food matters

My last CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box of the year from Foxtail Farm was both a festival of fall and a chock full of vitamins: garlic, bok choi, broccoli, turnips, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, winter squash, peppers, Brussels sprouts, and onions.

It’s not only activists and advocates who are influencing the dialogue. Anyone who purchases food – which is to say everyone – has the opportunity to advance the changes advocated in Food Matters.  I’ve come to call this "personal food policy,” because collectively our choices can stand up to the legislators, lobbyists, and special interest groups that continue to shape the way our food is raised, produced, packaged, shipped, and marketed.

- Mark Bittman, The Food Matters Cookbook

Eat More Plants, Less of Everything Else

As someone who spends an inordinate amount of time reading about, talking about, cooking, and eating food, getting to hear New York Times food writer Mark Bittman speak twice in 24 hours was kind of like being a 12 year-old girl who gets to hold hands with Justin Bieber at homecoming. I was very excited, in other words.

More than anything, I think we can credit columnist and cookbook author Mark Bittman with helping make the local, sustainable, sane, reasonable food movement more popular. Sure, Michael Pollan got there first, but he was arguably ahead of his time in terms of bringing the education, history and underlying issues of our food system to the table. Since then, many real food advocates have followed in his footsteps and have done a bang-up job getting the rest of us on board.

Mark Bittman, cookbook author and New York Times columnist, takes a balanced look at our food lives in Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating. Packed with recipes and sensible advice, Bittman brings us another step closer to taking all of the thoughtful knowledge about food choices, environmental impacts, the Standard American Diet – ground other authors have indeed covered – and breaks it down in a simple, easy-to-use manner. 

As a kid, I spent countless hours, days, weeks, months - heck, even years - thinking of nothing but baseball. With 2 brothers and 3 step-brothers in my family hanging around each summer, it was easy to get a game going any time, and each night was spent in front of the TV, watching our beloved Yankees (I'm from New York) attempt to destroy the competition. My brothers and I developed special cheers for Don Mattingly, Ricky Henderson, Dave Righetti, and the rest of the team. When I moved to Minnesota, I helped my family adjust to the idea by telling them that Dave Winfield was born in St. Paul.