Ruminate

In honor of Fat Tuesday, I will be eating 'sausage', mashed potatoes, and sauerkraut for dinner this evening. Goodness I love that combination. For the 'sausage', I'll be using the recipe below from Julie Hason. If you haven't tried it, do. It is fantastic. Anyone else have some 'Fat Tuesday' traditions or favorites?

 

Having grown up in Michigan around a large Polish-American community, I have become accustomed to eating pączki around this time year. Now that I am in New York, I am still able to find the decadent dough balls in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a neighborhood with a large Polish population.

Though I was successful in finding them this year, I missed the day last year. Why? Because in the Polish-American community in Michigan, Pączki Day is Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras). I was prepared this year after having read the great article about pączki on Wikipedia.

Hope you can find them where you live!

Recently Mark Bittman left his familiar job as the author of the NY Times' Minimalist column and host of the delightful, short cooking videos to write a column for the Time's opinion page on food issues. For some reason this fact still hasn't sunk in yet for me, and each week I'm happily surprised to see his name on the right side of the Times opinion column. 

This week Bittman tackles the subject of Agricultural Food Subsidies. His article provides a great overview of the agricultural food subsidies program in the US (how it got started and who it currently benefits) and makes an excellent case for shifting these subsidies to small and medium-sized farmers, and using the money to encourage sustainable agriculture and subsidize fruits and vegetables.

"Eliminating the $5 billion in direct agricultural payments would level the playing field for farmers who grow non-subsidized crops, but just a bit — perhaps not even noticeably. There would probably be a decrease in the amount of HFCS in the market, in the 10 billion animals we “process” annually, in the ethanol used to fill gas-guzzlers and in the soy from which we chemically extract oil for frying potatoes and chicken. Those are all benefits, which we could compound by taking those billions and using them for things like high-speed rail, fulfilling our promises to public workers, maintaining Pell grants for low-income college students or any other number of worthy, forward-thinking causes...

 By making the program more sensible the money could benefit us all. For example, it could:

 

Excellent news out of the heart land of American pig production. Both the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University have selected Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer, for their summer reading book. For a while now, each university has selected one book they recommend all incoming students read. This year the two universities have joined together for the first time. Incoming students will be asked to read the book, and the book will be discussed in small groups during orientation.

Congratulations are in order to both schools, not just for choosing a splendid book, but also for having the courage to challenge their students to think about an issue that all too often people shy away from!

 

Oprah's at it again. This time with a one week vegan challenge. Read about it here. Michael Pollan will be on today's show, and Lisa Ling will be touring a meat processing plant.