Salon.com > Sarah Karnasiewicz http://www.salon.com Thu, 23 May 2013 01:58:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Eat the weeds http://www.salon.com/2009/10/06/fat_of_the_land/ http://www.salon.com/2009/10/06/fat_of_the_land/#comments Tue, 06 Oct 2009 07:06:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life//food/2009/10/06/fat_of_the_land It's been three decades since Alice Waters made microgreens a culinary cliché, and by now most diners take the lingo of local food for granted: chefs who raise their own heritage chickens, restaurants with hand-lettered blackboards that outline the lineage of every lamb chop, and salads that sport farmers' Christian names. But what if the next menu you picked up offered nettle pesto picked from the ditch next to Route 6? Or garlic-sautéed dandelion greens gathered from the overgrown lot behind the grocery store? As the meanings of "organic" and "local" grow ever more slippery -- and in lean times, when fewer folks than ever can afford to pay a premium for dinner -- are wild edibles poised to emerge as the next gastronomic zeitgeist?

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/10/06/fat_of_the_land/feed/ 25 The jiggle is back http://www.salon.com/2009/08/20/jello_is_back/ http://www.salon.com/2009/08/20/jello_is_back/#comments Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life//food/eat_drink/2009/08/20/jello_is_back I am neither Lutheran, a lunch lady, nor a native of Utah – but I admit: I love Jell-O. Give me a wedge of quivering pink pie studded with sliced strawberries and ringed with a corona of whipped cream, or a pile of chilled coffee cubes to pop like caffeinated gumdrops. Watch: I’ll lick my spoon. I’ll giggle when they wiggle.

I come forward with this confession as a serious cook and without irony – because, well, it’s about time someone did. After decades of pretzel and marshmallow-strewn degradation, Jell-O (and its plain old unbranded sibling, gelatin) has served out its term as a culinary punch line. Let’s give the Rodney Dangerfield of desserts some respect.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/08/20/jello_is_back/feed/ 68 How cooking makes you a man http://www.salon.com/2009/07/29/catching_fire/ http://www.salon.com/2009/07/29/catching_fire/#comments Wed, 29 Jul 2009 10:27:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life//food/eat_drink/2009/07/29/catching_fire Animals of the genus Homo are defined by their little mouths, large guts, big brains -- and appetite for bratwurst. This, at least, is the provocative theory of evolution put forth by Dr. Richard Wrangham in his fascinating new book, "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human."

Wrangham, the Ruth B. Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, began his career studying chimpanzees alongside Jane Goodall, and rose to academic acclaim as a primatologist specializing in the roots of male aggression. Naturally, he tends to think of most scientific questions in relation to chimps. And so it was that a few years ago, while sitting in front of his fireplace preparing a lecture on human evolution, he wondered, "What would it take to turn a chimpanzee-like animal into a human?" The answer, he decided, was in front of him: fire to cook food.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/07/29/catching_fire/feed/ 100 Can it! http://www.salon.com/2009/07/08/canned_goods/ http://www.salon.com/2009/07/08/canned_goods/#comments Wed, 08 Jul 2009 10:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life//food/eat_drink/2009/07/08/canned_goods Yesterday, for lunch, I ate a $17 peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Its appearance was deceptively humble: not layered with slices of foie gras or rare Amazonian fruit, nor served on handmade whole grain flecked with gold leaf. There were no white tablecloths or waiters to attend me. I cut the sandwich into two triangles on a plastic plate and chewed while surveying the scrubby view from my fire escape. When I was finished, I wiped my sticky fingers on my bare knees. So, how to account for the eye-popping price tag? I can't blame Skippy or Pepperidge Farm. No, I blame myself -- and my $15 per pint, straight-from-the-Greenmarket, homemade and canned in Brooklyn, N.Y., macerated and simmered in unprocessed sugar, spiked with organic chiles and small-batch Kentucky bourbon strawberry jam.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/07/08/canned_goods/feed/ 58 Conversations: Tim Gunn http://www.salon.com/2007/09/11/gunn/ http://www.salon.com/2007/09/11/gunn/#comments Tue, 11 Sep 2007 11:00:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/int/2007/09/11/gunn

To listen to a podcast of the interview, click here.

