We tell ourselves stories in order to live

And now I'm back!

2011-09-13T13:07:00.000-07:00

Hello there,

This blog went on hiatus while I went to South Korea for a year. It seems like this time just flew by. So much has changed -- but in the meantime, this web address has stayed on the business cards I've been handing out throughout my travels.

So, for those of you who are showing up here and scratching your heads about who this strange Ryan Rose Weaver person is (and where she is, for that matter), some clarification seems necessary.

First, I'd like to first direct you to this post on my Speaking Konglish blog, which describes what I did in Korea from July 2010-July 2011.

Next, an update: I've since made the big leap back to the United States, no easy feat for an ex-pat abroad. (It may come as a surprise to some that it is much easier to find a way to go away than it is to find a way to return.) For now, I am traveling around the United States, visiting family members, taking on freelance, and doing research for various future projects. After completing an itinerary that will take me through the Catskills, Salt Lake City, Idaho's Salmon River (where the above photo was taken), Denver, NYC and Boston, I'll be moving to Buffalo, NY for the fall to be closer to family and to begin some of said projects. I can't divulge the details yet, but these will undoubtedly involve food, travel, language and education.

After that (because some of you are already asking!) -- well, 2012 is looking to be a big year already, and it's still months away.

If I've already met you, I thank you for the role you've played in this amazing journey and in my in yeon (a Korean idea that translates roughly to destiny, but means much more).

If I haven't met you yet -- I'm looking forward to it!

Chal kayo (go well),
Ryan

I've moved!

2010-11-27T21:34:00.000-08:00

To a new city in a new country: Seoul, South Korea.

And to two new blogs where I am cataloging my experience here:

1) Speaking Konglish, a site where I am writing about teaching, politics, culture, language and the like as I explore South Korea and attempt to explain my new life here to the folks back home.

2) Seoul Food, a food journal where I keep notes on what I'm eating and learning about food.

Why two sites instead of just one?

Because sometimes I feel the need to be silly, and sometimes I feel the need to be serious.

Sometimes, I hear from people that they'd love to know more about what I'm eating; at other times, people ask me what I'm thinking. And sometimes these answers go together, while sometimes they do not.

Sometimes I feel the need to focus in on one image, like the face of my elderly neighbor as she offers me a plate of Korean grapes or the sight of red peppers drying on the streets of Incheon. And sometimes I feel the need to take all of the disparate themes and ideas I'm exploring and tie them together in an essay about spirituality, adventure or ambiguity.

Sometimes I find America's super-seriousness around food to run directly counter to the greater aims of advocating simplicity, pragmatism, environmentalism and humanitarianism which drew me into the profession (that, and the free cheese). From where I sit in this tiny out-of-the-way country, where cabbage shortages cause panics and it's difficult to find cilantro, much less artisanal coffee liqueur or the like, it all seems monumentally wasteful and silly. The impetus behind America's food revolution was, I thought, to reduce consumerism, not fuel it, with 50 new and expensive ways to make your coffee and "authentic" food flown in from around the world at great cost to our environment.

At these times of frustration, I find myself writing about things that have implications beyond the table, such as education or politics.

But at other times, I use food as an alternate dialogue, a second language like Spanish or a discipline like painting, in which I can express things through metaphors or images when I can't transmit the truth about a thing in plain English. As one of my heroines, MFK Fisher, once wrote:

"People ask me: Why do you write about food, and eating and drinking? Why don't you write about the struggle for power and security, about love, the way others do?. . . The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry. But there is more than that. It seems to me that our three basic needs for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it. . . There is communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk."

I still love to eat, for better or worse. And sometimes, I think I'd like to spend the rest of my life writing about food, cooking food and talking to makers of food as part of my profession. But sometimes I think I'd like to leave that life behind for something different and as-yet-undetermined. Less tainted with guilt and gluttony, artifice and oil. More ... transcendent.

The search for this unknown thing is one of the forces pushing me across the planet, even as I slurp down kimchi and experiment with persimmons along the way.

So, this blogging situation arose organically from the state that I am in, and though I maintain the two sites separately, they often overlap -- as they did when I wrote about my visit to the Mungyeong Apple Festival in the Korean countryside.

Such is my privilege in a time when blogs outnumber books, and the Internet still offers free software and infinite space to anyone with a story to tell.

So, if you're still reading mine, thank you, and please drop me a line if there's something you'd like to see or ask about what's going on over here. I get the sense that the Western media is becoming increasingly interested in South Korea, but that there are not enough reporters taking the time to truly understand it. And while I can't promise that my perspective is any more enlightened, I do think that spending more than 36 hours in a place, having a stake in its fate and forming friendships with everyday people, rather than interviewing only top-level sources from afar, makes for better, truer stories. Especially when your stories are also informed by the uncensored opinions of its children, expressed in a language their parents often cannot understand.

I am also conscious of the potential opportunities opening up for women writers during a century in which women have unprecedented freedom, and the ability and permission to redefine political and economic landscapes around the world. Being a woman has always been central to my writing experience, and it continues to allow me to go places that men cannot go and see things they will never see. (It also allows me to get into trouble in ways that men would never get into trouble, because the rules are still different for us, but that, too, is part of the everyday experience that I feel it's important to capture.)

So, as I explore these opportunities (and eat a lot of kimchi along the way), please wish me luck, write me letters, and 안녕히 계세요 (be peaceful!)
Photo above courtesy of Dawn Kang.

Sowing new seeds for 2010 with TEFL

2010-04-04T11:08:00.000-07:00

It feels like a beautiful coincidence that the sunniest weekend of 2010 is falling on my first free weekend since January.

Some folks may be aware that I've dropped off the radar to take a 100-hour TEFL certification course, which had me sitting inside for nine hours a day every Saturday for the last 12 weeks. TEFL stands for Teaching English as a Foreign Language.

Many people, including me, get this certificate so that they can teach English abroad. (More on this later.) But I had other goals, too. I wanted to build on the teaching experiences I've had as an editor and volunteer, and to truly learn how to do this thing right. I wanted to have a meaningful, intellectual experience. And I wanted to meet other people who also wanted these things.

So, I sought out a TEFL course that would not just leave me with a slip of paper but with a new lease on life. And as luck would have it, I found it around the corner from my house.

The Boston Language Institute (BLI), located on the third floor of a nondescript building in Kenmore Square, is a groovy little institution. It was founded by a Sikh devotee named Siri Karm Singh Khalsa. It employs a rotating roster of well-traveled teachers who teach an alphabet soup of languages, from Afghani to Zulu, to a similarly diverse crowd of students. When I first entered this warm, bustling space at BLI's open house last November, it felt like home. And when Siri Karm assured me that their TEFL program could turn me into a "mean green teaching machine," as I put it, I took him at his word.

I am so glad I did. It would not be an exaggeration to say that this TEFL program has changed my life.

In the company of a dozen amazing women, I spent my Saturday mornings teaching real English classes, provided for free to the Boston community, and spent the afternoons learning how to teach difficult grammar (I can now define and explain an auxilary modal verb) and business English (so many sports idioms!).

There were definitely some rough days (which we got through together with raucous lunches at Eastern Standard and many, many coffee breaks). But overall, I learned so much from my students and fellow teachers, and fell in love with the English language all over again. I have a feeling that what I experienced in this class will be paying dividends for the rest of my life.

Graduation lunch with my ladies -- compliments of India Quality, yum.

I also find that when you are learning a new skill you must unlearn other things, and this has been interesting as well. It turns out that many of the behaviors I have cultivated in order to be successful as a journalist worked against me as a teacher.

For example, when interviewing someone, I find that I am softspoken, and I rarely interrupt people. My interview subject is the one onstage, so to speak. But in a classroom, you are the focus, and you must fight to stay that way. You have a carefully-planned lesson containing crucial information, and you have a limited time to impart it. You must interrupt the fascinating Russian physicist mid-story so you can move on to the silly exercise you have planned about cookies. You are always barking words, shuffling papers and playing ridiculous tapes, like some bizarre vaudeville actor. And you are always watching the clock.

If it all sounds overwhelming, that is because it is. I have so much newfound respect for teachers who can do this with grace. (Mr. Reeves, Mr. Lillywhite, Mr. Ginsburg, and especially Señora Curazon, wherever you are--thank you.)

Doris Day, schooling journalist Clark Gable about the wild world of teaching in Teacher's Pet

However, if you have a big heart, teaching is the ultimate high--and one by one, I watched us all get hooked.

Here is how it happens.

One moment, you have a class led by a shy new teacher, who feels as naked as a new-hatched chick in front of all these strange faces, and she knows that her hair isn't quite right and her shoes are uncomfortable and she's got a bit of a cold. She's struggling to get her students to guess a complex word, and receiving only blank looks from the entire group, including her fellow teachers at the back, who are writing down every mistake she makes.

And then suddenly, something shifts.

Someone cracks a joke, an exercise strikes a chord, and now the English words are flowing, the Argentinian housewife and the Latvian music teacher are clicking, and everyone is laughing and writing things down and saying things like, "Ahh! Now I understand."

Boom. HOOKED.

There is nothing better than this feeling. It is like watching the sun come out from the clouds, or watching the first shoots of crocus poking up from the ground in the spring, or falling in love. It's magic.

And so it is fitting that during this season of rebirth, a dozen new teachers are now taking their acts on the road, ready to plant new seeds of language in places as distant as Senegal, Norway, Siberia. It's so exciting.

First daffodils of spring!

So now that the class is over, I'm going to go outside and enjoy the sunshine, for the first time in a long time. 'Cause it turns out, teachers are real people too, and as one fellow teacher said to me recently, "I think I look forward to the weekends even more than the students do now."

To all my teacher friends--most of whom are far more experienced than me--do you have any wisdom to share on this subject? Any good teaching stories? Any moments of magic? I'd love to hear about them.

This is not a love song (to tag-teaming interviews for TeaParty Boston)

2010-02-24T19:21:00.000-08:00

I've been slammed with work lately, so I haven't been able to take on many side projects, but recently I had the opportunity to interview Nouvelle Vague with my partner in crime, Jessie Rogers, for TeaPartyBoston, and I couldn't turn that down.

Until this year I had always done interviews solo, but earlier this summer, Jessie and I sat down with Shore Gregory of Island Creek Oysters and ended up having an informative conversation that lasted for two hours and the better part of a bottle of a wine, and we discovered that she and I make a great tag-team. We share a sense of humor, but our respective senses of curiosity lead us to different questions, and interviewing someone as a team lets us each rest our brains and really listen to the person sitting across from us, versus scrambling to take notes and thinking quickly ahead to the next followup question. The result (we hope) can a much richer, more well-rounded piece that speaks to a broader range of readers.

Me and Jessie at Thunderdome NYE 2009

(with our other partner in crime, Michael Young, who sometimes shoots for TPB)

In this case, we sat in for a sound check at the Somerville Theatre with the band, then went backstage to sit down with Marc Collin, the charming French frontman of Nouvelle Vague.

Note: for those who aren't familiar, Nouvelle Vague are famed for their breezy bossa nova covers of badass punk and New Wave songs and are currently touring with a bluegrassy third album, featuring stripped-down tracks like the Police's "So Lonely".

I wrote the resulting recap, so it carries only my byline, but Jessie's input during the interview helped make it happen. (She also shot all the photos.)

The reverse is true for Jessie's recent piece on Southern Belle, although in that interview I mostly listened, as frontman Isom Innis has a fascinating story and a charming way of telling it. (I also highly recommend watching the "Conditional Love" video he filmed for TeaPartyBoston on top of a building on Newbury Street -- fans of La Blogotheque's Takeaway Shows will appreciate the format.)

Southern Belle - Conditional Love from TeaParty Boston on Vimeo.

"A Banner Year" in the Sunday Herald

2010-02-07T20:02:00.000-08:00

Something funny happened today: my friend Jenna and I had stories running side by side in the Sunday Herald.

Jenna's is a theatre preview; mine is a feature story that, like many of my stories, seemed to find me.

It began with a flyer on a bulletin board. I saw it out of the corner of my eye on my way out of Flour. “I BELIEVE IN YOU,” it said.

I looked closer. The flyer offered “free advice” and “motivational banners” to “use as a reminder that you can get better, feel better, move on, learn more, have fun, or whatever it is that you’d like to do.” At the bottom were tiny strips of paper with an email address and a Web address: adviceandbanners.blogspot.com.

I took one.

Back at my office, I shared this information with a few fellow romantics; it seemed too sweet to be true, like something out of a Miranda July short story or a film starring Meg Ryan.

Then a friend of mine, Christine, received her advice and banner in the mail. It read, “WORKING ISN’T WAITING.” Hung in her house, it grinned down at us like a rainbow-colored Cheshire Cat smile, and felt just as whimsical.

The advice, however, was down-to-earth.

"Your banner says, 'working isn't waiting.' Because it just feels good to be doing something, not only because it can help you get closer to whatever goals you have, but because doing things* and being active is intrinsically good for your mental health and happiness, right now. This is really important, and I think lots of people need this reminder. Feeling like you're waiting for something sucks so much because it's passive and stagnant. I hope the banner helps you remember that as long as you're doing something, and enjoying it, you aren't just waiting for something better. And that's such a relief, isn't it?"

From the return address, Christine observed that the writer lived just a few blocks away. “I wonder if I pass them in the cafe, in the market, on the bus, and we knowingly nod to our secrets,” Christine wrote later on her blog.

I asked the artist if we could meet; I already had an inkling that I would turn this into a story, but I was also just madly curious. She agreed.

We set a time and date for a meetup at Flour, and a funny Herald photographer named Stuart joined us. She told us her name was Samantha Kattan, she lived in Somerville, and she worked near me, as an interpreter of art at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA). We even shared a few mutual friends.

Stuart suggested we go to her house to look at her art. We piled into his pickup and headed to Union Square. There, Kattan showed Stuart her art supplies, and handed me a few books

by the graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister, whose obsession with creating “design that touches people" inspired her project.

She also showed us the banner on her own wall: it simply reads “TODAY.” It seems fitting for times like these, when the future is so uncertain.

I loved writing this story and am glad it exists in the world. And I keep thinking about what my banner would read, if I were to write in...but ironically, I'm not a stranger anymore, and it would not be anonymous.

This is always the blessing and curse of being a journalist -- you are equipped and entitled to chase down the subjects of your curiosity, to find out what others can't, and it is so satisfying, but often, you lose something of the mystery of life, too.

Were most of your stars out?

2010-01-31T20:19:00.000-08:00

Last week, J.D. Salinger died.

A writer who was as famous for being a "recluse" as he was for writing Catcher in the Rye, Salinger leaves behind an ambiguous legacy, at least in my mind. Contrary to popular opinion, he may not have been a complete hermit -- he was downright neighborly, according to some -- but the image many of us hold in our minds of Salinger, as a brilliant man who spent his life hiding from the consequences of his own brilliance (and thereby undoubtedly undermining his ability to write something as brave and resonant as his first novel ever again), is one I think would make old Holden Caulfield feel sorry as hell.

It makes me feel sorry as hell, too. But then, I tend to gravitate toward writers who are as wildly preoccupied with living as they are with writing about life, like Salinger's contemporary Jack Kerouac ("The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars").

Or Anaïs Nin, who had as the thesis of her classic Delta of Venus the idea that truly titillating erotica "must be mixed with tears, laughter, words, promises, scenes, jealousy, envy, all the spices of fear, foreign travel, new faces, novels, stories, dreams, fantasies, music, dancing, opium, wine."

Or Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame, who told an aspiring writer at a reading I recently attended that she "has to get out in life and roll around in it" to find inspiration.

Or Dave Eggers, most recently of "Where the Wild Things Are" fame, who once wrote an incredibly inspiring essay about why he thinks it's crucial to be "doing something, trying something, even when it's corny or stupid," even when it threatens to topple you from whatever pedestal you have been placed on by your adoring fans. Because "when you die, and it really could be this afternoon ... you will not be happy about having said no. You will be kicking your ass about all the no's you've said. No to that opportunity, or no to that trip to Nova Scotia or no to that night out, or no to that project or no to that person who wants to be naked with you but you worry about what your friends will say."

By contrast, many accounts portray Salinger as someone who purposefully turned his back on life, a writer whose life choices were wildly at odds with the openness and compassion Holden Caulfield displayed even in the face of fear and alienation, confusion and ennui. This is the Salinger I've always had in my head, and he still strikes a tragic figure.

However. Last week, my friend Jenna unearthed a passage of Salinger's that seems to suggest that my own personal Salinger might be a straw man, a literary boogeyman that serves to scare me into engaging with life even when it means facing criticism, unpredictability and "phonies." This passage -- from Seymour--An Introduction, a short story Salinger published in the New Yorker in 1959 -- suggests that Salinger might have more in common with me and my favorite writers than I thought. That in fact, he would have wanted to be remembered as we would like to be remembered when we die: as someone who did his best to live up to his potential as a writer -- and as a human being. (As Jenna puts it, "it's like he wrote his own epitaph.")

You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It’s never been anything but your religion. Never. I’m a little over-excited now. Since it is your religion, do you know what you will be asked when you die? But let me tell you first what you won’t be asked. You won’t be asked if you were working on a wonderful, moving piece of writing when you died. You won’t be asked if it was long or short, sad or funny, published or unpublished. You won’t be asked if you were in good or bad form while you were working on it. You won’t even be asked if it was the one piece of writing you would have been working on if you had know your time would be up when it was finished... I’m so sure you’ll get asked only two questions. Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out? If only you knew how easy it would be for you to say yes to to both questions.”

New business cards!

2009-12-29T19:13:00.000-08:00

I am thrilled to report that talented Boston designer Holly Gordon has recently designed my new business cards and, IMHO, did a bang-up job of it. Check it out --

Pretty exciting! Thanks, Holly. You are out-of-control amazing. Holly also did the design for the Second Glass Annual Wine Guide, which I recently helped to edit (whoops, forgot to mention that!).

And she designed the super-awesome fake mermaid tattoos we received at Wine Riot II, which I also helped with by editing the program and pouring wines for the folks from Tortoise Creek, while they seduced the entire city of Boston with their British accents and charming tales of living in the Languedoc and delicious pinot noir ("great breakfast wine"). Did I also mention that? No? Sigh. Even my friend Josh, who has of late been spending most of his time covering himself in whipped cream, was able to update his blog on this topic before me.

Anyhow, back to Holly. One of the reasons why I chose her design for my cards is that I love her point of view, and felt like she'd be able to convey mine. In fact, she recently wrote a post on her darling and well-illustrated blog that reads like a pragmatic (and admirably succinct) manifesto for Our Generation. I think it's worth sharing.

You know, it’s weird for us kids these days. We get out of school all revved up and ready for our big break. We’re told by our professors time and time again that we must find a job. Keep sending your resumes. Keep calling. We read stories about the people that inspire us – how “they” did it. Parents call on a daily basis, driven by pure anxiety, with an endless supply of tips on how to get it together.

I have a feeling my generation is going to tap out the pharmacies for anti-anxiety medication at this rate. Student loans are looming, rent needs to be paid, there is a global economic downturn – worst job market in years, and my school is already demanding statistics for my yearly salary. In this fabulous economic climate, we need to get extra creative with what we do and how we do it – a little bravery and innovation wouldn’t hurt. And those are two themes that are not recurring in the recycled suggestions of our predecessors.

My response is to weed out the irrelevant advice. A successful career does not have the same meaning that it used to. For me, a successful career involves the intense satisfaction of supporting myself doing what I love, being able to travel, having the opportunity to teach, inspire others, and to work with people who can match me in enthusiasm and challenge my ideas. Climbing a corporate ladder, one rung at a time, until I’m old and immobile is not included in my business plan. [Emphasis mine.]

So as I continually explain myself to others – I do, in fact, have a job – and yes – it is for real – I’m going to keep on working and loving what I do. I’m up to the challenge and I’m excited for what the years ahead have in store.

Mmmm. Don't you feel better? I know I do.

Thanks, Holly!

you lucky, lucky girl

2009-12-06T16:04:00.000-08:00

One of the things they don't tell you when you are little is that the best part about growing up and doing what you love is that you will find other people who love what you do, and who make you glad to be who you are. For example, my best friend, who is a scientist, recently told me about how happy it makes her to have friends who will turn to her and say, "I was reading about the stars yesterday..."

For me, one of the greatest pleasures of my life is knowing other writers, who carry their notebooks like security blankets, and talk about our favorite authors like they're friends we saw on the street earlier, and have portmanteau-making contests over French fries (and are nerdy enough to know what portmanteau means), and who constantly send me emails with subject lines like "i am obsessed with this poem."

Today's most recent wonderful thing comes courtesy of miss Jessie Rogers.

"Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell"

leaving is not enough; you must
stay gone. train your heart
like a dog. change the locks
even on the house he’s never
visited. you lucky, lucky girl.
you have an apartment
just your size. a bathtub
full of tea. a heart the size
of Arizona, but not nearly
so arid. don’t wish away
your cracked past, your
crooked toes, your problems
are papier mache puppets
you made or bought because the vendor
at the market was so compelling you just
had to have them. you had to have him.
and you did. and now you pull down
the bridge between your houses,
you make him call before
he visits, you take a lover
for granted, you take
a lover who looks at you
like maybe you are magic. make
the first bottle you consume
in this place a relic. place it
on whatever altar you fashion
with a knife and five cranberries.
don’t lose too much weight.
stupid girls are always trying
to disappear as revenge. and you
are not stupid. you loved a man
with more hands than a parade
of beggars, and here you stand. heart
like a four-poster bed. heart like a canvas.
heart leaking something so strong
they can smell it in the street.

In case of emergency, break glass and read Kahlil Gibran

2009-11-06T20:18:00.000-08:00

I'm fairly sure that every month, I write that things have been crazy, but this October was truly a wild ride. Perceptions were shaken, life plans were changed, relationships were scrutinized, and Thao & the Get Down Stay Down released an album that was, as promised, a "festive" heartbreak album that sucker-punched my friends and I in the collective solar plexus when we weren't looking. Know better, learn faster, indeed.

At some point this summer I had some good conversations about "sacred texts": works of literature, film, music and art that form and inform each person's worldview. These can be as goofy as a showtune or Yes song or as profound as the Bhagavad Gita.

Among my sacred texts are the poems of Khalil Gibran, published in The Prophet in 1923. While these poems have comforted many people since then, Boston has a special claim on Gibran: born in what is now modern-day Lebanon, the poet immigrated to Boston's South End as a child in 1895 and spent many of his formative years here.

His cousin and biographer, also named Khalil Gibran, created many statues around Boston, including a prominent one in Copley Square where I stop sometimes. The square, a sweet little patch of grass bordered on all sides by busy streets and surrounded by the looming majesty of the John Hancock Tower, Trinity Church and the Boston Public Library, is a nice place to stop and find refuge; it's a metaphor for the way I feel when I stop to read Gibran's poems. Like I've found a place of silence in the midst of troubles grown disproportionately large and emotions rushing past and creeping confusion. (Luckily all the texts are online here, for easy access in case of emergency.)

Lovely photo of Copley by Ed Karjala via Creative Commons.

Today I shared Gibran's meditation on love with a friend who was in pain:

...But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears...

