you are the guy with a ponytail. and you are rebelling against the political orthodoxy. >> i'm pretty liberal. i admittedly would have voted for obama in 08 that i but i was 17. [laughter] >> that is why we have to not lower the voting age any more. >> in you describe your relationship with --

did they hold the lid down on you? >> no, my relationship with him is outstanding. as many of you know the state democratic party asked that i be fired the other day and management, well, i was going to use the phrase but now i realize the camera is here. told them that is not going to happen. no, they are absolutely wonderful. they give me tremendous leeway and they are very supportive and i'm sure that they will be supportive as long as i make money for them. [laughter] and only until then. you have got to be very clear about what this is all about. it's not because i have a pretty face. >> i'll be the first one to say that your dad was one of my favorites. back in the day. what is your sense of the so-called silent majority in terms of the recall election and

the national elections, especially in the national independent. >> i don't know. i don't know nationally. things have been so confusing. in wisconsin, i do think you do get the sense that the silent majority and it may be a small majority, but what we saw over the last year, we saw and i have a whole chapter in the book about the empire strikes back in wisconsin because this whole issue of the two americans is so crucial, the two americans, the public sector in the private sector. what happens when you have a government debt, a governor and a politician who is willing to solve these problems? what do we see? we saw nothing but the drones and the protests in medicine and you could have gone through six or seven months believing that

everybody hated what was going on, was absolutely in an uproar and then you have the election for state supreme court justice and you have some of the recall elections. it turned out that not everybody felt that way. not everybody i along stretch because guess what? the silent majority can't go and hang out at the capitol. and single by yeah because the silent majority has to go to work to pay the taxes and to raise their kids, but they can come out and they can vote. so i do think that this is one of those areas where, do not get discouraged if you don't see you know, people like you out there on the street. and i understand that it was a very difficult period. you have to understand there are still more people out there who are working hard and trying to pay the taxes and make a living out there and unfortunately, the only time that you get to be

heard is during an election, which of course living in wisconsin the attempt to overturn that election, because we have had a year-long temper tantrum. joe asked about the significance of this year's election. in terms of come and i know that i over use this term tipping point but it's because i actually do think there's a tipping point. what's going to happen here in wisconsin with the reforms that have happened here? that is going to be a real tipping point because we are in this extraordinary political moment. we have people like paul ryan and scott walker who said okay, instead of just talking about solving this problem, what if we were to make the kind of fundamental reforms and structural changes to put us on a sustainable path? what happens? what happens? are they going to be rewarded for that courage for fixing a problem as opposed to pointing a blue ribbon task force are kicking the can down the road or are they going to be thrown out of office? every other state is watching

this. members of congress are watching this and we have talked about political courage and how much it easier just to give people stuff as opposed to telling them they can't afford stuff. if scott walker goes down, the politicians throughout this country are going to see that as a clear indication, too mess with this culture. do not mess with the entitlements and don't try to fix these problems. if you want to stay in office, appointed blue ribbon task force. there are two kinds of people in politics. there are lots of different kinds of people in politics but they are the doers and it be yours. the people that want to be in politics they run because they want the title and they want to be important because they want to have people up to them all the time and then there are the doers, people who get in the public life and they want to do something or fix something. what we are going to find out is whether or not we really want people who do something because trust me, if we don't get it right in wisconsin, what are the

chances we are going to get it right in washington? the fact that we have a debt that is growing too larger than the entire u.s. economy, how are he ever going to get a political class that will tell the american people you can't have free electric cars, free lunch, free all of this stuff and we are not going to be buying you, we are not going to be buying you all a new house for example if the politicians who say no get kicked out of office. we will know a lot more at the end of this year than we know now and we will know whether or not we have reached that point where a majority of americans say, gives me, give me and if you want my vote you have to tell me how much you were going to give me. if i vote for that other guy he's going to take away my freebies because i have a right to that. like the georgetown law student. just a few more questions and then i will sign some books.

speech is following that, in your last election, i forgot what the margin was, 52-48 or something like that. do the recall people realize that will lead to the debt? all the people who voted for walker probably going to vote for walker or some of them are not going to vote for walker. they are going to vote for someone different. >> i think that what they are counting on is you peeled off the independence you may have liked the results but didn't like the process. there was a period there were a lot of people saw the chaos in madison and instead of blaming it on the people who are creating the chaos they blamed it on the governor and to be very candid with you right now, i think a lot of them no they are not going to be able to run on collective bargaining form of the budget and they are just hoping this john doe investigation comes up with something that will take the governor down which is why i talk about that on the air.

unfortunately nationally everybody uses it as a referent upon the budget. i tend to agree because i mean, i talk to people in madison all the time. they live in this bubble and people are constantly freaked out. i say, you need to come out and come to waukesha county, come to milwaukee county or washington county. come out to the real world because i don't sense any, any loss of support, scott walker at all. >> do you think that the people that voted for walker the last time are going to have all of these thought processes that you just mentioned when a lot of them, a large majority of them are government workers and their livelihood was affected and it has affected them so they are going to vote against him just

because of that? >> not a majority of them were government employees but that would be one of the concerns, that you start with a base of 300 or 500,000 government employees who would vote no. that might change the dynamics a little bit but again, when you talk about the culture, and i do spend a good deal of time in this book, talking about how we have gone off on this, created this privileged class. i am not denigrating public employees. i'm not saying that you know they should be demonized. what i am saying is let's have a reality check out how different the world is or the people who are paying the bills and what an extraordinarily sweet deal they have. this is one of the frustrating things to watch all these people talking about the new egypt and our rights are being destroyed and adolf hitler because they

are taking 12% of your health care premium. the average american pays about 25% of their health care premium. they contribute to their own pension and they are paying nothing? so to have a culture in which you have people who felt so entitled to a lavish pension, lavish health care and not contribute virtually anything at all, and we have seen this revolution in wisconsin. so what is happening in wisconsin is in a lot of ways a prelude to what's going to happen. what happens when you start going after some of the other transfer programs or entitlement programs? i would also remind people in the mainstream media, i found it fascinating that president obama spoke out against the form on collective bargaining and it was only after about a month as someone said excuse me mr. president do you know that federal employees by and large do not have collective bargaining rights, and to the

extent that they have unions they are not allowed to bargain for wages and benefits? so you know, while the left is demonizing what governor walker is doing in wisconsin, federal workers have never under democrats or republicans been granted those collective bargaining rights. so just try to find how many stories made that point. one more question. are absolutely right. what comments do you have for children -- [inaudible]

in general, suggestions? >> in public schools, they will wear political things. [inaudible] since conservatives are always accused of being intolerant anyway i think we ought to be intolerant of that kind of propaganda the public schools. i think you ought to push back on all of that. [applause] because here is the reality. first of all, it's unethical and it's unethical to use that. is a form of oley inc. to be doing that. i do understand how difficult it is to take a stand because you are afraid that your child will be affected, but i think it's a breach of trust and a breach of confidence. for me, my real frustration and i have written about education now for 20 years, is that i have tremendous respect for teachers and i wish they would have more respect for themselves, that

they would want to be treated and regarded as professional because they ought to be treated as professionals as opposed to the decision that many of them at may that they would rather be trade union activists. you can choose, you can either be lockstep trade union leaders who did not get rewarded for being better or you are not held accountable or you can be a professional, somebody who was rewarded for being gifted. i personally don't have any problem at all with pay six figures to an outstanding math teacher. if you are an inspired teacher and you change kids lives, we will do everything possible to incentivize that and report you. the flipside of that is if you are burned out and you are dead weight, you should be treated the way any other profession will handle a burnout or a dead weight. we should not have a system that protects mediocrity. this is a challenge for teachers. i would hope that some of them would rise to this because it's

