Virtue

The Virtues of the Table: How to Eat and Think is a book about ethics by a very opinionated journalist, Julian Baggini. He’s really quite preachy. But I still enjoyed reading the first half of it, because I like his way of challenging commonly-held ideas. The second half was a bit tedious, rehashing a lot of concepts that are often mentioned about food and cuisine, and I kind of speed-read it.

Here are some quotes that appealed to me. (Note, the Kindle edition doesn’t have page numbers).

“The idea that novelty is a cardinal virtue in food can only emerge in a culture where the food tradition is weak and the daily menus not packed with favourites passed down the generations. Routine need not lead to boredom, but ironically, the constant pursuit of novelty can. There is nothing more tedious than culinary innovation for the sake of it.”

 

“In the 1950s and 1960s the Spanish costas were ruined by tasteless developments built to attract mainly British holiday-makers in search of a cheap break. Now, behind the beaches, the foothills are being ruined to provide tasteless food to, often British, consumers in search of cheap meals. The Spanish have blown their inheritance in search of quick rewards.”

“Excessive rigidity about the desire to cook everything from scratch is not a character trait I wanted to reinforce. It would be wrong to become moralistic about what is in essence a luxury. Before the widespread use of domestic ovens, the poor did little home cooking as we would now recognise it. In the slums of the developing world, takeaways and simple restaurants are the cheap option, not an indulgence, since it is more expensive to buy the fuel to cook at home for a single family than it is for one person to cook for many. In the modern West, doing a lot of home cooking is the privilege of the time-rich, or at least time-flexible.”

Time Marches On

The essays in this book were collected for publication in 2014, meaning they were written and in some cases published elsewhere earlier than that. I’m surprised at how many of the ideas were being explored in detail back then (as I recall) but have gone dormant now, though they would be just as relevant. I think the whole question of ethical eating was discussed much more a while ago than it is now. When was the last time I saw the term "food miles" and heard all the fuss about eating local? No longer an obsession, I guess.

I’m also surprised at how several of the “facts” known a decade ago are now very much in question, especially those theories of weight control and hunger that have been demolished by the widespread use of GLP drugs like Wegovy. 

“Why do people seem to think that people ought to lose weight by willpower alone?” asks the author when discussing weight-loss surgery. He argues that such surgery should be a perfectly respectable and unquestioned procedure, but he didn't think it was accepted. 

The same judgy question comes up for people on weight loss drugs now, but the whole issue has shifted as it’s become apparent that the control of food thoughts and hunger is simply much more difficult — or not possible — for many people, whose problem can now be solved by drugs, not surgery with all its risks. Reading the viewpoint from a decade ago sheds light on how much things have changed because of effective weight-loss drugs.

I wish I knew what inspired me to get this book! The author is still producing many articles, so maybe he mentioned it himself? I can’t really recommend it, though it has some good chapters.

Julian Baggini (Wikipedia)

Review © 2025 mae sander

Kitchens, March 2025

New in My Kitchen in March

New spoon rest or teabag holder that Evelyn made me.

What’s new on the refrigerator this month? Just one new and timely magnet.
For a thought-provoking essay on Orwell see: “We are all living in George Orwell’s World Now”
in the New York Times Magazine.

Things We Ate in March

Vietnamese shrimp and snap peas. Recipes from Andrea Nguyen.

Favorite dish: au gratin potato casserole prepared in my French baking dish that I’ve had for many years.

Roast lamb, roast potatoes, broccoli, and a glass of red wine.

An omelet and a pita bread.

In our kitchen one morning. Toast, jam, butter, orange juice, coffee. Other mornings, other selections.

Alice at our favorite bakery, Tous Les Jours — lunch. Yes, we three ate all these pastries!

A visual recipe from the website Recipe Tin Eats. It was very good!

A great meal from Carol’s kitchen.

Recently opened in Ann Arbor: one of a small chain of Vietnamese/French coffee shops. 

Beyond my own Kitchen: US Food Aid Disrupted

Destructive actions by our government have been constantly increasing. 

“Last week, the USDA cut an initiative called the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program, which helped schools receive fresh ingredients from small farms.” (source)

Food-insecurity is a major concern that has been addressed by some very effective programs during the past five years, but those programs are being abruptly discontinued. Farmers have suddenly been abandoned by government programs that purchased their goods on behalf of food banks. Agencies like Feeding America are struggling to cope with these losses. 

