Friday link love
I have to admit, of all the categories on TYT; I find Weekly Musings the hardest to keep up with. When I first decided to start sharing links of interesting articles I read, I thought how difficult can it be? There are no interviews to schedule, no major writing/re-writing a post, no waiting for pictures- so it must be straightforward to do this regularly. It turns out I was wrong. Of course, there are enough links to share. It’s the process of sitting down and consolidating a post every Friday that becomes the tough part. Blogging as a serious business has a lot to do with discipline, which we don’t realize at first. I decided at the beginning of Jan 2018 that I would give this a go once again, after taking a month to sort of plan it. (Anyone knows where January went?) Anyhow, here I am with a few links to mark the first Friday of February. Let’s see how long I stick to it, this time around.
–> This first link is a biased recommendation. I love everything that Amrita Gupta writes and the ideas that Eartha Mag puts forward. So this one was a double thumbs up for me. But bias aside, I think you should give this book review a read (and the book as well) because we need to understand where our food system stems from before we start problem-solving and believing that we ARE in fact solving them.
Our Food System Isn’t Broken. Capitalism Is What Is Wrong With It.
“Capitalism turns food, a life essential, into a commodity to be bought and sold. And while capitalist agriculture is adept at producing that commodity cheaply and making corporations richer, it is no good at providing living wage jobs, or sustaining healthy environments or bodies. We don’t have to look too far to find evidence of agrarian distress, water scarcity, the increasing burden of malnutrition and obesity, and more agrarian distress. We’ve been hearing, over and over, that the food system is ‘broken’, that it needs to be ‘fixed’. For Holt-Giménez, this argument is misguided. The food system isn’t broken, he says; it’s working exactly the way a capitalist food system is supposed to. And that’s what we need to understand if we want to change it.”
–> Mixing business, more specifically the spice business and politics. This piece for the New Yorker by Helen Rosner is definitely worth a read.
The C.E.O Who Called Trump A Racist (And Sold A Lot Of Spice Mix)
–> 5 Indispensable Kitchen Tricks From Julia Child
My eyes first fell on- “What to do when… your soup is too salty.” – Grated potato to the rescue turns out.
–> How does a successful criminal defense attorney move to the world of chocolate?
Read this interview by Simran Sethi as she talks to Shawn Askinosie about his chocolate venture. He is also the author of the book -“Meaningful Work: A Quest to Do Great Business, Find Your Calling, and Feed Your Soul.”
Inspiration for 2018: Chocolate Maker Shawn Askinosie On Personal Calling And Intentional Business
“I was so used to controlling things in the courtroom and knowing the answer to everything. When I was in the primary forest, the first thing I noticed is that this jungle—this forest—is way bigger than me. I can’t control it. It was truly, truly emotional.”
–> And of course! How can I ignore the Budget? This article on Scroll.in by Kumar Sambhav Shrivastava breaks it down for those of us interested in the agricultural sector.
Budget 2018 talks big on rural economy and agriculture. But where is the money?
–> Pongal is long gone, but I really loved this article by Subha J Rao on heirloom rice.
“It’s not that heirloom rice does not travel. If dudeshwar is used to make kheer in Bengal, it has been found to be a good rice to make idlis from, says Vishalakshi Padmanabhan, who along with her teacher-actor-farmer husband Kishore started Buffalo Back, a collective that propagates the organic way of life in Bengaluru. The couple farms in Kariappana Doddi, a village near Bannerghatta National Park. “Bengaluru and rural Bengaluru is drought-prone. But, the local rice doddabatha is drought-resistant. Even about 15 years ago, paddy was grown here.””
Do let me know if you read something interesting this week. Have a great weekend.
Image: Citron (Narthangai) in a tamarind gravy.