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On this episode of Talk to Me About Food I share top line findings from "The Menu Trends That Define Dining Right Now," by Priya Krishna, writing in The New York Times. I also muse specifically on Caesar salad which is one of items that's hot across the country from the survey of 121 menus that underpins Ms. Krishna's article.

This episode is one in a mini-series about a range of soups and simple foods from different food traditions that are suggested, prescribed, maybe sometimes even foisted on someone feeling under the weather. I consider a basic udon soup. Where it’s the bounty of the land that nourishes a chicken, it’s the bounty of the ocean and sea washing up on every millimeter of Japan’s coastline that infuses udon noodle soup with its curative power. Marc Matsumoto talks me through how to make dashi; the basic fish stock at the heart of a good bowl of udon noodle soup and okayu, a rice porridge. Marc is a private chef, culinary consultant and TV host with a base of clients around the world. He grew up and worked for a time in the US, but is now based in Tokyo. He has a website, norecipes.com, that teaches you basic cooking techniques but also offers a range of recipes from different cuisines, with a skew to Japanese food, including a basic dashi and udon noodle varieties.

How much, if at all, does the food you eat define who you are and where you come from? Do the choices around what food you buy, where you buy it, how you prepare it and even how you dispose of it subscribe you to a specific community (willingly or unwittingly)? In this episode I muse about "gastronativism" -  a word coined in a book titled Gastronativism, Food, Identity, Politics by Fabio Parasecoli. The author, a professor of food studies at NYU, defines gastronativism as the use of food as a political tool to specify and then galvanize a community into action.

Brief musings around discovering overnight oats. Beats regular old hot oatmeal any day of the week.

Sandor Katz, a self-described fermentation revivalist and author of three books on the topic helps me unpack fermentation. What it is and why it’s so engrained in all food cultures. He talks about the role of fermentation in preserving food then explains how fermentation plays a vital role in helping us get the most of the nutritional content of food by breaking food down into easier-to-digest elements, like amino acids. Apparently, we don’t benefit from the full nutritional potency of manufactured, fermented foods. The better to make your own yogurt or sauerkraut. We also talk through how fermentation brings out strong flavor profiles. Acquired tastes, for most. We are again turning to fermentation to show us the way. We are leveraging one of nature’s fundamental organic processes – a single-celled fungus digesting sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide to make bread, for example - to learn how to provision ourselves in a more sustainable way. Bioengineers are leading the way. They are learning to mimic the natural fermentation process to create completely new foods and food ingredients through precision fermentation and biomass fermentation. Audrey Gyr, from Good Foods Institute, a non-profit organization which promotes alternative proteins to animal-based ones, helps explain these Fermentation 2.0 approaches.

On this episode I consider healing meals; traditional dishes believed to help cure what ails you, physically, emotionally, even spiritually.  First, I reflect on my conversation with Ashley Thuthao Keng Dam, a PhD candidate in Eco-gastronomy, Education, and Society at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy. I recently came across their blog post entitled Curative Cuisines of Cambodia. The article reflects on ethnographic research done in rural Cambodia, looking at the impact of seasonal changes on how plant-based traditional medicine complements maternity diets. This is a very focused, maybe esoteric piece of research. But, I think it offers possibilities around how food can cure or heal that go beyond traditional Khmer medicine and what pregnant mothers should consume. I also share snippets from my chat with Amy Foote, Executive Chef at the Alaska Native Medical Center. The traditional food she serves is one important aspect of the more culturally relevant care patients get there. Donations from hunters really help Chef Amy deliver traditional meals - like seal soup - patients really miss and ask for. She explains how the Traditional Native Foods Initiative works and what it means to the patients. I wonder if we can all do more with healing dishes; curative cuisines as Thao coined them. To “eat right” when we’re out of sorts and out of balance despite our best efforts to follow a healthy diet. I suggest thought starters that go beyond boiling milk or making a cup of tea for someone in need. Something more  than your go-to soup. Or toast, rice, oatmeal or plain yogurt.

