Oh dear doG it is too early to already be on the airport parking lot shuttle.

Nosh natter?

Pollan, Produce, and Pesticides?

My food theories, let me show you them (ie, my garden has a flavor)?

I like My Garden Has a Flavor.

Anyone who doesn't know that you can't take your 1 liter bottle of water through security please raise your hand so that I may shove said bottle forcibly into the bodily orifice of your choosing.

Anyone who doesn't know that you can't take your 1 liter bottle of water through security please raise your hand so that I may shove said bottle forcibly into the bodily orifice of your choosing

I think that's too long for blogspot to accept, but thanks!

My Garden Has a Flavor

I like this a whole lot, although I'm not quite sure it's the blog in my head -- it sounds to me more like the hedonist-foodie side of things than the activist-foodie side, if that makes sense. And I love that stuff, but I'm not sure the world needs another blog on how sweet and succulent organic heirloom tomatoes are. I want that as the counterbalance to my place to rant about food waste, and land waste in modern suburbia, and climate change, and crappy food supply issues in poor neighborhoods, and the loss of food wisdom through homogenization, and why Whole Foods sucks, and community gardens, and baptist eating, and food policy, and food economics, and.... Bonus points for names using "dirt" or "roots".

What in the world is baptist eating?

Well there's no dancing at the table.

What in the world is baptist eating?

Nothing specifically theological - more of a shorthand for the way my in-laws and a whole lot of people I've met like them eat. Lots of cream-soup casseroles, sugar, white starch, meat at every meal, processed everything, very few vegetables, even fewer veg that aren't iceberg lettuce; deeply mistrustful of foodie culture as an urban librul thing, but also instinctively convinced that their mothers' victory gardens were more ethical and frugal than what they get when they do all their shopping at Wal-mart (which they also do for a whole contradictory mess of cultural and values reasons); no more than a generation from the farm, but never actually eating the products of their own farms (even in the cases where those products are human-edible, which frequently isn't the case).

(And to be clear, the Why Whole Food Sucks rant is about just as big a bundle of paradoxes on the yuppie-urban-foodie side.)

Seriously, if I could buy yogurt that had sugar not HfCS in it, I'd consider it a great victory.

Trader Joe's yogurt is made with sugar and inulin, not HFCS. FYI.

Rather more she's in complete disagreement with how the rest of the country lives.

Paycheck to paycheck, in a place where the kitchen is a closet, the garden could be shoehorned into two square feet of window sill, you have other things to do with your life than spend it on the zen of cooking, and you can either buy three day's worth of pure, wholesome, morally correct food or two week's worth of something that will keep people alive and hopefully somewhat satisfied.

I am not saying everyone should eat the way Alice Waters says, but it's not the worst idea. And saying "it's not the way the world is" is like saying that "violence is part of cities, especially inner cities." It's true. But it doesn't, to me, mean we should not strive for something more healthy and sustainable.

I don't think that connie -- or anyone -- saying that Alice Waters comes off as having an unrealistic view of how the majority of Americans live is the same thing as saying that therefore we shouldn't strive to change it.

Moving towards a more healthy and sustainable way of producing/preparing/eating food is a good thing. But it doesn't mean that people living below the poverty line, who have to decide between paying rent, buying medicine, and buying groceries can't feel frustrated at someone who advocates buying organic, free-range, locally grown food and/or having your own garden.

I think it's frustrating as hell, and I'm aware that I'm very privileged in that I'm able to basically buy organic, free-range, locally grown food whenever I want.

I guess what I'm saying is yeah, promote a more healthy and sustainable way of producing/preparing/eating food. Do what you can to move towards it. But don't dismiss people for whom it's unrealistic to achieve at this time.

Once upon a time, in my childhood, my mother used to make what we all called "Baptist Brownies" -- which were basically just blonde brownies. My mother used to explain the name as a way of indicating the Baptists didn't know what was good (i.e., more chocolate is always better) but the real reason was this was short-hand for the fact that the recipe was in the cookbook she had bought from the Baptist church fundraiser.

So, I lived in Berkeley 4 blocks from Chez Panisse, and while I think it's true that Alice suffers from being out of touch with real people and what it's like to raise a family on 40K, I know that because she raised the issues and the bar around Berkeley that it is possible to make better choices there more cheaply than it is here in the DC area. She raised the consciousness in people, and the demand for local produce. Even without using her label choices, we had better things available to us for less money than we have to pay here for them.