To subscribe: Click here to add Conversations to iTunes or cut and paste the URL into your podcasting software:

When I pick up the phone and hear Tim Gunn on the other end, a hypnotic calm comes over me -- and not just because he can't see my flip-flops and jeans. Maybe it's his voice (an arch purr) or his candor (his mother still critiques his clothes, he divulges), but after five minutes I'm ready to bare my soul and my closet to him.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/09/11/gunn/feed/ 21 Summer sips http://www.salon.com/2007/08/17/cocktail_results/ http://www.salon.com/2007/08/17/cocktail_results/#comments Fri, 17 Aug 2007 10:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life//food/eat_drink/2007/08/17/cocktail_results Put down that Budweiser and pour out that banana daiquiri -- you've got some sophisticated sippin' to do! Last week we challenged you, our readers, to send in recipes for your best summer libations for judgment, and you weren't shy. Before the close of cocktail hour Friday, Salon's in box was flooded with more than 140 entries. Culling through the candidates was a, ahem, tough job -- but thanks to a crack team of editors and cocktail experts, we finally narrowed the field to an elite group of finalists. Some drinks were hard to abandon ("Last Tang-o of Summer": The world needs more powdered "fruit" drink cocktails!). Others were ... not. (No more soy milk, please.)

By the time the last shot was poured, only five sophisticated, surprising -- and, most important -- thirst-quenching drinks were left standing. And so, without further ado, we bring you Salon's new summer classics. Enjoy -- because the gin and tonic may be timeless, but now it's got some stiff competition.

Category: Gin

The Irma la Douce

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/08/17/cocktail_results/feed/ 9 No more gin and tonics! http://www.salon.com/2007/08/08/cocktail_contest/ http://www.salon.com/2007/08/08/cocktail_contest/#comments Wed, 08 Aug 2007 21:15:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life//food/eat_drink/2007/08/08/cocktail_contest Sometimes an icy alcoholic beverage is the only remedy for the sticky, sweaty, late-summer blues. But what to pour? Rum and cokes? They're so freshman year. Gin and tonics? Sophisticated, but a snooze. Summertime needs some new classics -- and we need your help. Send Salon your favorite warm-weather drink recipes by cocktail hour on Friday, Aug. 10, and next week we'll select the top contenders, assemble a panel of discerning drinkers to sample them, and declare the winners.

To enter: Submissions must be sent to skarnasiewicz@salon.com and should include both a recipe and an introductory paragraph describing the drink's origins or inspirations, suggested food pairings, and most important, how many is too many. All cocktails will be evaluated within the following four categories: gin, vodka, rum and other. (Go wild!)

Recipes and photos of the winning cocktails in each category will be featured on Salon, and one grand prize winner will also receive a copy of "The Backyard Bartender: 55 Cool Summer Cocktails," by Nicole Aloni.

So, readers, start mixing -- and cheers!

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/08/08/cocktail_contest/feed/ 28 Life beyond the lens http://www.salon.com/2007/08/02/photographers/ http://www.salon.com/2007/08/02/photographers/#comments Thu, 02 Aug 2007 11:11:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/books/review/2007/08/02/photographers The most fascinating person in any given photograph is usually the one whose face is cut off, out of focus or turned away. We can smile and say cheese all we like, but it's these mistakes, the shots snapped a half-second too late, that truly reveal, hinting at the unguarded lives beyond the frame. Two new novels -- "The Shadow Catcher," by Marianne Wiggins, and "The Last Summer of the World," a debut by Emily Mitchell -- zoom in on this periphery to explain and expand on the lives and loves of two of photographic history's most complicated and compelling characters, Edward Curtis and Edward Steichen.

Like photographers, both Wiggins and Mitchell have chosen their subjects deliberately and staged their dramas with care, embroidering known history by promoting wives, lovers, mothers, sisters, colleagues and other walk-on characters to leading roles. But at the center of each of their tales is a solitary man, a cipher of sorts, who expresses himself most sensitively through the images he produces. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, both "The Last Summer" and "The Shadow Catcher" are also cluttered with the clichéd debris of masculine creativity -- the abandoned children and aggrieved wives, the epic visions, egos and doubts.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/08/02/photographers/feed/ 5 What else we’re reading http://www.salon.com/2007/07/17/whatelse_717/ http://www.salon.com/2007/07/17/whatelse_717/#comments Tue, 17 Jul 2007 21:15:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet//2007/07/17/whatelse_717 Rosie O'Donnell, radical hero? In the years since leaving her Emmy Award-winning talk show, Rosie O'Donnell has become the "most visible lesbian in the country" and single-handedly opened up daytime television to candid dissent, writes Kera Bolonik in the Nation. But until she stops cracking Chinamen jokes and cleaving to 9/11 conspiracy theories, says Bolonik, she won't be the public critic the left needs.

