Comments | existentialmutt: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

existentialmutt

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Feb 01, 2007 22:31

Michael Pollan, author of the awesome Omnivore's Dilemma, had a new essay published this weekend in the New York Times. It deals with the culture of nutrition, which is a topic that's particularly poignant to me. You see, in the past year I've become an official mostly-vegetarian, worked for organic farms for nothing but vegetables, experimented ( Read more... )

meatrix

Comments 6

greensinger February 2 2007, 20:29:10 UTC

These are all themes that have come up repeatedly on this trip. My friend Ben homebrews. And I got to meet this guy at Short Mountain:

http://www.chelseagreen.com/search?query=Sandor+Ellix+Katz

I think he takes it a step further than Pollan, and gets into some exciting (food) countercultural details. His Wild Fermentation is as close to a fermented foods bible as I've ever seen.

existentialmutt February 3 2007, 00:05:00 UTC

You met Sandorkraut? Cool! I love Wild Fermentation-- especially his recipe for yogurt:

Heat the milk up to 180 degrees, or if you don't have a thermometer, till it starts to bubble a bit. Then let it cool back down to 110. For the thermometerless, that's when you can stick your hand in it and it feels like you could leave it there for a while.

quiggles February 3 2007, 20:09:17 UTC

He is doing a workshop on fermenting things (fancy that!) at the Organic Growers School here in March. I know you said he's really inarticulate. . . do you think I should sign up for it anyway? (Make kraut with the Master?!)

existentialmutt February 5 2007, 16:52:07 UTC

He was a little flaky and rambling, but not completely inarticulate. Plus, that was a talk. He'd probably be a lot better in a hands-on workshop. Go for it!

Thread 5

kslays February 5 2007, 23:00:26 UTC

I get the Sunday Times and this was the first article I read in the Magazine last weekend. I'm a bit of a nutri-phile (meaning I like to study nutrition), and I loved it. Well thought out and just the right amount of challenging attitude to make it interesting, although I think most scientists studying nutrition agree with him completely.

My dad (who's a biochemist who did his Ph.D. work on digestion, then retired to become a winemaker) likes to describe fermentation as a battle between microbes. The fastest spreading ones (yeasts for alcohol, milk bacteria for yogurt, etc) crowd out the nasty ones, so it's a pretty safe procedure.