Dear Gourmet,

I will freely admit to sometimes being overly ornate, not to say snotty (although I suppose really one might as well go ahead and do so), in my speech - please see below and note that I do not go to a CSA, I patronize it*, for heaven's sake - but italicizing 'edamame' in your most recent issue is just ridiculous - the word is common currency, particularly among the bourgeois and gluttonous, i.e. your readership, of which I am otherwise quite happy** to be a member, and it is therefore the height of disingenuousness to so exoticize it.

Yours in the pot calling the kettle pretentious,

Julia

* Rereading the post I question the verb choice - Orwell was sometimes right - but what is this silly thing for if not to express my first, authentic, instinctive self?

** Actually, I am extremely enthusiastic about your recent focus on Food Politics, particularly the excellent article on labour conditions among tomato pickers in Florida, thanks to which I am now incapable of buying tomatoes*** at the grocery store.

*** Of course, the question presents itself: why suppose that tomatoes are alone in being the product of loathsome conditions? The answer is that they are not and every other commercially produced fruit and vegetable is equally suspect.