Photo: smith/Flickr
Today on On Point, host Tom Ashbrook speaks with columnist and food writer Gustavo Arellano about the rise of Mexican food in the U.S. — the takeover, really. Did you know that nachos out-sell hotdogs at baseball parks?
Cultural and culinary integration — and authenticity — is the topic. Fresh ingredients and well-seasoned food is the key. Listen here.
(And take a peek at Jaime Lutz’s most recent Food Therapy post: mollejas tacos on the menu!
Photo: Courtesy of ScribnerTracie McMillan.
America’s obesity rate is still the highest in the world. The government knows this – it spends more than a billion dollars every year on nutrition education. And we, too, know this. We know that fruits and vegetables and whole grains and olive oil are healthy; we know that sweets and saturated fat aren’t. In other words, we’re a country that knows how to eat well.
So why don’t we?
“One reason that it’s hard, I think, is that junk food is easy, cheap and everywhere,” said Tracie McMillan, author of the new book The American Way of Eating. “Healthy food is none of those things.”McMillan knows this deeply. For the book, she worked undercover at three typical food industry jobs – at Walmart, Applebee’s and a peach farm. Predictably, her diet suffered.
“I definitely saw how if I stayed in those jobs longer, it would have gotten worse,” she said. “The less control I had over my work life, the less empowered I felt to make decisions over diet and health. When I worked shifts at Walmart – which I would say was my most unpleasant job – I really was getting to the point where I was like, ‘screw it, I don’t care.’” Frozen meals, she said, felt “easier” than salad on days when she felt exhausted.
McMillan, a fellow at Brandeis’ Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, thinks the problem with how America eats isn’t entirely our fault. Instead, the fault lies with our institutions. Continue reading
Dorothy was right. Did she also cook? (photo: jonfeinstein/Flickr)
For the past four months I have been on the road, traveling with my new book Notes from a Maine Kitchen. I’ve been on airplanes and buses, trains and cars. I’ve seen the West Coast and the East — hiked through the hills of northern California and a park in Seattle with stunning views, and talked about my book in crowded rooms in New York City. I have eaten some extraordinary food along the way in some very talked-about restaurants.
But now I am home.
As I drove north from NYC last week after an intense six days of talking and signing books, and talking and eating in restaurants, I crossed the Piscataqua River into Maine. At that moment I imagined a camera sailing along above the car, focusing first on the blue waters of the river, then the pine trees, then the clean air Maine offers abundantly, but which seems in short supply in other parts of the country. This imaginary camera next zoomed in on the car, and on me. You can see me wiping away a tear (well, maybe more than one), emotional at my homecoming and so deeply grateful to live in such a gorgeous place.
Once I got home and petted my dog for what seemed like hours (I missed that girl a whole lot and needed to let her know), I unpacked, did laundry and checked up on hundreds on emails. But there was really only one thing I wanted to do: I wanted/needed to get back into my kitchen. Continue reading
Tortillas. Photo: Little Blue Hen/Flickr
You think you’re an adventurous eater, but have you tried sweetbread – in other words, cow glands?
Sounds gross, but prepared the right way, they’re chewy and meaty and delicious (and this is coming from a person who is occasionally grossed out by the modern chef’s apparently boundless enthusiasm for random acts of butchery. For instance: I would not recommend head cheese).
These mollejas tacos from Homesick Texan look like a good introduction to sweetbreads, for the skeptic. Consider that the first time my boyfriend tried snails, they were also in a taco. A tortilla and some pico de gallo can make pretty much any sundry food look appetizing.
Photo: Lizbeth*King/Flickr
LOCAL BITES
Notes from Maine
At 7pm on Wednesday, April 11, Here & Now’s resident chef Kathy Gunst will be “in residence” — featured at Porter Square Books in a reading/signing event for her cookbook Notes from a Maine Kitchen. You’ll recognize Kathy’s name from the pages of PRK as well. Head over and meet her!
Dine & Donate
This month Blue on Highland in Needham will allow you to donate part of your check to a local school or non-profit. If you dine-in or order take-out on Sundays, you can specify where the donation goes, including: St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Dana-Farber’s The Jimmy Fund, Chickering School PTO in Dover, or the Needham Education Foundation. Dine and donate!
