Eat This Newsletter 208: Cheesy
Hello
We are on the weekly schedule now, with probably fewer items but, I hope, my customary high standards for entertainment and information. In that connection, I’m grateful to Naomi Duguid for sharing the link to the first item..
A monocular look at a cheese
When she was 10 years old, Alexis Adams had a formative encounter with a very special Greek cheese. It was a touloumotiri, a cheese — tiri — ripened in an animal skin — touloumi. A search to rediscover that cheese is at the heart of a recent article from Adams.
The article is everything you would expect from a memoir born of 40-year-old reminiscences of an exotic and appealing place, from the funny and unfamiliar grocery items, including that cheese, to the shy smile of the local farmer who indulges the older Adams’ curiosity. She learns, along the way, that although farmers still make a cheese they call touloumotiri, the touloumi itself has been shoved aside by plastic and wooden barrels. Eventually, though, following a transhumance trail, another of her obsessions, Adams does eventually encounter a shepherd who makes the cheese in the old way, in a skin. But there the story almost ends, somewhat abruptly. Why does Dimitris favour the old way? Was it as good as she remembered? How does it compare with the modern stuff? Instead, Adams whisks us back to the first time she actually ate touloumotiri — more a dare than a desire — and gentle mockery of the grocer’s accent. I was disappointed.
If Orion magazine does not originally want to serve you, as it didn’t me, use this link instead.
Perennial Promise
“If your life’s work can be accomplished in your lifetime, you’re not thinking big enough.”
Wes Jackson, who wrote the above, is 87. When I visited The Land Institute, in the 1980s, his life’s work could best be summed up, by Wes himself, as perennial polyculture, growing a permanent prairie of mutually supportive and sustaining food crops. My impression is that that vision has taken a bit of a back seat lately, at least in public, to one component of the polyculture, a perennial cereal. Kernza is going great guns, and The Land Institute recently released a timeline that marks more than 40 years of Kernza’s active development. It is a testament to thinking big and thinking long-term, and if perennial polyculture takes a little longer, I suspect Wes will wait.
Follow-up: Milk Banks and Food Allergies
One resource I make a lot of use of is JStor, a repository for mostly academic articles that can otherwise be hard to get hold of. Even better, JStor offers a series of updates that point to articles first stored some time back. So it was that I read about a fascinating paper on milk banks in New York City. The article itself is behind JStor’s paywall, to which you may not have easy access; my own access is anything but easy. In any case, the article about the paper gives enough information that you can decide whether you need to see the entire paper, motor-cycle Sirens and all. Of course, I was attuned to notice the article because of my own episode on Mothers and Milk.
Another topic I am currently attuned to is food allergies, again because of a recent episode on how to be a good host (and guest) in the face of allergies. Matthew Smith, one of the contributors, has a new paper out examining historical and social science perspectives on food allergy. It provides an informative guide to many aspects of allergies, from the earliest recognition of food-based “idiosyncrasies” to the modern experience of sufferers and carers. I was particularly taken with the section on some of the assumptions that underpin “explanations” for the rise in allergies.
Take care.
p.s. Yesterday was Sustainable Gastronomy Day. Who knew? Who cares.