Pontormo

Yes, as mentioned above. Journalists are vulnerable to criticism from experts who have far more experience and training in fields that are new to them. Sometimes the object of criticism is due to a gross factual error, a lack of nuance or specialized knowledge, a false step taken in determining a reliable source of expertise to consult, or sometimes it is due simply to differences of interpretation and/or opinion. It's rare that you have, say, an Adam Gopnik with a Ph.D. in art history writing long articles on Eakins or book reviews complaining about all the press concerning "Da Vinci" when the guy's name is "Leonardo." Then there's Simon Schama, et al. Perspectives and historical understanding change over the years with the uncovery of new documents, the self-flagellation of Western academics over Eurocentric biases in their field with the rise of non-academic interest in Arabic Studies and so on. Different opinions are held simultaneously by experts of equivalent knowledge and brilliance. How is a writer outside the field supposed to keep up, to judge? One way is to specialize, which of course many journalists and critics do. Look at the amazing John Lahr on theater history. That said, Buford is new to his topic. He's clearly more interested in entertaining reportage than historical research as the author of Heat. Therefore, historical research is cursory at best, superficial or sloppy at worse; I am more inclined to credit him for reading Maestro Martino's 15th-C text than to persecute him for accepting blindly a translation of a recipe for pasta stuffed with "zucca" as "squash." His next book is being crafted very deliberately as a historical investigation, so it might be best to start sharpening daggers now, but wait a while before lunging forward to thrust into the nice man's soft, well-fed flesh. He ought to have his own knife kit now and will be better equipped to defend himself.

Is Mario Batali the Anti-Gordon Ramsay? In the new thread about Buford's Heat, the time both MB and GR spent in Marco Pierre White's kitchen was noted. Here's something else which should be understood in the context of the profound role home-cooking plays in our understanding of Italian cuisine and the idealization of the Italian grandmother in particular, including Mario's own: --Buford, p. 59

Phaseolus. Disappointed. Thought this would be a pragmatic Stoic or Epicurean with a sympathy for the plebes. ETA: Check out the new, relevant food blog by phlawless. She's attempting to feed a family of three almost exclusively from foods within a 100-mile radius of her home this week.

Your cute avatar/daughter's breakfast really appeals to me, too! Never had sorghum syrup; it would be honey around here or maple syrup from afar. Toddler snacks in the US tend to be Cheerios, toasted frozen waffles and bananas--I hadn't thought about this issue! No rush at all, PLEASE don't try to answer or address these all at once, but here are a few things that your food blog inspires me to ask: 1) Have you had any time to read the thread about Whole Foods & Michael Pollan and think about the issues it raises? Given M's age, I kind of suspect that Pollan's new book is not something you've had time for. However, its subject is very much related to your quest this week. Given the demographics of Research Triangle, I just figure you must have several Whole Foods stores. 2) Was your interest in local foods peaked by your professional experience? 3) I see you were away for the weekend, so didn't have a chance to shop at your town's farmer's market. Are there other options during the week where you can buy food directly from farmers? 4) Given Durham's historical relationship to the tobacco industry, do you know if there are farmers in the area who have switched from tobacco crops to other forms of agriculture? I don't know how close those farms were to the industrial centers, though.

So no bananas this week? What a fantastic theme for your food blog! I am really looking forward to this, phlawless.

Lori, your cooking classes with children are especially fun to see. Thanks for answering my question about Italian lessons with documentation. Now that the blog is drawing to a close, I hope you'll have more time to devote to eating fruit on your front porch.

July 4: Germany vs. Italy German beer and pizza? Penne und bratwurst mit Barbaresco? White asparagus on the side. Robiola later. (Needs more color.) July 5: France vs. Portugal Clams with sausage and ham (Ameijoas na Cataplana), a simple green salad and fresh fruit tart? ETA: How come France is hosting this thread when Germany's the official host of the World Cup? A little Francophilic bias, peut-etre?