Meanwhile, I found myself taking comfort in his meditation on joy and pain:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, "Joy is greater thar sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits, alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

I think if I were to compile a book of all my sacred texts, it would be very thick, perhaps even thousands of pages, with lyrics and photos and golden fall leaves stuck between the pages ... I'd love to hear from other people about what texts they consider sacred, beyond the obvious ones.

My first Herald byline: "Passover play not to pass up"

2009-10-12T16:33:00.000-07:00

It's funny how life works -- though one of my best friends, Jenna Scherer, has been the Boston Herald theatre critic for as long as I've known her (about 2 years), it never occurred to me to pitch a story to our fair city's second largest newspaper until this month. But a paragraph in the Craigie on Main newsletter (which I highly recommend, it's hilarious and informative), about an upcoming production at the Central Square Theater about food and nourishment, caught my eye. And while I normally send play-related news directly to Jenna, I felt that in this case, the story was calling to me. Jenna generously agreed to put me in touch with her longtime editor, and this story was born.

I began by having a great conversation with the play's star and creator, Belle Linda Halpern, who shares my love for the Food Project and for Michael Pollan. I then went on to speak with two local food luminaries who made cameos in the production this weekend, and who have played important roles in my development as a food writer. The first was David Waters, the CEO of Community Servings, who was one of the very first people I interviewed as a budding journalist back in the day, when I was interning for the Boston Business Journal. The second was Tony Maws, the chef at Craigie -- a place that has been very good to me as a customer, and very good to the Boston local food community at large.

I then had the privilege of being edited by the consummate professionals at the Herald. To put this pleasure in perspective: In the past month, I've spent as much time futzing with Moveable Type slideshows for Bostonist, creating Googlemaps for an interactive city guide, trading Twitter and Facebook messages with sources, and wrangling photos via iPhone and Nikon digital and Flikr Creative Commons and iStockphoto, etc. as I have simply writing my stories down. Because I am busy and work in a competitive industry, I'm dashing off articles and submitting them as fast as I can, and I'm lucky if the person uploading it to the site (me or someone else) catches my spelling errors, much less gives me feedback on how I can make the whole thing more readable and interesting. I'd almost forgotten what it was like to bang out a clever story with a punchy lede, to sit across the table from someone and talk about memories and missions that are meaningful to them, to see my byline on a piece of flattened wood pulp that exists somewhere outside the Internet.

Journalists love to talk about the fact that print journalism as we know it is dying, but I don't think they talk enough about the ways in which print makes life worth living -- especially for us journalists. This experience was one of them. It slowed me down, it made me a better and more careful writer, and it was fun.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm still in favor of moving away from killing trees for the sake of making art. I love being able to share my work and ideas with people outside my geographic vicinity. I love blogging and uploading and learning new things, and I always will. And I love being the first person to post on a new restaurant or piece of news. But there's still something about actually clipping a clip that takes me back to the first time I saw my first byline in the Buffalo News, ran my eyes over those three slightly smeared serif words -- three tiny words amidst a cacophony of crime reports, blurry pictures, tawdry advertisements for laundry detergent -- and thought, "Yes. This feels right. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life."

So thanks, Herald, for that.

My girls (and my boys)

2009-09-24T19:28:00.000-07:00

"I don't mean to seem like I care about material things, like a social status ... I just want four walls and adobe slats for my girls..."

It has been well-documented that this Animal Collective lyric makes no sense.

"A social status" is not a material thing, and four walls of adobe anything (slats? slabs? Adobe CS4?) still leaves you without a roof, but this does not change the fact that everyone -- including this grammar nerd right here -- loves the song "My Girls." In fact, Idolator's Christopher R. Weingarten (among others) has already broken this phenomenon down here, so I don't have to.

We all agree that what Panda Bear seems to be saying is this: all you really need in life is your crew. And when I reflect on this summer, I feel so grateful for the times I was able to spend connecting with "my strong women," as I call them. Thanks to them, I've been having the time of my life, and redefining what it means to really be a strong woman. I'm fortunate to be surrounded by several working models, from my mother to my mentors to my fellow Party Cats. Together, they have formed a loving network of ladies that has helped me to grow beyond belief and to laugh -- like, throw-my-head-back, spill-my-beer, give-me-a-second-I-have-to-breathe belly laugh -- every single day. To my girls -- you know who you are -- thank you.

Of course, there's also the love I have for my boys, who have helped me to maintain my strong womanhood throughout the summer by providing generous helpings of "mencouragement" along the way. To my brother, who's often mistaken for my twin these days and who introduced me to the song "My Girls"; to my dad, who raised me to be tough, "level-headed" and fun-loving from the beginning; and to my boys, Alexis B., Mike S. Mike Y., Matt L., Roger M., Tyler B., and Josh H., who have never let me forget what I'm worth -- thank you. This song goes out to you.

Making art (and tofu) on TeaPartyBoston.com

2009-09-08T16:54:00.000-07:00

The fall editorial lineup for Tea Party Tastes, the newly-launched food feature on my friends' lovely, photo-rich Boston lifestyle blog, is looking fun and exciting. Maybe it's because it involves news of Boston's famed Chocolate Bar, which allowed us to drop some serious Wonka references. Maybe because I know we have a lot of fun food profiles in queue, with hilarious interviews with some of Boston's most talented artists. Maybe because many of these interviews will include the question, "If you were a particular kind of cheese, what would you be?"

Jed Hackney, the Chocolate Bar's new pastry chef, said that if he were a cheese, he would be “Constant Bliss” from Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont. A phrase that also describes his sugary cider donuts.

It's also because, since my relationship to this site is personal and non-transactional, I feel comfortable writing about people in the food world whom I would consider friends -- people who may have begun as sources, but who have since invited me into their homes, into their kitchens, onto their farms -- and now they are something else. They are people I'm more likely to call at midnight for a drink than during the day for a quote. They're people with whom I'd prefer to collaborate rather than simply chat. (Collaborate is one of my favorite words -- along with frolic, it's probably my #1 active verb.)

What this means is that instead of working on service pieces, guides, features, etc. in a strictly technical sense, my hope is that this fall, me and my people are going to make some art together. We are going to riff. We are going to ad lib. We are going to graffiti our words across the Internet and hope that someone wanders along and likes what they see. We will do it because we are compelled to point out the genius of the people who are creating things in this city in the same way that bees are compelled to make honey, that birds are compelled to sing, that Jessica Simpson is compelled to soldier on doing whatever it is that she does despite all those "mom jeans" comments. We do it because we must create -- not because we must create something we can "monetize."

---

I was talking about writing recently with my friend Patrick, who appears in this Tea Party feature about tofu-making. Patrick's a talented photographer who was until recently living in Japan, and who is now making his way through Mumbai, India. He broke his ankle in Japan and came here to Boston to recover for six weeks at his parents' place, and in those six weeks we came to be friends.

We may have failed to make tofu, but Patrick succeeded in capturing perfectly my quixotic (and messy) approach to cooking. Since I normally photograph horribly, this is a doubly amazing feat.

Patrick told me that he feels compelled to travel so that he can continue to capture beautiful images, and has arranged his entire life around indulging this sense of wanderlust, constantly leaving everything he knows behind in favor of something entirely unlike anything he's ever known. It drives his life. Getting paid for it is always secondary to simply doing it. (Although I did hire him for a job, and did pay him -- I'll post the results when that project drops later this fall.)

Patrick is a great natural storyteller. If I ask Patrick for the background story behind this or that shot, he'll tell me with glee. On the night I first met him, he told us about hitchhiking across Hokkaido in the company of a scissor salesman, about how it felt to see this stranger open his truck and see a thousand gleaming blades in the back of the vehicle that was carrying him across the country. On the night that I last saw him, he told an hour-long story about living on a farm with a crazy Belgian and a fat kid from Hong Kong named Sony, dodging unmarked yakuza cars and learning that his landlord (probably) belonged to a cult. Other images like this one or this one came with equally entertaining stories that stood as examples of his fearlessness -- as did his willingness to make tofu in my tiny kitchen based on a recipe he scribbled down in a Moleskine several months ago.

And so before he left for Mumbai (where he was going to meet up with Shu, another incredibly talented photog friend of ours), I told Patrick that he had to write about his adventures, that the world would be a better place for it.

He shook his head. He said no. I was surprised.

I pressed him. Why not? Finally, he said, in a very small voice, "But ... but what if I write something and people don't like it?"

I laughed. "What if you took pictures and people didn't like it?" I asked. "Would that stop you?"

He shook his head again. No.

"Just think of it like that," I said. "Think of it like breathing. Think of it as something you have to do, or die. It doesn't matter if people don't like it." And as I said it, I realized that I truly believed this.

The bottom line is this: for me and for most of my friends, there will always be some projects we do for the money, and some we do for the love, and it is important to be doing both. Right now I am more than paying my bills with the money I make from doing what I love -- I am, as they say, living the dream. But often, the money doesn't matter to me (at least as much as some people tell me it should). I will always write. I will often choose to write with and about my friends, because that is its own reward. I will always crave collaborators, whether they are fellow crackpot cooks, aspiring artists, or intuitive editors -- people who can help me shape my ideas and bring them to fruition. And it doesn't matter to me whether or not people like the results. (But of course I hope they do!)

Wheeler's piece in Tasting Table!

2009-09-08T16:31:00.000-07:00

This actually came out last week -- sigh -- I am resigning myself to being woefully behind. But can you blame me? It is so gorgeous outside these days -- when given a choice between updating my blog and going for a run along the river at sunset with the dog, it's a fairly easy decision to make.

Anyhow, here's the link to my piece on Wheeler del Torro, who's a bit of a local legend here in Boston.

I first heard about him through my friend Emilie Hardman of the Conscious Kitchen, whose photography accompanies my piece. Back in the day, Wheeler -- who's now a bit of a celeb, with a cookbook and cameo appearances at hipster parties around the country -- just made small batches on the side and delivered them to people he liked. To hear Emilie tell it, it was like meeting with a member of the mafia -- he'd call from a phone booth down the street or something, show up in his van, and make a drop. But instead of unmarked bills or body bags, she'd get delicious vegan ice cream, which she'd then pair with her tasty vegan desserts and serve to her customers.

Finally this guy got a brick and mortar store, and immediately started throwing highly illegal parties in the evenings which eventually got broken up by the police. (The Weekly Dig's Cara Bayles once wrote up a hilarious rundown of one of these busts for the Dig Blog.)

Anyhow, my friend Morgan was reminiscing about these parties (I never attended one, but she said they were great, obvs -- as if something that combines civil disobedience AND vegan ice cream could be anything but) and she inspired me to pitch a piece about Wheeler to TastingTable. Et voila!

Of course, it never would have happened if Wheeler didn't have the ability to sell ice cream nationwide, which is half the story. Turns out he'll ship his vegan ice cream in dry ice to anywhere in the continental U.S. for a price, and even make batches of custom flavors for you if you're willing to buy the whole run (a few pints). Hence, the peanut butter peppermint line in this story.

The crew and I had the privilege of trying his pepper curry and chocolate nut ice creams at the Ice Cream Showdown in Union Square a while back. (This was yet another one of Christine's amazing events, which she put together with the help of Grand, one of our favorite stores in all of Boston.)

Wheeler could not be coaxed to smile for the camera -- it was about a bajillion degrees out, and he had been scooping gloopy ice cream for free for two hours already -- but you have to love that he was rocking a cape:

Berkshires, ho!

2009-08-14T19:00:00.001-07:00

I've lived in Boston for six years, and until recently, had never been to the Berkshires, just three hours away.

I made my first venture out there a few weeks ago in the company of Christine Liu, Hugo Liu (no relation), Jenna Scherer, Keyse Angelo, Carolyn McKibbin and a few other friends, old and new. Christine used her mysterious Citysearch superpowers to net us:

- a bus ride to the Berkshires via Local Motion

- a breakfast of muffins from the Channel Cafe, plus much-needed ABP coffee

- a tour of beautiful Moon in the Pond Farm (where we met a pretty adorable and VERY BIG black pig)

- a full picnic lunch at farm-to-table resto Route 7 Grill

- a tour and ice cream tasting at SoCo Creamery for dessert (we couldn't resist the Cookie Monster ice cream, made with real smushed-up fresh-baked cookies)

- a tour of Berkshire Mountain Distillers, which supplies places like NYC's Death & Company with quality homegrown spirits. (They let us play with their ingredients. It was fun.)

All this, for TEN BUCKS.

I will repeat: TEN BUCKS.

I bow to Christine's skillz.

Christine, aka Foodie Moses, leading her people to the distillery.

Now I'm headed out there once again to Lee to visit my girl Allison (a.k.a. LA food blogger Alli411) at her cabin. Am looking forward to seeing my ladyfriend -- and enjoying three hours of solo time on the way up, catching up on magazines (BoMag's new Best of Boston list just came out) and Anaïs Nin (I'm loving her journals so much), doing some journaling of my own, and looking out the window at the lush mountain scenery. And very likely eating more delicious farm-fresh food.

So many of my weekends have been taken up almost entirely by freelancing that it's almost mind-boggling to think of how little of my next 48 hours will be given over to working or even participating in planned activities. My prospective to-do list for the weekend looks something like this:

1) Put on flip-flops.
2) Pick blueberries.
3) Open the bottle of Rioja I'm bringing.
4) ?

I'm excited.

With thanks to Jenna Scherer and Darcy Hoffman for their images.

Twitter migration

2009-08-10T18:56:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I wrote about what it was like to maintain a Twitter feed for "work" purposes. To me, this meant focusing on generating useful information and commentary around one subject (in my case, food) and using the service to reach out to other folks in the field.

I like writing about food and talking to food people, so maintaining @go2foodnews ended up being one of the most interesting parts of my job at go2. It was also a useful way of contacting sources and, at least in a small way, a useful way of directing traffic toward our site.

However, it's now time for me to step out from behind the go2 Spork of Truth and strike out on my own.

There are a dozen other useful ways for businesses to use Twitter, and I'm sure at some point I'll share some thoughts on that in this space. However, I'm probably going to use my new feed, @ryanroseweaver, as an individual, just for fun -- which is of course the most maligned and damn-near-useless purpose of Twitter. So it goes. I promise not to tweet about my breakfast too much, though. Or use it to send gushy fangirltweets to @sarah_haskins and @st_vincent every day, even though it is tempting.

Citysearch: Eating the World

2009-08-10T17:41:00.000-07:00

Now that I'm a free agent, I'm slated to do several more reviews for Citysearch, which, in addition to launching some rad new lookbooks, is also plumping up its editorial offerings on the main site. "Eating the World: A Gastro Globe Trot" is my first "roundup" for Citysearch in this new incarnation, officially speaking, but one of many that I've done for Ms. Christine Liu over the years, both recreationally and professionally (during our Weekly Dig days).

Don't ask me why, but Christine and I (and our assorted friends) just really like making lists of things, whether it's "most obnoxiously sexist journalism cliches" or "weirdest potential party themes." For example, Easter weekend this year was a doozy, as we helped to host a rabbit-themed party on Saturday -- to which our friend Matt showed up in a bunny suit at 1am -- and an egg-themed party on Sunday, which involved some truly creepy-looking tea eggs and some pretty inventive "flip"-style cocktails, courtesy of Pomodoro bartender Stephen Shellenberger.

Bottom line: we're really, really into themes. So when Christine mentioned she was looking for a roundup of "global cuisines" around Boston, I was over it like white on Turkish/Persian/Albanian/Vietnamese/Malaysian/South Indian/Brazilian/Tunisian/Ethiopian rice. You can view the results here.

(Note: the intro is all Christine, including her "smile high club" line. We're quite different, style-wise, but we make a good team. The photo of Tamarind Bay above is all her, too, from her own review of TB on Citysearch.)

Introducing: Tea Party Tastes

2009-08-06T18:15:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, my dear friend Jessie and her friends Hil (a local writer who's done time at Rolling Stone) and Gab (a gifted musician and up-and-coming photog) have recently launched a rad Boston lifestyle blog -- one that aims to introduce a new locally-oriented, intelligent and dare I say feminine voice (or set of voices) to Boston's media scene.

Tea Party Boston is already making a splash in Boston: it has pretty pictures, and funny interviews, and it maintains a healthy balance between all-out fangirldom (in the case of cute band members and whisky cocktails) and wry hipster cynicism.

As they put it:

"Between Gab’s eye for capturing seemingly ordinary turned extraordinary moments on film, Jessie’s contagious enthusiasm for the trends defining the sights and sounds of our city and Hil’s determination to expose the underground musical talents on and off the stages of Suffolk County, TeaParty Boston is an outfit of locals with an insatiable need to celebrate the scene in Boston and beyond, however its followers define it."

The ladies of TPB are experts in the fields of music and photography, but they felt they needed a little help with their food offerings -- and somehow I was enlisted for the job. So we're calling this joint venture Tea Party Tastes. You can read Jessie's rundown of the section here.

Of course, the girls will be contributing content as well. For example, see Jessie's recent heads-up on the upcoming September Wine Riot, which is an event near and dear to our hearts -- as you can see from this photo:

Good wine, good friends, good music: TPB is all about it.

Considering our history with the Channel Cafe, Jessie and I thought it fitting to kick off this section with a review of the cafe's new dinner menu, supported in part by its "restaurant supported-agriculture" program. Along with some really close-up pictures of its delicious cookies.

My words, Jessie's images: the makings of a nom-rific partnership.

We've since added a roundup of Boston's best banh mi joints and a photo gallery of BOND's delicious design and even more delicious cocktails. And we have big plans for the next few months as well that may or may not include homemade Oreos. (Pssst -- I'm open to ideas!)

Island Creek Oyster piece in Tasting Table

2009-08-06T17:59:00.000-07:00

I vaguely hinted at this new gig a while back, and now it's more than official. I have submitted a few articles for Tasting Table, an food industry insider newsletter with a cult following in NYC that recently launched an "Everywhere" edition. I highly recommend it for anyone who is even remotely interested in food. (Which I would hope would be everyone who, um, eats it.)

The first of my pieces for TT is one about Boston's beloved Island Creek oyster farm, which is now offering a killer deal via their brand-new online store: $100 for 100 oysters, shipped anywhere in the U.S. (Word to my landlocked people: it's time for you to have a party and order up some some bivalves and shucking gear!)

That piece is here: Fresh oysters, from the flats to your door

Kitty Amann from Toro (and LUPEC) sourced a great recipe from Jamie Bissonnette for this piece that ended up on the cutting room floor (but you can rest assured that it will pop up in another publication soon). The gorgeous photo above of an oyster farmer collecting his "harvest" also ended up being passed over -- but it deserves to be seen, don't you think?

Time can change me, but I can't change time

2009-07-26T09:44:00.000-07:00

So one of the reasons I'm behind on my blog is this: last month, I left my job of 2.5 years as an editor at go2 Media, and I've been busy ever since with my new job and a lot of new freelance work.

I thought I'd take some time to reflect and talk about what I learned and experienced in those informative, interesting 2.5 years.

I used to tell people that after graduating with a degree in print journalism, I fully expected to cover cops and fires in East Podunk for my first job, as my mentors had done when they started out in journalism decades ago.

But the world changed. And so one fateful day in February of 2007, I found myself making my way, not to a giant newspaper complex in the ghetto or some cluttered copy desk out in the suburbs, but to a converted warehouse in the up-and-coming arts district of Fort Point. There, I climbed four flights of stairs (Mark, the man who would become my boss, advised me not to take the elevator unless I was "feeling daring") to interview for a job editing copy for a new startup company. 80108 Media was a venture-backed brand that was trying to make its mark in the world of mobile media, a world of which I had been only vaguely aware.

Here in this loft-like space, I was interviewed in a makeshift library by a young man wearing Diesel jeans who picked up my sidelong reference to Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs. I was also interviewed in a hip art gallery-slash-cafe by a curly-haired man who impressed me by telling me he had once made an album with the Velvet Underground's Mo Tucker, and who was impressed in turn when he found out that I had been a DJ for the indie station that was currently playing in the cafe, 88.9 WERS. These two men were to work closely with me for the next 2.5 years.

The Channel Cafe, where the course of my career changed forever.

Based on our shared sense of The Cool, we struck out to make a Cool Company. Our CEO met Sid Holt, former managing editor of Rolling Stone, at a gathering somewhere in NYC, and convinced him to make a weekly trip from his farm in Westchester to our South Boston offices to oversee our content strategy. The inimitable Christine Liu, now the editor of Citysearch Boston, came on as a consultant (and left as one of my best friends). We then hired a series of deeply cool interns to help us with our growing workload -- and one of them went on to become the talented Jessie Rogers, a.k.a. Madame Jessie, a.k.a. one third of the hit blog sensation Tea Party Boston, a.k.a. one of my favorite people in the world.

These interns, in turn, helped to recruit writers like Michael Fournier, author of the 33 1/3rd book on the Minutemen's Double Nickles on the Dime and, for a brief few weeks, Amanda Marcotte of the popular blog Pandagon. We also hired Jenna Scherer, the ubercool theatre writer at the Weekly Dig, to help us with our quickly growing editorial load. She also went on to become one of my favorite people in the world.

My job at go2 Media introduced me to some of my closest friends--
including Jenna Scherer, pictured above as the Spirit of Brittania on Halloween
(because only Jenna would already own a red teapot, a British flag, a blue wig and a toy sword)

At one point, we employed almost 100 freelancers in total, who wrote short messages about all kinds of subjects, from punk rock to volunteering, which we pushed out via SMS text software to phones around the country. We even attempted to make the word "thumbcast" our proprietary term. (We hoped it would catch on like "podcast," but instead it was more like "fetch" in Mean Girls -- it was not going to happen. But we did convince the Globe that it was going to for a second.)

We were, for a time, the epitome of a Web 2.0 company. We had a spiffy website, which we promoted at rock shows alongside free compliation CDs we had put together with bands like Swim Party and Taxpayer. (We also stuck Street Attack-designed bumper stickers with our logo on them Shepard Fairey-style on flat surfaces all over town, just for good measure.) We held powows with visiting writers and potential content partners at Flour and Channel Cafe. We wore jeans and concert T-shirts instead of suits and jackets. We blasted The Pixies from our computer speakers to keep our energies flowing as we emailed and edited nonstop. We held company-sponsored pizza-and-beer mixers for our Boston freelancers and organized happy hours on Fridays for the staff, where our co-founder turned on The Best of Bootie 2006 and we hosted marathon Gnip-Gnop tournaments.

Strangely, I turned out to have a knack for Gnip Gnop, as you can see from the brackets above.

We had a lot of fun. But I also worked hard during this first year, and received a raise at the end. I had a salary, an identity, a very good health insurance policy, a desk of my own if not a room, and I was Using My Degree. I felt happy and lucky.

I was further intrigued by our company's early 2008 decision to merge with go2 Media, another company in the mobile space. This provided us with a new opportunity to rewrite the business plan and to "monetize" our business with new mobile advertising campaigns (we had never really nailed down that "money-making" thing at 80108, which was a bit of a problem for our investors).

This move also provided us with an excuse to tour the country and meet our writers to answer any questions they might have about the merge and about mobile media in general (we tried to have the answers). And so I had the opportunity to see the country through the lens of the local experts we'd hired to write about it.

In Atlanta, I drank Sweetwater beer and Tombstone Teas at Six Feet Under, a city institution that faces a cemetery, and surveyed the damage left by the hurricanes of early '08 (they even took out my 26th-story hotel window).

