FIRST DRAFT

Paragraph of the day

It comes from another hilarious piece by Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams, entitled Gays hate apple pie:

Let’s look at the evidence here regarding the homosexual relationship to pie. Anne Burrell does favor apple tarts over pies, and that does sound suspiciously French. And Art Smith’s Table 52 features pecan pie and chess pie, which seem pretty American but are obviously not Republican enough to keep America straight. But has Huelskamp seen Cat Cora roll out a crust? I defy any heterosexual in America to surpass her technique. And Ted Allen did a whole All American, apple pie-themed episode of “Chopped”! In short, though I haven’t actually seen the document, I feel very confident that “take down apple pie” is not even on the first page of the Gay Agenda.

Mmm, apple pie...

Saturday Night Music: Pulling Mussels From A Shell

School fund raising festivals in New Orleans are different. This is what I had for lunch today, moules et frites cooked fresh with garlic and butter. Yum:

Lunch, in turn, gave me a delicious earworm from one of my all-time favorite bands:

 

What would Skink think?

Clinton Tyree aka Skink is one of Carl Hiassen's most vivid and weirdest characters. He's a one time Florida Governor turned environmental activist/hobo/nomad whose diet largely consists of roadkill. A new law in Montana made me think of Skink:

Elk, deer, antelope and moose: If Montana residents can scrape it up, they can eat it.

State lawmakers are poised to say just that after the Senate gave its initial backing Wednesday to a bill that would allow people to salvage roadkill for food. The measure is now a final vote from heading to Gov. Steve Bullock.

It makes no sense to let the carcasses of big-game go to waste on Montana’s roadways, supporters said.

“It really is a sin to waste a good meat,” said state Sen. Larry Jent, D-Bozeman.

The measure calls for law-enforcement officers to issue permits to individuals who would be allowed to remove the carcasses of elk, deer, antelope and moose off the state’s roadways. An earlier version would have allowed fur-bearing animals, upland game birds and migratory game birds to be scraped up, too, but it got canned.

Opponents question whether the meat would be safe and whether it would create liability issues for food banks that accept it. Sen. Kendall Van Dyk, D-Billings, said law-enforcement officers are not qualified to decide whether roadkill is safe to eat.

“Despite it’s good intention, it doesn’t pass the smell test for me,” Van Dyke said.

Cattle ranchers like Sen. Jim Peterson, R-of Buffalo, questioned how roadkill could be harvested for food when the cattle industry must follow strict federal regulations.

Montana is not alone in considering the usefulness of roadkill. Illinois allows people with a furbearing permit to remove roadkill for pelts and also allows for the salvaging of meat.

Alaska Fish and Wildlife Protection Troopers run a program that divvies approximately 820 moose carcasses to charitable organizations, like churches and nonprofit organizations, who cook up moose meat for needy people.

The Montana measure would defer to the state’s Fish, Wildlife and Parks agency to regulate how the roadkill is actually salvaged.

But as to whether the measure would create a new weapon for hunters — the car — Jent said he doesn’t see that as plausible.

“We don’t have very many suicidal drivers,” Jent said.

The Senate voted 33-15 in favor of the measure. A final vote could be scheduled as early as Thursday.

Bullock didn’t have an immediate comment on the bill.

I wonder what Carl thinks of this bill. Perhaps he'll have Skink move to Montana soon and become a dental floss tycoon:

 

Sunday Morning Video: Ramsay's Kitchen Nighmare- Bonaparte's

The very first episode of the BBC series featuring one of the dumbest people I've ever seen. It could be tag lined, Gordon swears and hurls:

 

Capitalism Has Failed

Here’s how you know capitalism has failed: when they start creating products for which there is no demand, then spend tons of money on advertising and marketing campaigns in the hopes of creating a demand. I call it the New Coke Syndrome. Nobody had a problem with old Coke but nooooo, some MBA type decided they needed to switch things around because market share and synergy and value-added-thinking-outside-the-box and blahbeddy blah. Voila! You have a product nobody wants.

I’m not sure when this phenomenon started -- probably when people decided getting an MBA was more worthwhile than being a doctor or teacher -- but we’ve been stuck with it for a few decades now and frankly I’m pretty damn sick of it.

So here we have today’s latest entry in the “shit-I-don’t-want” sweepstakes: ladies and gentlemen (but really, let’s be honest here, the stupid shit is always marketed to ladies), I bring you the Land o’Lakes Sauté Express® Sauté Starter! 

This product launched in October, but I saw my first ad for it this morning. Let’s read the product launch press release, shall we:

Land O’Lakes is helping moms solve the 4 p.m. daily dinner dilemma with Sauté ExpressTM Sauté Starter, a new, all-in-one, seasoned butter and olive oil sauté starter that cooks and flavors chicken, fish or pork in one easy step. Found in the dairy aisle, each of the six 1-ounce squares in a package of Sauté ExpressTM Sauté Starter combines the fresh flavors of butter, olive oil, herbs and spices. By simply tossing the pre-measured, butter-based square into a heated, non-stick sauté pan, moms can cook a wholesome, flavorful and sizzling meal in 30 minutes or less – no prep time required.

By the way, why do we need to use a non-stick pan if we're putting butter in it? But I digress. From their website:

How do I use Sauté Express® Sauté Starter?

Simply melt one Sauté Express® square in a non-stick pan over medium-low heat. Add any protein, such as chicken, fish or pork. Sauté until meat is thoroughly cooked.

Oh. So in other words, it's butter. With some spice and other stuff mixed in. Stuff I probably already have in my spice rack next to the stove. 

Umm ... 'scuse me, Mr. MBA CEO Guy, but was there something wrong with the stick of Land O'Lakes butter in my fridge?

You know, it’s not that hard to take a pat of butter, pull some dried Italian seasoning out of the spice rack and sprinkle it in there, maybe crush a clove of garlic and let it all melt. I mean, that takes all of, I dunno, two seconds perhaps? Add some olive oil to that and it takes all of 2.2 seconds. This is the daily dinner dilemma for moms? That I don’t have 2 seconds to melt some fucking butter and throw a pinch of oregano in there too?

Are you people fucking kidding me?

This shit makes me nuts. I realize it's not up there with, say, not reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, but the failure of our capitalist overlords to fully understand us ordinary peons and instead look for new ways to give us diabetes and hypertension really cuts my salmon. This is not a better mousetrap. This is some other thing that they’re trying to con you into thinking is a mousetrap. It's a mousetrap-like device. And by the way, do you need a mousetrap? Yes! But you have a cat? No, you really, really, really need a mousetrap! C’mon, you know you do! Ditch the cat, and BUY THE FUCKING MOUSETRAP! 

Let's be real here. This product only exists to justify some agribusiness major’s corporate gig. This would be the person who spends waaaay too much fucking time reading Advertising Age. From their press release:

“Cooking with Sauté ExpressTM Sauté Starter is a multisensory experience – from the bubbling and sizzling sights and sounds in the pan and the irresistible aroma of the herbs, spices and butter, to the light, savory flavor and texture of your finished meal,” said Becky Wahlund, test kitchen director at Land O’Lakes. “The entire family will be eager to sit down for dinner – and likely will ask for seconds – making Sauté Express™ Sauté Starter a win-win solution for moms.”

You know what else does that? Butter.

Also, apparently this product is just for moms. If you’re a dad, or a single person, this product is not for you. Continue melting butter and adding your own spices as you’ve always done. Or fuckit, pop a Lean Cuisine in the microwave, we don’t give a shit.

