Oct 10 2010

The NY Times magazine food issue: Community!

The New York Times Magazine’s annual food issue has arrived, with a surprising and most welcome focus on the community aspects of today’s wonderful food movement.   The cover says it all: “Eating together: How the food revolution–from farm to table–is really a story about seeding and savoring communities.”  Yes!

Food editor Christine Muhlke sets the tone with “Growing together: How the food movement jumped the plate.”

Click anyplace on the cover and you go right to Michael Pollan’s piece on the communal table.    I love the American Gothic photographs of food producers at Oakland’s Eat Real Festival.  I don’t know any of them, but wish I did.

Community!  That’s what the food movement is about.

As for next year, I’m hoping the Times will take up the politics of how we get there.

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Oooh, thanks for the heads up!! I recently came to grips with reality (ie NO TIME) and cancelled my subscription to the NYT but will make it a priority to read what looks like a great magazine! Best to you.

Yes!

I read the NYT magazine in front of the fire last night after a full day of grain threshing, trail work and brick oven cooking for the 350.org work party. There’s something so satisfying about working alongside new friends outside in the fresh air. We aren’t going to solve big problems like climate change or reform the food system with one day of work, but we will build the relationships that strong, resilient local communities are made of, and those communities are exactly what will help us to weather the storms and slowly work towards lasting change.

  • Nuc Sub Vet
  • October 12, 2010
  • 4:29 pm

My wife and I are lucky to live on the Central Coast of California. There is a local Farmer’s Market every day in one of the major five cities. You meet the farmer, talk to her about what and how she grows her organic crops. (her or him) The vegetables are great, there is good local cheese, beef and fish. The local fishers also sell fresh fish right off the boat on weekends.

You can belong to a vegie co-op that will have available weekly boxes of the latest, freshest goodies, at a reasonable price.

I believe in community food. How could you not?
Peace

  • Elsa
  • October 19, 2010
  • 2:21 pm

I am surprised that you actually thought this was good considering your obvious focus on politics and policies. I found it so cluelessly middle class that it was almost insufferable. A food issue on how to solve the problem for EVERYBODY, the poor included if not especially for the poor, is way more needed than yet another huge liberatory fantasy narrative on the significance of the hearth based on some nostalgia ala Pollan for the pre-industial past. Don’t get me wrong: I love reading that and I feel the same in many ways, but I don’t like to pretend that this is the way to solve the food justice problem. In fact, after some point, it takes the focus away from important work to change governmental bills and policies and subsidies and laws that are the real obstacles. Guthman’s “I can’t Stomach it” said same some time ago.

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