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Deborah Madison.  An Onion in My Pocket: A Life with Vegetables.  Alfred A. Knopf/Borzoi, 2020. 

Here’s my back-of-the-book jacket blurb:

Onion in My Pocket is a riveting account of how Deborah Madison’s previous 20-year incarnation as a serious student of Zen Buddhism prepared her to become the consummate vegetarian cook and cookbook writer.  We are all fortunate that she loves vegetables—and healthier as a result.

Madison is the author of more than a dozen books about vegetarian cooking.  She opened Greens in San Francisco, a restaurant that moved vegetarian cooking from the fringe to the mainstream.  Going there—or to Tassajara–during the heyday of the San Francisco Zen Center was a sublime culinary experience, well worth the long wait to get in.

Of her time at Greens, Madison writes:

At that time I had a tendency to cook richly, using plenty of butter, eggs, and cream when it made sense.  I was unsure about bringing vegetarian food into a mainstream venue, and I knew that we could always make something good when we relied on cream or buttery crusts, and that customers would like them.  Fat was easy to fall back on in this way.  Also this was 1979 and the early 1980s, an era of cream, butter, and cheese–not just at Greens but in restaurants everywhere.  Our dinners were rich, celebratory splurges, not substitutes for home cooking.  I can’t tell you how many people have told me they were proposed to at Greens, or got married there.

No wonder the food was so good!

Her cooking now is lighter, but still wonderful.

In Onion, Madison is too polite to mention what was happening at the Zen Center at the time she left to cook at Chez Panisse and explore the wider world.  That story—a #MeToo forerunner–is covered in Michael Downing’s “Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion and Excess at the San Francisco Zen Center.”

This book is about discovering the deliciousness of vegetables.  We need it.

Harold McGee.  Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World’s Smells.  Penguin Press, 2020.

Harold McGee, author of the astonishing On Food and Cooking, sent me a copy of his equally astonishing new book, this one an encyclopedia of the smells of everything—the “osmocosm.”

I am happy to have it.  He’s produced a life-changing book.  I will never think of smells in the same way again.

For starters, the book is brilliantly designed with elegant charts, key terms in bold, and chemical structures (yes!) right next to the terms in miniature on a light grey background, set off from the text but right there where they are needed.  Here’s an example from the pages that Amazon.com makes available.  This excerpt comes from a section on the smells of chemical compounds found in interstellar space (p. 19—and see my comment on the page number at the end of this post).

Interstellar space?  Well, yes.  Also animals, pets, and human armpits, along with flowers, spices, weeds, fungi, stones (they have bacteria and fungi on them), asphalt, perfumes, and everything else that smells or stinks—as well as foods, of course.

McGee must have had fun writing this.

It’s exactly becasue CAFOs [Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations] are offensive and harmful that the volatiles of animal excrement have been so well studied.  Crazily but appropriately, chemists borrow the terminology of top, middle, and base notes from the perfume worls (see page 477) to describe the smells of CAFOs.  The top notes, very volatile and quickly dispersed, are ammonia and hydrogen sulfide.  The more persistent middle notes include amines, thiols and sulfides, aldehydes and alcohols and ketones.  The constantly present base notes are the short-chain straight and branched acids, cfresol and other pehnolics, and skatole.  In a 2006 study of swine and beef cattle operations, barnyard cresol was identified as the primary offensive odor, and could be detected as far as ten miles (sixteen kilometers) downwind.  It’s probably the first long-distance hint I get of that I-5 Eau de Coalinga (p. 71).

But let me be clear: this is an encyclopedia, demanding close attention to the chemistry.  Sentences like this one come frequently: “The branched four-carbon chain (3-sulfanyl-2-methyl butanol) has its branch just one carbon atom over from the otherwise identical molecule in cat pee” (p.121).

But this blog is about food.  McGee’s discussion of food smells are riveting.  For example:

• The standard basil varieties in the West today mainly produce varying proportions of a coupld of terpenoids, flowery linalook and fresh eucalyptol, and the clove- and anise-smelling benzenoids eugenol and estragole.  But when it comes to a dish in which basil stars—peto alla genovese, the Ligurian pasta sauce of pounded basil, garlic, nuts, and cheese—Italians are more particular (p. 255).
• In 2014, I made a pilgrimage to a celebrated durian stall in the outskirts of Singapore and found that most of the half-dozen varieties I tried tasted of strawberries and a mix of fried onions and garlic.  I enjoyed them enough to smuggl one into my hotel room…After just an hour or two its royal presence filled the room and became unbearable.  I had no choice but regicide, and disposed of the body like coCanned sntraband drugs, flushing it in pieces down the toilet (p. 333).
• The dominant note [in beef stews], described as “gravy-like,” came not from the meats, but from the onions and leeks!  The volatile responsible turned out to be a five-carbon, one-sulfur chain with a methyl decoration, a mercaptomethyl pentanol, MMP for short.  It is formed by a sequene of reactions, the first causaed by heat-sensitive onion enzymes, then ordinary chemical reactions that are accelerated by heat.  So its production is encouraged by chopping or pureeing these alliums (but not garlic) well before cooking them to let the enzymes do their work, the cooking slowly for several hours  (p. 513).
• Canned sweet corn is dominated by seaside-vegetal dimethyl sulfide, acetyl pyrroline, and a corny thiazole (p. 519).
• Swiss Appenzeller is notably strong in sweaty-foot branched acids (p. 567).