Let me add, if you take some butter and spices and maybe crush a piece of garlic or squirt a lemon wedge in there, you will have something that is infinitely better than this product, because I looked at the ingredients and the Sauté Express® Sauté Starter is loaded with sodium, saturated fat, corn starch and other crap that you don’t need or want. The Garlic & Herb flavor has over 25 ingredients, including yeast extract, salt, sugar, sesame oil, canola oil and citric acid. It also has 280 mg of sodium, 80 calories, and 7 g of fat. That's per serving.

Even the simplest flavor, Savory Butter & Olive Oil, contains corn starch, sugar, soy lecithin, citric acid, and a whopping 270 mg of sodium and 7 grams of fat. Again, that's per serving.

This is what I hate about Big Food. You guys, I'm not eating this crap. No one should eat this crap. It's not even necessary to eat this crap! This product does not make anyone's life easier, not the "busy mom" or anyone else's. You people already sell butter. You want to help moms solve the 4 pm daily dinner dilemma? Try figuring out a way to get your damn butter into my fridge without it costing me $4 a pound. We can handle the rest, really we can.

Weekend Question Thread: Eating Well Cheaply

John wants to know about recipes/strategies for cooking well with little money. 

When I was broke-broke, I lived out of my friend's coffee shop's day old bagel bin. I'd get a dozen of those for two bucks, buy some cheap cheese and make a heartier version of grilled cheese by melting it over top of those in the oven. A head of iceberg lettuce lasted forever if you trimmed the brown parts off and potatoes were the best cheap food I knew thanks to my grandmother's stories about the Depression. Eggs, too. Cheap protein. A baked potato, even without butter or any other fixings, is like the most comforting thing to me. 

There's a couple of things that I've learned to make from scratch that everybody thinks are genius things but they're very simple: Pasta and bread. They're both somewhat time-consuming, so I don't know if they'd work for super-busy families, but you can make them for company and they seem fancy even though they're not expensive. I buy lots and lots of flour, and for pasta all you need are eggs and oil, and for bread all you need is yeast. You don't need a fancy machine for pasta either, just a rolling pin and a pizza cutter or sharp knife. 

The bread dough turns into cinnamon rolls in the morning, pizza on football afternoons, flatbread with whatever's left over in the fridge thrown onto it. It's a great way to throw a party for like $10. 

What are your secrets for cooking cheap? John mentions a whole chicken, and I buy those when they go on sale, too, and use the carcass for stock. And a ham is the best thing for making something stretch forever. Meat is pricey but I find myself spending the most money on fruits and vegetables because it seems like those things go faster. 

I swear to God, all I do in winter is eat and talk about food all the time. 

A. 

'We've Even Incorporated It Into Our Lovemaking'

HOWLING: 

What can I say about the 571B Banana Slicer that hasn't already been said about the wheel, penicillin, or the iPhone.... this is one of the greatest inventions of all time. My husband and I would argue constantly over who had to cut the day's banana slices. It's one of those chores NO ONE wants to do! You know, the old "I spent the entire day rearing OUR children, maybe YOU can pitch in a little and cut these bananas?" and of course, "You think I have the energy to slave over your damn bananas? I worked a 12 hour shift just to come home to THIS?!" These are the things that can destroy an entire relationship. It got to the point where our children could sense the tension. The minute I heard our 6-year-old girl in her bedroom, re-enacting our daily banana fight with her Barbie dolls, I knew we had to make a change. That's when I found the 571B Banana Slicer. Our marriage has never been healthier, AND we've even incorporated it into our lovemaking. THANKS 571B BANANA SLICER!

Via Nancy N. on Facebook. 

A. 

Now Be Thankful

I've always liked Thanksgiving. You get to gorge yourself, drink too much and get into arguments with right wing relatives or just have your basic family fight. I'm grateful that we have a holiday about, well, gratitiude.

I'm also thankful that one of my favorite films, Barry Levinson's Avalon, has a Thanksgiving scene is that is clearly more awesome than Jude:

 

 I'm particularly grateful for our weird little online blog family here at First Draft. We've got it all: from a crazy ferret lady to a neurotic academic to an allegedly awesome former squid to a blonde lady in a ham suit to a photoshop ninja to Southern Beale and her little dog Toto Tommy T. That's right, Tommy T too. But it's our readers who make this quirky community quiver or some other word beginning in Q. Why Q? It could have something to do with the character from Star Trek TNG but otherwise it beats the hell out of me.

Finally, I'm grateful that the tune I'm posting for this all-American Plymouthy Rocky holiday is written by a Brit-Richard Thompson-who is married to an American and lives in Southern California most of the time. Here's a version of Now Be Thankful performed with his ex-wife Linda who is a Brit who lives in Southern California. I seem to be repeating myself. You lot have got to be used to that by now.

 

Porkmageddon?

Someone else already used the term Porkocalypse so I had to root about for my own pun. It sucks in either event:

Might want to get your fill of ham this year, because "a world shortage of pork and bacon next year is now unavoidable," according to an industry trade group.

Blame the drought conditions that blazed through the corn and soybean crop this year. Less feed led to herds declining across the European Union “at a significant rate,” according to the National Pig Assn. in Britain.

And the trend “is being mirrored around the world,” according to a release (hat tip to the Financial Times).

In the second half of next year, the number of slaughtered pigs could fall 10%, doubling the price of European pork, according to the release.

The trade group urged supermarkets to pay pig farmers a fair price for the meat to help cover the drought-related losses.

In U.S. warehouses, pork supply soared to a record last month, rising 31% to 580.8 million pounds at the end of August from a year earlier, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The surge came as farmers scaled down their herds as feeding the animals became increasingly expensive.

In July, global food prices leaped 10% from the month before, according to the World Bank. Maize and wheat jumped 25% while soybeans rose 17%.

What will porkaholics and baconphiles do? Is this the revenge of the vegans? Nah, it's that "non-existent" climate change thing...

Jeez, I feel like Les Fucking Nessman. Hmm, I wonder if they're still awarding the Silver Sow award?

War on Christmas in July: The Battle of Chick-fil-A

There are other ways to do this: 

"The alderman has the ideological support of Mayor Rahm Emanuel," the Tribune reports.

"'Chick-fil-A values are not Chicago values,' the mayor said in a statement when asked about Moreno's decision."

I'm sorry, I didn't get my Chicago Values handout, but if I remember correctly they have something to do with "What's in it for me?"

More importantly, this sets a dangerous precedent: If your ideological belief isn't shared by Joe Moreno, forget about building a business in the 1st Ward.

And if the next alderman is against gay marriage and you're for it, the next alderman will have every right to reject your business too.

Agreed. It's a pretty clear free speech issue: You cannot deny them access to public services for which they clearly qualify based on the repulsive political stances of their higher-ups, especially if you are fucking dumb enough to say that that's the reason for your denial in the first place. Get off my side, assholes. Stop helping if this is the only way you can think of to do it. 

Moreover, this entire Chick-fil-A THING is on my last goddamn nerve, because like the War on Christmas before it, like the persecuted people who want to make a show out of praying in schoool, it's mobilized the dumbest people on the planet in defense of something that needs no defending. Here comes Sarah Palin, and this asshole, and Mike Huckabee, and half a dozen fuckwads I've defriended on Facebook and blocked on Twitter, talking about how a fast-food chain is so horribly victimized and we need to stand up for them. 

I don't care how horribly bigoted the Chick-fil-A folks get; they're really probably not going to go broke anytime soon. Meanwhle there is war, famine, pestilence, death, and oh by the way ACTUAL religious persecution happening, and you could not pay any of the talk-show bleaters all up in arms about the fucking chicken nuggets to gve a shit. There are a lot of powerless people in the world getting picked on for their politics and none of them own a fast-food chain. 

