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 [...]
Beyond Food Miles - A Locavore Apologetics
Daily Dining
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
Daily Dining
Okay, so I have been corrected as to the proper Southern usage of Dinner and Supper. Dinner is the largest meal of the day regardless of when it is served, and supper is the small meal after (and only after) dinner.
So you can have Lunch and then Dinner or Dinner and then Supper, but [...]
Daily Dining
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 [...]
More Bacon Goodness
I have many times pointed out my love of all things bacon, so I was happy to find that Vosges Haut-Chocolate offers a milk chocolate bar laced with smoked Applewood bacon bits:
Crisp, buttery, compulsively irresistible bacon and milk chocolate combination has long been a favorite of mine. I started playing with this combination at the [...]
Bacontarianism
Okay, so I have something of a fascination with bacon-related products, having recently mentioned Bacon Mints, Chocolate-Covered Bacon, Bacon Toffee, and Chicken-Fried Bacon. Now, in honor of my love for all things bacon, and to celebrate my return from the bacon wasteland that is the UK, I have become a Bacontarian.
Adding to my already odd [...]
Farmers Markets Cheaper Than Supermarkets?
There has been a little flood recently of items concerning the costs of shopping at farmers markets instead of supermarkets. Meg Hourihan points to some conclusions from a business-statistics class at Seattle University. Meanwhile, over at Becks & Posh, Sam has come to the same conclusion.
For my part, even ignoring the cost/value of known provenance, [...]
Food Deserts & Urban Farming
Food deserts are ‘areas of relative exclusion where people experience physical and economic barriers to accessing healthy food’. They are a growing problem in both the US and the UK, and likely elsewhere in the world, but those two countries are the places I have encountered them.
Food deserts are a result of the ever-larger super- [...]
A Big Kitchen
If you look in architectural magazines or cooking magazines, kitchens have become enormous, high-tech wonders; ads show monster appliances, triple ovens and fridges big enough to park a cow in. I will admit to having been drawn into big kitchen lust — taken in by kitchen porn. I spent quite a bit of time complaining [...]
Welcome To The Fattest Place In Europe
This comes as no suprise to me, but I am sure that all over Britian, little indignant gasps and “tut tut”s are being heard as the weeble-wobble people of Europe discover that with respect to girth at least, they might as well be Americans.
I find it particularly amusing because the British are, to borrow their [...]
Thirteen Vegetarian Meals
As I have been exploring my relationship to my food again, I have been flirting somewhat with vegetarianism.
Vegetarianism still makes a lot of people wonder what it is that you eat, even though the vast majority of all dishes in the world could be considered ‘vegetarian’.
With that in mind, here are thirteen of my favorite [...]
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
In the New York Times Magazine last week, Michael Pollan wrote an article entitled Unhappy Meals, in which he blasts the prevalent particularly American and reductionist approach to looking at food that turns everything into pseudo-scientific “essential nutrients”.
Instead of this “nutritionism” as he calls it, he counsels a more realistic view of eating, based on [...]
Post Punk Kitchen Videos
Earlier I mentioned the Post Punk Kitchen, the public access punk rock vegan cooking show from Brooklyn. Now I can share the love, via Google video. Enjoy!
Additionally, they run a vegan cupcake blog, a very funny commentary blog, and are generally funny and amusing and stuff. I will definitely be picking up a copy [...]
The Post-Punk Kitchen
As Jenn and I get our eating habits under control, we seem to be inching closer and closer to veganism. Now, thanks to Isa Chandra Moskowitz, we have inched that much closer.
Like me, Isa grew up in the 1990’s punk scene, and everyone from that generation seems to be turning farther and farther away from [...]
13 Things About Weight Loss
As part of my 101 in 1001 project, I have set myself the task of determining and then reaching my ideal healthy weight.
This project has turned out to be a real eye-opener; showing me some things about my diet and eating habits that I would never have guessed.
Here then are thirteen things I have learned [...]
Food Measuring Smart Plate
A plate that complains about how much you eat
Bacon Toffee
Bacon Toffee
Chicken Fried Bacon
Chicken Fried Bacon
Autumn Comes To London
The temperatures are dropping, the rain is picking up, and the air has that unmistakable crispness to it (when it’s not raining, that is) that signals the arrival of Autumn and threatens the winter that comes after.
It was a couple of days ago that I first noticed the crispness, the snap to the air, and [...]
Interesting Frugal Food Stuff
I consider myself reasonably frugal when it comes to food, though I am nowhere near as penny-pinching as some people in this category. As I have said before, I do not believe that lower grocery bills are the point of living deliberately and frugally.
However, I am aware that the grocery bill is, by far, the [...]
Change Your Relationship To Your Food - Step 9
The ninth and final installment of our series on developing a better relationship with your food.
Internet Connected Appliances Save Money?
According to an Information Week article, there is a test going on in Washington and Oregon to use real-time pricing data to let people make smarter choices about energy use.
The GridWise Initiative, led by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, is testing dryers, thermostats, and water heaters that are wirelessly connected to a server, which uses [...]
Cottage Cheese Cornbread
This is my families favorite cornbread, and a way of making it that I haven’t ever seen outside of us, so I thought I would share. Give it a try!
Yield: 8 servings
2 cups self-rising corn meal mix
24oz large curd cottage cheese
2 tbsp granulated sugar
3/4 cup whole milk or buttermilk
1 egg
2 tbsp bacon grease
preheat oven to [...]
Brunswick Stew
This is one of my mothers classic recipes.
Yield: 4-6 servings
3 lbs. chicken (can be whole chicken, breast quarters, or leg quarters)
Tomatoes – 1 can diced or sliced with liquid
Corn – whole kernel, one can, with liquid
Potatoes – peeled & diced, about 3
Green lima beans – 10 oz. frozen
Onion – medium, chopped (it goes in raw)
Salt [...]
Basic Kitchen Equipment
It is impractical to create a comprehensive list of every conceivable piece of kitchen equipment one might want, since every cooks’ needs are different. However, there are some basic pieces of equipment that are in pretty much every cooks’ kitchen. You should always buy the best quality you can afford, as many of these items [...]
Tourain Blanchi
This is a very simple, yet soul-satisfying French soup, and a favorite at my house.
Yield: 2-3 servings
1 tbsp goose or duck fat
4-8 cloves garlic, sliced
1 tbsp flour
1 egg, separated
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
salt & black pepper
16oz water
Melt goose/duck fat in a large saucepan over low heat
Add garlic and soften
Boil water
Stir flour into the fat/garlic and [...]
Decode Your Fruit
Have you ever noticed the little stickers on the fruit at the grocery store? In addition to the type of fruit it is and where it comes from, there is a number usually printed on the sticker. The April Food & Wine has, on p.72, an explanation:
“[T]he sticker labels on fruit: The numbers tell you [...]
More on Restaurants and Home-Cooking
I have given some more thought to what I wrote yesterday about cooking at home instead of going out to a restaurant, and thanks to Seattle Simplicity’s post about her upcoming $243 dinner at The Herbfarm I am now able to explain in greater detail why our change recent of attitude towards restaurants made me [...]
Jon 1, Restaurant 0
We have been making an effort to be more cost and value conscious when making purchasing decisions as a part of our new deliberate lifestyle, but there is one area where that is extrememely hard for us: restaurants.
We have been able to internalize and “own” (to use the hip business term) most all of our [...]
Kitchen Gardening
It has been many years (since I was a child) since my family has had a garden, but this Spring (very soon now in South Carolina), my wife and I will be reviving the tradition and providing more of our own food by the product of our own hands. This has gotten me thinking of [...]
These are the ramblings of 