Florence Fabricant has been writing about food for the New York Times since 1972. She has watched farm-to-table go from fringe idea to cliche, lived through the rise of the celebrity chef, and outlasted most of the restaurants she ever wrote about. This week, she joins Mark and Kate to talk about her new memoir, Salty, Not Sweet: A Life in the Food World – a book she resisted writing for years and then couldn't stop once she started. They cover how André Soltner at Lutèce changed the way Americans thought about chefs, why food journalism has never been more democratized and never less rigorous, and the writeup she considers among her most consequential: a pitch about pigs in blankets that may have permanently changed the hors d'oeuvres table at every bar mitzvah and gala in America.

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Follow Mark on Twitter at @bittman, and on Facebook and Instagram at @markbittman. Want more food content? Subscribe to The Bittman Project at www.bittmanproject.com.

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Jennifer Siebel Newsom, First Partner of California, joins Mark and Kate to talk about what actually happened when the state decided every public school kid deserves two free meals a day, and that more than half of those meals should come from California farms. It sounds like a policy conversation, but it's really a story about scratch kitchens, nacho bowls, salad bars, fountain milk, and what it looks like when someone decides to treat school lunch like it matters. They cover the Farm to School roadmap Jennifer built from the ground up, how California became the first state to pass universal school meals legislation, why LA Unified now only buys local, and what it would take for other states to do the same.

Subscribe to Food with Mark Bittman on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen, and please help us grow by leaving us a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts.

Follow Mark on Twitter at @bittman, and on Facebook and Instagram at @markbittman. Want more food content? Subscribe to The Bittman Project at www.bittmanproject.com.

A few links relevant to today's episode:

More information about California's Farm to School Program: https://cafarmtofork.cdfa.ca.gov/farm_to_fork/focus_areas/farm_to_school.html

More information about the 2026 California Farm to School Summit, October 14-15 in Sacramento: https://cafarmtoschoolsummit.com/

and, of course, Hot Lava Fudge Cakes from How to Cook Everything Kids: https://bittmanproject.com/recipe/hot-lava-fudge-cakes/

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Nik Sharma is a former molecular biologist who left his lab for a kitchen and never looked back. He's a three-time James Beard finalist, an editor-in-residence at America's Test Kitchen, and the author of Fundamentals of Flavor. We cover what baking soda actually does to meat (the meatball revelation alone is worth the episode), why you can marinate all day in yogurt but never in vinegar, and the four elements of nature as a framework for understanding everything that happens in a kitchen.

Subscribe to Food with Mark Bittman on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen, and please help us grow by leaving us a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts.

Follow Mark on Twitter at @bittman, and on Facebook and Instagram at @markbittman. Want more food content? Subscribe to The Bittman Project at www.bittmanproject.com.

The Bittman Project is featuring two recipes from Nik Sharma's Fundamentals of Flavor:

Sparkling Water Pancakes with Spiced Stewed Pineapple: https://bittmanproject.com/recipe/sparkling-water-pancakes-with-spiced-stewed-pineapple/

Poached Eggs with Green Chutney + Yogurt: https://bittmanproject.com/recipe/poached-eggs-with-green-chutney-yogurt/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.