If you're interested in the future of food, here's an interesting essay: Twilight of the Chicken Tenders, about transitioning away from industrial foods in ways that are more practical than slow food or Martha Stewart.

In that essay, John Michael Greer suggests that "[t]he recipes to look for aren’t the fancy ones you’ll find in glossy recent cookbooks that are meant to gaze scornfully down from the bookshelf and overawe the guests...".

I think he won't mind if I dissent in one particular instance: the same essay includes "De gustibus non disputandum est; which is to say that in food choices, above all else, dissensus rules." Unfortunately, I'm having trouble posting a comment directly, but it's a long enough comment to stand alone here.

The book I'm thinking of is packaged to gaze scornfully down and to overawe, but isn't written the way the cover would suggest. Chad Robertson et alia have done a great job of reviving the tradition of peasant bread for Tartine Bread. It's unusually considerate of the baker's schedule: the community of test cooks included a graduate student who found that the rhythms of fermentation prompted her to study more effectively than she had before she took up baking, and the first-time proprietor of a new coffee shop with an infant and a serious surfing habit who had to radically distort the process to fit the narrow windows of time that remained. It is a better resource than any I've seen on how to adjust to the ingredients, the fuel, the equipment, and especially time available. It also produces better bread with less effort or expense than Tassajara recipes or any from my family. Partly, this is because Robertson drew on very deep traditions, including apprenticeships in rural France, but has gracefully adapted them to his own time and place. I decided not to buy the book, but I got a lot out of reading it; I hope there's a paperback edition in the works, with more memoir/how-to spirit, and less coffee table book/intimidating gourmet attitude.

A great how-to on cuisine-building in general, is Carol Deppe's latest book, The Resilient Gardener. She has gone so far as to breed vegetables for less time- and energy-intensive preparation, but a good third of the book focuses on attitudes toward cooking and food storage that would be helpful even for those who live in studio apartments.

Last, there are a lot of good web log resources on this topic. An ongoing feature I enjoy is the "Bean Fest" series at Homegrown Evolution. This week's topic is a quick and adaptable rice-and-lentil dish called khichdi.