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New Issue - Happy Spring!

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Diner Journal Has Valentine's Day Crush

On the New Amsterdam Market!

Please support our mission to establish a permanent, indoor public market in the City of New York, where purveyors such as butchers, grocers, mongers, and other vendors will source and sell food from the region.

By incubating and supporting these local businesses, New Amsterdam Market will provide additional outlets and opportunities for farmers too busy or too distant to attend New York's thriving Greenmarkets - a need made all the more critical by the economic collapse.

Our aim in 2009 is to begin holding New Amsterdam Market once every month. We have been speaking with the City about use of a public site in Lower Manhattan and are encouraged by this prospect. More news will follow!

Your generous support will help us start the market.

Purchase Tickets for you and all your friends NOW!

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Whose Woods These Are I Think I Know: Cecily Upton At Large

Last week, I drove across Nebraska. Nebraska is a really BIG state. Big and Flat. It's January, so there wasn't much growing as I passed through, but the remnants of our nation's great corn industry fanned out before me in field after field of broken stalks and barren irrigation contraptions. I know most people think this part of the country is boring, and perhaps I did feel a tinge of boredom after 300 miles on I-80 with nary a curve in the road to distract me. But mostly I think Nebraska and her sister states of Iowa, Kansas, and the Dakotas, are beautiful. Beautiful in the way that Jennifer Grey was before she got her nose job…a little plain, but kind of wild and alluring just the same.

So, I'm driving through Nebraska and I start to notice that out among the broken corn stalks in 4 out of 10 fields are herds of stout, black cows foraging freely. Foraging freely? In Nebraska? This is a state firmly in the grips of Our Nation's Food System. Subsidies are handed out here like handshakes at a campaign rally. Aren't all those cows supposed to be penned up, in chains, unable to move, force-fed unnatural diets of grain and animal parts and injected with all sorts of horrible anti-biotics? Isn't that what Fast Food Nation and King Corn tell us? Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that doesn't happen, because it does. In fact, most, if not all, of those cows I saw munching away in the great open plains are destined for that very fate. Soon. And I passed those very feedlots the next day, in Colorado, and those animals are inhumanely jammed in there and there are MOUNTAINS of manure and it looks to be a pretty horrible existence. But, BUT, my east-coast, bleeding-heart, liberal, Slow Food sensibilities were kind of rocked when I saw those cows apparently enjoying themselves roaming freely amongst the corn stalks.

Then I got to thinking. And this is what I thought: what I'm seeing here might not be a quaint antithetical anecdote to the Evil Feedlot/Bionic Beef nightmare we know exists, but instead might be, in actuality, THE SADDEST INDICATOR OF HOW F***** UP OUR FOOD SYSTEM REALLY IS. Now, I'm still a little emotional about this, as you can tell. I'm going to try and lay this out clearly, but bear with me if it gets a little tangled. Here goes. These fields, in the spring, were most likely planted with GMO corn destined for one of three fates: feedlot grain, high-fructose corn syrup, or biofuel. Now, I need to make one thing clear: this corn is inedible. People cannot eat it. It can and will only be used for one of the three products I just listed. The farmers who grow this corn are most likely losing money on each acre and are subsidized by Uncle Sam to ensure the United States' bread-basket (note the irony here, given that these crops are not destined for food) remains productive. So, the sun shines, the fields are irrigated, the corn grows. Now in the good old days, some of these fields would be something other than corn and that other stuff would be harvested to feed animals like cows through the winter before a short diet of grain was imposed to fatten them up before slaughter.

I say a short diet of grain because grain is toxic to cows. Their stomachs can only tolerate it for a short period before it becomes infected, they sicken, and they die. Anyway, growing that other stuff became less and less profitable once the government began writing the checks. The government will really only write checks for corn and a few other, mostly non-edible, staples, so it didn't make much sense to be growing acres of crops that you wouldn't get paid for. Besides, science and technology had, in the meantime, invented all of these glorious drugs you could give your cows that prolonged the period that they could tolerate grain. So now you could send cattle to the feedlot at an earlier age, keep them on corn for longer, and they'd fatten up faster. Sounds like a win-win, right? Well, I think everyone reading this blog knows it's not, but I want to get back to the cows I saw munching away in the barren fields.

