Dining

From Madeira to Smuckers Mosaics

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My family is notorious for waiting until the last minute to plan our summer trip; that’s why this summer was so surprising. In November 2019 we had tickets to Madeira, and over winter break we began to very informally plan. While I was supposed to be finding hotels and hikes, I was too busy dreaming of all the passion fruit and tabaidos I was going to be eating. Unfortunately, our summer plans came to a screeching halt in mid-March. Instead of daydreams of Madeira, my mind was occupied with finishing up school, applying to summer jobs and remembering a mask when I went to the grocery store.

Dining

Become a Market Hero Today!

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Ithaca Farmers Market has been a central part of the Ithaca community for over 46 years and a beloved hotspot for nearby students. With over 100 vendors, the market has allowed many aspiring entrepreneurs the chance to start their own business on a small scale without the expenses or risks usually associated with the process. As a result, throughout the years the market has helped grow brands such as Gimme Coffee, Ithaca Hummus and Emmy’s Organics. Although Ithaca Farmers Market was able to stay open during the pandemic, business was far from usual. To maintain social distancing, weekend market vendors were limited to 50% normal capacity, while the Wednesday and Sunday markets were forced to open a month later than usual.

baking

Measurement Experiment: By Weight or Volume — Which is Better?

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Part 1 — Amelia Clute and French Macarons
French macarons are only scary if you actually care about doing it well. Let me elaborate — you would have to try extremely hard to produce a legitimately inedible macaron. Almost any combination of almond flour, sugar and meringue will give you an extremely tasty pastry. So why are macarons touted as one of the most difficult, fussy and intimidating challenges in the culinary world? Simply put, it is because we place too much emphasis on aesthetics without asking ourselves if we actually enjoy what we’ve created.

Dining

A Foodie’s Trip to the Doctor

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What do your teeth, brain, mood and gut all have in common? Unsurprisingly, it turns out one answer is almost everything. They are, after all, interconnected and essential aspects of your body and life. The other, often overlooked answer, however, is food. The COVID pandemic put into perspective how little control we have over certain parts of our health, but quarantine was sobering, proving we don’t have to be “an inert chunk of randomly assembled molecules drifting wherever the universe blows” us.  In fact, the decisions we make about our food give us resounding leverage over our health.

Dining

Future Pandemics Depend on Our Food Choices

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As the rate of positive COVID-19 tests rise again, we must consider the source of the virus and how to prevent future pandemics. The New York Times referred to the coronavirus as a wave that will “be with us for the foreseeable future before it diminishes” and will take more than one round of social distancing. We cannot depend on the warmer weather to diminish the number of cases or hope that a vaccine comes quickly; we must face the grim reality that the pandemic may persist into the next year. First, we need to educate ourselves on the nature of zoonotic diseases, which the Center for Disease Control  defines as being caused by “germs spread between animals and people.” According to One Health Commision, in the past three decades around 75 percent of all emerging infectious diseases originated in animals. These viruses are brought to humans by wild animals, whether humans consume them, capture and cross-breed species or increase encounter rates by destroying natural habitats.

college students

Eating Together Online with Strangers During the Pandemic

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As college students across the nation impatiently await announcements from universities regarding the status of the coming fall semester, many of us are searching for productive and meaningful ways to spend our free time now that classes have ended. With internships, summer research and academic programs cancelled, some of us are trying to readjust to living in our hometowns with parents and siblings, away from the friends, professors and resources we’ve come to rely on at Cornell. As we navigate this new reality, many students are staying connected with peers through podcasting, music-making and Youtubing, innovating new ways to engage with others in the absence of physical space. A few weeks ago, I learned about a free platform called Schefs that aims to connect students from different universities and facilitate interesting discussions about a wide range of topics, from pop music to quantum mechanics, all through a shared passion for food. Co-founded by two college students, Pedro Damasceno and Lola Lafia of Columbia University, Schefs started out as a way for like-minded people from schools across the nation to come together on their campuses and share a themed meal.

2020

Patriotic Meals: Food as a Stepping-Stone Towards Liberation

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Every Fourth of July, Americans are bombarded with advertisements about red and white products — it almost feels patriotic to spend money. Oftentimes, these companies advertise food sales — five dollar watermelon or hot dogs on a stars-and-stripes background — and imply that these items have some inherent patriotic identity. All-American men eat meat, a  Costco ad might urge you. Most of us don’t truly believe that we are performing our civic duty when we buy a hot dog; however, there was a time in American history when one’s diet was directly tied to their love and devotion — or lack thereof — to America. To understand American patriotism as it relates to food, we must go back to British Colonialism in the early 1600s.

Dining

I Made Bread Too

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The only thing better than the aroma of freshly baked bread is the sweet smell of hot chocolate chip cookies; quarantine has provided ample time for my family to make (and consume) both. Over the past few months, we have experimented with many different varieties of bread in an attempt to make our lives more exciting. My family has always been a bread-loving bunch. For years, my mom has used a bread maker that mixes and kneads the dough. With this time-saving machine, we can add ingredients to the machine, leave it for two hours on “dough” cycle and return to shape and bake it in the oven (which we prefer over baking in the bread machine).

Dining

Quarantine Cookout: How Coronavirus is Changing the Dynamics of Summer

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What does sand in the winter and not being able to find parking in front of your house have in common? They’re both indicators that you live in a beach town. Summer 2020 is undoubtedly one for the books. From lost internships to canceled vacations, everyone is feeling the effects of coronavirus in some way or another. These feelings are felt all the more deeply in a beach town.

Cafe Grumpy

(Coffee) Love in the Time of Corona: The Pandemic’s Effects on New York Coffee Culture

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Coffee has long been a New York City staple and a treasured morning ritual for many of the city’s inhabitants. Aside from the usual chains—Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts, among others—the city is famous for its plethora of hipster, local coffee shops. In the height of COVID-19, however, many of the city’s beloved spots have been forced to temporarily close. A recent New York Times article titled “Coffee Is One Routine New Yorkers Won’t Give Up” describes how customers and baristas alike have dealt with the crisis. Even with stay-at-home orders firmly in place, New Yorkers have clung onto their caffeine rituals in order to maintain a sense of normalcy in their daily lives.