It's easy to be in favor of fried chicken! It's easy to love Christmas, too, even though every December we go through some stupid kabuki thing where we judge who loves Christmas and how those filthy atheist whores are trying to take it away. And it drives me wild seeing people who should know better, like Rahm and his aldermen, playing into that, and mistaking the nuggets for the meal, and giving these perpetually angry wingnuts precisely what they want: An excuse to hold a rally in favor of something that doesn't matter at all. 

A. 

Weekend Question Thread

You're about to die, and you get your last meal. What is it? 

Mine? Deep-dish pepperoni and sausage pizza from DeRango's Pizza in Racine, Wis. Two inches thick and dripping with salty, spicy, heavenly tomato sauce and gooey cheese. 

Or a Lee's sandwich. I don't know what they put in those sandwiches. I was just talking to my dad the other day about how I bought all the ingredients to make the exact same sandwich at home, just a basic ham and turkey and cheese thing on Italian bread, with French dressing, and IT DIDN'T TASTE THE SAME AT ALL. 

A. 

Tough Cookies

Photo by Jae C. Hong/AP

Mitt Romney had another one of his what planet are you from moments yesterday in the Keystone State. (I love state nicknames and fling them about with abandon whenever I get the chance.) He was handed some cookies made by a local baker and, well, insulted the baked goods:

 

I don't know about your neck of the woods but in mine 7-Elevens don't bake cookies. It is, however, noteworthy that Mitt has actually heard of 7-Eleven. What's next? Mocking Stuckey's pecan logs? Actually those are kinda scary and eminently mockable since they look like turds...

Weird Mitt has violated rule number one of the campaign trail: if someone hands you food, pretend that it's yummy or as the Mittster himself might say delightful. The good news is that the Bethel Bakery's business is booming post Romney weirdness. I bet you $10K that If this had been anyone else but Weird Mitt nobody would have noticed...

Stay tuned for another episode in the continuing adventures of Weird Mitt and the little people...

I'll drink to that

A new study finds that drinking beer makes men smarter:

Beer makes men smarter.

So say researchers at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

They found that men with a couple beers under their belts were actually better at solving brain-teasers than their sober counterparts.

To reach that surprising conclusion, the researchers devised a bar game in which 40 men were given three words and told to come up with a fourth that fits the pattern.

For example, the word “cheese” could fit with words like “blue” or “cottage” or “Swiss.”

Half the players were given two pints. The other half got nothing.

The result? Those who imbibed solved 40% more of the problems that their sober counterparts.

Also, the drinkers finished their problems in 12 seconds while it took the non-drinkers 15.5 seconds.

“We found at 0.07 blood alcohol, people were worse at working memory tasks, but they were better at creative problem-solving tasks,” psychologist Jennifer Wiley reported on the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (FABBS) site.

The article went on to state that this may be why some heavy drinkers are brilliant scribblers. Actually, back in the days before clean water, lots of folks drank beer with breakfast. I somehow doubt that I can convince Dr. A that this is a good idea; except, that is, on Fat Tuesday...

 

Cheesy Grits?

First, a fond adieu to Virgotex and a rousing greeting to Southern Beale. Btw, the latter is a <drum roll> hockey fan and roots for some team called the Predators one of whose stars is a guy named Pekka. I am making none of this up. Since mocking hockey is one of my jobs here at First Draft, I thought I'd get an early start.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Mitt Haircut's culinary pandering.

 

I used to faux admire Mitt for his ability to pander but he's either lost his touch or his android memory drive is on the blink. I'm a mere transplanted Southerner and live in a city where grits are no big whoop but even I know that it's CHEESE GRITS. Cheesy is, however, a word that describes Romney's stump style.

Next thing you know, Willard will be quoting Robert Johnson and urging voters to:

 

Fuck Yeah Himal Chuli!

I dream about this place when I've been away from Madison for too long. 

A. 

Oreo Centennial

Yesterday was the 100th Anniversary of Oreos hitting the shelves. Here's a sweet piece from CBS News, which features the family of the guy who designed the classic cookie logo back in 1952:

NOLA Notes: Twelfth Night Edition

 

A boozy epiphany: It's the first day of the Carnival season, which will be mercifully shorter than 2011. There's a new Carnival related product out that I am NOT eager to sample:King Cake Vodka. Sounds totally vomitorious to me since I don't care for either vodka or sweet likker. It has come to my attention that unlike a *real* King Cake there will not be a plastic baby inside the bottle. If someone offers me a shot of this shit, I'll try it but until then I'll rely on NOLA food writer, Todd Price's tweets.

ESPN meets Andrew Jackson: Unless you're a sports hater or live in cave, you probably know that the BCS national championship game between local faves the LSU Tigers and their arch-nemesis the Alabama Crimson Tide is taking place at the Superdome next Monday. You may not, however, be aware that ESPN has erected a stage in Jackson Square right across from my shop to broadcast College GameDay. The stage was built in time for the Sugar Bowl. I have to give ESPN credit, it's the least hostile takeover of the Square ever. So far so good. Haven't seen Lee Fucking Corso yet but I'm working...

As to the game itself, I think this Tiger team is too loose to lose. Les Miles may not be an intellectual titan but he doesn't have a permanent stick up his ass like Nick Saban. Some call Saban intense, I call him uptight. I call the game LSU 24 Alabama 21. 

The Saints are playing the Detroit Lions tomorrow and are likely to devour them. Drew Brees has been on a tear and the offensive unit is even better than in 2009 when the Saints went on to win the Super Bowl. We appear to be on a collision course with the Packers, which means that it will be family sports feud time here at First Draft. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the weather in Green Bay won't be too beastly. The record of warm weather teams playing outdoors in the frozen North is not good so I won't shed any tears if the Pack are upset in their game. Sorry, Athenae, Doc and Scout. I'm not sure where Jude stands since he's originally from Biloxi but I can take the heat. I do, after all, live in New Orleans...

Geaux Saints. Geaux Tigers. Time for me to, uh, go.

  

Happy Thanksgiving

Since Thanksgiving is all about the food, it's a holiday I'm fond of. Here's my favorite weirdo holiday food video of all time wherein Martha Stewart teaches Snoop Dogg how to make mashed potatoes:

 

Sunday Morning Video: Oceana Grill- Kitchen Nightmares

Gordon Ramsay attempts to help two douchebags who run a tourist trap eatery in the French Quarter. Hilarity enuses:

 

Rock On, Wino

Marketing is everything these days. I recall when rockers were disdainful of lending their names to various products. That has changed. I guess we can blame Gene fucking Simmons for that: Kiss pioneered "extending its brand" by sticking its imagery on almost anything you could imagine.

I was interested to learn, however, that the ultimate first generation hippie band, the Grateful Dead, has licensed its name and Steal Your Face logo to a winery. I'm less surprised to see Rolling Stones and Police related brands. When you open the latter, the voice of Sting tells you how great it is.

The Dead wine is steal you face red and I'm only marginally interested in trying it. It's gotta be better than a touch of grey reisling or even worse, the wine the Dead are kinda sorta tied to via the title of this classic tune:

 

Pumpkin Recipes

OM NOM NOM NOM.

We're having houseguests this weekend, due to the ferret show (yes, ferret show, yes, you should come), so tonight is my night to bake things in preparation for their arrival. I love fall.

A.

The Cheesiest Billboard Ever

Given all the Sconnies here at First Draft, I probably shouldn't be the one to post this item but here it is:

This tower of cheesiness was erected near Lambeau Field in Green Bay by the physicians/national scold group, the PCRM. They're essentially trying to scare America out of eating certain foods and now they're going after cheese. And in Wisconsin of all places. Hmmm, I wonder if they have any plans to expand to France?  Probably not, French cheesemakers would probably force them to eat stinky fromage until they recanted.