In Austin, I jogged along Lake Travis and sipped margaritas with writers like Josh Huck and Laurie Lyons, freelancers who have now become friends, and fell in love with that city -- its laid-back cool, its sense of humor, its riparian smell.

In San Francisco, I drank classic cocktails at Beretta in the Mission with writers like Olivia Mark and Virginia "Gin" Miller, who's since gone on to write about that sort of thing for the SF Chronicle.

In LA, I wore my James Perse t-shirt and big sunglasses to lunch with Jolie Loeb, who was among the first writers at our company and the only one to receive a custom-made mix CD from me. I went to dinner with Allison Pescosolido, who now runs her own food blog, Alli411. I had my first taste of Intelligentisia coffee and the hipster 'hood of Silverlake. I was even present for a Paris Hilston sighting at the Newsroom Cafe (I say "was present for," because I didn't see her. I was too busy drooling over their veggie burger at the time).

Me and Miss Jolie Loeb, whose cheery emails brightened many of my days at go2 media.

In San Diego, we put the top down on our rented convertible as we drove along the coast of SoCal, stopping at the Starlite Lounge, where we pulled up a long table and spent all night in the company of crack writers like local SD legend Annamaria Stephens and CityBeat's "resident film dude," Anders Wright, two other freelancers that have become friends.

And in New York City, we took the whole team to meet our talented writers there, playing This American Life episodes all the way down.

I now had faces for almost all the names I had been working with for so long. I had a lot of new friends and good memories. I felt rewarded for sticking with the company through its awkward adolescence and its recent marriage to a more established brand. I still felt happy and lucky.

I was also given new opportunities at go2 media. I was charged with designing our new food product and integrating it with Yelp, which we did successfully earlier this year. I launched our first Twitter feed, which informed our so-called "Twitter strategy" (which would make a great band name, I think, but it's still not something I can say with a straight face). I launched our editorial product in Pittsburgh, Portland, Houston and Detroit. And when our office manager left to pursue his dream of co-owning his own company, I took over the task of organizing weekly lunches for our small crew with my friend Jack, which gave us license to order Indian lunchboxes and authentic Mexican for our group each Friday.

But after the merge, we moved from the hip warehouse space to a rented office in the Financial District, and our focus shifted from creating something new and interesting to creating something that would make money. These two things do not have to be mutually exclusive in the new media world, but they suddenly seemed to be in our world. And that changed everything.

We still wore jeans to work, but we felt increasingly out of place in a neighborhood in which everyone wears suits. We still played the Pixies on the stereo, but under the too-bright lights that lit our cubicles, they were starting to give me a headache. I still loved spending each day in the virtual company of my writers, wrangling good copy and keeping them on deadline, and I certainly felt proud that my company was able to monetize this new model of media. But I missed the exciting times we had had before. I needed a new challenge, and I needed a change.

Me at my desk in the Financial District.

By this time, winter was coming to the Wild West of the venture-backed startup world. Advertising budgets were shrinking. Investors were demanding that everyone do more with less. One company I consulted for offered me a job one week, then ceased to exist the next; another publication I wrote for on the side lost half its staff in a contentious power struggle and opted not to replace them; newspapers all over town slashed their freelance budgets. Waves of layoffs crashed over our company again and again. I survived all of them.

Until Q3 of 2009.

Luckily, due to my yearlong association with Bostonist and its mafia-esque writers' network, I found out about an excellent job opportunity copywriting for a badass female-owned company called Overseas Adventure Travel, and applied for it right away.

Forty-eight hours after I left go2 Media, I interviewed for and landed that job. I started in July, working fulltime freelance hours in a beautiful old building near Barbara Lynch's Drink complex in Fort Point, the neighborhood I loved and missed. It felt like fate.

Every morning, I walk through the front hallway, which is wallpapered in real postcards sent by travelers on OAT's trips, which go everywhere in the world: China, Cambodia, Egypt, Rwanda, even Antarctica. Each floor has a theme, and ours is apparently "the sea": an aquarium forms one wall of our conference room, while the other wall is shaped like the side of a boat, complete with portholes.

My colleagues here are kind and smart. I am adding to my "bucket list" and learning about the world every day. I am meeting many different kinds of people and experiencing how it feels to be part of a company that takes up more than 20 sq. feet of space.

I have a lot in common with my new coworkers.

And here, instead of a "custom-designed proprietary content management system (CMS)" to do my editing, I use a red pen.

In that regard, at least, my work more closely resembles the kind of job I thought I would have, back in my journalism school days. But the world has changed. And I am happy, for now, to be changing along with it.

Stillwater runs deep

2009-07-24T18:18:00.000-07:00

I am returning to update the blog. Apologies for the radio silence. It's certainly not for lack of news to post, but time to post it. That's coming. In the meantime, I promised pictures of the desert.

Backstory: about a month ago, I traveled to Utah to meet up with family and friends. We met up in Salt Lake City, then traveled down to Moab, driving out over the high plateaus of Canyonlands National Park and down a steep switchback to a mosquito-infested put-in spot called Mineral Bottom. Here we embarked on a 3-day journey through Stillwater Canyon, which runs through Canyonlands, pushing out past the buggy tamarisks and onto the river, which was running at about 30,000 cubic feet per second. Here's the crew on the first day:

Stillwater is a flatwater canyon -- no rapids, beautiful scenery -- so 30,000 cfs was not a threat to us here. However, Stillwater Canyon feeds into Cataract Canyon, one of the most technically challenging canyons in the Northeast, and one of its most dangerous, especially at high water (to give some context, my dad and my best friend's dad floated this canyon back when they were our age in inflatable rubber kayaks, at around 6,000 cfs).

My best friend and I had plans to take a jet boat out after the first big rapid -- we both had to get back to work, an ironic circumstance I will remark upon in a future post -- but my dad, my brother, my brother's best friend and my brother's girlfriend were going down into "Cat" along with the rest of the crew.

The rest of the crew included several professional river guides, many of whom had taken paying passengers through this very canyon at high water. Many other boaters I know refused to take this trip with us -- these were people who spent the colder months of the year building their own boats in preparation for spring, and they were things of beauty, dories made of polished wood and precise corners and painstakingly applied paint. They didn't want to see the work of a winter disappear into the roiling waves in an instant. And I, for my part, didn't want to see my loved ones do the same.

However, this is how we choose to take our "vacations" -- and considering our ancestry, can you blame us? One hundred and fifty years ago, our Mormon pioneer ancestors set out against incredible odds, weighing the possibilities of death against the drudgery of daily life wherever it was that they lived, whether it was in the slums of 19th-century New York or London (where many converts were won) or the intolerant villages surrounding Nauvoo, where many of the Latter-Day Saints began their journey West. One of my great-great grandfathers helped to guide Brigham Young's exploration party into the Salt Lake Valley on horseback; another froze to death sailing his boat across the Great Salt Lake in winter.

Our family is far from Mormon these days (notice the proliferation of beer cans in our photos), but this desire to test the limits, to test oneself against nature, and to find that She has granted you yet another chance to live and stand in awe of her power -- it's in our blood.

However, that doesn't mean it was easy, standing there making quinoa with toasted pepitas for fifteen people over a blowtorch flame in our makeshift river "kitchen," sipping a dirty martini from my Camelbak canteen, and considering what my life would be like without my family. I like to think that my life here in Boston is about as good as it gets -- I have a wonderful group of friends, I have work that I love, I have a roof over my head and in general I have far too much fun. But without my family, it would all become meaningless. We've gone through some tough times, my family and I, but we love each other fiercely.

This is me, my dad and my brother on the first day on Stillwater, sitting inside a kiva that itself sits high on a peak overlooking the river:

(Note: the title of this post is indeed a play on both the name of the canyon and the Rolling Stone cover in Almost Famous -- which is a family favorite.)

---

I realized the importance of friendship, too, on our last river trip. That one was a spring 2008 trip down the Yampa, which was then also showing record high water levels. The camp near the put-in was half-submerged in rainwater, and the water in the river was cold.

On the first day, my best friend's boat flipped. End over end it went, into a rapid that was not on the map. It was soundless. I remember looking upstream, cupping my hands over my eyes, seeing two specks of orange bobbing up and down in the rippling waves: Karen, my best friend, and Bug, the owner of the raft and a woman said to be one of the best boaters out there.

Scott, the longtime river guide and former Outward Bound instructor rowing my boat, sprang into action, shouting directions, coiling rope. The rubber raft my best friend had been on came careening down the river upside-down, a thousand-pound juggernaut, with paddles flailing, gear still attached underneath, and lines dragging dangerously behind it. Somehow, fueled by adrenaline and ducking fallen trees hanging over the water as we went, Scott and I subdued the bucking boat.

Meanwhile, I kept my eye on the orange specks. They floated for what seemed like an eternity in the freezing water before they were finally pulled into another boat, given new dry clothing, and brought to shore. We all met up on a sandy beach, where many of us lit cigarettes, some of us made sandwiches and ate as we'd never eaten before, and Scott stretched out on the soft edge of his rubber raft and, improbably, took a nap.

This is Karen and I after her flip:

Badass that she is, she's just grinning, happy to be alive, telling me about how she simply focused on her breathing -- and hoped that I wouldn't be worried.

But of course I was worried. I was deeply aware of how close I had come to continuing on for the rest of my years without the person who has been my best friend since I was born; who knows me better than almost anyone else; who has shaped my psyche and my life choices with her own; who can make my day better with just a few kind words or touch me deeply with her incisive observations of my character.

You can't see my face, but I can tell you that it reflected a mix of emotions one doesn't readily choose to experience over the course of one's daily life. Except, of course, for love.

But that, I think, is the point.

On our yearly trips down the river, I experience many emotions I don't choose to readily feel. On the one hand, I often feel at home as I never feel at home, as though I am being held in the warm embrace of the rocks that rise tall all around me, rocked to sleep in my boat, swaddled in dry heat and the calls of the canyon wren.

But I also often feel alien as I never feel alien: I am keenly aware that despite my pioneer heritage and growing collection of outdoor performance clothing, I spend most of my days as a confirmed city slicker who Twitters and texts and reads the New York Times on the train, and wears heels more often than she does hiking boots (though I often long for a better balance between the two).

On the river, I feel deeply connected to the people in my life, especially since the spectre of danger forces me to contemplate how fragile these connections are, how easily they could be severed -- but I also often feel isolated, alone with my thoughts and the stars as I am rarely alone.

Making a yearly pilgrimage to accept this, my full measure of pleasure, profundity, and pain, has become integral to my well-being as a human truly awake in the world.

---

And so we left the river this summer with heavy hearts, carrying our bags up the beach to meet the jet boat that would drive us upstream along the Colorado River and back to Moab. Behind us, the rest of our crew was preparing for what lay ahead in Cataract Canyon. Even the bravest of them had no appetite for breakfast that morning, and neither did we. It would be almost a week until we heard from them again.

In fact, Nature was kind to us this year: our crew had a "clean run." No one flipped, no one fell out of the boat, and no one was seriously injured. But it was a long week, waiting to hear this news from the source. In the meantime, we returned to Moab, where we spent a perfectly delightful night in a condo outside the tiny town, having dinner with friends and drinking beers on the patio.

After a ride and a hike through Arches National Park the next day, my best friend and I shared a beautiful drive from there to her new home in Denver, where she recently took a job working for National Renewable Energy Labs (NREL), a think-tank for the Department of Energy. I explored the city on my own for a day, then we met up with friends in the evening and had a wonderful meal.

But throughout our time off the river, I was struggling to keep my emotions in check. Even as I looked forward to returning to Boston and my dear friends and comfortable intellectual pursuits, I felt as if I had been tested somehow against the spectre of death in Cataract Canyon, and had been found wanting. Like I had taken the easy way out. Or, more metaphorically, like I had taken the blue pill.

One thing that helped me through this existential separation anxiety was reading "The Place No One Knew," an infamous Sierra Club publication about the lost Glen Canyon (now buried under the reservoir of Lake Powell). My best friend has purchased a first edition of this vintage book for two important people in her life, and I had the privilege of flipping through it with her as we cruised up the switchback road that leads to Arches National Park, on the day after we left the river.

The book contains many beautiful quotations from naturalists like Charles Darwin and Loren Eisley, as well as ardent literary nature lovers like Edward "Cactus Ed" Abbey. The one I liked best, and I cannot remember who said it, was one that said that the beauty of a place like Glen Canyon (or the Yampa, or Stillwater) can "stir you up as you were meant to be stirred up."

By the time we arrived at the trailhead for our hike, I was not just stirred up -- I was nearly in tears. Having read so many beautiful words that echoed my own feelings about this sacred place, I felt as if I had been reading the Bible or Rumi or the Bhaghavad Gita -- as if this book were part of a body of sacred texts that spoke to my personal religion of understanding life through the lens of shared experiences in wild places. And having spent the ride up contemplating the demise of a canyon I would never get to see, I was reeling with a deep sense of sadness and loss, for myself and for our culture.

In this picture, taken just after I put down the book and pulled on my flip-flops for a stroll through Devil's Garden, I am struggling to smile, a splotch of stark black emotion across an otherwise placid pastel canvas:

The desert is an incredible place, home to many animals, plants and microorganisms on whose existence we depend. This much is certain. But it is valuable as an idea, too, and this book is dedicated to the latter concept as much as to the former. I am so grateful for the lessons this place has taught me over the years -- even the painful, difficult, scary ones.

"The Place No One Knew" tells the story of our species' need for places like this, where we can return year after year as children, to learn what we need to learn. The pioneers who rode here on horseback, even the ones who died here under the stars of a strange sky, must have known in their hearts that they, too, needed to leave their comfortable (or not so comfortable) lives back home and strike out into the unknown if they were to truly consider those lives well-lived. They must have known that they needed to evolve beyond the circumstances of their birth, to be stirred up as they were meant to be stirred up. They must have known that the risk was worth it. That the answers were out there. And that if they proved themselves worthy of the journey, they might eventually find what they were looking for.

Back from the desert

2009-06-19T12:23:00.000-07:00

Pictures to come. I'm still sorting out my emotions and recovering from culture and weather shock. I am all mixed up.

Til then -

Busy week

2009-05-05T08:20:00.000-07:00

Last week was a busy one for blogging and researching for an upcoming slew of new reviews at Citysearch Boston, where I've recently started freelancing (only because Christine, my editorial soulmate, is the editor there). I was also busy researching a piece for a new food publication (TBA when I get my first clip - I don't want to jinx anything).

This week, however, I am going to need to hunker down and focus on work for Go2 Media, as my dear colleague Jessie is on vacation, gallivanting around Guatemala, and I'm handling about 50 percent of her job (which includes the not-unpleasant work of updating our style, music and celeb news feeds) on top of my own (which includes the equally not-unpleasant work of Twittering about food and making sure the mobile hipsters of LA, NYC, Austin and the like don't miss their Pete Rock and Horrorpops shows).

In the meantime, I'll leave you with a guest update from Madame Jessie (as she is called when writing silly horoscopes for our site). She is currently rocking the beaches of Antigua. This letter is one of the reasons why I am lucky to have her as my coworker.

Hola muchachas! Guatemala is amazing and you should all drop what you are doing and fly down this minute.

On Sunday we went to Chichicastenango (which is really fun to say) and there was this ridiculous market and we bought all sorts of handicraft crap from the indigenous peoples. The little kids are at once adorable and sad because they try to sell you things like little flutes, and they are really good at making the pouty faces and saying things like "señorita señorita para que puedo comer." Ugh.

Yesterday we went to a volcano and climbed it in really inappropriate shoes and clothing and toasted marshmallows and bread near the lava. Shit is HOT, if you were wondering. The little niños tried to sell us walking sticks, saying "¡es necesario!" but we thought they were full of it. Turns out, walkng sticks would have been helpful. I just didn´t like how they suggested that it was necessary to buy a stick to hit the dogs with. There are stray dogs EVERYwhere. They are really skinny and it´s sad. They seem happy enough though, and they must be doing ok if they could, like, run up the side of the volcano-- which wasn´t exactly an easy hike. We fed them a lot of volcano toast.

Today we might rent bikes. Or we might take salsa lessons. Or we might go to the massive market and buy tons of wacky fruit. Or something.

Tomorrow we are busting out of our sweet hotel here in Antigua (we are like BFFEs with the recepcionista, she´s totes adorbs) and heading to the beach. Woot woot. I gotta work on getting rid of this rad tank top tan.

Hope all is going well for you ladies!

Un beso,
Jessie

Envy-and-awe-inducing photo of Antigua by Michael R. Swigart via Creative Commons license.

Bostonist: Tupelo and Sip Cafe now open

2009-04-25T15:05:00.000-07:00

Two new spots opened this week. I wrote about both for Bostonist.

Tupelo is a new Southern comfort food restaurant in Inman Square. The reporting process for this was very Web 2.0: the week before it opened, I put a note about it on our go2 Twitter account, @go2foodnews (which you can follow by clicking on the link to the right - hint hint). In the tweet, I referenced their Twitter account (@tupelo01239), which had a lot of good information up already about the restaurant-in-progress.

Then, @Tupelo02139 hit me back, thanking me for the coverage with an @ reply that referenced our feed. Impressed by the speed of their reaction, I direct-messaged Tupelo for more information, and found out that the voice behind Tupelo's Twitter feed is Jen Deaderick, the wife of Tupelo's opening chef -- who happens to be Rembs Layman, the chef who created the delicious menus I've been eating for years at Matt Murphy's and Pomodoro, where my friend Aaron has been bartending on and off for a long time. She passed along Layman's email, and he passed along the new menu (now viewable on Facebook), which looks, well, exactly the way a menu would look if the chef of those two restaurants decided to open a Southern spot. It's still rich, textured, crumbly, comforting, marinated, slow-cooked, and seafood-savvy, with fried oysters and green tomatoes in place of Pomodoro's delicate Italian calamari and Matt Murphy's hearty Irish fish & chips.

Now thoroughly excited (albeit with a twinge of wistful regret, as the menu's not terribly veggie-friendly), I wrote up a post on Bostonist about the new place, which then made its way to Twitter via our RSS feed, which was then re-tweeted by Deaderick, who then thanked me for the coverage via Twitter direct message.

Moral of the story? We're getting great traffic from this, and so is Tupelo. And traffic, my friends, means we both stay in business. It's a win-win without any ethical compromises -- the only thing that's been exchanged is friendly words and timely information. So, for those writers among you who are still crowing, "Why should I use Twitter? What's it good for? I am cantankerous and contrary and feel that mocking this relatively innocuous bit of technology is far more important than researching real and useful information for my readers!" I say to you: this kind of thing is what makes Twitter useful.

But please, if you're still on the fence, I encourage you to stay there -- because food journalism is becoming very competitive in this town, and if I can maintain an edge using this tool while you go on about its inherent narcissism and pointlessness and degrading effect on the English language, etc. etc., I can more easily scoop you.

--

Speaking of which, I am fairly sure I scooped the Globe this week (although Thrillist scooped me first, sigh) when I wrote about Sip Cafe, which just opened in the old Z Square space in Post Office Square. This location has been my go-to summer lunch spot since my days as an intern at the Boston Business Journal. It has a nice little patio and is located directly inside the beautiful grassy oasis that is Post Office Square, where Financial District work-bots can pick up a cushion to sit on the ground without mussing their suits and skirts, as they listen to live jazz or flamenco under the shady trees and trellis-covered walkways.

I was surprised when Milk Street Cafe vacated the space and again when Z Square took off earlier this year. But I'm happy to see that Jared Mancini, the new owner of Sip Cafe, has snapped up the space and brought his sustainable/local take on the coffeeshop concept to the Financial District. Service is still a little shaky -- we went as a group on opening day and agreed we'd give it another month or two before we returned for anything like a real meal. But the drinks are on point (Mancini slung coffee on Newbury for a while before opening this place) and the location, as I said, cannot be beat. I may return next week, now that the weather in Boston is approaching the 80-degree mark!

Photo of stove via Tupelo; photo of Sip Cafe by Kerry Skemp.

Wine Riot FTW

2009-04-20T17:50:00.000-07:00

This event was amazing. Big props to Tyler Balliet, Morgan First, Maggie Dayton and Lauren Michaud of The Second Glass for putting this together. My Bostonist recap is now up and available for viewing. More photos of the event by the talented Christine Fernsebner Eslao here.

And while I'm giving props to my friends again

2009-04-12T18:44:00.000-07:00

I should note that my dear friend and colleague, Jenna Scherer, has started a new blog cataloguing all of her theatre writing for the Boston Herald and the Weekly Dig. It's called The Second Husk.

Cynicism, laughter, the second husk into which the shucked man crawls...

-- Djana Barnes, Nightwood

Jenna sees 3-4 plays per week, so there are always new updates. And amazingly, she still finds new and sarcastically creative things to say about them all, even when she's busting out her third article in a weekend on a Sunday morning when everyone else is walking their dogs or drinking mimosas. She is a trooper. And she's currently looking for a fulltime gig, so if you're in need of a staggeringly brilliant arts writer (she doesn't just write about theatre -- it's just what she does best and most frequently), you should contact her at jenna [dot] scherer [at] gmail.com.

Weirdly accurate cartoon rendering of Jenna Scherer courtesy of artist Jenna Scherer.

Bostonist: Guide to the Wine Riot

2009-04-12T17:56:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in a recent post, my friends Tyler and Morgan from The Second Glass are working on a little party called the Wine Riot. It's coming up next weekend.

If the event sells out, as they're hoping it might, there will be 2,500 drinkers attending, with one tasting session on Friday and two on Saturday, and lots of wine classes, vendors and food. It will require about 150 volunteers just to keep things running. I will be one of them. As such, I offered to write a kind of insider's guide to the Riot for Bostonist, as I've found myself explaining it frequently to interested parties anyhow and think the complexity of the schedule and the structure of the event does require some clarification. It's now up on Bostonist. Feel free to comment with questions!

Given what I know about that rock

2009-03-26T07:38:00.000-07:00

Last night we saw John Vanderslice and John Darnielle (a.k.a. The Mountain Goats) at the Somerville Theatre. I would have been happy to see either one play solo at this venue -- hell, I'd see almost anyone at this venue -- but to have them both together, playing acoustic, was pretty cool.

Vanderslice started us off with a set of passionately rendered acoustic versions of his heavily-produced, moody paeans to lost lovers and lost rabbits, then Darnielle took the stage. After he had played the songs he wanted to play and began taking requests from the audience, it became apparent that many of the audience members were superfans determined to hear the most obscure items from his sizable catalogue. Luckily they made some excellent requests, from the angry and hilarious divorce epic "No Children" ("I hope you die! I hope we both die!") to the encore performance of "This Year", whose chorus, "I am gonna make it / through this year / if it kills me" clearly resonated with our recession-battered audience.

An early highlight was Darnielle's performance of Ace of Base's "The Sign", which my Bostonist colleague Christine described as "less a cover than an annotated critical edition, the original text broken up with observations and footnotes and questions." Before he began to play, Darnielle confessed. "I love this song ... I had to stop playing it after a while, because it gets to the point where, 10 years into the relationship, you have to stop having sex four times a day." (As someone who listened to that entire cassette over and over again almost nonstop the year that it came out, I completely understand this emotion. This early and repeated exposure to Ace of Base may explain my generation's current fixation with Swedish rockers, actually.)

