Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
The Washington Post
From lab-based improvements to sustainably raised ingredients, carriers are rethinking the food they serve us after decades of treating airline meals as a profitable afterthought, writes Natalie B. Compton. Singapore airlines, for instance, has partnered with AeroFarms, the world’s largest indoor vertical farm, to create its farm-to-plane initiative; Emirates is building its own vertical farming operation in Dubai; and Scandinavian Airlines is “sourcing organic, handpicked ingredients from farms they can readily name, as well as other Scandinavian treats, like craft beer and candy, for its passengers.”
Despite its contested history, okra has connected Southerners for centuries
The Bitter Southerner
Okra’s origins are unclear and its path to North America disputed. Yet the vegetable “binds us all,” writes Shane Mitchell. An old tale about enslaved African women hiding okra seeds in their hair and transporting them here “is probably apocryphal. The more likely explanation for okra landing in the New World has to do with the ugly reality of trade in human beings, and feeding them like so much livestock, in order to get them to market … These ancestors brought a gift we do not deserve.”
Big Brother meets chain restaurants
Wired
“As casual dining chains have declined in popularity, many have experimented with surveillance technology designed to maximize employee efficiency and performance,” writes Louise Matsakis. At one Outback Steakhouse, a surveillance system “analyze[s] footage of restaurant staff at work and interacting with guests” to track “how often a server tends to their tables or how long it takes for food to come out.” While such technologies could reap valuable data for employers, workers are more likely to experience “increased stress and lower job satisfaction.”
Whither funeral food?
The Wall Street Journal (paywall)
The post-funeral deluge of casseroles, fried chicken and other comfort foods is a long and rich tradition, especially among faith-based communities. But changing tastes, concerns about food safety, and generational indifference are weighing on the practice, as more people turn to professional caterers and restaurants for their gustatory balm, writes James R. Hagerty. Still, there are plenty who take it as seriously as ever. In Tabor, Minnesota, Cheryl Novak’s whole family gets involved in the funeral lunches she makes for their church. “Her sons built a meat smoker for the church. ‘They call it the holy smoker,’ Ms. Novak says. Some people, she suspects, attend funerals mainly for the lunch.”
Tracing the origins of the Scorpion Bowl
The Daily Beast
The Scorpion Bowl — “half a bottle’s worth of booze mingled with various fruit juices and whatnot in a gaudily-painted ceramic vessel supported by three kneeling hula girls (also in ceramic) with four long straws jutting over the edges and a gardenia floating placidly in the middle” — is a classic tiki drink. Inherited wisdom says that the drink was invented by Victor “Trader Vic” Bergeron, a California restaurateur inspired by his travels to Hawaii. But the drink’s origins are far more complicated, writes David Wondrich.