Thank you, Russ and yes, Sandy, you were right about the source of ALL of the mushrooms. I agree that the micro/macro debate is behind the dilemma. Towards the end of today's 10th-Anniversary celebration at FRESHFARM Market here in D.C., I spoke about this series of open letters with two guys who represent a small local operation that participates regularly at the market. They said they were in discussion with Whole Foods and that WF contacted THEM about the possibility of carrying their food.

First up in quick google search for cherry preserves is a recipe using Bing. However, I also looked up my favorite store-bought item which uses sour cherries. Contrary to Zingerman's Web site, it is NOT made exclusively with fruit and sugar. Here's the label for American Spoon's preserves, a guide I'd trust. Lemon brings out the flavor; "Acidity rocks!" says Mario. P.S. You can also bake a cherry galette and tell your guests, you're feeding them in the manner of Michael Pollan's final, hunter-gather's meal in Omnivore's Dilemma.

Of course I would like WF to carry local food in season, forgoing a lot that is shipped to the east coast from California, The Netherlands, CHINA (the source of my organic garlic tonight), etc., etc. when we've got small local farms carrying the same thing, only fresher and ripe. I also agree with jsolomon about the need to give more power to individual stores and to individual regions within Whole Foods, restoring some of the ideals of the co-ops from which the corporation cameth, while agreeing upon over-arching matters of Quality Control, core product lines and so forth. However, I want to know what the local farmers want first. I am sure there will be different opinions. Were I speaking exclusively in Utopian terms about my own city, I would like to kick all the mediocre establishments out of our one 19th-century indoor, year-round Eastern Market, and in this case, I am referring primarily to the produce stands inside. Give the space to the farmers themselves and let all the other supermarkets compete. There will be plenty of business for all. I am a sucker for street markets and would hate to see supermarkets replace them altogether. I don't want WF to suck up even more than they have already, as delighted as I am to see the way they are eating their cake and having it too: 1) Michael Pollan, you are wrong, wrong, wrong, see how much we sell that comes from local sources?; 2) Look! We are making these changes to embrace local farms [and redress the crimes you say we commit]. I also wonder what is going to happen to the WF stores that aren't ideally situated, i.e., not in Pollan's California. Are my city's stores going to be able to say "Bye, Bye!" to the Big Organic farms in California during 3-4 months a year and then get everything they want again for the rest of the year? Marion Nestle believes in making do with what we have locally and supplementing it with frozen vegetables rather than shipping green beans to New York from F/CA. (This is admittedly simplistic.) * * * I just got back from a shopping trip to Whole Foods. In a very large produce section, there were around 18 local items from farms in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland: ca. 5 different types of mushrooms, 2 kinds of kale, 3 kinds of chard, mache, butterleaf lettuce, zucchini, yellow summer squash, Dandelion greens, mint, basil and hothouse tomatoes. I stopped counting at around 149 for the shipped produce from Georgia, California, Florida, New Jersey, Washington, South Carolina, North Carolina, Hawaii, Mexico, Cananda, Chile, Holland and China. (I forgot to check the banana labels.) Let's say there were 200 shipped items , approximately. Granted we don't grow pineapples and citrus fruit. However, our berries, beets, scallions, garlic, etc. are great, and this early in the seaons, some of the stone fruit still proves superior to the hard peaches and nectarines from afar. Even the apricots, I would guess, as opposed to the aprium apricots at $5.99 a pound.

Regarding Alberto's most recent post and the Ligurian thread: do try to find Fiore Sardo, a Sardinian cheese that many in Genoa prefer. (And I do want to clarify that I neither roasted the garlic until it it was pungent and dark nor tossed in fistfuls. The point was to make its presence known, but subtle.)

P.S. Have you tried adding tarragon?

No, Verjuice. No one knows. There is nothing like the smell of eggs in the morning. Freshly cracked, viscous. See that little stringy thing dangling in with the gluey clear whites? Hold that up to your nose. Sniff. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!

Then there is the monster, Grendel, here from a translation of the Anglo-Saxon epic poem: Beowulf

I'm glad your second batch turned out wonderfully. You might be interested in this thread on The Cooking and Cuisine of Liguria, linked here beginning on page 2 with Adam Balic's documentation of pesto-making. (Page 1 has some background; later pages, discussions and photographs of Ligurian olive oil which is not as spicy as others sold as EVOO.) It's not at all orthodox, but I recently made pesto using roasted garlic just because raw garlic can be rather potent. Perhaps adding extra cloves to compensate for the milder, sweeter taste was ironic, but I really liked it this way.

