FERN’s Friday Feed: A spaghetti obsession
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
Why Dominicans take spaghetti to the beach
Eater
“Spaghetti arrived in the Dominican Republic with a wave of Italian migration in the late 19th century, but became ubiquitous in the national diet in the ’50s, after the dictator Rafael Trujillo started the first domestic pasta factory,” writes Mike Diago. “‘At that time spaghetti became cheaper than rice, plantains, beans, bacalao, herring, meat, everything,’ says Ivan Dominguez, director of Alianza Dominicana Cultural Center in Washington Heights. ‘My whole neighborhood would go on Sundays, maybe 45 of us, in a two-story guagua (bus) from Santo Domingo to Boca Chica and everyone would have their pot of spaghetti.’ These gatherings, and the spaghetti itself, both came to be known as empaguetadas.”
New law that expands farmworker rights has Colorado farmers grumbling
Colorado Sun
From guaranteed overtime and the end of “stoop labor” to health care access and protection for abused workers, “the Farmworkers’ Bill of Rights that was signed into law … will significantly impact working conditions for … the more than 40,000 farmworkers in Colorado, an estimated three-quarters of them Mexican and Central American migrant workers,” writes Nancy Lofholm. “Agricultural employers who oppose the new law say it will increase their labor costs 20% to 30%. It may force them to cut back on their operations.”
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The immigrant workforce milking Wisconsin’s cows
The Guardian
“As the number of dairy farms in Wisconsin declines, the size of dairy farms is increasing; large farms with thousands of cows that require round-the-clock milking, and by extension, a larger workforce,” writes Summer Sewell. “The foreign-born population in Wisconsin has grown by 45% since 2000, with rural counties seeing the largest and fastest growth of that population. Immigrant workers make up approximately 40% of the workforce on Wisconsin dairy farms, and up to 90% are undocumented … The shift in the way of dairy farming is slowly shifting the demographics of America’s dairyland.”
New clues on old pottery help scientists determine ancient diets
Knowable Magazine
“Newer scientific techniques, added to a more inclusive view of the importance of everyday activities in archaeology, are leading to a clearer picture of what was on the prehistoric menu. Gathered from bottles, fragments of ceramic pots and even relics from Bronze Age grave sites, microbes and remnants of molecules offer a bevy of new clues about ancient cuisine,” writes Carolyn Wilke. “Earthenware pots were a game changer, Dunne says, and people invented them multiple times in different places. Ceramic vessels helped change what people ate — they could boil meat for stews, for example, or cook tubers long enough to destroy toxins.”
Pig cuts through American foodie hypocrisy
The New Republic
“Pig, Michael Sarnoski’s foodie noir about loss, love, and labor in Portland, Oregon’s restaurant scene, doesn’t leave them much room for redemption,” writes Jan Dutkiewicz. “It … spends most of its time sending up the manners and morals of an industry that promises diners real food at premium prices, selling them feel-good stories and ethical peace, all while abusing workers and animals. This is often painfully heavy-handed, but it speaks to a fundamental truth about a troubled industry.”