Is Spring Coming Yet?

 

At Bao Space downtown, we had a pleasant lunch. I tried their hot & sour soup.
It was tempting because the weather is cold again. But we hope the cold won’t last.

Alice is visiting us. She ordered a rice bowl.

Signs of Spring

Despite our day of icy rain, plants are starting to re-emerge in our garden

Sandhill cranes stay in Hudson Mills Metropark all year, but they seem to have brighter head plumage now.

Addendum: Friday afternoon birds at Kent Lake:
 A Red-Winged Blackbird, a Sandhill Crane, and three wild turkeys.

A new grey recliner is now on our front porch, along with the wooden table Len made recently.
We’ve even had a few afternoons warm enough to sit outside

Reading

I finished reading The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster (1947-2024)

The New York Trilogy is very meta — which means that as a reader, you are always conscious that this is a work of modernistic fiction. You have to accept that the author and reader are conspiring about characters, who are being created in a very artificial way. The story is not told the way that traditional authors related to their characters and their readers. 

In other words: these three very loosely related stories make the characters seem aware that they are characters in a story, that they have an author, and that you have agreed to see them as characters. It’s very mannered. At times the characters are relatable, but at times the whole thing just seems annoying.

Auster’s work has been around for decades, and I have meant to read his works — maybe I should have read them long ago. All the pretense might have been interesting back in the 1980s, but now I feel as if the whole thing is a bit exaggerated and passé.

I am reading Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke. It was very hard to get into the book, and I read the first 100 pages twice — but now I’m finding it very good reading. It’s about a Black Texas Ranger and how he solves some mysterious murders in a small town. (I don’t know the solution yet. Will keep reading.)

Quotes about a Sad Week in America

Food Safety? What Food Safety?

From “Food Safety Jeopardized by Onslaught of Funding and Staff Cuts” by Christina Jewett:

“In the last few years, foodborne pathogens have had devastating consequences that alarmed the public. Bacteria in infant formula sickened babies. Deli meat ridden with listeria killed 10 people and led to 60 hospitalizations in 19 states. Lead-laden applesauce pouches poisoned young children.

“In each outbreak, state and federal officials connected the dots from each sick person to a tainted product and ensured the recalled food was pulled off the shelves.

“Some of those employees and their specific roles in ending outbreaks are now threatened by Trump administration measures to increase government efficiency, which come on top of cuts already being made by the Food and Drug Administration’s chronically underfunded food division.” (New York Times, March 19)

Attack on the American Mind

From Robert Reich:

“Make no mistake: Trump’s attack on the American mind — on education, science, libraries, and museums — is an attack on the capacity of Americans for self-government.

“It is coming from the oligarchs of the techno-state who believe democracy is inefficient, and want to replace it with an authoritarian regime replete with technologies they control.

“Be warned.” (source: Reich’s Substack)

Blog post © 2024 mae sander

Shared with Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz and with Eileen’s Critters.

A Cute but Unnecessary Book

 

Sylvia Plath’s Tomato Soup Cake: A Compendium of Classic Authors’ Favourite Recipes.
Arbitrarily photographed with some eggs in my kitchen that were going into an omelet that was probably better than anything in the book.

Collections of recipes by famous people appeal to many readers. Many such collections have been published, sometimes by asking the famous people to contribute recipes, and sometimes by finding their recipes already published somewhere else — maybe in a journal or in letters, maybe in a novel. Sylvia Plath’s Tomato Soup Cake is such a collection with recipes already published in similar anthologies. When I heard about it, I ordered it because it sounded really good and I thought that in some way, it would be original. It isn’t. I am somewhat disappointed.

The sources of the recipes in this new book are mainly recipes from earlier collections — sometimes it seems to be kind of a cannibalized work. Here are the covers of some of the sources cited in the afterward to the work:

Where to find writers’ favorite recipes? Look in earlier collections of writers’ recipes.
Most of the books depicted above are now out of print and costly. I found the images by searching the web. I own only one of these books (though I also own some similar collections).

Big Question: do these sound like good recipes? Would you want to use them to make dinner or a special treat for guests? Well, not really. After all, most of the authors whose work is included were not at all cooks. Some of them even say they weren’t very good in the kitchen, though some of the recipes are quite plausible, if ordinary. For example, Allen Ginsberg’s Cold Summer Beet Borscht is almost exactly like the borscht my mother made. Christopher Isherwood’s “Brownies Wendy” are simply the most standard classic brownies (the ones my seventh-grade cooking class was assigned to make). Tennessee Williams’s Grits are pretty undistinguished from the usual southern favorite. Barbara Pym’s Marmalade is ordinary as well. Not much to see here —  though at least these are interesting authors, so maybe it’s nice to know what they might have cooked.