But the other memorable moment of the night was when an audience member requested his little-known ditty "Beach House." Peep the lyrics:

BEACH HOUSE

I get letters telling me since I moved away
you've taken to hanging out on that rock about a mile from shore
Given what I know about that rock, mainly that it's populated by seals
I strongly suggest to you that you not hang out there anymore

'Cause the seal is a wily and a vicious creature
and the seal will bite you if you give him half a chance
Yeah the seal has a mind set on violence
and the seal is the sworn enemy of man

Now when I say that the seal is vicious I use the term advisedly
according to Webster's 9th New Collegiate, definition 4b.
Which states that vicious means marked by ferocity
and offers as a synonym...savage

'Cause the seal is a vicious and a wily creature
and the seal has a mind full of evil designs
and the seal will harm you and laugh about it
Yeah the seal is not a creature you want to toy with
Yeah the seal is not a creature you want to toy with

Yeah. Did I also mention that he and Vanderslice are creating a tour EP called "Moon Colony Bloodbath" about astronauts who harvest organs on the moon? No? Well, Christine did. Good thing the official writeup was her responsibility.

If you're wondering where the connection to food is in all this, well, don't worry. There is one. You see, in my favorite cookbook, I Like Food, Food Tastes Good, which contains essays and recipes written by members of indie bands, Darnielle has contributed an essay, and I kept thinking about it as he played. His recipe is for something vaguely Indian (I will dig it up after I unpack all my cookbooks). In the book, he rhapsodizes about the wonders of clarified butter and the joys of eating real food when not on the road. And despite all of his angry songs and his sardonic sense of humor, he is nothing but earnestly sweet in his essay. "When I get home from tour," he says, "I look forward to cooking for my wife more than almost anything."

The moral of the story being this: John Darnielle is a slightly schlubby former psychiatric nurse whose lyrics concern mostly adolescent angst and evil stepfathers and seal-related paranoia. So if John Darnielle can find domestic bliss and become a rock god and learn to cook with ghee, there is hope for all of us.

(Photos courtesy of Christine Fernsebner Eslao for Bostonist)

Bostonist: BOND Helps Answer the Eternal Question: Where to Eat in the Financial District?

2009-03-25T11:39:00.000-07:00

Here at Go2 Media, we work hard, but when 11:59pm rolls around, talk turns from APIs and queries and deadlines to LUNCH. Last summer, a group of us organized a monthlong "Lunch Challenge", during which we attempted to try a new restaurant every day. Luckily, the Financial District is lousy with lunch spots, and we discovered a few new favorites, like the Boston Kebab House and Trattoria Andiamo (née Boston Deli Deluxe).

Usually, we gravitate toward places that provide a great value for the money and a variety of choices to satisfy our diverse group of coworkers, from Jack, our meat-loving Puerto Rican project manager, to Richard, our vegan ex-rocker engineer from Scotland. But sometimes, we splurge.

Last week, Jessie (who normally hunkers down over a can of soup re-heated in the kitchen) joined me on a jaunt to BOND, the Langham Hotel's new space. I am a fan of the folks at the Langham - I profiled their wonderful pastry chef, Trena Costello, last summer, and they were kind enough to host one of my students at their Chocolate Bar last year for my 826 food writing workshop. (The photo for the subsequent Globe article about our workshop was taken at the Langham.) So I was excited to visit again -- if only for another taste of Trena's intricate chocolate desserts (and yes, we left with extras in a to-go box).

The meal we shared with Julie Shamrock, the hotel's communications manager, only served to underscore my already positive impression of the place. Our food was tasty, locally-sourced, and reasonably-priced (though as I note for full disclosure it was comped for us). And despite BOND's highfalutin' decor, the staff kept things casual and unpretentious - which to me is the most wonderful and forward-thinking thing about this establishment. I ended up writing about our visit on Bostonist - the full piece is here.

For friends who work in the Financial District - do you know of any other noteworthy deals or lunch spots not mentioned in this piece? I'd love to know about them!

(Photo credit: Robert Rollend, courtesy of the Langham Hotel)

My friends, Part 2

2009-03-22T12:42:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, it seemed as though my friends were making headlines right and left for their mad style. Nowadays, it's their professional accomplishments that are making an impact on our fair city. I've been particularly grateful for my friends lately, as I've been going through some difficult personal stuff (hence the dearth of articles), and I thought now was a good time to share the love.

Some shoutouts:

ANDREW

Andrew Phelps moved here last year to work for WBUR, our local NPR affiliate. An accomplished journalist from San Diego (and a very funny guy), he has taken on the immense responsibility of re-inventing the station's Web site and bringing it into the new millenium.

His colleague, Ken George (@kengeorge), is the one behind Public Radio Kitchen, which has been making a stir in the Boston food writing world. I am hoping Andrew's other projects will continue to build upon this admirable move toward building and maintaining a community of WBUR readers and listeners around a common interest.

Based on the work he's done for his own snazzy website, I'm expecting big things. Because what he really needs right now is more pressure. If you'd like to give Andrew some feedback on what you'd like to see on the new WBUR site, you can send him a tweet at @andrewphelps.

CHRISTINE

Christine Liu, my dear friend and the new editor of Boston Citysearch, has been toiling away to make sure that the local site is updated with the most recent restaurant and boutique openings, that their high-profile relaunch (recently covered in the New York Times) continues to go swimmingly, and that Citysearch's new hipster spinoff "lookbooks" (Mopshots, LuckyToes, and Three Buck Bites, among others) gain traction. Since most of us have at least a passing interest in hair, shoes, food, or all of the above, I'm betting you'll dig these -- and perhaps even become a contributor. If you're interested in writing about food specifically, you can apply here.

HARRIS

Lissa Harris, my fellow feminista and former Dig editor, has started a blog called WomenDO! Its goal: to catalogue and roundly mock silly, sexist-slanting fluff pieces in the mainstream media. I am grateful to her for giving me an outlet for the anger I feel when I read yet another piece about women bowlers or women soccer players where the reporter is surprised to find that the fairer sex is capable of, well, anything.

Harris goes by the alias Samuel Johnson on her blog in honor of the 18th century author, who famously told his friend (who had just seen a woman preacher speak at a Quaker meeting): "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."

Harris uses this phrase often in her analysis, as this is a common angle for lazy writers to take when writing a "Women Do" story: the news is not that the woman in question is a particularly notable firefighter or tattoo artist, but that she is a firefighter in the first place. Shocking!

Harris and I believe that in this day and age, there are more important things for our remaining paid journalists to write about -- like, oh, say, the deficit, or the two wars we're fighting, or the fact that a bakery in Brooklyn is serving fried Cadbury eggs for Easter. Important, useful things like that.

However, our country's paid journalists insist on writing about the dangers of "sexting" instead, so I am both pleased and sorry to report that Harris has been able to find plenty of material to critique on the blog so far. So my hope is that one day, with the help of The Onion, Jezebel, and Sarah Haskins, we will be able to mock bad trend reporting (and its evil twin, sexist advertising) into submission.

To read about what makes a WomenDo story different from a regular news story, click here. To send Harris a hot tip, email womendoblank [at] gmail [dot] com.

TYLER + MORGAN

Tyler Balliet and Morgan First, who were profiled on Beyond Boston Chic in my last friends roundup, are more than just a hipster power couple. Together, they run The Second Glass, an online wine publication for people who like their vino without the obligatory splash of pretentiousness. Tyler conceived the idea a few years back, when he was working part-time at a liquor store on Newbury Street and constantly found himself answering basic questions about wine (i.e. "What does Burgundy mean?") and recommending bottles for under $10.

"There was no publication for these people, nothing below Wine Spectator," he told me recently.

So Balliet, who comes from a long line of entrepreneurs and designers, seized his opening and quit his day job. His girlfriend Morgan, herself an entrepreneur (her business, MAP Boston, is now up for sale), now manages the PR and community for The Second Glass.

This unstoppable team is now working on one of the most ambitious wine events Boston's ever seen: the Wine Riot, scheduled to hit the Cyclorama later this April. The weekend-long event will include a VIP tasting, a panel on sustainable and biodynamic wines, and a "Global Twitter Tasting" on Friday (500 tickets available), and two mass tastings on Saturday (1,000 tickets available per session). There'll be music, food (from Savant Project and Sel de la Terre, mmm), and lots of exhibitors. They're hoping to use the money and awareness raised by the event to expand the business to other cities.

I'll likely be blogging the entire event for Bostonist, so stay tuned. In the meantime, if you're interested in volunteering for Wine Riot and getting in free (versus paying $45-65), click here. If you'd rather roll VIP and avoid slaving away in the wine trenches, hit WineRiot.com for tickets. (Photos from BeyondBostonChic.blogspot.com.)

EKO

Eko has been working hard in the office and at home to keep us sane and thoroughly snuggled. He deserves the biggest shoutout -- and some biscuits.

I Can Haz $1 Cheezburger?

2009-03-17T14:47:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry, I had to do it. These internet memes, they are taking over my writing. I promise that in person I can and do converse like an adult.

So I wrote about 2 new cheap eats aggregators this week: one's local, and one is national.

First, there was Hubeats, which rounds up meal deals around Boston. (Click to enlarge screen shot) There were a few on here that surprised even me. Five dollar boar chili specials at K.O. Prime, anyone?

Bostonist: "Phoenix Media Launches Cheap Eats Aggregator Hubeats"

I believe Hubeats is where my buddy Christine Liu found the deals we investigated for the second site, 3BuckBites.com, a new spinoff site for Citysearch, where she is the Boston editor.

Our research involved eating tiny grilled cheese sandwiches made with Velveeta at Great Bay, which was charming because Great Bay, a fine establishment famed for its fresh seafood, is not normally known for espousing low prices or artificial cheese products. Luckily, Christine knew the bartender, Jonathan (Christine knows every bartender, ever) so we received an extra plate of $1 tater tots for our trouble, AND a $5 plate of fish tacos. Viva la recession!

Bostonist: "Three Buck Bites Launches (With the Help of Boston Bloggers)"

Getting meta at the WBUR food blogger meetup

2009-02-26T21:11:00.000-08:00

Oh em gee dudes. I just returned from the food blogger meetup for WBUR's Public Radio Kitchen and am now going to blog about it. And I probably won't be the only one. How meta.

There was an impressive turnout for this event - maybe 20-30 people from all corners of the blogosphere. There were twentysomething women sharing tips on Twitter with middle-aged ladies, professional writers and chefs mixing it up with cooking hobbyists and graphic designers-turned bloggers, and of course, lots of delicious and sustainable foods to share.

I am such a glutton that I could not even wait until the food event to start eating food, so I scarfed a delicious tofu bánh mì from Pho Viet and some Thai iced tea at Super 88 before I arrived. Yeah. It was probably for the best, since I may have eaten all of Sweet Amandine's eponymous desserts had it not been for my pre-emptive snack attack.

I was pleased to meet people like Pam of Cave Cibum (with whom I write at Bostonist but had never met face to face); sad to find that JJ Gonson was unable to make it (she most assuredly would have added some, ahem, spice to the conversation); and happy to run into my old buddy Andrew Phelps, who's currently shaking things up at WBUR alongside Ken George, the new media production manager for the NPR affiliate. I felt grateful to George for arranging such an inclusive, casual event and for providing both mingling time and moderated discussion about The Future of Journalism. There were plenty of interesting comments (one woman recounted being insulted publicly by Helen Thomas, of all people, who told her that bloggers were going to be the death of journalism). Many well-designed, perky business cards were exchanged. And we all agreed that we should do it again sometime.

Above all this event made me feel grateful for the opportunities I've had in my life, since many people told me how much they would like to "break into" food writing and how insecure they felt because they weren't "real journalists" with degrees or newspaper experience. I don't tend to think in these restrictive terms. But it reminded me that my colleagues, especially the ones just beginning to discover their voices, deserve all the encouragement they can get. We're all in this together, after all.

Bostonist: Craigie On Main Is The Hotness

2009-02-26T20:42:00.000-08:00

I hadn't planned to review Craigie on Main this week. In fact, I hadn't planned on going to Craigie on Main again this week. But after seeing Raymond Ost of Sandrine's receive the prestigious Mérite Agricole (akin to knighthood) at the French Consul's residence, Alexis and Christine and I were understandably hungry, and the impending snowstorm pretty much blew us into Craigie. Once there, we were greeted by various friendly food industry folks who were having dinner there (which seems to be a regular occurrence at Craigie), and seated quickly with a prime view of the bar. The bar then became the focus of my review, because Tom Schlesinger-Guidelli, Craigie's resident star bartender, was mixing and mashing like a DJ of bitters and rye and impressing the hell out of everyone. Don't like that semi-cheesy metaphor? Well, I've got a few more for you in the Bostonist piece that followed this visit, viewable here.

My favorite part is this one:

...Tucked away near our seats were the collected works of M.F.K. Fisher (an author who is to food lovers what Nick Hornby is to nerdy record collectors and Stephenie Meyer is to abstinence-loving Mormons). Three drinks in, we found ourselves thumbing through the pages and reading aloud to anyone who would listen, "There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk. And that is my answer, when people ask me: why do you write about hunger, and not wars or love..."

You keep a bookshelf at your bar, and put MFK Fisher's collected works in said bookshelf, you're bound to earn my respect. As I said in my post: well played, Craigie, well played.

Go2foodnews is on Twitter!

2009-02-20T07:59:00.000-08:00

It's true. I'm on Twitter. But just for work - for now.

Busy day here, and a lot to get done before the Boston Globe Travel Show tonight, so I'll just borrow the note I wrote for our site to explain:

Even though Go2's been in the mobile scene for almost 10 years, the editorial team here has been resisting Twitter for personal use. But when we got the opportunity to start posting our new food news stories, of which we're incredibly proud, we finally began to understand what people mean when they talk about how addictive and collaborative this site can be. If you stop by our Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/go2foodnews, you'll find links to some of our favorite food stories, relevant updates on the intersection of the food and mobile worlds, and other news you can use. You'll also find some of our excellent writers among our followers; feel free to say hello!

Happy tweeting,
The Go2 Media Staff

So there you have it. So far, one of my favorite parts about this experience has been reading daily updates from David Gregory of Meet the Press and Ruth Reichl of Gourmet, who both seem to write their own tweets and who come off as both intelligent and human. I've also enjoyed connecting with old acquaintances like Lexy Winter, a sometime photographer for the Dig (she shot me and my dog for a dining article I wrote last summer) and now a new media intern for Public Radio Kitchen, which is hosting the food blogger meetup I'll be attending on Feb. 26. Small world.

In a way, I think the experience I've had on Twitter mirrors many networking and professional events I've attended. Rather than representing thousands of individual soapboxes (which is how some assumed it would work in the early days of the service), Twitter is more like a party, where people can discuss similar interests, share useful information, give one another encouragement or feedback, eavesdrop on interesting conversations going on nearby, and come and go as they please. And so far, that party has been pretty enjoyable -- even though the virtual experience does remain sadly devoid of cheese and cheap Champagne.

Bostonist: the Globe nails sex ed article

2009-02-16T11:06:00.000-08:00

In addition to the Fairey post, I also touched on another political topic that is of much greater importance to me this month: improving sex education, whether it's inside or outside schools. I was moved to post after reading a great Globe article by a former teacher on the ways in which sex education needs to "grow up".

Bostonist: Shepard Fairey Talks Obama, Plagiarism and Capitalism at ICA

2009-02-16T10:42:00.001-08:00

There are few people left in Boston who aren't sick of Shepard Fairey's name and his attendant controversies at this point, but I wanted to make sure that my writeup of his pre-arrest lecture at the ICA was linked here for posterity.

Fairey, for those who don't know, recently became famous for his ubiquitous OBAMA HOPE poster. He is a controversial figure these days because this poster and other works of Fairey's have been said to draw too heavily on original works by uncredited artists and copyrighted photographs. Others are turned off by the fact that the former skateboarder and staunch counter-culture figure has made a lot of money by selling his designs to companies like Saks Fifth Avenue. Fairey has also been accused of and even arrested for vandalism by putting his works up on private and government property, and in fact he was hauled away in cuffs the night after this lecture on an outstanding warrant, much to the chagrin of the assembled hipsters at the ICA, who were waiting to see him DJ an art party.

As my article indicates, I found Fairey to be charming and clever -- clever like a fox. He shook off the accusations of plagiarism and vandalism easily, and his handlers at the ICA allowed him to do so. However, the fact that he was later arrested shows there are tangible limits to the abstract conversation he was attempting to craft about power, laws, money, and ownership.

I think the conversation about the relationship between power and art might have continued after his arrest in an interesting way, actually, but the ensuing avalanche of super-simplified opinions for and against Fairey in the local media ("he's a hero!" "he's just a punk kid with no respect for authority!") has made it all very tedious instead. So I'll just leave off here.

New food portal in development at go2 Media

2009-01-26T08:32:00.000-08:00

I’ve been lobbying hard to create a food portal for go2 Media, the mobile media company where I have been working full-time for nearly 2 years. And recently, I got the go-ahead to cobble one together, with the help of my crack food writing team, which includes Clara Silverstein, a former editor at the Herald and author of the Boston Chef’s Table Cookbook; Virginia Miller, founder of the San Francisco-based travel site theperfectspotsf.com; Allison Pescosolido of alli411.com, a new Los Angeles-based food blog; and Anders Wright, film editor for San Diego CityBeat and all-around crack A&E writer for go2.

The URL for the site is http://wap1.go2.com/section/food-events.

The URL and the site itself may change over the course of a few months: what you see is a rough draft.

The interface is necessarily and intentionally simple, given that the portal is optimized for browsing on mobile: the fancy graphics and hi-res food porn we’ve come to expect from our favorite food Web sites would only slow down the performance of this page if you were browsing it on your Blackberry. However, I’ve often relished the limitations mobile imposes, because sometimes less really is more. (Anyone who’s ever taken three or four days just to get through the Sunday Times might agree with me.) And to me, this sure beats reading the Metro on the train. (It's a greener option, too.)

Thoughts? Feedback? Email me at rweaver (at) go2.com.

Change, it comes eventually: songs for a new era

2009-01-22T12:33:00.000-08:00

I've been super Obamemotional this week over the inauguration. I bought the New York Times yesterday (mostly for the fabulous photo of Mrs. Obama's outfit, complete with green Jimmy Choos), and rather than let Michael Graham give us his commentary and ruin the morning, I decided to read some of the stories aloud to the b.f. as we drove to work. My voice kept faltering as my eyes moved over the words, too quickly for my mouth to follow (this has always made it hard for me to read aloud), and my emotions seized on the ideas before my mind could cut them off. My throat tightened as I read the re-cap of Obama's inauguration speech:

The problems, he warned, “are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America — they will be met.”

For the first time in eight years, we have a president who commands masterfully the power of words. And words are powerful. They can inspire us to make a change, shore up our defenses as we are about to surrender, bring us to tears. I had forgotten what it was like to be moved by words in this way. Most of the noble presidential speeches our generation has heard have come from the movies, not from the past administration.

In my family, we are all skilled communicators, but we sometimes struggle to say the hardest words. We've learned to bridge the gap between strong emotions and limited words with music. My mother will play me a country song to explain why she's proud to be my parent. My dad will play "dream up, dream up, let me fill your cup" on his guitar to remind me of when I was a little girl and not too shy to sing Neil Young songs with him around the fire. My little brother will send me a mix of indie dance music to tell me to loosen up and have fun, and I'll send mixes back to him to remind him as he studies that someone loves him and understands him and is proud of him. My best friend, when we are meeting after a long time apart, will play songs that remind us of driving through the desert together, late at night.

This week, as I've moved from work to play with my headphones on, my ears have been catching on the words of certain songs, words that seem to express the difficult but ultimately joyous feelings I've been experiencing over the dawn of this new era. Eventually I'd like to collect them all and send them to my loved ones. I thought I'd share a few of the lyrics here, just for fun.

Andrew Bird, "Tables and Chairs"

If we can call them friends we can call them on red telephones
And they won't pretend that they're too busy or they're not alone
If we can call them friends we can call
Holler at 'em down these hallowed halls
But we can't let the human factor fail to be a factor at all

Don't
Don't you worry
About the atmosphere
Or any sudden pressure change

'cause i know
That it's starting
To get warm in here
And things are
Starting to get strange

And did you
Did you see how
All our friends were there
Drinkin' roses from the can

How
How i wish i
I had talked to them
And wished they
Fit into my plan

And we were tired of being mild
Oh so tired of being mild
We were so tired

I know we're gonna meet someday in the crumbled financial institutions of this land
There will be tables and chairs
Pony rides and dancing bears
There'll even be a band
'cause listen after the fall there'll be no more countries
No currencies at all
We're gonna live on our wits
Throw away survival kits
Trade butterfly knives for adderal
And that's not all
Woah!
There will be snacks, there will
There will be snacks!

The Shins, "Sleeping Lessons"

Go without
'Til the need seeps in
You're low, anymore
Collect your novel petals for the stem

And glow
Glow
Melt and flow
Eviscerate your fragile frame
And spill it out on the ragged floor
A thousand different versions of yourself

And if the old guard still offend
They got nothing left on which you depend
So enlist every ounce
Of your bright blood
And off with their heads
Jump from The hook
You're not obliged to swallow anything you despise
See, those unrepenting buzzards want your life

And they got no right
As sure as you have eyes
They got no right

Just put yourself in my new hooves
And see that I do what I do
Because the old guard still offend (their pudgy hearts and slimy hands)
They've got nothing left on which we depend
So enlist every ounce
Of your bright blood
And off with their heads
Jump from The hook
You're not obliged
To swallow anything you despise
That you despise

Lauryn Hill, "Everything is Everything"

Everything is everything
What is meant to be, will be
After winter, must come spring
Change, it comes eventually

I wrote these words for everyone
Who struggles in their youth
Who won't accept deception
Instead of what is truth
It seems we lose the game,
Before we even start to play
Who made these rules? We're so confused
Easily led astray
Let me tell ya that
Everything is everything
Everything is everything
After winter, must come spring
Everything is everything

I philosophy
Possibly speak tongues
Beat drum, Abyssinian, street Baptist
Rap this in fine linen
From the beginning
My practice extending across the atlas
I begat this
Flippin' in the ghetto on a dirty mattress
You can't match this rapper slash actress
More powerful than two Cleopatras
Bomb graffiti on the tomb of Nefertiti
MCs ain't ready to take it to the Serengeti
My rhymes is heavy like the mind of Sister Betty
L. Boogie spars with stars and constellations
Then came down for a little conversation
Adjacent to the king, fear no human being
Roll with cherubims to Nassau Coliseum
Now hear this mixture
Where hip hop meets scripture
Develop a negative into a positive picture

Now, everything is everything
What is meant to be, will be
After winter, must come spring
Change, it comes eventually

Sometimes it seems
We'll touch that dream
But things come slow or not at all
And the ones on top, won't make it stop
So convinced that they might fall
Let's love ourselves then we can't fail
To make a better situation
Tomorrow, our seeds will grow
All we need is dedication

Let me tell ya that,
Everything is everything
Everything is everything
After winter, must come spring
Everything is everything

Everything is everything
What is meant to be, will be
After winter, must come spring
Change, it comes eventually

New slew of posts up at Examiner.com

2009-01-22T11:33:00.000-08:00

I've been adding posts every few days to my Examiner.com column, and have been pleasantly surprised to find that it's easy to come up with interesting angles on veganism for a local Boston audience. I've also had a warm reception from Shannon Cain Arnold, the vegetarian examiner (the liberal Jew to my orthodox, if we're working with my Kosher metaphor from post #1), and from Boston's Food Examiner at large, Jacqueline Church, although of course we knew eachother previously from the Bostonist piece I did on her inspiring Teach a Man to Fish project.

