Entries associated with the tag "The End of Food":

This week in Omnivorous I ran down a half dozen of my favorite new food books. Here are some more new releases of note:

THE SPLENDID TABLE'S HOW TO EAT SUPPER, Lynne Rosetto-Kasper and Sally Sweet (Clarkson Potter, $35) The Guffawing Grandmarm of NPR's syndicated food show, along with her producer, present a companion cookbook for beginners who want someone a little more sophisticated than Rachael Ray as a sensei. Regular listeners will recognize much of the background information but may be put off by the admitted "hand holding."

THE RIVER COTTAGE COOKBOOK, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (Ten Speed Press, $35) The British food writer, TV personality, and back-to-the-lander has become a cottage industry for DIY food production. Here are clear, precise instructions for everything from gardening to sausage making to choosing a cow to cleaning cuttlefish in the loo.

THE END OF FOOD, Paul Roberts (Houghton Mifflin, $26) Grim, sobering analysis of the widening fissures in the global food system: "Ironically, the problems with the modern food system begin with its very success." This is something you should probably read, but won't have fun doing it.

EVERYDAY DRINKING: THE DISTILLED KINGSLEY AMIS, Kingsley Amis (Bloomsbury, $19.99) Compilation of the late, great English satirist's two volumes on the "drinking arts." Here he is on one of the basic jobs of British vodka: ". . . to replace gin in established gin drinks for the benefit of those rather second-rate persons who don't like the taste of gin, or indeed that of drink in general." The introduction is by another eloquent British lush, Christopher Hitchens.

BEYOND THE GREAT WALL: RECIPES AND TRAVEL IN THE OTHER CHINA, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid (Artisan, $40) Beautiful coffeetable cookbook and travelogue on China's underexposed outlying regions and minority populations. Recipes are as varied and intriguing as Kazakh noodles, Uighur pastries with pea tendrils, and Tibetan bone broth.

Recently I've been salting my reserve of existential dread by reading Paul Roberts' forthcoming The End of Food, a dense, cheerless forecast about the fragility of the global food supply (it's spring!). So yesterday I felt particularly gloomy wandering around this year's Fancy Food Show at McCormick Place. With news reports of Costco rice rationing, Japanese butter shortages, and Haitian food riots echoing through my head, it's hard to get behind the hordes of showgoers lining up for samples of pate and Epoisses, buffalo sausage, single origin chocolate, and water whose chief marketing attribute seems to be the overdesigned plastic art deco style bottle it's poured into.  

There are probably a number of reason this year's trade show--titled the Global Food & Style Expo, which encompasses FFF, the All Things Organic Show and the U.S. Food Export Showcase--seemed more subdued and contracted than last year's, and not all of them have to do with my crappy mood. The U.S. imports end of the floor was forlorn and unattended, and the Fancy Food Show slightly less so. But on the other hand the organic component was booming: by my rough guess it was nearly the same size of the other two shows combined. It's not news that organics have become big business, but the difference between this and last year seemed startling. The New York Times even had a tout there selling subscriptions. Of course that meant a larger share of silliness on display, from organic frozen breaded shrimp, yogurt for dogs, many varieties of unidentifiable bark bars advertised not so much for what they're made from but for what they're not, and all sorts of highly processed foods that are permitted to wear the attractive label of "organic." The absurdity of a lot of this stuff was put sharply into focus at the display for a French Canadian spice company that thought the best way to market its blends was to employ a couple of robotic arms to sprinkle the stuff over uncooked pasta and a platter of weathered-looking salmon (pictured).