A dinner party where women talk food
Alissa Wilkinson imagines Maya Angelou hosting Hannah Arendt, Octavia Butler, Laurie Colwin, and others.
food
Cooking my way through Africa’s east coast
Hawa Hassan and Julia Turshen offer a rare thing: an English-language cookbook of African food that isn’t from Ethiopia.
Lisa Donovan tells the stories behind the recipes
Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger exposes the misogyny within the restaurant industry.
“Jesus was preaching to people who were in the middle of the worst farming and fishing crisis yet.”
It always has been—because vulnerability is part of creation.
We gave our readers a one-word writing prompt: “indulgence.”
A church on my street fed food-insecure kids while schools were closed. The work of justice flowed outward from the table.
Can hunger end?
The binding constraint on progress against hunger and malnutrition is weak political commitment.
Several weeks ago, Chipotle founder Steve Ells published a column headlined "Conventional vs. Grass-fed Beef." As you've probably heard, Chipotle prefers the latter—the fast-casual burrito chain has a lot to say about agricultural reform, ethical food, etc. But here the subject is more complicated than the title suggests: Ells was defending Chipotle's decision to stop buying exclusively domestic beef in favor of importing some of it from Australia, where the grass-fed supply is better. It's a classic food-ethics connundrum: should you go with the higher production standard, or the food produced closer to home? Chipotle chose the former, a perfectly defensible choice if you just have the two.
I have lived in the U.S. for nearly three years now, and there is so much to love: the beauty and the grandeur of the landscape, the welcome and hospitality I’ve found in one city after another, and so many new friends. But there is one thing I don’t love so much.
Some news in the world of sustainable food: Chipotle is responding to beef supply shortages by considering looser standards. Instead of aiming to avoid all beef treated with antibiotics, the burrito chain and sustainable ag advocate may start accepting cows treated for illness, while still avoiding those given antibiotics as a matter of routine. It's a defensible place to draw the line.
Eat with Joy, by Rachel Marie Stone
When Rachel Marie Stone offers homilies of food redemption rather than damnation, it may feel like a lovely if disorienting kind of grace.
A recent report from PLOS One finds that growth in global agricultural yield is not projected to keep up with growth in demand. Brad Plumer picked it up, and someone gave his post this blog-snappy headline: "This terrifying chart shows we're not growing enough food to feed the world." Well, not exactly.
Staring down the barrel of another Chicago winter at age 40, I was a little freaked. Then I started to serve soup.