A few recipes are distinguished by their unappealing nature: these are recipes that I would never try and in fact they are by authors that I would probably never read:

• Noel Streatfield’s Filets de Boeuf aux Bananas contains beef, bananas, horseradish, parsley… no thanks. Also, I had never heard of Noel Streatfield (1895-1986), author of children’s books, but now I have. 
• Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Devils on Horseback are made from bacon wrapped around prunes that are stuffed with olives stuffed with pimentos. I guess these were popular back in the day — this author was born in 1923. I have a feeling that her books are also forgotten, along with her style of cooking.
• Spike Milligan’s Spaghetti Dolce is spaghetti with cream, sugar, and brandy. Another unappealing recipe by another forgotten writer.

Fun fact: Sylvia Plath’s Tomato Soup Cake has no listed author: it was put together by the staff of the publisher, Faber. The more I think about it, the more it seems to be a rather cynical hack job. While some of the authors may be interesting, many are deservedly obscure, and they have no actual connection to one another, aside from the fact that at some point they published recipes. I think the book’s reason for existing is just to make a bit more money off the same old material, and, like the title itself, is meant to attract attention in a shallow kind of way. If you already have any collections of recipes by writers and artists, you probably don’t need this one.

Better Celebrity Cookbooks

 I have quite a few celebrity recipe collections on my shelves. I also have several recipe books by famous authors, where they shared their recipes along with maybe a few anecdotes about dinner parties or meals shared with other famous people. The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook by Gertrude Stein’s companion, written after Stein’s death, is probably the most famous (and to me wonderful) of such celebrity cookbook. 

Memorably, Peter Sellers’  1968 film “I love you Alice B. Toklas” made reference to the Hash Brownies recipe included in this book. The film is surely forgotten by now, but this cookbook was consequently even more famous at that time.

Plots & Pans: Recipes and Antidotes from The Mystery Writers of America promises “Hundreds of Delicious Recipes from the Most Imaginative Writers in America — Spiced with their Wit, Leavened with their Malice, and Served with their Own Distinctive Style.” Published in 1989, this book is still in print and available. The illustrations are amusing.

I have around a dozen other recipe books featuring work by various authors. Some were compiled later, and the recipes are reconstructed from brief mentions in an author’s works; for example: a Jane Austen cookbook or an Agatha Christie cookbook, by authors who didn’t participate in making the book. I also have several by authors who were interested in food as well as detective fiction or other fiction. 

Bottom line: you can do better than the recently published book!

Recent Books

 

Library books. I have read one so far.
UPDATE: I read 100 pages of Girl, Woman, Other. It had no plot and I lost interest.

One view of my Apple Books page.

A very old favorite! With a puppy for Eileen.

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel.
Not usually a sci-fi fan, I still found this an enjoyable read.
Yes, the contradictions of time travel! Yes, life on distant planets!

Trust by Hernan Diaz.
Nested stories that constantly surprised me! Especially the surprise ending.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett.
Twins are always a good metaphor for something. Good read!

The Adventures of China Iron by Cabezon Camara.
I really did not like this book at all! Very forced and mannered writing.

Reading now: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman.
Finished it: it’s good.

And In Our Neighborhood

Finally: A few spring flowers among last fall’s dead leaves.

Mainly this week was busy with Evelyn’s very quick visit. We did a few things together, cooked good dinners, took some nice walks, and ate lunch out a couple of times — NO STRESS! Although I did finish some books, I didn’t have time to write the kind of reviews that I like to write: those DO take time and thought.

“Bombay Fish Tacos” at Cafe Zola. Mango with Urfa Pepper is delicious!
Evelyn had shakshouka, Len had the mezze platter. All good.

Blog post © 2025 mae sander. 

Shared with Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz and Eileen’s critters.

Happy Purim 2025

 

Evelyn’s hands making Hamantaschen for Purim, which starts this evening.

Ready to bake.

Out of the oven.

Elaine’s Hamantaschen in Indiana.

Photos © 2025 mae sander

Light and Shadow in Late Winter

Walking Near the Huron River

Poor deer!

Looking down from the bridge over the tracks and the river.

On the bridge.

 

More Light

The sunlit lobby of the fitness center.

Shadows of our breakfast: milk, water, coffee (for Elizabeth).

