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Asking for your Input, and Planning for Posts to Come
This is going to be a short post—partly because my kid’s school is now entering its second week of a teachers’ strike (definitely not on my bingo card for 2024) and partly because I’m allocating all my mental energy to my (abundant) February to-do list. But it’s as good a time as any to open my drawer of potential ideas for posts and share a few of them with you. The entire concept of service journalism is to give readers access to practical, usable advice that will help shape their lives and practices, anchored in the genuine solicitation of reader feedback and community engagement. Though numerous people would question whether all food writing is inherently service-oriented, I do think that a newsletter such as this—something that sits at the intersection of criticism, scholarship, and popular explorations of food and media—has at least a little bit of practical application and public viability in mind at all times. Food presents a unique challenge to writers, in that the more you write about it, the more concrete and yet also more abstract it becomes. Even as we write about the specific elements of a dish—its ingredients, its nutritional qualities, the chemical processes it has undergone—we also have to engage with its abstract, aesthetic value, the pleasure and disgust it invokes, the memories it triggers, the thoughts and feelings it produces. And all of that has to add up to something that not only produces meaning and value for the author, but also meaning and value for the reader. Food writing serves, for sure, but also fuels the appetite for subsequent courses.
So all of this is to say that your feedback, your interests, and your engagement with this site shape what I choose to think and write about in this space. If you want a look into the worlds of fine dining then that means I get started on some restaurant reviews. If you have been eyeing that viral do-everything pan popping up in your feed, then maybe I can try it out and tell you if it’s any good. Or maybe you’ve been dying for a hot take on the latest so-called food historian…well, I’m going to have to get in line behind a whole lot of other folks to write that piece. But whatever you’re hungering for, I want to leave some space this year to ensure that you’re well fed.
So, in lieu of a fully cooked post this week, I’d like to offer you the chance to share your thoughts, via this short anonymous survey (no more than 10 min, I promise!) This is a great opportunity to weigh in on what you like or don’t like about FF&M thus far, and what you’d like to see more of in the coming months. Can’t wait to hear your feedback!
Recommendation: Again, school strike, so not a ton of offline content consumed this week. But I’ve eagerly bookmarked two pieces that I’d love to read along with you: first, the New York Times’ exploration of contemporary dining trends as viewed through the menu design and dish descriptions of today. (Man, I would’ve loved to be in the room when the authors pitched this, as I would’ve leapt from my chair yelling “Yas material culture!” and had to be dragged away.) Second, and not entirely unrelated, Amy McCarthy’s piece from Eater at Home about the rules and regulations of the dinner party, as viewed through the hilarious dining guides of the twentieth century. I’ll be enjoying this one with my pinky decidedly up.
The Perfect Bite: After a visit to Cambridge to return some library books, I drove down the stretch of Massachusetts avenue that we once called home and picked up dinner at our favorite Lebanese restaurant, Cafe Barada. Apart from what remains the best fattoush salad I’ve ever had (heavy on the sumac and lemon juice), we also enjoyed tastes of ful mudammas, homemade falafel, and beef kebabs over pilaf, and topped everything with generous spoonfuls of toum (and enjoyed garlic breath for a solid 24 hours afterwards—worth it.) So glad they’re still in business, and cooking up just as delicious food as when we were locals.
Cooked & Consumed: Continuing on my quest for more meatless meals, we cooked two bangers this week. First, Smitten Kitchen’s french onion lentils & farro, which was so easy to put together and had just enough melted gruyere on top to make it feel like a decadent treat. (Also, nice to be able to point to each element in the dish as something my kiddo loves—sweet onions, lentils, farro, cheese—as proof that she should try it and like it.) Second, for dinner last night with friends, I put a long-dormant package of phyllo dough to use for Melissa Clark’s spiced vegetable pie. Easy to adapt to various people’s allergies and aversions, it also packed a ton of vegetables into a still-hearty and flavorful main course. (And best of all, we’ve got plenty of leftovers for the week ahead.)