Ramble: Eats & Reads...

Going on a delicious fusionary literary ramble today, inspired by my son's new interest in five-star restaurants, thanks to his summer job in one of the finest restaurants in a city renowned for fabulous dining establishments. 

He speaks Spanish with the cooks, has learned to like fish dishes, can crank out pepper with a flourish, tell you if the buffalo is grain-fed and makes great tips on good nights.  Perhaps he might cook up something fusionistic-expialidiocious  in the future...

• New Culinary Blog: Book:|:Kitchen is the new online site covering culinary creations and the people and literature that shape them. One of my first media studies grad student friends, M., from San Antonio, moved to NYC when I did and we have enjoyed sharing classes and interests.  This is her site that she has been incubating for some time.  M. has her undergrad degree from Smith and her writing reflects her passion.  She is working on a film of mobile food establishments in NYC. She's cooked up a fun, well-designed, interesting site with excellent writing and a ton of links to delicious sites.

• Food History: While reading 1491 - New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, I was reminded again of how food has become less indigenous with our global stew.  According to the book, "bananas and coffee, two African crops, have become the principal agricultural exports of Central America; maize, ...domesticated in Mesoamerica, is  a staple in tropical Africa; peppers and tomatoes from Mesoamerica form the culinary backbones of Thailand and Italy; Andean potatoes lead Ireland to feast and famine; and apples, native to the Middle East, appear in markets from Manuas to Manilla to Manhattan."
• Motherhood and food fusion: Labor as a product? Organic garlic farmer Stanley Crawford muses in his book, A Garlic Testament - Seasons on a Small New Mexico Farm about the Amish concept of labor as a product, not an expense.  "What is the business value of a marriage?  The children? The landscape, the hills and the mountains amid which we live?  ...If I thought in strictly business te4rms, I would have to draw lines to exclude the very values I ultimately work for," he writes.
• Fusion Feast - Plants for Eating, Plants for Health: I'm currently reading The Extra-Ordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things by Larry Dossey, M.D. which was published in February and is moving quickly up the sales rankings (#7,o0oo-something today on Amazon).  He reminds us that 80 percent of people rely on traditional plant-based medicines and that "green medicine" is a respectful way of being in the world, in which the plant world is considered alive and sacred.  When living in NYC, I'm so aware of what he terms "the asphaltization" of our world - my feet only touched real earth twice in Manhattan in my first nine months there.
• Delicious Online Links (mental food): MotherPie's updated online link list is up in the site's sidebar.  Here it is again: Download motherpies_favorite_online_links-28.html

Yummy Summer Cheers!

Comments

[Laundry Woman]

Timely post. I'm looking for a new recipe site. Do you think it would be all right for me to link to her???

I got tired of cooks.com. Too commercial for my tastes.

[Debby]

Great post! Good info. I helps me realize that I need to learn new recipes.
Thanks!