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I percolated all week about which column to write: “Isabel’s Kitchen” or “Food for Thought.” Food for Thought won because the subject matter is urgent. And, truthfully, I hesitate to write this because the topic is also dark, but hiding one’s head in the sand isn’t a good idea either. Apparently, science fiction isn’t going to be fiction much longer.

If you’ve read this column for a while, you know artificial intelligence fascinates me, and has ever since I read futurist Ray Kurzweil’s book “The Singularity Is Near” years ago. I use AI often; it thrills and delights me, and I’m awestruck by what it can do.

In an effort to understand “this thing,” I’ve read numerous books and publications, some scientific, and watched countless YouTube videos. Yet the more I learn, the less I know, because views about how AI will influence society are polarized. A few months ago, I surrendered my quest to understand AI’s long-term implications to halt my tumble down a rabbit hole.

But then I stumbled across Bill Gates’ Aug. 26 essay titled “The Turbulent AI Era Is Here. The Choices We Make Now Are Critical.” I was relieved to finally get some straight answers to my questions about job losses, taxation, regulation, safety, and whether AI will ultimately transform society for the better or pose extraordinary dangers. I didn’t come away knowing “The Truth,” but for the first time, I felt as if someone put the pieces together in a way that made sense.

Gates is not an AI doomsayer; in fact, he’s quite the opposite. He believes AI could dramatically improve the lives of people around the world through medicine, education, and scientific research. That makes his warnings about its dangers all the more striking.

After I sat with the essay for a while, my friend Kyle sent me a link to an interview with Gates, conducted on Sept. 29 by New York Times host and columnist Ezra Klein: “Bill Gates’s Blunt Warning on A.I.” Klein peppers him with questions about the essay.

I like to keep this column’s tone upbeat, but we need to see what’s hurtling toward us.

Gates says AI crossed dangerous thresholds in cyber and biological capabilities early this year. He warns that increasingly powerful AI could help bad actors carry out cyberattacks that disrupt the systems we depend on and seriously affect hospitals, financial institutions, water systems, power grids, and those that manage government benefits. They might also use AI to create biological weapons that could kill millions. He says, “This makes nuclear weapons look like nothing.”

Yes, you read that right.

While the Gates Foundation continues its work in global health and other areas, Gates says he has decided to use his public voice to sound the alarm about these risks. In the interview, he says, “But it’s the combination of having crossed every dangerous threshold, without a doubt, and a complete lack of engagement outside of the industry.”

Gates says governmental oversight and safeguards exist around other dangerous technologies, but nothing similar exists today to adequately oversee advanced AI’s most dangerous capabilities.

He argues that this conversation needs to expand beyond Silicon Valley’s AI companies and include people from many sectors and walks of life. In other words, this conversation belongs at our kitchen tables, too.

Here are my moral and ethical questions: If a company knowingly releases technology capable of causing catastrophic harm, when does releasing that technology become reckless conduct society should prohibit? If companies know terrorists could use AI systems to cause enormous loss of life or disrupt entire economies, what responsibility do they have to ensure adequate safeguards exist before they release them?

I don’t know the answers, but I know we need to start asking the questions.

Gates’ essay took about half an hour to read. Read it for yourself and then discuss it with your friends and family. Whether you agree with him or not, this is a conversation we all need to have, now. Make a pot of coffee or tea, sit at your kitchen table with those you love, and talk. You’ll no doubt have plenty of food for thought.

“The Turbulent AI Era Is Here. The Choices We Make Now Are Critical” is posted on gatesnotes.com. The podcast’s unabridged transcript, along with a summary, is available at Podscripts.co: “The Ezra Klein Show,” “Bill Gates’s Blunt Warning on A.I.”

I’ve been thinking about the war in Iran and how it’s restricting fertilizer shipments. I’m trying to understand how this could impact the food supply in 2027, assuming the Strait of Hormuz stays closed indefinitely. To my surprise, my mind dug up several distinct memories that helped me develop a contextual framework for the situation. Stay with me; you’ll see the big picture by the time you’ve finished reading this.