a calling to be a teacher and unfortunately we have turned it into this sort of factory unionized setting that otherwise we would not see stories like that. again, unfortunately when you say, wouldn't it be great if we treated teachers like professionals and they acted like professionals that would describe teacher bashing i guess. thank you very much. appreciate it very much. [applause] >> now more from little rock. booktv visited the city with the help of our local cable partner, comcast of central arkansas. >> tells the story of nine people from arkansas and they

are people i heard about when i was doing fact-checking for the encyclopedia of mercantile studies. one of the earliest interesting people in arkansas was a plantation owner's name charlie mcdermott. charlie grew up in louisiana and had family plantations down there but he was looking for a place to resettle and he really got into eastern arkansas and found land along the bayou bartholomew fair that he really felt was special, so he purchased that land and built a house and was thriving and brought his wife in their many children to arkansas and were growing up there. in addition to being a plantation owner and a farmer, charlie was an inventor. he invented a new way of making an iron or wedge that was partly hollowed but what do the same amount of footing work but he was always trying to plot. charlie mcdermott thought that man was meant to fly so he tried as hard as he could to invent

the airplane. actually filed a patent for a device for traveling through the air. it had 20 -- it was operated like a bicycle. it was human powered get it was effective as a glider. if he got it high enough and got a good when he was able to travel short distances with it and he was determined that if the chicken could fly in the buzzard could flyfly, man too fly and eventually women could fly to the store and pick up their food and fly back home again. the only reason that this work was human power could not get very much distance. if you had a gasoline powered mower, if he had a lawnmower to take apart and put the motor and and he would have been able to fly it. he published articles about flying devices and scientific and american devices. he traveled with it and came to the arkansas fair in little rock and went to the centennial and philadelphia so there was lots of literature about his flying machines. there is very little doubt that horrible and wilbur wright saw some of his models and model

some of their ideas. that a gasoline-powered engine and so they invented air flight and got all the credit for it. charlie mcdermott said $4000 he could invent a working model and his neighbors raised a thousand dollars. he was ready to put it on exhibition. the night before there was a windstorm and is working model crashed into a jury and he was not able to demonstrate it. charlie mcdermott was an inventor and arkansas hero. >> we would like to hear from you. tweeted should be back at twitter.com/booktv. coming up next a panel on america's food industry from how the country's food is grown and produced to what is being eaten and how wages and costs affect their level of nutrition. tracie mcmillan panel member and author of "the american way of eating" spent 2009 working throughout the system from industrial farm in california

and the produce section at a walmart near detroit to a chain restaurant kitchen in brooklyn. she profiles the people who worked alongside her at each job and reports on her attempts to eat well on reduced wages. this is about an hour and a half. [applause] >> can you hear me? i'm okay? i first want to introduce the rest of the panel, starting to my left. annia ciezadlo. annia is the author of the 2011 memoirs, "day of honey" and memoirs food, love and war called one of the least political and most intimate and valuable books to have come out of the iraq war by "the new york times." it's just out in paperback. her coverage of the culture and politics in the middle east and "the new york times," "the washington post" and the nation have been recognized by the international association of professionals and included and

the writing series. welcomes annia. [applause] to the left of annia is amanda, the co-founder of food 52.com and the author of the essential "new york times" cook book for which he won an award. a longtime staffer for "the new york times," she has authored edited and contributed to many books including eat memory and cooking for -- she left to pursue the food 52. welcome, amanda. [applause] next to amanda we have james. james is the editor-in-chief of sever magazine was the judge in the first two season of bravo's top chef masters. is to thousands jeff -- book on southeast asia cradle of flavor was recognized by the james award in the international association of professionals and he has lectured widely.

he is also an editor at sassy magazine. [laughter] i love sassy. next to james is reverend daphne stephanie jackson. he is the co-founder of the brooklyn rescue mission in 2000 do with two with her husband reverend robert jackson to bring healthy food to the homeless and hungry essential brooklyn. finding fresh food rare in their donations box, the jackson's began growing produce in an abandoned lot behind the mission. it is now a small urban farms supplying a small farmers market and a pantry, sorry, for their emergency food providers and the reference jackson are known across the city for their partnerships with other urban farmers health advocates and community producers. [applause] and then of course on the end is

tracie mcmillan. tracie mcmillan is a senior fellow at the shuster institute for investigative journalism and author of the american way of eating, undercover at walmart, applebee's, farm fields and the dinner table which just went on sale today. although she has written on food in "the new york times" and harper she just closed her food stamp case last month and was of all things, i'm sorry, that was crossed out, she is most pleased by greg garner's comment are owed from the book -- code that girl can work. [applause] before we start with questions i thought we would open up for a minute just to give us a quick synopsis overview of the book and it just came out so everybody may not have ready at, and we'll take it from there.

>> thanks everybody for coming and i'm excited to have a discussion which was inspired by some reporting i did for the american way of eating. increasingly when i was going around the country working as a farmer during california, as a produce clerk at walmart in michigan and cooking at applebee's i kept hearing from all the people that i worked with that most of the discussion i was hearing in my professional life suggested it was only the people that cared about what they were eating. that was the inspiration behind the panel and i'm so delighted that all of these incredibly talented, smart dedicated people decided to share with me so i am super psyched. >> we will start off by asking the panel a question, which is food movement does get labeled as i know in my show and i to let's get real, i try to speak to the metal and i try to take away that whole lifestyle and take away that realm so he approached

if it is nonthreatening to people but why do we think it is elitist and more quickly can you care about food without coming off as sounding elitist? who would like to start? >> this is right up my alley. we envisioned food at a level where some of the most at risk of hunger people would have an opportunity to eat a level of food that is of such quality that they were -- and i and my husband took to the soil and started to grow food for our emergency food program. the amazing thing about it is, although many people walk past us laughing, what are they doing out there in the dirt?

this was before was such a popular movement. we began to grow and deliver fresh produce to people who hadn't had real food in a very long time or they grew up with this food or they were young and they never tasted food that didn't take last -- taste like plastic. we had a whole other group of people who couldn't identify food so that was another category. that round red thing was an apple or the green stuff. so i think that you know, in our work, we have worked very hard to bring food down to a level where it is wholesome, it's available, affordable and it is good for your body, mind and soul, everything. we have taken great pride in the fact that we have worked to introduce choice for our community which we have growing

right now. so i think the fact that food doesn't have to be elitist and at any level at all. >> amanda maybe you want to speak to that. coming from "the new york times" from the realm of what we would describing your question and use the word lifestyle. you call it food lifestyle, it having the opportunity to decide i've had i have had this effect on elitist even though do you think about the kinds of food that people are interested in, it's actually very simple.

