Tag: Michael Pollan

Small Bites: The other Grant Achatz bakes pies in Michigan and Food Day urges us to eat real

Chicago chef Grant Achatz’s dad, a renowned pie maker also named Grant Achatz, is the subject of my latest USA Character Approved Blog post. And Food Day promotes eating healthy, eating real.

There are countless stories about kids of famous people and the pressure they must feel to live up to their parents’ wonderfulness. But what happens when the kid’s the famous one? Chicago’s own Grant Achatz is rightly revered for his groundbreaking molecular gastronomy at Alinea—and for his courageous battle against tongue cancer. Little is made of the fact, though, that he learned his chops and exhibited his extraordinary talent as a young boy in his dad’s restaurant kitchen. Continue reading “Small Bites: The other Grant Achatz bakes pies in Michigan and Food Day urges us to eat real” →

Eat, drink and be healthy in 2010

A quick round-up of ideas for healthy eating and drinking, including fighting diabetes with small changes, more reasons to drink coffee, reasons to drink and not drink wine and an excuse for pregnant women to eat bacon.

‘Food Rules’ from someone who should know

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Michael Pollan
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Michael Pollan has written definitive tomes on food and health—the health of those who eat it, those who produce it and the planet we live on. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals is the best known, weighing in at nearly 500 pages.

food-rulesHis latest book, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, is a lot slimmer, a pocket-sized 112 pages. But in its own way, it’s just as full of useful information. In it, Pollan lays out 64 rules to help us eat smarter, eat healthier. In a piece he wrote for Huffington Post, he tells how the list came about and gives us a small taste of the list. Here are a couple of samples:

#36 Don’t eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk.

#39 Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.

Pollan recently appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He entertainingly but forcefully makes the point that the way we eat is responsible Continue reading “Eat, drink and be healthy in 2010” →

What Julia Child taught us and why we could use a few more Julias today

The utterly charming movie Julie & Julia reminds us why Julia Child was so important. And Michael Pollan says that today’s food television doesn’t actually teach us to cook.

julia-in-chicago

Okay, show of hands. How many of you out there saw Julie & Julia opening weekend? We did. It was wonderful, even from the third row far right seats that were the best we could do in the crowded theater. And this was for a summer movie without car crashes, explosions or superheroes!

The crowd was spectacularly diverse, men and women, older and younger couples—even a group of teen girls sitting next to us—all thoroughly wrapped up in the intertwined stories. It’s not a film for kids, though. Julie & Julia earns its PG-13 rating with its occasionally frank celebration of love and life.

It is this celebration of life that is at the very core of Julia Child’s being. In her memoir My Life in France, she remembers her first meal there, a lunch of oysters and sole meunière in Rouen: “It was the most exciting meal of my life.” That meal—and the passion it instilled in her for French cuisine—changed how she thought about food and, ultimately, how America cooked. Continue reading “What Julia Child taught us and why we could use a few more Julias today” →