Smithsonian.com

Dogfish Head Brewery, featured in the New Yorker. Courtesy of Flickr user: creativedc

A roundup of recent food-related features worth checking out:

On Sunday, the Washington Post ran this graphic about a “greener Thanksgiving,” which gave me a nudge of guilt about buying Californian wine and South American asparagus, but I promise to eat all my leftovers…

Topics like food miles and carbon points get a much sexier treatment in Wired magazine’s November special section on “The Future of Food“. Such a science-and-stats heavy story could have been as dry as shredded wheat—but instead it’s served up as an eye-catching feast, replete with bright graphics and sleek photos of everything from cows to catfish.

The New Yorker has a great piece this week on “extreme beer,” which examines novel brewing techniques and asks: “When does beer cease to be beer?”

And finally, Michael Pollan wrote a thought-provoking feature for the New York Times magazine last month, titled “Farmer in Chief.” In it, he advised the President-Elect (whose identity was still a mystery then) that “Food is about to demand your attention” in relation to national security, energy policy, health care, foreign policy, and just about every other aspect of leading a country. I hope Obama got a chance to read it.

Thanksgiving Turkey -- Courtesy of Flickr user defak

Here’s a little theme music for your turkey dinner, courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings…the gobbling sounds rather random to me, but make up your own mind. Happy Thanksgiving!

A proud turkey

Chances are this week you’ll read your fill of blog posts about this noble bird. But what do you really know about where the turkey - the word or the bird - came from?

Turkeys are true-blue natives of North America, but you wouldn’t know it from the names Europeans saddled them with. First brought to Europe by early explorers, the birds were promptly described as a relative of guineafowl, the brown, speckled Asian species that gave us chickens.

Wrong. But forgivable if you consider that the discoverers were also under the impression they had discovered a shortcut to India.

Next comes the common name. Also forgivable: If you were English, what would you call a bird you bought fresh off a boat from Turkey (thanks to circuitous imperial shipping routes that connected the New World to England via the Middle East)? It certainly rolls off the tongue more easily than Meleagris gallopavo

But what’s amazing to me is the swift and total domination with which turkeys obliterated their competition in the European poultry market. The birds tasted so good that by 1525 - just 33 years after Columbus, remember - they were selling out at markets, according to Taste, a great book on English food. Up till then the lords and ladies had been feasting on what sounds like a collection of exotic hats: egrets, curlews, lapwings, cranes, and bustards. Those great stringy marsh birds had no chance against a giant, plump grouse fattened on beech nuts and corn.

The native peoples of Mexico had domesticated their subspecies of turkey, and it was these birds that came back to Europe with the first explorers. So, you guessed it, when Europeans sailed back over to settle the East, they brought their own turkeys with them. Turkeys are native to all the eastern states (and were so plentiful that local tribes apparently didn’t bother to domesticate them). But the Pilgrims didn’t know that, so better safe than sorry.

The birds’ abundance was short-lived in the Age of Gunfire, and by the mid-nineteenth century New England had been emptied of turkeys. It got so bad that naturalists curious about turkey biology were reduced to quoting Audubon, “who had far better opportunities for observing the wild turkey than can ever be had again.”

Happily, nothing that tastes that good can be allowed to go extinct without a fight, and reintroduction efforts proved spectacularly successful. More than 4 million turkeys now roam the lower 48 - including regions outside their original range - and a good proportion of those seem to live along my commute to work.

So as we head into the Shark Week of the American culinary scene (all turkey, all the time), don’t groan at the prospect of overcooked turkey breast. You’re being treated to the smash hit bird of the millennium… the gobbler that gobbled Europe.

Especially if you follow my simple rule: It’s hard to ruin a turkey if you slather it with butter every 15 minutes for the first 4 hours. And regardless of what your in-laws do to the poor bird, it’s going to be better than stewed egret.

(Image: photofarmer/flickr)

The NYTimes ran a story last week about the latest animal-abuse scandal reported by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). The group has released what it says is an undercover video of a turkey-breeding farm in West Virginia where workers punch, kick and generally bully the birds in their care. Don’t watch it before you settle down for Thanksgiving dinner; I haven’t mentioned the most disturbing details. The video is also embedded after the jump for those of you with strong stomachs.

Now, I’m not advocating a nationwide rush for “Tofurky” (that stuff tastes like a poorly cooked hotdog), but this report does disturb me. It suggests that at least one major U.S. turkey producer keeps its birds in a less than sanitary and healthy environment, which raises questions about food safety. And yes, some of the things done to these birds are nothing short of cruel.

On the other hand, some might argue, these turkeys are destined to die anyway. Does it really matter if they suffer a few extra slings and arrows along the way?

(more…)

iStockPhoto.com

This isn’t meant to be a “how to” blog, but I recently stumbled across some useful tips at a Smithsonian employee event and thought I should share the wealth. The speaker, a certified nutritionist named Alana Sugar (I know, right? That’s her real name!) talked about people’s “love/hate relationship with food” at this time of year.

“We look forward to eating delicious foods, but at the same time, we fear that they will make us fat or otherwise harm our bodies,” she said.

Ain’t that the truth, Sugar. (Especially since I just noticed that our acronym makes me a FaT blogger.)

She offered the following tips for navigating the treacherous terrain of holiday parties:

1) Eat eggs for breakfast the day of the party, or at least have a handful of nuts before you head out, since protein will take the edge off your cravings and keep you from gobbling indiscriminately at the buffet.

2) Talk. Get a plate of food, but then go strike up a conversation, preferably away from the buffet table. Eating should be secondary to socializing.

3) Enjoy a few glasses of wine, or indulge in dessert, but try not to do both at the same meal. Too much alcohol combined with sugar can cause “intestinal distress.” (Thankfully, Sugar didn’t answer when an audience member asked her to elaborate on the type of distress.)

4) Along the same lines, remember that wine has calories, too. Try mixing it with sparkling water to create a lower-calorie “wine spritzer” after your first glass. (Though personally, I’d recommend taking a glance at the label before you horrify the hosts by watering down a particularly fine wine. If it’s one of these best-sellers, it probably didn’t break the bank, so spritz away.)

5) Keep exercising through the holidays – not only is it good for obvious health reasons, but it can also help you release the stress that family functions can generate. And without a release valve, that stress could make you an “emotional eater” who turns to food for comfort or distraction.

And most importantly: Only eat what you consider delicious. Why waste calories?