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Michael Pollan: “Get Back in the Kitchen!”

For most of my life the only way I knew to make scrambled eggs was to microwave them. All the better if you had a paper bowl to do it […]

What Will You Admit To? Bushwick Seattle’s Guiltiest Pleasures

It’s time to confess. We all have our secrets—but what haunts your playlists and bookshelves? What book do you stick on the shelf making sure the spine faces in? What […]

Michael Pollan: “Get Back in the Kitchen!”

For most of my life the only way I knew to make scrambled eggs was to microwave them. All the better if you had a paper bowl to do it […]

What Will You Admit To? Bushwick Seattle’s Guiltiest Pleasures

It’s time to confess. We all have our secrets—but what haunts your playlists and bookshelves? What book do you stick on the shelf making sure the spine faces in? What […]

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Michael Pollan: “Get Back in the Kitchen!”

For most of my life the only way I knew to make scrambled eggs was to microwave them. All the better if you had a paper bowl to do it in. My mother microwaved everything, even pork chops. Also, I grew up in the Midwest, where vegetables are alien objects. (I once brought a pear to show-and-tell because I thought it was “weird.”)

There is hope for people like me, says Michael Pollan, author of seven books including national bestseller The Omnivore’s Dilemma. And not just me. Pollan thinks there is hope for everyone. (Guess what? I can roast vegetables now. Pears are no longer weird!)

Pollan’s out with a new book, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation. Transformation, he says, because he just likes the way it sounds. Or actually, like he told Jade Chang in an interview with Goodreads:

I realized that that was what I was dealing with: the transformation of nature into culture. I’ve always been interested in transformation….Humans are in the transformation game in a way that very few other animals are. We take what nature gives us and then make something else out of it. And cooking, by the way, is the prototype of all transformations—it’s the first one. Claude Lévi-Strauss pointed out that all these different cultures think of nature as the raw and culture as the cooked, because that’s kind of the paradigm—taking something that’s just given by the natural world and making it into something that’s more useful, more appealing, more like us.

In Cooked, Pollan breaks down the ways in which we prepare food into the four elements: fire (good ol’ BBQ), water (braising), earth (fermenting, i.e., beer, cheese, etc.,), and air (baking).

The full interview is up on Goodreads and I recommend it. Highlights include:

Pollan compares bread to penises!

…there’s the Apollonian side of things and the Dionysian side of things, and the Apollonian side is more male, more visual, more sharply edged, essentially more like a penis….I mean, men like to make things, and they like artifacts, and bread is more an artifact than a lot of other food we make. And I won’t even talk about baguettes!

Pollan endorses communism in response to Bloomberg’s soda ban!

I’m in favor of trying Mayor Bloomberg’s idea in New York to limit the size of cups. I just don’t think that’s trampling on people’s liberty! If you want 32 ounces of soda, you have to get two sodas instead of one….Let’s see if it works, let’s see if that pause between the first 16 ounces and the second 16 ounces just might discourage people from doing something that might really be bad for them! We need to try taxing soda and other forms of junk food. I think we need a federal definition of “What Is Food,” and we need to exclude things like soda that are not food, [that are] what I call edible, foodlike substances, and not let federal dollars support feeding those things to our children or including them in food stamps.

We need to experiment with many, many social approaches to changing people’s diets, and we’ll see what works. And if it doesn’t work, we’ll throw it out! So I say…let a thousand strange flowers bloom.

Pollan advises not to eat meat in airports!

It’s just a good rule of thumb.

If you want to hear more, head over to Goodreads.

And be sure to check out our upcoming show,

The Bushwick Book Club Seattle Presents Original music inspired by Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma & The Botany of Desire

May 16 at The Crocodile

What Will You Admit To? Bushwick Seattle’s Guiltiest Pleasures

It’s time to confess. We all have our secrets—but what haunts your playlists and bookshelves? What book do you stick on the shelf making sure the spine faces in? What songs are you embarrassed to listen to on repeat when no one else is home?

