"Baby Gaga" Ice Cream...Repulsive or Progressive?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/02/25/134056923/breast-milk-ice-cream-a-hit-at-london-store

Found this article on NPR...they make a good point that it's natural and organic, even "free-range"...but personally, I would never eat this. Never ever.

Secret Ingredients

          The first section of "Dining Out" from the New Yorker Book of Food and Drink was a bit harder to get through for me; the writing lacked voice for the most part and was a bit dry, but I suppose the fact that these articles were written from the 1930s - 1960s might have had something to do with that. All in all, I did find Joseph Mitchell's "All You Hold For Five Bucks" pretty interesting -- I had never heard of a beefsteak before, and I actually really liked the simplicity of the event. Beer, meat, music, and company of other happy people for just five bucks? Sounds pretty fun to me! I liked the "don't give a damn" attitude of the owners of the locales where the beefsteaks took place; in a way the people were almost depicted as beasts -- "unrestrained", and if a "man wanted some noise, he'd just open his trap and howl".
          Joseph Wechsberg's narrative was a bit slower to read for me than Mitchell's; Wechsberg describes how amazing everything was, and how vividly he remembers the tastes, but doesn't actually bother going into that much detail about the dishes or drinks. I thought this focused more on the history of the place and the owner, instead of the food. Adam Gopnik's article was more interesting for me though -- maybe this is just because I'm going to France for study abroad and the cuisine there interests me. But I thought it was smart and informative narrative overall, and I especially liked how he went into the heads of the various chefs, showing us who they were and where they wanted to be. It surprised me that French cooking is coming to be more predictable or stubborn in terms of how their food is prepared/how it tastes -- I always thought the French to be people who embraced opportunities for innovation in their food, looking to outside influences. Guess not anymore...
          Bourdain's "Don't Eat Before Reading This" was really enjoyable to read. His smart, quick snarkiness carried the whole piece, as it did in "A Cook's Tour"; I loved that we got an inside look at his kitchen, and got a sense of who he is in that specific environment. But I cringed when I read the bit about the meat -- I usually order hamburgers medium-well or well-done....looks like I may have been getting the not-so-desirable parts. Jim Harrison's "A Really Big Lunch" was a good read as well; first of all, 37 courses...?? WOW. His descriptions didn't go into too much detail, but for 37 courses, I thought he did a great job. I personally don't know if I'd ever partake in something like that -- probably just to say that I did it. One of the quotes near the end that I liked: "Life is a near-death experience, and our devious minds will do anything to make it interesting."
          M.L.K. Fisher's pieces were pretty interesting, as they reminded me of several dishes and "secret ingredients" my mom used to (and still does) make. Overall I thought the writing was lacking in voice, but it did give interesting information on dishes like tripe and casseroles that I've never made before. It made me think about whether or not there's a meal today that I hate only because I was forced to eat it as a child....that would probably be salmon, or brussel sprouts.
          Anthony Lane's "Look Back in Hunger" was probably my favorite piece; it was full of voice and great humor, and I laughed out loud in multiple sections. I really related to this narrative, as I myself have always had trouble following recipes (for example, making pancakes with 1.5 cups of baking soda instead of 1.5 teaspoons). People on cooking shows, like Martha Stewart, do make it all look so carefree and easy; will I ever be capable of such perfection? Who knows.

