When my info-larder gets too packed, it’s time to serve up some choice nuggets from around the Web.

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Get 'em while they're hot.  • For years, Barry Estabrook reported on food politics for Gourmet Magazine and its Web site. In a sense, he played the role of the conscience of the foodie set--at the margins of a magazine devoted to celebrating the latest cooking techniques, ingredients, and vacation hotspots, Barry gently but tenaciously informed pleasure-seeking readers about issues like the brutal economics of dairy farming and the ecological consequences of mindless fish-eating.

I always thought that Barry's toehold at Gourmet would inspire other glossy food magazines to open their pages to serious discussions of the U.S. food system. It never happened--Gourmet's competitors continued  singing the glories of, say, the steak, without troubling readers with information about how steaks are made in America. And now Gourmet is gone.

Barry, thankfully, isn't. He's launched a blog called Politics of the Plate. His latest post is typical: a well-reported piece on the creepy harassment members of Florida's Coalition of Immokalee Workers are getting as they try to force the supermarket chain Publix to pay up for fair tomatoes.

• I sometimes enjoy New Yorker critic-at-large Adam Gopnik's food writing. For example, I loved his 2005 piece comparing British chef Fergus Henderson, famed for utilizing the "whole beast," with French chef Allain Passard, who shocked the cooking world by dispensing with beast altogether. I am forever in Gopnik's debt for introducing me to the work of Henderson, whose prose style and cookbooks I admire, as I hope someday to admire his restaurant. (If I hadn't read about Henderson in Gopnik's piece, I might never had landed a review of Henderson's book The Whole Beast in Gastronomica a couple of years ago.)

So I was excited to see Gopnik's long rumination on cookbooks in the latest New Yorker. I, too, have a complicated and loving relationship with cookbooks. I wanted to like Gopnik's piece, but didn't. For me, Gopnik laid out a thicket of sentences, some 4,000 words' worth, many of them over-elaborate or too dense by half, to belabor one point: "Anyone who cooks knows that it is in following recipes that one first learns the anticlimax of the actual, the perpetual disappointment of the thing achieved." Besides the "first" bit--don't most folks learn that lesson before they first crack open a cookbook?--that seems true enough. And that (eventually) brings him here:

When you start to cook, as when you begin to live, you think that the point is to improve the technique until you end up with something perfect, and that the reason you haven't been able to break the cycle of desire and disillusion is that you haven't yet mastered the rules. Then you grow up, and you learn that that's the game.

That's well-said--but also well-established: Another way of saying that it's the journey, and not the destination that counts, in cooking as in life. Okay.

But what about the ways people's relationship to cookbooks has changed? Gopnik takes a quick glance at one: with the Web, it's now easy to quickly search for recipes and information of on ingredients, meaning we reach for our laptops more and to our bookshelves less.

Here's another, related one. In the old days (the mid-1990s), I would often be inspired by a recipe from a cookbook--say, a kibbeh from Paula Wolfert's wonderful Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean (1994). I'd procure the ingredients at a combination of the supermarket and ethnic markets and then go home and cook. The results ranged from delightful to disastrous to that melancholy in-between described by Gopnik.

These days, settled as I am into the new-wave tradition of local and seasonal cooking, I start with available ingredients and then seek preparation ideas (when I don't just lean on my established repertoire). This latter method is much more suited to the broad universe of Google than the inherently narrower universe of the cookbook shelf. Yet I still love cookbooks.

• I've been impressed by the emergence of the young novelist Jonathan Safran Foer as a public intellectual on the question of meat.

I haven't read his new non-fiction book Eating Animals yet. I found his big New York Times Magazine essay on why he went vegetarian plodding and unconvincing; but his Wall Street Journal piece, "Let Them Eat Dog: A Modest Proposal for Throwing Fido in the Oven," was brilliant. In a way I haven't seen since the great J.M. Coetzee's performance in the novel Elizabeth Costello, Foer plumbed the moral depths of meat eating.