The folks who make the cheesehead hats are also not amused at having their product worn by the Grim Reaper and are threatening legal action. That's unlikely to happen but it's great PR and casts Fomation Inc. as a champion of all things cheesy and Wisconsiny.

This whole episode, of course, reminds me of the cheese shop sketch:

 

Okay, I'm off to score some rogue cheddar...

Ghouls

Bring on Jude's meteor:

Wolf asks Ron Paul about a hypothetical 30 year-old who has no insurance and needs intensive care.

“So society should just allow him to die?” Wolf asks.

“Yeah!” someone in the audience shouts out.

There was no van, because about one of these a month is what I can stomach, and I had a work thing, and also I had a bunch of houseguests recently and so am mostly out of booze. Even I draw the line at drinking Kahlua to, you know, drink it, instead of pouring it over ice cream or into hot chocolate or something.

A.

Rising Tide 6 Brass Band Panel

  


It's shameless plug time again, y'all. I'm not only one of the organizers of Rising Tide but a little birdie tells me that we're going to have a record turn out of First Draft bloggers this year.

Anyway, we've decided to do something completely different to end the conference, a panel discussing the NOLA brass band tradition that concludes with a performance from the TBC (To Be Continued) Brass Band. Here's how Cousin Pat described it at the RT blog:

The Brass Bands Panel will feature Lawrence Rawlins, band director of Roots of Music; Alejandro de los Rios, producer of the Brass Roots documentary; members of the TBC Brass Band Edward “Juicy” Jackson, Joe Maize and Sean Michael Roberts; moderated by writer Deborah Cotton and followed by a performance by the TBC Brass Band.

The conference takes place on Saturday August 27th at Xavier University. For more information and how to register CLICK HERE. Lunch will be catered by J'anita's at the Rendon Inn and served up by my dear friends, J'anita's owners, Craig and Kim Giescke.

Finally, here's a sample of TCB's music as filmed by moderator Big Red Cotton:

 

I happen to like peas

President Obama's recent culinary reference in the endless debt ceiling death dance really tickled my fancy:

"It's not going to get easier. It's going to get harder. So we might as well do it now: pull off the Band-Aid, eat our peas. Now is the time to do it. If not now, when?"

Congressional Republicans are clearly our national boo-boo so the Band-Aid bit works for me although I suspect the folks at Curad winced at this reference.

I, however,  beg to differ when it comes to peas. I like the little green suckers in whatever form they come; unless they're mushy from being cooked to death. In my case, the proper phrase would "eat our cauliflower."

What about y'all? What's your duty food?

 

Nut free nights

Some people have severe nut allergies, which is something I don't recall hearing about until recently. Major League Baseball is on the case:

From Cracker Jacks to bags of straight-up peanuts, baseball games can be a bit of a nightmare for fans with severe nut allergies. According to Reuters, about half of all MLB teams will host at least one "nut-controlled game" this season, so even the most allergic fans have a chance for to catch a foul ball with their beer. A nut-free game typically means "an isolated section of around 100 seats that have been thoroughly cleaned," not selling nuts nearby, and having medical staff on hand in case of an emergency. One Chicago mother of a highly nut-allergic young baseball fan said that hearing the crunching of peanut shells during a game is "like being in a horror movie."

Huh? I have allergies and Dr. A has some pretty bad ones but audio allergies? The only audio allergies I have are to Lawrence Welk and eurotrash electronica. <synth drum rim shot>

I don't really have a problem with nut free nights: it's never a bad thing when a business tries to please its customers. Besides, nut free nights is (are?) fun to say and evokes some inordinately silly imagery such as players with empty cups... <painful rim shot>

I know, however, one person who might find this trend worrisome and it's Harlan Pepper the nut naming dog dude from Best In Show.

 

 What's a nut namer to do without any nuts? Sing this song?

 

I couldn't find the version I really wanted: Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts. I haven't heard their Nuts To You LP since I was in kneepants. Wait a minute, I'm wearing shorts right now so I am indeed wearing knee pants. It's fucking hot here y'all.

Back to Doug Clark, here's the classic as well as "classy" in the Good Fellas sense cover:

Grand Old Pizza Party?

What's the deal with Republicans and pizza? Former Godfather's Pizza honcho Herman Cain is running for the GOP nomination and, for some obscure reason, is polling well. I'm not sure why: do they think Obama is Abel or something? Or has Cain made them an offer they can't refuse? Beats the hell outta me but as long as I'm not sleeping with the fishes I don't give a shit. End of Godfather related jokes.

It could just be the cheesy goodness of pizza, which inspired a somewhat mirthful (mirthy?) gesture and/or prank by Mitt Haircut's camp:

Mitt Romney took his presidential campaign to the next level on Thursday, eschewing mud slinging to instead engage in the far more delicious smear tactic of pizza slinging.

You know that old prank where you send a bunch of pizzas to someone who never ordered them? Well that's sort of what Mitt Romney did during a campaign stop in Chicago, sending the leftovers from his meal to Obama's campaign headquarters.

<snip>

Gail Gitcho, Romney's communications director, told TPM in an email that it wasn't a prank at all.

"No prank - just a nice gesture since we were just a few blocks away from their HQ yesterday and had extra pizza," she wrote.

Dang. I was hoping it was a prank since the only funny thing Mitt has ever done was name a kid Tagg. (Guess he's always it.) I was hoping for an outbreak of zany practical jokes to show that Mitt is more than just a guy with good hair, perfect posture, Mormon underwear and a father who once ran the now defunct auto company that came up with the Gremlin. Now that was a funny car: The Pinto was funny too except for that whole exploding gas tank thing...

Of course, if the Mittster or any other Gooper gets elected, the joke is on us...

Malaka Of The Week: Nicolas Cage

Yeah, I know: this is low hanging fruit BUT it's irresistible since the latest Cage meltdown occurred in my city. Now that I think of it, Nicolas Cage comes to NOLA to get drunk and arrested. Guess he buys into the lowest common denominator visitor thing. Actually, he's what I call a parachutist (very part time New Orleanian) but today I call him malaka of the week.

Cage's latest bout of drunken NOLA malakatude occurred last week:

Sources familiar with the situation tell TMZ ... Nic was "very drunk" on the streets of N.O. when a cab driver saw him loudly arguing with his wife Alice.

We're told the cabbie called the police and said in addition to the screaming and yelling ... he saw Nic grab her.

We're told the police came and told Nic and his wife to just go home. That's when Nic allegedly told cops, "Why don't you just arrest me?" The cops then reiterated that he and his wife should just go home. Cage then repeated his dare to cops.

At that point, police took Nic into custody and charged him with ...domestic abuse and disturbing the peace.

As we all know, malakatude and dumbassery are kissing cousins and insisting that the cops bust you is a one way ticket to the slammer.

As a New Orleanian, I have no problem with people getting drunk but I have a problem with people who cannot hold their liquor. Another of Nic Cage's problems is misogyny. When he was Bacchus in 2002, rumors swirled about town that he made a pass at a krewe member's wife and was outraged when there were objections. Apparently, Cage told the Bacchus spouse that she should be flattered that a movie star hit on her. Whatever, dude. This OTT hammy actor thinks that he's God's gift to women.

During Carnival, Cage was nearly caged for being drunk and disorderly at Stella, which is an upscale eatery on Chartres Street owned by celebrity chef, Scott Boswell. Here's an extended excerpt from an hilarious piece by Jim Nelson of GQ who just happened to be there when Nic Cage did that malakatude that he dude so well:

He stood at the entrance of the room, clutching the hostess stand for balance, and glared out at the diners. The entire place went stone silent. He moved, stumbled, came closer to our tables.

"Where's the REAL girls?" he moaned.

