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.
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:
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:
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.
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:
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.
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:
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."
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:
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...
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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>
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
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."
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.
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 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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
There's a big ass parade for the Saints today. They'll be riding on floats borrowed from some of the major parading krewes. I'm skipping what's being called the Lombardi Gras parade because I'm fighting a cold and I have a horde of company coming in a few days.
One of the things I like about Drew Brees is that he lives in the city: no
gated suburban community for our QB. One of my friends from the Krewe of
PAN lives in Drew's neighborhood and delivered some Voo Dat swag to his house. She
found out that she wasn't the first to bring offerings to the Super Bowl MVP:
Here's a close up of the gate featuring a six pack of Abita beer left on the ground as a sacramental beverage. A good symbol: we're all a bit mental around here right now:
On to the Seabiscuit bit. Clancy DuBos, the publisher of the Gambit and the dean of NOLA political pundits wrote a terrific post comparing Drew to Seabiscuit, which makes Peyton Manning War Admiral. It's a spot on analogy. Here's a snippet but follow this LINK to read the whole thing:
Then I started thinking about other great comebacks, other great but unlikely heroes, and I immediately thought of Seabiscuit,
the unlikeliest thoroughbred champion of all time — and, fittingly,
“the people’s champion.” Seabiscuit was small, knobby-kneed and had a
funny (i.e. defective) gait, but the little bay colt was all heart — much like our Saints, and very much like our QB, Drew Brees.
A personal note about Clancy. In many ways, Clancy is the personification of the NOLA MSM at its best. He's one of the few who has openly embraced the blogosphere. The Picayune, for example, will use blogs as source material but rarely credits them by name. I met Clancy at Rising Tide 3 and we've become friends. I wish more established journalists were as open minded about the new media as Clancy. Uh oh, I hope I haven't embarrassed him. I'm known for my snark, after all. Okay here it goes: Clancy's a good guy but he has his flaws; he's a horrid punster and drinks Budweiser. What's up with that? There, I feel better...
Finally, the Po Boy bit, which also involves Clancy DuBos. Clancy appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show in a segment, not about politics but about food. Clancy went with Kent Jones to his favorite Mid-City Po Boy joint, the Parkway Tavern. I like the Parkway but I'm a devotee of my neighborhood joint, Domilises. Anyhoo, here's the segment:
I'm conducting my own war on Christmas via the Bon Appetit Christmas issue, or holiday issue, or as Mr. A likes to call it, "the dare." I take the most effed-up looking thing with the most complicated recipe and longest list of ingredients, and I try to make that bitch in my tiny home kitchen with my hand mixer that sounds like a lawn mower and my oven that's always off by 20 degrees or so and still smells like that one time I set a yam on fire. This afternoon it was the Chocolate Peppermint Meringue Cake, which in the magazine looks like this:
My version is somewhat flatter, and simpler, since I didn't want to put fresh raspberries on there only to have them spoil if we didn't eat the whole cake TONIGHT, plus I had this leftover meringue and more frosting than I knew what to do with:
It was a monumental pain, but it tastes good. And this was just a dry run: I can make a prettier version now that I know exactly how much time it takes (about three hours prep, about five hours including baking time) and how tasty the result will be.
Go to the goddamn grocery and get steak. Yes, the grocery. A little
ammonia is not going to kill you, you pussy. You want to be all fancy
and grass-fed and environmentally conscious, go ahead, I don't give a
shit, just get a fucking steak. Ribeye is good. And, yes, bone-in.
Schmuck. Take the steak home. Get a bigass frying pan and put the shit
on the stove, cranking the heat up as far as that fucker will go. Take
a shitload of salt—rocksalt, you dumb motherfucker, none of that
fine-grained crap here—and toss it around the bottom of the pan.