So, I'm driving along and I won't lie, my black Brooklyn heart warmed a bit when I saw those happy cows in the fields, but it soon iced back over when I realized the sad irony. Here were cows, spending their last short weeks before the feedlot, scavenging in snow-covered fields for the remnants of GMO corn that they would soon be force-fed in too-close quarters while standing in their own waste. These poor animals will never know what it feels like to follow their natural instincts. Over the years, they've had those instincts bred out of them. They're bred to eat, and eat they will, anything they can find. And in these fields, what they were finding would soon kill them. Then that heart got even colder and more ice-covered when I thought about this: what if those fields were used to grow actual food, for actual people. Food that nourished and provided our population with the nutrients and vitamins that many of us so desperately need. And what if, once that food had been harvested, the remnants of that system were left to be slurped up by hungry animals who could turn it not only into further nourishment, but also into natural fertilizer, making those fields even more productive next season. Ahh, what if? I'm no farmer, so I'm sure it's just a crazy idea dreamt up by a silly kid from the city who doesn't know what she's talking about, but I kind of feel like I might be on to something here.


by Cecily Upton

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A RESTAURANT WILL NEVER ASK YOU TO EAT AT HOME

Diner Journal Will Always Ask You to Do It Yourself

It's never a good idea for a magician to give away her secrets. Or is it? As more and more Americans turn to their home kitchens for nourishment the winds of change can feel as cold, stark and tragically bland as the January air. Cooking has always been a winter tradition and now, in this the winter of our discontent, those long hours in the warm room are not only necessary but they offer us a chance to relearn some magic that may have been lost.

Change is inevitable but what is often misunderstood is that it holds intrinsic value. America is a nation full with change and, as it follows, hope. The Diner Journal is a quarterly, independent publication that uses food to search for and express this very hope in our culture, community, arts and politics.

Inspired to write a cookbook but without the time away from their day to day work Andrew Tarlow, Mark Firth and Caroline Fidanza set out to create a periodical. Entrenched in seasonality and locality and alive with the spirit of Marlow and Sons and Diner the Journal was born. What began as a musing on the dining institution has become a place to create conversations and affect change. From preserving tomatoes to carving holy saints from chocolate the Journal maintains a commitment to reverence and instruction with the understanding we all still have a lot to learn. It is hope, along side the hearth, that keeps us aglow at night.

And in words of one of our truest Americans, Bruce Springsteen, 'You can't start a fire without a spark." I am writing you today to thank you... for your sparkles. This is the second in a series of email that will chronicle our evolution and the expansion of our community. Last time around Andrew offered to dress as a chicken in hopes of wooing your subscription dollars. As far as I know the offer still stands. I might also add that it turns out Marisa happens to have one. A chicken suit, you know, just laying around. In return you regalled us with subscriptions, ideas, thoughts and encouragement. Since then we have almost doubled our subscription base, been touted by the UTNE reader, pandered by the Financial Times and are well on our way to forging vital relationships with such astitute oreganizations as The Cloud Institute, civileats.com, Community Agriculture at NYU, and well... facebook.

Now I am asking you for more ideas. Just think of how many ideas appear and vaporate in one day. How many thought bubbles float away from us on the -7 degree air. I am asking you to just grab a couple more and send them my way... What's your favorite bookstore? Foodstore? Blog? Who is your favorite writer? Food or otherwise... What is the most important thing to you right now? How are we going to bring McDonald's to it's red and yellow knees?

Uncertainty is the unlikely gold that paves the road to progress. Help us lay the bricks. Or the eggs. Whatever you want to call it. So please if you haven't subscribed take a moment to. And pass this along to anyone and everyone you love and respect and would also like to see Burger King Body Spray go the way of the Argentinosaurus. Instead of us.

Best wishes and Happy Obama Day,

Diner Journal

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