JONTILLMAN.COM | part of the problem since 1976

Wow, it’s been a while since I posted anything about food or the garden or anything tasty, really. Life has had other plans for me than sitting around with the computer, but now that I am on a bit of a break before diving into new projects, let me catch you up:
The garden continues to [...]

As an avid reader of “foodie” blogs, I run across articles like this one all the time, and I’m really not sure why they even exist. How hard is it to not waste food, particularly if you like food enough to read a food blog?
Everyone occasionally has a few leftovers or some fresh herbs that [...]

The locavore movement has been misunderstood, perhaps willfully, by quite a few people. Newspapers characterize it as being simplistically, or militantly, focused on food-miles and ignoring the “fiendishly tricky business” of balancing your carbon emissions on your dinner plate.
Never mind that many of the objections raised in the above Guardian article are canards. Environmentally-sound growing [...]

From my old home state of North Carolina comes a six-part expose on the poultry industry, documenting the lives of North Carolina’s 28,000 poultry workers. Editor Rick Thames kicks off the series with a searing editorial that compares these workers, mostly illegal immigrants with few rights, to the South’s most notorious historical underclass. But it [...]

Everyone who visits New Orleans that loves food ends up at Central Grocery (923 Decatur Street, French Quarter) eating a Muffuletta. If you’re like me, you took some home too. The problem is in getting a proper Muff outside of New Orleans, a concern of all of us who are fans of the sandwich but [...]

Barbera over at Tigers & Strawberries wrote an interesting piece on Hunters and Locavores. She says at the end of the article:
Hunters here are pretty much what I would classically call a locavore, in the most visceral and true sense possible. They go out, find their meat on the hoof, stalk it, kill it, field [...]

Daily Dining
Food on the brain today as the planning of the 2008 garden swings into high gear. Compost is cooking away, the plots are laid out (we’re using Square Foot) this time, and the long list of crops is in hand. We have also reorganized the frozen food storage over the last few days and [...]

Daily Dining
Okay, so I skipped breakfast today, which is never a good idea. The remainder of todays foods were down-home favorites - simple foods I grew up with and have always had an affinity for.

breakfast ▼

3 cups of Sumatra Mandheling coffee
2 tsp sugar

lunch ▼

1 cup leftover Brunswick Stew

dinner ▼

1 slice Meatloaf
1 cup Boiled Potatoes
1 cup [...]

Daily Dining
Today’s eating was dominated by Sunday Dinner, done on a German theme this week, and quite delicious, if I do say so myself.

breakfast ▼

Coffee: 3 cups
Sugar cube: 2

dinner ▼

Schweinepfeffer (Paprika Pork Stew): 1.5 serving
Onion Rye Bread: 2 slices
Westphalischer Kirschkuchen (Westphalian Cherry Cake): 2 pieces

supper ▼

Westphalischer Kirschkuchen (Westphalian Cherry Cake): 1 piece

Today’s Weight: 202 lb

Daily Dining
I think I might just enjoy this whole food diary thing, so I have been playing around a bit with how to make it a more enjoyable topic for postings, starting with a snazzy layout. Let me know what you think.

breakfast ▼

Coffee: 3 cups
Sugar cube: 2
Fried Bologna Sandwich

Fried Bologna slice: 2
Cheese: 1
Over-medium egg: 1
Bread:2 [...]

Daily Dining
I think I might just enjoy this whole food diary thing, so I have been playing around a bit with how to make it a more enjoyable topic for postings, starting with a snazzy layout. Let me know what you think.

breakfast ▼

Coffee: 3
Smoked Sausage: 1
Grits: 1/4 cup (uncooked)

dinner ▼

Pear Cake: 1 slice

supper ▼

Red Beans [...]

Jenn and I are on a quest to trim the old waist-lines, and are beginning with a modest food diary in order to get a handle on what we actually eat. I’ll be posting a daily list of my consumption along with my weight for the day. So, here goes.
Today’s Food:

coffee: x3
sugar cube: x5
half & [...]

Imagine an America where millions of people left their cars at home and rode their bicycles to work, grew their own food in their yards, recycled so much that you couldn’t find litter on the streets, repaired things instead of replacing them and generally lived lives of frugal conservation instead of profligate consumption.
Sounds like a [...]

This little gem is a real find! In addition to being a proper drinking den (Milton Brewery goodies and STRONG ale on tap), it has a laid-back student vibe to it that, in the States, I associated with good independent coffee houses.
There is a Bar Billiards table, a total of eight real ales on tap, [...]

Smack dab in the middle of the Columbia Road Flower Market stands what can only be described as the trendiest cake shop in all of London; Treacle.
In a sort of campy homage to the British post-war urban tea house, Treacle makes no chintzy pretensions to ‘proper village tea’. This is proper East End builder’s tea, [...]

The Queens is perhaps the perfect expression of the “East End Dive” pub. From the old gent in the wheelchair waiting to get in at opening time to the inevitable OAP drunk by mid-afternoon ready to have a go at everyone who walks in to the crushing crowds on match day (it is across from [...]

The Prospect of Whitby may very well be the most famous pub in London, or anywhere, for that matter. Originally built in 1543, and quickly became so famous as a hangout for smugglers and other assorted villains that it was christened the ‘Devil’s Tavern‘. Rebuilt in the eighteenth century after a fire on the premises, [...]

Now here is a pub that is a bona fide piece of east London history. On March 8th, 1966, Ronnie Kray murdered rival gangster George Cornell, shooting him through the eye.
Accroding to The London Companion by Jo Swinnerton, this is also where Bulldog Wallis, a pickpocket and ruffian, killed a man by pushing an [...]

Standing mere yards from Aldgate East station, The Hoop & Grapes is truly one of the old school of London pubs. Built sometime in 1640 as a private house, it barely escaped the Great Fire of 1666, which stopped just yards from its door.
After the fire wooden buildings were forbidden in the City and now [...]

There isn’t a product out there that is as silly (or cynical) as bottled still water. Sparkling water I can understand, it really isn’t available anywhere else, but bottled still water? Does anyone actually think that there is something better about it than plain old tap water?
Obviously, yes, quite a lot of people do. That [...]