To Eat Animals, Or Not To Eat Animals

          "The Forest" section of this book is the first time I actually could picture the narrator, Michael Pollan; his personal experience is what dominates this section, and along with that he brings much more of his voice into the book as he navigates forests and reflects on what he himself values. I could almost envision him reading it out loud, which wasn't the case in everything prior to this forest section. As I myself am an avid meat eater, I found this part refreshing -- I expected to, once again, be guilt-tripped and disgusted into being a reluctant vegetarian for a few days like I always do after I read or watch a critical piece on eating meat. But I loved how Pollan delved into the issue of how we consume meat today, and then actually went through the process of finding out that eating meat in a more conscious way is in fact more wise than just disregarding it altogether. This section really made me think more than any other part of the book, especially in terms of what I personally value and what I want my lifestyle to be like. Granted, there were a few sentences that did give me a twinges of guilt: our choice, according to Singer, was between "a lifetime of suffering for a non-human animal and the gastronomic preferences of a human being" (312). And the whole "force-molting" process? Alright, then I felt terrible. But overall, this section didn't make me feel overly guilty for consuming meat, and instead changed the way I think about consuming it. In today's world, it's true that we "remain only semiconscious about what it is [we're] really doing" (281); when we consume food, we may have our eyes open but we aren't actually seeing. I had never thought so in depth about the action of consuming meat, and this was especially evident during the part when Pollan was examining the question of whether or not speciesism and racism are comparable...I don't exactly know what to make of that, but I did appreciate the point he made about how natural the consumption of meat in the world is; we'd be denying the entire system of nature itself to cut off meat consumption entirely. What we do have to change is how conscious we are of what we eat, how it was raised, and how this affects the environment now. What's wrong is the "practice, not the principle" (328).
         
          I was so intrigued when I read the paragraph about the fact that we combine certain foods with certain spices for a reason other than taste -- I thought that wasabi was eaten with raw fish only for the unique combo of flavors, not that the antimicrobial functions of the spicy paste minimized the danger of the uncooked fish! I never really stop to think about the origins of food combination, whether mixing different foods serves as a nice twist on the dish, or whether or not it serves a completely different purpose. I liked Rozin's summary of this, that cuisines are the embodiment of the wisdom of a certain culture; evidently, I had little to no wisdom before reading this book.
        
          It really surprised me to read that part of the mere 47% of Americans who have sit down family meals, some of them don't actually consist of sitting down together and eating at the same time. I thought that the concept of "sitting down to a family meal" was pretty basic; I'm probably biased because most of the meals from when I was an infant to when I graduated from high school were sit down family meals. This was one of the things that my mom and dad always insisted on, especially during the school week. Setting the table for everyone was a nightly routine, as was waiting to eat until everyone was at the table. In the earlier years, we were forced to stay sitting at the table even after we were finished eating to wait for everyone else to be done. I know that in reality, this routine isn't easy for many families. But I at least thought that the families who did have sit down family meals actually sat down together.
        
          I love the idea of obtaining meals by hunting and gathering; realistically, I probably wouldn't ever be motivated enough to do all of it, but what I appreciated from Joel's farm and from Pollan's hunting/gathering was the complete openness of it all; they weren't trying to hide anything from the people consuming the food, but those people were in complete awareness of exactly what they were buying or eating. There's also so much more meaning to the food you consume when you hunt and gather; I find myself mindlessly wandering through the caf day after day, just trying to find semi-decent food to satisfy my hunger. This food is meaningless, and I rarely think hard about it. My parents actually get meat, eggs and milk from a farm in northern Wisconsin that's not unlike Joel Salatin's; the chickens and cows roam around on beautiful green hills, and they actually get to meet the cows that end up being their next cut of meat. The milk comes straight from the udder and is put into glass jars which they take home -- my parents call it "raw" milk, and I never could get used to the weird taste. This is so sad to me -- I'm so used to watered-down, to pasteurized, to industrial, that I can't even bring myself to enjoy the natural, straight-from-the-source gold.

