Eating the Void: On Making a Raw Café Gratitude Chocolate Hazelnut Pie

...hat our digestives systems have evolved over thousands of years to cooking food. Indeed, there are many foods that don’t release their nutrition unless they are cooked. In addition to this culinary nihilism, the proprietors of Café Gratitude mix into the recipes what Mark Fisher called “business ontology,” that ever present drive to explain every aspect of our lives in the language of business. A pull quote next the the I Am Bliss recipe enjoins m...

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What’s Your Personal Food Policy?

...nksgiving holiday would be an appropriate moment to define my own personal food policy. But as I started to write down my personal food policy I discovered so many contradictions and exceptions that I just stopped. My own personal food policy, when considered honestly, was almost as tangled as the USDA’s. Yes, sometimes we manage to grow all of our greens, but other times bugs/bad soil/forgetfulness in the garden sends us on a trip to our local di...

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Notes on Mark Bittman’s “Behind the Scenes of What We Eat”

...eal food Encourage small family farms De-subsidize companies that make non-foods (junk food) But as we’re always saying around here, real change starts at home. In your daily choices. Our actions drive policy at the higher levels. So what can we do? A lot of it I’m sure you, dear readers, are already doing– just like us. You’re trying to support local farmers. You’re cooking from scratch and eating whole foods. You’re trying to source ethically ra...

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Urban Chicken Enthusiasts Unite!

...every month or so, eat eggs dishes and talk about raising chickens, local food and sustainability. The L.A. Urban Chicken Enthusiasts meetup group is just for people in the Los Angeles area. Not to worry if you aren’t in L.A., I noticed a lot of other urban chicken groups on Meetup and if there isn’t one in your city you can easily start your own. So if you are local and into chickens, join our group. If you aren’t in L.A. or not a poultry person...

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How to make your soup wonderful: Wild food soup stock

...n Outdoor Skills, and I like to go there to check out a section called the Food Lab, where they talk about food products they’re experimenting with, and give how-to’s. A few months ago Erik brought home a beautiful bouquet of nettles. I decided to try one of the Food Lab projects that intrigued me — Wild Food Soup Stock Preserved with Salt. This is no more than a bunch of finely chopped vegetables, herbs and greens (wild or not) mixed with plenty...

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