FERN’s Friday Feed: The soup war
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
How Ukraine’s national dish became a symbol of Putin’s war
The Guardian
“On 25 February 2022, I woke up after a turbulent night checking news updates about Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” writes Anya von Bremzen. “Amid the shock and bouts of crying and doomscrolling, a seemingly trivial yet intimately unsettling thought entered my mind. I realised that after years of investigating national cuisines and identities for a book I was working on, I no longer knew how to think or talk about borsch, a beet soup that Ukraine and Russia claimed as their own.”
Food tattoos take root
Taste
“In the early 2000s, tattoos were an overt chef signifier—especially food tattoos. You know the vibe: full sleeves filled out with true-to-size measuring cups, a long stalk of knobby Brussels sprouts, maybe a diagram of how to butcher a pig. Some part of the stereotype stems from line cooks’ early adoption of tattoos, an affinity nurtured by the restaurant industry’s counterculture mentality and lack of corporate culture. As chefs captured the public imagination, so did their tattoos,” writes Aliza Abarbanel. “Still lifes bearing hunks of holey Swiss cheese, crunchy baguettes, and martini glasses runneth over with gin are just one example of a surging new school of tattoos expanding the definition of ‘food people’ and ‘tattoo people.’”
How the farm bill can ease childcare struggles
Ambrook Research
“Nationally, 74% of farm families have experienced childcare challenges due to cost, availability, and distance to care,” writes Shelby Vittek. “The lack of available options can hinder farm growth, forcing farmers to choose between growing their business and keeping their kids safe. Could help soon be on the way? For the first time in history, the American Farm Bureau and the National Farmers Union have included affordable childcare in their priorities for the 2023 Farm Bill.”
What it means to nourish ourselves and others
Longreads
“I don’t like to give my current position of oneness a sitcom-like gleam. I do not consider it so permanent as to be radical and I don’t think of it as so fleeting to entirely dismiss it altogether,” writes Sharanya Deepak. “More than anything, I like to … recognize it, to exercise my right to sometimes think, cook, and eat alone. Besides, how alone am I when I cook for myself? When I make a peanut-chili oil and drizzle it on noodles like my cousin Arya, or when I add dahi to my qeema like my friend Dr. Masoodi … I like it this way, when the economy of the kitchen belongs to other people … The kitchen is a memory keeper, crowded with recipes and prompts from the people of my life. But what is mine is the choice to get it right or fuck it up. When I cook for myself … I am genderless, childless, a person without any hinges. I am, fleetingly, nobody, or whoever I want to be.”
The sweet, foxy funk of scuppernongs
Oxford American
“I was a full-grown adult before I knew how to spell the word ‘scuppernong.’ This deficiency was not helped by the phonetic gymnastics some growers would undertake to advertise their roadside produce on cardboard signs,” writes Katoya Ellis Fleming. “One such homemade billboard near my mama’s house would occasionally brag: SCUPPYNINES 4 SALE. I learned near about the same time that some folks don’t even know what a scuppernong is and have never experienced these strange grapes—fat, round, and golden, their skins tough and tart, like the rind of a slightly underripe plum. This realization made the fruit a special thing to me, a uniquely Southern commodity deeply ensconced in the lore of my family.”