Different dream for a different time

It is with a conflicted and disappointed heart that I decided this past weekend to not apply for spring admission to NYU’s Food Studies program. Additionally, I’ll be dropping the Agriculture class that I am currently taking as a non-matriculated student. And I'm trying with all my heart to convince myself I haven't failed.

It is perhaps understating it when I say that I have overextended myself lately, overwhelmed and excited by all the opportunities NYC has presented to me in the two years I’ve lived here. Working full-time, being a wife and mother, blogging, reviewing for School Library Journal (which I’m also taking a sojourn from), publishers’ events, foodie lectures, French classes… And now a class with 100+ pages of academic text to read each week, not including the numerous writing projects that entails… It’s too much and I'm having to give up so many things that are imporant to me. Something has to give.

The good news is that the blog is staying. When I was going down the list of things I could cut, I said, “What about the blo –?” to the Husband. I didn’t get out the whole word “blog” before Adam cut me off and reminded me how much I love it here. This must stay. It’s a good constant.

Ultimately, what the awesome Husband pointed out was that our best moments have been when we have been doing nothing: cooking chili all day on a Sunday, picnicking in Central Park, apple picking in the fall, examining an ant on the sidewalk with Kiddo. Though I suppose you can hardly call these things “nothing.” Fall is my favorite season and I would hate to miss it because I’m writing a paper on 19th century agriculture in America. I’m choosing fall, family, friends, and food. Agriculture and waste in the urban environment will have to wait.

Eat, drink, and get busy living.

First Night of Class!

My first Food Studies class was last night, and it was every bit as brilliant as I was hoping for. The professor is wicked smaht but incredibly approachable, the people in the class are friendly, and the topics we discussed in our abbreviated first class already thrilled me to my fingertips.

While the professor promised that "I don't want to kill you", she did tell us it was her job to make our brains feel like they're going to explode. She also said it was her job to make us better writers. I'm all for exploding brains in order to be a better writer.

Eat, drink, and flex those cerebral muscles!

Cue "Eye of the Tiger": I can't give up yet!

So you can imagine how out-of-this-world-excited I was today when I saw that NYU had posted the booklist for my first Food Studies class. Because I’m soooo geeky that way.

- Of Frankenfoods and Golden Rice: Risks, Rewards, and Realities of Genetically Modified Foods by Frederick Buttel (Woo hoo!)

- Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West by William Cronon (Yeah, baby!)

- Agrarian Dreams: the Paradox of Organic Farming by Julie Guthman (Bring it on!)

- Sunset Limited: The Southern Pacific Railroad and the Development of the American West, 1850-1930 by Richard Orsi (Awesome!)

- American Agriculture in the Twentieth Century by Bruce L. Gardner (Fantastic!)

- Centrality of Agriculture: Between Humankind and the Rest of Nature by Colin A.M. Duncan (Okay, I paused here – it’s an $80 book. Whatever! I’ll use plastic!)

- Larding the Lean Earth by Richard Stoll (Rock on!)

- Dolly Mixtures: The Remaking of Genealogies by Sarah Duncan (Sheep? Cool!)

- Home Grown: The Case of Local Food in a Global Market by Bruce Halweil (Brilliant!)

So I bought everything on the list, except for American Ag in the 20^th Century, which I checked out from the library. I clutched my card like a 5-year-old using it for the first time. I checked out the book. I took it back to my desk at work and cracked it open with enormous anticipation. Here is a sample of what I read:

The bearing of inequality on poverty is that, for a given income standard, or poverty line, and a given level of mean income of a group, the greater the inequality of income the larger the percentage of the group below the poverty level.

And I do not lie: The Whole Book Reads Like This. Don’t believe me? Let me randomly skip 100 pages ahead…Okay, here’s a sample from this page:

Although the sales and membership of cooperatives grew under the Capper-Volstead Act, it soon became evident that exemption from antitrust was not sufficient to confer decisive market power upon agricultural producers.

To quote Georgia Nicholson: Oh, what in fresh hell?

Eat, drink, and try not to second-guess your decisions.

Food Things

-- First, after more than an hour of hopping to many, many offices, I FINALLY got myself admitted to a Food Studies class in the fall as a non-matriculated student!!!! Naturally, the school didn’t exactly give me a wide range of sexy classes to take – I’m taking a non-sexy core class. Food Systems I: Agriculture. Here’s the description:

Food Systems I: Agriculture
E33.2033 30 hours: 3 points

Surveys issues surrounding food production from an agricultural perspective. Students will gain anunderstanding of how agricultural production shifted from a Jeffersonian ideal to an industrial and politicalpracticality. Topics include the agrarian ideal of the yeoman farmer, the ascendancy of markets and agricultural commodification, the politicization of agriculture and the farm bill, and sustainable agricultural systems.

