Food news roundup: April 1
From around the web this week, a few bites of food news. Feel free to comment with thoughts, reactions, or anything else of interest.
Rikers Island inmates bake 36,000 loaves of bread per week
The cult wine of 121 B.C.
New bill aims to limit rights of beer and wine producers to ship directly to consumers
Food inflation kept hidden in tinier packaging
What does "sustainable" mean for wine?
Good Food Jobs and the importance of ice cream
Dorothy Neagle and Taylor Cocalis, the ladies behind Good Food Jobs, are coming to BU for a free seminar this weekend. They’ll impart some general wisdom on food-focused careers and will help participants think creatively about applying food writing skills beyond traditional channels. The seminar is full, but keep an eye on our Events page and the Lifelong Learning website for future opportunities like this one.
by Erin Carlman Weber
Like so many great things, Good Food Jobs wouldn’t be if it weren’t for pluck and ice cream.
Taylor Cocalis and Dorothy Neagle, founders of the gastro-job website, first bonded during a car ride home from a dairy festival in upstate New York, an event to which they'd been lured by the 25-cent ice cream cones. They remained close for the rest of their undergrad studies at Cornell University, adding to the growing body of evidence that says connections fostered by churned frozen cream are unbreakable. After the pomp and circumstance, Taylor headed to graduate school at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy, and Dorothy began working for an interior design firm in New York City.
Five years after that first ice cream date, the friends found themselves possessed by a combination of career unrest, entrepreneurial urge, food tunnel vision and a desire to work together on a project that would make a difference. They were bound once again for the dairy fair and its pocket change-priced cones when they had an “a-ha!” moment that set Good Food Jobs in motion.
The site is a boon for many food studies students, who, if they’re anything like this one, can be found hitting their browser’s refresh button on the site's job listings several times a day. Since its launch in May 2010, Taylor and Dorothy have transformed their brainchild from a weekly e-newsletter to full-fledged search engine. They’re currently putting up an average of 60 new opportunities a week, and they recently passed the six hundred listings mark. Openings posted on the site span the breadth of the food world. A random sampling could turn up a decorated New York City restaurant looking for line cooks, a marketing position with an urban gardening organization, a Michigan farm searching for interns, or one of the country’s top food websites hiring freelance writers.
Taylor and Dorothy say it’s their goal to ensure there’s a greater chance this diverse range of food-centric businesses exists. They vet each listing to make sure it meets not only their high standards for sustainability, but also the desires of their uniquely food-focused job seekers. The wide range of postings speaks to an idea the women say has been eye-opening for many—just because you want to work in food, it doesn’t mean you have to work with food.
Having ice cream on hand does help, though, as Dorothy and Taylor can attest.
Food writing students want to warm you up
In New England, finding creative and tasty ways to eat your way through the last bits of winter before spring finally bursts onto the scene can seem a never-ending task. Students from this semester's food writing class, taught by Boston Globe food editor Sheryl Julian, are here to help. A few weeks ago, Julian tasked the group with developing a recipe and writing an introduction for a winter-worthy dish. Here are the three hearty, Italian-inflected dishes that rose to the top.
Sophie Gees' rib-sticking ribollita
Chris Malloy's spaghetti all'amatriciana
Rachel Weiner's roasted butternut squash risotto
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Food news roundup: March 25
From around the web this week, a few bites of food news. Feel free to comment with thoughts, reactions and anything else of interest.
Japan's food contamination problem 'serious,' says WHO
Can city farmers make a living? Activist Eli Zigas on the challenges of urban agriculture
Minnesota acts against 'food club' milk seller
Amanda Hesser on how the new Google recipe search gets it wrong
ConAgra broadens campaign to fight child hunger
Genetically modified crops get a boost over organics with new USDA rulings
Graduating Project | Ilona Baughman’s A Touch of Spice: Eating, Exile and Identity
This is the first in a series of posts on the diverse range of projects our students undertake as a culmination of their Gastronomy studies. To write about your own graduating project, send an email to gastronomyatbu@gmail.com.
by Ilona Baughman
I came to the Gastronomy department, not surprisingly, with an abiding interest in many aspects of food. In the course of my studies, I found myself most particularly interested in food’s utility as a lens into culture. A class with chef Ana Sortun opened my eyes to the sophisticated culinary legacy of the Ottoman Empire. I soon began to investigate food’s utility as a lens into my culture, me being a daughter of Greek parents, and a granddaughter of Ottoman subjects.
I learned that although Greeks have lived throughout the Eastern Mediterranean for millennia, only a fraction of them actually lived in the place that became Modern Greece in the early nineteenth century. The Ottoman Empire was comprised of a diverse, multi-cultural population. The new republic quickly and successfully promulgated a nationalist agenda that rejected that diversity, along with any memory of its legacy, which resulted in an almost entirely homogeneous Greek population. This collective amnesia of the recent past enabled the newly constructed national narrative to leapfrog over time, and trace a straight line from the present back to a glorious past in antiquity.
The idea of Greek culture as a modern construction, in opposition to the Ottoman past was the subject I wanted to tackle in my thesis, using food and eating practices as a way to illuminate cultural differences and similarities. The problem was how to narrow the scope to a manageable, meaningful project, with sources to which I had access.
The answer came to me after seeing the 2003 film A Touch of Spice. It is the story of a Greek family from Istanbul who, for political reasons, are deported to Athens, a place as alien to them as anywhere on earth. Berated there as foreigners, they are considered positively unpatriotic for continuing to cook and consume “Turkish” food.
The film thus poses the question “what is Greek food – and by extension – how does one really define Greek identity?” An analysis of the film has allowed me to investigate the issues inherent in teasing out these questions of national identity, anchored in recent history.
