Read this

Rule: Read this.

If cooking means anything to you, you should like it.

I'm not sure how I feel about her writing (I've only read this, and obviously it's a short work), but she seems like she might be worth checking out. Anyone out there know anything about her?

I heart you, Michael Pollan.

So I'm reading Michael Pollan's second big hit, In Defense of Food. I'm going to resist my impulse to make it a rule to read this book, but it's super thought-provoking and I think well-written and researched. There is a little paranoid, but if you read it in conjunction with Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser - for a non-Pollan perspective and body of research; certainly one could also read Pollan'sOmnivore's Dilemma - then the paranoia seems a little less extreme and might seem more like hyper-(justified)vigilance.

I won't ruin it for anyone, but he quotes Wendell Berry - an accomplished writer and defender of sustainable agriculture practices - quite often, and one of the quotes near the end of the book is going to be a rule I'm going to attempt to follow:

Eating with the fullest pleasure - pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance - is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.

Word, Mr. Berry. Word.