No, definitely not sexy. But fascinating, nevertheless.

-- Los Angeles has blocked any new fast-food “restaurants” in their poorest areas, particularly South L.A. Places like Subway that are usually in strip malls and don’t use heat lamps are exempt. I actually have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, something needs to be done because the poorest people in our country are the ones with the highest rate of obesity and fast food restaurants certainly play a role in that. However, I’m not a fan of governments legislating behavior and I’m annoyed that personal accountability and responsibility, as well as education about nutrition, is being undervalued or totally ignored. Additionally, kids won’t have new fast food places coming into their neighborhood…but often what they get at school is even worse than fast food. Spend some time and tax dollars worrying about that, lawmakers.

-- I found this article in the San Francisco Chronicle: 10 Techniques Every Cook Should Know. It even includes video. Happily, I can do almost all of these things successfully: Breading, Browning/Searing, Dicing an Onion, Making Pan Sauce, Rolling Out Pie Crust, Making a Roux, Segmenting Citrus, and Making a Vinaigrette. Where I am less successful is Tempering: sometimes I’ve nailed it…other times, I’ve had chunks of cooked egg or bits of curdled cream in my dish. And the last one is Folding: I’ve actually never folded anything since I don’t bake and I’ve never tried a soufflé. So I don’t even know if I can do it or not.

-- As I mentioned in my earlier post, my friend Heather introduced me to the book What to Drink with What You Eat by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page (See their website). It is the definitive source. Wanna know what to eat with that IPA you have in the fridge? This book has a list. Wondering what in the hell one drinks with Pad Thai…or pretzels? This is the book. Not only does it have “chicken” but it breaks it out into “chicken with lemon or lime”, “chicken tikki masala”, “chicken with cream sauce”, and maaany more. It includes beer, cocktails, wine, tea, and even water. I checked out the 2006 version from the library but Heather informed me that a new edition is coming out this fall (but I can’t find the new one anywhere online). So look out for a new edition sometime soon. Likewise, Heather is highly recommending The Flavor Bible, which is also by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg. It comes out in September so I’ll be keeping an eye out for that one too.

Eat, drink, and master the 10 Techniques Every Cook Should Know

Laura: A Week in the Life

So here has been my week:

Monday: Children’s Book Week kick-off breakfast, hosted by the Children’s Book Council. It was held in a bank. Really. Then I ran around NYU, trying to get registered for a Food Studies class in the fall as a non-matriculated student (I failed). In the afternoon, a preview at Little, Brown. That night, my last French class of the semester. Voila! Le fin!

Tuesday: Work. Homework. Dinner. Watch “Dancing with the Stars.”

Wednesday: Work. Homework. Dinner. Bath. Call Mom.

Thursday: Preview at Random House in morning. Back to work by 1:00 for meeting. Leave work at 3:00 to go to Kew Gardens Hills to see program with Kirsten Miller (she’s awesome). Come home. Make dinner. Homework.

Friday: Career Day at the kiddo’s school where I try to make Queens Library sound cooler than Google (Adam is representin’, too – I’m gonna smoke him!). Work. Dinner. Week over.

It’s been one of those weeks. And here was my dinner menu this week:

Monday: Adam flew by the seat of his pants while I was at French class.

Tuesday: Orecchiette with Sausage and Broccoli Rabe (thanks, Giada)

Wednesday: Grilled Shrimp and Spinach Salad with Honey Vinaigrette (courtesy of Cooking Light - some of the best-flavored shrimp I've had to date)

Thursday: Penne with Vodka Sauce (thanks again, Giada…I hadn’t cooked Giada in ages so I thought I’d revisit some of my old faves from when I was just starting to cook)

Friday: Friday is the one night a week we eat in front of the TV, and we uncreatively call it “TV Dinner Night” and it’s sort of become a family ritual. Not to mention that it’s become a fun challenge to design a dinner that can be eaten picnic-style in front of the TV. So this Friday, it’s nachos.

Stick a fork in me. I’m so done with this week.