Huh? A few more paces. He's a foot away from my andouille sausage. Quick. Someone feed him.

"WHERE'S THE REAL GIRLS?"

He spotted them in the corner, and moved toward them like a drugged Sasquatch. The room seemed to sway like an uncertain boat. The two ladies, alas, had manly company at the table. This did not dissuade Cage.

"You." He pointed at the brunette. "You're a contender." He turned to the blonde. "You're not."

He was soon escorted out of the restaurant by a couple armfuls of hospitality. A manager type stood in the driveway outside and tried to gently scoot him off, the way you might shoo a raccoon you're not sure is feral. Nearby you could hear the carnival howls of Mardi Gras. The room sighed, slowly went back to digesting.

Then we heard another tussle. Cage was at the doorway, trying to get past the manager dude, grabbing onto the walls, his arms extended out as if he were desperate to catch an existential football. His hand went through a panel in the door, shattering the glass. "You LOVE ME!" he shouted to the restaurant staff, who surely at one point did.

Cops were called. In New Orleans that usually means nothing happens. But they turned up—for a drunk-and-disorderly at Mardi Gras, no less. He was taken home, not arrested. But he suffered, I imagine, a head-cracking case of morning shame.

Well, at least he didn't demand that the po po take him away that time. Of course, he should have learned a lesson from this earlier altercation and not demanded to check in to the Parish Prison last week. Part of me thinks I shouldn't kick someone when they're down and I wouldn't do so if Cage weren't such an insufferably arrogant and entitled douchebag. And douchebaggery is synonymous with malakatude.

The Ripper and his knives

  
No, this post isn't about Jack the Ripper. The Ripper in question is suave super chef Eric Ripert whose friend Anthony Bourdain loves calling him that. I do too.

The current issue of the New Yorker has an amusing piece about how the Ripper likes to travel with his knives. This post exists solely because I *love* this title and found that cool picture of Monsieur Ripert and a blade. Splat. Slice.

I'll throw in some gratuitous knifey music as well. This version of Mack The Knife is the one where Ella loses the thread and rallies magnificently:

 

Glory Days

Sometimes I feel a bit too old to be on Facebook but, on balance, I like it and reconnecting with some old friends has been a bonus. My friend Clara refuses to do FB because she's convinced that only the creepiest people from her past will friend her. My experience has been pretty good: the high school friends I've connected with are people I liked as opposed to the schoolyard bully or the class know it all.

I was a hippie rock-n-roll freak when I was a young whippersnapper. Surprised? Probably not. I wore the same jeans jacket for 3 years complete with a Zappa button on one pocket and a Lennon button on the other side. Not exactly a balanced ticket but unbalanced is okay with me. My friend Betsey called it my "drug coat" and she was probably right. She's one of the friends I've gotten back in touch with online. She's become totally respectable but I knew her when none of us were. Heh, heh, heh.

It was via Betsey that I learned some sad, sad news, which left me pondering my own mortality. Our old friend Signe died recently. It was a surprise because she was always fit as a fiddle and twice as lively. I hadn't seen Signe since the 1980's but I recall meeting her when we were 5 years old. We went to the same Greek Orthodox church and were in the same Sunday school class. My mother, who was raised Lutheran, taught us one year, which was kind of odd for me: I couldn't get away with being the class clown with her. Damn maternal mind control.

Besides being a convert to Othodoxy (it never took with me) my blond Norwegian mother was the best damn Greek cook in the world. Mercifully, she foresook such Scandie delicacies as pickled herring and other stinky vittles in favor of pastichio and moussaka. Btw, our family never put spuds in moussaka and I was horrified the first timeI had it that way. Apparently, it's a Northern Greek thing so now I accept that version as valid albeit grudgingly.

Anyway, Signe was one of my first crushes and was always one of my favorite people growing up so I was very sad to hear that she'd passed. My parents knew that I had a crush on Signe who was, after all, a nice Greek girl so they encouraged me to take an interest in her later on, which meant, of course, that I did the opposite. It was her lucky day...

Since I'm waltzing down memory lane, the picture above is of what the kids today would call my posse: David, Russ, Steve and me. (I can't believe I ever wore a frakking flannel shirt. Holy Fogerty, Batman.) I hadn't seen this picture in eons until our friend Peter (hereinafter the Other Peter) posted it on Facebook. If I recall correctly the Other Peter was the photographer and this is a portrait of surly young men worthy of Richard Avedon. Okay, I'm exaggerating but it's a fun snapshot.

When we were too young to hang out in bars, we'd head to Denny's for our late night stoner food. It was an old school Denny's in San Mateo complete with pastel viny booths and big ass asterisks everywhere. I'm not sure why the asterisks were the motif but I dug it. Perhaps they were trying to keep Roger Maris away  or were fans of the great astericker: Ford Fucking Frick.

We must have been major pains in the ass for the staff  because  our trips to Denny's often involved goofy juvenille performance art, which we thought was hilarious but was probably cringe inducing. I recall going in late one night and Steve was wearing a wet suit and I was toting Russ' kid brother's tuba. That's particularly ironic because as an adult I loathe tubas. (Just ask Elspeth Ravenwind. One of her joys in life is making tuba jokes at my expense. Hit me with your best shot, sweetie.)

I wasn't jerky enough to toot the damn thing at an asterisk or even at the oily and unctuous manager who was dating one of our more glamorous high school classmates. We called him Stephanie Harold Dude because her name was guess what. She was blond and self possessed enough to play Crystal Allen in a school production of The Women. She was, of course, the homewrecker played by Joan Crawford in the film version. I have no idea if Stephanie grew up to be a homewrecker or even a tuba toter but I hope she did better than Stephanie Harold Dude. All I recall about him was that he was Lucely in charge of the Booths at the astericky Denny's...

Where am I going with this? Nowhere in a hurry. Oh yeah, a bit about Glory Days, which is one of my favorite Springsteen songs. It's a chirpy poppy song with dark lyrics. That seems to be a speciality of Jersey songwriters, the same phrase describes a lot of Pat Dinizio's work with the Smithereens.

Anyhoo, here's a particularly joyful version of Glory Days from my third favorite city in the world: London. Hyde Park to be exact. Bruce and Little Steven start cracking up when the latter leans into the mike to sing his trademark raspy harmonies. Great stuff from a glorious band.

 

 

Hot Potatoes

Some people take their jobs too seriously. Take the head of the Washington State Potato Commission. Sounds crucial to me, y'all. Anyway, this guy Chris Voight ate nothing but spuds for two months as a promotional gimmick of some sorts. He actually lost 20 pounds and ended up sounding like Barry Fitzgerald and was so starchy that his shirts ironed themselves. <rim shot>

Despite his disclaimers to the contrary, I suspect Mr. Potato Head was so sick of spuds that he burst into the Kinks song below when the diet ended:

 

As you may have gathered, the narrator of the song was an unemployed layabout whose wife tormented him by feeding him nothing but spuds. Unlike the guy in Washington state, the dude in the song cracked under the potatoey pressure. I'm unsure, however, if he became a masher as a result. <baboom>

Just like Billy Sunday in a shotgun ragtime band

This post title is a line from the Dead song Ramble On, Rose with ab fab lyrics by Robert Hunter. Hunter was the unseen but very important member of that great combo. The post title is also a tribute to my friend Craig Giescke whose post titles at beerfooddude are always quotes from song lyrics. Craig has been on my mind this week: he was an inkstained wretch for many moons but embarked upon a second career as a chef. His eatery J'anitas is one of my hangouts. They recently parted company with the Avenue Pub where Craig, Kim and their crew banged out wonderful food in what was essentially a kitchenette. It turned out that they were too successful for the pub but have landed on their feet in a new location. If you come to New Orleans, drop me a note and I'll take you to meet Craig and Kim and eat their amazingly soulful food. They're even more awesome than their food and that's way more awesome than Jude...