“USDA had previously allocated $500 million in deliveries to food banks for fiscal year 2025 through The Emergency Food Assistance Program. Now, the food bank leaders say many of those orders have been canceled.” (source)

Food banks throughout the country, which have struggled to help those in need as their numbers increased, are now profoundly challenged as many millions of dollars in food aid has been cut off: 

“USDA’s cancellation of the Local Food for Schools and Local Food Purchase Assistance programs has garnered headlines, but they are just two of more than a dozen programs supporting small farms and regional food infrastructure that have been impacted. (source)

Source: “Feds cancel #4.3M worth of poultry, cheese, eggs to Michigan Food Banks” (March 29, 2025)

Here in Ann Arbor, throughout our state of Michigan, and in most other states, needy families that relied on USDA food supplies for nutritional help are facing a grim future. 

“Nearly $5 million worth of food for Michigan food banks has been cut by the Trump Administration, according to the CEO of one of Battle Creek's food banks. Although that number accounts for about 4% of food distributed to Michiganders across eight counties, South Michigan Food Bank CEO Peter Vogel is hopeful the cuts won't cause southwest Michiganders to go hungry. Canceled meals, including products such as chicken, eggs, pork, turkey and cheese, were expected to be delivered this spring and summer.” (source)

Farmers, already jeopardized by international trade cancellations in the tariff wars, are additionally faced with these newly cancelled orders. (The impact on farmers of new tariffs scheduled to begin this week is a major issue, separate from the various program cancellations.)

“Funding pauses at the U.S. Department of Agriculture are affecting sustainable agricultural programs in Michigan. The program Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities funds 41 projects, including 28 in Michigan. Grants support programs that increase economic opportunities for farmers who use sustainable practices. The disbursement of those funds has been stopped, according to two of those projects in Michigan.” (source)

Thinking of my own kitchen, where I am so extremely fortunate, makes me also think of the less fortunate people in my community, my state, and my country — one of the tragedies that is unfolding in the tsunami of federal injustice.

Blog post and original photos © 2025 mae sander.

Other photos as credited.

Shared with In My Kitchen at Sherry’s blog.

Cruelty: A Story of Vietnam and Cambodia

 

Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes by Chantha Nguon (published 2024) is one of the most brutal stories I can remember reading. Born in Cambodia to a Vietnamese mother, she experienced the early days of the hideous events in Cambodia in the 1970s; she fled to Saigon where she suffered as the Vietnam War ended and dictatorship and poverty overtook the once-prosperous country. She lived perilously in Vietnam and then again in Cambodia and Thailand where she was in a wide variety of urban slums, refugee camps, and other places of suffering. As I read, I often had to stop and take a symbolic breath of air to clear my mind of the anguish, as well as to recollect the history of the Vietnam War and the Cambodian Genocide, which I haven’t thought about recently.

A quote that the author uses throughout the book: “Rice is what you eat when you have nothing and when you have everything.” (p. 16)  Remarkably, Nguon’s narrative of want and desperation is nevertheless filled with food descriptions. This may be the strangest embedding of food memories I’ve ever read! Each chapter has its own recipes, usually for the traditional foods of the countries where she lived, and usually of a fascinating exotic nature with many local and unfamilar-to-me ingredients. Some of the recipes, however, are written in irony with instructions like this: “Buy the least rotten fish you can find in the communal store or from your neighbor in the market.” (p. 109) or “Recipe: A Taste of Poverty: This dish is easy to prepare, but the regimen is very difficult to maintain—unless you must.” (this recipe is only rice, p. 226)

Life for Nguon until age nine was happy and prosperous; even after the early death of her father, her mother was able to provide a pretty good home and appealing food. Her mother’s many varieties of hand-made noodles are an especially vivid memory. She later contrasts these delicious creations to the packets of instant noodles that were available in some of the refugee camps where she was confined. The instant noodles that her mother disdained were a luxury in these later bad times.

The family escaped from Cambodia to Vietnam just before the situation in Cambodia became impossible: the Khmer Rouge dictators of Cambodia drove the educated urban population from their homes into the countryside where they had nothing and where one fourth of the people died of starvation or worse. (I have included a historic note about these events at the end of this blog post). 