cooking or are sort sort of like peasant style cooking. now we are interested in seeing that was 15 years ago and now we are interested in you know kind of growing our own and curing in preserving and all of these things that were done by people who didn't have any money. >> and grandma cooking. >> yeah and they think it has happened beyond the lifestyle for it not to be elitist. >> i guess for me to head-scratcher is, i mean looking around this wonderful roomful of people, is there not a foodie? is there a person who is not a foodie here? is there such a thing as food not being a lifestyle? food is what sustains us along with oxygen and i don't know, i guess just for me personally, i have got issues with the name

foodie. it jars me. it sort of rubs me wrong. i mean, i just turned 49 years old. i have probably been in 42 countries in my entire life. i'm the editor of a food magazine. i don't think i've i have ever met a person for whom food was not a lifestyle. food is what we must do every single day. i think maybe the thing, since what we are talking about is fetishizing of eating and maybe that is what we mean by this word lifestyle, and yes, it's weird. it's basically kind of like brad pitt and angelina jolie are to human life as is some extraordinary chef as food is to eating so i guess, i don't know. >> just to go off of what james is saying, the one thing i've

seen when i was working at the american way of eating was that everybody wants good food. it's not like people that are working at walmart don't think about their meals or don't think that they would like to eat healthy or don't spend time and energy in figuring that out. i sat down and i was working at the walmart grocery section and i said what did you have? i have this tuna casserole and this and this and this with it and then we had porcupine. i said porcupine? which are actually a southern dish, you know it's a meatball that has rice cooked in it and when you take it out of the oven the rises sprouted around like spines. somebody who is thinking about it and talking about the family but she is not a foodie in the way that we think of it in terms of like mainstream culture coming out of new york. >> it definitely speaks to the whole question of ordinary

people and the people that we don't expect to be foodies are foodies. and also focusing on that can seem elitist. i did a story a couple of years ago about refugees in the middle east during the iraq war. there was a huge outpouring of refugees and i was curious about, i knew from having traveled around different countries in the middle east that a lot of them were really really homesick and one of the best ways that people feel that homesickness is by cooking food. so i picked james being the visionary author, what are the iraqi refugees eating and how are they dealing with homesickness and how are they dealing with this tremendously dislocating experience of being in exile in a foreign country? and i originally was going to do the story but the syrian government did not let me in. so i called the u.n. high

commission on refugees and sort of talk to the local person there. when i told him that this was a food story, they were very excited to have me do a story on refugees but when i told them it was a food story, he was absolutely furious. these are people that are starving. how can you possibly write about what they are eating? this is ridiculous. most people would be thinking that they are having difficulty getting food and i was like no, that is why i want to write the story. i want to write about people who have absolutely nothing and are in this dreadful situation, how they are coping and how food is helping to humanize them. long story short, i think there is a dichotomy between sort of what we think of as serious journalism and what we think of when you say the word food. when you say food writing, when i tell people, i tell people i'm a food writer and they assume that i'm doing, what is the latest recipe for cupcakes?

but it is assumed to be not a serious story and i think for food writers that is of tremendous opportunity for all of us. to do things about war and famine and things we usually think of as being not having anything to do with food. usually there is a food story in there. and our job is to find it. >> do we think that maybe americans, we are in america and america, that americans are potentially -- sorry. that americans are going overboard a little bit in their possession with food? i guess what i find is i see the american food having three categories and what i call real food, and apple, junk food which is apple jacks and that what i call a foodieness which is in

the middle which is all that systemic and effects are apple flavored gummy bear kind of stuff. we have these three tears tiers to our food system and i guess i sort of agree with you. everybody cares about food and cares about with e. but i don't know if that is necessarily true. either it's not chew the people don't care or are people are so blindsided but what i call the food firewall that they think they care about their food but they understand what they are eating are what they are getting. i guess that is my big fear. for me it keeps coming back to this elite crowd. we all talk about food and write about food and do it for a living, so everybody else does not have to. so i guess can we speak to that? maybe i'm not being clear about this but what i see is a three tier system in this country where we have this luxury of being in a city where we have access to all this great stuff.

you tracie spent time in working in a walmart and spend time in the fields. because you have that firsthand experience with people working in other places may be can speak to that. i going to walmart and i look at the supermarket section and all i see is processed packaging. they are trying to bring in more real for you but i'm wondering if people really do care about their food are people really like to eat because we are we are human and we get hungry. is there a difference with that? are people getting upset about what they are eating better people maybe not that clear about it? >> most working families that i've met don't obsess about it to the extent that they are taking photographs of their meals. or spending full days wandering around farmers markets. how annoying farmers markets can be because you just want to go get something and there was a girl with her bicycle. and i have heard friends of mine who are parents complaining about strollers.

i don't think you see that kind of the possession. i do think that there tends to be the sort of unspoken undercurrent of debate, sort of assuming that low income families just don't eat a lot of fast food. and that actually doesn't tend to happen with a very low income because they can't afford fast food. i also think that when people are picking something like fast food or convenience food, that's not an expression of i don't care and i have been tricked. it's sort of this confluence of time and money and access to what we have made easy for them. convenience is huge for everybody. if we want to have a conversation about public health and food we have got to start having a conversation about why people eat well, how do we make it easy for them to do that instead of sort of following the model. it makes a lot of sense for

family to say you need to prioritize to spend more money and spend more time and why don't you stop watching tv and spend more time cooking? i don't watch a lot of tv and i cook a lot and that's fine and that's my choice. i don't think you're going to win over anybody by lecturing them about turn off your television and other things. >> i guess i can only make, as a food historian i can only make conjecture about what americans eating habits and americans eating ways might have been 100 years ago, 125 years ago, before the american corporate military machine took over and told us what to eat and how to eat it. i grew up in the 19 sixties and 1970s, largely in northern california, a lower middle-class kid. i did not grow up in what we would call nowadays, kind of

like you mentioned early on in your book in a very moving way for me personally because i really identify with it. for me, when i was a kid my dream food was carnation instant breakfast, chocolate malted. and also, libby's brood cocktail was the bomb. >> but only if you got the cherries. >> i always got it. my mom did not enjoy cooking. my mom shopped once a week for processed food and that is what i ate. my dad was an in office products salesman and he used to travel the country. when he came home, he would duplicate males that he had eaten at these kind of great continental restaurants in the 19 sixties. i think it began me on a journey

of appreciating food, but i don't think again, if you go back to what i was saying earlier i appreciate food anymore than any of you in the broom right now. one thing that i have experienced maybe in my travels, i have lived a lot in southeast asia and southeast india. i lived for about a year and a half in a south indian village where there were not supermarkets and their was no carnation instant breakfast. instead there was only what was grown behind the house in the village behind the house. and eating that food for a year and a half, i felt a lot better than my carnation instant breakfast diet of being a kid. >> i did spend a lot of time in the archives to go back 150 years in the and the thing that is interesting, how present food

was in people's everyday lives. what you were buying, how you were making it actually was this very big part of everyone's day and probably more so than what it is now. so i don't think that is new. if you get away from food and you look at -- and arab citizen with -- are up session with fashion, think americans go overboard. we are hardwired to go overboard with everything and then we kind of pullback and a kind of evens out.

there is a lot better fashion available to -- then than there was 20 years ago. there are a lot of negative reasons for that but the fact is, you get people interested and get people figuring out ways to bring it to the masses and that is exactly happening with food. actually think it's a good and annoying. i understand that when you go out to dinner with a group of people who all the attack about the entire mail is you know, how the carrots were cut or how they found this weird cheese in the corner of queens and you know, like i can get a little much, right? at the end result, and i really believe this, i think if you want to look at a big company that has made some progress, whether you like chipotle or

not, they have actually made a great effort to change the way fast food is done. so it takes is kind of over-the-top foodie or whatever you want to call it and this real interest to kind of fashion a food i think to make progress that will kind of join this very disparate group right now which is like the elite foodies and those who feel kind of left out and left out of the conversation. >> i think it is a great example of that. a company that is really breaking the bar and setting an excellent example, sort of bridging that gap i think between mcdonald's and everything else. everything above that. >> can i jump in? there is something that we are not talking about, which is this kind of tremendous exposure to food blogs.

a lot of food writing that we have grown up with is restaurants and it only cost $200 to have dinner and suddenly we have gone from having food writing about the consumption of food and food as a consumer product to suddenly these stories about food that you make an and food is something we make. for me, i don't know, never saw any sort of dichotomy because my mom was one of those people, we went to the farmers market when i was a kid and had absolutely no money. really really poor but partly that came from my grandmother who was a child of immigrants. you always make basic simple food. you are making vegetables and stuff like that. this was night teen 70s and 1975 was the height of gardens after world war ii.

