Best Food Writing 2010 by Holly Hughes Page A

as the greatest chef who ever lived. Her primal story, our family’s primal story, will have to change.
    Or will it? It wasn’t until I became a parent that I understood my grandmother’s cooking. The greatest chef who ever lived wasn’t preparing food, but humans. I’m thinking of those Saturday afternoons at her kitchen table, just the two of us—black bread in the glowing toaster, a humming refrigerator that couldn’t be seen through its veil of family photographs. Over pumpernickel ends and Coke, she would tell me about her escape from Europe, the foods she had to eat and those she wouldn’t. It was the story of her life—“Listen to me,” she would plead—and I knew a vital lesson was being transmitted, even if I didn’t know, as a child, what that lesson was. I know, now, what it was.
    Listen to Me
    “We weren’t rich, but we always had enough. Thursday we baked bread, and challah and rolls, and they lasted the whole week. Friday we had pancakes. Shabbat we always had a chicken, and soup with noodles. You would go to the butcher and ask for a little more fat. The fattiest piece was the best piece. It wasn’t like now. We didn’t have refrigerators, but we had milk and cheese. We didn’t have every kind of vegetable, but we had enough. The things that you have here and take for granted.... But we were happy. We didn’t know any better. And we took what we had for granted, too.
    “Then it all changed. During the war it was hell on earth, and I had nothing. I left my family, you know. I was always running, day and night, because the Germans were always right behind me. If you stopped, you died. There was never enough food. I became sicker and sicker from not eating, and I’m not just talking about being skin and bones. I had sores all over my body. It became difficult to move. I wasn’t too good to eat from a garbage can. I ate the parts others wouldn’t eat. If you helped yourself, you could survive. I took whatever I could find. I ate things I wouldn’t tell you about.
    “Even at the worst times, there were good people, too. Someone taught me to tie the ends of my pants so I could fill the legs with any potatoes I was able to steal. I walked miles and miles like that, because you never knew when you would be lucky again. Someone gave me a little rice, once, and I traveled two days to a market and traded it for some soap, and then traveled to another market and traded the soap for some beans. You had to have luck and intuition.
    “The worst it got was near the end. A lot of people died right at the end, and I didn’t know if I could make it another day. A farmer, a Russian, God bless him, he saw my condition, and he went into his house and came out with a piece of meat for me.”
    “He saved your life.”
    “I didn’t eat it.”
    “You didn’t eat it?”
    “It was pork. I wouldn’t eat pork.”
    “Why?”
    “What do you mean why?”
    “What, because it wasn’t kosher?”
    “Of course.”
    “But not even to save your life?”
    “If nothing matters, there’s nothing to save.”

ATTACK OF THE ANTI-MEAT CRUSADERS!
    By Lessley Anderson From chow.com

Though chow.com has expanded beyond its original base of die-hard street eaters, it’s still an audience of wide appetites and strong opinions. Instead of polarizing the meat-eating issue, senior features editor Lessley Anderson brings balanced reflection to this book review.
    M eat eating is under attack! And yet you may not have noticed all the noise—new, shocking reports from the World Bank, United Nations, and more—because you were too busy mawing on that delicious artisanal bacon.
    The upshot is that, by some estimates, livestock farming produces more greenhouse gases than all the world’s transportation systems combined. Factory farms are responsible for 99 percent—yes, 99 percent—of all the meat in the U.S.
    Then there’s the newish (November) nonfiction book by hot young writer Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals ,