Got a lot of time to read/watch a lot of stuff about food?

Granted, “a lot of time” is relative. Maybe 30-45 minutes, total. Two things:
Consider the Lobster, an article by David Foster Wallace who just died recently and apparently is some kind of good writer, and
Cookbook Peddler, a video interview (in like 8 parts) about a guy who really cares about cookbooks. Oh, and he walloped Barnes and Noble.

The first one is just interesting, and ethically challenging in that animal-rights sense. Read the footnotes (although you can just read them after, you don’t have to keep cross-referencing).

The second is cool (go this guy!) because it unites two things I like: small, specialized businesses; and food. It’s a little scary, though, because he says, basically, recipes won’t work. The whole idea of thinking about food in a “pull” sense (that is, saying “I want fettucine alfredo, so I’ll look up a recipe and then go to the grocery store and buy the ingredients”) is wrong, and will only further mess up our relationship with food. My current thought is that the recipe way is better than not cooking at all.

Here’s a good time to outline what I challenge/encourage you in particular to do about food, now that I’ve thought about it a little more, and then I’ll get back to work: Kick it up one notch. If you’re a fast-food-and-tv-dinners type, go to the grocery store and make recipes. If you’re a grocery-stores-and-recipes type, go to the farmers' market and experiment. (course, if there are no farmers' markets around, because it is after all December, then go to the grocery store and experiment, but buy organic/local/sustainable/humane/etc food as much as you can.)

Enough about food! It’s snowing here in Seattle. Apparently that is rare, but it is also very neat.


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