there was great fruit everywhere people were doing all the stuff that we are doing now, canning, pickling in making yogurt. it was the very cheap and quite accessible. she was a disciple disciple of elizabeth david. this stuff is not expensive stuff. this is stuff that anyone can make so it's a whole kind of dichotomy that never made sense to me and now we have this great universe of commie can go on the internet and say which is my favorite fast food blog? i have a giant box of cairo, what am i going to do with it? within seconds you'll have 40 great recipes. i think that is a great impact on not just accessibility and information that you are making people feel like they can do it. she is a pioneer woman and she has five simple pictures identifying this thing that no one shows you how to do is tremendous. >> i also think about families,

which is a good example of what you are saying and also american culture, and i don't think that you can take that out of the system. when i was young, my mother made -- we all liked them. so when i came into this i said okay let me try make gang mash potatoes. i preferred instant that i grew up on them and they tasted wonderful. i didn't care that they were artificial or dehydrated or whatever. and as i progressed in the food movement, it began to understand that maybe i didn't like idaho but i liked -- goal. i am a foodie. you say nobody is a foodie but you know. and i think family cultures, it was what we as americans and everybody i know a dam, but now you know, us young people are

being raised with the knowledge again now of you know, different types of potatoes. i have met little kids that can identify their vegetables because they are being fed at -- educated very young now. there are many types of mashed potatoes and many types of lettuce. i think that the culture is changing and maybe because of the obesity problem, we are working on it and it's going to go0l forward.0n0n >> depending certainly on -- speak for me one of the most revolutionary things that we can do as americans now is not by the right food from the right co-op, not by the right look or support the right causes but instead actually just cooked dinner at home tonight for your family. and it seems so kind of like, i don't know, it's just so obvious. for me, from my vantage point, a

profoundly revolutionary thing. if we all did that, even just one, two, possibly three times per week, think about what a difference it would make. think of what that would do to all the fast food is that we have been decrying for the last few minutes and think what it would do about that corporate military machine that really controls what we eat and how we eat it in this country. >> also we fallen to these false dichotomies. you and i have talked about this, there is nothing wrong with having processed food every once in a while. i hate to say it, should we? you're working hard and you buy frozen pizza and you chop some real actual vegetables and put them on top of the frozen pizza. i mean, come on. >> one thing that i've been thinking about a lot recently just because i've been thinking

about where i'm from and the culture there, because i'm from rural michigan which is this very, tends to be very conservative and sort of a bootstraps mentality, which i find actually really powerful in a lot of ways because you don't have lots of structural opportunity. if you don't think do you can get yourself out of that situation you are just going to be hopeless if you are not happy there and one thing that i really engage with the lot is being able to cook is a form of self-sufficiency. it's really empowering because you can decide, this is what i feel like eating and what i want to do and once you learn to do it, it's not that hard. but there is this really big learning curve and i are a sort of feel very grateful that my family struggled a lot when i was really young, so i started cooking when i was like seven. all the big mistakes like forgetting to put the leavening in the cake or the salt for the sugar and all those problems, by the time i was 10, so by the

time i'm 12 or 13 i can actually cook food. once i get to the point where i have to actually cook for myself, i mostly got it down. i would screw up the vegan stuff sometimes. i have to deal with that but i can do that and it's a hugely empowering thing for me. i'm not going to go pay money at a restaurant if i can make what is there and i can make most of the stuff there. i'm not going to buy the process stuff if i can make something just as good and just as much time. in the book where i was like you know, i want to see what hamburger helper takes in time and money and i sort of expect they will would be faster and cheaper to do hamburger helper which is basically ground beef, noodles and gravy. it was one minute faster to do it with hamburger helper and it was like 50% more expensive. so for me, once you know that -- the hamburger helper was more

expensive than doing something.ñ i need to work on my gravy.5ñ5ññ >> 50% more salty. >> weimar salty and when you know how to cook you can say well i do want to solve it that much i don't want to solve it that much and you have this power to determine what you are eating. i think that is really powerful. >> using a firewall the firewall thing, i think they're being so many products like hamburger helper, it helps with the convenience and people have lost not only the ability to cook but they have also lost the end ability to trust their instincts and their senses so you fear, fear of being able to cook the real thing because you have relied on this crutch of process for so long and i think also since i grew up in the suburbs in the 70s and we made our own jam and pickles, i like to call it little house on the prairie and long island, suburban life.

part of it was economic to cause my dad was a teacher and we had no money but my parents were the same way. then my mom went back to work, like everybody's mom. she went back to work and i think there was a huge drop off for people who had the moms who worked in the 70s and suddenly there was no cooking being done. i think as women went back to the workforce and 80s and 90s those kids grew up with no connection to cooking because the mom was not home cooking in the afternoon and everybody sort of embrace convenience and processed food. there was so much more but flooding into the market in those days. >> i think also if you look atñ? the decline -- real wages have been steady since 1989 and tracie talks about in her book, people cooking stuff from scratch is

not necessarily knowledge or money but time and that is usually the real expense. >> although to echo what tracie just said, just really doesn't hold water. >> it doesn't. i agree with james. i feel like this is what we have to think. it's like a timesaver. past few it's for 60 years, so it's call it the foodie mental effort to ingredients. part. >> it's not that much effort. once you do it, i don't know, we don't even think about it. we shop every saturday morning at trader joe's just around the corner from us and we have pretty much the same more or

less rigid set of things that we buy and we kind of riff on it and i don't know, it's not all that hard. it's that brainwashing. >> we have this mystique of scalloped potatoes and it sounds difficult and then you go on line and plug plugged in and you get a thousand recipes. potatoes and cheese, you are like why was i spending all this money on this other stuff? a think also the access to simple recipes because the cookbook i have might have been way over the top. >> just turn on food network and and and watch 24 hours a day people cooking although people who watch food network are not cooking. >> they may not be but they are observing, they have a greater sense of how food is made. >> there is great value to that.

they will know so much more about food than they would otherwise. i actually feel like it's a shame that michelle obama focused so much on ingredients and not on cooking. i feel like she missed a great opportunity. i actually think it would have been much more powerful for her to get people back in the kitchen than to just be interested in the ingredients. like we are saying, doesn't really matter exactly what you're cooking. it matters that you are cooking and your understanding of what it takes to feed yourself. that self-sufficiency and empowerment is so valuable to our culture and your family life. it has so many ramifications i feel, that was a big shame for the past four years. >> even if you are using like some kind of terrible factory

food, you are still cooking. >> are still in the kitchen putting her hands into it which is the first step at least. >> i think learning to cook is the gateway to having an appreciation for finer ingredients. if you start cooking, you start to realize that food is comprised of multiple ingredients that you can play with. so you know, if you take something that you made with one kind of ingredient like this kind of chicken and later you try it, you have money to buy fancy chicken and you know how much better you think one of the other is, you can make an informed decision about how you want to spend your money and your time. i think that is really important and that is how i got into writing about this. like background is an investigative welfare reporter. there are not that many of those. i was following a sustainable food cooking class i was very skeptical.

