I was inspired to start this site in part because of all of the beautiful and thought-provoking content created by others. The Internet, for all its flaws, has certainly spawned a revolution of self-expression, and I think our lives are richer for it. I am lucky that my job brings me into contact with some of the best writing out there, so I’m introducing a new weekly (hopefully) feature where I link to things that I found moving or interesting in the previous week.
* Jennie Parillo, whose husband died suddenly a short time ago, writes profoundly and movingly about the importance of cooking, and the family dinner: Easing Into Back-to-School Dinners | The FN Dish.
* In praise of simple school lunches! I am definitely in this camp and no one has complained so far.
* On Food Elitism, by Frank Bruni: “When [Paula] Deen fries a chicken, many of us balk. When the Manhattan chefs David Chang or Andrew Carmellini do, we grovel for reservations and swoon over the homey exhilaration of it all. Her strips of bacon, skirting pancakes, represent heedless gluttony. Chang’s dominoes of pork belly, swaddled in an Asian bun, signify high art.” Thought-provoking, especially at a time when everyone’s trying to “solve” the obesity epidemic.
* David Lebovitz on 40 years of Chez Panisse. Beautifully written tribute to an American pioneer. When we lived in California, we dined at Chez Panisse only once, to celebrate Michael’s birthday in 2005, when I was pregnant with Callum. I think we’d signed papers to buy our house in Albany right before going to the restaurant, so we had a couple of things to celebrate. It was a memorable and delicious meal, in which I ate two foods I generally don’t enjoy — olives and lamb — and found the beauty in them. (Downstairs, it’s a set menu daily, so, when you make your reservations ahead of time, you don’t know what you’re getting into.) My former New York roommate, Ben, had once been a dishwasher there. When he told me this in 1999 or so, I had no idea of the restaurant’s significance, but Jason Chervokas soon set me straight, and I finally got to experience it myself in 2005.
* And finally, another piece on food, this one addressing a possible solution for feeding the growing human population in the future: eating insects. From The New Yorker: Grub
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