mark bittman

On Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, a common complaint about eating healthfully was that people didn't want to eat “rabbit food” all the time. But, as Oliver demonstrated on the series, there's more to eating well than munching on lettuce and carrots. So with the ingredients from this week's CSA (community supported agriculture) box, I will showcase salads made without lettuce.

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. 

thedailygreen.com

When I was young, there was a great deal of pomp and circumstance around Easter. Not coming from an overly religious family, this fussing typically had more to do with food than ritual, though the reflective and celebratory nature of the day carried through. In those years, it was about Easter dresses, patent leather shoes, and Grandma’s good china. And as often as possible, our whole family gathered together -- grandparents, their daughters, and us, the daughters of the next generation -- for a good meal.

Are you a talented writer with a passion for local food? Spend your time hanging out with local food chefs, organic food organizations, fair trade coffee makers, co-ops, and/or farmers markets? Read books by Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman in your spare time? Anxiously await the next film from the folks who brought us "King Corn" and "Big River"? Have you been admiring this site from afar?

If so, we've got an opportunity for you!

 

Here's a video of New York Times food writer Mark Bittman speaking at the TED conference in 2008. Mark is as compelling a speaker as he is a writer. And I can't think of another time someone used the phrase "cow farts" in a presentation and it wasn't even a little bit funny. Here's what the good folks at TED wrote by way of introduction:

In this fiery and funny talk, New York Times food writer Mark Bittman weighs in on what's wrong with the way we eat now (too much meat, too few plants; too much fast food, too little home cooking), and why it's putting the entire planet at risk.

Take a look:

Michael Pollan, Mark Bittman, and many others have given sustainable foodies reason after reason to advocate for reform of the food system and local food in the US. Their work is incredibly well-researched and poignantly written. I stumbled upon another good reason to support food system reform from a lesser known source a few weekends ago. I was at the Bancroft, Wisconsin, VFW for a family reunion listening to my dad and his cousins reminisce about their Uncle Ralph. Ralph was a dairy farmer in central Wisconsin who was rather fond of asking, “If a fly won’t land on it, why would I want to eat it?” Good question! The fact that I don’t have a good answer means that the effort it takes to eat real, local, and sustainable food is well worth it.

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.

Seems like every few days I'm approached by someone with a local food focused business idea. Distribution is broken! We need a year round farmers market! CSAs are not the answer! Here's what I say: Yes. I've seen King Corn, FRESH, The Future of Food, and others.