green onion, a local grocer!

brought to you by the awesome people who brought you clementine... GREEN ONION! 

it opens today! finally! after over a year of waiting! this is so exciting! 'field work' needs to happen. and by field work, i mean grocery shopping. bam! 

green onion market opens may 17th, and there will be tomatoes!

mad cow and vegans

in lieu of ‘Food Confessions‘, this:

i’m not really sure why the joke is on vegans so often. but it is…

also, I just tried googling it, and the top five links lead to vegan jokes.

food confessions

Reposted from keb.mfa blog. 

Gross, sure. But also very, very true.

(Read more below photo. Do it. Read it. You know you want to.)

Considering how often I go on about all things meat, especially pork, especially especially bacon, most people I have met within the last five to nine years would probably be very surprised to know I was a vegetarian for eight years.

Yes. You read that correctly. EIGHT YEARS. A VEGETARIAN.

I was eleven. Almost twelve, I think.

It wasn't for health.

It wasn't because it was 'cool' (vegans, uck).

It wasn't, though some may argue, because my 'cooler' older sister was.

And not to say my older sister isn't cool. She totally is. She's totally badass. She plays along with my kitschy food photo shoots. Every. Time. I only say 'cooler' because, when you are eleven, and your sister is fifteen, you totally think your big sister is cool. Thankfully, we grew up, and mine is still cool.

It was because a friend, who shall not be named, tried to get me to eat a live grasshopper at summer bible camp.

Yes. You read that correctly. I went to summer bible camp. That's a story for another post.

No, another blog. This is no place for religion.

Unless of course it's Mesoamerican cultures worshipping Maize Gods.

Which will happen. That, however, is for another post, for real.

Back to the story at hand. LIVE. GRASSHOPPER.

Gross. I swore, right then and there, watching that poor little creature shake with fear, that I would never, NEVER, eat another living creature again.

And then, when I was nineteen, there was a party, a fuzzy navel or three, and a whole oven full of chicken fingers.

Recent run-ins with acquaintances  from years past have almost always included the question, 'Wait, you eat meat now?!'

For real? Like any of us are still sticking to the metaphorical guns we loaded when we were eleven.

C'mon people. Get with the program.

I HEART MEAT.

And I feel like I am able to appreciate it so much more than they, because I know what it is like to be on the other side.

All jokes aside, and damn, do I mock the vegetarian/vegan culture A LOT...

Wait, no. Not all jokes aside. Just this joke. THIS JOKE.

Suck it, vegetarians. And by suck it, I mean eat it.

Also, I would more than likely try a fried grasshopper. That's a delicacy in some parts of the world.

OH NO, SCORPIONS. On second thought, maybe I wouldn't eat a fried grasshopper.

Either way, bam.

an ethnography of scent

"cann and ross help explain how the fish market may be actively remembered, but djordjevic et. al. show us a way in which its memory may be socially inherited or invoked. the lingering smell of fish provides the context that visitors can use to help shape their experience to the seaport area. for visitors for whom the history and perhaps the place itself are known, the smell of fish is a direct link to the past. for others however, the smell of fish can connect them to other imagery that they can use to shape a memory about the area. i’m not quite sure if i want to call this a 'constructed' memory, but the idea that i am leaning toward is that visitors to the neighborhood who do not know that this is where the fish market stood can associate the smell of fish to any other fish market they may have encountered. aided by 'tells' from around the neighborhood, they can form an image of what they believe to be the content of the market thereby creating a 'memory' or image in their minds of their own devising. in time the smell may fade completely—it may become nothing more than an imagined scent—but for now, it seems that this piece of history is inserting itself into daily life."

the only time when margaret mead is not mead

via anthropology major fox

f.y.i., this is so a real thing.

also, guess what kb and i will be doing next time we're in the same state?

pickle that pepper.

oh no! there are capital letters! i originally wrote this for my own blog, but since i feel it is appropriate here, i am reappropriating it. without changing single letters. 
the end.  

I was literally starting to drool, as I read through this article - Preserving creativity: Chef Paul Virant puts up pickles and more in a new book.

buy on amazon!

I didn't even finish this article before I determined I need to own this book.

I need to buy mason jars.

I need to pickle something.

Just because.

It is so tasty.

Few have recipes such as smoked apple butter and beer jam, pickled fennel and cherry bomb peppers, or sauerkraut made with Brussels sprouts or turnips. These are not your granny's preserves.

Beer jam.

BEER. JAM.

IT EXISTS.

Here is a free recipe from the article, which I won't click on ever again, because   sucks with a subscription limitation these days...