it was very powerful for the kids because they were learning to cook, so they really started engaging in about their ingredients and being able to feed themselves. i think that is the sort of thing that everybody should learn. i think that is really powerful. >> i learned basically from my mom. she cooked and i was in the kitchen with her all the time and i learned how to cook at a very young age. i also took hoh in school and they don't teach hoh any more. i think those basic survival skills, not just howe where we made chocolate chip cookies and teddy bears for teaching people life skills i think is something that is really missing from american education and all that teaching the skills where people learned a sick things. this is how you go to the supermarket and pick out picked out a bunch of carrots and peel them and this is what you do. i think we are sort of missing that so everyone is watching the food network and reading blogs and looking on line but some of

it is made so unattainable and you don't have that vocabulary. i teach in a culinary school and i've been teaching there for 14 years. you would think everybody coming in to culinary school is coming in with a basic vocabulary already fair and a basic knowledge, they ask me things like you know, where's the lemon juice? i say, it's in the lemon. you have to get it out of the lemons. they are coming in because they are in it for the glamour and the statement and the flash. the way i look at it is okay, i'm graduating lots of people who -- but it's hard to not get caught up in the flash in the glamour and find out people are not learning that vocabulary. >> i think a lot of people who watch the food network, you are this fancy food person and you are a foodie but i don't have time, i don't know blah, blah,

blah and a lot of them are devoted. i think there is a system, a lot of people who sit and watch really hours and hours, think in some ways it makes them think that they can't cook because it's really complicated stuff and they are people who are like guys, really don't have time for that and i'm not that great of a cook. often they actually do cook really simple stuff but i think we don't have enough of just the simple stuff like you are describing. i get questions like that all the time. i have recipes in the back of my book and i tell people, and they say i could never do that. i'm like wow, i chose the simplest recipes i know. most people are intimidated by the culture of food and i do think it has gone some way towards convincing people that they cannot cook and they don't have time because they think food has to be something really

glamorous and exciting and stuff that looks like a building. i think that is kind of a problem in some ways. >> they always have stuff in little bowls. we don't see where the lemon juice comes from. and that is why, and i have to say at farmers markets we have fudenma's so that people can actually watch and give them a free peeling to take home with them because learning how to cut is a big deal to the average farmer's market customer. we have many organizations that help with those basic skills, get into the community. why have all of those little bowls? i can't cook bedkish too.

>> i will give you some. >> wouldn't it be great if you went to school and second, third, fourth grade as a mandatory part of the national a class called life skills and you learn things like how to do laundry. this is how you write a check. this is how you peel the carrot. yourself, things like that. vocabulary is about, those basic life skills. sort of getting off track your a little bit. so much of our discussion is about consumption and so little of our food discussion is about its production or the political context. anybody?

too complicated? >> i mean we do, it's all about eating. we always talk about cooking and eating and shopping but what about production? you were in the field. you were out there growing. >> is hard work. it's hard work. >> i have a garden and it's enough. >> don't don't get paid a lot. >> in the book tracie the statistics and i cannot recall the statistics but the tiny percentage of the labor and the final cost, we pay our farmworkers more although we have the cheapest food according to income in the world. >> farm labor into being on ..

and then other 80 whatever percentage of transportation distribution, marketing, labor, you know, there was actually a usda study looking at what would happen to the cost of food if the minimum wage with across-the-board. it's minuscule, something like 1 percent. >> and the reason that you weren't making minimum wage, you and your fellows out there in

the fields, was because, i imagine, loves a your co-workers were out of status, and documented, we call illegal aliens. >> as far as i can tell everyone i worked with was undocumented. that did not do a systematic poll of all of my co-workers in broken spanish about their status. everyone that i was close to did not have papers. and, you know, that seems to be the case with everybody else. i really think that is the only reason that people are going to work for two or $3 an hour is because they have come up from a community, and they are terrified of saying anything because they might not get to work again. and it is really, you know, just such a deep, entrenched fear in those communities of getting deported or having any of those kinds of problems. very much living hand to mouth. so people just don't -- well, it's better for us to have a stable income that it is for us to have no account. we would just keep doing this.

>> or your shifts like working for to a $3 an hour? >> i was being paid piece rate, and so i got a dollar 60 for every 5-gallon bucket of garlic that i could pick, which was what happened with everybody. but what happened is that we were working for a labor contractor, and my foreman was actually really nice. he was this really amiable guy. as saw him really try and help a woman who cut herself and things like that, so i've reluctant. but what the company did is to stake our cards from the field, take whatever we earned by piece rate, and then before the issue our payroll tax that would / minimum wage. so the card, their for eight or nine hours. and then the paycheck agon would have chased to retreat. you know, the some of my way to / minimal wage, and that would be, you know, what i had erred. so if it was really compelling him an interesting for me to sort of realize i had this idea

in my head that it's hard, yeah. i know people suffer. but in my head secretly i still thought there were in the minimum wage. and that justice not tends to happen. part of the reason is we have this idea that the farmer, for one thing, gets a lot of the money for food at the store, and that's rare. a lot of the way the food has gotten cheaper has been that there has been all this consolidation within the supermarket industry to develop these consolidated net works of distribution and supply chain. walmart is sort of the king of this. walmart now controls 25% of our food, pretty much between farm and played. which was really interesting to learn. i was thinking, oh, yeah, there is pressure on suppliers and farmers to pull down the cost. mostly it has just been all that sort of efficiency and distribution. >> sorry. do you have any idea where that curlicue were picking ended up? >> actually, i picked for this

farm labour contractor and was able to identify the garlic was going to two companies. one was the garlic company and one was ranch. sort of like a mass-market car like that gets so that walmart. they actually stalker like from the garlic company when i was working and will mark. it was that california garlic that was out of season, so it is not possible that it was actually my garlic. then i did see loose garlic and braided heads of garlic at whole foods. and i called the company's up and said, hey, guess what, i was working in your field. i have this paycheck and these cards. they don't match. christopher wren said conoco were sorry. all of our ports as several was paid minimum wage which would chilly happen if he does with the apparel tax. then the girl the company serving days with me more, but there were just like a weak enough that your employee number and have no record of you.

you must've been in a different field. there are other fields of their u.s. be confused. which, you know, it's possible that the garlic was in the crate , when somewhere else. i have no way to know. but the way that it works is basically, you know, just -- and workers have no idea where it is going because the only reason i knew was because i was paying its into details like the name on that piece of paper and things like that. and so there is this a real disconnect where people that are working the fields don't know where the food is going, what brand is being sold under command people who are buying staff have no idea either. grown in california, mexico, but there is really very little with the growing conditions are or any of that. it just fell to 55i felt like i was in this place where there were not actually in the loss for workers, which was kind of creepy in the u.s.

>> and we don't have mandatory labeling of the produce. so really you don't know where estimate from. you don't know what you're buying. you to a supermarket, they don't have to say where your produce comes from, and i find that this is scary. you know, i think in europe and britain they have had that for years, probably 20 or 30 years they've had to level with the for this kind from. so i find it makes me very suspicious as skeptical when i am buying supermarket produce. you were talking about walmart. one of the things, wal-mart's just announce that there will be putting their own label now on food telling you whether it is a healthy choice and not to my help the food according to the gospel of walmart. healthy, you know, and the wall mongrels so that people can look at the food that walmart sells, gross and controls and of this. they can get a sense of, you know, whether healthy so they

don't have to actually even read nutrition levels anymore. >> this is marketing on the packaging or what are we talking about? >> do you want to speak to that? >> right now it is a green sticker that says great for you with a green icon. a unisex sticker. >> that is what my mom said. >> i was a great fan to -- a great fan. >> canned food. i mean, i like canned food. i'm fine with that. >> great for you, and if you go and look at what the actual criteria are to get the great for you label, it's not very -- like i would not argue with most of it. lows sugar, any food or vegetable, no added sugar, and there is some sodium criteria and things like that. i personally probably would not want anything with an artificial sweetener in there, but the thing for me that is sort of

crazy about that is, if it's basically just telling you that it is the fruit, vegetable, low sodium, low sugar, do we really need to -- i mean, are we really that stupid that we don't know that that's good for us? to what -- do we want to encourage that? >> if you shop at walmart, maybe. >> and me, i don't know. i think a lot of people that, probably no fruits and vegetables are okay paths. don't need to lead a share results. from the it was the sort of weird. this sort of feels like satire. we are excited they will tell us to eat our best doubles. >> and people are okay with all my telling him what to eat, but not the government. >> right.

