gastropoda

Despite the fact that my next-older sister died of breast cancer when she was younger than the age I just turned, I’ve never been exactly comfortable with the whole beribboning industry. I wouldn’t say I feel vindicated in seeing the lid blown off, but I am very glad to see endorsements like the KFC “bucket for the cure” subjected to some disinfecting sunlight. And I’m totally not surprised to learn the organization is run by wingnuts. I just love that all the Kkkrazies who attacked Mrs. O for her promotion of healthful eating and exercise have to see the Choos are on the other feet now.

Wish I could say I was thrilled to learn access to good food is not what’s holding back Americans without cushy jobs and lots o’ lucre from cooking and eating well. But my unneutered-steer-manure detector definitely went off when I went looking for the methodology on the study. And if I read right, the 1,500 happy respondents were recruited online or by email, then interviewed by landline or mobile. I know the Kkkrazies are busy persuading the not-quite-poors that the serious poors own too many appliances, and have too much gout, to be hungry. But cripes. How many have internet access at home or time to hit the library?

The latest evidence the backfield is on life support at the hometown paper, though, was the report on the model whose leg was amputated by Photoshop for a Health Department ad warning of the diabetes risk from supersizing both sodas and physiques. The hole awaiting the truck to drive through was: How could a photographer sell a photo for that use without knowing who the subject was? No release? But of course it took the followup to answer that, without acknowledging that maybe running the poor guy’s face blew his cover. (I assume that was fair use because it was a news story?) At least he was a good sport and signed off with a great quote about singing and dancing and not charging an arm and a leg if the sugar-water companies wanted to hire him for their own campaign. Not gonna happen (only anorectics guzzle in ads), but here’s a thought: NYC should hire him for the next set of save-yourself ads. Who would ever order a Big Gulp again?

Idle thoughts: I’m guessing Holy Foods bagels are not really “hearth-baked.” Red Waddle would actually be a better name for a heritage breed (especially if we’re talking mandrills). Plus it turns out “a new way to eat a burger” is not with your toes; it involves trying to turn beans into a Reuben sandwich and confusing the headline writer, not to mention the reader. And please alert the Page One editors: A hero may be just a sandwich, but it isn’t made with a bun.

One zombie myth just can’t be beaten back, though. And that’s the cretinous insistence that crappy eating is a class thing. Props to these guys for acknowledging that everybody goes to McD’s. But whenever I cross the park I think about how similar both the 1 percent and death-row convicts are when it comes to food. The average last meal of either would be exactly what they grew up eating. A palate that never evolves is obviously a sign of a sociopath.

This says everything about how OWS has made the 99% push back: Even I sided firmly with the woman whose cupcake was confiscated for TSA kabuki. Before the terror capitalists won, I would have frothed that of course the goddamn thing was a potential weapon. As with any belly-bombing infantile grossness, the proportion of icing was outsized enough to bring down a plane.

All the Twinkies hysteria has made me understand, yet again, how easy it is to fool nearly all of the people all of the time in this new age of endless infotainment. And how easy it has been for Trump to gull cretins into believing he’s a huge success even though bankruptcy is not his bug but his feature: It always gets him out from under the crushing debt he invariably racks up, so he can go forth to rampage another day. This Ho-Hos “crisis” has nothing to do with Americans craving whole grains and spurning artificial pastries and everything to do with how capitalism works, especially in Bushwhacked America. Going into Chapter 11 is just a nice end-around with pension plans. The processed crap will keep being processed. But for 19,000 screwed-and-tattooed employees counting on retirement benefits, it’s “let ’em eat Ding Dongs.” Or Friskies.

Also, too, there could have been no more insidious a juxtaposition than the jump of the hometown paper’s piece on organic milk up against a takeout on the millions spent promoting one small segment of the processed-crap market. All the hand-wringing over whether farmers can be paid more to produce more seemed even more insane as you considered: People will always pay whatever chip makers ask for a bag of genetically modified corn fried in genetically modified oil but balk at a tiny increase for a half-gallon of responsibly produced milk. What was sickest was reading in one story that farmers are cutting back on feed for their animals as a result of rising prices and then seeing with the other a photo from a commercial of a guy with manboobs big enough to milk. If there’s ever a bacon shortage, I know exactly which consumers can solve it.

Just wondering: How desperate for cash/credit would you need to be to take on the job of wrapping text around “Deen Crisco’s” recipes? Or even subcontracting it out? I guess this is proof that industrial pork is the best grease for a slippery slope.