The full title of the book: Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. The reference to nature ties the work to Michael Pollan's previous books, even A Place of One's Own, as evident in a photograph of the writing space the journalist built in wooded surroundings. (The architectural subject first appeared in a beautiful, personal essay in The New York Times Magazine.) The Library of Congress classifies Omnivore's Dilemma differently. The natural histories of Charles Darwin—even Diane Ackerman, the poet who writes non-fiction about animals—are given numbers under "Q" for science. However, Pollan's new book is assigned a number beginning with "GT" for Food Habits, a sub-category of Geography & Anthropology.* M.F.K. Fisher's works are all grouped under "TX," the first letter signifying Technology, and in combination with "X," specifying the field of Home Economics. Shudder. For a study that explores the nature of classification and what categories say about the way we think and why we believe in them, cf. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things by George Lakoff, another Berkeley professor. However, the author IS a journalist and Steven Shaw maintains he made a professional error while researching Chapter Nine: The Big Organic (pages 134-184 of 411) which begins "I enjoy shopping at Whole Foods…," a sentence that delivers a cheerful indictment as one moves on to the next page. Michael Pollan decides to analyze his shopping trip by focusing on the evolution of corporations from the Counter-Culture movement in the 1960s and turns largely to organic farms instead of dissecting the business practices and growth of Whole Foods. He traces much of what disturbs him back a little further to industrialization. In the process, Pollan offers a lot of praise to some of his subjects, though it tends to be qualified. If that chapter has a villain, it is a gradual, evolving process and a network of inter-relationships rather than a single entity. Conclusions suggest that success distances parties from many—but not all—of the ideals that brought their ventures into being. The sad fate of People's Park becomes a metaphor for what happens when Eden's lost and no one gets all the way back to the Garden. Perhaps one of the reasons John Mackay wrote his open letter is that he resents the clever characterization of one's experience at Whole Foods as literary. Michael Pollan expresses a skepticism that many of us share when it comes to marketing, noting the idyllic fashion in which signs and labels reinforce the belief of shoppers that they're buying an item superior (more humane, more nutritious, fresher, tastier…) to its counterpart at Safeway, a supermarket mentioned only in passing. Ultimately, he concludes that the skills of a literary critic or journalist are required to decipher what one finds, although anyone trained to analyze texts (lawyers, politicians…) is up to the task. The one representative of Whole Foods who appears in the chapter goes nameless. However, Pollan quotes the marketing consultant verbatim. It is difficult to critique anything without sounding superior oneself, especially to the object of scrutiny just as it is very difficult to write well without believing in the truth of one's own perspective, at least when the subject matters to you. Michael Pollan does not perform an exposé à la 60 Minutes (a show he mentions), but as someone who approaches the verbal self-representation of Whole Foods with a critical eye, he produces a text that represents himself as a thoughtful, engaged individual with a new, comprehensive understanding of the culture and consequences of eating, one inaccessible to a vegan executive unless he re-examines his personal morality.** To be inferred: MORE thoughtful and engaged than John Mackay who built a thriving company out of sincere convictions. Naturally, the businessman feels defensive. The fact that Pollan singles out Whole Foods and then glosses over it in preference for a narrative about the sixties and farms may also appear as a slight. Mackay's story has been told in The New York Times before, though the development of businesses started by Gene Kahn—the closest thing to a protagonist in this chapter—Myra Goodman and others are less well known. Does he replace John Mackay's pastoral myth with his own? That may be, but I'm partial. I like his story. *Anyone familiar with major museums devoted to natural history might be aware of the category's problematic relationship to anthropology. A display of stunning Haitian voodoo flags was launched at the natural history museum in Manhattan instead of MOMA, upstairs from a popular exhibition of living butterflies. In Washington, D.C., different understandings of cultural identity and different stages in the history of colonialism separate African objects in a new art museum from the European and European-inspired American works at the National Gallery of Art, and several blocks away, from the African "artifacts" placed in a gallery near Mammals at the older museum of natural history. (FYI: Dewey call #: Geography.) **Michael Pollan hunts a wild pig in the final section of the book. He also argues for the mutual benefits of animal husbandry, even when it comes to animals whose lives end in slaughter and braises.

