Spot-On: Sustainability Redefined

Sustainability: of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged. - Meriam-Webster Online.

The definition above isn't wrong, but, it seems to me, it is incomplete, at least when it comes to food (and probably everything else) since it's too focused on micro-effects as opposed to macro-effects.

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Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin d weeks | spot-on | sustainability

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Spot-On: The Cost of Eating

You may not have noticed, but food prices actually started going up over two years ago. I was acutely aware of the trend because I was watching the average food costs for my clients climb from 30 percent to 40 percent by the end of last summer. Because I charge a flat rate for food and service I was also watching my income decline. So last August I bumped my prices up. I'm already almost back to a 40 percent food cost. (Note: I buy from grocery stores just like you do.)

You can read the complete article at Spot-On.

Technorati: Food | essay | kevin d weeks | spot-on | food economics

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Spot-On: A Food Face

Best I can figure is that I have a food face. I was in the market the other day, looking for a good bunch of asparagus when the woman next to me asked, "How do you cook asparagus?" She went on to say, "My husband doesn't like it so I've never cooked it, but I really like it and I decided to just buy some and make it for me."

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Spot-On: More Insanity from the U.S.D.A.

Most bureaucracies are famed for their lack of imagination, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture manages to consistently confound that dismal notion by finding new ways to control what we eat and who we buy it from. How the U.S.D.A. plans to regulate the farmers from whom I buy locally-raised meats is a good example of this ineptitude

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Spot-On: Urban Farming

What makes someone tear up his front yard and plant vegetables? Why do people want to grow vegetables a mile from the White House or raise chickens in Brooklyn? I mean, it's gotta be ugly during the winter and early spring, and I can tell you from experience that a vegetable garden is an order of magnitude more work than a lawn.

You can read the complate article at Spot-On.

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Fat, Fabulous Fat

Like most (all?) humans, I love fat. And there's good reason at the root of that love. Fats are essential to our metabolic process. They're the way plants and animals store energy for future use. Because we can readily and quickly convert fat to serve immediate energy needs, it appeals very strongly to us.

You can read the complete article at Spot-On.

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Spot-On: Book Review - Bananas

Many years ago, as a teenager, I ate lunch in an Indonesian household on most Fridays. The meal always featured a huge platter of what I thought at the time were fried potatoes. They were highly spiced and slightly sweet and I adored them. But as a callow youth I didn't think to ask anything more about them. Some 20 years later I was reading an article on plantains and realized that's what I had been eating. I ran out to the grocery store, bought a plantain, sliced it into rounds, doused them with curry powder and a touch of sugar, and fried them. Yep, that was it.

You can read the complete article at Spot-On.

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Spot-On: Culinary Winter

I don't know about you, but as far as I'm concerned March is the dead of winter culinarily. I hate it. It's that time of year when there's "nothing to cook" and my kitchen seems as barren as the trees outside. How can I say that? The cooking magazines are filled with spring dishes while the grocery is still filled with winter ingredients. And all too often, old and tired winter ingredients.

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Spot-On: Name that Thing

The other night I participated in a call-in radio program, Dinner with Chefsline, with a fellow who owns a butcher/wine/cheese shop in Charleston, S.C. I was introduced as a chef, but I prefer to be called a professional cook. Chef means "chief" and it refers to the individual's position in managing the kitchen crew in a professional kitchen. Chef is a management job and I'm seldom a chef. Ninety-nine times out of a 100 I'm simply the cook - paid or not.

You can read the complete article at Spot-On.

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Spot-On: Review — the Art of Eating

Although I seldom buy cookbooks anymore, I do subscribe to food magazines. The magazines offer loads of ideas even if I don't follow a specific recipe. That's also why I publish recipes on this blog. It isn't that I expect a reader to follow the recipe explicitly — in fact I post a disclaimer warning against doing so (look in the right-hand sidebar) — but I hope someone may find my use of cornmeal in pancakes or the addition of juniper berries to beef stew worthwhile.

You can read the complete article on Spot-On.

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Spot-On: No Prevention, No Cure

The Hallmark beef recall has become big news in the two weeks since the Humane Society video was released, which is great, but as I've read and listened to the coverage I've been angry about one thing: The news agencies keep calling it a "USDA recall," which is flat wrong and is misleading the public.

You can read the complete article at Spot-On.