Nguon describes this flight from the city: “You pack your things and walk out of the city with your family. You ask no questions. A sea of humanity is on the move: children, grandparents on cyclos, the sick and wounded in wheeled hospital beds.” (p. 71)

As the Vietnam war ended, Nguon experiences another era of losing everything, becoming a refugee in a camp. “We slept in two rows of thirty bamboo beds in a long, open-air bamboo hut with a thatched roof and earthen floor.” (p. 82) Still, she recalled dreaming of food at that time saying: “my fondest food memories are more of food-dreaming than of the actual meals we ate. It was the dreaming that sustained our minds, if not our bellies.” (p. 65)

Image of boat people fleeing Vietnam, 1975. (source)

After fleeing from Vietnam in a small dangerous boat (that is, becoming “boat people”) she and her husband spent a decade waiting in another refugee camp in Thailand, hoping to be accepted to go to Europe or the US. In the camp, they were given a few necessities:

“Again, a UNHCR official issued us two cookpots. This time we also got a small wood-burning cook stove, two blankets, a mosquito net, a spoon, and a plastic plate. Someone showed us to a long, narrow structure with concrete floors, tin roofs, and thin cement walls on three sides. ‘This is your house,’ the man said. The shelters were designed for forty people, so each person was allotted a rectangle of concrete about the size of a single bed.” (p. 190)

Eventually, they realized that they had no chance of escape from the refugee camp, and in desperation they returned to Cambodia, which was emerging from the genocide nightmare and becoming civilized again. After several years of various endeavors, they founded a women’s weaving studio where they helped to create a better life for other people, and where they raised their two children, though there’s only a fairly brief summary of this time of her life.

Refugee Camps Still Exist: Waiting at the US Border This Month

As I read the stories of the expulsions 50 years ago as people were forced from their homes and were walking long distances in search of a place of refuge, I thought with horror of the fact that the same thing is happening right now. Long lines of displaced people in Mexico are heading for the US border, and as of this week, their hopes of asylum have been destroyed. The camps where they wait are eerily like the ones the author experienced in Southeast Asia a generation ago.

Historic Note on Events in Nguon’s Memoir

In case the history is unfamiliar to you, here is a summary of the Cambodian Genocide: 

”Lasting for four years (between 1975 and 1979), the Cambodian Genocide was an explosion of mass violence that saw between 1.5 and 3 million people killed at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, a communist political group. The Khmer Rouge had taken power in the country following the Cambodian Civil War. During their brutal four-year rule, the Khmer Rouge was responsible for the deaths of nearly a quarter of Cambodians.

“The Cambodian Genocide was the result of a social engineering project by the Khmer Rouge, attempting to create a classless agrarian society. The regime would ultimately collapse when the neighboring Vietnam invaded, establishing an occupation that would last more than a decade.” (source)

Review © 2024 mae sander for maefood.blogspot.com

Kitchens and Politics, July 2024

In My July Kitchen 

New plate from the Ann Arbor Art Fair.

I'm sharing my July kitchen activities and food thoughts with Sherry and her blog party called In My Kitchen. It's been an exciting month, with lots of cooking: in fact, I have already posted photos of quite a few things that we ate. During the month, we’ve had visitors; moreover, we have been following the eventful news about the upcoming elections and the excitement of the Paris Olympics. I've also been enjoying the blog party Paris in July, where more than 20 bloggers have shared posts about books, movies, art, food, and other topics with a French theme.

But let’s look around my kitchen: first the refrigerator —

Cooking and Baking This Month

From the following photos, you can see that the innovative recipes and baking in our kitchen are now done by Len. I still do my share, but I tend to make our old favorites and easy meals — not worth photographing.  And he does the novel recipes, especially from the New York Times and a couple of recent Asian cookbooks. Len has been baking bread and trying new recipes for several years since I began to feel burned out (and since he retired from teaching at the University).

Len made pizza.

Dinner for two nights. Miriam made the New York Times farro salad. Len made the seafood dish.
I concocted the leftover versions.

I made Aloo Gobi — a dish of potatoes and cauliflower with Indian spices.

One French dish we made this month: I made the base and Len torched this crème brûlée.

More delicious baking from Len.

For more photos of our July meals, see this post from Monday:

https://maefood.blogspot.com/2024/07/what-we-ate-and-drank-in-july.html

 

Beyond My Kitchen: Kamala Harris and Food

Kamala Harris in the kitchen (a few years ago).

Some great facts about Kamala Harris:

• Harris loves to cook. According to a New York Times article, she "scrolls cooking sites and relaxes at the end of the day by reading cookbooks. (Her favorites are by the Italian cook Marcella Hazan and the California chef Alice Waters.)" She has made a few cooking videos, and has given informal demonstrations of her recipes during campaign events.
• Harris has consistently promoted policies and legislation to combat hunger and poverty. Unlike her Republican opponents, she has made efforts to provide more federal food aid — not to cut benefits for those in need. In 2020, as a Senator, she cosponsored the “Closing the Meal Gap” act which extended food benefits during the pandemic. She advocated for increases in funding for summer meals for children who were dependent on school breakfast and lunch programs during the school year. These children otherwise might go hungry when school was out-of-session. She also worked to expand eligibility for school lunch programs.
• “As part of the Biden administration, she of course supported a major expansion a of the tax credit that greatly reduced child poverty but expired in 2022 in the face of unified Republican opposition.” (source)
• Harris favors better wages for food workers; for example, she supported McDonald’s workers in Iowa in 2019 as they went on strike to obtain a $15 hourly wage and the right to form a union. 
• Harris has promoted efforts to improve working conditions and to ensure better pay for agricultural workers. The United Farm Workers has already endorsed her for President: 