It should be clear from these excerpts that this is a reference work—a field guide—just as advertised.  If you read it, you will learn more than you ever dreamed possible about the volatile molecules that we can and do smell.

Nose Dive will go right next to On Food and Cooking on my reference shelf.

But uh oh.  How I wish it had a better index. 

For a book like this, the index needs to be meticulously complete—list every bold face term every time it appears—so readers can find what we are looking for.  This one is surprisingly unhelpful.

I found this out because I forgot to write down the page number for the fatty acid excerpt shown above.  I searched the index for most of the key words that appear in the clip: fatty acids, short and branched; butyric; methylbutyric; hexanoic; cheesy; intersteller space. No luck.  I had to check through all of the fatty acid listings and finally found it under “fatty acids, and molecules in asteroids, 19.”   Oh.  Asteroids.  Silly me.

I also forgot to note the page for the CAFO quote.  CAFO is not indexed at all, even though it appears in bold on the previous page, and neither does its definition, Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation.

McGee refers frequently to “Hero Carbon,” the atom basic to odiferous molecules.  I couldn’t remember where he first used “Hero” and tried to look it up.  Not a chance.

This book deserves better, alas.

Penguin Press:  this needs a fix, big time.

Rebecca Earle.  Feeding the People: The Politics of the Potato.  Cambridge University Press, 2020.

The historian Rebecca Earle uses the potato as an entry point into investigations of some of the most important political issues of our time: immigration, free-market capitalism, and globalization.  As she puts it, her book

offers a deep history of the concept of food security and fresh account of how eating became part of modern politics.  It also helps to explain our own fraught relationship with dietary guidelines by showing how healthy eating became embedded within a neoliberal framework valorising personal responsibility and choice rather than state-led intervention” (p. 3).

A couple more excerpts to give you an idea where she is headed with this.  Malthus, she says, had a “dismal vision of catastrophic population increase.”  With this vision

came pessimism about the potato’s capacity to contribute to national well-being.  Far from increasing trade and boosting economic exchange, the potato bcame an obstacle to modernity, because it helped sustain precisely the sectors of the population that capitalism aimed to eradicate” (p. 141).

Later, she describes the Peruvian International Potato Center (its Spanish acronym is CIP):

Peru is not alone in its gastronational celebration of local potato varieties.  A number of countries, from Denmark to Ecuador, have likewise established national potato days, or sought to protect specific varieties under international legislation…International regulatory structures thus help to nationalise potatoes by according them formal status as part of the national patrimony.  Its long history as an overlooked, localised food resource now enables the potato to toggle between the global food system and notions of culinary heritage, in a way that other major commodities such as sugar or maize have largely failed to do (pp. 197-198).

Michael F.  Jacobson.  Salt Wars: The Battle Over the Biggest Killer in the American Diet.  MIT Press, 2020.

Michael Jacobson was one of the founders of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which he directed for more than 40 years.

His book comes with an introduction by Tom Frieden, former head of New York City’s Health Department and Director of the CDC.

I wrote a blurb for it:

Public health authorities advise eating less salt as a way to prevent high blood pressure, but a few scientists disagree. For anyone confused by these arguments, Salt Wars is a must read.  Michael Jacobson has been fighting these wars for decades, and his assessment of the research on both sides—and the policy implications–is exceptionally fair, balanced, and fascinating.

Here are a few excerpts:

• One reason that the debate has been so vigorous is that most journalists treat new reports supporting the conventional view on salt with a yawn.  Dog bites man?  Big deal.  What does capture the attention of journalists and headline writers are the man-bites-dog reports—those suggesting that eating less salt would be harmful—especially when they are conducted by credentialed researchers at prominent universities and published in respected journals…The poor consumer, lacking an advanced degree in epidemiology or nutrition, can get dizzy trying to follow the arcane biomedical and statistical jousting (p. xvi).
• I was sorely disappointed that the FDA was not setting mandatory maximum sodium levels.  Such limits for all foods in a category…have at least three advantages over a voluntary approach.  First, they would have teeth and ensure that all companies actually trimmed sodium in their saltiest products.  Second, the FDA could easily enforce them.  And third, they would provide a level playing field…I have since been persuaded that the voluntary approach was inevitable (p. 139).
• The process to propose sodium reductions was frustratingly slow, but there was no villain or cabal that sought to undermine the FDA’s effort to lower sodium consumption.  Rather, it was a case of how the Washington policy-making apparatus works when it comes to anything that is complicated, controversial, and consequential…It took the administration so long to propose the guidelines that there was no time to finalize them and the matter has languished for four years  (p. 143).