Technorati: Food | essay | kevin d weeks | spot-on | food safety

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Spot-On: Class Foodfare

When I lived in Eugene, Oregon Saturday mornings were my shopping day. It wasn't unusual for me to begin at 9:00 with a trip to the farmers' market in downtown Eugene, where, during the summer months, I could find those luscious leeks, ravishing radishes, baby beets, and even wild mushrooms on occasion — all picked early Friday evening or Saturday morning.

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Spot-On: Science and Fries

I've been reading Hervé This' book, Molecular Gastronomy. If you're not familiar with the term "molecular gastronomy," it refers to the application of science to cooking and is typified by the creations of Ferran Adrià at elBulli and Grant Achatz at Alinea. These chefs apply cutting edge, often high-tech techniques (many of which they invent themselves) to food.

You can read the complete article at Spot-On.

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Spot-On: USDA D is for "Downer"

The food news last week was grim, disturbing, and troubling. It featured a video taken by members of the Humane Society of the United States that shows workers at Hallmark Meat Packing in Chino, California picking up, rolling over and dragging "downer" cows — animals that can't walk — with forklifts, shocking the animals, and shooting water up their noses in an effort to get them into the slaughter house. The video is grim and graphic, no animal should ever be treated that way.

You can read the complete article on Spot-On.

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Spot-On: Finding Comfort

Colleen is a solid middle-aged mid-westerner of Anglo-Saxon stock who's favorite comfort food is kimchi. Right, kimchi, the potent fermented Korean vegetable dish. In fact, she makes her own. So how did someone from Kansas end up loving such an exotic dish?

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Spot-On:Send in the Clones

Let's apply a little logic to the issue of cloning animals. First, cloning is not genetic engineering; it is not about transferring genes from an eggplant to a cow. It's about taking the nucleus of an animal's cell, embedding it in an unfertilized egg, and starting the natural process of embryonic growth. There is no logical reason why the meat or milk of a cloned animal should be any more dangerous than that of any other animal. And in some six years of study, that's what the FDA has concluded. If you think about it, identical twins are simply clones that arise naturally during gestation.

You can read the complete article at Spot-On.

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Spot-On: Food TV -Culinary Wasteland

I happened to catch an episode of Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" the other night. He was in Singapore for the show's season opener on the Travel Channel and, for a change, didn't eat anything particularly outrageous - other than the bull penis. I enjoy Bourdain's writing but I'm not tremendously fond of this show. It's essentially a travelogue and Bourdain's nearly inflectionless delivery is tiring. But despite all that, it's the best food show on television because Bourdain clearly loves food. The same can't be said of the culinary wasteland that his shows once called home, the Food Network.

You can read the complete article at Spot-on.

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Spot-on: Eating Around the Edges

When I walk into any of the five grocery stores I regularly shop at I turn to the right and enter the produce section. It's in the same spot in every store. (In fact, most people on entering most stores of any sort begin by turning right.) It may be an accident that the produce section is the first department on the right in all those stores, I've certainly been in lots of store where it wasn't, but it's not an accident that produce is against a wall. That's its position in almost every grocery store in the country.

You can read the complete article at Spot-on.

Technorati: Food | essay | kevin d weeks | spot-on | ingredients | food health

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Spot-on: Keeper of the Flame

This morning — I'm writing the week before Christmas, I mailed off my gifts to kith and ken. Every package contained food, and each box carried a gift of sorts from my mother’s mother: Bourbon Cake. My grandmother, Mummo, is long dead but she returns to life, or at least memory, each Christmas.

You can read the complete article at Spot-on.

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Spot-on: Business as Usual

I have a lot of respect for Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor for much of Bill Clinton's presidency. For an economist he generally seems to have appreciation of the effects of economics on the little guy. But he missed the point of much of the debate over the 2007 Farm Bill when, on Tuesday's Talk of the Nation, he argued that a concern for family farms was misplaced because Big Ag is producing so much food so efficiently.

You can read the complete article at Spot-on.

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Spot-on: Sectarian Eating

This past Thanksgiving I got two calls about vegetarian dishes. One was from a woman whose vegan nephew was coming to dinner and she wanted to know how to make a green bean casserole (the equivalent of that mushroom soup thing) without any animal products in it. The other was from a woman wanting to serve Tofurkey with all the trimmings.

You can read the complete article at Spot-on.