Eating the Sun

       One quote that stuck out to me in this section was when Pollan states that "it's a foolish culture that entrust its food supply to simpletons" (221). He couldn't be more correct. The second part of Pollan's book, "Pastoral Grass", really pulled me in more than the Industrial Corn section. This is probably because this organic farm section included people -- I wasn't distracted once throughout this section, and the charismatic farmers (especially Joel) made it easier for me to connect to the information given in this section. My concept of "organic" is changed entirely from reading the second part of the book; the "Supermarket Pastoral" that Pollan mentions is exactly what my mindset was like beforehand. Whenever I would have to go grocery shopping for my mom, and she sent me to the huge grocery store as opposed to the small food co-op we usually frequent, she would give me a list of what to get. Next to nearly every item on the list, there would be parentheses surrounding the single word "ORGANIC!". I had always connected huge-supermarket-organic with healthy-free-range-farm-organic, and never stopped to think twice about these assumptions. I never, for example, thought that on an organic farm, they would use synthetic fertilizers. I thought this was only a concept linked to industrial food, and the sad thing is (as Pollan says): "organic farming has increasingly come to resemble the industrial system it has set out to replace" (151).
       Like we were talking about in class, in order to get real change in terms of consumption in the U.S., we'd have to have a food revolution; this is a huge issue, and it would require a complete change in lifestyle from the majority of the population. The one thing I agreed with Gene Kahn on was when he talked about being thankful for the small amount of progress we have made -- at least it's a step in the right direction. Change isn't going to come about right away, and small steps towards better nutrition and food practices will be the key to changing the country's mindset. Right now we're all about money and time; Pollan says that the reason why we go industrial is because it is "simply more cost-efficient" (161). It'll take a while to change this mindset.
       The human interactions in this section were what really drew me in. I loved the part when Pollan mentioned talking to a small farmer, one in particular that was criticized by an industrial organic grower, and he snapped right back and put the industrial organic guy in his place. I also loved that Pollan didn't just write this stuff or solely research it; he went right in there and experienced things for himself. I especially like the section where he goes to Polyface and works with Joel. The idea that the farm is all connected, from the sun providing free solar energy to the grass to feed the cows and chickens, which is fertilized by the pig manure. It's a huge organism rather than a big machine.

"Processed Corn, Walking"

Every time I read a new book or see a new documentary on modern day food practices, it astounds me that I could have been so uninformed about what I'm putting into my stomach before knowing all of this new-found information. Before reading Michael Pollan's food-conscious narrative, though, I thought that it would be pretty standard in terms of books written about food -- it would go into a "The Jungle"-esque description of a meat-packing plant or a slaughterhouse, revealing the true nature behind fast food while providing a wealth of knowledge that would probably go along with "Food Inc."'s premise. Turns out...I was wrong. The main focus of this section of The Omnivore's Dilemma : CORN. Corn, corn, corn, and more corn. I knew that corn was a pretty big ingredient in many of the foods we eat, but I had absolutely no idea that every food we eat is basically entirely comprised of it.
Out of all the books and articles we've read for this class, The Omnivore's Dilemma is definitely the least like a memoir. Bourdain's book was full of voice and personal experience, Bik's was a story of her childhood, and the New Yorker article was about a woman's travel and food experiences and how they tie together. Pollan's book is almost entirely factually based, geared towards informing us about food -- not food as an experience, but food as what it is in its literal form. I found that the parts about experiences that he had while finding more out about food were the most interesting; when he and his family went to MacDonald's, or when he spent time with the steers. This book definitely doesn't have as much voice or personality as any of the others we've read, and at times I found myself getting a bit distracted while reading certain parts -- but overall, this book was an interesting and informative book that definitely got me thinking even more about what I'm eating every day at the caf!
I really liked the section about the history of corn; where it came from, how America embraced it as the cheapest calorie available to us. This book is written for a population of educated people, who are concerned about the state of both the country's economic and agricultural health. I really liked the evolutionary concept that kept coming up throughout this section, that corn has adapted over time to how we as consumers utilize it. I had little to no knowledge about corn's function in agriculture and in the food we eat daily, and in this section Pollan almost personified corn -- the corn is "push[ing] the animals and their feed crops off the land" (40), and it's pushing people off of the land too -- I had this weird image of corn with an evil dictator face, conquering all the country's land and forcing inhabitants out of it.
When I thought of cows and other animals eating corn before reading this, I had pictured it as a more humane and vegetarian way of feeding them. Turns out, it's completely horrible. Instead of letting them eat the grasses that their body is built to digest, we're forcing corn into their digestive systems that end up making them sick and actually making their meat more unhealthy for us to consume. Pollan really stresses the importance of speed in today's society, which I can completely see; where it used to take four or five years to raise cows for meat, we've now narrowed it to fourteen months. I know that our population is exponentially increasing and there's an ever growing demand for food, but I have to wonder -- the rate at which we consume food is unhealthily fast, and this not only is horrible for the obesity epidemic but also forces the agricultural system to shorten animals' lifespans using unhealthy fattening methods...is this worth it? Reading about corn-fed animals and their abscessed livers made me worry about this even more than before.