Eat, drink, and rejoice in Friday

NYU Food Studies Program: getting my foot in the door

I'm on my way! After a couple emails hounding people at the Food Studies office, I found out how to register for a class in the fall as a non-matriculated student. I think, "Great! I'll stop by the office to pick up the application right before my French class tonight!"

And here I find it necessary to point out that the program didn't have the application available electronically because it had to be filled out "in triplicate." Really?! I didn't know that the college kids today even understood that term! The school is lucky that I'm old enough to remember the joys of carbon paper! I don't know why I should be surprised - you won't find more antiquated procedures than in a public institution. Just ask a librarian.

Anyway, then it occurs to me that the office may not be open as late as 5:30. So I call. Yep, they close at 5:00. Again, really?! How can a program claiming to be designed for the working professional have an office that closes at 5:00??

Never mind, I can do this, I tell myself. So I squeeze out of work 30 minutes early (which is completely justified since I rarely take a lunch break). "I can do this, I can do this," I repeatedly chant in my head. But wouldn't you know it - the F train decides it's going to go local instead of express. And I'm crushed. I can't even pick up an application - how the hell do I expect to juggle a class?! Never mind that I've been juggling French classes for the past 3 semesters - it doesn't matter because I choose this moment to have a crisis of faith. I fight tears the whole trip - I'll never make it before 5:00.

I come up out of the subway at 4:58 so I start doing that half-run, half-walk thing that New Yorkers do, all the while dodging puddles and yelling in my cell phone to Adam about my crisis. I make it to the office on the 10th floor at 5:07. I see the window is closed, the lights are dimmed. Fuuuuuu.....! But WAIT! There's a guy still in there! I gesture wildly to him and he lets me in. Yes, he remembers talking to me on the phone. Yes, here's the application (in triplicate!). Yes, this is what you do from here. Which, lucky me, requires that I return the paperwork to two different offices on campus...before 5:00 p.m. But that's an adventure for a different day - it's 5:15 p.m. right now.

All this, and I haven't even submitted an application to the actual degree program - this is only to take a class as a non-matriculated student. Sheesh.

Fortunately for me, underneath my perky exterior lies one of the most stubborn and determined people you're likely to meet. Stay tuned for more adventures!

Eat, Drink, and go electronic.

A Nibble of This and That

I was a tad more eager than usual for this week’s NYT Dining section because I was really curious to see the Letters section re: last week’s “The Fat Pack Wonders if the Party’s Over” by Kim Severson. Alas, no Letters section in the physical paper and no section in the online version. Not one that I could find, anyway. No one had anything to say, that was printable, about that article? Really? I was hoping for some great discourse and was totally disappointed to not get it.

Once again I find that combining food and children’s literature in a single blog isn’t entirely random. Check out Allison’s post over at Shelftalker about Mud Pies and Other Recipes: A Cookbook for Dolls written by Marjorie Winslow and illustrated by Erik Blegvad. Allison has included a couple of the “recipes” in her post and it sounds so “completely and utterly charming.” I’ve put a hold request on the one single copy at Queens Library.

As part of the prerequisites for NYU’s Food Studies program, they require you to have some hands-on experience that extends beyond your own home kitchen. So I’m looking through the course schedule at the Institute of Culinary Education (aka ICE) with absolute delight. A Greenmarket cooking class! A knife class! A “Fine Cooking” class! A salt class! Where to start???? I’m thinking of the knife class – it’s only a 3-hour class I can take after work so I don’t have to worry about too much commitment at this point. If it goes well, I can do the “Fine Cooking” class, which is much more money and five 5-hour classes. Between those two classes, I will have satisfied the prerequisite. I’m on my way!

I recently heard about the journal Gastronomica and thought a subscription might be in order. So I went to the website to check it out and read an intriguing letter from the editor that is in a similar vein to our earlier discussion about NYT’s “Fat Pack” article. She discusses the juxtaposition of providing healthy, delicious, affordable food to disadvantaged families and communities with the idea that good food – or any food, really – should cost more. Those ideas seem completely contradictory to each other. She’s right, though: I live in a lovely part of Queens with decent restaurants, a fish monger, a cheese store, and a great market for my other needs. And I spend a significant portion of my income on food. But I work in a disadvantaged neighborhood, right across the street from the bus depot, and it is incredibly difficult to find healthy food around here. I usually bring my lunch to work but, occasionally, I’ll forget and need to buy lunch here. You wouldn’t believe the difficulty in doing that. There’s a market nearby, but the produce is sub-par and comes from everywhere but New York. Forget good bread or any unprocessed cheese. Everything comes frozen, in a can, in bulk, or vaccuum-packed. Not surprisingly, you’ll see a significantly larger number of overweight and obese people in the neighborhood I work in as opposed to the one I live in. During my info session, the director of the Food Studies program repeatedly threw around the term “food crisis in this country” and I don’t think that’s stating it too strongly. Darra Goldstein’s letter just added one more voice to the dull roar.

