Almonds on a baking sheet.

Almond Butter to Get You Through the Apocalypse

The lights are out. It’s dark in my apartment. But darkness is expected at two in the morning; it’s the silence that awakens me, the jarring absence of modern life’s electronic hum, that jolts me from my sleep. It’s eerie, but I pound my pillow a couple of beats and go back to sleep. Electricity goes out occasionally–a strong wind, a blown fuse. By the time my alarm chases me out of bed in the morning, and I stumble towards the kitchen, rubbing sleep from my eyes, the power is back, and the lightbulbs shine their yellow light at the flick of a switch.

But what if they didn’t? What if the lights stayed out, and the refrigerator didn’t cool, and double-clicking Chrome connected you to nothing (a tale of horror I assume will be added to the next Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark anthology)? That’s the premise of Jean Hegland’s Into the Forest. Eva and Nell are two sisters ensconced in their remote forest cabin as society crumbles. Eva, a pre-professional ballerina, misses the musical accompaniment to her dancing, but Nell is a modern girl: her longings are for internet and food. Continue reading

I Have My Reasons.

 yummy-sammich

 Well, now I am back again for my second blog post and guess what? Instead of failing at sardonic wit and questionable humor now I am just straight up pissed off. And here’s why.

I am assigned with the happy task of writing about the bizarre and the taboo in food. My inspiration comes from a vegan author. Can you believe that?

Yes; there are indeed vegans. And now they have pens.

Continue reading

Hands-On Ribs

 

Ah, the methods by which we prepare our food and the techniques with which we shovel that grub into our mouths – I have contemplated these aspects of eating at length and come to the conclusion they are two of the more important steps in feeding ourselves. And look how far we’ve come! It seems like just yesterday we were hacking away at critters with sharpened rocks.  Next we were spearing chunks of flesh on sharpened sticks and sticking ‘em in that newfangled fire. Then along came utensils. What game changers! Continue reading

If You Give a Health Nut a Fruit Chip

 

“Industrial technologies, particularly synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, has fed the swelling human population during the last century. Can organic agriculture feed a world of nine billion people?” David Biello, “Will Organic Food Fail to Feed the World?”

David Biello’s “Will Organic Food Fail to Feed the World?” examines an issue that “has too often been an emotional debate”: organic vs. non-organic farming methods.

Biello begins by drawing attention to how much civilization truly relies on food: we need it to feed ourselves, to feed the animals we use to feed ourselves, to strengthen our clothing with fiber, and even to fuel our cars. Because we rely so heavily on food, agriculture has wiped out massive amounts of the biosphere: 70% of grasslands and 45% of temperate forests have been converted to farmland. Additionally, farming is not only the leading cause of deforestation in the tropics, but also “one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions.” Continue reading