When the pan is hot as all fuck—it should scorch the shit out of your
finger if you're stupid enough to touch it—put the fucking steak on
there. You can crack some pepper on the top of the steak as the bottom
is searing, but don't even talk to me about garlic or onion powder or
COMPOUND FUCKING BUTTER, asshole. This is steak, all you fucking need
is salt and pepper. After a bit (3 minutes for pink, 5 for cooked
good), flip that shit over and do the same fucking thing you just did
with the other side, i.e. sit on your ass and wait for your
motherfucking steak to be ready, you useless assbag. When you're done,
sling that shit on a plate. Beringer's 1996 Cabernet Sauvignon Napa
Valley Private Reserve makes an absolutely delightful accompaniment,
particularly if you've taken care to let it breathe a bit before
quaffing. Also, make some fucking potatoes, because that's what you eat
with a fucking steak. God, sometimes I just want to smack the shit out
of you.
I have to go get some of that wine now. Dad comes down for dinner every once in a while and he's the reason I was raised on red meat at every meal.
I need your help folks. I supplicate myself to your experience and wisdom, particularly our friends from Lousiana. I seek your feedback for help dealing with a failure, of imagination, of technique, of logistics, I know not what else.
Here's my confession:
I don't know what I did with the gumbo recipe but I looked everywhere and couldn't find it. It was on a stained index card that I'd kept for 20 years, through moves between residences, crosscountry from south to east and back again. That's really where things first went off the rails, was losing the recipe. It was my dad's recipe and his gumbo was always reliably soul-startingly good. Yes, my emotional memory of meals past may distort a bit, but this I know: it was damn fine gumbo, every one of the hundreds of times I ate it over the years. Every single f*cking time. Dark, thick, spicy and smoky but not to the extent that the taste of the shrimp and crabmeat were overpowered.
I consider myself a good cook with a good intuition, so, other than pastry and baking, I usually succeed at what I try. I've been cooking a lot lately, trying to train myself to make food with fresh ingredients, different new things every week, not just purchase crap on the fly or rely on the couple of staple quick meals I can throw together with my eyes closed. I joined the food coop and have been reveling in fresh local produce, meat, and eggs. So, I had a handsome fresh mess of okra, some tomatoes, onions, and a lovely plump free-range chicken. Gumbo just entered my mind and I couldn't shake it. I blame that okra.
My grandmother and her sisters, who grew up during the Depression, are all long-lived, strong women even in their 90s. I asked her once what the secret of their generation is, why everyone I know her age kicks more ass before breakfast than I do all day long. She thought about it for a minute and then said, "We ate potatoes. Every day, we ate a potato." I went right out and bought a bag.
Still, Escazu is a single-origin dark chocolate, which to me is at its best when at its purest. The chocolate is sold in bars,
a format which conveys clarity, and I do think that the pure dark bar
is a serious accomplishment. The chocolate is clean and true, with a
dusky characteristic I can best liken to a medium-roast Guatemalan
coffee. Among the flavored bars, Escazu is at its best when true to the
aesthetic of Latin American flavors: the troika of dark chocolate,
chili and pumpkin is rendered with a true artist's touch, as is the
deft duo of chocolate with coffee beans. Of other flavor pairings, sea salt
was the one I liked best. I was surprised to find tiny bursts of
velvety salt crystals not at odds with the chocolate. I can't say that
I think salt enhances the taste, but it doesn't tussle with it.
I swear by a big glass of orange juice and a couple of ibuprofen BEFORE you go to bed. Plus maybe some potato chips of some kind. If I've had more than two drinks, chances are I'm gonna wake up with a headache even if I didn't get silly, so medicating in advance works to head that off.
Course, it's also good to have A BEER and not TWELVE. Especially at the office party.
A.
Contact Info
Adrastos adrastos at bellsouth.net
Athenae - Allison Hantschel athenae25 at yahoo.com
One of the first blog-based books, the anthology Special Plans examines Feith's role in misleading America into war. Buy from Amazon and William, James & Co.
These are stills captured from video shot March 2006 in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans specifically the area between N. Claiborne, Florida Ave, Tupelo and Tennessee.
These are photos and stills captured from video taken August 2006 of the Lower 9th Ward specifically the area between N. Claiborne, Florida Ave, Tupelo and Tennessee.
One of the first blog-based books, the anthology Special Plans examines Feith's role in misleading America into war. Buy from 