The other reason I have J'anita's on the brain was that my Krewe du Vieux sub-krewe PAN had our theme meeting upstairs at the Avenue Pub. We came up with a corker: one that's less esoteric than some of our past odes to folks like Lafcadio Hearn. This, however, is just a tease. I'm sworn to silence under pain of something or other. It could be torture by tuba, which is my least favorite instrument. I refuse to modify the last word with musical...

   

How do ya like dem ersters?

Thus spake (according to legend at least) Longite NOLA Mayor Robert Maestri to FDR when the two were dining on oysters at Antoine's. The quote varies-sometimes it ends with Mr. President or Chief-which is why I'm not 100% sure it's true. But if it isn't, it should be.

This post, however, isn't about malaprops or politics, it's about dem ersters. The Sunday Picayune ran a fine front pager by Brett Anderson on the ongoing problems faced by a family owned and operated oyster processing and distribution company in NOLA, P&J Oyster Co. The BP oil spill and the response to it continue to bite people in the ass. Here are the first few graphs:

In mid-September, Al Sunseri set two raw oysters on a table next to the coffeemaker in the offices of P&J Oyster Co. The specimens were not up to his standards, but P&J, which Sunseri runs with his brother Sal, was selling them anyway. The company had no other choice.

"You see?" Al said after feeding the oysters to a visitor. "They got a good oyster flavor. They just don't have any salt. And they're small."

Al blames these deficiencies on the fresh Mississippi River water diverted to protect Louisiana's delicate coastal marshlands from the oil that poured into the Gulf of Mexico from the ruptured Macondo well for most of the summer. Still, "they're decent oysters," he said. "People want to buy them."

P&J has dealt in oysters for nearly 135 years, making it the oldest oyster processor and distributor in the United States. The disaster triggered by the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion on April 20 brought that tradition to a virtual standstill. On June 10, the Sunseris, having conceded their regular suppliers could no longer provide them with the volume and quality of oysters necessary to operate their business, ceased regular operations at P&J. They laid off 13 full-time employees.

The whole piece is worth a read: Brett Anderson is the Picayune's stellar food critic/reporter. He knows from good food. Anyway, shrimp and crab seem to be plentiful but we miss our salty and briny Louisiana oysters. You *can* find them but many restaurants are serving ersters from elsewhere because they have no choice. I guess we should all pray to Poseidon or Neptune to bring our oyster beds back.

I haven't said this for awhile but here it goes: Fuck you, BP and the trail of despair you left in your wake. There, that felt good.

Halal Soup

Assclowns

I got a halal chicken once because some Muslim friends were coming over and there's a halal grocery/butcher within easy driving distance. Roasted it with rosemary and some lemon, thing was frigging delicious. Didn't feel particularly inclined to love Mohammed more after eating it nor don a veil, though. Kosher hotdogs? Tasty. A bit disappointed I couldn't speak a word of Hebrew after I took them off the grill. Last night, had this steak frite at a French place, but this morning I am no more French than, say, Della or Oscar.

I'm getting really bummed out here. Was planning to order takeout at some point this weekend, but if that doesn't make me instantly Asian I'm done and it's nothing but Lean Cuisine from here on out.

A.

Blackened Out

Last night, Dr. A and I joined assorted NOLA bloggers and friends of Dangerblond for her birthday dinner at a wee Mid-City restaurant called Katie's. The core of the party were the Rising Tide committee of "people who get shit done" and our sweeties. The food was excellent and the staff remarkably patient given the fact that our table was a 97 top (only a slight exaggeration) and we all have VERY LOUD VOICES. Just ask Virgo Tex: prolonged exposure to NOLA bloggers is a leading cause of deafness in the 504 area code, uh, area. In short, it was cacophony at its most cacophonous. Former Mayor (and current Urban League honcho) Marc Morial was there for dinner as well. His table was much quieter than ours. We were louder than vuvuzela blowing futbol fans. Honk, honk, honk.

On to the point of this post: food. New Orleans is a city of conversation and the main topic of conversation is food. There's an increasingly lively food blogging community here to guide us on our path to gluttony. When you talk to someone about a wedding in NOLA, the first question you *always* ask is, how was the food? Not was the bride gorgeous? Or did the best man get drunk and make a pass at the bride's mother? Food. But I do digress. It is, after all, what I do.

Anyway, back to food blogging in New Orleans. My current favorite is Blackened Out. It's written by longtime friends, Peter and Rene. They hit all the usual foodie notes but they season everything liberally with snark and wit. These guys are fucking funny and excellent writers, y'all. I follow BO-uh oh, better spell it out-Blackened Out on the tweeter tube and whichever one of the boys tweets during LSU and Saints games is hilarious. I resisted the temptation to steal of some of his lines in my Les Miles post. I'm no Milton Berle: I neither wear frocks for laughs nor steal jokes.

Here's the beginning of a spirited exchange between Peter and Rene on the subject of eateries that do not accept credit cards:

Rene: If any menu item on your menu is over $8, you have no business being a cash only restaurant. Now listen, many restaurants and food purveyors will tell you they are cash only to keep their prices down. The theory is if they don't have to pay the credit card companies 3-5% a month for the right to take credit cards, they can pass the savings on to you. But when was the last time you walked into a cash only restaurant and said, "Hey this po-boy shop's prices are 3-5% lower than the one that is cash only." If you are a snowball stand, bakery, or coffee shop, I'm fine with you being cash only. Otherwise, the 21st century is paging you, please take cards.

Peter: You are beginning to sound like the Dean. Case in point, this quote from his restaurant review of Ciro's Cote Sud on July 7, 2010: "The cash-or-check payment policy is an absurd inconvenience to enforce upon customers, and causes one to order less food and wine than one otherwise might. (How much cash is in your pocket right now?)" Saving that 3-5% may not be manifested in lower prices on the menu, but it is certainly recognized as a value to the customer in some other manner. How do you know? Because if Restaurant A consistently charged 3-5% more for the same exact food as Restaurant B next door, all other things being equal, which would you go to and which would be closed down in a matter of months? Let consumer preference determine if cash only is a make or break point of contention for diners. Last time I checked, Mandina's and Casamento's were not hurting for customers.

I'm with Rene on this one. In the modern economy you need to take plastic. I own a small business and I hate paying the fees BUT it's the price of doing business in a way that's convenient for your customers.

So, if you're looking for NOLA restaurant tips or for the perfect way to roast a chicken, check out Blackened Out.

Just Call It Something Else!

Corn sugar:

The group plans to apply Tuesday to the Food and Drug Administration to get "corn sugar" approved as an alternative name for food labels.

Approval could take two years, but that's not stopping the industry from using the term now in advertising. There's a new online marketing campaign at http://www.cornsugar.com and on television. Two new commercials try to alleviate shopper confusion, showing people who say they now understand that "whether it's corn sugar or cane sugar, your body can't tell the difference. Sugar is sugar."

Renaming products has succeeded before. For example, low eurcic acid rapeseed oil became much more popular after becoming "canola oil" in 1988. Prunes tried to shed a stodgy image by becoming "dried plums" in 2000.

The new name would help people understand the sweetener, said Audrae Erickson, president of the Washington-based group.

"It has been highly disparaged and highly misunderstood," she said. She declined to say how much the campaign costs.

A.

Gimme

WANT.

A.