Craig B. Upright.  Grocery Activism: The Radical History of Food Cooperatives in Minnesota.  University of Minnesota Press, 2020.

I was interested to read this book because I was a member of the Berkeley Co-op grocery store on Shattuck Avenue back in the day and am a member of the Ithaca Co-op now.  Co-ops are member-owned.

Upright based this book on his doctoral thesis about the history of the co-op movement in Minnesota, which aimed to promote production and sales of organic foods.

It is important to study these stores and their stories because it is difficult to understand what “organic” means today without knowing what it could have been, without exploring how this new product, sold in these unconventional settings, attracted the passions of those who wanted to make their world a better place (p. 5).

The difficulty, as Upright puts it, was in trying to run a business and a social movement in one space.

A co-op will cease to exist if it continually operates at a loss.  But co-ops are generally not oriented toward generating a profit.  In fact, state laws often dictate that surplus revenues must be reinvested in the organization or returned to its members…Remaining true to their social values helps maintain the patronage and support of the members who consciously choose to participate, thus keeping the business viable (p. 79).

Upright explains the social-movement origins:

Between 1971 and 1975, co-ops promoted ideologies of opposition to larger capitalistic structures.  Particularly in the Twin Cities, new-wave co-ops opened primarily in areas characterized by institutions of higher learning and strong leftist political leanings.  They formed as art of a larger rejection of mainstream economic policies, attempting to place more power in the hands of lower-income consumers; the array of foods they sold reflected a liberal cultural and political agenda, balanced by the need to sell enough product of any kind to stay in business (p. 125).

This movement was important because in many ways, it succeeded.

The goal so many worked toward…has been achieved; organic food has now achieved mainstream acceptance.  Even so, cooperatives thrive…The social change many championed when this movement began more than forty years ago—the hope that they could challenge the dominance of prevailing agricultural paradigms—has been realized without leading to the irrelevance of co-ops (p. 210).

Today is the official publication date for my latest book.  This one is unusual for me.  It is tiny (4″ by 6″), short (fewer than 200 pages of text), and done in a Q and A format.  Kerry Trueman asks the questions in mini-essays.  I answer them in brief essays intended for anyone who eats.

I will be discussing the book via Zoom:

• Tonight (September 29):  at 6:30 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center.  Information and registration (required for Zoom link) here.
• October 1: with Clark Wolf as part of the Fales Library Critical Topics Series at 5:00 p.m., via Zoom.   It’s free but registration is required—here.
• October 4: I’m on a panel at the Brooklyn Book Festival at 11:00 a.m.  Information about the festival, registration, and Zoom links is here.

The Table of Contents is here.  You can read the Introduction here.

More information is here

• About the Book
• About the Author
• Reviews
• Related Books

Buying options

• UC Press
• IndieBound
• Bookshop
• Powell’s
• Barnes & Noble
• Amazon

Enjoy!

Tom Philpott.  Perilous Bounty: The Looming Collapse of American Farming and How We Can Prevent It.  Bloomsbury, 2020.  

Here’s my blurb:

In Perilous Bounty, Tom Philpott probes what’s wrong with Big Agriculture—examining how it depletes California’s water, poisons water in the Midwest, and ruins soil resources—and proposes ways to reconfigure the food system to better promote health and sustain the environment. This must-read book is deeply researched, compellingly written, and thoroughly inspiring.

And here’s a quick excerpt:

We have reached the limits of “market-as-movement” to transform the food system.  In an economy marked by severe inequality, wage stagnation, and persistently high levels of poverty, the market approach excludes the population that can’t afford to pay the higher prices of organic, local food or devote time to cooking from scratch.  It threatens to create an ecologically robust niche for the prosperous within a dominant food system that quietly lurches on, wrecking the environment and making people sick.  Well-off consumers should vote with their forks three times a day, but the pace of positive change they create has been no match for Big Food’s massive inertia and the rapid advance of climate change.  But something important has emerged over the same period: the stirrings of a new form of movement politics…  [p. 255]

Jeff Miller.  Avocado: A Global History.  Reaktion Books, 2020.  

I did a blurb for this one:

Avocados is a welcome addition to the Reaktion food series, so filled with splendid facts, figures, and illustrations that I learned something new on every page.   I particularly appreciated Jeff Miller’s discussion of avocados as an international commodity—legally grown and traded but also the target of organized thievery and now too expensive for many of their growers to have for their own use.  This is a fascinating story, beautifully told.

This book comes early in the alphabetical listing of Reaktion Books’ Edible series, which includes dozens of single-food monographs from Apples to Wine.  I didn’t know they had blurbs on the back cover, but I was pleased to do this one, especially because I met Jeff Miller when he took the course I taught with Sidney Mintz in Puerto Rico in 2003 and appreciate his subsequent work as a food studies scholar.