"Fetal personhood" and abortion rights: An Arizona woman has "mounted a grassroots campaign ... to get the government to give parents who deliver stillborn fetuses the option of receiving a 'certificate for stillborn birth'" -- but abortion rights advocates fear those efforts "could aid anti-choice groups as they attempt to chip away at or eliminate abortion rights," reports Allison Stevens in the American Prospect.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/07/17/whatelse_717/feed/ 14 Summer reading, summer eating http://www.salon.com/2007/07/10/elizabeth_david/ http://www.salon.com/2007/07/10/elizabeth_david/#comments Tue, 10 Jul 2007 10:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life//food/eat_drink/2007/07/10/elizabeth_david There's nothing like midsummer in New York to make a person acutely aware of the deprivations of city life. Does anyone grow up and move away, only to yearn for swarms of roaches and sweltering subway stations? For this country-mouse transplant, summer and the city are a cocktail that provokes the sincerest kind of longing; campfires, salty corn on the cob, fried clams and cans of beer sipped while dangling your toes in a dark lake -- these are the fabric of my summer fantasies. But short of a fairy godmother with a shore house, I've found only a few quotidian treats capable of breaking the humid gloom: a midnight thunderstorm, maybe, a mound of lemon ice in a paper cup -- and a little yellow cookbook by Elizabeth David.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/07/10/elizabeth_david/feed/ 3 Finale wrap-up: “The King of Queens” http://www.salon.com/2007/05/15/king_39/ http://www.salon.com/2007/05/15/king_39/#comments Tue, 15 May 2007 14:06:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/review/2007/05/15/king Monday night, after more than 200 episodes and nine seasons on CBS, "The King of Queens" stepped down from its sitcom throne. A scrappy outer-borough survivor, somehow "King," despite chronically lackluster reviews and musical chairs time slots, outlived both its dumpy cousins, like "Yes, Dear" and "Still Standing," and its overshadowing elder sibling, "Everybody Loves Raymond," to be the last live-action comedy of the 1990s still on the air. The exterior of Doug and Carrie Heffernan's modest brick Rego Park town house remained unchanged until the series' final scene -- and inside, our two protagonists were still going at it -- but the door won't be opening for us again.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/05/15/king_39/feed/ 30 Going whole hog http://www.salon.com/2007/05/01/pork_review/ http://www.salon.com/2007/05/01/pork_review/#comments Tue, 01 May 2007 11:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life//food/eat_drink/2007/05/01/pork_review "You want a heart? We got them every day. Every part of the pig. We got the ears -- I keep 'em in the freezer -- we got the head ..." The butcher continued rattling off his inventory on the other end of the receiver, but I'd heard all I needed to hear.

I'd had swine on the brain for days, ever since "Pork and Sons," chef Stephane Reynaud's homage to all things hog, landed on my desk. Part cookbook and part memoir of his upbringing in the mountains of France among a community of butchers and farmers, "Pork and Sons" details the life and times of some very pampered pigs from youth to slaughter and sausage to saucier. The volume is already a bestseller in Reynaud's native country -- in 2005, it won the Grand Prix de la Gastronomie Française -- but the release of the U.S. edition feels right on cue, too: timed to coincide with both the lunar "Year of the Pig" and the porcine renaissance that has been sweeping the American culinary community. (Here in New York, a local chef was recently celebrated in the paper for serving a pork cocktail. Can we really still call it the "other white meat"?)

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/05/01/pork_review/feed/ 8 Can this woman make quinoa sexy? http://www.salon.com/2007/03/06/swanson/ http://www.salon.com/2007/03/06/swanson/#comments Tue, 06 Mar 2007 12:05:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life//food/eat_drink/2007/03/06/swanson Like many other eaters, weathering these days of transfat bans, E. coli outbreaks and agriculture exposés has prompted me to think more critically about the vittles I let pass my lips. Now, when I have a cold and crave chicken soup, I'll walk a few blocks farther, and spend a few dollars more, for an organic bird to stock my pot. At the market, I skim the ingredients in the stuff I toss into my shopping cart and avoid anything I can't pronounce or that appears to have been manufactured entirely from corn syrup. But though most of the time eating well makes me feel good (yes, inside and out) I'm hardly a nutrition scold -- and in moments of weakness I still succumb to the temptation of a big box of Mallomars (before you judge: at least they're "seasonal").