Pumpkin Beer

I love everything about fall food. I love sweet potatoes, I love stews, I love soups, I love roasting a whole chicken and picking the bones clean all week, I love baking potatoes and stuffing pork tenderloins with apples and I love gingerbread pound cake with pears simmered in spiced rum. I love the farmer's market right now, full of thick heirloom tomatoes and apples that not only taste like apples but actually smell like apples. I love pies and cobblers and I love evenings cool enough for a smoky cabernet or a rich malbec.

Or a pumpkin beer!

Fall fall fall fall fall fall.

A.

Fuck Your Organic Grass-Fed Food, You Hippie

So the other day Mr. A and I bought some bacon. We'd gotten a gift certificate thing for a local market that sells wine and cheese and other yummy things that pass for breakfast dinner around here, our diet of late has been light on protein in general and fatty protein in specific, and so one of the things we picked up was a packet of bacon.

This bacon was hormone-free, antibiotic-free meat that had been gotten from happy pigs living in freedom all their lives on some farm about 10 blocks away before being humanely killed. The cheesemonger dude behind the counter made filthy orgasmic noises when we asked him about how it tasted and the package said something about applewood and smoking. It was like $12. And when I brought it home and fried it up it tasted like my very first memory of bacon, sweet and salt-crunchy and clean somehow, a real vivid taste.

Now, we wouldn't do that every week, because that's insane, $12 for about 20 strips of bacon, no matter how good it is, but I, unlike this writer from Time magazine, do not see such bacon's existence as some kind of rebuke to Real America:

Eating an apple is almost always better than not eating an apple, no matter where it came from. And getting the whole brood into the habit of sitting down to a meal of lean meats, lots of veggies and judicious amounts of carbs and starches is hard enough without bringing politics into the mix. Farmers' markets are undeniably great — if you can afford them, if there's one near you and if you have time between the job and the kids to make a special trip when you know you can get everything in a single stop at the supermarket. The food industry undeniably churns out all manner of dangerous and addictive junk without a shred of real nutritional value in it, but there are also food companies that manage to get healthy, high-quality food to market and keep the cost of it reasonable.

Shockingly, plenty of people in my decidedly not-upper-class 'hood manage to overcome the shackles of their children and go to the twice-a-week markets. Families, with tons of kids, double strollers, huge plastic wagon conveyances, unruly niblets everywhere if you show up much past 9 a.m.

Then again, I live in one of the bluest parts of one of the bluest states in the country, so maybe we're all just kidding ourselves and people in the suburbs of DuPage County are too tired from going Galt to support our heirloom tomatoes. What the fuck, lately. Why does this story, which is mostly about how organic food sucks about as much as any other food does these days, take this sudden weird turn into how good food is for pussies who don't work hard?

What a strange sentence that is. "Maybe people with REAL lives don't have TIME for your stupid organic shit, huh?" And not for nothing but it is the very same "food purists" this article derides who spend most of their time trying to bring farmer's markets to poor neighborhoods, with community gardening projects and even efforts to bring local produce to homeless shelters and food banks because eating decently SHOULDN'T be a matter of having to save up half the kid's college fund, just to buy bacon.

via Virgo.

A.

Weekend Question Thread

Gwen vs. Pie.

What yummy thing have you made recently?

A.

Restaurant Site Menus

Felisdemens asks a question I've always wondered about myself:

- Why in the name of FUCK do restaurant websites IN THIS DAY AND AGE have their menus solely available as PDFs? That is the stupidest thing ever conceived. Seriously. It's time to cockpunch your web designer, people.

This makes me crazy. I hate downloading things I'm only gonna read once.

A.

What? No Mustard?

Photo by Timothy A. Clary AFP/Getty Images

Posh boy and British Prime Minister David (Just call me Dave) Cameron indulged in some street food on his visit to the US and A last week. Cameron likes to pass himself off as a man of the people despite his Eton and Oxbridge background but the "small people" tend to put mustard on their hot dogs. I asked my favorite Lucky Dog vendor, Harold, what he thought about this and he said: "Well, at least it's not ketchup. That belongs on burgers, not dogs."

There you have it: Cameron. Hot Dog. Fail. 

Pasickie

Making people happy:

When the Popsicle Princesses arrive at the Time Out Chicago offices for an interview, they immediately hoist a picnic basket and distribute their wares—the Gloria Gaynor (whole blueberries, lemon zest and juiced berries), the Madonna (strawberry and basil syrup), the Kathleen Hanna (mango with a hit of cayenne)—to passersby in the foyer. “Would you like a pop?” they ask me. A hand-labeled, multicolored fruit pop made by two women wearing matching red gingham shirts and cutoffs? Only David Brooks is a big enough killjoy to refuse.

The Popsicle Princesses are Liz Wolferman and Emma Nolley, a renegade pair of 23-year-olds whose mission is to bring ice pops, made in batches of 30 and transported in that picnic basket on the back of a sometimes-functioning tricycle, to the streets. Their role model: the tamale guy. “We were just fed up with the laws of vending in Chicago,” says Nolley, “and we were like, You know what, those tamale guys are out there doing it, and we love that, and they go to the bar, run around, and everyone gets so excited. Can we do that, too?”

One of my favorite things to do is feed people. It's hard to be in a bad mood at a meeting when there are delicious cookies. People get bitchy when their blood sugar gets low and in a high-stress work environment, man, some days you just want a treat you don't have to stand in line for or figure out if you've got enough change in your pocket for or whatever. Plus, and this is the selfish part, baking and cooking give me a sense of accomplishment distinct from wrestling all day with a paragraph that just won't work.

A co-worker and I once, during a particularly bitching 18-hour day in which everybody in the office seemed to be about to blow a gasket, went out and bought two boxes of Dilly Bars at the Dairy Queen and distributed them around. We just couldn't take the crabbiness anymore and ice cream seemed the simplest thing to do. While it didn't solve anybody's marital disputes or make their financial problems disappear or help them meet their deadlines, it did, at the very least, make it hard to complain, as our mouths were full.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some farmer's market peaches as need making into a pie. That strawberry basil thing sounds amazing, too. NOM NOM NOM.

A.

Top Chef PWNS Heritage Foundation

Via Melissa, this:

Tom Colicchio: There were three of us who were the voice of reason. And one person from The Heritage Foundation said that if children are getting obese, then maybe we should stop feeding them. I was like [sarcastically] "okay." He became my adversary right away and I managed to get a few digs in afterward.

I watch Top Chef religiously and before I read this, I've never much liked Colicchio. He always came off as a nasty, sarcastic ass and not in an interesting way, but this has completely turned my opinion around. In fact, he's looking downright tasty.

A.

'Cynical but Essentially Guileless'

Bourdain:

A whole chapter follows parsing the advantages of selling out; it is as torturous in its self-examination as a seminarian's confession. Bourdain isn't famous because he knows so much about restaurant cooking (though he does) or because he's always cool (he isn't) or even because he hosts a popular show about liquor and piglets. Bourdain is famous because he is vivid and real and mercilessly honest at every second — in a sphere whose atmosphere consists of bombast, shilling, sanctimony and the unholy alliance between marketing communications and social networking.

[snip]

You talk in the book about how you're going to sell out, but for some reason you still haven't. Why not? What are you waiting for?
What did Molière say about writing being like prostitution? "First you do it for fun. Then you do it for a few friends. Finally you do it for money." I've done "product integrations" for the show. In this brave new world of TiVo and DVR, no one watches television as scheduled. They fast-forward through the commercials, they delete them, they download [shows] commercial-free. Advertisers-sponsors aren't stupid. They know that increasingly, the only way to get their product seen is in the body of the show. Once I agreed to do that, for the cause, for the budget, for whatever, I pretty much lost my cherry. As I said in the book, it's vanity that precludes me from doing actual ads. So far. Not integrity. That surely will change. I think it was the Keith Richards ad for Vuitton. I thought, Jesus! If he's not too cool to do it, what's my problem?