Dormant hydrangeas in the snow this week, and the way they looked last June.

Photos © 2025 mae sander for maefood.blogspot.com

What has happened this week?

Is Winter Ending?

Well, no, winter isn’t ending. We’ve had a bit of better weather but also some bitter weather. We took a walk under cloudy skies, but heard a Red-Winged Blackbird singing. At our house we are having a very quiet time, also pondering the rapid and increasingly alarming political and international scene in our national government. Not much to share with Deb’s Readerbuzz and her Sunday Salon on the weekend, but here it is!

Dreaming of summer and walks along the Huron River.

We cooked a bit, and had a few ready-made meals.

We shopped at the locally famous Zingerman’s Deli, and bought rye bread, salads, corned beef, and pastrami for sandwiches.

Now for my reading this week…. 

Sojourner Truth and Human Rights

The struggle to free the enslaved black people in the United States in the 19th century and the parallel and combined struggle throughout that century to endow men and women of all races with full rights of citizenship, property ownership, and voting, was a long and painful one. Sojourner Truth, who was born in slavery at the end of the 18th century, was a major figure in this struggle. She became a figure of legendary proportions, and in fact, her reputation depends on several anecdotes that were much embellished from the original events in which she participated.

Both the actual struggles, the political participation, and the myths of Sojourner Truth seem especially important now. As I have been reading about her life, I’m thinking about the horrifying way that the successes of that struggle are being reversed in our new political scene right now, this week, today.

Sojourner Truth’s Narrative tells how she was born in a Dutch community in New York, where slavery was less widespread than in the South, but where many Africans were held in bondage until New York ended legal slavery in 1827. Her narrative describes how she was enslaved until she was approximately thirty years old. She details her relationship with her owners, her family, and other people. She describes her religious development as a Pentecostal Christian, relationships with the preachers and leaders who influenced her, and her participation in various religious organizations and congregations. As she participated in many high-profile events of her time, she was conscious of her legend, and contributed in a positive way to being a leader and a proponent of human rights, freedom from slavery, and women’s suffrage.

The Narrative of Sojourner Truth was widely read throughout her life.

As the century progressed, antislavery activists conveniently forgot about Northern slave owners as they pursued the struggle to end slavery in the South. Thus Sojourner Truth’s origins were often forgotten, and she was sometimes thought to have been born on a Southern plantation rather than on a small-scale Northern farm where the language was Dutch, and where she would never have had the Southern accent that’s popularly associated with her. 

This association is especially strong with her most famous speech, delivered at a very early women’s suffrage meeting. You’ve probably heard the refrain of this speech known by the repetition of the words: “Ain’t I a woman.” These words were not reported at the time the speech was given, but were invented by a later proponent of women’s rights.  However, this legendary version of Sojourner Truth’s speech is so widely accepted that the author of the careful biography that I read feels it will never be corrected.

Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol by Nell Irvin Painter.

What did Sojourner Truth stand for? Even her “Narrative” was the work of a white woman who took down her oral history because Sojourner Truth herself was unable to to read or write. In fact, Nell Irvin Painter’s biography summarizes it: “Everything we know of Sojourner Truth comes through other people, mostly educated White women.” (p. 207)

Painter’s book is fascinating, and very revealing about pre-Civil War attitudes and cultural stereotypes about the relationship of Black and White Americans, and the co-development of views on race and on slavery. Here is the passage that makes me tremble in fear that we are losing the progress that was made in that era and many subsequent eras when it comes to the rights of women, minorities. and non-white people:

 

“Women’s rights meant empowering women in a multitude of ways: securing women rights to their wages, their inheritance, and the custody of their children; admitting women to institutions of higher learning and the professions; and permitting women to vote, hold office, and serve on juries. This broad agenda dovetailed with the needs of Black people, who also lacked a wide range of civil rights.” (p. 261)

An article in the New York Times titled “Republican Men and Women Are Changing Their Minds About How Women Should Behave” summarized a number of recent studies:

“Surveys from 2024 show that support for traditional gender roles is increasing. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is happening primarily among Republicans. Perhaps more surprisingly, it is happening among Republican women as well as among Republican men.”

Women being sent back from employment to stay home? Women being shut out of active high-level politics? In the most backward (but powerful) circles even questions of whether married women should be allowed to vote? 

That’s just one example: many news stories have been detailing extreme racism in the firing of high government officials and many overtly racist and anti-woman statements made by the incoming and less qualified replacements. What will become of us? 

