We are glad you are here Friday Feed – FERNs (#FFFWe share stories from the week that have made us stop and think (see below).
School food is a gateway into British culture for immigrants
The Guardian
Shahnaz Ahmadsan writes that schoolchildren’s lunch choices have become a barometer of how the country is doing. Think Marcus Rashford, who won near universal admiration for his campaign for free school meals during the pandemic. Or Jamie Oliver’s campaign against the Turkey Twizzler during school dinners. They can also serve another function that is less well-known. I have shared my personal experience with others from migrant backgrounds and also spoke with them. School dinners were our gateway for traditional British food and, in certain ways, the wider culture.
Chefs have joined the fight after Kyiv’s vibrant restaurant scene was shut down.
Eater
Yaroslav Duziuk reports that since the Euromaidan Revolution in 2014, which toppled Viktor Yanukovych’s corrupt and Russia-leaning administration, the Kyiv business and gastronomic cultures have been booming. This booming scene was abruptly halted by the unprovoked and brutal Russia-waged conflict. Many Kyiv citizens are concerned about survival. Chefs and line cooks are being recruited into a citizens’ army. They are determined to fight.
How animals and plants adapt to thrive in cities
Knowable Magazine
New York City’s brown rats might be developing smaller rows of tooth. The Eastern US’s tiny fish have adapted to live in urban water pollution. Eric Bender reports that living organisms are developing differently in cities than in the countryside. A city can change the environment in a dramatic way. Marc Johnson, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Toronto Mississauga says that cities can create new ecosystems. The city is home to more half of the world’s population and is the fastest-growing ecosystem. It’s not surprising that many biology labs now focus on urban ecology, a field that didn’t exist at the beginning of this millennium.
The create-your-own-ending story of fried rice
Whetstone Magazine
Food is a clue to our past, even if we forget it. Chinese immigrants started opening restaurants and cooking when they had no other job options. In the years after building the transcontinental railroad, they were forced to adapt the ingredients to American tastes. Kenny Ng writes that fast food fried rice was used to survive in an economy that didn’t need them. What is it that we lose, beyond culinary history, when the lineage and details of a dish are lost to the society in which it is consumed? We hide what we can’t take with us in the rice grains as we negotiate what can be saved in the chaos and freedom of migrating.
Tiramisu altered dessert history. But who made it?
The New Yorker
Susan Orlean writes that, despite what you may think about menus, there was a time when tiramisu wasn’t available in New York City or San Francisco in particular the nineteen-eighties or nineties. People probably ate ladyfingers in that prehistoric time. These long, thin, unsatisfying cookies were a popular choice. Ladyfingers were not thought of as a way to make espresso.