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Spot-on:Elements of Cooking

During a recent episode of Next Iron Chef America Michael Ruhlman, serving as one of the judges, criticized one of the chefs for serving a consommé that wasn't perfectly clear. "Technically, consommé is a clear soup or broth," according to Ruhlman and in this case the liquid showed the red coloration of the watermelon it was made from. Picky? Yes. Technically correct? Yes. Important? Not in my view.

You can read the complete article at Spot-on.

Technorati: Food | review | kevin d weeks | spot-on | book

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Spot-On: A Cook's List

Cash: the register is ringing
Time to buy a bunch of stuff.
"Plastic taken," stores are singing
Now the season's getting rough.
~ to the tune of Hark the Herald Angels

During my 20s I managed a pair of Pier 1 Imports stores and a Kirkland's Gifts and I loved the Christmas season. By the time the day after Thanksgiving rolled around, the hard part was done and you were committed to your choice of merchandise and quantities — for better or worse. The only thing to do by then was settle into your shoes and have fun helping people with their Christmas shopping while racking up obscene daily sales totals.

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Technorati: Food | essay | kevin d weeks | seriously good | spot-on | Christmas List

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Spot-On: The Bambi Syndrome

Here are two words you don't often see together: turkey and extraordinary. Nevertheless, about six Thanksgivings ago I enjoyed one of the best turkeys I've ever eaten. It was at my brother's house in Vermont and the turkey was wild, shot earlier in the week by a friend of my brother. The bird was a far cry from the flavorless mutants sold in supermarkets and even superior to the more expensive free-range turkeys such as those from Lobels. This freshly slain animal was all dark meat, juicy, and packed with flavor.

You can read the complete article at Spot-On.

Technorati: Food | essay | kevin d weeks | seriously good | hunting

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Spot-On: Art and Science

Craft is the nexus, an apogee, of art and science. During my 20-plus year career as a computer programmer and editor of programming magazines there was a constant discussion of whether good programming was an art or a science. It was, and still is, both. Like cooking, it begins with science — verifiable facts, mathematics, technology, and logic — but real success required art — intuition, a sense of proportion, the search for an indefinable elegance.

You can read the complete article at Spot-On.

Technorati: Food | essay | kevin d weeks | seriously good | spot-on | commentary

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Spot-On: T-Day Minus 17 — Start Now!

It's November. In three short weeks a holiday considered the epitome of food and the epicenter of its cultural, political, ideological, and psychological significance in this country will take place. It is a celebration focused on cooking and eating and even those who consider grilling a steak ambitious think about roasting a turkey with dressing, making gravy, and searching the Internet for that horrible green bean and cream soup casserole.

In other words, it's Thanksgiving.

You can read the complete article at Spot-On.

Technorati: Food | essay | kevin d weeks | seriously good | thanksgiving | spot-on

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Spot-On: To Each, His Taste

I recoiled in horror and blurted out, "Oh God, no!"

I was teaching a cooking class and someone had just asked me about using cooking wine from the grocery store. It's a reasonable question, just one that I thought most folks knew the answer to. I had the grace to blush at my reaction, apologized, and explained that the stuff sold in stores is heavily salted, poor quality wine and that you should always use something you'd drink. I suggested he try a swallow of cooking wine sometime and would understand why it was a bad idea.

You can read the complete article at Spot-On.

Technorati: Food | essay | kevin d weeks | seriously good | spot-on

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Spot-On: Overbooked Cook

My dirty little secret is that I seldom use cookbooks anymore and the last time I bought one was over a year ago. I call this a "dirty little secret" because I love books. My dining room contains all my cooking books. The living room has my Tolkien and Kipling collections as well as the usual assortment of cocktail-table books on (in my case) either food, science fiction, or architecture. My guest bedroom has three large bookcases filled with technical/non-fiction works, and my bedroom hosts my fiction and travel collections. Movers hate me. But although I'd never give up a cookbook I also almost never use one anymore. Collections of recipes are an atavism.

You can read the complete article at Spot-On.

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Spot-On: At Your Service

If you follow my Spot-On column then you know how passionate I am on the subject of cooking for yourself, family, loved ones, and friends. You may have gathered that I consider cooking fundamental to not only family life, but even civilization. Columns such as "Love's Labor" or "Teach Your Children Well" speak to that belief. So it may seem at least somewhat dissonant that I work as a personal chef — in some way the opposite of what I preach.

You can read the complete article at Spot-On.

Technorati: Food | essay | kevin d weeks | spot-on | cooking services

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