We need another distraction…

Another Distraction

What would you think about a few cute bunny images? Again, I’ve looked at the work of the amazing artist Hokusai from 19th century Japan. Here are a few pictures by him and by one of his students to share with Eileen’s Saturday Critters.

Dreaming of Spring

At the Peony Garden in June a few years ago.

 Blog post © 2025 mae sander

Two Good Books

 We Do Not Part by Han Kang

Korean history is generally mysterious, at least to me, and this recently-translated historical novel, We Do Not Part, provides a detailed description of events that I have never learned about. Specifically, on the island of Jeju in the late 1940s around 30,000 people were massacred in a campaign to destroy political viewpoints that differed from those of the emerging anti-Communist South Korean government. Although the facts of this massive number of deaths was suppressed for decades, it resounds in the novel, specifically in the life of one of the two main characters. The massacre looms over the very surreal plot, which takes place in around 2020. I have no idea of how a Korean reader would relate to the events — or even the extent to which they would be familiar to Koreans, but the shadowy atmosphere of the novel for an uninformed American reader is made more intense by the obscurity of the historic background. 

We Do Not Part is a first-person narrative by a woman who describes herself as unbalanced: she has been living alone and never leaving her apartment for a long time, eating very little, suffering from destabilizing migranes and digestive disorders, and exiting in a kind of solitary, hermit-like bubble. She begins by describing a dream — in fact a kind of hallucination — which she has shared with a friend who lives far away in a very isolated place: Jeju Island. She receives a summons to the bedside of this friend, who has suffered a hideous accident in the woodworking shop where she creates various art and practical items. The friend demands that she immediately leave the hospital, take a plane to the nearest airport near her home, and proceed by train, bus, and on foot to reach her house where he pet bird will soon die if not given food and water. The journey, which the narrator undertakes, becomes somewhat surreal as a blinding snowstorm nearly defeats her arrival there. 

Her arrival in the nearest small town: “If not for the chill of the icy particles falling and settling on my forehead and on my cheeks, I might wonder if I’m dreaming. Are the streets empty because of the storm? Or are the lights out in the small shops selling cold seafood soup and noodles in anchovy broth because it’s a Sunday?”

Once she reaches the friends’ isolated house, she finds the bird, which has died. Without any way to leave again she tries to make herself at home, but the power fails, heat and water are cut off, and the storm nearly freezes her. As she is becoming colder and colder, her friend appears, strangely no longer affected by the terrible accident that had befallen her. At this point, the narrator becomes uncertain if the friend’s presence is illusory, if her friend has come back from the dead, or if she herself is dead. She writes: “Or how if I kept turning your dream around in my mind, I would see shadows glimmering like fins inside a lightless aquarium. Is someone really here with me? I wondered. In the way that light in two different places becomes pinned to a single spot the moment one tries to observe it?”

A long conversation between the narrator and the mysteriously returned friend composes more than half of the novel, and the story the friend tells is of how she discovered her mother’s past, specifically her mother’s family’s history in the Jeju massacre. The revelations include both the stories of her parents and much detail about the brutal actions of the Korean government and the subsequent hush-up, creating a suspenseful and effective story.

The unreal illusion of the two women in the darkened and isolated house reminds me of some “existential” novels of the past, where there is a kind of suspension of the way that a reader and an author collaborate and agree on the conventional narrative methods that portray reality. Instead, there’s a raw version of existence at its most basic. The book offers numerous levels of historic, psychological, emotional, and relationship reality. It’s a brilliant novel.

From the New York Times: “Transforming real life into a haunting dreamscape, ‘We Do Not Part’ is about grief, tragedy, the weight of the past, and the painful but essential work of remembering, delivered by one of the most electrifying writers working today.” (source)

M Train by Patti Smith

Patti Smith was either famous or obscure in the 1960s scene in New York — it depends on who you ask. I admit that I didn’t know much about her until the mid-90s when she emerged from a long period of not being in the public eye, and performed on stage here in Ann Arbor with the poet Allen Ginsberg. A poster from 1996 illustrates their joint performance at Hill Auditorium. Years later, I read her prize-winning autobiography Just Kids, which documents her years in 1960s New York. 

Several years ago, this is what I said about their performance:

I distinctly remember that the audiences seemed divided between those who thought Patti Smith was a goddess and Allen Ginsberg an afterthought, and those (like me) who hadn't really heard of Patti Smith, but thought Allen Ginsberg was an American legend. I'd never seen her before, but had seen him at events in Berkeley or San Francisco in the 1960s, most notably the Human Be-In, a memorable Happening in 1967. His readings in 1995 and 1996 made a lasting impression on me -- hers, not so much.