I've also received some fun comments from friends of all kinds on my posts, from the cynical Lissa to the bubbly Alicia. (Note: "B Dub", who asks for recipes in the first post, is actually my steak-loving cowboy dad, using a family alias. Thanks, Dad!)

Anyhow, here's a quick roundup of the new stories on Examiner:

Jan 10: Learn to cook vegan desserts with Conscious Kitchen's Emilie Hardman

Emilie's one of my go-to sources for vegan info and overall inspiration - her blog, Conscious Kitchen, is full of beautiful photos and thoughtful commentary. This class is the first in a series that I hope will be very successful for Emilie.

Jan 11: Vegan school lunch options garner support on Change.org

The voting is closed now on Change.org/ideas, the Reddit-style site run by Obama's transition team, but when it debuted, it seemed to me to be a beautifully modern way of expressing the democratic ideal: anyone could submit ideas for the president's consideration, and readers could vote ideas up or down.

The idea of reforming the school lunch program so that it will offer vegetable-based cuisine to feed our nation's growing bodies (and fight diabetes and obesity later on) did surprisingly well, although I'd imagine this was due to the self-selected community of liberal, early-adopter, tech-minded voters, which does not represent the country as a whole.

Jan 17: Two vegan dinners on Sunday, Jan 18: BVS dinner at Grasshopper, vegan tasting at Tremont 647

The BVS dinner was cancelled, but I'm hoping to make the rescheduled dinner on Feb. 15, which includes a lecture on kitchen gardening. I'm hoping to get into this in 2009.

I'm equally excited about vegan food at Tremont 647, as I've been veg-ifying the recipes in chef Andy Husbands' "Fearless Chef" for a while, but I'm sure the pros can do a better job. According to 647's events coordinator, Joy Robinson, who is a LUPEC lady and a vegan herself, it's the first of many.

"We have only done 1 vegan dinner (this past Sunday) but plan to make it a regular thing in March. Not sure if we're going to do every Sunday or once per month yet, but when we kick it off, I will have some vegan wines and organic cocktails on the list," she told me via email this week. "The reason we're waiting until March is because we're doing Pork Month for the month of February, with a 3 course Pork menu every night of the week, for $35 per person, excluding tax and gratuity. We thought offering a vegan menu at the same time as a pork menu, would be a little weird." I agree.

Jan 18: Matthew Lishansky of Upstairs on the Square dishes on vegans and the restaurant biz

I've been a fan of Upstairs' GM Matt Lishansky ever since I met him, because he had recently hosted Henry, a student of mine from 826, for my food writing workshop, and had only sweet things to say about him. Recently we met up again at the Upstairs staff party, where Matt was in his element. We had a few beers, swapped a few stories, and the next day it occurred to me while I was writing up the upcoming vegan dinner series at Upstairs that it would be great to get his (confirmedly carnivorous) take on it, so I called him up. He graciously agreed to chat on the way to working two weddings. He gave me a great interview (who else would call himself a "sauce queen"?) and the inspiration to conduct more for this column.

Jan 18: Veggie Planet's Didi Emmons to teach Jan 31 curry class

The first time the b.f. and I ever took a cooking class together, it was with Didi Emmons. It was cheap, and it involved spring rolls -- which made it irresistable to us both. She's currently working with a class of teenagers at the Haley House, and it's easy to see why she's such an effective teacher for kids: she's approachable, she explains things clearly, she's unpretentious, she makes food that is fun to eat as well as to cook, and even if the class isn't hands-on (as ours wasn't), she makes it fun and engaging. We are definitely going to be attending this curry class!

Boston Vegan Examiner column begins this week

2009-01-10T14:32:00.000-08:00

So I stumbled across this site, Examiner.com, while Googling the other day, and one thing led to another, and I filed an application to become a contributor, and they called me and hired me. So here I am, writing a column as their resident "Boston Vegan Expert". This URL is my little corner of the Internets.

http://www.examiner.com/x-2428-Boston-Vegan-Examiner

As luck would have it, my friend Tyler had just sent along an angry email about a piece on veganism in the Improper Bostonian, so I used that as a jumping-off place in my inaugural post. While I am not technically a vegan (I eat cheese, butter, all that good stuff), I do understand where vegans are coming from, and I find it irritating that, despite that huge amount of information on the Internet and in bookstores about veganism and its roots, reporters and even regular people continue to approach this community like Harris' Betelgeusian anthropologists. It reminds me of the way people insisted that they "didn't know enough about this Obama guy", even though he had a comprehensive Web site and two books out before he ran a campaign for the presidency that employed more information sources, from Facebook to SMS to Twitter, than any other candidate at the time. Some people don't know because they haven't been exposed yet to the facts, but some people say they don't know because they don't want to know.

The information is out there, but as I also mention in my post, so are a lot of extreme and often irritating vegans, muddying the waters with their judgmental behavior and their ALL-CAPS responses to any nuanced discussion of food, ethics, and environment. This anklebiting minority makes the rest of the vegan community (which is by and large a warm fuzzy lot, concerned with fermentation and vegan dog biscuits and global warming and the like) look like a morass of tattoed asshattery. So I strove in this post to establish a tone that is inclusive and moderate rather than exclusive and extreme.

I get paid in clicks and would love to have feedback, so if you know me and love me, please visit the site early and often, and leave me some comments.

Also, I'm required to maintain an RSS feed and link list of useful vegan resources for the column, so if you operate a blog that fits the bill, comment here and give me your info, or email me at BostonVeganExaminer [at] gmail [dot] com.

Bostonist: Herald discovers that LUPEC ladies drink scotch

2009-01-10T13:22:00.000-08:00

This week, my friend Lissa Harris debuted her much-needed media blog, Women Do! Its aim: to catalogue and mock the many pieces of trashy "trend journalism" inflicted on the thinking women of the world these days. Writes Harris:

The true Women Do story is not about medical issues, or gender discrimination, or anything properly related to women qua women. Oh no. It is about the shocking spectacle of women doing stuff that people generally do. At its heart is typically an earth-shattering revelation that some women, for instance, like to drive motor-cars or eat ice-cream. The reporter sets about tackling this topic with all the barmy innocence of a two-year-old child, a Betelgeusian anthropologist or a time-traveler from 1769. (Inside tip: As a rule, reporters and editors are not actually all that amazed that women can do stuff. But they think you are.)

...The perpetrators of the classic Women Do story will inflict on us any number of stale puns, cliches, slogans, witticisms and bons mots. They will lard headlines, subheads, captions and ledes with great glops of insufferable cuteness. They will, in their gormless way, encourage girls to go.

The very next day, a prime specimen of Women Do! journalism appeared in the Boston Herald concerning LUPEC, an organization of women bartenders in Boston that became a household name in 2008 due to its valiant efforts to raise cocktail awareness and money for charity.

You see, now that everyone who cares already knows about LUPEC, the Herald has decided to discover it. Condescendingly and inadequately. From it's pun-rific headline ("Raising the Bar") to its insufferable verbiage (they actually used the word "sassy"), the article was pretty gormless (Later, I learned that the reporter, Kerry Byrne, goes by the nickname of Chief Angry Troll on the football fansite ColdHardFootballFacts.com, which does not surprise me at all.) Here you have an article where badass LUPEC president Misty Kalkofen is literally lighting ingredients on fire in a Congress Street basement, and you find it more newsworthy to note that her friend's not drinking a Cosmo?

So by way of introducing the Bostonist readership to Harris' blog and re-introducing them, for the hundredth time, to the Herald's increasingly lazy reportage, I filed this blog post in response. Then I promptly made plans to visit Kalkofen at Drink, where it was confirmed that she's still one of the best bartenders in Boston, double-X chromosome be damned. (Alexis asked her what liquor she was pouring, and not only did she give us the last 100 years of history on the stuff, she also described the way the U.S. product differs from the French product and why it was like a vermouth but not like a vermouth... All while shaking the dickens out of an egg cocktail, filling our water glasses, finding us a seat at the bar, and taking orders from other customers.)

Things got meta when Harris read my piece and decided to quote it on her Women Do! blog. A nice, sarcastic exchange ensued in the comments, and walking-food-encyclopedia-about-town MC Slim JB offered to write an entry just for us (for a story about "women enjoying Vietnamese food", he suggested the headline "Banh mi, bonne amie").

Bostonist: The Year in Food

2009-01-04T16:53:00.000-08:00

As you might guess, I had a lot of fun in this post, and was proud that I kept it short and sweet. I didn't realize it at the time, but the fact that I'm re-reading some Chuck Klosterman lately made its way into the post with this bit:

"Hungry Mother's popularity lies not only in its inventive comfort-food menu, but in its ability to allow New Englanders to enjoy everything that's good about the South (buttermilk biscuits, mint juleps, genuine hospitality) and everything that's popular in Fancy Restaurant Culture this year (sophisticated cocktails, grass-fed beef) while still actively condemning the negative aspects of the "Real" South (weak levees, Evangelicals, Disneyworld)."

I was thinking today, as I put on my outdoor performance gear and leashed up my dog for a walk in my fully gentrified neighborhood, that this brand of humor, found in Klosterman's stuff, Stuff White People Like, Black People Love Us! and the kind of humor in the above passage -- a brand you might call The Self-Delusion of the White Middle-Class Urbanite -- has become incredibly ubiquitous. And why? On the one hand, I just spent an entire post defending this group of people from accusations of hypocrisy. And I honestly don't think that there's that much self-delusion to go around. Most of the sushi-loving, organic-touting people in question are in fact incredibly self-aware about their flaws and impure motives, are hypervigilant about the faces they show to the world, and are desperate to rid themselves of cultural ignorance and unquestioned biases (although I make no excuses for Sasha Frere-Jones). They're trying to make the best decisions they can with the information they have, and they consume an above-average amount of information. Sure, they may go overboard trying to do the "right" thing (think: "some of my best friends are black!"), but sheesh, it's better than the alternative.

These decent people, though, will still sometimes joke about religious folks, Southerners, "people I knew in high school" -- the kinds of folks that Stuff White People Like would classify as "the wrong kind of white people" and that Sarah Palin would classify as "Real Americans". Politicians like Palin will try to say that these people just don't understand Real Americans, but I disagree. What they choose to say about it is generally informed by firsthand experience, but it's bitter experience.

Like any good humor, this brand comes from intimate familiarity and cruel rejection. Most Middle-Class Urbanites were once middle-class or lower-class suburbanites, living in the Target towns outside Ohio and Dallas and Rochester. They went to youth group, but failed to find Jesus; went to the high school football games, but still can't remember the rules; went to the birthday parties, but felt stung by the superficial smiles; tried many times to do the dance, but could never get the moves down. These are people who attempted to live in "Real America" before realizing it just didn't feel real for them the way it did for other people.

And you know what? Despite my aspirations towards tolerance for all, I still can't force myself to like Disneyworld. And despite my fantasies about ditching my brain-cell-destroying city lifestyle for a nice suburban house, I know I can never go home again. But neither can Chuck Klosterman, and neither can many of the people who eat at Hungry Mother, which is why they wish to eat food that tastes like home because it saves them the trip and the letdown. And sharing a laugh together, even an imagined one at someone else's expense, makes us feel a little less alone in the world.

Bostonist: 8 Aspects of (Rick) Warrengate

2009-01-03T13:01:00.000-08:00

So I volunteered to contribute to this "12 Days of New Years" feature on Bostonist, and as it was the weekend after Christmas, I played until the last minute and then had to come up with a topic involving the number eight. I was going to write a nice post about Formaggio Kitchen's latest class, or Alex Lobrano's visit to Needham. But I didn't, because I thought they'd sell out, and because they had nothing to do with the number eight (now I know what the writers at Sesame Street must feel like).

If you'd like to read about those things instead, just click the links above. But if you'd like to read about Rick Warren, about whom I wrote on Dec. 28, stick with me.

I've been fascinated about the conversation around Obama's selection of Rick Warren as the guy who'll give the prayer for America on Inauguration day. As I've mentioned before, I often feel as though I am straddling two worlds: one in which people hold mainly religious beliefs (my mother, my friends from Utah), and one in which people hold mainly secular beliefs (my father, my friends in Boston). Lately I feel moved to comment whenever I see these two worlds collide (which they are doing quite a bit these days).

I presented mainly secular viewpoints in my 8-point roundup, mostly because the majority of the high-profile commentators who provided timely, credible, linkable and provocative commentary on this issue, such as Frank Rich in the New York Times and David Gregory on Meet the Press, happened to be commenting on the impact it's had on Obama's secular base. I'd be interested to hear directly from religious folks who are perturbed (or pleased) with Rick Warren's selection or its reception.

Christmas Eve breakfast

2008-12-25T13:19:00.001-08:00

Yesterday's breakfast at Cafe Fixe: bracingly tart sheep's milk yogurt, almond macaroon, French press coffee and the b.f.'s beloved lemon scone (Max, the owner, said he'd been hoping we'd come in because he knows the scones are the b.f.'s favorite. So nice of him.) And a hearty helping of food policy angst via the NYT. I've been anxiously awaiting the answer to this question (the article concludes that the answer is "sorta").

A language lesson

2008-12-24T15:41:00.000-08:00

This weekend, my friend Alexis invited me and two other friends to visit him at his apartment in Cambridge as he prepared to fly home to France. Now, I've done the last-minute "goodbye hangout" before, and it usually consists of me running around folding clothes or searching a closet for a lost pair of ski goggles while a friend or two sits perched on my bed with a glass of Kool-Aid, chatting with me as I go.

Not so with Alexis, who is a) French and b) a professional diplomat. Before I came over, he had already gone to the store and picked up a small feast of sushi ("for the vegetarian" - moi), carrots, tzatziki, pita chips and (of course) hummus, as well as a few bottles of wine. Our last-minute goodbye ended up lasting until 3 a.m. I never saw him fold so much as a sock, but he was packed and ready for his flight the next day. (Although his bags did get lost, temporarily depriving his French relatives of the Orville Redenbacher popcorn and Goldfish crackers he was bringing over to Brittany).

It seems natural now that the conversation drifted to the topic of sprezzatura. It's one of my favorite words, Italian or otherwise, and the perfect word to describe Alexis' special talent for this sort of thing. The word comes from Castiglione's "Book of the Courtier", and a courtier, I suppose, was an early form of the kind of diplomat Alexis is today. In the book, one character, Count Ludovico, explains the meaning of grace, and in it he mentions sprezzatura.

"It is an art which does not seem to be an art. One must avoid affectation and practice in all things, a certain sprezzatura, disdain or carelessness, so as to conceal art, and make whatever is done or said appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it....obvious effort is the antithesis of grace."

The idea of sprezzatura went on to hold great sway during the Renaissance -- and still does today, especially in Italy, where living life with great pleasure is an art form, and therefore an act into which some degree of affectation or pretention can creep. Even modern-day observers like The Sartorialist have noticed this, in this case by recognizing the way a carefully careless Italian has left his shoes fashionably unbuckled (scroll down to see the text/photo).

Hinting as it does at a kind of illusion, sprezzatura lends itself to both positive and negative associations, I think: at best, it can define the way a trained athlete can make the impossible look easy, and at worst, it can imply a certain calculating disingenuousness, the way a socialite will accept a compliment on a carefully put-together outfit by saying, "Oh, this old thing?"

Alexis, of course, embodies the former. He's like the star shortstop of sweetness. He's the sort of person who doesn't so much light up a room with his presence as he does the individual people in it, going from person to person paying genuine compliments in a careful way, like a priest lighting candles, until every person is glowing. If you try to tell him that you've noticed and appreciated him doing this, he'll wave you off and say, "Oh, please, I am a diplomat," in a way that in itself suggests he's simply doing his job, like an off-duty firefighter rescuing a cat from a tree. (Okay, I think three metaphors enough for this paragraph.) But I suspect that in truth, Alexis' personality naturally led him to the profession that most suits him, so that he, as a citizen of a notoriously standoffish country, has an official reason to imbrace his inner warmth and geniality, the way his beloved Americans do.

Strangely enough, Alexis, who is taking Italian lessons (yes, boys, and he's single too!), was unaware of the word's meaning. But my friend Aaron, another champion of sprezzatura (in that he's a veteran party thrower, former Quiz Night host and sometime sommelier) recognized it immediately. "It's the ability to throw a dinner party at a moment's notice, and to make it look easy," he said.

(Alexis, embodying sprezzatura)

Alexis seemed to like this, and repaid the linguistic favor later that night, when we were talking about Margaret Anderson. (Yes, we talk about early 20th century lesbian feminist pioneers at our casual social gatherings. We also talked about boys.) Earlier this fall, I wrote a post about sustainable seafood in which I employed a quote from Anderson. I pulled this up to read it again, because I was trying to explain how my how-can-I-help-you-today approach to life often gives way to angry bouts of WTF-itude when issues of fairness and responsibility are on the line. Anderson wrote:

I wasn't born to be a fighter. I was born with a gentle nature, a flexible character and an organism as equilibrated as it is judged hysterical. I shouldn't have been forced to fight constantly and ferociously. The causes I have fought for have invariably been causes that should have been gained by a delicate suggestions. Since they never were, I made myself into a fighter.

"That does seem to describe you", my friend Jenna ventured.
"Yes, but you are not angry," Alexis said. "You just reven -- " and he stopped himself. "I don't know if this is a real English word."
We looked at him quizzically.
"The word is revendiquer. I don't know if there is a word for it in English."

So we looked it up.

According to About.com, revendiquer means "to claim, demand, take responsibility for." The example they give is "Il faut revendiquer vos droits - You have to demand your rights." Alexis explained that the word has been used in situations where, for example, workers were demanding their rights to better pay or reasonable hours.

"It means you fight for what is right, for what is owed," Alexis said.

Jenna wondered if its English analog -- or at least its English cousin -- would be vindicate, which, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, can mean "to avenge" or "maintain a right to".

For some reason, I prefer the French word. To vindicate sounds almost clinical or legal, as if you're stamping a document: "vindicated." Pronounced "reh-VON-di-kay", revondiquer sounds like a proper action verb. It sounds like the way a large flag whips as it's raised into a strong wind. It sounds like it should have an exclamation point permanently attached to the end. In short, it sounds like an onomotopoeia for the action and emotion of stepping up, at first begrudgingly and then with greater and greater intensity, to fight against an opposition that should never have existed.

(Margaret Anderson, founder and publisher of The Little Review, who fought to have James Joyce's Ulysses published in the United States)

As I thought about this exchange, I realized how often I am moved by this concept. In this blog alone I have posted diatribes on subjects outside the purview of my professional work, to which this blog is supposed to be dedicated. In these cases, I have gone beyond the assignment, when there was an assignment at all, to express my anger at an act of unfairness or incompetence that, in my mind, was beyond comprehension or legitimacy. Revondiquer was all I could do. I suppose that's one of the reasons why I became a journalist. (That, and the free cheese.)

This month, I posted on the failure of one of the English-speaking world's top fashion writers to provide consumers of my generation with an adequate guide for environmentally-conscious clothing consumption, and the failure of the fashion and luxury community at large to acknowledge issues such as poverty and environmental responsibility, when such awareness is de rigeur for their peers in the equally glamorous fine dining industry. Last month, I posted on the misguided best intentions of the Prop 8 proponents I knew and the demoralizing consequences for our GLBT fellow Americans. Before that, I posted on the ignorance of a restaurateur who could not tell me where his food came from, and the laziness (or lack of courage?) of other restaurateurs who know but don't care. Before that, I posted on the inefficiency and waste within our country's current agricultural system as described by Michael Pollan.

But my need to revendiquer, to demand what is "owed" to us as a thinking, compassionate people, often goes beyond (or should I say below) the scope of this blog. I am a mad forwarder, sending on news stories both bizarre and infuriating to my friends, and more than one person has commented on how frequently I post these stories to Facebook. It seems that these days I am generating a veritable newsfeed of la revendication. In the spirit of the new year and new President, a quick roundup:

- Campbell's decided to run an ad featuring a lesbian chef, her partner and their young son eating soup for the holidays, and the right-wing American Family Association called for a boycott of Campbell's. A boycott, for acknowledging that families with lesbian moms exist, and that they sometimes like to eat soup. Campbell's stood their ground and defended both their ad and the family. Feministing.com asked its readers to buy a can of Campbell's and mail it to the AFA with a note expressing their support of gay families and the companies who aren't afraid to do the same.

- On December 19, the Bush Administration quietly attempted to auction off parcels of public land (that's public land, as in land that belongs to you and I) adjacent to several of Utah's national parks that had not been adequately reviewed, in a process that was not cleared with the National Parks Service. Now several environmental organizations have filed a lawsuit to stop the high bidders (who had to cross a line of shouting, angry picketers to get into the auction) from taking possession of said lands.

- In one of its most spine-tinglingly inspiring and visionary editorials in recent history, the New York Times has called for a "secretary of food" to replace the Secretary of Agriculture position in the cabinet, someone who will reform the food system to reduce consumption of fossil fuels (for fertilizer and transportation), increase standards for animal treatment and organic farming, and push for healthier foods to be made available to the poor to combat diseases like obesity and diabetes. Obama appears to have ignored this plea -- he's appointed a Sec. of Ag. with ties to Monsanto -- but advocates for food reform are not giving up.

- While consumption of bottled water continues to outstrip that of beer and milk in the U.S., Toronto's attempting to divert 70 percent of its waste from the landfill by 2010.

And so it goes.

The idea that we should work hard to preserve our environment so we and our descendants can continue to live in it, I think, is the most pragmatic thing in the world. The idea that we should not deprive other human beings of the same rights we enjoy is ingrained in me. These are not issues I want to fight about. The causes I have fought for have invariably been causes that should have been gained by a delicate suggestion.

I still maintain that, like Margaret Anderson, I wasn't born to be a fighter. But perhaps no one is.

I wish that my job entailed simply offering delicate suggestions, as Kristof so eloquently did when he recommended, via the NYT, that Obama bring some sanity to the way our our broken country nourishes itself; as Rachel Maddow so skillfully does when she suggests that perhaps, maybe, we should do something about all those banks wasting our money and all those loose nukes stashed away in the bunkers of countries hostile to us; as Tim Russert so gracefully did when he asked simply that politicians confront their own words and tell the truth. But sometimes even well-intentioned people (and Presidents) are deaf to gentle suggestions. Sometimes we can't all get along. And since we can't, revendiquer is the only choice. And I am so grateful to Alexis for helping me to find in his language a word for the urge I could never adequately explain in my language, a word that belongs to all good journalists the way sprezzatura must belong to all good diplomats.

A Short Catalogue Of Things You Think You Want

2008-12-15T17:36:00.000-08:00

For a long while, my b.f. has struggled to share my passion for books, as he, along with many other people I know (mostly males, for whatever reason) tends to prefer to communicate and learn from listening rather than reading. For a long while, I have struggled to accept this, as I live and breathe through the books I read, and generally tend to share them and talk about them with everyone I know while I am reading them, and often for months afterwards. However, we had a bit of luck over this last Thanksgiving break, because the b.f. had a long drive home to his family in the South, and he quickly grew sick of the increasingly inane talk radio dominating the airwaves Down There. So he decided to try out audiobooks for the first time in his life -- and found that he thoroughly enjoyed them and retained the info very well.