On that note, the Sustainable Table has a wonderful blog and they posted about a curriculum package by Equal Exchange. It teaches kids about fair trade, food production and sustainable living. This seems as good a place as any to start turning this thing around.

Information session update

This is where I demonstrate what a good writer I am not because I'm feeling at a loss for words to describe how fantabulous the Master of Food Studies info session was at NYU.

First off, my worries were unfounded. I was running late (I got lost!) so I didn't have to sit through the whole why-are-you-here small talk with the people around me. Second, I found out that the program is actually designed with working professionals in mind. Nearly every class takes place at night (there is the occasional exception, but the daytime class is always an elective). Not only that, but they actually encourage you to go part-time, and we were told that it's usually only international students that go full-time. So no worries there!

There were about a dozen people at the session, which was headed up by the program director, and it appeared that I was probably the second or third oldest person in the room...at 32 years old! But that was going on appearances alone, and we all know how reliable that is! The director told us that only about 50% of the students in the program have previous culinary experience (phew!) and there are only 85 or students total in the program at a time. Sounds like my kind of program!

Then she talked about the classes. Oooooh, the classes!

Food and Culture - how we define and identify ourselves individually and as a culture through food

Water, Waste, and the Urban Environment - study water as a commodity and as a food. NYC's history with waste disposal and the acquisition of water.

Comparative Cuisines - discusses how cuisine changes history. The example the director gave was how the Irish Potato Famine didn't alter Ireland's history, but it changed America's history forever. Those are the sorts of things discussed.

Research Applications - this is essentially your thesis. You pick a topic, either based on an earlier project in your coursework or a new one, and spend the semester researching it. The director called it a "passion project" which, naturally, made me feel woozy with joy immediately. The idea is that it's cumulative and, hopefully, will end with a publishable product. The school makes a whole day of it, starting with breakfast, then the presentations, break for lunch, then more presentations, and then dinner out to celebrate, of course.

Guys, I can't even tell you how good this is sounding to me. The director said it is a very rigorous program, but not a competitive one; given the vast range of food studies, there are plenty of jobs out there to suit the multitudes of interests. She also talked about how close all the students become since it's a group of people that all share a singular passion for food. Not to mention the school isn't too large. I'm just a bundle of energy, nerves, and excitement right now because I know in my heart of hearts this is right for me.

Now, in the back of my head, I have that quiet little voice, saying, "Laaaura...what about that little Newbery committee you want to serve on? What about that ALSC committee you just got invited to...your second committee invite? Are you ready to let some of that drop? Are you?"

But you know what? I'm not worrying about it right now. I just had a whole world open up to me today so I'm just going to sip the flute of prosecco I have next to me and urge the rest of you to pursue whatever interests you, whatever keeps you excited and energized about life. What's stopping you?

Embarking on yet another adventure

HUZZAH FOR VACATION DAYS!!!!

It’s a gorgeous, breezy, sunny day here in NYC, and guess who has the day off work. And why do I always make you guys guess? Well, I have the day off work. I wasn’t initially sure if I should share why I have the day off….but then I said, “What the hell!” I’m going to an information session today for NYU’s Masters in Food Studies program! I know, it’s not really that big of a deal. I mean, it’s not like I’ve actually applied or anything. But still… This is an important step for me.

So I’m just hanging in the apartment, dressed up all fab, waiting until it’s time to go. I’m incredibly nervous because 1) I’m concerned that I’ll find out I can’t keep working at the library 35 hours a week and do the Masters at the same time, thus killing the dream, and 2) I’m freaked that I’m going to be completely “over-chic’d”, meaning that I’ll be sitting in a room today with serious foodies, with people that have already completed culinary school, with people that have been published. And I’ll introduce myself and say, “Well, I’ve blogged about food for about 8 months – like every 3^rd person in the world – and…um…well, I’m really passionate about food.” That’s about all I have to recommend me at this point. That and I’m incredibly scrappy and persistent. But I can’t very well tell people that today, can I?

