Direct from Polignano a Mare, Flavia Giordano's love letter to Puglia's unique foods and ingredients, including some remarkable biodiversity. Melons eaten unripe, colourful carrots, and sporchia, a broomrape parasitic on broad beans.
A space for mostly short form stuff and responses to things I see elsewhere.
Top artists last week.
1. Billie Holiday 16
2. John Hiatt 11
3. Pat Metheny 11
4. Warren Zevon 11
5. Madredeus 10
Maybe: Hoping to have time.
Top Album Artists last week
1. Willie Nelson 14
2. Cowboy Junkies 12
3. Levon Helm 12
4. Oscar Peterson 11
5. John Coltrane 7
2025-05-05
Eat This Newsletter 269
1 min read
“Salt is a powerful thing. It ensures well-being, it cures, it pleases guests, and it attracts males. And it was brought from a mystical garden. To teach girls how to manage this power must have been an ongoing challenge for the elders.”
Read (and subscribe) at https://buttondown.com/jeremycherfas/archive/etn-269-salted-butter/
TIL about the -c flag in rsync, which skips files based on checksum. The big benefit to me is that it preserves modification times, making it easier to find what I’m looking for. They say it takes more processor time; I don’t care. Hope there are no gotchas.
Got to be a win all round.
2025-04-28
Latest episode: The Paradox of Plenty
1 min read
Food has become cheaper and more abundant over the past 70 years or so by ignoring external costs. As a result, our planet and our health have suffered untold damage. Is it even possible to turn the food system around? Listen at https://eatthispodcast.com/paradox
Top Album Artists last week
1. Bill Frisell 14
2. Calexico 13
3. John Hiatt 10
4. Tres Chicas 10
5. Astor Piazzolla and Gary Burton 6
Top Album Artists last week:
1. Ralph Kirkpatrick 35
2. Charlie Haden & Pat Metheny 14
3. Galactic 13
4. Jenny Scheinman 12
5. The Iguanas 12
Eat This Newsletter 268
- Link to a truly thought-provoking essay on Malthus
- Fiction, fact, and myth in rural–urban conflict
- Crop variety names
- Celebrate Passover != Jewish
Read (and subscribe) at https://buttondown.com/jeremycherfas/archive/eat-tn-268-will-the-circle/
Just for fun I went to look at the four sites Jason linked to, the ones he thinks may be of no value. Each asked me to share my information with 119 vendors. I'm not going to do that. And spending on adverts is not going to deliver visitors either.
Always good, and this time, super pleased by the link to a chart of which glue to use when, and how.
Anti-Big Tech Journalism
Tech language does not work. That includes the 'Fediverse'. Campaigns isolated on decentralised networks do not work. By claiming platform 'purity' no one new is learning about these spaces. Build and they will come is not true. Humans are complex things and they need more than four walls to feel at home.
True for almost everyone, not just journalists.
2025-04-15
1 min read
New episode: Farming’s Overlords. The top four companies globally control more than 60% of the inputs modern farmers need: machines, seeds, chemicals. That concentration, plus their size, gives them unprecedented power.
Top Album Artists last week:
1. Willie Nelson 15
2. The Cranberries 13
3. The Little Willies 13
4. Salif Keita 10
5. Jerusalem Quartet 9
Interesting and educational to read about Reilly’s bash script for writing a now post. I’m still in the metaphorical Dark Ages of having a template that I save in the right place under a new name with updated variables.
XKCD on tariffs is actual genius.
https://xkcd.com/3073/
I feel the same, and am now tempted to rename Miscellaneous to Dunno.
Time again for Eat This Newsletter.
- Some things called pepper
- Welsh oats
- Chickens with olives
- Hot potatoes
- Civil Eats’ Food Policy Tracker
Read (and subscribe) at https://buttondown.com/jeremycherfas/archive/etn-267-more-diversity/
Thanks for the introduction to wikiloc.
Might just be me, but Apple’s launchctl seems badly broken, at least for new services. Followed https://www.navidrome.org/docs/installation/macos/ to the letter, and it just doesn’t work. The exactly same command directly from the terminal works perfectly. Cannot figure it out, but it seems I am not alone.
New episode: Quinoa’s Rise and Fall
Between 2007 and 2014 farmers on the altiplano of Peru saw their income from quinoa increase by almost 900%. The boom was followed even more quickly by a bust.
https://eatthispodcast.com/quinoa
Yes:
It is good to share some of the downs as well as the ups or even the plain level-going. I sometimes censor myself from sharing all the joy because I don't want to give the impression that everything is always perfect, but it darn near is, for which I am grateful.
Most people know that Jewish dietary laws forbid pork. A new book asks why the pig — rather than any of the other animals banned by the Hebrew bible — should have become so inextricably bound up with Jewish identity.
https://eatthispodcast.com/pigs
Just wow! https://www.c82.net/natural-colors/
The Natural System of Colours: Recreating Moses Harris’ color wheels from the eighteenth century.
h/t https://anhvn.com/posts/2025/weeknotes-29/
Yes:
Eat This Newsletter, for your delectation.
- 16,000 calories per calorie: isn’t that rather inefficient?
- NuFood: ready for water lentils?
- Marmalade, membrillo: what’s the difference?
And more, at https://buttondown.com/jeremycherfas/archive/etn-265-past-and-future/
I think my problem with Douthat and this essay is that I just don't find myself attracted to systems of belief, any systems of belief. To be a part of life, yes, but no more than a part, and a part with no special talents beyond self-destruction -- which is easier maybe if life eternal beckons.
Is there anything worse than having a post from two years ago highlighted with fine exceprts, and discovering at least one typo?
Question expecting the answer no, as my old Domine used to yell.
Fixed now. Thanks Joe.
I fear this may not work, but I need some webmentions to style in my site redesign, so I am going to reply to a post not quite at random and hope that that shows up. It probably won't, which will relegate styling webmentions to the live site. Heigh ho.
Latest episode: Food facts are not the answer to fear of foods
Charlotte Biltekoff, author of Real Food, Real Facts: Processed Food and the Politics of Knowledge, on how industrial food and real food talk past one another.
https://eatthispodcast.com/real-food
2025-02-15
1 min read
Unfortunately Google was a good one to resurface from this day in 2006, and of course the original inspiration is still up. I played again, and the results were not nearly as interesting or varied as they were all those years ago.
I got over the grave disappointment of Apple’s Books messing my Notes and Highlights for long enough to discover that a solution had been close at hand all along: Calibre!
https://www.jeremycherfas.net/blog/a-farewell-to-books