So it was with equal parts curiosity and trepidation that I opened up Heidi Swanson's new cookbook, "Super Natural Cooking: Five Ways to Incorporate Whole & Natural Ingredients Into Your Cooking." Though I've long been an admirer of the smart recipes and stunning visuals on Swanson's cooking blog 101cookbooks.com, I wasn't sure I was interested in adding such a purely virtuous volume to my shelves. After all, a woman cannot live on lentils alone.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/03/06/swanson/feed/ 37 Annie Leibovitz’s reckless candor http://www.salon.com/2006/11/18/leibovitz_2/ http://www.salon.com/2006/11/18/leibovitz_2/#comments Sat, 18 Nov 2006 14:00:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/feature/2006/11/18/leibovitz Somewhere at the back of our closets, in shoe boxes or plastic bins, we all have stacks of these snapshots: pale thighs and juice boxes and striped umbrellas on a sandy beach; a rumpled bed and a view from an anonymous window; poses by the lake at a cousin's wedding, candids out of focus or ill-framed. Even as we shoot them, most are forgotten -- and as anyone who's suffered through someone else's endless slide show knows, that's usually for the best. Photographs are great hyperbolists, capable of convincing us that, with the simple push of a button, a mundane moment is something worth memorializing. Still, even the most obsessive shutterbugs usually know that the only people who care about these images are those who lived the captured moments or loved the people who did.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2006/11/18/leibovitz_2/feed/ 73 The Hillary factor http://www.salon.com/2006/11/08/hillary_62/ http://www.salon.com/2006/11/08/hillary_62/#comments Wed, 08 Nov 2006 06:03:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2006/11/07/hillary The one question looming at the Hillary Clinton victory party was all but spelled out in block letters on a handmade sign carried by Harjinder Singh Duggal of Queens: "HILLARY: 1 STEP, 2 YEARS TO THE WHITE HOUSE." But asked later in the evening whether the senator from New York would be announcing her much-anticipated bid for the 2008 presidential race, Howard Wolfson, a Democratic consultant and close advisor to Clinton would only laugh. "Not tonight," he said, "But we do appreciate your interest!"

As the polls closed in New York and a fine mist began to fall over Manhattan, several thousand enthusiastic supporters packed into the Metropolitan East ballroom at midtown's Sheraton Hotel and Towers for the New York Statewide Democratic Party Election Night Celebration.

