Tracie McMillan Eating Well • July/August 2015
The terrible working conditions in tomato fields have become the subject of hot debate. We talked with Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and executive producer of the James Beard Award-winning film Food Chains, which is about the tomato-worker revolution.
Rodale’s Organic Life • July/August 2015
The first time I reconsidered what off-grid meant, I was in Detroit’s North End, trailing the Reverend Joan C. Ross. Red-spectacled and in a second career after selling off her McDonald’s franchises, Reverend Ross was showing me a solar demonstration house, a once-abandoned beauty she had helped bring back to life. There was fine trim in a Victorian parlor, a porch that screamed for a summer afternoon, a toilet that used wastewater to flush, a yard designed to catch runoff and prevent flooding, and a thatch of solar panels on the roof.
“You’re not paying into companies who are burning fossil fuels, or destroying the planet,” she said. “You’re relying on the sun.”
I would have expected this
Wall Street Journal “Off Duty” • June 19, 2015
FRESH OUT OF BANKRUPTCY and angling toward boomtown, Detroit is attracting an influx of creative young professionals and entrepreneurs to its middle- and working-class mix.
NPR The Salt • May 11, 2015
If you think trade deals are just about business, think again. They can also have a sweeping effect on how people eat. Take all those avocados, watermelon and cervezasfrom Mexico we now consume, and the meat and feed corn for livestock we send there in exchange.
The Obama administration hasn’t shared much detail about the provisions in its controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership, the free trade deal between the U.S. and 11 countries currently being negotiated. But if it’s anything like prior free trade agreements, two things are likely, trade experts say.
OnEarth • May 1, 2015
Last summer I asked Tamar Adler—the only professionally trained chef I know well enough to invite over to my house—to come help me clean out my fridge. I had reached a point where my kitchen was full of decrepit leftovers and castaways. I described the project as “sort of like Iron Chef, but broke.”
I had a wonderfully busy April, enjoying visits with some amazing folks in my home state of Michigan and in the gorgeous Hudson Valley of New York. First, as part of Monroe County’s One Book, One Community program, I met with journalism students at Monroe Community College; had a delicious dinner with faculty, staff and … Read more
Yahoo! Food • March 20, 2015
More than 60 years after her death, Mexican artist Frida Kahlo is having a banner spring in the United States.
This March has seen the opening of both an opera and a (shared) retrospective at the Detroit Institute of Art, and in May, the New York Botanical Garden will unveil a show themed on the painter’s fascination with the natural world. Along with these celebrations of Kahlo’s artwork, some attention is at last being paid to one of her lesser-known oeuvres: cooking.
I had so much fun playing with Frida Kahlo’s recipe for Double-Fried Chicken and Nut Sauce for Yahoo Food that I couldn’t help tweak it to my liking. Here’s what I came up with:
Adapted from Frida’s Fiestas
Servings: 8
This is not a quick weeknight meal. There are three major steps: Making the sauce, frying the chicken the first time, and then frying it the second. Unless you relish long and arduous cooking, I say break it up: Make the sauce in advance, as much as a day or two. Round one of frying can be done ahead of time if you like, though you may sacrifice some crispness. As you near the second frying time, warm the sauce on the stove, but keep in mind that the white peanut sauce will darken from snowy white to beige if you heat it for very long.
Thank You Democracy • March 18, 2015 I enjoyed chiming in with Jefferson Davis for this radio show, Thank You Democracy, out in Portland, OR. You can listen to the whole show here.
NPR The Salt • March 11, 2015
For many years, if a public school district wanted to serve students apples or milk from local farmers, it could face all kinds of hurdles. Schools were locked into strict contracts with distributors, few of whom saw any reason to start bringing in local products. Those contracts also often precluded schools from working directly with local farmers.
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