>> name comes in all forms. i don't want a corporate any either. >> i find really disturbing. you know, the gospel according to walmart. they are making these decisions as to what they consider better for you, although i guess, you know, festivals and fruits and things and it's okay, but i'm suspicious of that sort of thing because if they are controlling the supply chain and all of corporate america, you know, this is where you're going to get things like organic coke that's better for you because its organic corn syrup. >> i go back to what we were just talking about. it's sort of like, hey, if it encourages someone tell anybody to cut president just, you know, zipping up in a plastic bag, more power to walmart. even these stupid some degree levels.

>> i don't know there necessarily down. it's close to the house. they can get all the ingredients it is cheaper. we're not talking about -- were talking about that, just control and power. you know, walmart puts other places of business because they are so big and control so much of the supply chain. they can, you know, make sure there are the only grocery stores. and same with wholefoods, by the way. so that is kind of -- find it really shocking. what i find most shocking, what was written before, nobody went before. you know, what you did. and coming you know, that, to me, that is a challenge for us. and, you know, we ask these questions, you know, why is there is this sort of the economy, these three levels of food. part of it is because of us. you know, part of it is because

we do unconsciously, perhaps, promote this idea that there is high food and love food. you know, bad people he loved food and good people the high food. there is something in between. gray areas. i think they do. that is sort of my job. those areas where they do. >> maybe i'm wrong. the body was good for you. and then all of a sudden you know, the standard of good for you is, you know, they find that it causes cancer. and then it's no longer good for you or, you know, it was grown in a way that had some sort of problem attested. you know, it's great for you, but nasty pesticides on this stuff. you know, popular medical shows. they're like, you know, this specific fruit has so much pesticide. okay.

healthy. can i really get this stuff of my food? and these are the kinds of things that stunned me. peaches because of the fuss. and not good for me. >> when you take those things that have been good for you for thousands of years and industrialize and, that is what product, and it's going to be treated in a way to work, you know, the chemicals, that may not be so good for you, you have to look at how people age than 300 years ago. >> i have a question actually on that note. are they? >> i don't know. i would guess they do this because that's not true that we regulate. >> something specified to my good for you.

and then the common names.

the common person that ghost of walmart know that is not the best. it's not the best products to buy. that's the process. that is part of this. you get this kind of educational messages out. you know, it is more than just whether or not it has sugar or salt or fat or, you know, whether it has been shipped from far away. it's a whole lot of things to take into account. >> that's a good thing. was a lot you get as of late. that's really good. because it means to me know. of course we have test the question, where do you alcee 20

years from now, 30, 50 years it's the future. this fat people in the little cars. the flesh is? your old enough to get the is that where we're going? i things going to get better? to is people. the senses parity. the senses reference in said. recess' those in the future? >> when i was a kid there was this very obscure science-fiction writer. cool young adult models. he has this book called the

missing persons league about how the world of the future, only the lead get real food. guerrilla revolutionary people. bring this book back into print. and this really profound effect. there is a scene with a single kid takes his coffin down into its debts basement. it's as though it is pot, but just corn and tomatoes. well, my god. this is amazing. that is something have never experienced before because they all get these appellate the stuff. this other world as possible. we all make our own yogurt. maybe we don't, but the gifted

yogurt. the world is really possible. gm goes, something like a new survey people, 90, 95 percent of people want to know if this food is to edit the modified. hope is that at any time soon? does anyone know the answer? the european countries forced their governments to let them know if what they're eating is gm up? yes, they do. there is a lot of potential right now. soda of be making sure that that alternate feature happens . but they're is a lot of suffering and right now that we should be paid more attention to. food isn't just cupcakes. for some reason i've beaten up one cupcakes today, but those of

us who love food go we should be maybe a little more active and militant in making sure that the pieces that she writes about don't happen, and they do in other countries. maybe we should be looking to that example. >> i an optimist. i feel like, you know, it is a great thing that we're all here. there is a reason for it. however food is grown and where it's coming from. i think actually, the very fact chilly air here is a good sign. an economy in 20 years it will look back and feel like our conversation was 90 years. i still think the fact that people are talking about it, that, you know, the first lady is focusing on food, our major mission. writing books. so, you know, michael collin has essentially created the whole idea of food politics that to me you know, it's not something

that existed before he started writing pieces. that's all good. you know, is. >> i think i kind of side with you, amanda. you know, just thinking about, you know, the childhood favorites of mine that i was just remembering and remembering at least from my perspective, my very relatively small perspective about what americans a 20 years ago. it was like an apocalypse. it was bad. it was all just -- canned food, frozen food. it was just all -- i mean, there was virtually the area fresh peeled carrot, you know, in what i grew up eating and what many allows me -- around the eight as well. i think what i am starting to see now, i mean, so by default

food anthropologist's because of my work. if i am in a supermarket and suburban denver. one of the california. instead of in long island. generally i think what i see people filling up their carts with is a little, probably a little bit less terrible that it was 20 years ago. i can't imagine that's going to -- i don't think were going to go back in time. i don't know. i don't know. but it feels like maybe some okay things are starting to happen, and it feels like, yeah, maybe people not in some sort of best way, but every so often and really are kind of respecting the very, very essential active cooking, and that's amazing. >> the economy has a lot to do

with it. people are feeling. >> so be it. >> reminds me of what i was saying. you know, this movement has gone and so, you know, they are going to grow up to create children that the pattern. the thing is, there remember eating well. is the middle group that has been ignored, the ones that have been raised in the 70's. i think that in some ways we can't cast aside if we do were going to break the -- were going to have so much sickness and disease in appeal to assert --

and so in the future starting from now, we really need to work are in capturing the ones that are going to grow old and need the most support. i think they have been ignored. twenty years from now, you know, i think it's going to be okay. because i, you know, -- in a community i'm looking at young people, they really -- i see children go past the farmers' market crying because their parents are trying to push them passed. the kids want to stop and get the produce. reaching evidence is your culture. the generation. but i think in the know, we can just keep reaching out to them with books in shows. is not so hard to make a run

potatoes are whenever. maybe we will buy organic, but maybe, you know, we will cook. in a, because that is where i think a lot of it is. >> of sir of torn between the work this is doing really shows the people of working-class communities care about their food. that is actually the largest portion of the population. break it down by income more less. and marketers are telling retailers this. you need to focus on households that earn less than $35,000. so whole families the learning that kind of income. you know, the real dedication to fresh fruit.

i think that is really exciting and optimistic. at the same time there's a lot of structural reasons and it's really hard. i think the sort of, look, we have to take this stuff seriously. we cannot just be doing the lifestyle stuff. everyone, the swim with a lifestyle stuff. beautiful, historical writing. it's phenomenal. but, you know, have to starred generally as a society to khmer food seriously and stop teasing people for it. the take giffords seriously. yet. i do. let's take a shower every day. i wash my teeth. no. the only person that poor people only like judd for is someone who is only never met someone who is poor.

>> i think there's a split. directions. which is becoming even more divided. versus their palin's. she can bring back is the keys to our kids. major corporations. i can't be quite as optimistic as you have been, but this is part of my job. be somewhat cynical. anyway, i think we are just about out of time, but we can take q&a now. we can take questions if anybody has any questions. >> the microphone is going around. because this is being found, we need everyone to talk into the

microphone. [inaudible] >> okay. right there. >> site. i would like to thank you all for an awesome discussion. when you put together here. primarily a topic that you have sort of touched on, the issue of shame, but people who can't, lecturing people hot seat. it seems like we are trying to escape this issue of shame. i think that in the run this evening, she has been about a certain degree of shame and the way people who ex's food stamps are sort of shame into using them. how do we get around this? what is this panel think about this? out, especially people who are preaching the food community to mike going back to actually taking it out of the equation really.