With the results of the nation's races flashing on big screens overhead, a petite middle-aged woman raised her bottle of Brooklyn lager and exclaimed of the Republicans, "That's right, we're gonna work their asses!" The rest of the raucous crowd -- including movies stars (Ed Norton), men in dark suits and graying temples, carefully coifed women in classic Chanel-style tweeds, and fresh-faced campaign workers -- hummed in anticipation of the arrival of their candidates: Andrew Cuomo, Elliot Spitzer -- and of course, Senator Hillary Clinton.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2006/11/08/hillary_62/feed/ 1 The hothouse effect http://www.salon.com/2006/08/31/hothouse_kids/ http://www.salon.com/2006/08/31/hothouse_kids/#comments Thu, 31 Aug 2006 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life//feature/2006/08/31/hothouse_kids Never before has raising a talented kid seemed such an exhaustive, expensive undertaking. IQ-enhancing baby formulas. "Brainy-baby" toys in stimulating shapes and scientifically approved colors. Infant DVDs designed to inspire mini van Goghs and mold budding Olympic champs -- and imprint children with crucial skills while their brains and bodies are still soft. If the shelves of Babies R Us are any evidence, it is these props -- not blankets and bottles -- that are the new necessities for devoted parents. Whether such extreme parenting is the byproduct of swollen middle-class egos or a genuine anxiety about the demands of an increasingly competitive world, the result remains the same. Across America, for those who can afford it, childhood has begun to look a lot less like a summer camp and a lot more like a training camp.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2006/08/31/hothouse_kids/feed/ 49 Streets of ire http://www.salon.com/2006/08/25/summer_violence/ http://www.salon.com/2006/08/25/summer_violence/#comments Fri, 25 Aug 2006 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life//feature/2006/08/25/summer_violence In cities across the country, from Oakland, Calif., to Hartford, Conn., to Orlando, Fla., the story of summer 2006 has been one of kids and killing. Nashville, Tenn.'s police department reports that the number of teens arrested for violent crimes within the first six months of 2006 increased 20 percent over 2005; in Washington, D.C, 14 murders occurred in the first 12 days of July, and juvenile crimes in particular have risen 82 percent. In August, Oakland police reported that in 2006 nearly 30 percent of the city's homicide victims -- 26 out of a total 88 -- have been under the age of 19, a frightening sum that if it continues on pace, will easily double the number of last year's casualties. Even Boston -- a city whose effective offensive on youth violence during the 1990s earned the nickname the "Boston Miracle" and became a model for crime prevention across the country -- is facing a dramatic reversal of fortune, looking this summer less like an example of success than a cautionary tale.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2006/08/25/summer_violence/feed/ 25 Destination: Southwestern France http://www.salon.com/2006/07/27/france_11/ http://www.salon.com/2006/07/27/france_11/#comments Thu, 27 Jul 2006 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/books/literary_guide/2006/07/27/france If you tell people you're taking a trip to southern France, they're likely to assume you mean the South of France -- that land of pastis, sunflowers, celeb-swarmed film festivals, and sunburned Brits. It's an honest mistake; though the Côte d'Azur and Provence have long been celebrated by tourists (and romantic chateau-restoring writers) for their improbable mix of big-money glamour and precious country charm, few American travelers realize that the towns and villages along the western half of France's rolling southern border offer a great many picturesque pleasures of their own. Ribboned with three of France's great rivers, penned in by the Pyrenees to the south, hollowed by some of the world's most remarkable caves, and -- in parts -- populated by more geese than people, the limestone Causses and green valleys of Gascony, the Dordogne and the Lot feel continents apart from the crowded beaches and high-rise hotels of their Mediterranean neighbors.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2006/07/27/france_11/feed/ 10 Roadfoodies http://www.salon.com/2006/05/18/jane_michael_stern/ http://www.salon.com/2006/05/18/jane_michael_stern/#comments Thu, 18 May 2006 12:33:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life//feature/2006/05/18/jane_michael_stern "Should we eat while it's hot?" Michael Stern asks as a perky, ponytailed waitress slides a steaming pizza pan onto our table. We need no prompting, though; sliced into jigsaw pieces, glistening with olive oil, flecked with petite New England clams and perfumed with garlic, the pie is irresistible. Seconds later, another thin-crusted beauty arrives, blanketed in chopped tomato. Hands and mouths go to work and three of us chew in contented silence, clinking our glasses of root beer.

It's a blue-skied day in early May and I've joined Michael, along with his wife, co-author and traveling companion, Jane, for a late-afternoon pit stop at Pepe's Pizzeria in Fairfield, Conn., to sample the legendary slices and to talk about their new book, "Two for the Road: Our Love Affair With American Food." The pizza is divine, but the place carries a personal connection for the couple, too. According to Stern mythology, it was on their first date, over one of Pepe's white clam pizzas, that they first discovered their shared passion for great food, and for one another.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2006/05/18/jane_michael_stern/feed/ 21 The children they gave away http://www.salon.com/2006/05/11/fessler_qa/ http://www.salon.com/2006/05/11/fessler_qa/#comments Thu, 11 May 2006 13:04:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life//feature/2006/05/11/fessler_qa "Nobody ever asked me if I wanted to keep [my] baby, or explained the options. I went to a maternity home, I was going to have the baby, they were going to take it, and I was going to go home. I was not allowed to keep the baby. I would have been disowned."

-- Joyce

It was the 1960s and Joyce was going to beauty school in Florida when she realized she was pregnant. When her mother found out, Joyce says, she was "dumped" at a Salvation Army Home for Unwed Mothers in Alabama. "It was an old, old, old house with big rooms," she remembers now. "[And] I had no control ... It was like being in a car wreck or something. Once you start skidding, that's it. [So] I kind of skidded through it."

Joyce is just one of more than a million and a half women who were sent to maternity homes to surrender their children for adoption in the decades between World War II and the passage of Roe v. Wade in 1973. They were college freshman working their way through school with two jobs. They were tomboys, sorority girls and valedictorians. They were mothers and they were invisible.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2006/05/11/fessler_qa/feed/ 69