Since 2001, Tracie has produced award winning work, receiving recognition from the Sidney Hillman Foundation, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the James Beard Foundation, the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists, the Harry Chapin Media Award, the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, the Casey Medals for Meritorious Journalism, and more. Read more
Michael Ruhlman • July 25, 2012
One of the curious things about doing a semi-ridiculous reporting project—say, leaving behind your life to go work undercover as a farm worker, Walmart produce clerk, and Applebee’s kitchen wretch—is that near-strangers confront you with grand, existential queries. Like: What’s the most important thing you learned?
The Washington Post
The Washington Post • June 29, 2012
I dare you to celebrate the Fourth of July without a hamburger. What food better conveys the values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness than an all-American beef patty, grilled in the sunny confines of a grassy back yard?
A burger on the grill says: I have the day off to celebrate this great country, and I am going to relish it.
Slate
Slate • June 27, 2012
A few years ago, the chef and organic pioneer Alice Waters did a spin on 60 Minutes that managed to showcase exactly why foodies get branded as elitist. “Some people want to buy Nikes, two pairs,” she said in a casual moment at a farmers’ market. “And some people want to eat Bronx grapes and nourish themselves.”
This was vintage foodie-ism, a smug and irritating noblesse oblige transposed onto a discussion of our meals. That didn’t change the fact that much of everything else Waters said was right: The way we eat is making us sick; it’s a good idea for kids to learn to cook; even, in a more formal moment, “good food should be a right and not a privilege.” But her aside about sneakers made it unlikely that anyone not yet onboard with Waters would listen to her in the first place.
The Atlantic
The Atlantic • March 9, 2012
It’s every author’s wish that a major media figure will discuss her or his work on air. So when Rush Limbaugh spent 40 minutes lambasting both me and my first book, The American Way of Eating, during his radio broadcast to 15 million listeners on Tuesday, I was mostly elated. By the time I finished listening to the show, though, I had a question: What exactly does he think I did wrong?
The Atlantic
The Atlantic • March 8, 2012
If my floor had been clean, I might have made it to the toilet.
This is the initial thought that comes to me here, crouched on the bathroom floor, my face centered over a toilet seat and inches from a wastebasket filled with dirty toilet paper. Saliva and bile dribble from my chin, and I can see, off to the side, where the initial wave of vomit and dusty mucus splattered down the side of the tub.
Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times • March 4, 2012
A few years ago I bought a cookbook titled “Kill It and Grill It” for my boyfriend, a Yale grad who hunted and fished. Admittedly, I offered the gift ironically. I’d been drawn to it by its cover photo of ’70s rocker Ted Nugent and his wife, Shemane, each clad in a denim vest and clutching a rifle and knife, respectively. As a native of rural Michigan, I saw the image as both funny and dismaying. They kind of look like families I grew up with, I thought. But who buys a cookbook with a gun on it?
New Times
New Times • March 2, 2012
Happy Friday on this stunning 80-degree day. It has been a food-filled week here and around the intranets.
This week, Tricia Woolfenden chronicled her obsession with McDonald’s shamrock shakes and informed readers of the best bars for out-of-towners and the best vegetarian restaurants for Meatless Monday.
The Daily Beast
The Daily Beast • March 2, 2012
I’ve always wanted to be a tomboy, the kind of girl who could keep up with the boys—and do them one better. So when I landed in the kitchen of an Applebee’s, reporting undercover for my book, The American Way of Eating, I felt like I was getting my chance to be a downmarket, female version of Anthony Bourdain. My workplace was a perfect setting for it.
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal • March 1, 2012
A few years ago, working an undercover stint for “The American Way of Eating,” I had the best soup of my life. I had just taken a room—a cubby, really— with farmworkers in California’s Salinas Valley, paying $300 for the next seven weeks, using it as a homebase from which to find field work. As soon as I agreed to take the room, my landlady led me into the kitchen and set a steaming bowl of soup, scarlet and speckled with golden globules of fat, before me. Chunks of fish, fleshy and white, floated in the bowl alongside translucent onion snippets and scraps of herbs. Eat! she commanded in Spanish, handing me half a lime and a salt shaker. Then she pointed to a stack of fresh flour tortillas. Eat!
The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post • Feb. 24, 2012
Three years ago, I went to work undercover in America’s food system. To the extent that I was motivated by journalistic intrigue, I wanted to see how the country’s vast industrial food system worked. But more than that, I had a bone to pick with foodies.
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