gastropoda

If you like eggs, though, you might want to think about the latest installment in the saga of how foie gras is making certain idiots batshit insane. The food world’s equivalents of the right-to-birth crazies are now talking about petitioning the USDA to declare lusciously fat livers unsafe to eat. Their faux concern is exquisitely timed, just as Eric Schlosser has highlighted how humans continue to be obscenely abused for reprehensibly cheap burgers. It just makes it patently clear how badly these nutcases with no lives want to shove their noses in my plate. No wonder some days it seems we have never evolved out of Eden and that goddamn apple.

On the bright side, all government agencies are apparently so under siege that the chances of foie gras even moving onto the agenda are about as high as bananas all around in the Middle East from the Chimp and his ivory-tickling enabler. The very credible report just issued on the FDA was enough to give any sentient being the E. coli squitters: no money, no computers, no coherence, but more scary food imported and grown and distributed every day. No wonder the nutrition nazis are feeling emboldened enough to propose limiting sodium in processed foods. Everybody knows that’s going nowhere in the age of Big Food and osteoporotic government. Salt on your own private plate would be banned first.

Cheese has been one of the last food groups to retain its dignity despite the unstoppable epidemic of Food Network-spread Tiger Beat silliness. Or so I thought until I wandered past the Murray’s in Grand Central and spotted a new Cheddar from the great Rogue Creamery in Oregon labeled Morimoto Soba Ale. Having invested in a quarter of the $14.99 pound, I can only say they really need to rechristen the show “Insipid Chef.” This stuff makes Monterey Jack look strong.

There’s a silly e-joke going around about a drunk who gets caught in a field with his pants down and responds in feigned shock when the arresting officer points out that he’s humping a pumpkin:

“Shit, is it midnight already?”

Unfortunately, worse forms of pumpkin abuse are happening on the commercial level. Trend-obsessed companies are turning an aroma-free kitchen workhorse into massage creams and masques and much scarier stuff — one company is marketing pumpkin pie shampoo, another pumpkin pie syrup to be mixed into cocktails or, more chilling still, coffee. The freakiest is selling pumpkin body oil. Anoint yourself with that and you might want to stay in after dark.

The other vivid detail from an NYT story last week is that a Georgia poultry slaughterhouse raided by immigration is now hiring “men from a nearby homeless mission.” I assume they’re slightly better groomed than the bums shaking coffee cups on my corner. But I’m not sure I’d want them anywhere near my wings. There are worse things than salmonella in chicken potpies.

Delta seems to be flipping a page out of the Turd Blossom playbook — rather than attacking its opponent’s strength, it is showcasing its own weakness. The idea of opening a midtown lounge to serve airplane food with a price tag is so bizarre it makes me half-tempted to trek down and try a gruesome tray-tableful. Then again, maybe the goal is not really to get the asses into the cramped seats to wait forever for takeoff. Maybe it is to give Americans trapped by a worthless currency and witless government a chance to fly high without going anywhere. Eco-sensitive Potemkin Airlines works in Delhi. Why not New York?

Processed food is getting scarier. Kraft is now making an orange product — I wouldn’t call it cheese — that it says will “help keep your digestive system on track.” Is that a promise or a threat? Somehow I keep hearing Angelica Huston in “The Grifters” when something else that color appears. . . .

The silliest new product has to be yogurt “hand wash.” It even comes in a flavor: honey vanilla. The label says it contains yogurt protein, which I guess sounds better than the rendered roadkill in most soap. What’s so ridiculous is that said yogurt protein is being touted as a “natural skin conditioner.” But the best ingredient for that, Jack Ubaldi taught in butchering classes when I was in restaurant school, is lanolin. Which is already in most soaps. I guess Dial Lamb With Rosemary doesn’t have quite the same ring.

On the other hand, it’s fascinating to see blogs, especially the conglomerate kind, morph as they attach themselves to advertising’s soul-sucking teats. Already Big Food is able to slide shills designed to look like posts into some blogs (Hong Kong should sue over the appropriation of the name of one of its assets for processed crap), and the next menace looks to be ads off to the side that rudely interrupt your reading to drop virtual chicken or sausage into the “editorial” well. What’s that old computer term — GIGO?

New media is condemned to repeat the mistakes of the old in another way. When you sign up contributors and the material is recycled from their own chirpy narcissism, who is going to keep coming back? There are 8 million blogs out there. And HBO didn’t get where it is with reruns.