Michael Pollan at TED

I’ve talked about Michael Pollan here before. I consider his books some of the most life-changing books I’ve read, and sometimes I feel like I’m on a little personal mission to get everyone in the world to read them. This TED video is a great introduction to his ideas, and to the idea of truly sustainable farming. I grinned the whole time I watched it.

I hope that you’ll pass this video along. Share it with everyone you know! This one is definitely an idea worth spreading.

UPDATE: WordPress won’t let me embed the video from TED, for reasons I can’t quite fathom. You can watch it on the TED website for now. Hopefully I’ll figure out how to embed it when I have more time.

UPDATE AGAIN: The video is available through the YouTubes, which I can embed, so here you go:

Michael Pollan and Allandale Farms

I recently had a life-changing experience. Well, it wasn’t so much AN experience as several of them, in quick succession. And they were experiences as much as sitting on a couch reading can really be an experience. But I feel that my head has been turned around, and something that was only minimally important to me before has become a serious kitchen priority. And that something is organic.

I guess you could say all of this started in late January, when Michael Pollan published an article in the New York Times. “Unhappy Meals” made the rounds pretty quickly and inspired much conversation. Of course, I read it and instantly forwarded it to Crystal. It was one of those articles that made me think, “Everyone needs to read this!” But I long ago learned that I can’t make people read anything, no matter how important I think it is. I stopped harping on people about it, and it was mostly forgotten.

A few weeks ago, I read Don’t Eat This Book, Morgan Spurlock’s elaboration on Super Size Me. Nothing particularly revelatory in there. After all, I did read Fast Food Nation. Twice. But it had the effect of focusing my attention, like a magnifying glass catching the sun and setting things on fire. I could feel it. I was going to become obsessed.

Good thing, because I can’t afford to put expensive wine in my spaghetti sauce

I just read this article at the New York Times and I feel a bit vindicated. I have long held that the adage to never cook with a wine you wouldn’t drink should not be the kitchen gospel it is. First, you’re putting it over hot fire, which immediately renders it a different glass of wine altogether. Second, you’re mixing it with other things that are likely more flavorful than the wine itself, and you don’t really want the wine to stand out that much, anyway. Third, I’m poor and can’t afford to go pouring the good wine into the sauce, instead of into my belly, where it belongs.

Julia Moskin does some extensive kitchen experimentation to prove, to my mind beyond a doubt, that cheap wine in your risotto (and whatever else you’re cooking) is a-ok.

The Science of Food Stuffs

Harold McGee, the author of On Food and Cooking, has a new column in the NY Times: The Curious Cook. I’ve been slowly trying to get my way through On Food and Cooking. It’s really a cool book if you’re interested in knowing what happens to food when cooks do various cooking things to it, and I think that if I manage to read the whole thing I’ll be a better cook. That’s the theory anyway. It’s kind of dense, though.

This new column could be a way to get the McGee goodness in smaller, more palatable doses. I’ll still try to do battle with the book, though–it will be defeated!

Drinking with Babies

This week, the NYT addresses something I’ve always been peculiarly interested in: how much drinkin’ is too much drinkin’ when you’re With Child? In the grand tradition of American Fear Mongering, we’ve been taught to think that if a pregnant lady has even a sip of wine she’s dooming her childto mental retardation, and maybe she should be locked up. We’re never good at drawing lines between moderation and abuse, and with that knowledge in mind, I’ve always thought that the French probably have the right idea–a few drinks (not hard liquor) a week is probably fine.

It seems some obstetricians (unofficially) agree. I appreciate Julia Moskin, the author, for being really upfront about the realities of being preggers, and still wanting to have a beer with your husband at the end of the day. And frankly, I think that if a lady is giving birth to anothing human being, she’s responsible enough to make her own decisions about her own body.