Using the film has also solved the issue of sources: the film and cookbooks are my primary sources. Secondary sources include works in food studies, film studies, nationalism and Modern Greek history. The writing is finally underway. With a little luck, you will see me at graduation this May!
Practicing Gastronomy date change
Our first Practicing Gastronomy discussion with Alicia Towns Franken has been moved from Monday, March 21 to Monday, March 28. We hope you can join us as we kick off this discussion series on careers from all corners of the food and drink world. And if you've got ideas for future guests, please send suggestions to gastronomyatbu@gmail.com.
PRACTICING GASTRONOMY
Gastronomy in the Wine World with Alicia Towns Franken
Monday, March 28
808 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 109
4:45-5:45pm
Food news roundup: March 11
From around the web this week, a few bites of food news. Feel free to comment with thoughts, reactions and anything else of interest.
Massachusetts plagued by shortage of grocers, according to new report from MA Public Health Association
Food safety implications in the federal budget debate
NY Congresswoman introduces legislation to reduce antibiotic use in livestock farming
Can Pasadena farmers really trademark the phrase "urban homestead?"
Practicing Gastronomy with Alicia Towns Franken
by Erin Carlman Weber
On March 28*, we're kicking off the Practicing Gastronomy discussions, a series of informal monthly chats with professionals from all corners of the food and drink world. Here's a preview of our first guest.
Alicia Towns Franken thinks wine should be on every table, and that includes those in the delivery room. The Boston-based sommelier and consultant christened both of her children with a dab of Krug rosé moments after they were born. She brings this same principle of lighthearted pleasure, plus her vast knowledge of all things wine, to her pursuits as an educator through tastings, seminars and charity events around the country.
Alicia got her start at Back Bay steakhouse Grill 23, where she was working as a server to finance her neuropsychology studies at Harvard. Her path took a sudden turn down a different road the day she sampled a glass of wine that gave her goose bumps. She asked immediately to be part of their wine program, and eventually she was made wine director. During her tenure as sommelier, Alicia expanded their wine offerings from a two-page menu to a 1,000-bottle list, and earned accolades from Boston Magazine, Les Dames d’Escoffier, and Wine Spectator.
These days, Alicia is a wine consultant and works charity events, participating in seminars, tastings and panel discussions. She’s also an accredited Wine Location Specialist and an ambassador for the Center for Wine Origins, where she works to educate consumers, the media and policy makers about the importance of accuracy in wine labeling. To perform work like hers, Alicia feels it’s vital to be open-minded, with a strong sense of fun and flexibility, and to have a passion for sharing knowledge in an accessible and respectful way.
Alicia will be sharing much more of her wisdom on building a career in wine as our first guest in the Practicing Gastronomy discussion series. Please join us as we sit down with Alicia for an informal chat about her life as a sommelier, consultant and educator in the world of wine, including what it’s like to work a charity event that goes through 100,000 wine glasses.
EVENT INFORMATION:
Practicing Gastronomy with Alicia Towns Franken
Monday, March 28*
808 Commonwealth Avenue
Room 109
4:45 - 5:45pm
*Originally scheduled for March 21. Date revised March 15.
Northeast Food and Justice Summit
text by Erin Ross, photos by Annaliese DeNooyer
The Northeast Food and Justice Summit took place at Northeastern University over the last weekend in February. I helped organize a workshop for it with three Gastronomy students and three students from Chatham University’s Masters in Food Studies program. Running our workshop, which was called "Re-Defining Your Food Studies Vocabulary," was rewarding and fun, but attending the other workshops and meeting people at the conference was also an important component of the overall experience.
Conferences are amazing, exciting, and draining. They're so important as an opportunity to meet other people who are passionate about similar food issues, and they expose you to new ideas and causes at the same time. What was especially exciting about this particular conference was that a number of the attendees were high school students and college undergrads. It was so great to see how smart and educated these younger students were about the issues we so often debate in class.
The first night of the conference was an opening session with a variety of speakers—labor activists, youth workers for the Food Project, and even some poets. They helped to establish what they meant by food justice, and got everyone thinking about why we were all there. They also had us do a variety of get-to-know-you games, which allowed us the opportunity to find out who was attending the conference and why they were attending.
The next day had three workshop sessions. We were presenting in the last block, so I attended two earlier in the day. The sessions I went to were called “International Resistance: Food Sovereignty” and “A Conversation and Strategy Session Around the Industrialization of Black Food Culture.” The first workshop focused on the Via Campesina movement in Brazil, building a historical case for how the colonial food system developed and many ways still exists in the global south. The second session showed a clip from Byron Hurt’s yet-to-be-released film called “Soul Food Junkies.” We then broke into smaller groups to discuss how inequities in the food system are often drawn across racial lines, and took a look at how our own race factors into how we approach food access issues.
Our workshop went well, and was attended primarily by college students. We had an effective and dynamic conversation about the words we use in food studies, like culturally appropriate, hidden costs, and sustainability. I don’t think anyone came up with straightforward definitions, but it made everyone think about how hard it is to define the language we use.
I didn’t attend the closing session of the conference as I was beyond drained, and needed the opportunity to get some of my own work done. However, the conference gave me lots to think about, and I hope everyone considers taking time to attend similar weekends in the future!
Food news roundup: March 4
From around the web this week, a few bites of food news. Feel free to comment with thoughts, reactions and anything else of interest.
America's future farmers already dropping away
Bittman: Don't End Agricultural Subsidies. Fix Them.
Feds consider changes to raw milk rules
Winter farmers markets touted at regional conference in Sturbridge
The debate on how to define 'organic' food grows