Talk to Me About Food

This episode captures a thought experiment. In my mind I can see myself creating an eatery of some kind. A second career. But I know enough to know that I don’t know nearly enough or have the fortitude to actually establish and run this eatery I’ve been thinking about for at least 10 years.

The 2024 explosion of cicadas didn’t happen here in North Texas. This was going to be a once in a lifetime event. A coincidence of thirteen-year and seventeen-year broods that hasn’t occurred since Thomas Jefferson fretted over pests in his Monticello gardens. Maybe it has been a bigger deal in the upper Midwest where the bugs were expected to darken the skies. If broods XIX and XIII have made nat...

What follows now are musings about the forces impacting what we choose to eat AWAY from home  Priya Krishna, a contributing writer to the New York Times food section shared her assessment of what she and her team discovered surveying 121 menus from restaurants around the country in a story called “The Menu Trends That Define Dining Now.” This was in the February 7th 2024 edition. It's mostly...

On this episode of Talk to Me About Food I share top line findings from "The Menu Trends That Define Dining Right Now," by Priya Krishna, writing in The New York Times. I also muse specifically on Caesar salad which is one of items that's hot across the country from the survey of 121 menus that underpins Ms. Krishna's article.

This episode is one in a mini-series about a range of soups and simple foods from different food traditions that are suggested, prescribed, maybe sometimes even foisted on someone feeling under the weather. I consider a basic udon soup. Where it’s the bounty of the land that nourishes a chicken, it’s the bounty of the ocean and sea washing up on every millimeter of Japan’s coastline that infuses u...

How much, if at all, does the food you eat define who you are and where you come from? Do the choices around what food you buy, where you buy it, how you prepare it and even how you dispose of it subscribe you to a specific community (willingly or unwittingly)? In this episode I muse about "gastronativism" -  a word coined in a book titled Gastronativism, Food, Identity, Politics by Fabi...

Brief musings around discovering overnight oats. Beats regular old hot oatmeal any day of the week.

Sandor Katz, a self-described fermentation revivalist and author of three books on the topic helps me unpack fermentation. What it is and why it’s so engrained in all food cultures. He talks about the role of fermentation in preserving food then explains how fermentation plays a vital role in helping us get the most of the nutritional content of food by breaking food down into easier-to-digest ele...

On this episode I consider healing meals; traditional dishes believed to help cure what ails you, physically, emotionally, even spiritually.  First, I reflect on my conversation with Ashley Thuthao Keng Dam, a PhD candidate in Eco-gastronomy, Education, and Society at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy. I recently came across their blog post entitled Curative Cuisines of Cam...

In this audio blog post I consider Squareat; a start-up meal delivery company that delivers a box of brownie-sized pieces of animal protein (like chicken breast) and same-size, same-shape squares of veggie and grain side dishes. 21st century food to ponder while you enjoy your Thanksgiving meal.

In this Halloween audio blog post I muse about the results of an experiment where a human gene that codes for obesity was implanted into the genome of a potato. The spuds grew to be 50% larger! What could be wrong with that? The research is real; only some of the implications conjured here are plausible...

This episode looks at what it might take to make locally grown and processed food the hub of our food system. Why?  For one, Covid-19 has exposed vulnerabilities in our current food system that is dependent on a sprawling, global web of connections on the one hand, and industrial-scale, concentrated agriculture on the other hand. The longer term threat that’s been creeping up on us for decades is...

Charles Spence, author of Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating defines this realm of research as the scientific study of those factors that influence our multisensory experience while tasting food and drink. The basic premise of gastrophysics is that all aspects of the eating environment – where, when, how, and with whom - provide essential sensory cue, and that the eating experience is influe...

A brief musing about the natural absence of blue in our foods and drinks. A few food scientists are exploring ways to create a natural, bright-hued blue to replace FD&C Blue #1, but there aren't that many artificially colored blue foods either, even though blue is our favorite color...

In this  Talk to Me About Food "mover and shaker" profile I share snippets from a conversation I had with Amanda McLemore, chef, and founder of Baguette & Butter, the first sustainable digital food space. Amanda tells me about how she became a sustainable cooking activist and shares her suggestions for how to cook more mindfully: It's about setting up your kitchen to work effici...

In this blog post I touch on the growing efforts to reduce food waste by packaging and marketing upcycled food products. This can be produce that's deemed not fit for the supermarket display or an ingredient that's in the waste stream of some food production process, like barley used in brewing beer. Products like these can now qualify to use a packaging mark from the Upcycled Foods Asso...

The audio blog post muses about vegan foods by comparing two very different approaches to creating plant-based foods and dishes. The owners of the Herbivorous Butcher in Minneapolis draw upon their creativity to offer a wide variety of plant-based butcher fare that mimics meats and cheeses as closely as possible. The chefs at Eleven Madison Park in NYC express their creativity by designing vegan d...

This audio blog post muses about the relationship between consumers and producers of packaged food in light of a recent article about Nestle's admission that a good part of the world's largest food and beverage company's products "doesn't meet any recognized definition of health."

According to Houzz.com, one of the key tastemakers in home design today, 25% of Americans renovated their kitchen in 2019, and we spend a lot more on updating the kitchen than any other room in the house. The open concept kitchen has been on trend for a while now, but that might be changing per the same Houzz survey, as well as HGTV celebrities Jonathan Scott, one of the Property Brothers, and Eri...

In this audio blog post I muse about the fate of some our staple foods in the face of climate change. Humans continue to contribute to the extinction of species across the kingdoms of life. Some are trying to rescue endangered or even lost food species, but the trajectory of many others does cause a pause for reflection.

In this audio blog post I muse about how functional ingredients are being added to foods and beverages to enhance short-term cognitive skills, keeping in mind that Homo Sapiens has been consuming "brain food"  for a very long time.

Blog post musings about bioengineered bee-less honey, and other look-alike, taste-alike substitute food products.

Hunting and gathering is in our DNA. Very few of us in America subsist on doing either one these days. Major disruptions raise the profile of both activities. COVID 19 has not only reduced income for tens of millions of Americans it has also led to shortages of staple foods. An increase in the number headlines and of books published on growing your own food and foraging suggests that some of us wa...

Regenerative agriculture is practiced on a very small percentage of total farm and ranchland in the U.S., maybe 3-5%. This figure is growing by the day because it is a sustainable approach to growing and raising food that also mitigates some of the effects of climate change. This is Part 2 of a two-part story. It looks at how and why food grown using regenerative agriculture practices tastes bette...

In this blog post I muse about lentils, chickpeas, and beans (the magical fruit) on the heels of World Pulses Day, a day set aside by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization to sing the praises of pulses.