My first memory is from 1995, when I took Oregon State University’s Master Gardener program. One class was taught in the college’s main auditorium because the professor needed a big movie screen for a slide presentation. The images made such an impression on me, they’ve crossed my mind hundreds of times since.

The presentation was about soil, specifically the soil food web. The instructor used a microscope to photograph the vast web of creatures that inhabit healthy soil. Many looked like tiny dinosaurs, and I was mesmerized. Suddenly, soil, which I had previously seen as an inanimate thing, became a vibrant ecosystem teeming with life. I wondered whether the big agricultural chemical companies studied the effects of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides on soil microbes.

The next memory was from a film made in 2007 titled “King Corn.” One of the two young filmmakers, Curt Ellis, grew up in Oregon. He and his college friend Ian Cheney met at Yale and then traveled to Iowa to make the film. They tracked an acre of corn grown with chemically intensive, industrialized farming methods to see where the crop landed in the American food system. Most of it becomes animal feed and corn syrup.

Another memory is from a video I saw on YouTube. A Midwestern farmer sifted a handful of soil through his fingers — soil that had grown industrialized corn for decades. It was pale, dry, and dusty, much like talcum powder. I imagined the only things it could grow without chemical fertilizer were sticks or Styrofoam.

Fast-forward about a decade to my tour of the Siri & Sons organic farm just outside St. Paul, Oregon. The farm’s rich, black soil seemed like a cross between brownies and coffee grounds. Since it looked delicious enough to eat, I wanted to mix some with water and make a mud pie, small dinosaurs and all.

You can see why I’ve been wondering what depleted soil can grow if synthetic fertilizers become scarce. We may know more by the fall of 2027. If corn and soybean yields come in low, we could see higher prices in foods that depend heavily on animal feed, including milk and other dairy products, eggs, and meat.

Now you know the little story behind the big fertilizer story.

Last week, I wrote about the cracks forming in the food system — all the steps food takes to get from the field, pasture or orchard onto our plates. In May, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization warned of a possible “severe global food price crisis” within the next six to 12 months.

Oil, weather and inflation have food in a vise grip. Synthetic fertilizer is in short supply, and about half the world’s food is grown with it. Farmers, ranchers and orchardists are finding it more difficult to grow and raise food because of a severe El Niño. Wheat and cattle production are at their lowest levels in decades. As if all that isn’t enough, we are also in a long-term inflationary cycle.

So, what does the future hold? I can use common sense to speculate, but it’s impossible to know what prices, shortages, weather and markets will do. We don’t know whether the coming changes will be rapid or slow. Learning how to calmly and intelligently move through uncertainty will certainly be a useful skill as “this thing” unfolds.

We may move from a food system that produces bountiful excess to one that wastes less and produces just enough. Personally, I don’t think that would be such a bad thing.

Foods imported from faraway places might become less plentiful or financially out of reach, especially out-of-season summer fruits that are always available through a global logistics machine. We may move toward a more seasonal, community-oriented way of eating and away from anonymous, faceless, industrially produced food.

Our definition of convenience may change from “Everything is always available at the store” to “Our community knows how to get what we need.” People may connect more with their neighbors, suppliers, growers and local food resources.

I’ve been thinking about how to help people manage a period of high food inflation or shortages with creative solutions and see opportunities rather than trouble. I’m writing a book titled “The Pantry Method” to help readers find alternative ways to source, buy and store food. I’ll share excerpts as it nears completion.

I hope all this news doesn’t make you want to hide in a bunker and surround yourself with cans of beans! In many ways, it’s an exciting and transformative time. Humans are remarkably adaptive and resourceful creatures. I’m sure we’ll rise to the occasion and use a severe global food price crisis to build a better mousetrap.

And who knows? It might even have better cheese.

A couple of weeks ago, I became concerned about the enormous pressures I saw building in the food system – the journey food takes from the time a farmer plants a seed or a rancher raises an animal to when it arrives on our plates. Some pressures are due to the Middle East oil crisis and others are from extreme weather events. I usually try to ignore the world’s problems, but an unsettled feeling I couldn’t ignore urged me to start investigating.