Now I’ve read her second memoir, titled M Train, from 2011. It was interesting in a way, but I can’t say I’ve really gained any great interest in her or her writing. I was impressed at the numerous references to a vast number of authors and intellectuals that she included, but sometimes that seemed a bit hurried and superficial. The book jumps back and forth over various times in her life, and sometimes touches on the death of her husband, but it’s not in my view well organized.

Here is a passage that I enjoyed:

“I believe in life, which one day each of us shall lose. When we are young we think we won’t, that we are different. As a child I thought I would never grow up, that I could will it so. And then I realized, quite recently, that I had crossed some line, unconsciously cloaked in the truth of my chronology. How did we get so damn old? I say to my joints, my iron-colored hair. Now I am older than my love, my departed friends.”

I think you would have to be a serious Patti Smith fan to love this book. For me it was just OK.

Reviews © 2025 mae sander for maefood.blogspot.com

 

February Kitchen Thoughts

What will happen to the farmers who grow our food?

We are very lucky to have great fruit in winter as in summer.
I hope nothing destroys that privilege.

Bad things are happening all over our country. Not the least of them for many people: runaway grocery prices, headlined by escalating egg prices and shortages of eggs. Many new policies can impact what we will be able to purchase. Our country is both an importer and an exporter of food. The luxury of fresh vegetables and fruit in winter results from trade with Mexico and South America, where new tariffs may cause retaliation and thus abrupt price increases, and all the changes will have a big impact on American farmers. In the following write-up, I would like to explore a little of the impact of new government directives on US agriculture, and how they might directly affect a consumer like me.

An egg with black beans, avocado (had to be from Mexico!) and a tortilla (probably from US-grown grain).
In my kitchen and every kitchen in America our food will be affected by new policies.

So Much At Risk

Much farm policy that enables us to stock all of our kitchens is at risk. For example, tracking of disease outbreaks among farm animals is being cancelled by cuts at government health agencies: a threat to reliable meat, egg, and dairy production. Ongoing grants supporting energy efficiency and conservation are being withheld or cancelled. Reliance on immigrant farm labor is clearly being disrupted: fifty percent of farm workers are thought to lack legal immigration status. Foreign markets for farmers' produce are being disrupted, preventing stability in farmers' planning. The new budget (being passed this week in the House and Senate) includes cuts in programs like SNAP which buy farmers' produce; Congress has also failed to renew tax protections on farmers this year.

Driving west in 2022, we saw many wind farms, which obviously yield a profit for farmers, as well as supplying them with energy. The current administration wants to stop support for wind farms.

Funds for Next Summer’s Harvests Are Being Withheld

As farmers prepare for 2025 spring planting and eventual summer harvests, promised government funds to support their activities, including purchases of farm equipment as well as routine expenses, have been frozen by the new administration. The consequences: inability of farmers to implement their plans for the growing season. The USDA has not only frozen funds, but has prohibited release of any information about when or how the funds might be released. (source) 

Some cancelled funds were promised through conservation and climate programs, along with access to data sets that helped farmers adapt to changing conditions. This climate-related data also has been scrubbed from websites at the Department of Agriculture. Earlier this week several farmers’ organizations sued the Department saying that “the pages being purged were crucial for farmers facing risks linked to climate change, including heat waves, droughts, floods, extreme weather and wildfires. The websites had contained information about how to mitigate dangers and adopt new agricultural techniques and strategies. Long-term weather data and trends are valuable in the agriculture industry for planning, research and business strategy.” (source)

According to their lawyer: “You can purge a website of the words climate change, but that doesn’t mean climate change goes away.”

Threatened or actual defunding of farmers and removal of useful information will result in food supply issues in the coming months: “Farmers across the U.S. are struggling to make critical decisions ahead of the spring thaw, as billions of dollars in promised federal payments remain frozen by the Trump administration.” One discontinued initiative was $19.5 billion in agriculture-related conservation programs. Another funding freeze involved $3.1 billion for “climate-smart” farm projects. Some of these USDA funds are slowly being released, but the impact of the disruption is widespread. (source)

Fresh salad vegetables and canned tuna may be in jeopardy from import/export issues, too. A big salad like this is one of our frequent dinner entrees.

