Dining and Opining

  What an opportunity! Apply by April 1 for a $10,000 Fellowship to produce a piece on food and farming, to be edited by Michael Pollan and other leading editors!  How I wish I had the qualifications of a real journalist (and the time!) to apply.  But maybe one of you will?  All the details here: http://journalism.berkeley.edu/projects/foodfellows/ CLICK HERE FOR THE ONLINE APPLICATION

  Mark your calendars for this very exciting Madison food event: Madison Food Camp!  Saturday, April 13, 2013 from 9:00 AM to 4:30 PM   Sign Up, And See More Details Here This one day event will bring together people from the community to share knowledge on all thigns food.  Exciting topics like gardening, bee keeping, fermenting, canning, chicken wrangling, foraging, permaculture, raw food preparation, cheese making, brewing, composting, and more!  $10 gets you in for the whole day.  The organizers also welcome others who are interested in presenting. Sign Up

[Update: I tried to embed the videos, but for some reason, they all autostart automatically. Since that gets kind of annoying, I just posted linked images instead. So, if you click on the image, a video player will pop up in another window. If anyone knows how to change the code so the videos don't autostart, let me know, and I'll embed them once again!] The food magazine, Saveur,* has an awesome video festival going on right now. You can register to vote on your favorite video in one of several categories, or you can just go watch them all without registering!** The categories are Ultra Short Form ; How-To & Recipe ; Documentary ; Animation/Experimental ; and Culinary Travel . Madison's own Underground Food Collective has a beautiful video, " Matambre " in the "How To & Recipe" category, so they've certainly got my vote:  But here are a few other of my favorite videos: "Rebuilding Vegetables" by Leon Hidalgo, in Ultr...

You've all probably seen this Dodge Superbowl ad by now, in which a speech from conservative radio commentator Paul Harvey, "God Made a Farmer" is overlaid on a bunch of beautiful images of [mostly] white American farmers: but have you seen this one , which offers a much-needed commentary on the predominance of Latino farmworkers in America? Or this one, "God Made a Factory Farmer," which brilliantly comments on the actual state of American agriculture, and on the overt advertising ploy of Dodge? God Made A Factory Farmer - watch more funny videos A final, much-needed response is this series of beautifully-curated photographs on the "History of America's Migrant Farmers."

Slow Food USA has just announced that it has hired a new Executive Director: Richard McCarthy, of Crescent City Farmers Market in New Orleans.   Richard McCarthy Earlier this year, the then-Executive Director of Slow Food USA, Josh Viertel, left the organization. The cause of his departure, at least in part, was a divide in the Slow Food community about what the primary goals of the organization should be. Because Viertel had been emphasizing the social justice elements of the food movement, some traditionalists within Slow Food thought he was turning away from the organization's roots, from its original emphasis on the aesthetic pleasures of good food. As Viertel wrote in a January 2012 Atlantic article, "The Soul of Slow Food" : This shift has prompted some important and difficult conversations. Lately it has bubbled over into controversy . Some people worry we are turning our backs on our roots. Some people say we are being more faithful to them. The...

My brush with fame came last week at the American Historical Association (AHA) annual meeting in New Orleans. There, I got to briefly meet, and take a photo with, Michael Pollan! This famed writer, scholar, and food movement leader has been one of my most important influences over the last seven years, shaping my interests, intellectually and personally. He was at this professional conference (of a profession not at all his own), on the invitation of my graduate school mentor and AHA President, Bill Cronon . One of themes of this year's AHA, and of Bill's presidency, was "The Public Practice of History in and for the Digital Age." And because Michael Pollan is one of those people who manages to use history in fascinating and useful ways, without himself being a trained historian, his take on "public history" is a deeply valuable one. Pollan spoke at two different sessions at the conference, both moderated by Bill Cronon, both of deep interest to me:...