“Since the very beginning of her career in California — the nation’s largest agricultural producer — Kamala Harris has proven herself a loyal friend of all working people. … Vice President Harris has stood with farm workers as California Attorney General, as a United States Senator, and as Vice President. The United Farm Workers could not be prouder to endorse her for President of the United States. Together, we continue the work of building an America that works for all of its working people. ¡Sí Se Puede!” (https://ufw.org/harrisendorsement7212024/)

 

And Olympic Gold

Blog post © 2024 mae sander 

Sunny Summer Days

 

In the garden

The herbs keep growing.

We walked along the Huron River.

Summer Reading

I read one more mystery by E.C.R. Lorac: Checkmate to Murder (1944)
Quite enjoyable!

Throughout Lorac’s novel, we keep coming back to one character, Roseanne, and her preparation of a stew to feed the men who were assembled while the murder next door was taking place:

“Rosanne returned to her cooking. She had undertaken to produce supper for five people at nine o’clock. The chess players and Delaunier had each provided a ration of something ‘to put into the pot,’ and Rosanne was contriving a savoury stew from the miscellaneous collection brought in by the others, added to the meat and vegetables she had bought for herself. Actually she loathed cooking, but with the rare common sense which characterised her, she had taught herself to cook, and to cook well, in order to prevent Bruce squandering their slender means on restaurant meals.” (p. 8)

It’s a well-plotted mystery, and the characters are interesting though not necessarily likable. Inspector Macdonald, of course, succeeds again.

A major success by World Central Kitchen described in detail.
I have enormous respect for this organization and its founder José Andrés. 

This book was published in 2018 about the events following the hurricane in Puerto Rico the previous year. Unfortunately, it’s still painfully relevant both in terms of the challenge of how to deal with natural disasters, and in the horrific indifference and cruelty shown by then-President Trump towards the American citizens (that is, the people of Puerto Rico) whose entire world was destroyed and who were starving and homeless.

Photos © 2024 mae sander

A New Year is coming: let it be better than this one.

Birding allows me to enjoy the beauty of the natural world.
Yet anyone who appreciates the natural world has a lot to worry about.
This bird, the kingfisher, has long been a symbol of calm weather, peace, and love.

The Planet is in Trouble!

What is important to me this year? Global human and natural welfare are fragile. The future looks uncertain. My focus leans towards the US because that’s where I live, and I see many causes for concern, serious concern. Many of the issues that I worry about are closely linked to one another. And there are so many of them!

• Climate change as an existential threat to humanity: arriving rapidly and causing a number of types of deprivation, desperation, natural disasters, and dysfunction in societies, especially causing food scarcity and famine or near-famine in the global south.
• The war in Israel and the dreadful consequences if Hamas is not defeated.
• Antisemitism in American life and on US university campuses — brought out by the war in Israel, but obviously evoked, not caused by the war.
• Increasing inequality (both socio-economic and racial) throughout the US with a variety of bad consequences, combined with right wing repression of women’s rights and minority rights.
• The war in Ukraine and the looming dominance of Russia as a consequence of a bad end to the war. 
• Food shortages in many third world countries (much of it due to climate change) forcing large numbers of people to crowd into already overburdened cities and often to attempt migration to the global north.
• Political success by the extreme right wing in many places. The large numbers of desperate people wanting to enter North American and European countries is one factor in growing right-wing strength in the global north.
• Degradation of educational institutions in the US: a complex and multi-faceted issue.
• The threat to world peace implicit in almost every one of the above issues.
• In the US, we are also threatened with the end of democracy and the completion of a right-wing takeover of the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of the Federal government.

Notice that I don’t have any mention of AI or of any type of rampant and out-of-human-control technology on the list. I’m not very worked up about AI — maybe that will prove to be all wrong. And although I’m very interested in how our food choices and consumer choices collectively impact human life, my concerns for the future are expressed in a more general way. Similarly, fears that treasured creatures such as some species of birds, bats, frogs, polar bears, rhinos, fish, monarch butterflies, and many more may go extinct (or lose their natural habitat and exist only in captivity) is intrinsic in the concern about climate change. As the New Year approaches, all these thoughts perplex me.