USAID Cancellation Impacts US Farm Profits

In another disruption of commitments to farmers: American agriculture supplies 41% of the food that’s provided internationally by USAID, which was abruptly shut down this month. This has resulted in immediate loss of tens of thousands of US jobs, and shutting down some welfare organizations as a consequence of cancelling food aid worth over $340 million. Commodity purchases now cancelled include rice, wheat, and soybeans. These farmers had relied on USAID as a place to sell their crops (source). The impact on farmers could resonate into our own food supplies: destabilizing our agriculture isn’t a very good idea. 

From an ABC News article titled “The USAID shutdown is upending livelihoods for nonprofit workers, farmers and other Americans” —

“USAID-run food programs have been a dependable customer for U.S. farmers since the Kennedy administration. Legislation mandates U.S. shippers get a share of the business as well. Even so, American farm sales for USAID humanitarian programs are a fraction of overall U.S. farm exports. … U.S. commodity farmers generally sell their harvests to grain silos and co-ops, at a per bushel rate … farmers worry any time something could hit demand and prices for their crops or give a foreign competitor an opening to snatch away a share of their market permanently.” (source)

Farmers and Tariffs

Tariffs are challenging to understand, but here’s a summary of what the increasing tariffs will mean for American agricultural markets: “Midwest farmers fear economic fallout as Trump’s shifting tariff policies reignite trade tensions with key partners. Many worry that new trade wars will further disrupt global markets, leaving them with fewer buyers and declining profits.” (source) 

Citrus Growers Depend on Immigrant Labor

Florida's citrus growers were just recovering from hurricane damage as they were hit by the Trump-tariff-generated threat of disruption in their Canadian sales, along with disruption in immigrant labor supply and abrupt interruption of promised government grants. 

California citrus growers are expecting a good season this year, though reliance on immigrant labor creates challenges. 30% of California citrus is exported, so tariffs will be an issue. California Mandarins like the one shown in my kitchen are becoming more and more popular, but also more expensive.

Cattle grazing as seen from the Interstate on our 2022 trip west. Cattle are another agricultural product that’s jeopardized. The US is the world’s largest beef exporter. Value: over $4 billion per year. However, we also consume imported beef, so prices may rise as controls are implemented.

Trump’s Promises?

From The Minnesota Reformer:

“Many farmers voted for Trump because he promised less regulation and greater prosperity for America’s farmers. The hard truth is that, like most of the folks who voted for Trump, farmers failed to do their homework about the reality of the new administration. All of this has occurred in the context of higher input costs and tight margins for virtually all crops.

“We are now living and working in an environment where the only constant is chaos. Chaos produces uncertainty, and that leads to loss of trust. The buyers of U.S. farm products are not going to deal with nations that cannot be trusted. There are plenty of options in today’s world for those buyers to bypass the United States. Why on God’s green earth would they put up with the insanity that we have in Washington now?” (Ben Palen, Feb. 17, 2025)

Higher Prices Coming 

The disruption of farm stability and agricultural supply chains, whether within the US or through imports, will have an effect on grocery prices and food availability for Americans, whatever their political views, and will especially affect those who are food insecure. For more examples, see “Trump’s Funding Freezes Bruise a Core Constituency: Farmers” in the New York Times.

Every meal we eat depends on both our own farmers and on imported food, often from Canada or Mexico.

In My Kitchen this Month

Participating in Sherry’s “In My Kitchen” is always fun, as I like to look back on what I’ve been cooking, and then to share what other bloggers from far-away places have in their kitchens. Sherry herself lives in Australia, and I enjoy reading about bloggers’ kitchens in Europe, Canada, Africa,  and many US states. The world is small and tightly connected. Disruptions in global trade may not now affect other places, but eventually there may be more consequences than just for us in the US. Attributing any single price or availability change to a specific policy or program isn’t straightforward, but I think all Americans are beginning to experience the result of the new administration’s craziness.

More Foods That We’ve Cooked and Eaten Recently

Sautéed fresh mushrooms tossed with frozen peas.

Ginger muffins in silicone muffin cups.

Valentine gift from Carol: a box of fantastic chocolates, including a white-chocolate mouse.
Climate change and other factors have vastly disrupted cocoa production and caused large increases in prices.

Our new kitchen knife with a magnetic holder.

New serving tray with a local theme.

Thinking of Other People

Please understand that though I write about my own fortunate situation, I am deeply aware that many Americans are suffering terribly from the increasingly dire food situation in our country. This photo from the New York Times highlights the desperation for food that many are experiencing. (source)

Photos of mouse and of cows shared with Eileen’s Critters

Shared with Sherry’s IMK and with Deb at Readerbuzz.

Photos © 2022, 2025 mae sander