FERN’s Friday Feed: The cat’s meat man
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
Feeding felines in Victorian London
The Public Domain Review
“Within minutes of the cat’s meat man embarking on his circuit, the barrow would be surrounded by felines, some of whom had perfectly good homes to go to and others who did not but still hoped that a sliver of flesh might fall their way. Although there were plenty of grim jokes circulating about how cat’s meat men supplied the toughest meat they could get away with,” writes Kathryn Hughes, “the fact was that many of these rough diamonds were known for their tender hearts. It was not unusual to spot a cat’s meat man slipping scraps to the hopeful strays that wound around his ankles. He was their guardian, their special friend. Sometimes he could even bring about fairy-tale transformations: no less a lady than the Duchess of Bedford had recently adopted a stray that had been rescued by her local London cat’s meat man.”
‘Can we bake a truly local loaf?’
Oxford American
“[F]or Erik to bake a truly local loaf of bread, he had to identify regional farmers growing organic, heirloom grains, as well as millers, threshers, and cleaners, all near Chattanooga. In East Tennessee, these folks are hard to find,” writes David Cook. “The vast, rolling fields on the western side of the state crunch up like a folded map as you move east. The Appalachian Mountains and their foothills make large-scale grain-growing difficult. And without East Tennessee growers, why would millers exist here? Or threshers and cleaners? Like is the case for much of the American food system, the work had become compartmentalized and siloed. Done elsewhere. It became his own Little Red Hen story, as Erik wondered, like that fabled chicken: Who will help me bake this bread?”
Why we’re drawn to the false promise of the tradwife
Literary Hub
“Baking felt like a compulsion, a bodily urge. It soothed my anxieties about moving, about leaving the city and all my friends in it, about leaving my girlhood of roommates and karaoke bars behind. But there was also, almost immediately, a wifely quality to my work in the kitchen,” writes Larissa Pham. “It wasn’t that my partner didn’t cook—he does—but I was the one who baked, and I loved it. I loved who I became when I baked: a calmer, more precise person who turned raw ingredients into gold. Why, then, did baking seem to make me closer to something I didn’t understand and wasn’t sure I wanted to become, which was a wife?”
A New York restaurant, a Texas farm, and their plant-based brawl
The New York Times
“The letter from the New York City lawyer came in April. Sky Cutler, 36, was admiring his young tomato plants and preparing to harvest the spring lettuce he grew in a pocket of rich soil here in the Texas Hill Country. He and his family had named it Dirt Candy Farm. It’s only two and a half acres, but he could grow enough to do a good business at the local farmers’ markets,” writes Kim Severson. “As soon as he tore open the envelope, he knew it was trouble …. The letter was from a lawyer hired by the chef Amanda Cohen, who runs a 60-seat vegetarian restaurant on the Lower East Side of Manhattan where a five-course meal …. It is also called Dirt Candy. The letter gave the family one month to rebrand.”
Beginning with seeds: Restoration in the wake of wildfires
Emergence Magazine
“Flames surged over the hills, crackling in a language older than the trees. I watched the news and tracked online maps as the Palisades and Eaton Fires spread, turning entire communities into kindling. Dark plumes of smoke rose from rooftops and stained the sky gray. From the photos,” writes Lauren E. Oakes, “I could almost taste the air—sharp, bitter, and suffocating. The kind of stench that clings to your clothes and sits in your lungs, a plaguing reminder of the fire’s reach. Sunset cast an eerie amber glow. As I scrolled through the countless images, my heart heavy, I came across a story about a gardener in Altadena. In preparing to evacuate, the first thing she packed was her seed collection.”