The good thing, though, is that the info session is over at 2 p.m. Which means I’m heading to Union Square for a couple hours before picking up the kiddo after school. Can’t wait to pick out something deliciously adventurous to eat! And it’ll certainly help me recover from whatever goes down at NYU.

I earned my MLS and all they gave me was this stinkin' shirt

Walter Minkel, over at The Monkey Speaks, has an alarming post up right now. Wausau, WI has demoted all of its librarians (all of the Librarian I positions, anyway). Instead of Librarian I, they will now be “customer service librarians,” which also comes with – BAM! – a $10k annual pay cut.

This, of course, is part of a reorganization to save the flailing budget of the city. The library director, Phyllis Christenson is quoted in the Wausau Daily Herald as saying, “I would rather keep people on staff at a lower pay than fire somebody.” Well, dur! Once again, this is an example of library upper management coming to a half-assed decision because they’re afraid to make the difficult choice and have the difficult conversation. Never mind that you’ll have people on your staff who are undervalued and demoted so you have to guess that the morale at the Marathon County Library System is swell, right? Right? Sheesh. Not to mention that Christenson also states this reason for the reorg: “Librarians today do less complex work, she said -- calling for pay adjustments and more technological assistance.” Whoa. That smells like a cop-out to me. A big, ol’ stinky one. I have seen nothing but evidence to the contrary in my own day-to-day job. Nevertheless, library science/information science programs nationwide should pay attention – if library directors are seeing our work as relevant, then Master’s programs will need to double-time to make sure that they’re producing librarians well-versed in all things relevant to libraries today…like how to be a manager or a director.

I can only hope that this is not going to be a trend elsewhere in the country. I can only hope that this is just the misguided attempts of some Midwest councilpeople and library directors to save their own jobs. Otherwise, that Master’s degree in Food Studies at NYU is starting to look more and more promising…

For an alternate perspective, check out the Annoyed Librarian's post about this.

Up and running: Harry Potter and NYU

Like so many others, I’m in the midst of reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Unlike so many others, I’m reading it pretty slowly. I was at the very start of my career as a children’s librarian when Sorcerer’s Stone came out – I remember that we actually got review copies of it. And since then I’ve been on many adventures of my own so I’m feeling particularly nostalgic about this book and a little sad it’s going to be over soon.

Thus far, I have the same complaint about Harry Potter that I (and so many others) have had about the past three books: it needs tighter editing! There are just some scenes that drag on for unnecessary amounts of time. It really gets ridiculous sometimes. But I also feel like that’s a minor quibble at this point: Rowling is a master at creating suspense, tension, and excitement in her stories, and I’m so along for the ride.

On my other favorite subject, I went to a food-related event at NYU last night: “Sustainable Agriculture vs. Industrial Food: A Conversation with Dan Imhoff and Dan Barber. Clark Wolf was the moderator. For the most part, I didn’t learn anything I hadn’t already read in Omnivore’s Dilemma. What I did learn more about was the Farm Bill which, as Marian Burros points out in her Times article, needs to be called the Food Bill. The conversation got me completely fired up about supporting a movement that has the potential to reverse the dangerous course American food culture is currently on. As soon as I finish Harry Potter and a book I need to review for SLJ, I’m going to pick up Dan Imhoff’s Food Fight: A Citizen’s Guide to a Food and Farm Bill.

Here are a couple things I got out of the event:

• California produces 50% of our nation’s fruits and vegetables but they receive no subsidies – those all go to farmers of corn, wheat, soybeans, and other commodity crops.
• Transparency is the biggest issue of the Farm Bill. We want to know where our food is coming from, how it’s processed, what is used to make it.
• Mondavi has an organic wine out…I’m going to buy a couple of bottles and enjoy them while I read House of Mondavi, which is on my long long long reading list.

Apparently the next NYU talk is “Chefs Who Grow Their Own”. Can’t wait!

After the talk, Adam and I went to dinner at Rouge, our favorite restaurant in our neighborhood. We had a bottle of Valley of the Moon Sangiovese, which has become one of our new favorite versatile wines, and shared a cheese and meat platter along with a frisee salad with gorgonzola, hazelnuts, and bacon. Simple but fantastic. And because I had such a light dinner, I went for the out-of-this-world gateau au chocolat avec crème anglaise, a flourless cake they serve that is really a small slice of heaven. Adam had vanilla custard with berries: he liked it, but it was a little too gelatinous for my tastes.

We finished off the evening by going to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Overall, a lovely evening.