I believe that mixed farming systems--ones that grow grains, veggies, and livestock synergistically--are probably the most productive and sustainable. Moreover, I cherish the cultural heritage of the globe's various cuisines--most of which include meat, if usually in moderation. Thus I eat meat occasionally, and enjoy it greatly when I do. Yet the moral questions around systematically killing sentient beings--and arbitrarily declaring one species "pet" and another "dinner"--must be confronted and thought through.

Moralists like Coetzee and Foer push us to do just that. Even if we end up rejecting their insistence that we become vegetarians, they remind us of the suffering we cause when we eat meat--and thus they inspire us to do so only in moderation, and with great care for how the animal was treated.

On the other hand, wittingly or not, their appeals suggest a hallowed moral status for vegetarians. But in a society in which relatively few people are engaged in food production, morally upright victuals are hard to come by. Supermarket tomatoes carry the taint of exploitation and even slavery;  and even buying organic doesn't guarantee socially just conditions in farm fields.

"Every document of civilisation is at the same time a record of barbarism," wrote the great German writer Walter Benjamin. Vegetarians, nearly as much as omnivores, need to conduct a withering critique of the moral and ecological liabilities in the processes that feed tham--and work to transform them accordingly.

• For the wine-obsessed, The New York Times' excellent Eric Asimov has an overview of six recent wine books. Eco-wine enthusiasts like me will want to get their hands on two of them: Been Doon So Long, by the pioneering California vintner Randall Grahm; and Liquid Memory, by wine-world enfant terrible and polemicist Jonathan Nossiter.

Grahm, proprietor of Bonny Doon Vineyard, is legendary for his wacky and hilarious label prose and his trend-setting wine-making ways. According to a great piece by Asimov last spring, Grahm is now moving to organic farming and natural wine-making techniques. May a thousand imitators bloom in California wine country

Nossiter, a former sommelier at Manhattan's Balthazar, is most famous for directing the documentary Mondovino--which doubles as a stink bomb hurled at makers of highly manipulated, lavishly marketed, and overpriced wines, and a love letter to Europe's remaining traditional vintners.

• For the beer-inclined, here's Paste Magazine's "25 Best American Breweries of the Decade." Any quibbles you might have with the list--there are 19 better breweries than San Diegos's Stone?--just underscore the pretty truth: we're in the full flower of a spectacular beer renaissance in the United States.

• Did y'all see my Newsweek piece?

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I recently recorded my first BloggingHeads TV ... episode? diavlog? not sure what they're called ... with Lester Brown, focused on the latest edition of his book: Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. My main takeaway from the experience is that I need a much better microphone on my laptop. The sound is pretty awful on my end. Also I'm long overdue for some beard maintenance. And media training.

There's some chit-chat and technical glitches toward the beginning, but we get rolling about 5 minutes in:

If you just can't get enough BHTV, here's another good episode, with enviro journalist David Orr squaring off against conservative Jim Manzi on the subject of climate change and Orr's new book:

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Netroots Nation panel on blogging and climate change [VIDEO!!1!]

On Aug. 13, at the Netroots Nation conference for progressive bloggers, journalists, and activists, I was part of a panel called "A Warming Web: The Blogosphere and Climate Change." Also present:

You may be thinking, why would I sit for over an hour and watch a conference panel online when I could be ... doing pretty much anything else? Let's just say we made it worth your time. I'm not saying Grandia strips to his tightie whities and Grant spanks him, but I'm not saying there's no spanking. You know how these panels get.

Keep watching, I think it's right toward the end there. No, a little farther.

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DeLong and Deltoid on Roger Peilke Jr. “train wreck”

For years, scientists have pondered the mysterious but persistent connection between ecological wisdom and the follicular phenomenon that is the mustache. Is it the ‘stache that produces the wisdom? Or does the wisdom push its bearer toward the ‘stache? Early research focused on Amory Lovins, the efficiency guru who pioneered the green ‘stache in the ‘70s; while those studies proved inconclusive, recent years have brought an avalanche of evidence: green biz wiz Joel Makower, newly converted “geogreen” Tom Friedman, deft dealmaker Henry Waxman ... the list goes on. Global ‘staching skeptic? Check it out.