>> i think i like the question. i guess i'm just not completely sure about what you're -- i'm not completely sure about what you are getting at. >> i think i understand. it goes back to food access and that whole notion of people who are for not eating healthy when it's just maybe that's their supermarkets has really poor produce. and the farmers' markets sometimes is out of their price range. it's about creating a way for people who may not have enough money to really shocked the way they would like. excepting food carts. the farmers' market by putting in systems. they spend the amount of money ended at $2 coupon and come back

the next time. well, cooking demo and giving them to have a coupon to shop. just this level of the playing field as much as began to man that's one of the reasons why we participated in a program where with united way where even we contacted with local farmers, our particular farmers, and they, for like half a year bring down the fresh produce. it's pretty much the same as that produced distributed free of charge of food pantries. there are people trying to level the playing field so that it just becomes food, equal access. it's not special food. it's that, you know -- it's just food. we eat it all. we'll have access to it. donated food, past expiration,

but that. but stop feeding that there are children. we can level the playing field to pay for it. you know, i don't know if that fully answers your question. >> i don't have a whole lot that add to that. i think that what i would sort of love to see, our food cultures move to where we don't have to come up like, talk about where food is from or its pedigree or any of that because it's a pretty good stuff to produce really well and can focus on other things, you know, like a music and culture. i would really love to see that. i think it, you know, the idea that, you know, we want to get to a point where it can to speed food and we know that it's good. that's really, like, that. >> you know, this is going to

some sort of bad, but been going to say it. a lot of things i imagine most of us here in this room live in new york city. you know, arcane farmers' market is the union square farmers' market. like many new yorkers to my respect to lot of what i see and what i buy at the union square farmers' market. there is, frankly, another side of me that is really appalled by it. the fact that, you know, in seasons, plums and peaches are $4.50 a pound. not right, not okay. and i have been tough farmers' market. have been to a couple in california, but i have one in mind in particular in sacramento. and for me it was like the dream farmers' market, where everybody shopped, or at least on the couple of visits that i was there just from my perspective it seemed like all cultures,

economic levels, all races kamal skin colors, it was just this really, really amazing to reach through quilts of the culture of sacramento, the entire metropolitan area. and there were plans for sale for $0.50. of course you're in the heart of the central california valley in summertime where most of the plums come from, but there was also a $25, you know, bottles a low boil, artisan all of oil. but it was like a place where sacramento shopped. it actually bugs me that i don't -- yes, there are exceptions. yes, you can find a dollar bags, even at the union square farmers' market. it just kind of bug me that the overriding thing that the is prefers rocket is about to offer me anyway $4.60.

it disturbs me. maybe that baja pucks into what you're talking about, the same thing here. it makes me feel as simple. >> one quick thing. detroit's east and market is to leave the same way. all kinds of people from all walks of life. tons of really great food. and it's affordable. as the latest. is not enough relief fancy. you go there. begun. auckland to have all kinds of markets. at mexican. this is kind of a very typical chicago thing, and it is other cheek. but asking about the same, it's really interesting this really visceral effect. i have some food one spirit that we tell you. everyone has the story.

and, maybe one in 100 like a low, it's interesting. not really interested in food. most people have their own food culture. i think, again to listen people react with those kind of feelings. you must know all the amazing magic stuff about food. you must just only dine on managing good cheese and fennel pollen and caviar and for crop. i just sat by comparison. and part of all we can do to not make people feel ashamed is just not to judge people who eat those frozen pizzas. and people reacted that, i grew up eating frozen pizza, but my mom put festivals on a tv dinner, my grandmother made a dent in hines mixed up because she did it for $0.50. it expired. then she would add ground paris to it. the she ground by hand. these academies a kind of false.

>> one thing you have to keep in mind is the farmers' market system in new york there is a geographical limits where the food can come from, so i think it's the hundred dollar limit. because the molecular saying, that and things like that, those are just sort of general wholesale markets are you convinced a from all over the place. demint to live with you. judge me crazy to go to the farmers' market and put one to metal on the scale. >> i totally agree with you, but i also feel like we are talking about union square. i remember. it's the highest real estate. you know what i mean? >> forgot what it was like 20 years ago. >> the other thing we're not talking abut his food co-ops. often cheaper than the non organic food as supermarkets.

not everything has to be actual food co-op, no offense to people. different kind of food co-ops and a different kind of bars. this is mine that to talk about how great the seven is enough. everyone had a food co-op. because the distribution company. the truck would come, everyone was unloaded. unloading stuff. whenever. i mean, it was just off the regular people did, and that is still accessible to us. we can still do it. >> i feel like god. >> abcaeight.

worked? >> does your bill has been like the record festivals jack. >> i don't know. >> you can send them to me. i think is a row it's extra hard to kick your has been anything. >> some people really like overcooked vessels because that is what they grew up with. it's a comforting for them. i like billy over cooked carrots.

>> i have some the dissent. i do love them. but sometimes there are certain things, like most things, really can only be taught in person. ten years ago, distance learning was the new thing and everyone, there were even going to be in the classrooms because you were just all going to learn on the computer. come to find out that actually it doesn't work necessarily. we learn by doing stuff, and often by having somebody show us up to do stuff. and sometimes it is just someone you know. sometimes that is the best teacher. >> there are some pretty -- i mean, you know, traveling back in time 25 years ago there wasn't -- there was as -- there were not so many sources to turn to for information about where to learn to cook plan and simple as there are now. it is pretty incredible. however, i do think it is important to remember that by

and large what we see on tv, food network, a top chef masters, for that matter, it's entertainment. it's entertainment. it's just like a kind of, you know, you get in that kind of tv narcoleptic thing and watch it. so now. it's kind of phenomenal. the explosion of affirmation of there. it's incredible. it's absolutely incredible. everybody's finger tips. >> i must learn to cook from cookbooks. and so, i mean, i was struck in the kid. the parent teacher conference.

look for having good little bits of present explain. this disorder see what the tension is supposed to be when he appears the care with the four per something like that which is what reporters often make good recipe writers i like to think because you need these concrete details. you find a few folks to do that, and it makes sense because everybody learns differently. everyone tries differently is quite different people like different cookbooks. i find that powerful because i find i have a few cookbooks attentive for anything like that. kicking. that date the key is also the person doing the learning and sibila coca-cola going to learn this. decide to really focus of figured out. i've found you can learn from books pretty well.

>> a whole bunch of teaching cooking applications coming up. of this is jim hill with the new program. touch of university and the company that will be doing a daily. vehicle some -- >> we get. you're getting as sharp as possible. from my garden are from a pot, i think, that you want to capture as much of the flavor in the trenches again. you know, even if it's being something that is buried in

salad dressing. it comes from having tasteless food. so, you know, as we move closer to better tasting food, no matter where you get it, even if you go it better i think that it is easier. >> used up the cooking. he told me, before she came here, rob pak-choi. that is what she had. >> the hydroponic. >> we don't even need to cook it. that's the way we grow. but i really think that that >> endo be too hard on him. 12 times before you let him do it. >> don't make fun of it. >> i wonder if we could go back to that last topic like many

other things to economics. and to go back, i think, to you/ question about shame adjustment of lotus's, and surprised that nobody has explored the exploitation of those gels of the militarized corporate machine as a college this witnesses of the workers in the field essentially easy prey forq other sort of corporations. surf. >> may be important to remember. i don't think that falling prey

to this machine that we both know referenced adelle to discuss specific. all of us as americans and where another, i don't know, maybe victimized is too strong a term to describe this, but in a way it is not. we all fall prey to it. we are in a mass hypnosis. we have forgotten the basic things. hudson to friday. in some ways contradicting some of the things i was talking about earlier, but i don't think that it's something to specific to poor people or middle-class people were rich people. i think in a way we all, as americans, are hypnotized by this kind of release three way

of nourishing our bodies. >> that just as americans. i read primarily about middle east politics. a famous story. at your back to furnace three. everyone is barely aware of saddam hussein's gassing of this horrible thing one of the things that made that possible is there were showering him jets this henchmen, and at that time the breadbasket. always has been. the famous story. they were making this decision. what to do with it. he said -- somebody's set for may, well, we can't do this

campaign against these guys because we need them. and he's like, we don't. we have the americans. we don't visit there to but necessarily think of the food system. we think of ourselves. the friendly actors. but go and you find something very interesting. starbucks the american diplomats tried to tell people in other countries, you know, make sure these guys except our foods. again, i feel like we all have our work cut out for us. this is a global system. and it works in ways that, you know, we don't even sickout.

