Tag: food

Land Use

Fascinating. So much land wasted for shitty burgers.

33% of US land is used for pasture — by far the largest land-use type in the contiguous 48 states. And 25% of that land is administered by the federal government, with most occurring in the West. That land is open to grazing for a fee. There’s a single, major occupant on all this land: cows. Between pastures and cropland used to produce feed, 41% of US land in the contiguous states revolves around livestock.

No Passport Required Queens

In “Queens, NYC” host Marcus Samuelsson heads to the New York borough to learn more about the Indo-Guyanese community’s culture, history, and food. In Queens’s Richmond Hill neighborhood, Samuelsson visits roti shops and bakeries like Singh’s Roti Shop to make and eat classic Guyanese treats like pine tarts, pepperpot, doubles, and plait bread. He visits the temple canteen inside a neighborhood mandir, makes Caribbean-style roti at home with a Guyanese family, and plays in a cricket match, followed by a meal of bake and saltfish, coconut pastries called salara, and more.

17th century food

Most people in the early modern world—not just in Europe, but everywhere—were illiterate farmers and pastoralists whose diet was hyper-minimalist by contemporary standards. This is not to say that their food tasted bad, necessarily. But it was clearly very simple, and very starch-heavy. From China to Europe to sub-Saharan Africa, gruels and stews made out of staple grains or legumes were the daily fare. Italian farmers weren’t eating eggplant parmesan or spaghetti with meatballs. They were typically eating either boiled beans or grains, day after day after day. The acute eyes of Bruegel the Elder captured one example of this universal food of the premodern peasantry. In Bruegel’s The Harvesters, a team of peasants is taking a break for a mid-day meal which seems to consist entirely of bread and bowls of what I am guessing is a wheat-based gruel, something akin to Cream of Wheat. The jugs they’re drinking out of probably contain small beer.

East of Edenworks

The Edenworks fish and greens ecosystem farm in Brooklyn uses broad-spectrum LED lighting for continuous production indoors, all year long. The microgreens are in floating aquaponic containers, fertilized by the microbially-digested fish waste from below, and they thrive on this nutrient stream. Results: the greens and fish are quite yummy and popular at the local Whole Foods.

  • 90% of American seafood is imported and 40% is mislabeled (!)
  • Fish are 40x more efficient than cows at converting feed to body mass
  • Over 50% of all fish meals come from aquaculture ($160B globally)
  • Edenworks’ aquaponic microbiome improves conversion of nitrogen to plant yield by 18x over indoor hydroponics

Navy Yard Expansion

Currently, the Navy Yard has 60 buildings under lease. The first phase of growth at the Navy Yard will be driven by 5 cornerstone projects, encompassing 250K m2 of space either in development or just finished developing: The Green Manufacturing Building, currently home to New Lab, Crye Precision and Brooklyn Roasting Company (800 jobs), Building 77 (3000+ jobs), Dock 72, a private joint venture where WeWork will be located (4000 jobs), the expansion of Steiner Studios (2000 jobs), and Admiral’s Row site, which will be anchored by a Wegman’s grocery store (1200 jobs).

EV Chinese Dining

In the East Village, you can now get Hunan-inspired mifen rice noodles, Cajun-Chinese spicy crawfish boils at $30 per Kg, Hong Kong-style clay pot rice, and homey bowls of Taiwanese beef noodles — all within the same 1km radius. And most of these restaurants weren’t even here just 2 years ago.

  • Han Dynasty
  • Tim Ho Wan
  • Mimi Cheng’s Dumplings
  • The Bao
  • Szechuan Mountain House
  • Clay Pot NYC
  • Drunken Dumpling
  • MáLà Project
  • Hunan Slurp Shop
  • Ho Foods

Bushwick Night Market

You should come hungry to Happy Family Night Market. The 1-day Bushwick festival promises to be a vibrant celebration of Asian-American culture through food, film, discussions and more.

Let’s start with just some of the menu; so far there’ll be chicken choila with aachar and puffed rice and a vegetarian momo from While in Kathmandu. Bunker Vietnamese will serve Smallhold mushroom tempura, red wattle pork skewer, grilled corn with scallion oil and a coconut peanut topping. Randwiches will bring adobo pulled pork sliders, Shikampur-style lamb meatballs in a rich gravy, and potato-croquette-style balls with Maggi ketchup from Taj Mah Balls. Honey’s will be putting on a specialty cocktail made with umeboshi plums from Ozuké.

Bronx Night Market

In the mood for some delicious food, artisanal products, and live music? Head on up to the Bronx’s first-ever Night Market, at Fordham Plaza this Saturday from 16-21. Following the lead of the Queens International Night Market, which opened in 2014, the Bronx Night Market will feature more than 40 food vendors, as well as a variety of art and merchandise vendors.