One of the things I really like about No Reservations (along with the delicious host himself, on whom I have a crush worthy of a high school sophomore) is that it doesn't shy away from dealing with the essential poverty of many places the production visits. And when in a country, city or neighborhood that is significantly poor, when dealing with people who have been oppressed (the Laos and Cambodia episodes, I'm thinking of especially), the show doesn't treat it or them any differently than it does the wealthy and well-connected. Everybody is viewed with the same skepticism, humor, and warmth.

Also WHAT'S A SQUEEZLE?

A.

The American Meat Institute

Unsurprisingly, thinks bacon KICKS ASS:

"To lower risk of heart attacks and diabetes, people should consider which types of meats they are eating," said Renata Micha of the Harvard School of Public Health, whose study appears in the journal Circulation.

"Processed meats such as bacon, salami, sausages, hot dogs and processed deli meats may be the most important to avoid," Micha said in a statement.

Based on her findings, she said people who eat one serving per week or less of processed meats have less of a risk.

The American Meat Institute objected to the findings, saying it was only one study and that it stands in contrast to other studies and the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

A.

Weekend Question Thread

What one food do you absolutely refuse to eat?

Me? Olives. I can tolerate most things I don't like, like mushrooms and green beans, but olives absolutely make me heave. I can't even drink a martini an olive has been in.

A.

'They Made Me Eat Testicles'

Kids in restaurants:

With some frequency, I take kids out when reviewing because I want to see how the restaurant reacts. In my experience, at Asian restaurants, especially Chinese and Japanese, the staff often willingly indulge the children. Though obviously it's not just Asian restaurants. Loving families will choose restaurants where families and children are welcome.

There is a class of restaurants that are inappropriate for kids: ones where you can't eat in under an hour. Even adults get antsy.

Pick a place that has food the kid likes, but encourage and let them explore. Fuck the kids meal, with its stupid chicken nuggets, if the restaurant doesn't normally sell that food. You know, go by the old rule with your kids: "You don't have to eat it if you don't want, but you have to taste it." That's how they learn. All the time, I'm with parents pre-scanning the menu, "Oh, he won't like this, he won't like that." I take them aside and say, "Oh, why don't we experiment? The kid's hungry. Let's order all this food. He's not going to know what any of this shit is! Let's just see what happens." Nine times out of 10, the kid will look around, make his own decisions for the first time in his life, and find stuff he likes, even if it's just to spite his parents! 

A couple of years ago, we were at a Lebanese restaurant, and the parents were like, "Oh, he won't like..." again. And then out came a big old plate of lamb testicles. They were really cute, they looked like little almonds, grilled, and they smelled terrific. And the kid just went to town on those balls!

There are a couple of places in my kid-friendly 'hood that are decidedly overrun by playdates, and every time I walk by the windows somebody's darling is smearing nasty graham cracker mush on the tables or licking the glass and then sticking napkins on the spittle. The bakery has clearly become THE meeting spot for the area's mothers and when I squeeze in there between the strollers to buy bread I feel naked with my lack of a Vera Bradley diaper bag. Which is, you know, fine. Not everything has to be my scene.

There are a couple of other places that manage to be kid-friendly without giving off a "feel free to trash the place, junior, and fuck anybody who doesn't like it" vibe, like the Italian restaurant near us that is nice without being pretentious and a coffee shop that became suddenly super-child-friendly when the owner had kids. In both of them you can find kids being kids, but if you don't have a couple of spawn of your own you don't feel strangely under-dressed, either.

I would actually think shopping with kids would be a more interesting topic, because I've seen far more varied parent and kid behaviors in stores than I have in restaurants. Restaurants, unless they're really snooty, tend to be noisy places anyway, as opposed to, say, book stores. 

Maybe I just don't eat out anyplace so fancy a reasonably energetic child would be an imposition.

A.

Because the Internet is, In Fact, My Personal Army

You know you want to buy some ferret wine.

Actually, it's regular Chilean and Spanish wine, with ferret labels, sales of which will benefit the ferret shelter.

Stock your cellars, drunkards!

A.

I Cannot Wait for Bourdain & Ruhlman to Get Hold of This Guy

MORAN.

Speaking of Ruhlman, I've had this bookmarked for a while:

Book sales generally are stagnant but cookbooks keep selling.  People want to cook but they’re told at every click of the television remote, in every cookbook, in all the magazines, this is HARD people, so here are the shortcuts!

Next cookbook I’m going to write?  It’s going to be called, Recipes That Take a Really Long Time and Are Too Hard For People To Do. (The only problem would be coming up with enough recipes where that was actually true.)

I don’t cook every day.  Last night, we wanted wanted to squeeze in an extra game of pool, kids at home were getting hungry, the intended stir fry was going to take 45 minutes to get on the table.  Decision?  Chipotle, beef and chicken burritos, chips and guac.  Sometimes work goes on too long and we don’t even have 30 minutes to cook—fine, fry a burger and mic some frozen peas.  Order take out.

I’m not an idiot.  I know people are busy.  I don’t always feel like making dinner.  And I know a lot of people who simply don’t like to cook.  If I had to knit my own clothes I’d be really bummed.  But the notion that cooking is hard and that it takes a long time and we’re just too stupid to cook is wrong.  And I want people to recognize the truth from the bill of goods they’re being sold.

Mostly because while I don't think he's wrong (it pisses me off that people convince themselves they can't do things just because, like, there's so much in the world that limits you, why would you do it to yourself?) but it's not necessarily about the cooking time. It's about the ability to maintain freshness of ingredients when you don't shop every day.

I hate grocery shopping. I just hate it. I hate the crowded stores, the people blocking the aisles, the kids throwing cereal at each other, the self-checkout that never works, the person in front of me in line who has obviously not been out of her house in 20 years and is just flummoxed by the whole moving conveyor thing, and the way I can find 90 percent of what I need in one store but still have to drive to another one for the other 10 percent (dear Trader Joe's, please stock Diet Coke, love, A). And, first world problems, but I also can't bring myself to order through Peapod or something and have it delivered, because if I buy an apple I need to see it's a good apple. So I shop once every two weeks. If that. My personal preference would be to pick the pantry clean of everything including the ketchup and a box of lentils I've moved to two different homes before ever going back to the Dominick's.

If you shop every two weeks, the lettuce you buy at the beginning of the trip will be nasty three days later. Ditto just about every other fucking vegetable these days: Come back to me, farmer's market! So you eat fresh for two days and then go back to frozen veg medley. You can buy the chicken unfrozen but if you don't eat it right away ... and keeping fish around in the fridge freaks me right out. I am paranoid about fish. We don't eat it much because the only time I do buy it it's from someplace I'm sure it's fresh and then it costs the earth. I could freeze it, but then I'm thawing it and also then it tastes like cardboard. 

Usually in the summer, when I have more time and energy, I do better in terms of making a soup or a pasta sauce or something fresh and then preserving it for later use. We had farmer's market cherries steeped in red wine and sugar over ice cream with brownies the other night because I bought enough to freeze all these long months. Last Sunday I baked all afternoon, and froze the brownies and cookies and biscotti so I'd be able to pull out homemade desserts for a while.

So it's not just about cooking time. It's also about the entire pattern of the way we live, the stores we have to drive to, the crap trucked-in produce they stock, and the calculus in our heads of how much we're willing to throw out before we say fuck it and just go back to frozen pizza. I would cook every day like he suggests, roasting a chicken and making a salad and some steamed veggies, if that didn't also mean shopping every day, and if shopping every day didn't mean driving every day. There's more at work here than just the ability to convince yourself you can cook.

A.