Sunrise on one of the shortest days of the year. We hope things will start to look better.

I've also reread a mystical novel based on Jewish traditions and folklore:
The World to Come by Dara Horn. Reading good books: another cosolation.

Blog post © 2023 mae sander

Shared with Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz 

and with Eileen's Saturday Critters 

In My Kitchen, October 2023

Obviously in my kitchen in October is Halloween candy!

For more than half the month of October, we were out of town and eating mainly in restaurants, so not much has happened in my kitchen lately. Therefore this wrap-up will be short. I'm sharing my kitchen thoughts with the many other bloggers who summarize new foods and gadgets each month and link up at Sherry's Blog.

New from Trader Joe's: a nice French snack.
I had it waiting in the freezer for when we arrived home after a day in the car.

Brought back from our visit to Fairfax where there's a Wegman's.

On every trip, I get some new magnets and retire the previous batch from my refrigerator door.
These are from Monticello, Cape May, the National Zoo in Washington, and the Baltimore museum.
Also, Alice brought me a Daruma magnet from her trip to Japan. (I wish I had been there too!)

We've been eating simple meals, often made from pantry staples. For example, for this lunch, we had
sardines (from a can), sliced cheese, lettuce, olives, and stuffed grape leaves (another Trader Joe item).

Simple classic: roast chicken, bread dressing, cranberry sauce.

Len’s latest bread, with raisins and dried cherries.

Food Waste

In my kitchen is a new trash can. The old one was broken, so we had to get another one for household trash that can't be recycled or composted. Very unexciting, but it reminds me of an issue that’s getting a lot of attention these days: FOOD WASTE.

Potential mulch.

From start to finish, we are told, there is unnecessary waste at every step of the food chain. The wasted food represents an unproductive expenditure of energy. Piles of rotting garbage then produce methane and other by-products, and thus accelerate global warming. One household doesn’t make much garbage, but there are millions of us!

"According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), approximately 31% of the available food supply is wasted, with 21% occurring in households and 10% in consumer-facing businesses....About 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions are linked to food loss and waste." (source)

Here in Ann Arbor, compostable household garbage is collected with the garden waste (like raked-up leaves) and is turned into usable compost. Nationally, around 27% of the US population has access to a program for composting food waste. (source)

A few big actions lead people to waste food in their own kitchens. Homes with children have many challenges with wasted food for a lot of reasons. In particular, if parents follow general advice on having children try new foods several times, waste is inevitable. Adult families create waste when we over-supply our refrigerators and pantries with food we don’t need or don’t manage to use. Whether the unused food goes to landfill or to composting facilities, it's still wasted.

What are people doing that results in so much waste?

• Buying too much at the grocery store, especially produce, and then not using it in a timely way. You get a good deal: 20 pounds of potatoes and 10 pounds of onions at Costco. What happens to them?
• Cooking a big quantity and not using the leftovers. Trying a new food and not liking it. Or just overfilling your plate: especially an issue at restaurants. Abundance is our enemy in fighting waste.
• Purchasing unusual ingredients when planning to cook a complicated recipe and it doesn't happen — so you never need the materials. Or buying a big package/bottle/box of an exotic Asian sauce or special condiment that you only use once and throwing it away a year later.
• Over-reacting to “sell by” and “best by” dates on packaged and processed foods. These labels encourage people to throw away still-usable food. We are now told that other than deli meats and a few other things, most foods are still fit to eat (if they don’t smell bad) for quite a while after the date on the package. I partly believe this, and try to make responsible trade-offs between eating something that might be too old, and tossing something that might be fine.
• And just a seasonal note: in my experience, any leftover Halloween candy should be thrown out just before Valentine's Day. (For a more nuanced view on candy shelf-life see eater.com.)

Maybe you grew up hearing that you should clean your plate because there were starving children elsewhere in the world. (The exact spot where these children lived varied throughout the 20th century.) Maybe your mother or teacher said these hypothetical children would be thrilled if they were offered what you were rejecting. I have no idea if this ever made any difference in any child’s behavior.

Starving children are unfortunately still with us now, but I think we adults in the 21st century can find more useful motives for trying to be more responsible. If we want to combat global or local food insecurity, there are better ways than cleaning our plates!

Maybe it’s too late to undo global warming, or too depressing to think about it very much. No doubt though: global warming is clearly leading to crop failures and to starvation in Africa and other parts of the world. Overwhelming, isn’t it?

Neighborhood Update: Decorations at Night

Happy Halloween, Everyone!

Blog post © 2023 mae sander