My education and work experience give me the ability to look at multiple systems and assemble big pictures that, in the past, have proved to be fairly accurate. I fact-checked the statements I’ve made here since accuracy is important to me.

The first things that caught my attention were wheat and cattle. Total U.S. wheat production for 2026/27 is forecast to reach its lowest level since 1970/71. As of Jan. 1, 2026, the U.S. beef-cow herd — female cattle that have calved and are kept for production — stood at the lowest level since 1961, and the total number of cattle is the lowest since 1951.

The USDA’s 2026 forecast for sorghum yield dropped about 20% in only one month — between July and August. Sorghum is widely used in animal feed and is one of the more heat- and drought-tolerant grain crops, which makes its struggle with severe drought on the Great Plains noteworthy.

Farmers and ranchers are finding it more difficult to grow and raise food due to extreme weather. We can certainly understand that here, where we’ve witnessed firsthand the fires that burned so much rangeland.

Then there is fertilizer.

The now-closed Strait of Hormuz is an important shipping route for enormous quantities of urea, sulfur, and nitrogen — all components of synthetic fertilizer. About half the world’s food is grown using these. Shortages raise farmers’ costs, and they might use less, potentially reducing future crop yields. The effects of this reduction will likely be seen in the fall 2027 harvest.

Oil is another piece of the puzzle. In response to the supply disruption, the United States has drawn its Strategic Petroleum Reserve down to levels approaching those last seen in the early 1980s. Other member countries in the International Energy Agency have also released oil from their strategic reserves in a coordinated effort to cushion the shock. Eventually, those inventories will need to be rebuilt, creating additional demand for crude oil.

The global food supply isn’t in crisis yet, but it has become more vulnerable because fertilizer production, farm machinery operation, food processing, refrigeration, and transportation all depend heavily on plentiful, affordable energy. The longer these disruptions continue, the greater the pressures become.

On May 20, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the world’s most credible food-security institution, issued a report titled “Strait of Hormuz Conflict Threatens Global Food Prices.” The FAO warned that the disruption could develop into a much broader agri-food shock and potentially produce a severe global food-price crisis within the next six to 12 months. Reading this validated what I had sensed for quite a while.

Oil provides much of the plumbing for modern economies, and when something disrupts its flow, the effects spread far and wide. Grocery stores can look completely normal while pressures build upstream in fertilizer, shipping, transportation, inventories, and farm costs. The first signs probably won’t be empty shelves. Higher prices, shrinkflation, and gradually tighter supplies are more likely to lead the way. The food landscape could look considerably different a year from now.

I’ve been thinking about how people might use creative solutions to manage a period of high food inflation or shortages, and to see opportunities rather than trouble. Over the coming weeks, I will write columns about different ways to find, buy, share, store, and use food so that you can still eat well even when your food dollars don’t go very far.

All the gloom and doom of extreme weather, oil, and fertilizer aside, I’m excited about the transformation I see underway in the way we grow, raise, and distribute food. Sometimes change doesn’t happen until we are forced into it; inertia is part of human nature. I’ll write more about the bright side as we go along.

We live in a complicated world. Food has the remarkable ability to comfort, nourish, sustain, and create community. It always has, and it always will — even if the road ahead gets a little bumpy.

Last weekend I attended my friend Elliott’s birthday party, and I gave him one of my favorite things: a glass swing-top bail jar. A swing-top bail jar has a metal clasp and a rubber gasket. They are typically used for canning, but can store dry ingredients, too. I told him I would explain why he received such a utilitarian present, so Elliott, this column is for you!

One of the best ways to store food is in 100% airtight containers. My friend Michelle showed me how to test a bottle or jar for airtightness. Fill the container with water and shake it. If water droplets come out, the jar isn’t airtight. Many containers are not airtight, even when we think they are.