Thank you, Anne & Russ. Well, in this fast-paced world it's easy to become dated. However, I'm reaching the end of OD & have a response to what used to be the last post here....

Perhaps as a concept and a separate, final course as opposed to having sweet things mixed in with savory ingredients and/or dishes? How are you dating modernity? "Early modern" is used for dates in 15th and 16th centuries instead of Renaissance these days. There were sweet things--pastries, ice cream, et al in Ancient Egypt. Sumeria earlier? I don't know. Of course, the Chinese did everything first, right?

I thought these were a New England-thing since I associate the home-made kind with Maine in the summer! Tennessee claims to be the birthplace of the Moon Pie, apparently the same thing. Are they on the west coast at all? * * * Lori, thank you for all the photographic accounts of shopping excursions in your blog! Have you done any lessons in Italian food or cooking of new Italian dishes since you asked us all about good books to use?

I used to think the New Yorker was as infallible as the Pope. I've learned recently that it does make mistakes. It just doesn't run corrections. ← I have not had a chance to read the book yet, but I can't imagine that a journalist's research into culinary history wouldn't result in a few errors. Afterall he was not trained in that field and given the fact that the topic is just starting to join traditionally respected branches of historical study, it's a difficult area to explore for anyone, especially when it comes to determining the reliability of secondary sources. I personally am a little skeptical about the premise behind his next project, but Buford now reads Italian and he has been consulting primary sources from the periods he is investigating. Let's hope he has help deciphering archival materials. However, the fifteenth-century text of Maestro Martino (ca. 1465; ms. now in Library of Congress) from the court of Mantua includes a recipe for pasta stuffed with zucca, or a large pumpkin-like winter squash. Completed in the third decade of the same century, one of the prophet figures Donatello carved for the belltower of the Florentine cathedral may have been called "Zuccone" early on, though literary sources do record this irreverent nickname until a later date. (It was inspired by the figure's bald head, one that resembled a zucca.) I think zucchini, or "little squash" may have come from the New World. Perhaps Pizza Napoletana, Eden and others with greater expertise might fill in some blanks. Here's the first English translation of the book I mention, although you'll find there is also a nifty new version on a CD that you can read on your computer; Alice Waters lent her name to the project so it might sell: The Art of Cooking. Here's the "Pumpkin-Head." This Italian source is linked as a cached source so you can scroll down to see that Martino's book does include tortelli (large version of tortellini) stuffed with zucca. And if you want to see what zucche (plural of "zucca") look like, see the background of the painting offered in a study I found on the history of stuffed zucchini--one of those weird surprises online searches offers: Basket in upper right quadrant of Figure 1, scroll down.

N.B. At the anniversary farmer's market at Dupont Circle this Sunday (see post upthread), Atwater will be supplying the birthday cake, so it should be great! The chef from Teaism will be demonstrating how to bake a cherry pie, so lucky shoppers may wish to contribute to Mayhaw Man's thread. More stone fruits (peaches & apricots for loyalists; cf. related comments by Russ Parsons), plenty of berries, blue and rasp, squash of all kinds, fennel, artichoke babies...

I've just updated that thread for your benefit.

And for the sake of residents new to this area, especially, here is a guide to farmers's markets compiled by The Washington Post. This list addresses D.C. only, but should be a good start. More relevant for those in the wider metropolitan area, including Northern Virginia: Organic Produce and Farmers markets. Welcome!

And for many generations to come if Dagwood's still thrives in Providence, RI. Great sandwiches. Cited before, but this time for Daniel: --James Joyce, Ulysses

Congratulations, again, David. I'd like to recommend that anyone unfamiliar with Dara Moskowitz (City Pages, Minneapolis) should read her. Engaging, interesting writer.