In this audio blog post I consider Squareat; a start-up meal delivery company that delivers a box of brownie-sized pieces of animal protein (like chicken breast) and same-size, same-shape squares of veggie and grain side dishes. 21st century food to ponder while you enjoy your Thanksgiving meal.

In this Halloween audio blog post I muse about the results of an experiment where a human gene that codes for obesity was implanted into the genome of a potato. The spuds grew to be 50% larger! What could be wrong with that? The research is real; only some of the implications conjured here are plausible...

This episode looks at what it might take to make locally grown and processed food the hub of our food system. Why?  For one, Covid-19 has exposed vulnerabilities in our current food system that is dependent on a sprawling, global web of connections on the one hand, and industrial-scale, concentrated agriculture on the other hand. The longer term threat that’s been creeping up on us for decades is the loss of soil fertility almost everywhere. A sustainable food system would be built on small, diversified farms close enough to form symbiotic relationships with population centers. I first speak with Thomas Locke of Bois d’Arc Farm. He raises livestock using sustainable practices less than 100 miles from the Dallas Farmer’s Market. Thomas shares his story and what it’ll take to make DFW a more vibrant local food scene. I then share part of my conversation about urban farming with Owen Lynch, an associate professor in the Meadows School of the Arts at SMU. Owen is helping folks in South Dallas help themselves to develop a systemic solution to systemic problems around food access by developing a network of professionally run urban farms to support a local produce market. The starting point is Restorative Farms. Jeff Bednar started Profound Foods several years ago as a small food hub in Dallas. Through it he sells his own small farm's 150 varieties of edible greens as well products from 50+ local farms to some 6,000 residential subscribers and a range of restaurant chefs. He tells me how he got started and reinforces the need for more food hubs like his. Next, Zach Correa describes for us how lemonGRAFT works. It's another sort of food hub based on software coordination. lemonGRAFT connects produce eaters with growers - backyard warriors and small farmers alike - who live in the same vicinity. He also talks about the compelling benefits of this system. Finally, Judith McGeary, of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, addresses the elephant the room when it comes to the local food movement; farm policy and regulation. After explaining the factors that have constrained local food, Judith suggests ways that citizen eaters like you and me can make a difference. There is local food potential everywhere. We have to want it…To really want to re-engineer the current food system model in favor of locally grown, raised and processed food. My sense is that we will need to live through more shocks to consider demanding change of others and of ourselves. Photo courtesy of Brad Roa at Restorative Farms

Charles Spence, author of Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating defines this realm of research as the scientific study of those factors that influence our multisensory experience while tasting food and drink. The basic premise of gastrophysics is that all aspects of the eating environment – where, when, how, and with whom - provide essential sensory cue, and that the eating experience is influenced by multi-sensory faculties you don’t even know you have. In this episode I share some of the findings from this book with the help of Charles Spence, Professor of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University, and Head of the Cross-Modal Laboratory. Flavor is not experienced with taste buds alone. Not by a long shot. And the smell receptors in the back of the mouth are critical in cataloging memories of what we eat and drink. The sense of smell is what draws emotion into the eating experience. I also look at how sight and touch cues can heighten the appeal of what's on the plate. Charles then shares with me the power of "sonic seasoning" and how all these cross-modal effects can be used to change behavior. He explains how we can eat healthier, for example. Finally, we look at the future of gastrophysics. How can the five senses be manipulated to deliver extraordinary eating experiences? Wine sound associations courtesy of Jozef Youssef of Kitchen Theory at a TEDx LSE conference in 2018.

A brief musing about the natural absence of blue in our foods and drinks. A few food scientists are exploring ways to create a natural, bright-hued blue to replace FD&C Blue #1, but there aren't that many artificially colored blue foods either, even though blue is our favorite color...

In this  Talk to Me About Food "mover and shaker" profile I share snippets from a conversation I had with Amanda McLemore, chef, and founder of Baguette & Butter, the first sustainable digital food space. Amanda tells me about how she became a sustainable cooking activist and shares her suggestions for how to cook more mindfully: It's about setting up your kitchen to work efficiently but also about being flexible in how you approach the whole process of planning and preparing food.