Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
The congressional battle to legalize hemp
Politico
The farm bill is the site of an unlikely battle: whether to legalize hemp. “Next to the fierce debate over whether to tie work requirements to food stamps, the so-called ‘descheduling’ of hemp just might be the most controversial aspect of the massive spending bill,” writes James Higdon. Two Kentucky politicians, Rep. James Comer and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, are the architects of the proposal. Congressional supporters of legalizing hemp see it as a possible replacement crop for former tobacco farmers. With McConnell at the helm of the policymaking, Higdon writes, “[i]t’s not hard to see how hemp could be legal before Election Day.”
A spicy chili paste that binds the Southeast Asian diaspora
The New York Times
If you cook much, chances are you know about sambal oelek, the spicy chili-garlic paste that has become increasingly common in American grocery stores and restaurants. But that sambal is just one of more than 300 varieties of the fiery condiment that is a staple of home cooking in the villages of Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. “Sambal’s new popularity in the United States has made me both excited and territorial,” writes Natalie Pattillo. “In 1999, when I was 8, my family moved from Singapore to Alpine, Texas … When you’re living thousands of miles from your home country, craving your mother’s or grandmother’s sambal is like getting hit with a wave of nostalgia from a fond childhood memory you can’t fully recreate.”
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Dollar General, a discount grocer, is colonizing rural America
The Guardian
“Dollar General is opening stores at the rate of three a day across the US,” writes Chris McGreal. “It moves into places not even Walmart will go, targeting rural towns and damaged inner-city neighbourhoods with basic goods at basic prices – a strategy described by a former chief executive of the chain as “we went where they ain’t.” The chain, which sells everything from groceries to clothes, uses aggressively low prices to drive out local grocery stores, leaving residents with little but “the kinds of processed foods underpinning the country’s obesity and diabetes crisis.” Some communities have started to push back.
New York’s destination for fake meat
Atlas Obscura
A 23-year-old grocery store in Chinatown, New York, has long been a destination for those seeking meat substitutes that mimic animal protein. The market’s founder, Lee Ming Ng, immigrated from Taiwan in 1979 and opened the store in 1995 after feeling “[f]rustrated by the lack of vegetarian options in New York,” writes Priya Krishna. So, she “decided to open a shop dedicated entirely to the mock meats that she felt homesick for.” Now, the market’s audience has grown, and shoppers from across the city come seeking mock chicken legs and bacon.
What is ‘southern food,’ anyway?
The New York Times
When many think of southern food, a particular image often comes to mind. The cook is “probably white or African-American, a churchgoer, a straight woman and a mother,” writes Julia Moskin. But “[m]ore and more Southern cooks are chipping away at that stereotype, both in who they are and what they cook.” In this conversation with cooks Todd Richards and Virginia Willis, Moskin unpacks the stereotypes and histories of southern food, opening up new ways to understand the traditional dishes and their cooks.