Eat This Newsletter 189: Inauthentic
Hello Authenticity is big again this week. I’m not against that, I just don’t feel like doing it myself. Whodunnit Who Invented Mac and Cheese? asks an...
Eat This Podcast -- Mothers and Milk
Hello A wet nurse (for that is what Hera was in all tellings of the story) created the Milky Way when her divine milk sprayed across the heavens. Today’s...
Eat This Newsletter 188: Tasting Menu
Hello Things seem to be picking up again after the (northern) summer lull. A bumper crop these past couple of weeks, even after some judicious weeding, so...
Eat This Podcast -- Fad diets are too good to be true
Hello Eat This Podcast is back with new episodes. And they really are new, unlike most fad diets, which are usually just an old fad diet with a new wrinkle....
Eat This Podcast -- No surplus calves
Hello I've just listened to a very interesting podcast episode about the growth of the dairy industry in the US, and I'm pretty sure I will have more to say...
Eat This Newsletter 187: Legends
Hello I’ve been hard at work on the next series. ETA: 19 September. But that hasn’t stopped me scouring the internets in search of additional sustenance....
Eat This Podcast -- Fresh old salame
Hello There’s no use pretending otherwise. Today’s foray into the back catalogue is inspired by National Salami Day, which is not until next week and which...
Eat This Newsletter 186: Nutritious news
Hello A quick confession; I have finally uploaded transcripts for the four episodes on wheat and human history. Sorry it took so long. Supporters of Eat This...
Eat This Podcast -- Mother of God
Hello By a happy coincidence, today I can point you to a short episode that first saw the light of day exactly four years ago, as part of my lunatic attempt...
Eat This Newsletter 185: Heat
Hello Little did I know last week, when I resurrected the episode in which Harry Paris explained watermelon names, that 3 August was National Watermelon Day....
Eat This Podcast -- Watermelon Madness
Hello The only thing keeping me from a complete meltdown these days is watermelon. Two slices from the ripe, crimson quarter-slice, replete with spittable...
Eat This Newsletter 184: Catching up with reality
Hello Was I happy that Russia and Ukraine appeared last week to have agreed a deal to allow some grain exports to leave the Black Sea ports? Of course I was....
Eat This Podcast -- Grain and Empire
Hello In the final part of my conversation with Scott Reynolds Nelson, author of Oceans of Grain, we move on to empire. The earliest city states in...
Eat This Podcast -- Grain and Finance
Hello Having moved your wheat from where it grew to where it was needed, there was a matching need to transfer the money to pay for it. Bills of exchange,...
Eat This Podcast -- Grain and Transport
Hello Cereals provide their offspring with a long-lived supply of energy to power the first growth spurt of the seed. Thousands of years ago, people...
Eat This Podcast -- Persephone's Secret
Hello Many people take the myth of Demeter and her daughter Persephone to be just a metaphor for the annual cycle of planting and harvesting. But maybe there...
Eat This Newsletter 183: Authentically awful
Hello I had a very enjoyable time during the Oxford Food Symposium’s Kitchen Table talk on how can we find reliable sources of information about food. I’d...
Eat This Newsletter 182: Hot news, cold comfort
Hello A quck reminder of the Oxford Food Symposium’s Kitchen Table on Wednesday of this week. Join Elizabeth Yorke, Anusha Murthy, Ken Albala and me for an...
Eat This Podcast -- Peanuts, Senegal and Slavery
Hello Senegal, on the western edge of Africa, was an ideal base for the transatlantic slave trade, although the European powers that established themselves...
Eat This Newsletter 181: True, that
Hello There is a kind of thread tying most of today’s newsletter items together. More on that in the final piece. Wheat worries A lot of people have talked a...