Blueberry aigre-doux

Prep: 10 minutes

Cook: 5 minutes (plus processing time)

Makes: 5 half-pints

Notes: Adapted from by Paul Virant's "The Preservation Kitchen." The chef spoons this fruit and its sweet-sour liquid atop a grilled Camembert round or uses the liquid in a cocktail. He also uses it in vinaigrettes, pan sauces and glazes. Filled jars processed in a boiling water bath are shelf stable. If you omit the water bath, the jars must be stored in the refrigerator (see method).

Ingredients:

• 1 bottle (750 milliliters) red wine with berry notes (such as malbec or merlot)
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup red wine vinegar
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 4 1/2 cups blueberries, washed, drained

1. In a pot over high heat, mix together wine, sugar, vinegar, lemon juice and salt. Heat to a boil; transfer to a heat-proof pitcher.

2. Scald 5 half-pint jars in a large pot of simmering water fitted with a rack. This pot will be used to process the jars. Just before filling, put scalded jars on the counter. Meanwhile, soak lids in a pan of hot water to soften rubber seal.

3. For shelf storage: Pack blueberries into scalded jars. Pour hot wine mixture over blueberries, leaving 1/2-inch space from jar's rim. Check jars for air pockets; add more wine mixture if needed to cover blueberries. Wipe rims with a clean towel; seal with lids. Screw on bands until snug, not too tight.

4. Place filled jars in pot with rack; add water to cover jars by about 1 inch. Heat water to a boil. Process jars for 15 minutes (start timing when water reaches a boil). Turn off heat; leave jars in water a few minutes. Remove jars from water; cool completely. Check seals. Store.

5. For refrigerator storage: Once liquids come to a boil, add blueberries. Poach, 5 minutes. Ladle into scalded half-pint jars. Wipe rims; seal with lids and bands. Allow jars to cool. Store in refrigerator up to 1 month.

fresh fish and lead... yum

"the ancient romans might have traded live fish across the mediterranean sea by endowing their ships with an ingenious hydraulic system, a new investigation into a second century a.d. wreck suggests.

"consisting of a pumping system designed to suck the sea water into a fish tank, the apparatus has been reconstructed by a team of italian researchers who analyzed a unique feature of the wreck: a lead pipe inserted in the hull near the keel."

this is the type of thing cultural anthropologists think about

"the anthropological study of tourism has generated a body of theory that aims to define and delimit an object of study—the tourist—that in many cases is diluted among other forms of activities, experiences, and preoccupations in our contemporary society. some of these studies, now classics in the anthropology of tourism (e.g. d. maccannell, e. de kadt, v. l. smith, j. urry, a. santana), have theorized about the relationship between 'hosts and guests,' differentiating them through a series of dichotomies such as leisure/work, foreigners/locals, consumption/production, and transience/stability. these studies have established the foundations for a branch of social research that has been largely ignored by the wider field of anthropology."

as dr. d would say, "when you're in the place, you do the thing."

that goes for field work as well as vacations, but then again, those often are one and the same.

why we do what we do

"on a flight home from the field, i was seated next to a woman also traveling alone. exchanging pleasantries, she asked me the one question that fills me with dread every time the words come out of their mouth, 'so, what do you do for a living?' after i quickly summarized my past 24 years labeled as 'student,' with the phd now blindingly in reach, she stopped me. she said, 'i think what you’re doing is lucky. you are living the life you chose without settling. i envy you.'"

...with that in mind, being an academic is still a form of masochism. 

just saying.

the drinking culture of archeologists

"it seems like every archaeologist has more than a few heroic stories about how much beer or whiskey they or their colleagues drank at such and such a dig or while surveying such and such a valley. not being much of a drinker myself, i admit being baffled by the exuberance with which archaeologists tell stories about how crew chief x used to clean the profiles of the excavation pit with a bottle of jack daniels by the end of the day (no slip twixt trowel and lip!). or about how field director y would drink his students under the table (then dance on top of the table) only to harangue them about their lack of pep four hours later at the beginning of the next work day.

"...how can this broad literature illuminate all the drinking that archaeologists supposedly do? by the 1980s, scholarly opinion on drinking had shifted from alcohol as a destructive social and personal pathology to a constructive good that integrates social groups (e.g. douglas 1987). but this line of thinking does not explain why drinking might be a diacritical marker of archaeologists specifically. it should come quickly to mind that drinking is an embodied practice, and the embodied experience of fieldwork involves not just working together but living together with other project members in variable conditions of deprivation, driving diggers to drink. consumption at conferences becomes a ritualized reenactment of the field moment."