What are your guiltiest pleasures?

I’ll admit to one of mine: “All My Life” by K-Ci and JoJo. It started 15 years ago when my sister’s high school boyfriend was responsible for driving us where we needed to go. It was one of two CDs he always had playing in his car. I sat in the backseat–eighteen years old and boyfriendless–and practically wept at how romantic it was. I still love this song, even though the lyrics are the worst (e.g.,”Girl you are close to me you’re like my mother / Close to me you’re like my father”).

Here’s what a few of our Bushwick Bookclub Seattle volunteers admitted to:

Kate

I totally scoffed when you first asked this, even though I wanted to help. I thought, “Pssh. You can’t embarrass me. I own it.” And this is largely true. I still own a copy of Tiffany’s album and I don’t care who knows. Call Me Maybe… ? Love it. I was making this list in my head of all the bands I love to NOT feel guilty about, when it happened. It went like this: “There’s Glenn Medeiros, the Facts of Life theme song, Vanilla Ice, all that 90s lesbo-folk, and Debbie Gib-…oh. Fuck.” This is when I remembered that a friend had recently forced me to listen to Justin Bieber’s acoustic album…and I liked it. A lot. I feel so vulnerable right now.

Geoff

Eagle Eye Cherry – “Save Tonight”

U2 – “Stuck in a Moment”

Kerry

I have lots of guilty pleasures in books and music. I will share with you my biggest one: Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series. Never in my life have I been so hopelessly addicted to something I knew was so terrible. Like my love of diet Dr. Pepper, the four Twilight books were a habit I just couldn’t quit despite knowing they were poisoning me from the inside out. I read page after page of nauseating descriptions of Bella’s love for Edward’s “sweet” breath even though it disgusted me. I found Edward’s stalking of Bella to be a bad example of a healthy relationship to present to tween readers and yet I read them with gusto. I digested them at a desperate pace, bringing the first on a trip with me, then buying the second and third at airport bookstores as I continued my travels. My guilt grew as I watched all five terrible movies even though viewing them made me both bored and sad. When friends started buying me movie merchandise including a horrific fleece blanket adorned with Jacob’s handsome but age-inappropriate face and I secretly liked it, I started to wonder if I could be a candidate for “My Strange Addictions.” It’s power over me was a force that I could not fight. Luckily for me, the series ended and there are no more books to co-opt my valuable reading time.

Jessica

Okay… Here’s goes mine.

I secretly LOVE ridiculous/semi-trashy novels. My reigning guilty pleasures are The Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon and The Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger. Both series completely consume me when I read them (and I don’t really want to admit how many times that has been) and let me escape!

Now for the music- again two songs since I can’t really choose. I absolutely love “Truly, Madly, Deeply” by Savage Garden. I also have an incredible fondness for “Hanging By a Moment” by Lifehouse. I used to sit upstairs and IM my high school boyfriend while listening to it blaring. Sigh.

Now it’s your turn: tell us about your secret playlists and bookshelves. Tweet us at @iReadandSing or add your comment below!

Half Sized Blog Element (Single Author Style)

Half Sized Blog Element (Multi Author Style)

Michael Pollan: “Get Back in the Kitchen!”

What Will You Admit To? Bushwick Seattle’s Guiltiest Pleasures

Michael Pollan: “Get Back in the Kitchen!”

What Will You Admit To? Bushwick Seattle’s Guiltiest Pleasures

Full Sized Blog Element (Big Preview Pic)

Michael Pollan: “Get Back in the Kitchen!”

The Bushwick Book Club Seattle Presents Original music inspired by Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma & The Botany of Desire

May 16 at The Crocodile

What Will You Admit To? Bushwick Seattle’s Guiltiest Pleasures

Kate

Geoff

Kerry

Jessica

Interesting links

PARTNERS