philosophy

I've been following a certain story in the UK with interest. A rich old lady died recently there, and in her will, she left her £10 million estate to the owners of her favorite Chinese restaurant. The family (actually her nieces and nephews) contested the will, as you might expect. On Friday, the High Court upheld the will.

First of all, thank you so much to all of you who shared your food memories for our 4th Anniversary event. You made us laugh out loud, you made us chuckle, and you brought tears to our eyes. If we could we would have given the prize to everyone! But we only have one book in our budget...so, after a weekend of arguing back and forth, we finally selected one jewel out of a whole boxful of treasures: Mitch's entry, I Ate Love.

At the moment I am reading a book called The Kitchen. It's been reissued with another book by the same author, Nicolas Freeling, as The Kitchen and The Cook, both of which were written in the post-World War II period. I'm reading it as slowly as I can, because it is a book to savor.

One of the early passages in The Kitchen caught my eye, where the author describes the hands of a cook.

Forgive me for neglecting Just Hungry a bit this week - I've been spending all of my free waking time in Knightsbridge. I did want to follow up on the thoughtful comments left on my post about eating local in winter, in areas without 4-season growing conditions. Perhaps because I've been immersed in the 14th century has helped, but I'm increasingly intrigued by the idea of trying to experience how it would have been like to survive the winter in an age when fresh foods were not shipped in from far parts.

So I am going to try it out for at least a week in a few weeks - I think the end of January/beginning of February would be a good time. I don't think I will go back as far as the Middle Ages, but something prior to the 19th century anyway - prior to fast trading ships as well as the advent of refrigeration. (I'm not sure if I will aim for pre-canning days as well). I'm also a bit undecided as to if I'll try to emulate how it would have been in Switzerland, or something more generic, as well as what class in society I'd put myself (since rich people would have eaten a lot better then poor people, of course). When I've done more research into this I'll post what I'm going to do.

The Guardian, one of Britain's finest newspapers, recently installed several blogs to which their staff writers contribute, including a food blog. Last week one of their restaurant reviewers, Jay Rayner, wrote a negative review of a well known London vegetarian restaurant - which upset quite a lot of vegetarian readers. He defended his review, and several commenters bit back. One opinion expressed was that, since the critic is not a vegetarian himself, that he did not have the palate to judge vegetarian food, and that only committed vegetarian or vegans should be reviewing vegetarian restaurants.

That's an interesting point of view. While I doubt that main stream media outlets instituting such food-specific critics and such, in the wide world of blogs it is theoretically possible - so someone might choose to only trust restaurant reviews from a vegetarian blogger. Is it plausible though? Is an omnivore disqualified from judging what's good vegetarian food because his or her tastebuds are tainted by a fondness for meat? Should vegetarian food only appeal to non-meat eaters?

As someone who has gradually increased the percentage of vegetable based food in my diet in the last few years, but is not a vegetarian, I'm really curious about this. I do like the taste of meat. but I love the taste of fresh vegetables too. If I gave up meat products totally though, would my palate change that much, so that I enter a magical realm which is reserved only for vegetarians? Will meat become totally inedible? I'm a bit skeptical about this, since so many vegetarians seem to at least occasionally crave a 'meaty' taste.

Rebecca Blood has a great post summing up the recent minor brouhaha about a popular 'quality' mac and cheese brand that originated with article in Salon magazine, vs. the standard of the genre that comes in a blue box. Rebecca focuses on the actions of the CEO, specifically his comments on a post on megnut, which are funny in the way he assumes that people will just take his marketspeak at face value.

Anyone who has any interest in food, nutrition, where our food comes from, and most importantly, how to eat at all, should read the massive (12 pages) article by Michael Pollan in the New York Times, Unhappy Meals.

To wrap up my week long series on weight loss, these are the things that I'm doing, and plan to continue doing, to achieve my goals - as well as some things I am not doing.

• Tell everyone

  These weight loss posts are part of my plan: I'm telling everyone, friends, family, and even you out there in the anonymous interweb, what I'm doing. In the past I've tried losing weight in secret, and it just does not work because if I give up no one knows either.

Continuing my week of weight loss related posts, this time it's about eating out.

When I lived in New York, about 80% of my meals came from outside - restaurants, fast-food places and takeout. Coupled with that and 80-100 hour work weeks, I basically ran myself into the ground. Nowadays I don't eat out nearly as much. This has a lot to do with a change in lifestyle of course, but it I also consciously made the decision to try to cook for myself as much as possible.

Continuing my week of posts about weight loss, some reflections on how to go about losing weight but still retaining my interest (or..obsession even) in food.

There was an interesting article recently to which I linked in my daily links, about a woman who went on a diet, and a different world.