Naturally it’s behind the paywall, but the New Yorker has a great feature this week on the richest woman in India, who made all those rupees developing drugs. One graf near the end is worth the price of the issue: Her company has been working on the “holy grail” for Big Pharma, which would be oral insulin in a processed-crap world where everyone is developing diabetes (50 million in India alone). And Biocon came close until the patients who were given placebos in trials improved because they wanted to impress their doctors. “Suddenly, their control group of diabetics had started exercising and eating better.” Message? Diabetes is both preventable and curable senza drugs. Maybe it’s time for Occupy the Pharmacies. Walk away from the Lipitor. And eat beans.

Which is my way of leading into this: I’m a total advocate of the attempted reincarnation of the Fulton Fish Market, not least because I believe food is the future in this country; everyone has to eat, and the opportunities for entrepreneurs are as boundless as the frontier once was. But at this last one, for the first time, I started wondering the same thing I do at the “fancy” food shows: How in hell can people possibly hope to build a business on stuff that just tastes bad? Why don’t their loved ones tell them? I wound up buying a (great) ginger cookie midway through just to get the nasty bits out of my mouth. I know I have only myself to blame for even trying the “organic soy-and-oat tempeh” I was lured by after noticing tamales were involved. But jeebus, was that ever a crime against natural. And the “Peking duck cookies,” made with duck fat and five-spice powder, were nothing short of foul. Duck fat is lard’s funky cousin, and I love duck. I would ask if the food revolution now heating up might be hampered by its weak food soldiers, a generation raised on processed crap and now setting out to change the world with no palates. But I also tasted two fish soups that were pretty bland. And those were all made by established companies. Coming soon to the Javits Center . . .

Epistemic closure is the undeniable diagnosis for most of wingnuttia, which probably explains why the deluded would look to an “economics” blogger sans calculator for advice on cookbooks. Naturally, she did not mention the manual for the socialist contraption she so proudly hailed after dropping $1,500. But she did “inform” readers that Maida’s books are out of print. Because that’s how capitalism works — no reissues are possible if the market demands. My advice to the closed-minded: Ask a liberal. We think anything goes anywhere, but especially in the kitchen.

Also, too, it’s unfortunate there’s no place where good people like Willie Nelson can go to get their food message out to a wide audience online. He’s totally right on Occupy the Food System, but I ain’t linking to a site that apparently believes we can all eat well when outlets don’t pay. Might as well shill for Smithfield processed crap behind photos of frolicking heritage hogs.

I read the WSJournal’s cheery report on the boom in fast-food deliveries in China and just envisioned a worse “Wall-E.” Isn’t getting the diabetes diet to consumers quicker, with no effort, only going to make humans fatter and more unhealthy? Isn’t the use of millions and millions of motorbikes just going to mean more pollution in a country where the air is already pretty near apocalyptic? And I don’t know which detail was more chilling, that two-thirds of McD’s sales in this country come from drive-throughs or that overlords of the evil empire are salivating at the prospect of web orders enabling them to shut down call centers (a k a places where actual humans earn money). Good move in a 99% world. Maybe next they get rid of the workers who pack the crap into the special compartments on the motorbikes. And then ask Henry Ford why they need to move to Pandora.

It says everything that it took the Taiwanese animators to make the most fair-and-balanced sense of the cheval scandale. As someone who spends way too much time reading and not nearly enough writing, I already knew the issue was complicated. With hearts bleeding for ducks allowed to gorge to their guts’ content, everyone assumes inhumanity is involved in turning Seabiscuit into supper. But forcing the poor animals to be trucked out of the country for slaughter sounds far more traumatic to me. (Not that I’m whinnying, but the longest, hardest day of my life was the one spent getting from a hospital in Torino to our apartment in New York on a broken femur — and I had warm nuts in business class to ease me through it.) It’s fascinating to see people who happily eat cheap pork from abused hogs worrying about a protein many cultures regard as perfectly acceptable, even commanding a premium. I’ve tasted it only once*, the first time my too-curious consort insisted on ordering it, in a swanky restaurant in Florence where it was served in thin shreds as an expensive appetizer. I remember it was surprisingly good. But mostly I remember that the waiter kept wiping his oily nose and I later developed what felt like a particularly brutal form of bird flu. I would say “sick as a dog,” but that would be dinner in other cultures. Cooked at fever temp.

*Amended after a long walk: I remember I tasted it again, also in Italy, in Treviso, on bruschetta. And definitely not priced like dog food.

As much as I dread the possibility of reincarnation, I do have an uncharacteristic urge to plan for it when I spot really good gigs for the next life. Like recipe developer for the Idaho potato pushers, who must be paid in serious drugs. I unfolded the accordion folder of eight and thought I’d picked up the Onion by mistake. They didn’t really coat chicken cutlets with hash browns (and Bisquick!), did they? How much gravy were they huffing when they stuffed acorn squash full of mashed potatoes? And what in the name of Montezuma’s Revenge were they thinking, using potatoes in tortilla soup? Why? The vichyssoise leeks were taken?