And so it came to pass that for the last 18 hours of his drive up to Boston through the blue ridge mountains down in Tennessee and the traffic snarls of New York City, the b.f. became acquainted (at my behest) with one of my favorite books: "On Beauty" by Zadie Smith.

Ironically, it was because of this b.f. that I discovered Zadie Smith -- I found her book "White Teeth" (which I like even more than I like "On Beauty") sitting on his bookshelf, in the "purchased for an English class that I then transferred out of" section. I read it cover to cover with barely a breath or a meal in between, it was so enjoyable.

When the b.f. returned, the first thing we talked about (at five in the morning, in the dark with the dog sleeping soundly between us) was Zadie Smith. Her masterful command of tone and dialect and narrative. Her bizarre and lovable characters. Her ability to run up and down the black and ivory keys of race and class and intellect like a virtuosic piano player. Her ability, which she shares most notably with the writer Junot Diaz, to say words like "postmodern" and "dude" in the same sentence. Her ability to engage us both as a very particular kind of modern young reader, despite the fact that we experienced her in two different mediums.

I aspire to sound like Zadie Smith one day. Not to speak in her enviably smoky North London accent, of course -- which I remember clearly from when she held me and my fellow audience members in thrall at the Brookline Booksmith when she came to read "On Beauty" for the first time years ago -- but to play the keys of culture the way she does, in full-length narrative form.

In the meantime, while I work on my writing and we wait for Smith to come out with a new novel, the b.f. and I are enjoying this essay Smith wrote for The Face back in the day, which exemplifies the kind of range, humor, randomness and preternatural wisdom one will find in her longer work. It comes at a good time of year for me -- at a time where we're reflecting on how far we've come and trying to hang on to some semblance of humanity and simplicity through the insane holiday season. I've decided to post it here, in part to save my friends the trouble of having to listen to me rave about Smith one more time.

A Short Catalogue Of Things You Think You Want
by Zadie Smith

So, what is it that you think you want? The received wisdom goes that you want Fame, that we all want it now, the same way our parents wanted a good melon. But it only means one thing, it has only ever meant one thing: more people knowing you than you know people. Everything else is an accessory. Just don't bother with this thing, more people knowing you than you know people. Shun it. Put a black cross on your door. It's no fun. It's just for people who have lost something. Amputees.

What else? Well, you want Muscle Definition and at any cost. Nothing I can say can convince you otherwise, and you will get your trainer and your home gym, even though I am not alone and there are others who would like to touch you, soft as you are, in this hard city. But you think hardness is what you need to survive these days, and maybe you are right. I can't fight you (I'd lose).

Now, your mother tells me you want Something That's Comfy Like A Sofa But Doesn't Look Like A Sofa, because you hate the suburbs and you never want to go back there, but at the same time you appreciate the fact that everybody's got to sit down. This is a laudable statement. Only, it wasn't the sofa that made life suburban, and it wasn't the curtains or the carpet or the neatly trimmed flowerbeds. It ran much deeper than that. And no amount of Conran furniture and Japanese wall prints will change what's in the marrow of you.

You want it, I want it, we all want The Love Of Someone Better Looking Than Us. Maybe you have someone better looking than you sitting right next to you now, reading over your shoulder, stroking on the nape of your neck. It's like having the TV on, isn't it? Shiny, pretty, distracting. You've got human TV all the time, you lucky thing.

Of course, some of you are more hardcore than that. You want A Big Shiny Cause You Can Get Behind and, friends, I can see your point. After all, your great-grandfather got a war, so did your grandfather -- hell, even your dad got the Sixties. What did you get? Bupkiss. Or rather, a whole load of intricate claims and counter-claims, civil conflicts involving five different factions, rights that look like wrongs and vice versa. Feels like too much sometimes, huh? You'd like things a little simpler, more black and white. Well, that's over. Frankly, everyone's tired of protecting you from what some people deal with every day. Best advice I can give you is to start small. Sort out your bathroom cabinet and go from there.

Surely any right-minded 21st-century type wants to Get Sushi, Whenever, Wherever? And a Decaf Chocolate Mocha Espresso, Anytime, Anywhere? Well, want it, but know what it is that you're wanting. I read that Leonardo called it a service-station culture which takes the needs of a Fat White American and reproduces them all across the globe. No, I couldn't believe he said anything that smart, either.

Speaking of Leo, is it true you still wish to be Forever Young? To be, or to be with, The Perfect Woman? A cautionary tale: my 73-year-old father has the hots for the big-haired one off Friends. He thinks about her constantly. That is what happens in a culture that won't put childish things away. Remember: these two things do not exist. Remember: these two things will hurt you more than anything else, if you let them.

In the end, it's New Trainers you want and don't try to tell me different. Well, the good news is you don't only think you want them. You really want them. Despite their three-month life span, Nike's profits and the children who make them. Because they are beautiful, because they are Art. And as we have learnt these 20 years, Art will make you do shit like that, nine times out of ten.

Ham is vegetarian in the Czech Republic.

2008-12-09T08:07:00.001-08:00

So my college buddy Christian and his girlfriend Marta left earlier this year to live out one of the most popular fantasies of my generation: moving abroad to teach English. What's more, they headed to the Czech Republic, one of my top Must Visit destinations, as part of my family comes from that area of Europe, and, well, I hear Prague is awesome. I was more than a little envious of their seemingly glamorous plan when they told us about it, even though they also explained that they were choosing this expensive, logistically complex career path only because they had struggled to find other employment in the U.S. (and that was before the sh*t hit the fan with our current economy).

Now they're firmly esconced in Czech life, as evidenced by a new slew of Facebook pictures which I immediately seized upon as a way to experience their adventure vicariously (admit it, you've totes done it too).

One picture in particular, though, made me feel slightly relieved to be here in Boston, where new vegetarian cafes, vegan dessert tastings and raw vegan takeout services are emerging on the regular.

Note the options available to vegetarians here:

1) Fried cheese, cranberries, tartar sauce
2) Fried cheese, tartar sauce
3) Ham.

Too funny.

Weekly Dig: Green is the new blegh

2008-12-03T08:20:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately for me and the author of"Green is the New Black", the book I reviewed for Greenland this week, I hated every page of it. It was absolutely awful. After having gone through the book writing and editing process, I can only conclude that the editor of Blanchard's book must have either hated or feared her, because it's full of errors, nonsensical ellipses, non sequiturs, and rambling offshoots into Blanchard's personal life that have little to do with saving the planet. I don't know what I expected from a writer who uses the word "fashionista" without irony, but what I got was extremely irritated.

The published review is here, but unfortunately for me and the Dig readers, it also received a less than careful treatment in the editing process. So I'll print the uncut (albeit even more rant-y) version here:

Green is the New Blegh

When it comes to the environment, what you wear is nearly as important as what you eat. The pesticides that soak conventional cottons are as harmful to farmers as the pesticides that seep into the ground on conventional lettuce farms. The labor conditions under which fast-fashion clothing is produced overseas are often deplorable. The implications of highly disposable, cheap sweaters which will sojourn only briefly in your closet before spending the next few millennia not biodegrading in a landfill are as daunting as the ones we face daily every time we choose (or don’t choose) to eat a Big Mac wrapped in cardboard.

So why, asks Brit fashion writer Tamsin Blanchard, author of “Green is the New Black”, aren’t we doing more about it?

The reason is, partly, writers like Tamsin Blanchard.

It’s apparent from her badly-edited, sloppily turned-out “guide” to eco-consumerism that fashion writers like Blanchard, who’s worked the style beat for several leading London publications, still believe that “fashionistas” to be strongarmed into caring about the environment. That they don’t truck in measured, devastating arguments like the “foodies” who read Michael Pollan. That any innate curiosity or concern they might have about the origins of their clothing is likely to be eclipsed by their need for omigod shoes. That they’ll be able to sort through Blanchard’s self-indulgent, blowsy rambling to find the useful nuggets of information that the writer does present in her guide, such as pointing out that even mainstream chains like H&M and American Apparel feature organic cotton lines that are better than the less responsible alternative, or that UK company People Tree may actually have a workable model for Fair Trade, sustainable fashion.

What fashionistas need, it seems, is for a high-ranking insider to teach them about a new concept called “vintage” and to reassure them that it’s, like, totally posh to shop at “charity stores” and to buy hemp-based clothing from Marks & Spencer without becoming a “hippy-dippy”. (Did we mention this book is all in Brit-speak?)

Sigh. Is it any wonder that kids today have turned to those newfangled weblogs for real, useful information?

We recommend recycling your copy of “Green is the New Black” and turning to the paperless resource of IdealBite instead, which will deliver daily tips with links to products you can use, written in a style that non-fashionistas can read without retching on their “hippy-dippy” vegan fair trade shoes.

This was the first time in a long time that I've written something so unabashedly negative -- but you know what? It felt good. Some people see green and they don't think "saving the planet" -- they think "lining my pockets by jumping on this trend". Blanchard has come on the green scene and attempted to make a quick buck by purporting to tell environmental "fashionistas" what they already know (that vintage is green, that organic and bamboo-based materials are the way of the future, that we need to buy less and think more about our purchases).

Blanchard has also proven something about the fashion world that "fashionistas" need to know, and to fix: that the high rollers of the fashion world are becoming increasingly disconnected from the people they clothe and from the people who work for them all over the world. For example, this comment from Anna Wintour: "I see a lot of people in my industry who are over-reacting. Stores that are over-discounting, designers who are creating collections for the price and what sells rather than to reflect who they are." Replies Jezebel.com, "It takes a special understanding of the world — wasn't the Dow just below 8,000? And aren't advertising pages in this month's Vogue down 22% compared with last December's issue? — to frame the fashion industry's biggest problem right now as charging too little for its wares."

Even luxury conoisseurs are feeling a little ashamed of buying bling these days, but that emotion is not in the best interests of fashion magazines, which thrive on luxury ads -- so with tastemakers like Wintour wielding the whip, the consuming must go on, even when it makes no sense to the consumers themselves. The devil wears Prada, indeed.

While the luxury fashion world's "let them eat cake" attitude may infuriate the actual thrift shoppers among us, my feelings about this go beyond sour grapes to real moral outrage. As long as this reality-be-damned luxury continues to be defended, encouraged and even lauded by magazines like Vogue and Elle (and breezily passed over by the likes of Blanchard), the fashion world as it stands will continue to contribute to greater poverty and environmental degradation worldwide in the years to come while calling it "art". I doubt there's a designer or a consumer among us who would be willing to argue that authenticity and environmental responsibility are mutually exclusive, so let's get real. It's time to acknowledge that clothes are a commodity as well as an "art form", and their production needs to be managed more carefully and with greater conscience.

Unfortunately, Blanchard does not tackle this topic, or many others of substance. Like Bush, she simply tells us to shop to solve the world's problems, albeit in the Marks & Spencer organic section. It's not good enough. Blanchard's book is lazy, indulgent, and worst of all, not useful. I sincerely hope that she makes very little profit from her book sales -- because those books will most certainly all end up in the trash, which will only make the problem worse. Blegh!

Weekly Dig: eat gooder

2008-11-24T08:06:00.001-08:00

I forgot to post this quick writeup I did for the Weekly Dig's Greenland column, which is out this week. I interviewed Kenji Alt, the co-founder of GoodEater.org, a new Boston and New York-based blog that features interesting stories about the intersection of food, politics and the environment. (Coincidentally, I'm thinking about buying a house at that intersection, cause I spend so much time there.)

My meetup with Kenji had to be quick -- he was racing from his job at Cook's Illustrated to the kitchen of Rialto, where Jody Adams was going to be demonstrating a recipe for his upcoming blog feature, Great Chefs @ Good Eater (which I mentioned in my writeup, but that bit was unfortunately cut from the Dig piece). While we sat down to chat and split a plate of sweet potato cod fritters at Green Street, the manager stopped by to talk about a seasonal cocktail recipe for the feature. Before his stint as a food writer, Kenji spent a while cooking in the Boston restaurant scene (at No. 9 Park, Clio and Uni), so he Knows People. I think his blog will be very successful, and I hope to see it rolled out in several cities beyond Boston and NYC in the coming years.

I'm propping Kenji's blog now not because I think it'll be novel to the best and brightest among Boston's food-conscious readers -- it won't be. But I know there are still people out there who have yet to get the memo. Sometimes it seems to me like everyone and their mother is caught up inside this local-seasonal-organic triangulation, but then I'll visit a restaurant in the North End, where veal is in every other dish and they're serving caprese salads with tasteless tomatoes and imported asparagus in effing November, and realize that this food revolution still has a ways to go. And I'm hoping that Kenji's methods (did I mention he killed a duck and posted the photos on his blog? Or that he advocates patronizing a startup mobile chicken slaughterhouse? Or that his co-founder, Josh, has suggested that, in the event of a major doomsday scenario in which our traditional communications and food systems break down, we all emulate the bartering methods of a little African country called Lesotho, where they communicate by colored flags?) might just get the message across.

Bostonist: VEGAN BRUNCH?!

2008-11-23T19:22:00.000-08:00

Woo! We stopped into Tamarind Bay yesterday for lunch, and ended up chatting with the manager, Naveen. Turns out he's a self-professed "health foods" guy, and wants to publicize the fact that this "coastal Indian eatery" has about a dozen vegan dishes on the menu (all helpfully demarcated with a big "V"). He's reached out to the Boston Vegan Society, and is considering beginning a vegan brunch on weekends. I think this would be awesome, so I gave 'em a holla on Bostonist today.

My friends

2008-11-22T17:31:00.000-08:00

...are full of mad style, apparently!

First, the Sartorialist-style street blog Beyond Boston Chic snapped photos of my friend Morgan outside her booth at the SoWa craft market...

...And then photographed her boyfriend Tyler (who is generally dressed like a rock star, but apparently Morgan can take credit for picking out these shorts...and yeah, they're ridiculously cute together)...

...And also my college buddy Vin.

Then, the Globe featured Morgan again in their biker style article (this math checks out, since Morgan is 200% more stylish than I am).

Then, the Weekly Dig featured our dear Alexis for both his personal style (he was apparently "Sipping a drink at a chic Newbury Street café, sporting pinstripes, rimless glasses and square-toed shoes" at the time of his interview) and his artistic style, as he put together the public music program Make Music Cambridge, inspired by those he's seen in his native France...

Then, the Globe named our friend Keyse as one of their 25 most stylish Bostonians of 2008. (Keyse's a jewelry maker and an avid Craigslist furniture hunter who loves bright colors - I'm betting it's her Brazilian blood.)

And just to prove that their photographed outfits were far from one-offs, I present to you Morgan and Alexis last night, at a Second Glass party hosted by Tyler and Morgan, at the Dig (so it all comes full circle).

I am so lucky to be surrounded by such stylish, creative, intelligent people, who are beautiful inside and out!

Bostonist: dining out for Thanksgiving

2008-11-22T15:52:00.000-08:00

I'll be honest: I don't quite understand why so many restaurants do special menus for Thanksgiving. Is it because we as a people are becoming less connected to our families and more obsessed with fine food? Is it because restaurants are neutral ground for families who would otherwise come into conflict over the cooking of the meal? (I could see some families I know fighting over latkes vs. pasta, or turkey vs. Tofurkey.) Is it because trying to have a traditional Thanksgiving is somehow too painful (for example, after the passing of a grandmother who always cooked the meal)? Is it because there are so many busy parents who just can't come to grips with a day full of cooking, and would rather take the vacation time to relax? I'd love to know.

I don't personally know anyone who will be dining out on Thanksgiving, but I did have fun with this post (and I'll admit that I did sneak in a subversive link to this NY Times story on the unfortunate mistreatment of turkeys, which is one reason why I'm not usually tempted by the big bird on Thanksgiving, although when I ate meat it was one of my favorites).

As for me, I'm headed out on an 8-hour road trip with my friend Jenna and our respective dogs to western New York for the weekend. My mom and I will be joining my dear friend Heather, her parents, and their entire Italian clan for what is sure to be an all-out food extravaganza, complete with Heather's extremely adorable grandmother. I can't wait.

Our new morning fix: Cafe Fixe

2008-11-17T10:06:00.000-08:00

I forgot to add this little Bostonist post I did on Election Day. After waiting in line for about an hour, the b.f. and I were in need of some sustenance. We strolled up the street to find Cafe Fixe offering free coffee and tea to everyone as part of their grand opening. We've since been back several times to try different kinds of coffee (for the b.f.) and tea (for me).

What's good:

-Great pastries (the chocoloate croissant + french press is so far the best breakfast combination)
-Soothing atmosphere: white walls, jazz on the stereo (the Starbucks across the street is a hot mess)
-Reasonable prices (all the teas are under $3)
-Easy parking
-Free wi-fi

I'll probably add to this list over time, but for now -- we're diggin' it.

Another rare political post - on Prop 8

2008-11-15T21:27:00.000-08:00

Because the main purpose of this blog is to serve as a record of my professional work, I don't always feel that it's appropriate to use it for my personal musings. However, I recently contributed to this Bostonist post on the large Prop 8 protest that took place in several cities today, including one in Boston, which I attended. So I believe this merits an additional comment from me that gives some context to my position on this issue, especially since I am in the unique and fortunate position of being able to consult both my GLBT friends and my Mormon friends directly on this issue, rather than relying on the press or blogs. I hope that both groups will take this as an opportunity to start a dialogue with the other side, as I am trying to do -- no matter how much anger or distrust they may feel right now.

Okay. Here goes.

I have not always been sure about what I believe when it comes to amendments dealing with marriage. I find much of the rhetoric on both sides to be problematic.

I don't entirely believe that marriage is a "human" or a "civil" right, and furthermore, I think this rhetoric is somewhat beside the point.

I don't think that defining something as a "human right" is in and of itself a necessary step in helping make something, whether it's water or food or a life free of violence or discrimination, more available to those who clearly deserve it.

I don't think marriage should be defined as a "civil right". While many religious people are offended by the idea that anyone should seek to define "marriage" as something other than the union of man and woman described in the Bible, I am bothered by the fact that the U.S. government should have any say in matters of the heart. I am bothered by the idea of allowing a majority of people to vote on a metaphysical aspect of reality such as the origins of life or the validity of certain kinds of love. I am bothered by the thought that our government, which once allowed slavery and allowed women to be treated as property and deprived of a vote, should now lay its heavy, hairy hand on the shoulders of my friends and tell them that they, too, must wait another generation for Democracy to determine their "rights".

However, the U.S. government has opted to extend civil protections to couples. And so I do not believe we can extend these to some couples but not all.

Unfortunately, rather than redefining what these civil protections are called -- defining what the government provides as a "civil union" and what a spiritual institution provides as a "marriage" or any other word, which I believe would greater sanctify the idea of "marriage" -- GLBT advocates have decided on a different tack. They seek to redefine the word "marriage" without reforming the way the government gets involved in the institution itself.

The reason why they've opted for this strategy, it seems, is because if marriage as it relates to the government's actions were defined as a bond between two persons, rather than a bond between a man and a woman, the 14th Amendment would protect it, and the 14th Amendment is a powerful ally. If this redefinition were achieved, it would then guarantee the equality which gay couples are currently, tragically lacking in most parts of the country. The relevant text here reads:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

As this amendment is one of the most important in our nation's history, on which my own right to vote is partially dependent (the Constitution never mentioned women's rights, either, but they exist now), I do not take it lightly, and I'm sure that GLBT activists also recognize its resonance. I think that regardless of one's stance on Prop 8, every person should take this legislation's rise to prominence as an opportunity to meditate on what the 14th Amendment really means, and to decide for him or herself whether or not Prop 8 truly upholds the ideals inherent in this amendment.

---
The problematic part of using this tactic is that it has led people to believe that GLBT activists want to "force" them to recognize the emotional validity of their unions, to "force" churches to send priests to marry gay couples, to "force" teachers to teach about the existence (the mere existence) of gay unions. Not so fast, folks.

Setting aside the fact that there are still those who hold views about women and people of color that predate the civil rights and feminist movements, despite much legislation being passed in their favor, this is not the point. Most couldn't care less about what some random Utahn or Texan or Californian thinks. Remember, many GLBT folks do not even have the acceptance of their families, and no big gay wedding is going to change that. If a GLBT person has the courage to be out in the first place, he or she already has the courage to put up with those with differing beliefs about homosexuality.

The most attractive prizes at the bottom of this crappy little Cracker Jack box, as one lesbian friend of mine put it, are far more "boring". They want access to a partner's healthcare so one of them can stay at home with the new baby. They want to know that they'll be allowed in the ambulance and the ICU should the 911 call come one day. They want joint tax returns. And they want the incredible privilege of being able to take all that for granted one day, like straight folks do. That's what "equality" means in this circumstance.

And so, while I don't believe the government has a role in regulating what is for most a deeply spiritual and emotional bond, I don't believe that it's appropriate for those who are religious to be applying their definition of marriage to what is essentially a secular process, designed to provide protections and support to all citizens under the law.

As a person raised by a pair of divorced parents and a pair of devoted grandparents, I have always known that families come in all shapes and sizes, and they don't have to be "traditional" to be effective and loving. As a person who has come to know many gay persons and couples, I see no difference between the way GLBT persons support their partners and parent their children and the way straight persons do, inasmuch as there can be similarities at all (since parenting itself has become an ideological minefield). As a person who has loved and lived with all sorts of people, I've never doubted for a moment that you can't always choose whom you love. And as far as I can tell, being a child of a "traditional marriage" between a mother and a father has not made me any less confused about love. So I believe that all families, in all their forms, deserve the same protections and support -- as do their children, who often have little say in the matter.

I also find it problematic that members of the religious community have employed statistics - often uncited ones - to support their claims that homosexual couples should not be granted the right to marry or raise natural or adopted children because they are somehow less likely to succeed at it. Homosexual people are more promiscuous, they say. Their children will be more likely to be "confused", they say. And furthermore, families with gay parents will even affect the success of other marriages and other children.

For example, in "The Divine Institution of Marriage", an often fascinating essay on church and state issues authored by the LDS church, one paragraph reads:

It is true that some same-sex couples will obtain guardianship over children –through prior heterosexual relationships, through adoption in the states where this is permitted, or by artificial insemination. Despite that, the all-important question of public policy must be: what environment is best for the child and for the rising generation? Traditional marriage provides a solid and well-established social identity to children. It increases the likelihood that they will be able to form a clear gender identity, with sexuality closely linked to both love and procreation. By contrast, the legalization of same-sex marriage likely will erode the social identity, gender development, and moral character of children. Is it really wise for society to pursue such a radical experiment without taking into account its long-term consequences for children?

I do not agree that a heterosexual marriage, based as it would likely be in dishonesty, would be a much better option for these gay parents than living their lives openly with partners of their choosing. Just ask Alison Bechdel, whose father remained closeted his entire life, until he was finally outed after it was discovered that he'd had affairs with several of his male students. The miserable guy then committed suicide, and his daughter still went on to become a lesbian. (And a talented writer and artist, and a heckuva nice person to boot.)