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If you're curious about critters that live under the sea, I recommend you check out The Reef Tank. The website started as an information source and community-building tool for aquarists, and to that end, it features product reviews, discussion forums, and even a marine species wiki.

But they've since realized that people who keep giant fish tanks as a hobby also care deeply about what's going on outside the fish bowl, so they've beefed up their blog with features about climate change, ocean acidification, and conservation efforts. In addition to interviews with scientists and other reef enthusiasts, they also regularly feature the work of notable contributors like Coby Beck and, oh yeah, me.

My latest post is about the Live Blue Initiative, a project of the New England Aquarium that calls on fish-huggers everywhere to pledge to "live blue" by reducing their carbon footprint.

So dive right in and check it out! And pledge to live blue while you're at it.

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Biochemist Oliver Peoples explains how his polymer-producing microbes could transform the plastics i

When it comes to eco-parenting, mothers tend to get the spotlight—everything from cultural references (Mother Earth and Mother Nature, anyone?) to marketing blitzes (hello, Big Green Purse!). But there are plenty of fathers out there doing their part for both progeny and planet. We showcase a few of them here, including our own Grist staff dads.

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David Roberts and Thomas Friedman talk green.Wednesday night, Grist hosted a party -- nay, a soirée -- at The Warehouse in Washington, D.C. Among those in attendance were EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, CEQ Chair Nancy Sutley, Green Jobs Czar (don't call him that to his face!) Van Jones, and a number of other fabulous folk from the green world.

For the night's entertainment -- or "nerdtainment," as my brother said when I told him about it -- New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and I chatted on stage about climate, energy, and efforts to build a greener world, then took questions from the audience. Friedman discussed the updates and rethinking he's done for the paperback edition of his bestseller Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution -- and How It Can Renew America, which comes out in September. As he says, "there's a reason the ice banks of Antarctica and the banks of Iceland melted at the same time." In our financial system and in our environmental policy, we use the same kind of fraudulent accounting -- socializing risk, privatizing profit, and delaying responsibility. This generation, he says, will have to be the "regeneration," which changes both systems with an "earth race" like the space race of the 1960s.

He also made a note of his disappointment at being left off our list of badass greens. I told him we'd do a list of green mustaches to make up for it. (Think about it: Friedman, Amory Lovins, Joel Makower, our own BioD ... coincidence?)

Anyway, huge thanks to Friedman for being the star of our event, thanks to all who attended, and, what the hell, thanks to all the readers who have stuck with us for 10 long years. Here's to another 10!

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Chip Giller keeps it real

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It’s Getting Ha! in Here: Maria Bamford

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Last week I made an appearance on Green Patriot Radio, and the episode is now online, with the somewhat amusing slug, "Mariel Hemingway and the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill."

You can listen to the episode ... on a buggy player with no controls ... at this horrendously ugly website (WTF?). But it's worth it!

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These editors have begun to slightly hack.Photo: Tom Clements/Vihrea Lanka Grist recently found itself the focus of a feature story in a Finnish newspaper under the headline “Tässä ei ole mitään hauskaa.” We were briefly flattered, as all those umlauts struck us as quite sophisticated, and we’re pretty much suckers for any outside attention. Until we ran the story through Google Translate, which interpreted the headline thusly: “This is not funny.”

Ouch. Let’s hope something was lost in translation. It continues: “Will climate change laughs? Humor is a can, and sugar, with online magazine Grist may be the Americans to swallow the bitter environment.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Let me back up: Earlier this year, Grist played host to Taina Ahtela, a sharp editor from Vihreä Lanka, a Helsinki-based environmental publication. She spent two months learning about our operations and helping us prepare for the launch of our new site. We tried to answer her questions about the American political landscape; she told us about environmental issues in the land of Nokia and saunas. She blogged about American environmental politics, and then published this story after she went home.

