FERN’s Friday Feed: Men on trips eating food
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
Why TV is full of late-career guys at restaurants
The Atlantic
“White-guy-goes-a-wandering, white-guy-goes-a-gourmandizing — that’s the rubric. Specifically, right now, late-career Hollywood white guy. Phil Rosenthal, the creator of Everybody Loves Raymond, has Somebody Feed Phil on Netflix. Eugene Levy has The Reluctant Traveler on Apple TV+. Stanley Tucci has Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy on Discovery+. Nice work if you can get it. And the genre has been formalized,” writes James Parker, “drone shots of fjords, mesas, and Mumbai street markets; glistening porno food close-ups; tinkly twinkly music; voice-overs saying things like ‘The Venetians are a thrifty people.’ These are the common elements, episode after episode proposing itself as a kind of anemic picaresque in which the host/hero visits a strange place where no misadventures occur, no sex is had, and everyone is very obliging and laughs a little too readily — hahaha! — and gives him nice pieces of pork and yummy desserts.”
‘Reality is a helluva sous chef’
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (video)
“Universal free meals aren’t cheap. In Minnesota they budget at $400 million over the first two years but it’s projected to cost about $80 million more than that. Though, part of the reason for that increased cost is higher-than-expected participation in the program, which is obviously a good thing. Because for the final time, the benefits are clear … That should be the standard in all fifty states. And if it helps, maybe we should be considering lunch as an essential school supply. You know, like books or desks. We accept that they’re subsidized by the government as an investment in kids’ futures. And I’d argue lunch should be too. And that the way to achieve that shouldn’t be by asking each state to fund it out of their own budget, but by passing legislation at the federal level similar to what we did in the early days of the pandemic.”
Can Kentucky farmers resurrect rye for the state’s bourbon industry?
Ambrook
“[T]hose who enjoy Woodford — or practically any bourbon made in the Bluegrass State — aren’t tasting the work of Kentuckians alone. While its water is drawn from limestone-filtered springs, and its corn from nearby farms, the ingredient that gives good bourbon its distinctive pepper and herbal notes is shipped in from thousands of miles away,” writes Daniel Walton. “Early in the state’s history, area farmers grew enough rye to supply its distilleries. But when Prohibition shuttered alcohol production in 1920 … the market for local rye evaporated … [B]y the time distilleries reopened to pent-up demand in the 1930s, domestic rye production had all but disappeared. Distillers looked abroad, sourcing the grain from places like Germany, Poland, and Canada. In the interests of sustainability, supply chain resilience, and good old-fashioned local pride, the bourbon industry now wants to bring rye back to Kentucky.”
Texas rice farmers on the brink
Texas Observer
In the Texas Rice Belt, where 60 percent of all the state’s rice is grown, farmers rely on “water purchased from the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA), the quasi-government agency that regulates water from the Highland Lakes … the chain of dammed freshwater bodies spanning Central Texas from Lake Buchanan to Lake Austin,” writes Paula Levihn-Coon. “For nine decades, rice farmers who bought water from the LCRA could open valves and flood their rice fields when needed.” But “the LCRA has not opened the gates to the canal system that channels water from the Colorado River to [their] rice paddies for two years in a row. Without this LCRA water … dozens of Texas rice farmers are stymied. Indeed, their industry’s survival is at risk.”
Breadfruit is here to save the world
Wired
“Warming temperatures are making farming much more difficult in the tropics. Food systems across island nations in the Caribbean and Pacific are particularly vulnerable,” writes Richard Schiffman, “being hit hard by a combination of heat waves, droughts, and unseasonal rain. And the impact of climate change in these areas is likely to increase significantly in the next decade, especially for farmers of the most common staples like corn, wheat, and soy. But there is one crop that loves the heat and is not easily discouraged by swings in the weather. It is called breadfruit, and it is undergoing a quiet revival in its Pacific island and Caribbean homelands, where people are hoping that the tree, and its produce, will thrive in a climate-changed future.”