Here's the thing: outside of Utah's Mormon majority, there is no such thing as a "well-established social identity", whatever that means. We're all apt to belong to dozens of groups, clubs, communities, and churches and even sexual orientations over time, and that's a good thing. As for "gender identity"? Meh. It's a mistake to be nostalgic for the days when Men Were Men and Women Were Women. Women, if you'll recall, got the shit end of that deal. I'd love to have my feminist mom and my egalitarian dad weigh in on what it means to be a "real man" or a "real woman" in 2008. Or better yet, Hillary Clinton.

And what about our "social fabric"? It's more like a patchwork quilt these days, with some kids coming to school with Islam-mandated headscarves, some with yamukas, some with cornrows and some with pigtails -- and ain't that America, home of the free. Personally, I think that if my friends' marriages can survive the parenting examples of Britney Spears and Angelina Jolie, we can probably stand the sight of two loving, healthy, non-anorexic, non-umbrella-wielding moms taking their kids to soccer practice.

I also think that if "what's best for the children" is the all-important question, then we must also look at which lifestyles the LDS church promotes and which it decries, using these suddenly-very-important statistics. Many of my friends in Utah are encouraged to marry in their late teens or early 20s, and to begin their families as soon as possible, as as the custom in the LDS community. Many statistics show that young marriages such as these are far more likely to end in divorce than those which begin later (as they do in liberal, secular places like Massachusetts). Others studies (including one done at BYU) show that the academic performance and overall success of a child is strongly linked to the age of the mother at the time of birth. The older the mother, the more successful the child (as older mothers are more likely to be educated, financially stable and/or independent, and emotionally mature). So, based on these statistics, the LDS church might consider encouraging its members to marry and procreate later -- or even supporting legislation making it illegal for people under 25 to marry, as it would be "better" for society. But it's not likely to do so.

In the meantime, my dear friends in Utah are forming incredible marriages, raising beautiful children, and are as committed if not more committed to making their marriages work and their children successful as any 30something post-grad pair in Massachusetts (and so, for the record, I have often defended their life choices as vehemently as I now defend the life choices of my GLBT peers).

Therefore, while the church and its members have gone out of their way to declare their love for the sinner and not the sin, and while many of the young LDS members I have seen commenting on blogs and Facebook take care qualify their arguments with, "I'm not bigoted", it is in fact a kind of bigotry to highlight scientific research when it supports your point of view, and to ignore it when it does not. It is bigotry to rely on these statistics rather than reaching out to the people behind them and actually observing the relationships and parenting habits of GLBT persons. It is bigotry to draw conclusions about people and lifestyles with which you have no direct experience, even if they are conclusions based in Scripture. It is my belief that if there is a God, He or She would prefer that you do your own research.

The truth is that GLBT people were hurt by the religious community's involvement in the issue, despite individual members' best intentions. They do feel less safe in the world thanks to Prop 8's passing, and for good reason. They certainly do not feel loved by the proponents of the Yes on 8 campaign.

And while some church members feel that GLBT persons should not now or ever gain the ability to marry, they will not now or ever be able to silence, erase or permanently marginalize the people, gay and straight, whom they have just engaged over this issue. The same process of democracy that approved this amendment could someday overturn it. We went from Jim Crow laws to President-elect Obama in less than a lifetime. The trend of democracy points toward greater acceptance of GLBT persons and gay marriage with every new generation. Elton John, Ellen and their peers are not ever going back in the closet. Best to start accepting this now.

I would also think that if you are someone who feels you must claim that you are "not bigoted" before you declare your views, then you must already realize that you have as your political bedfellows large swaths of people who are, in fact, deeply bigoted. And that's worth a thought, because I doubt that anyone I saw at the peaceful Prop 8 protest in Boston today would have been ashamed to be seen or associated with any of their fellow protesters, despite their philosophical differences (which do exist, even in the land of kumbaya secular liberalism). In fact, it was quite the opposite. Everyone was proud as hell to be there, standing by their neighbors, holding their children, and waving their flags in the rain.

Cab convo

2008-11-13T08:40:00.000-08:00

This is a pretty decent example of the Bostonist convos I participate in on a daily basis via Googlegroups.

Who Needs a Cab Between Noon and 8pm? A Meditation

Note: I am Bostonist #3.

Other note: this convo is inexplicably tagged "internal affairs".

I want to embrace everybody

2008-11-05T12:19:00.000-08:00

Maya Angelou has been a hero of mine for quite some time. Watching her interview with Harry Smith on CBS this morning was very moving. (Unfortunately CBS will not let me embed the video directly, so do click on the link, it is worth watching.)

"This morning I’ve not slept, really," Angelou said today. "I can’t pull my nose out of the television. I go from one channel to the next, to the next, and I want to embrace everybody. I’m just so proud. And grateful."

These are my sentiments exactly.

She then goes on, at Smith's urging, to quote from memory her poem, "Still I Rise." Harry Smith was brilliant to suggest this. I love how haughty and proud this poem is. I love how feminine and strong it is. I love its weight and its lightness together.

I don't speak about politics very much on this blog, although I follow politics fervently and have a voracious appetite for viewpoints on all sides. I feel compassion for the Americans who, for reasons of their own, could not share in the transformative experience we have had as voters who have wished for -- and have now been granted -- the opportunity for change in the form of Barack Obama. I cannot express to them what a fierce battle it has been to overcome our cynicism, apathy, fears and disappointments to get there, because they have fought different battles in their time. I think that for the best of us, belief is always a struggle, and the meanings of events often become clear just as you are questioning the existence of meaning itself. It is a cycle. We are all living at different points in that cycle.

However, for now, I am jubilant, albeit a little bit scared. It has been almost surreal to watch how in spite of being shot by words and cut by glances, Obama has continued to rise, and rise, and rise. So for those of us walking with a little extra spring in our step and more than a few tears in our eyes today:

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

- Maya Angelou

After weeks of waiting...

2008-11-05T10:40:00.001-08:00

The story that Clara Silverstein did on my 826 Boston workshop is finally out! I was starting to think this day would never come. The Globe's been holding it since late September -- and now it's out, in the new (and improved?) "G" section, in the issue announcing Barack Obama's incredible, historic election win. Not only is this timing an honor for me, but it may mean that 826 will receive increased exposure from the many people who will be buying the newspaper today. That would certainly make it worth the wait!

Here's an excerpt from the piece:

When children have a chance to play restaurant critic, they might describe a mound of pasta with cheese sauce as volcano-shaped, or compare a cheesecake to sugary socks. Being a restaurant critic feels like an adventure.
That's what happened when budding critics, ages 11 to 14, recently learned how to become more discerning diners through "Food Critic for a Day," a workshop at the nonprofit 826 Boston in Egleston Crossing. First, the eight students meet with teachers Ryan Rose Weaver, an editor at go2 media, and Jennifer Coates, an assistant professor of nutrition at Tufts University. They start by asking them to describe a Chinese sesame bun filled with red bean paste. The texture reminds T.J. Wasserman, 11, from Belmont, of a "Tempur-Pedic mattress." Eva Hernandez of Roxbury, 13, says the bun looks like "a deflated basketball."
After the first class, students visit restaurants around Boston, including Ashmont Grill, Beacon Hill Bistro, Bella Luna, Myers + Chang, UpStairs on the Square, and the Chocolate Bar at the Langham, Boston. Their assignment is to order dinner and review the experience. Restaurants donate the meals to the student and an adult...

Click here for the full story!

(Photo is mine; I took it during the workshop!)

Weekly Dig: DIY cheese

2008-10-30T14:24:00.000-07:00

This article marks a sort of tipping point for me in my life as a budding food writer. After this, I realized that I may have to cut back for my own health. Because on the one hand, who gets paid to eat the best cheeses in Boston? Only the luckiest of lucky people. On the other hand, who has time to work a day job AND take freelance assignments that involve warm ricotta and luscious cheese pizza and mascarpone-stuffed burrata AND also work off all these calories? Not me.

I fear I am much softer around the middle than I was in my sports-playing, dry-toast eating days, which are not so far behind me. Recently I've started thinking about cutting way back on food writing and covering something healthier, like politics (which never fails to make me lose my appetite, although it also makes me want to drink). Or music (where meeting some of my favorite artists and finding out that they were idiot savants made me wonder how Lester Bangs survived the inanity of it all...oh right). Or international events (because a good case of African dysentery or a slog through the meat-eating Middle East would certainly help me lose weight, if not my mind).

I've also thought about going vegan and giving up cheese entirely (that will never happen). Or becoming a macrobiotic Buddhist chef. Or joining one of those quintessentially Bostonian crew teams and rowing down the Charles every morning at 6 am. Or training for the Marathon. Or something -- anything to introduce a sense of discipline and moderation into my psyche, where right now there is only a gaping, unfillable hole of "yum!" and its inevitable consequence ("zzz"). Especially since we're heading into the holiday season. Any food writers have tips on how they keep it all together - and keep off the pounds? Let me know.

Now that I've gotten this dietary rant out of the way, I can say that I actually enjoyed writing this piece. Over the course of one week, I met the following food stars:

- Lourdes Smith, the badass cheesemaker at Fiore di Nonno
- the legendary Lydia Shire, who was far less intimidating than her reputation suggests
- Rocca's very friendly chef, Tom Fosnot, who gave me a great and rennet-free recipe for ricotta (a boon for this cheese-loving vegetarian)
- wunderkind Boston chef Will Gilson, whose food is the best expression of my personal idea of culinary perfection (fresh, seasonal, flavorful, simple, original) I've experienced in a long while.

So for that, I'm willing to shelve my diet complaints (temporarily!) since I got to have my cheese and eat it too.

Bostonist: the sushi swiping scandal of '08?

2008-10-17T21:01:00.001-07:00

This was an interesting story, and a nice distraction from the abysmal public dialogue around the presidential election, which may or may not erode my sanity before November 4. This Bostonist piece, which centered on Erin Murray's mysteriously-under-the-radar-but-totally-a-big-deal-IMHO article on O Ya's Tim Cushman, brought up several questions that are relevant in any discussion of food, creativity and business:

1) When checking out the competition, what's the difference between "doing research" and "spying"?

2) Are you obligated to identify yourself to your competitors?

3) What's the difference between being influenced or inspired by a food experience, and blatantly ripping off that food experience?

4) What's the difference between a white, affluent guy taking a recipe from another white, affluent guy, and a white, affluent guy taking a recipe from a culture to which he does not belong? (In this case, two American guys making big bucks off the Japanese art of sushi, and one who's also made big bucks off his Spanish and Mexican restaurants).

5) Did the author of this article deliberately break this out around Columbus Day, when I'm already poring over the traditional white-guilt issues of cultural appropriation? Or am I just as bizarrely paranoid as Tim Cushman?

These are of course rhetorical questions, and ones I did not raise in the post. I'll admit that I once spied on various guitar stores around town while doing "research" for my boyfriend (a session that consisted of his friends and I ducking around corners and generally acting as conspicuous as possible while doing our best "spy" impressions and tooling around in our "recon" vehicle, a rented compact Zipcar). And I revel in making dishes at home that I originally tried in a restaurant. But I think those things were harmless in comparison to what Tim Cushman did, regardless of his motives.

As for the latter two questions, I avoided them because I'm quite cautious regarding my knee-jerk desire to connect things back to either postmodern or postcolonial theory, simply for the sake of flaunting my liberal arts degree or reveling in my own probably unreasonable curmudgeonliness.

What I did ask was, did Tim Cushman blatantly steal ideas from Ken Oringer and Ting San? Because that seemed like the simplest and least arrogant way to go about things. Especially since the competition between these chefs is likely incredibly fierce and getting fiercer, seeing as the pool of customers willing and able to pay $150 for a plate of teeny pieces of blowtorched endangered tuna is likely shrinking by the minute these days.

(Photo credit: Boston Magazine, featuring Tim Cushman looking like he's ready to hunt down, kill and eat a great white shark right now. Or perhaps Ken Oringer?)

J.J.'s recipe for clam chowder

2008-10-17T20:38:00.001-07:00

For my bit on sustainable seafood for Bostonist, I tapped J.J. Gonson, who planned to contribute this clam chowder recipe to the Teach a Man to Fish project. I've edited it a bit: J.J.'s style of writing, especially when it comes to recipes, is wonderfully free-form, almost a stream-of-consciousness. It reminds me of the recipes in I Like Food, Food Tastes Good, a compendium of recipes from indie rockers like Death Cab and Nada Surf that I actually use quite often (Roots of Orchis gives a great recipe for sweet potato biscuits with vegan gravy). For example, Devendra Banhart explains his recipe for "Africanitas Ritas" (basically, fried bananas) thusly: "...add a little bit of cream!! And STIRRRRRR!!!!... SIR LAWRENCE OF ARABIA!... THEN, put it on the frying pan!!!! let it get GOLDEN!!!"

It's fitting that J.J.'s style should fit in with these quirky indie kids. Her sister is Claudia Gonson of the Magnetic Fields, and J.J. herself was a fixture in the Portland, Oregon rock scene for a while, where she wrote songs with Elliott Smith and met her husband, a member of the British band Cornershop ("everybody needs a bosom for a pillow..."). Now Gonson's a mom with two appropriately adorable indie kids of her own, and a personal chef who's been obsessed with organic and local food "before it was cool" (the favorite phrase of every Portlander I've ever met).

So, with that in mind, check her yummy-sounding recipe for clam chowder, made from scratch (as J.J.'s Yelp profile states, "no detail un-overthought"):

Here is my recipe for clam chowder, as I learned it at my mommy's knees in the tiny kitchen, overlooking the Wellfleet bay.
Depending on how many people you plan to feed, you can decide how much of each ingredient to use. For 4 servings, use approximately:

1 onion, diced
2 celery stalks, diced
1 clove of garlic
3 lbs of clams steamed in 1-2 cups of water
2 slices of bacon or 1T butter
4T butter
4T flour
3 cups milk + 1 cup of cream or 4 cups of milk
2 large, floury potatoes

Instructions:

1) Steam open clams and other shellfish and reserve liquid.

2) Remove clams from shells and set aside. If you use quahogs or razor or other large clams, cut into bite size bits.

3) Reduce the clam broth over a hot flame until it is reduced by half and quite concentrated (or use bottled clam broth).

4) Heat milk or a combination of milk and cream.

5) Either render small pieces of bacon and use the fat, or use butter, to saute diced celery, onion and garlic until fragrant.

6) Boil and dice potatoes.

7) Make a roux with a ratio of 1T of butter to 1T of flour for each cup of milk you will use, by sautéing flour in butter for a minute, stirring constantly.

8) Over low heat, add hot milk to the roux, a small amount at a time, stirring well to remove lumps. When the milk mixture begins to thicken, but is still quite runny, add all of the other ingredients, along with a bit of fresh thyme and salt and pepper to taste.

9) Bring the whole thing to just below a boil and cook for half an hour to allow flavors to marry. Do not boil or the soup can separate, or "break."

You can use this same recipe to make fish or corn chowder, or any combination, but if you use a very moist fish, like cod, do not use all of the clam broth as the chowder will be too watery!

Yum. So there you go. For the full Bostonist post with J.J.'s take on the Boston fish scene, click here.

(Photo credit: Luna Cruz, via Creative Commons license.)

Bostonist: Know yr pescado!

2008-10-17T20:03:00.000-07:00

Last week I did a post on the Boston-based "Teach a Man to Fish" project. I had heard about it via my Chocolate & Zuccini newsletter, and it turns out that my foodie pal J.J. Gonson knew the brains behind it: Jacqueline Church of the Leather District Gourmet. Before I knew it I was sitting down to some delicious Cantonese food with her at Gourmet Dumpling House, and we were swapping tales of being vegetarian in foreign places (she's not a veggie now, but somehow survived as one for over a year in Germany). As we walked back toward her 'hood and my office through the brand-new park on Chinatown's slice of the Greenway (and I snapped the picture below) we finally got around to discussing her project.

Jacqueline, or "Jackie", started her "Teach a Man to Fish" project a year ago, after diving (ha) into the world of food writing and sustainability. A "recovering attorney", she's new to the food blogging scene, but as a traveler and a conoisseur of world cuisines, she's got her bona fides down (she's even been to Antartica, where I'd imagine the only ones fishing are the penguins). The idea of this project -- at least as I see it -- is to not only hold yourself accountable for what you're buying, but to ask questions of those who are buying it for you - the fishmongers and seafood restaurants of your local scene.

Ideally, your conversation would be pleasant.

"So, where do you get your fish?"
"Oh, we source ours through a variety of small, sustainable, local producers. Here are their names..."

Unfortunately, it does not always go that way. More often, as it did on Wednesday with another place I was reviewing, I asked,

"So, where does your fish come from?"
Waitress: "Uh, I'm not sure! Let me get the owner."
Owner: "Uh, I'm not sure. We get a price sheet every day. It's different all the time."
Me: "Is it local?"
Owner: "It's from all different places...it changes every day. I'm not sure. It's whatever's cheapest, or freshest.." [Trails off]

Or similar. It should be a simple question, but it is anything but simple.

However, as Margaret Anderson once endearingly said,

I wasn't born to be a figher. I was born with a gentle nature, a flexible character and an organism as equilibrated as it is judged hysterical. I shouldn't have been forced to fight constantly and ferociously. The causes I have fought for have invariably been causes that should have been gained by a delicate suggestions. Since they never were, I made myself into a fighter.

This is how I feel often, in so many areas of my life. Shouldn't environmentally responsible food sourcing practices and comprehensive knowledge of ones own vendors be important to every restaurant owner? Why should we, the customers, have to work so hard to make this the minimum requirement for every place we patronize? Why should I have to initiate a conversation with a person who has just given me a good meal, when the conversation may turn awkward if he/she gives me the "wrong" answer? Why do I feel so angry about this when I'm sure in my own life there are things that I don't know, that I could be doing better?

However, the alternative is to not care, to not work, to not take responsibility. So, bloggers like C&Z's Dusoulier and LD Gourmet's Jacqueline Church and myself and hopefully other, more responsible restaurants and fish purveyors will have to fight the good fight, even though I'm sure we would all much prefer to be talking in pleasant tones over a good bottle of (dare I say sustainable?) red wine.

So, with that in mind, I'll be posting next on how chef J.J. Gonson makes her sustainable clam chowdah.

The Omnivore's 100

2008-10-05T19:03:00.000-07:00

I recently saw this "game" (foodie pissing match?) from the blogger of Very Good Taste on Chocolate & Zuccini, and decided to play along, even though the number I've tried would likely be a bit lower than usual due to the fact that it's heavy on animal products. Luckily (?) though, I was able to try some of these before the Vegetarian Curtain fell across my life. Also luckily (?) I've lived in the semi-rural Southwest, suburban upstate New York and the very urban Northeast, so I've been exposed to a wide variety of strange things, from snake to poutine.

The rules, as Very Good Taste's author describes them:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

Also: hilarious FAQ section here. (Ex. "Q. Why is there so much alcohol? A: Because I’m English.")

Below are my results, as well as descriptions in brackets for those that aren't painfully obvious. This makes my list less easy to read but hopefully more educational for all involved (I learn best by writing things down).

As for cross-out items - I am leaving most of these items open, despite the fact that many are meat-based. While I wouldn't go out of my way to try them here in the U.S., when traveling I think it's good to take a "when in Rome" approach when possible (although not literally, as I once ate at a Burger King in Rome - long story, but you get the idea). So I can't guarantee that in certain circumstances I might not be interested in or obligated to try some of these things based on context (an example: my vegan friend once chose to eat goat stew while visiting with a group of Bedouins rather than turn down what was for them a rare feast, served for her benefit, and I would do the same).

As everyone knows, when you talk about food you often segue into talking about happy memories, so I've included some of those here, too.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding [a.k.a. blood sausage]
7. Cheese fondue
~~8. Carp~~ Eh. They're the rats of the sea. No desire to eat rats either, incidentally.
9. Borscht [cold tomato soup - which reminds me of the "Chuckie Gets Skunked" episode of "Rugrats" in which borscht is used as a miracle deodorizer]
10. Baba ghanoush [eggplant dip]
11. Calamari
12. Pho [a traditional Vietnamese noodle soup]
13. PB&J sandwich (I like mine with fresh raspberry jam and crunchy fresh-ground peanut butter on white bread, with a glass of milk)
14. Aloo gobi [a staple "Indian buffet" dish made with potato, cauliflower and various spices]
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses [an unpasteurized cow's milk cheese washed in pomace brandy]
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes (my dad makes his own amazing, very alcoholic wine from the fruits in his garden!)
19. Steamed pork buns (I have to make do with the red bean and lotus buns, which are just as tasty in their own way, I'd imagine)
20. Pistachio ice cream (Eastern Standard used to make their profiteroles with pistachio ice cream, hence my love for them)
21. Heirloom tomatoes (see this post)
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras [duck or goose liver pate; I am tempted to cross this off due to the cruelty of the methods sometimes used to produce it, but as not all fois gras producers engage in these methods, I would like to try it sometime when I can be sure of the way it was done]
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese [from wikipedia: 'meat slices in aspic (gelatin made from meat stock), with onion, black pepper, allspice, bayleaf, salt and or vinegar, from the head of a calf or pig (sometimes a sheep or cow). It may also include meat from the feet, tongue and heart.']
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper [one of the spiciest peppers in the world, often used in Caribbean "jerk" dishes]
27. Dulce de leche [Portugeuse milk-based syrup - am hoping to snag some next time I am in Inman Square]
28. Oysters
29. Baklava [The best I've found in Boston is at Yada Yada, made by grandma Shpresa]
30. Bagna cauda [An Italian warm dip made with garlic, anchovies, olive oil, butter and sometimes cream, served with raw vegetables like fondue. I haven't tried this yet, but am going to remedy that immediately.]
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl (woot Boston)
33. Salted lassi [an Indian yogurt-based beverage; I've only had the sweet, mango-flavored kind, not the salty, cumin-flavored kind]
34. Sauerkraut (woot Buffalo)
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar (you can be sure I'll knock this off the list at some point)
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O (Heather and Margot - I love you)
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal [a notoriously hot Indian curry, popular in the UK]
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more (on an unforgettable anniversary with the b.f.)
~~46. Fugu~~ [I'm not a Russian Roulette kind of girl, and this is the infamous, potentially deadly Japanese blowfish dish - which I remember from this Simpsons episode where Lisa drags her family to a weird - to them - restaurant...Lisa and I are pretty much the same person, even though she's a cartoon.]
47. Chicken tikka masala (the b.f.'s favorite thing ever)
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi [tasty pickled Japanese fruit; I'm going to seek this one out asap]
53. Abalone [huge edible sea snails - if you're like me, you remember the girl in "Island of the Blue Dolphins" speaking of nothing but abalone for pages and pages, it seemed]
54. Paneer [simple Indian cheese; I want to learn to make my own]
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle [egg-based dumplings or noodles]
57. Dirty gin martini (file this under, "really, I haven't had one of these?" But this can be easily remedied, as I love gin)
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine [French fries topped with gravy, cheese curds, and sometimes sausage]
60. Carob chips [carob is a legume from the Mediterranean region, eaten by humans as early as ancient Egyptian times]
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads [the thymus glands of lambs, cows or pigs]
63. Kaolin [a kind of edible clay...but hey, it's vegetarian!]
64. Currywurst [hot pork sausage in curry sauce]
65. Durian [an enormous fruit whose odor food writer Richard Sterling describes as "pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock"]
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis [from wikipedia: "sheep's 'pluck' (heart, liver and lungs), minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and traditionally boiled in the animal's stomach for approximately three hours]
69. Fried plantain [a relative of the banana...mmm, just had this last night!]
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette [pig intestines]
71. Gazpacho [cold tomato soup]
72. Caviar and blini [fish eggs + a thin crepe - too bad they don't serve this at Zaftig's]
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost [a sharp Norwegian goat's milk cheese - putting this on my Formaggio Kitchen fantasy shopping list]
~~75. Roadkill~~. Not unless I was truly starving.
76. Baijiu [A Chinese liquor usually distilled from sorghum, a grain]
77. Hostess Fruit Pie (Says the author, "It was these or Twinkies, and I don’t want to encourage anyone to eat a Twinkie.")
78. Snail (another example of "when in Rome", but of course it was "when in Provence"...an excellent move, I'd say)
79. Lapsang souchong [Smoked Chinese tea - expensive and getting more so]
80. Bellini [peach + prosecco cocktail]
81. Tom yum [delicious Thai soup made with lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves, galangal, shallots, lime juice, fish sauce, tamarind, and crushed chili peppers]
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky [Japanese snack food - basically sticks dipped in chocolate]
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
~~89. Horse~~ Again, not unless I was starving. I draw the line at companion animals. No cats, no puppies, no horses. No thanks.
90. Criollo chocolate [chocolate made from the rarest, most expensive, most finicky cacao bean]
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa [a North African hot sauce]
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano [a delicious sauce with about a kajillion ingredients, including "dried chile peppers (commonly ancho, pasilla, mulato and chipotle), ground nuts and/or seeds (almonds, indigenous peanuts, and/or sesame seeds), spices, Mexican chocolate (cacao ground with sugar and cinnamon and occasionally nuts), salt, and a variety of other ingredients including charred avocado leaves, onions, and garlic. Dried seasonings such as ground oregano are also used. In order to provide a rich thickness to the sauce, bread crumbs or crackers are added to the mix." - wikipedia]
96. Bagel and lox [salmon, for you goys]
97. Lobster Thermidor [I love the wikipedia entry here: "a French dish consisting of a creamy, cheesy mixture of cooked lobster meat, egg yolks, and brandy or sherry, stuffed into a lobster shell, and optionally served with an oven-browned cheese crust. The sauce must contain mustard (typically powdered mustard) in order to be true to the original recipe and to have the distinctive Thermidor taste. Lobster Thermidor was created in 1894 by Marie's, a Paris restaurant near the theatre Comédie Française, to honour the opening of the play Thermidor by Victorien Sardou. The play took its name from a summer month in the French Republican Calendar, during which the Thermidorian Reaction occurred, overthrowing Robespierre and ending the Reign of Terror. Unlike the recipe, the play was not a critical success and is rarely performed."]
98. Polenta [boiled cornmeal]
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee [one of the most expensive coffees on the market and the base of the Tia Marie coffee liqueur]
100. Snake

This means I've eaten 52 out of 100. Not bad for someone who's not really an omnivore at all. I'm already making a mental Vegetarian 100 list...although it looks like some folks are way ahead of me.