The auto-translated article really is a thing to behold. It references “plasterer 50 cents” and contains this troubling line: “Gristin machine has begun to slightly hack.” It also poses enduring questions such as “So who Gilleran and what Grist?” (We’ve been trying to answer that ourselves.)

So who Gilleran?Photo: Tom Clements/Vihrea Lanka

A few more choice selections:

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Newtongate: the final nail in the coffin of Enlightenment thinking

See here for a guest editorial I just got published in The New Republic.

Nothing that I haven't written about before on Grist, but always nice to get the message about the need to consider generation efficiency (in addition to appliance efficiency) in discussions about how to lower the overall fossil-fuel intensivity of our economy.

One minor quibble. Down in the comments, note the snarky "you can't mess with Carnot". I can't tell you how many times this has been raised by bad physicists. (It's the thermodynamics version of the arguments raised by those who remember a little of freshman economics and claim that profitable investments don't exist because the free efficient market would have already captured them if they did.)

Someday, someone ought to write a post about that!

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Seattle's Green Fest may be lacking feats of strength and the airing of grievances, but there's plenty else to do when this "party with a purpose" hits the PacNW this weekend. Listen as presenters including actor Danny Glover, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, and celeb-foodie Alice Waters offer thoughts on everything from racism to the green economy; see what's cookin' at the PCC recipe demo stage; or just mosey through the exhibit hall collecting bits of wisdom and free stuff. Festival passes range from $10-15, but the experience (and the gratis gewgaws) are priceless! And if you're headed to the festival on Saturday, don't miss the Grist-moderated panel discussions on sustainable art and youth activism.

Plan it: Saturday, March 28, 10 a.m.-7 p.m.; Sunday, March 29, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Grist-moderated panel discussions are Saturday at noon and 4 p.m.
Map it: Washington State Convention & Trade Center, 800 Convention Place, Seattle, Wash. (map)
Save it: Get $5 off admission when you bike or bus to the festival.
Celebrate it: Join the Seattle Greendrinks crowd for an after-party Saturday night at Pike Pub & Brewery.

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So, I'm featured as a talking head in a documentary on the sustainable-food movement called Food Fight. Other folks who appear include Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, and Dan Barber. 

Food Fight will be screening this coming Saturday, March 28, 7 pm,  in Seattle as part of Green Festival. I'll be attending the screening, and moderating a panel afterward featuring Alice Waters and the film's director, Chris Taylor. Grist-reading Seattle dwellers should attend -- you don't need a Green Festival badge to get in. The showing will take place at the Seattle Town Hall, located at 1119 8th Ave.

And for people who reside in my area, Western North Carolina, there'll be another screening in Boone on April 5 at the Dragonfly at 7 p.m. Chris Taylor will attend, and take questions with me after.

Below find the trailer. In what was clearly an oversight, Chris forgot to highlight his most attractive, charismatic, and popular interview subject -- moi -- in the trailer. I'm sure he's scrambling to fix that blunder as I type this.

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On Wednesday, the Obama administration officially announced that Grist board member and Ford Foundation program officer Michelle DePass has been nominated to serve as the assistant administrator for international affairs at the Environmental Protection Agency.

Michelle currently manages the Ford Foundation's initiative on Environmental Justice and Healthy Communities, concentrating on the intersections of environmental and social justice both in the United States and internationally. She has taught federal environmental law and policy at the City University of New York, and developed a workforce development training program for disadvantaged youth on Superfund waste sites. She also served as executive director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance and co-organized the Northeast Environmental Justice Network.

She previously served as the assistant to the city manager of San Jose, Calif., on environmental policy matters and was an Environmental Compliance Manager for the City of San Jose. She was a William Kunstler Racial Justice Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, and later worked as a senior policy adviser to the commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

This is big news for Michelle. Congratulations!

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