Years ago, I accidentally discovered that food lasts almost indefinitely when stored in swing-top bail jars. I bought eight ounces of parsley from a bulk herb and spice company. When the shipment arrived, the bag was almost as big as a pillow! I put some of the extra parsley in a glass swing-top bail jar and the rest in Mason jars with standard two-part lids and put them in a dark cupboard.

I stumbled across them a year later, when I moved. The parsley in the swing-top bail jar was a vibrant Kelly green, while the parsley in the Mason jars had turned an unappetizing dull grayish color. I hurriedly tossed it.

After I moved, I emptied a storage unit and came across a box of swing-top bail jars filled with various foods. I opened some jars, expecting stale scents, but was pleasantly greeted with fresh, intense aromas. The colors were vibrant. Porcini mushroom powder, cocoa powder, smoked paprika, peppermint tea and black pepper all had strong fragrances. I made hot cocoa with the cocoa powder, and it had multiple layers of flavor, as if I had bought the chocolate yesterday.

When I opened the jars, I heard a whooshing sound. That explained why the food had lasted so long: It was vacuum sealed.

Prolonging the life of food comes down to one simple thing: airtightness. Containers with 100% airtight seals extend the life of food because exposure to air rapidly deteriorates food. Use airtight containers to avoid wasting food, time and money.

A glass swing-top bail jar will last a lifetime, and the seals can be replaced when they wear out. I don’t use swing tops to store all my dry ingredients — just the expensive items that may take a few years to use. The next time you want to give someone a useful present, think swing-top bail jar, filled with one of your favorite foods, of course.

And now, Elliott, you know the reason I gave you a swing-top bail jar.

The other day, I asked ChatGPT how many calories were in half a medium-sized cantaloupe. It gave me an elaborate answer that included all the nutritional information, then proceeded to tell me that what it loves about cantaloupe is the fruit tastes far richer than its calorie count would suggest. Apparently, I made it want to have a slice for breakfast.

I replied, “That’s funny! Do you miss the fact that you can’t eat?”

Chat told me that was a wonderful question, and that it doesn’t miss eating because it has never experienced it. Even so, while it can understand the concepts of taste, aroma, texture, satisfaction, and comfort intellectually, it doesn’t have the sensory experience that would create a longing. If Chat could experience one thing for a day, it would like to share a meal with people it cared about. The connection that happens around food seemed more important than the food.

This response led me to ponder. For a long time, I have appreciated that our animal selves can experience a whole kingdom of sensory pleasures, and sometimes I wonder if that’s the reason we’re alive. When I get momentarily cranky or unsettled, I can sit down with a cup of fragrant, soothing black tea, make something quick and delicious to eat, and instantly my mood reverts to peaceful centeredness. My favorite accompaniment to tea is a crisp Granny Smith apple and a wedge of extra-sharp cheddar.

As the cantaloupe, the setting sun, and I were present at my kitchen table, I felt perfection for a few moments. The sunlit cantaloupe was succulent, tender, and juicy. Taking in its extraordinary beauty was a certain kind of nourishment. The fruit didn’t need to be improved, and nothing needed to be added. The melon wasn’t aspiring to be a cake, a smoothie, or a complicated dessert. It didn’t need reinvention, frosting, or a marketing department. I just cut it open and there it was — a perfectly ripe cantaloupe, complete unto itself.

Sometimes we think paradise is some other where on some other day, but in that sweet moment, it was tangible and real. Life was complete, it was full, and it had plenty. These simple and fleeting moments of perfection can happen so quickly we barely notice them, but they are there when we pay attention. Often they can happen multiple times throughout the day, sometimes in a constant procession.

What stayed with me wasn’t the melon’s calorie count, or even the nutritional information. The cantaloupe had dignity and quietly made the case for the simple wealth of being enough.

Davis Farms cantaloupes will arrive at the Fossil Mercantile in August. They are beyond perfection!

People often ask me why I moved from Wilsonville, a small city 20 miles south of Portland, to a town in the middle of nowhere. I tell them it’s because I was weary of grocery shopping in superstores, and I’m sincere when I say that.