TRAVEL BOOK IS OUT!

2008-10-03T09:52:00.000-07:00

Hooray!

Last night as we prepared to watch the Palin/Biden debate, the b.f. came into the kitchen and dropped a very exotic-looking envelope on the counter for me. Inside was the new copy of the Insight Guides' Boston SmartGuide, which I compiled earlier this year!

And by compiled, I mean slaved over for three feverish months on nights and weekends. To create the SmartGuide, I adapted some of Insight's older copy on Boston, did a lot of new research, and wrote pages and pages of new copy, including dozens of new restaurants (natch), new music venues, new museums and a guide to the environmental issues facing New England (although for that segment I was able to lean heavily on the expertise of the Conservation Law Foundation and am so grateful for their help). Apparently, Europeans (the main audience for the Insight series) really care about their carbon footprints, et. al. when traveling - which of course is awesome.

The book will not be on shelves until December, but you can pre-order it on Amazon, if you are so inclined. In fact, I promise that if you purchase this book and later have any questions (or just need a good restaurant recommend), you can comment here and I will do my best to respond personally. (Just don't ask me for, say, the year during which the Old State House was built, because I've already forgotten it. Sigh.)

Bostonist: Chefs Collaborative dinner. Want.

2008-09-30T18:33:00.000-07:00

Nom-inducing name-drop-a-ganza post from last weekend. I balked at paying $100 for this event (though it's worthy and seemed like a good value), but I did get some small measure of satisfaction from getting the scoop on the ridiculous menu before the attendees did:

[Jamie] Bissonnette will be breaking out some Thai-style ceviche and some of his signature charcuterie, and Kelly will be making "Honey Smoked Hiramasa with Pumpkin Seed Cracker, Pickled Local Squash, and Bloody Mary Tomato Salad with Heirloom Cherry Tomatoes, Rain Organic Vodka Gelee, Horseradish Cream" (yum!). Gilson will be cooking up some venison, and may try to use some chocolate nibs from Taza Chocolate (the local chocolatier is a sponsor of the event). Gilson is also one of four New England chefs who have agreed to include some endangered, hard-to-find food items from Slow Food USA's Ark of Taste, so you may find some of those limited-edition goodies popping up in his dishes.

I loathe horseradish and have no desire to eat venison, but I still feel as though I missed the ball. Where was my organic local rouge vif d'temps carriage?

(Photo credit: Darwin Bell via Flikr Creative Commons)

Bostonist: T-Rex Taqueria takes a bite out of Brookline

2008-09-30T18:29:00.000-07:00

I have to give my man (dog) McGruff some props here for the title of my post about tacos, mole, crazy potatoes (!), wrestlers and reptilian action figures.

Bostonist: Ciao Bella says bon giorno to Boston with free ice cream

2008-09-30T18:21:00.000-07:00

Yum! This free-ness was a while back, but the gelato is here to stay. Here's where you can get it in our 'hood:

Boston

Whole Foods Market
181 Cambridge Street
Boston, MA 02114
617-723-0004

Brighton

Whole Foods Market
15 Washington St.
Brighton, MA 02135
617-738-8187

Cambridge

Whole Foods Market
340 River Street
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-876-6990

Harvest Supermarkets
581 Massachusetts Av
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-661-1580

Boston

Whole Foods Market
15 Westland Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
617-375-1010

Cambridge

Whole Foods Market
115 Prospect St.
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-492-0070

Boston, Jamaica Plain

Harvest Market
57 South St
Boston, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
617-524-1667

Cambridge

Whole Foods Market
200 Alewife Brook Parkway
Cambridge, MA 02138
617-491-0040

Pemberton Farms
2225 Mass Ave
Cambridge, MA 02140
617-491-2244

(Photo credit: Ciao Bella)

Bostonist: The Roadhouse is finally open

2008-09-11T20:26:00.000-07:00

Kind of fun: this is the "most recommended story" on Bostonist right now. (I'd say that's like being the tallest person at a midget convention, but as a short person I hate midget jokes.) It's popularity is probably due to the fact that everyone and their mom has been waiting for this spot to open, and it's been delayed for weeks. As I noted in my review, Boston doesn't need more beer bars in any aesthetic or cultural sense, but it needs more simply to balance out the supply of craft beer spots and the demand for "good beer", which suddenly everyone and their mom thinks they need.

Don't get me wrong - I love me some Allagash White as much as the next goateed grad student (note: I neither have a goatee nor attend grad school). But I also enjoy drinking crappy Molson Canadian out of a keg while partying in a Buffalo basement, and 3 percent Utah Bud Lights at eight in the morning while reclining in a canoe. It's all about context and havin' a good time.

Anyway, many a Bostonian now fancies him or herself a "beer snob", and all these newly anointed "snobs" need somewhere properly snobbish to drink. And the Publick House has been giving the people what they want - a long-ass beer list with many unpronounceable names and a slightly sadomasochistic staff -- for a while, so the Roadhouse I'm sure will follow suit. Fortunately our bartender on opening night wasn't at all curmudgeonly (probably because he comes from a bar in Cambridge instead of the Publick House, where acting like a jerk seems to be the required schtick), and he allowed us to try several of their American beers on tap before we chose our fancy beers, Baskin-Robbins style. Good times. It's all here on Bostonist, so give it a click if you want a little more of the scoop.

Bostonist: South End Buttery - How does it stack up?

2008-09-11T20:03:00.000-07:00

As far as new openings go, the yuppie-tastic dinner menu at the Buttery was not high on my "must try" list (which is getting far too long), but we ended up there after we stumbled away from Final Friday at Space 242 in search of eats, and my beloved Franklin told us we'd have to wait an hour for a table. We had a fun group of five for the dinner, though, so it ended up being quite fun (albeit expensive), and I was able to get a fairly decent photo with the iPhone, so I put the results on Bostonist.

Weekly Dig: Three pastry chefs hit the sweet spot

2008-08-28T20:41:00.000-07:00

This story will forever be remembered in my mind as the story that introduced me to the Ashmont Grill's blueberry pie, crafted with care by Claire Garland. I could barely conduct my interview with Garland, so shaken was I by the transcendent (I know I probably overuse that word, but it's merited in this case), transcendent blueberry pie she served me over a nice sugary cup of coffee at the Ashmont a few weeks ago. Yum yum yum. Full piece here.

Bostonist: Tomato, Tomahto: Boston's Best Heirlooms

2008-08-28T20:27:00.000-07:00

At last night's Slow Food event at the Nonprofit Center, we were privileged enough to taste several very rare fruits and vegetables, some prepared by awesome personal chefs. We also learned a great deal about heirloom products, seed-saving and cooking. I considered it $22 well spent, although the vibe in the small, over-lit room felt a little church-basement to me. It seems to me that SF Boston is still finding its feet as an organization. So I penned this Bostonist post on where to find and buy some of the rare fruits they were serving to help spread the important message they are trying to send about the importance of buying quality strains of fruits and vegetables -- not only because they taste better, but they support better farming practices and biodiversity.

I also recently purchased an iPhone (I have been wanting one for a LONG time), and this was my first opportunity to use it to support a blog post. I think the result turned out fairly well...

Bostonist: get on the Slow Food ARK of Taste

2008-08-28T20:24:00.000-07:00

I plugged this event last week, then I attended it last night. Considering I'm missing the Slow Food Nation fest in SF this weekend (by choice, sort of, since I had an invitation to stay in SF with the bff, but decided an NYC getaway would be cheaper and easier), this Slow Food event came as sort of a consolation prize. The premise was to try some foods on the SF "ARK of Taste", a seed preservation project, and to learn more about why it's important to preserve these items and America's biodiversity overall. The result: I learned that I have been miserably deprived in the produce department, and that now that I'm hooked on some of the fruits and cheeses I tried, I've found that they are hard to find or prohibitive in cost. But hopefully, it won't always be this way, and hopefully, some foodies who happen upon my post will be willing to seek them out and support their growth in Mass. (And I just finished watching Obama's speech at the DNC, so I am full of hope-iness.)

More on the foodie blues

2008-08-23T16:34:00.000-07:00

Part 2 of my meditation on knowledge, ignorance, bliss and sadness: I am re-reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and came upon the chapter in which Pollan's research on the connection between petroleum, corn, and factory farming begins to crystallize. By the end, tears of frustration were rolling down my face.

Here's the thing: when I decided to give up beef, pork and chicken (for my own personal and complex reasons), I just as firmly decided that I would not be one of "those" vegetarians. I would never speak unless spoken to at the dinner table when meat was on the menu (unfortunately, I am often spoken to and asked, by a person innocently biting into a burger, "So, what made you decide to become vegetarian?"). I would never require the b.f. to become vegetarian unless he chose to (although now, we cook together frequently, and it makes no sense to make meat for one when there are only two of us, so he has now become a de facto vegetarian chef). I would never pester my acquaintances to change their ways or even to change their choice of restaurant to accommodate my diet (although they often have and they will).

However, because I am not one of "those" vegetarians, I often have to perform the same mental magic of forgetting when sitting down to a meal, or I could not get through the day. I could not review a restaurant's menu objectively (I usually bring a designated carnivore). I could not feed my dog his dinner (once underweight, he now thrives on meat-based Evo kibble). I could not pick up takeout on the way home (where there is often an order of chicken tikka masala or beef pad see-ew for the b.f). I could not sit down to a meal with my wonderful meat-eating family without balking. And I need to be able to do those things.

In other words, I no longer eat certain foods, but in order to show respect and restraint toward those who still wish to eat them, I still go through my day performing the same acts of forgetting and objectifying those foods that more omnivorous folks perform in order to eat them. The result is that I am able to be shocked -- an experience both pleasant and painful, like a good hard massage releasing unconscious knots in the muscles -- when I read something like the following passage in Pollan's book, which elegantly sums up how we came to be in the enormous mess we're in.

America's food animals have undergone a revolution in lifestyle in the years since World War II. At the same time much of America's human population found itself leaving the city for the suburbs, our food animals found themselves traveling in the oppostive direction, leaving widely dispersed farms in places like Iowa to live in densely populated new animal cities. These places are so different from farms and ranches that a new term was needed to denote them: CAFO -- Confined Animal Feeding Operation. The new animal and human landscapes were both products of government policy. The postwar suburbs would never have been built if not for the interstate highway system, as well as the G.I. Bill and federally subsidized mortgages. The urbanization of America's animal population would never have taken place if not for the advent of cheap, federally subsidized corn.

Corn itself profited from the urbanization of livestock twice. As the animals left the [traditional family] farm, more of the farm was left for corn, which rapidly colonized the paddocks and pastures and even the barnyards that had once been the animals' territory. The animals left because the farmer's simply couldn't compete with the CAFOs. It cost a farmer more to grow feed corn than it cost a CAFO to buy it, for the simple reason that commodity corn now was routinely sold for less than it cost to grow. Corn profited again as the factory farms expanded, absorbing increasing amounts of its surplus. Corn found its way into the diet of animals that never used to eat very much of it (like cattle) or any corn at all, like the farmed salmon now being bred to tolerate grain. All that excess biomass had to go somewhere.

The economic logic of gathering so many animals together to feed them cheap corn in CAFOs is hard to argue with; it has made meat, which used to be a special occasion in most American homes, so cheap and abundant that many of us now eat it three times a day. Not so compelling is the biological logic behind this cheap meat. Already in their short history CAFOs have produced more than their share of environmental and health problems: polluted water and air, toxic wastes, [and] novel and deadly pathogens.

Raising animals on old-fashioned mixed farms such as the Naylors' used to make simple biological sense: You can feed them the waste products of your crops, and you can feed their waste products to your crops. In fact, when animals live on farms the very idea of waste ceases to exist; what you have instead is a closed ecological loop -- what in retrospect you might call a solution. One of the most striking things that animal feedlots do (to paraphrase Wendell Berry) is to take this elegant solution and neatly divide it into two new problems: a fertility problem on the farm (which must be remedied with chemical [petroleum-based] fertilizers), and a pollution problem on the feedlot (which seldom is remedied at all).

This biological absurdity, characteristic of all CAFOs, is compounded in the cattle feedyard by a second absurdity. Here animals exquisitely adapted by natural selection to live on grass must be adapted by us -- at considerable cost to their health, to the health of the land, and ultimately to the health of their eaters -- to live on corn, for no other reason than it offers the cheapest calories around and because the great pile must be consumed.

I can't imagine feeling anything other than outrage and frustration with our food production system after reading this passage. Yet the alternative -- to never to have read it at all -- I know would be worse.

The omnivore (food writer's) dilemma

2008-08-23T15:41:00.000-07:00

A word on why I write so frequently about food and, when I can get away with it, food's connection to the environment. Many times exploring the world of food can be fun, but as anyone who's read "The Omnivore's Dilemma" or "Fast Food Nation" knows, it can also be painful. Ignorance really is bliss, and the more one learns about the way most food is produced in America, I find, the more one loses one's appetite.

This is why I feel I can no longer eat most forms of meat, even though this handicaps me as a food writer in the eyes of some. And this is why I constantly champion local, organic, etc., even though these ideas and words are beginning to lose their meaning and to sound hackneyed and impoverished even to me. Because below these "nice" words lies an ugly reality, and it's one I am fighting to change, even as I babble on about the wonders of chevre cheesecake and huckleberry ice cream.

Food in the new millenium is as much about pain as it is about pleasure, but unfortunately the former is not one many people enjoy hearing about. So since this balance is lacking in my published work, I feel the need to address that aspect here.

I'll be posting in 2 parts. I'll begin with this introduction.

Last night, I was telling the b.f. a story I had heard on This American Life on a drive I took to NYC this spring. It was on the "Matchmakers" podcast, Act 3. It's called "Babies Buying Babies", and it starred a factory reject doll named Nubbins. Perhaps you've heard it. This is the summary from the TAL website:

Elna Baker reads her story about the time she worked at the giant toy store, FAO Schwartz. Her job was to sell these lifelike “newborns” which were displayed in a “nursery” inside the store. When the toys become the hot new present, they begin to fly off the shelves. When the white babies sell out, white parents are faced with a choice: will they go for an Asian, Latino, or African-American baby instead? What happens is so disturbing that Elna has a hard time even telling it.

Spoiler alert: What happens is that, rather than purchase an African-American doll for her white child, a customer chooses to adopt a deformed white doll the "nurses" at the toy store have dubbed Nubbins, a doll they never expected to sell. (Note: when Googling this episode I came across other blog responses to this episode, including an account from an adoptive mother who stated that unfortunately, the real adoption habits of parents in the U.S. tend to fall along similar lines, an aspect of the story TAL did not explore.)

As TAL pieces tend to be, this narrative skirts the boundary between provoking laughter and tears. I finished my own re-telling with a bitter laugh and said, "It's sort of depressing, really."

The b.f. surprised me by sighing and saying, "Ryan, I want to make you happier. I want you to be a happy person."

I responded by sighing back, then quietly but firmly explaining that while there are things that make me unhappy, I would rather be unhappy than uninformed. And yes, sometimes the information I consume (served up by the "liberal" media, which, it's true, tends to traffic in sometimes cynical truths) makes me unhappy.

When you believe, for example, that we should be working to preserve the environment for ourselves and future generations, or that we should be making food choices daily that underscore our values, or that women should be treated as equals among men across the globe, and then day after day you find that there are millions who would disagree with you or at least fail to support you in this view, then it's difficult to feel happy about the future implications of that fact. And when your enemies are not "Republicans" or "Democrats" but simply iniquity and ignorance, which are about the same as "Terrorism" or "Drugs" in terms of combat-ability, it's hard not to feel as though your work will never be done.

However. Because these stories of iniquity and ignorance exist, I know that it could be so much worse for me. I have my health, I have more than enough to eat (especially lately, with all these food articles!), I do fun and creative work daily with people who support and respect me, I have a lovely apartment in a safe and pleasant neighborhood, I have a loving (if deeply quirky) family, I have a committed and accomplished partner, I have smart and caring friends, and I have a wonderful puppydog, who is himself grateful to have been rescued from iniquity and ignorance and given a happy and healthy (for the most part) life of his own.

I am a happy person. I am living in difficult times. I am working always to make them less difficult for myself and those around me, and writing about food and all its implications is an integral part of that. Outside the blissful Eden of ignorance, my way often feels like a long row to hoe. But I don't think I would be happier if I laid my tools down and walked away, because I would have to leave myself and all this behind. And I like who I am, anger and sadness and all.

(Image from www.michaelpollan.com)

Weekly Dig: Chevre, meet crust

2008-08-21T08:40:00.000-07:00

Mmm, cheesecake.

Mmm, chevre.

That's basically how this article came to be. Taking some artery-clogging goodness for the team, that's what I'm all about.

(photo by Lexy Winter for the Weekly Dig.)

Bostonist: Once, twice, three times a Mieka Pauley

2008-08-21T08:16:00.000-07:00

I broke out of my food beat this week to post three shows for Mieka Pauley on Bostonist. I have a soft spot for Mieka Pauley. She was my very first interviewee for WERS back in the day, and she made it easy for me. She had brought comedian Baratunde Thurston along, and we all sat on the floor joking around. I enjoyed Thurston's company, but I couldn't figure out why he was there, until halfway through the interview she quietly admitted they were dating. They struck a nice balance: he's talkative and boisterous, while she's taciturn and reflective. It was easy to see how he wooed her with his humor and warmth, and equally easy to see how she attracted him with her heavy-lidded eyes and clever poetry.

However, I still can't understand why Pauley isn't already selling me iPods, and posing in some slightly scandalous way on the cover of a national magazine, and fending off accusations that she's "sold out", and dismissing rumors that she's stolen John Mayer away from Jennifer Aniston, instead of gigging around the country in small rooms and playing to small crowds. Maybe it's because her quiet voice wouldn't carry in a football stadium. She might not enunciate well enough for Sirius radio or NPR. She might not fit easily into mainstream music's pre-made molds of "winsome folk chanteuse" (read: women who are sad about the status quo) or "tough DiFranco-style broad" (read: women who are mad about the status quo). But I'd like to see her get the chance to try it all on for size.

Bostonist: Veggie-gasms and other events

2008-08-21T08:06:00.000-07:00

"Veggie-gasm" is really the only way I can describe the upcoming meals at Upstairs on the Square. Luckily, I came up with some other serviceable words for the rest of these rad events.

In da club

2008-08-16T19:28:00.001-07:00

I am officially "on staff" at Bostonist. Pretty fun. I post this link because I've had to write a few bios before for this or that, and the process is always interesting and difficult, considering I maintain equal loyalty to Utah, Buffalo and Boston as "homes" and I feel the need to explain how I got from there to here. I like this one because I felt I was able to meld these aspects of myself somewhat gracefully, when I am so rarely able to do this in real life.

Also, I am serious about the tofu at Rod Dee, the profiteroles at Eastern Standard, and the cold beer that must be imbibed before any proper brumble in the Utah desert. I can comfortably say that those three food items define me as a person.

Something else I'd like to mention: despite the fact that Bostonist does not pay for their copy, I have really enjoyed the sense of camaraderie that the staff seems to share -- and this extends to my friends who write for the 'ist in Chicago and Austin. Rob Christopher, Tom Thornton, and Josh Huck were kind enough to send me welcome notes when they found out that I had joined the club in Boston. I only hope I can live up to Tom's food coverage and build up enough chops to write an essay for Austin's Soup Peddler -- and perhaps to post as a guest commentator on Josh's soon-to-be-a-zeitgeist soup blog. (Oh no, I have not forgotten about the soup blog.)

Bostonist: InSeason makes getting local food in Boston less annoying

2008-08-16T18:17:00.000-07:00

Apparently -- surprise -- I had more to say about local food in Boston after the Dig "Greenland" piece. I also had additional quotes from Chris Crandall of Inseason (some of which I mentioned in my previous post) that I thought were interesting and incisive. He also wrote a few new notes about Whole Foods in his blog that I thought deserved wider exposure, considering his unique proximity to actual farmers who deal with Whole Foods' "buy local" system.

Luckily, in the age of new media, a freelancer can sometimes find a home for these "bits of string too short to use" (to quote Didion once again) within the same news cycle as...er...the original ball of yarn. So I did a bit about InSeason's debut in Boston for the 'ist as well and added some additional commentary from Crandall.

Full story - and a lovely photo from Crandall's blog -- right here.