“Our ability to discuss the value of food is a luxury; even on budgets, many of us are far from struggling to put food on the table. But along with the luxury to have that discussion comes the responsibility to do so. Not just talk about what kind of fruit goes best with an imported Manchego or our latest culinary adventures at a new restaurant, but talk about what building a sustainable food structure really looks like, both here and abroad.”
Anna Brones, over at the Huffington Post, on Why Caring About Food Isn’t an Option: It’s a Responsibility.
If you’re looking for some lunchtime reading, here are two stories that present a top-to-bottom approach to the issues facing farmers and the food community right now: Tom Philpott considers why organically managed soils stand up better to the extreme weather conditions produced by climate change than their conventional counterparts, and The New York Times gives us a look at who decides what gets labeled as Certified Organic. Both serve as a good reminder of all that goes into what ends up in supermarkets and on the table— and that the process is rarely a simple one.
We've done an annual pig roast for the last few years, usually in November. A good friend of mine, the writer Jack Hitt, is from South Carolina and his passion is cooking whole animals. Every year at Yale there's a Jack Hitt Memorial Pig Roast—though he's nowhere near dead—that he supervises.
In case you missed it: here’s Michael Pollan giving our Pig Roast a shout out in the Wall Street Journal! Though we should note that he doesn’t have the name quite right— this year we’re looking forward to the Fifth Annual Last Day of Classes Jack Hitt Pig Roast, named in honor of the man who’s been guiding us through the long, slow-cooking night for as long as we’ve been having them.
Rene Redzepi's Visit to Yale
YSFP Events Intern Jordan Zimmerman covers the Noma chef’s talk for Boston Magazine. Check out the photo of Yale Farm Manager Daniel Macphee talking crops with Redzepi in the slideshow!
JamieOliver.com: An Introduction to the Yale Sustainable Food Project
The YSFP is thrilled to announce our newest collaboration: we’re now working with the folks at JamieOliver.com!
This first post serves as an introduction to our history and our programs; once a month from now on we’ll send them student-written updates about what we’re up to at the Farm and on campus. All of those posts will be linked here, of course, but you should check out the rest of Jamie’s website, which information about tons of other cool food and agriculture projects as well as his work trying to reform the school food system.
Unsavory Culinary Elitism
Frank Bruni has a nice piece in this morning’s New York Times about the class snobbery implicit in some of the conversations about cooking and eating in this country. One of the most challenging things about working in and around slow food and sustainable agriculture is finding a way to talk about it without being dogmatic or condescending— I know what’s good for you better than you do— and it’s particularly tough because issues like race and class and gender are implicitly tied up in our food culture, and talking across those lines is always a tricky feat. My favorite wisdom on this comes from Tom Philpott, who wrote about this in Grist last year: it’s important to offer education and healthy, affordable options, but it’s crucial to meet people where they are when you do.