>> the biggest hurdle, complex. what to eat. in addition to being -- well, trained to think that food could be cheap. you know what i mean? it's hard to have a valid conversation about it because when you're on this side of the issue in the said that you look like a jackass. right? but it is true. so it should cause something, and it should cause something so that people who are picking minimum wage. >> trained. it should be cheaper. wish to put our trust and corporations. corporations, some drugs can be trusted. this great pillars of american society.

you know, we can trust them. they're good for us. it just in corporations, you're going to you with regard to tell you teach. >> hopefully the rest of the world will follow this kind of terrible model that we have set of, you know, for the last five, six, seven or eight generations are so. i'm sorry, the kids are so. i mean, one thing just popped into mind as you were speaking. i have been traveling to mexico since probably, oh, gosh, late 1970's. and spent recently a couple of days with diana kennedy who is one of the great authorities on mexican cooking. on my recent trips to the country, and this is something that, very much heckling. mexico's way of eating is kind of eerily like -- it is becoming

like ours was, maybe in the 1940's and 1950's. it is kind of not could that a lot of the local farmers, their kind of out of business. a lot of the way mexico eats no is because -- it is dependent on big, huge agribusiness. it is not cool, and that is just mexico as an example. that is -- i have to say, that is pretty unsettling for me personally. >> actually, there is a word for this phenomenon. that is the results. the more and more tax reform. >> of the above was interesting. food should be excessive. we have been trained to think it should be cheap. at the getting on to that call one of the things that has happened in this sort of time they're talking about, it's done worse. we have been trained to think that certain foods should be cheap. so were actually, like refined

flour. refined sugar. why was it that my grandmother always made molasses cookies because during the depression molasses was cheap. why is it would think that cheap sugar is our birthright. you know, combustibles and fruit. i think detective of this in her book. we have been almost exactly. >> subsidies. subsidies. a lot of it. >> a lot less and less. we always talk about a greater percentage. there is something about a little more for something. the value of more. so it's kind of like we need to find some middle ground. >> and i'm also a little upset. food for less, a southern

california, i don't know. it is a cheap supermarket chain. you can buy oftentimes ten lines for a dollar. that is simply not right with that story. >> totally. >> low, we always have to contextualize is for the ridges have been stagnating. as much as europeans spend on food, you know, they also spend less on housing and education and health care which are things that, you know, european governments subsidize pretty heavily. so in france the most recent comparative numbers from to does a seven and the average american household was spending about 30 percent of their income on food. spinning about 1920. and the 6 percent difference and i calculated this. americans spend 6 percent more on education, health care, and housing. spend something like 20 percent of gdp and we spent 15. they're making decisions that have large national level about how we want to allocate our

money. expecting people said shoulder the burden at home. not to mention, you know, child care which doesn't even to you know, get pulled into that as well as vacation time. if i had five weeks of vacation every year i would be really happy to spend a week of that canny of my own food attending to garden and things like that. so i think it is important to make sure people are getting paid decent wages and to develop a way to talk about food so that people appreciated until the good as or less. wheels up to contextualize as discussions in terms of what life is like for a lot of people in the u.s. right now. >> i think part of a we have to do is, you know, we have to effete and economic and political story. you know, anthropology, sociology. we tend to look at it sort of in a solution. >> we're out of time. and getting a little signal. somebody over there. thank you for coming command thank you to the panel.

[applause]:?:? [applause] >> everybody, there are books for sale. from the and also a man dead gym and on yet, all wonderful writers. everyone should come and talk because he is awesome. >> to find out more about tracie mcmillan, visit our website. >> it is little rock weekend here on book tv. throughout the weekend hear from several local authors. toward the city, and learn about some lesser known history. arkansas became the 25th state in 1836, and barack was named the capitol city. best known for being the home of the town library, and the rocks and soil high. >> i'm debra baldwin, seceded

president with the university of arkansas barack center for arkansas history and culture. and we are in the arkansas studies institute building in the rock arkansas. this is john netherlands has cooled, affectionately known as j.m. he moved here in 1902 from tennessee with his family when the family brought the kind -- bought the controlling interest. he guided the arkansas gazette through important times in history. world wars, vietnam. but he is probably best known for his coverage of the 1957 central high school crisis. and for that he won two pulitzer prizes. began collecting in the 1920's, and by the 1950's he was probably one of the few newspaper editors to have on

staff a full-time historian. he collected everything related to arkansas. he collected and variety and an eclectic assortment of things. the collection includes 40 manuscript collections, 200 newspaper titles, 250 maps, 2500 photographs, 3500 pamphlets and 2400 bucks. had an interest, his academic concentration was mississippi. we know very specialize in books and math. that is from 17921880. but included in that, the material in general. he also collected anything that pertained to arkansas. so besides books and maps,

books, but it pertains to arkansas. it may still sense. interesting in newspapers. we had a turn-of-the-century thing. we had a series of these from the 1910. this is a great collection. the documents a section of the south of the turn-of-the-century and also documents a sense of humor. publishing a magazine. no one was immune from the skating fan. he went after the wealthy, pork, religious, and religious, politically inclined to and the ignorant. no one was safe from his pen.

very entertaining. people throughout the country to subscribe to it, but important for scholars. this section of the history. probably one of the famous coatings is that davy crockett almanac. we have an almanac from 18351850. 1835 is the first year of publication. and it is fascinating because it is a very crude 1835 publication , and is very steady when you first looked at it. people could imagine talking about buses. 1836 the plo and the press with each passing year to the decade.

you end up with 1850. he is wrestling he spectacular and wrestling bears and fighting so we've gone from the bare bones to this list it -- legendary. in this important election because you can see how the legend of this person grocer the years. for scholars this is a fabulous way of charting the history of his legend. you also have two very important books on the mexican war published in 1848 to 1850 and 51. these books started in 1846. these are primary source

materials where people were actually documenting what happened during the war. some mid-19th century materials, firsthand accounts of the war front. ego is very important for scholars. this is a very key holding for the haskell collection. he was also interested in the slavery issue. obviously being a state that would have an impact of his collecting. he collected quite a few books on the issue of slavery and an 18th-century. one of the more important books is an abolition of books, reverend from the north, came down and spent three years in the south and went through all of the state's and documented all of the soft which, of course help the constant terms of the propaganda against slavery. also a starkly documents was going on in the state. of course arkansas is mentioned. so that is important for scholars as well as some what

unbiased book on slavery, on the enough. this is an academic book of slavery from the beginning of history to 1858. very still in its cereal. they're not opinionated. this is an academic. ingested in cowboys. many collections of books. the chick-fil-a interesting because it's the book from the 1870's and talks about what was actually going on in the western frontier of the time. it talks about cattle raising, crops, a factual account of what is going on. people on the east coast of fascinated by the west and are getting a lot of up verbally.