Boston-CA Vineyard Connection
On Saturday, April 14, from 12-5 PM The Wine ConneXtion in North Andover will host Peter Merriam, local resident from Boxford, MA, and founder of Merriam Vineyards in CA’s Russian River Valley. Merriam produces Bordeaux-style wines, which will be yours for the tasting.
A Quaffable Edible Meet-Up
On April 23, 6-8pm, join Brooklyn Brewery and the staff of award-winning Edible Boston at Local 149 in Southie for the first of four “Quarterly Carousels” — a meet-up of beer lovers, local food producers and Edible Boston readers. RSVP to events@edibleboston.net. Continue reading
Photo: geishaboy500/Flickr
Some of the most beautiful Easter Eggs I’ve seen online to date come from TheKitchn. Perhaps what gets me is the shine, but there’s no doubt that these hard-boiled eggs naturally colored using beets, red cabbage, yellow and red onion skins, etc., are gorgeous.
After you read the post and get a handle on what’s involved, cull through the comments left by those who have followed the recipe. You’ll learn that the dyes leave no residual taste. These are, in the final analysis, utterly edible eggs — after the hunt is over, as you sit for Easter Sunday brunch. Sorry, Paas.
Photo: jlodder/Flickr
Even though I celebrate Easter, not Passover, I made a classic, spontaneous purchase at the grocery store last night and grabbed a box of matzah from the display shelf at Trader Joes. Not only do I want my kids to try matzah, I really want all of us to try matzah brei.
Maybe a simple rendition of matzah brei is the best intro to this most traditional of Passover foods. But I am taken with the Coconut Matzah Brei created by Katherine Romanow, who writes the Eating Jewish column for the Jewish Women’s Archive blog “Jewesses with Attitude.” Katherine uses macaroons as the launching point for her post, gives a bit of historical context (love this), then shares the recipe, which calls for vanilla and almond extract as a complement to the coconut flavor.
What’s your favorite version of traditional matzah brei?
Black currants, high in Vitamin C (photo: GlennFleishman/Flickr)
On this day in…
1932
C.G. King and W.A. Waugh isolate vitamin C.
1939
Merck, Sharp & Dohme announce the synthesis of vitamin B6.
1887
William Rose, biochemist, who established the importance of amino acids, is born.
The Backstory
Disclaimer: the WHOLE backstory would take pages, so here are a few nuggets to take away: Continue reading
Photo: a_b_normal123/Flickr
Early in January Rachael Herz, psychologist, neuroscientist and leading expert on the psychology of smell, was featured on On Point in a discussion about what disgusts us and why — the premise of her book That’s Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion. Herz’s conversation with host Tom Ashbrook was wide-ranging and fascinating, taking into consideration how all five of our senses, the driving emotion of fear and the fact of our mortality come together to shape what we find gross.
Below, Anne Fishel, whom we hear from on occasion at PRK, touches on Herz’s findings and additional studies that attempt to explain why some foods disgust one person and delight another. Fishel shares some thoughts on how to coax the picky eater, especially the young ones, into trying and liking foods once kept at arm’s length.
Anne K. Fishel, Ph.D.
The Family Dinner Project
One of my young adult sons called me recently to rave about a Japanese dinner he’d had with his brother.
“What was the best part of the meal?” I asked. After a pause during which I could almost hear him salivating, he said: “Either the beef tartar topped with raw quail egg, or the raw Kobe beef served with raw urchin. Can’t decide.”
My first thought was, “How disgusting.”
And then, in a more contemplative mood, I wondered why are my sons’ palettes so much more adventurous than mine, when they share my genes and grew up with my cooking? Continue reading
Photo: L. Marie/Flickr
People go nuts over Peeps this week — ’tis peep season, after all.
But if you really want to go wild, Shauna Seaver’s book Marshmallow Madness! is your ticket to sugar heaven. Seaver spoke with Here & Now’s Robin Young about making marshmallows at home and the sticky, sugary-sweet varieties (oreos? Liqueurs, anyone?) you’ll find in her book. Here & Now invited its own tasters to the studio to see how the homemade varieties compared to store-bought. The average age of the tasters is 9.5 years old, but they sound like pros. Listen to the story.
If you want to stick with a basic peeps recipe but get a little fancy on the outside, Boston blogger and sweets diva Buttercream Blondie has posted Glamour Peeps 2.0 — her own recipe and tips for making peeps at home, complete with DISCO DUST!!
As Seaver warns, ‘This is candy we’re making. Not breakfast.’