597 Chautara (608) 251-3626 Community Pharmacy (608) 251-3242 The Cooper’s Tavern (608) 256-1600 El Pastor (608) 280-8898 EVP (608) 294-6868 Falbo’s (608) 255-9090 Fromagination (608) 255-2430 Himal Chuli (608) 251-9225 Ian’s Pizza (608) 257-9248 Indie Coffee (608) 259-9621 James J. Chocolates (877) 526-3752 Just Coffee (608) 204-9011 Ma Cha (608) 442-0500 Marigold Kitchen (608) 661-5559 Mermaid Cafe (608) 249-9719 Nature’s Bakery (608) 257-3649 Regent Street Market Co-op (608) 233-4...