gastropoda

Am I the only $15-a-year sucker wondering why a magazine would run a cover line touting a pull-out guide on “what’s in season now” right alongside a photo of pancakes topped with wild  blueberries? It is the February issue, after all, and said fruit is a long time gone. Then again, the contents page features a frittata filled with asparagus. And don’t even get me going on the hypocrisy of a big name nattering on about eating less meat in the same week he’s insisting millions of readers run out and buy honkin’ slabs of pork. Having grown up in Arizona before the Colorado started running dry, I also have to say that any “green” issue that includes a fat advertorial promoting Las Vegas pretty much undermines itself. Even if the city could turn wine into water, it’s an eco-disaster no amount of local cauliflower could ever carbon-offset.

Copy editors’ eyes must be on the stock tables lately, because some pretty amusing oopses have been seeping into print. The NYPost ran recipes side by side calling for egg yokes. The NYObserver identified the photographer who created “My Last Supper” as Meanie (which was especially ironic given what a lovefest with chefs her book party was). The home of the Human Scratch N Match ran a photo of a food book recommended by none of the experts in the accompanying story (one of whom, incidentally, happened to be a restaurateur whose favorites were “written” by celebrities who had had him on their teevee shows). The infallible NYTimes described lattice tops being rolled out for pumpkin pies. The Washpost recipe for Anzac “cookies” (rightfully, biscuits) said they could be stored up to five days — this for a treat designed to be durable enough to be baked and shipped to soldiers and still survive nuclear winter.

And then there was the story in the WSJournal comparing apples and olives — a recipe from Molto for a sausage-stuffed pork loin and a recipe from Thomas Keller for veal breast with polenta cakes, glazed vegetables and sweet garlic — to see which might be less nutritionally dense than a Big Mac. Anyone with rudimentary knowledge of what lurks inside ingredients could tell the caloric deck was pretty much stacked against the fatty cow and assorted accouterments. But the real asleep-at-the-send-button was the description of “the Falstaffian redhead” as “not-quite fat.” Does he have to ride around in a golf cart to qualify? Or is it just that America has defined adiposity downward?

All the cyber-guffawing over Food & Wine’s baroque Thanksgiving menus happened to coincide with an offer I couldn’t refuse, so I just signed up for a year’s subscription at the cheaper-than-Conde Nast-monopoly price of $12. I had given up the magazine eons ago when I realized it was a sand trap at $36, automatically renewed on my Amex account, but I would pay a pittance without credit card indenture. So of course what arrives in the mail right after my check clears but an offer to “extend my subscription at the same money-saving NEW SUBSCRIBER RATE of $19.95.” Jeebus B. Child. That publisher could be selling subprime mortgages for all its transparency.

As is the case with most magazines that arrive on my doormat through the mail, I subscribe to The Week first and foremost for the food, and last week it outdid itself with a condensed version of Outside’s extraordinary story on eating dog in Vietnam. I found the link to the actual piece through chow but absorbed enough to know it should be required reading for all the big swinging dicks out there (or little flopping ones, more likely) who like to show how tough they are in consuming critters for the camera. Rarely is the culture of a comestible taken into account. May they all be monkey brains in a future life.