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By rights, there should have been an episode last week, but there wasn’t because I was just back from New York and the James Beard Awards, and I just didn’t have time to put something together. Also, of course, I didn’t win — that honour went to Gravy, from the Southern Foodways Alliance — and […]

Not much for you this week. I’m in New York, awaiting tomorrow night’s James Beard Awards dinner, and wondering what I’ll do if I win, and what I’ll do if I don’t win. Either way, you’ll hear about it first here.

The appropriation saga continues, with peanuts in West Africa and bagels in New York.

Quinoa — that darling of the health-conscious western consumer — came in for a lot of flack a few years ago. Skyrocketing prices caused some food activists to claim that the poor quinoa farmers of the high Andean plains in Bolivia and Peru were no longer able to afford their staple food. Every mouthful we […]

Prices come down, prices go up, ice cream melts, cuisines move, coffee brews.

Life goes on.

At this year’s Amsterdam Symposium on the History of Food I talked to Jon Verriet, who’s been researching the history of the haybox. That’s an insulated container, into which you put hot food, which then keeps cooking thanks to the retained heat. Jon made the point that hayboxes often see an upsurge during times of […]

Pepper, butter, foraged food and rice. Diversity, right?

When it comes to cradles of agriculture, West Africa does not often get a look in. The Sahel is better known as a place of famine than of feasting, but it wasn’t always so, and even today the Bamana people of Mali have a rich food culture. Stephen Wooten – that’s him in the picture […]

More than a day after I first heard, I’m still having trouble believing that Eat This Podcast has again been nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award.

Measuring obesity, micro-dairies, natural wine, cured meats and soft food.