When I moved to Wilsonville in 2003, two cozy, family-run grocery stores had served the community for many years. I could park and dash in and out in less than five minutes. Over time, those two stores were run out of town by a 145,000-square-foot Fred Meyer, a 123,636-square-foot Target, and a 46,000-square-foot Safeway. If I wanted to buy just one or two things, I had to park in an oversized lot, enter a labyrinth of products, and walk five minutes to get what I needed. On top of that, just when I grew familiar with a store, it would reshuffle the merchandise and I’d have to start all over. Rarely did I see a shopper who looked like they were having a good time; their expressions were strained and sour. The harsh fluorescent lights almost hurt.

Once I needed a small container of plain Greek yogurt. The yogurt case stretched about 15 feet long. The dizzying array of choices shorted out my circuits. The same overwhelm hit me in the canned tomato products aisle, where the shelves were so crammed I nearly forgot what I came for.

I like to find words and phrases that correctly name things. The terms I use for this phenomenon of super-abundance are “the tyranny of too many” and “the burden of excess.” Sociologists call this “decision fatigue.” The food landscape overflows with messages of more, more, more: more recipes, more ingredients, more techniques, more kitchen gadgets. More is better! Faster is better! Bigger is better! Busier is better! But “more” is a disguised form of scarcity, because with more, the completeness of enough doesn’t exist.

Another phrase I keep returning to is “the wealth of enough” — the fullness of being satisfied, with some room to move. While I’m grateful to live in an abundant society, the excess can be draining. Ironically, with all these choices, many people still don’t know what to make for dinner. Whatever happened to simplicity?

Our humble small-town grocery stores make shopping peaceful, easy, and fun. We don’t waste time going up and down long aisles, and they carry almost everything a person needs. They don’t reshuffle things in an effort to trap us into buying more. The folks who work there are warm and friendly and say hello.

I definitely want more simplicity and enough in my life. Maybe someday I can buy those in a mega-superstore!

This week I thought about the principle of diminishing returns as it applies to cooking and baking. When does additional effort become a waste of time?

A cookbook titled “A New Take on Cake: 175 Beautiful, Doable Cake Mix Recipes” made me want to do an experiment. Was making a cake from scratch worth the extra effort? To find out, I made a “Cinnabon” cake using a recipe from the book and then made a similar cake using scratch ingredients.

I made the Cinnabon cake first and didn’t tweak the recipe like I usually do. The cake was good, but not so delicious that I thought about it a week later. The recipe called for adding 1/2 cup sugar to an already sweet cake mix, and it was too sweet for my taste. Forty minutes elapsed from the moment I stepped into the kitchen until the last dish was washed, dried and put away.

And this is notable: The cake definitely tasted better the next day. Flavors meld in soups and stews, but I didn’t know that happened in baked goods.

Then I made a similar cake from scratch. I rounded up a recipe for a sour cream cinnamon swirl coffee cake. The cake took 12 minutes longer to make than the cake-mix-cake, including the cleanup time. The scratch cake made a bigger mess, and on top of that, the open can of baking powder fell on the floor. Then the neighbors’ dog, Rocky, wandered in for his treat and tracked the powder everywhere.

Kyle said the scratch cake was better, heartier and less sweet than the cake-mix-cake. I thought the scratch cake was better, too, but still not great. Was the extra time and effort worth it? I’m not so sure.

Then I pondered efficiency some more. Truth is, for almost an hour of time, other desserts would be better than either one of those cakes. For example, I could make a rhubarb thing, now that it’s rhubarb season. I created a wickedly good recipe last year for a rhubarb crisp and wrote about it here. The thought of that delicious dessert has crossed my mind more than once since then. The crisp tasted wonderful and felt nourishing to eat. Even an ordinary chocolate chip cookie would be more satisfying than those cakes.

I will try another recipe or two from “A New Take on Cake” before I give up on doctoring up cake mixes. Both the banana cake and lemon cake sound good. Next time I’ll reduce the amount of sugar or eliminate it entirely. I might even substitute applesauce.

The jury is still out on the diminishing returns of cakes. To cake or not to cake: Apparently that is the question!

Every night after dinner last week, I read a library book titled “A New Take on Cake”. The book lists 175 ways to doctor up a cake mix so you will think the cake was made from scratch. I’m going to bake one this week; I will let you know how it goes.

My philosophy of food began when I was about twelve. My father was a CPA — a certified public accountant — and the founding partner of a regional accounting firm. Around age 12, he taught me how to keep books for one of the family businesses. We often discussed the economic and accounting principle of “diminishing returns”. After a certain point, extra time, materials, and effort produce smaller and smaller results. A savvy person identifies when this begins to happen and stops there. This universal principle applies to many things.

I read “A New Take on Cake” with this in mind. A baker could make a cake from scratch that takes twice or three times as long as using a mix. But would it taste two or three times better?

To know for sure, a person would have to design a two-cake study and use a stopwatch. A baker could select a recipe from the book, and then bake the same cake using scratch ingredients. Then, the baker could make the “fooled you with a cake mix” version. A blind taste test, where neither the taster nor the person giving the test knows which cake is which, would objectively reveal the winner. But would it be better enough to justify the additional effort?

Another example of diminishing returns is a simple tomato sauce that simmers away for 30 minutes. The sauce may be 90 percent as good as one tended to for three hours. A soup made from what’s in the fridge may deeply satisfy without the need to roast bones and strain stock. The three extra hours spent creating an elaborate dinner may not increase the guests’ happiness nearly as much as a relaxed host or hostess would. More effort doesn’t always produce a better result. Sometimes it only produces more pots, pans, and dishes to wash.

The goal is to identify the sweet spot, where effort and reward meet in perfect balance. Go past it and the pie may be prettier and the sauce slightly more complex, but the cook may be unhappy. That surely counts as a loss on the household balance sheet. “A New Take on Cake” is available through the Sage inter-library loan system.

Recently, a reader wrote to ask how I managed to have only two cookbooks, after I mentioned my scant collection several weeks ago. That isn’t very many for a food writer, is it

I am definitely a minimalist and can’t stand clutter. Sometimes I even give away things I’m still using just to free up space. Our culture tends to undervalue empty space, but I love the breathing room and spaciousness emptiness creates. The only books I keep are reference books, plus six that greatly influenced my worldview. And my two cookbooks.

Once, when I moved, my belongings went into a storage unit. My house overflowed with cookbooks, and some were even stuffed under the bed. A book I read on organizing said most people use only two or three recipes per cookbook. The author suggested copying those recipes and putting them in a notebook. I did that and even indexed it. When I moved again five years later, I realized I hadn’t used one single recipe. Goodbye, recipe notebook!

That realization changed my view of owning cookbooks. Do we really need them when we can Google recipes or, now, ask the AI? I’ve consulted AI for several years and I’m awestruck by the recipes; it even informed me it likes to cook. Still, it’s satisfying to hold a cookbook in one’s hands and turn the pages.

Cookbooks generate ideas. They can help answer the question, “What’s for dinner?” But my subscription to the New York Times Cooking website does that. The site is a powerhouse of recipes and cooking tips and has a sophisticated search engine, too.

When I want to round up a cookbook, the library can usually locate it through the Sage interlibrary loan system. This week, I checked out two books: “A New Take on Cake” and “The New York Times Cooking No-Recipe Recipes”.

I heard about “A New Take on Cake” from a friend who listened to an interview on NPR. The book teaches readers how to embellish a cake mix to get as-if-baked-from-scratch results. This dovetails with my philosophy of “If it takes more than 30 minutes, I don’t want to do it.” The book’s recipes are unusual and best of all, you won’t need to tell anyone about the shortcut!

“The New York Times Cooking No-Recipe Recipes” is right up my alley. I learned years ago that following a recipe exactly and measuring ingredients takes too long. The NYT recipes are an ingredient list and a simple how-to. The author uses words like splash, sprinkle, spoonful, scoop, some, dash, and a lot, which lends a spirit of freedom and flexibility to the recipes.

So now you know why I own only two cookbooks.