gastropoda

Wondered what “white pinot noir” might be.  Turns out it’s “unpretentious rosé.” Or, the new white zinfandel. // First thing you learn when reporting on the bog on cranberries is that the people who produce them are adamantly not farmers but growers. // New rule: restaurant designers should have to eat a meal in every seat they cram in. (Walked out o’Fat Radish rather than face wall off bar.) // @DwightGarner read this memoir so we don’t have to. Ouch, to put it mildly. // Just found this Aldo Leopold: Humans are like the “potato bug, which exterminated the potato and thereby exterminated itself.” // Cheese: When it’s not snobbish indulgence of the elites, it’s junk food for the poors.  // Sometimes you can only tell mango by the color. // And the best dairy name ever has to be: SoyCow SoyMilk. (Video should show udders on the beans.)

Tweezers are fine cooking’s way of saying: Slow down, you’re eating too fast. // I misread Pollan as Palin and thought Monty Python was back with a cheese nun sketch. // Cheerleaders are trouble. // With fish, baked is another way of saying fucked. // “Fat kebabs sweating on spits” would put you off your Istanbul dinner. // So scrapple is the new lard? (Sorry. Does not compute.) // Flair/flare is the new palate/palette. // Not even 1 1/2 shades of grey. // And guess we have to wait 60 years to hear the Chimp’s taster come clean. Although that poor woman would have been restricted to pretzels and hot dogs, not asparagus and pasta.

Also, too, I started to post this but thought better of it, given the loons loose on the series of tubes: “Instead of trying to save the ducks (as if), these people should get (mental) help for themselves.” Considering I was uncharacteristically too timid to Tweet, I’d say terrorism works.

America: Where the women are butchers and the pigs are nervous. // If you want your fud-world book read, spring for the index. // Blanked out where I read someone referring to something tasting like angel food cake. Shorter description: Like nothing. // Official end o’ Internets: RT @LaughingSquid: True Facts About The Duck by Ze Frank via @linecook // There’s a difference between a chef’s “rip” on a classic and his “riff.” One is both less aromatic and less ignitable. / / No calf’s liver, please. We’re PETA.

Sunripe is a shrewd brand for tomatoes: leave off the s for truth in labeling. // Other people’s enviable trips were easier to stomach when you had to wait a month to get a postcard . . . // Funny to see “farmers’ market roasted vegetable tacos” on a menu after just leaving a Greenmarket selling mostly potatoes and beets. Gracias, no. // Overheard obviously new cat owners at Petland today, reading can labels: “What cat eats lamb?” Um. Any that get a chance? // Wondering, as always with OpenTable: What does it profit a restaurant to appear fully booked online if it suffers the loss of half the dining room?

Lots o’ great stuff in this “conversation” with @michaelpollan. (Now I understand yogurt frenzy: latest sugar pipeline.)

Finally, I was outdone after Tweeting that every time I read about a chef with a “signature flare” I think of burning food. @acookblog responded: “It’s only used as a distress call. Like if he’s trapped on a dessert island or something.”

Never turn your back on lemon curd. // It’s amazing food writers don’t egg houses on Easter. // Listening to yet another Peeps piece on Marketplace– God must be so proud his son’s big day is most associated with processed crap. // How long till there’s a Best Bi Chef award? // They were sap-sucking and using reverse-osmosis in 1992 in Vermont, but I guess news travels slow. // And it’s not as if anyone might need food in Oakland, or anything . . .

There’s a difference between mixed nuts and nut mix (it’s all in the “tack blend”). // The latest in TSA kabuki: You can bring a knife on a plane but still need to use plastic in an airport restaurant. // I saw @Bourdain in the ladies’ room. At Bacchus. (Actually a “Guts & Glory” poster over the sinks.) // Mignardises in Buffalo are Styrofoam kittybags.

Once upon a time did people really dine for Darfur? // Doritos should have a caballo flavor. // Whole Foods cashiers are painfully slow. At least there aren’t many of them. // Only god (AKA nature) can “make” cabbage. // Nice of nature to send snow for grossest NYC parade (firemen had open-carry on D train at 11): fell on all the living and the drunken. // Someone needs to tell WSJ that @JenniferMcLagan said it all & much better in her book. Five years ago. // “Floater” is also a word never to be used in connection with anything eatable/drinkable. That’s plumber talk. // So many food blogs contain so much horseshit you’d think it was a gluten-free ingredient.

Musical Monday in a restaurant sounds as if beans are involved. // IBM’s Pastry Chef Watson could go straight to work for the Cheesecake Factory (“Spanish” breakfast pastry contains saffron, black pepper, honey, almonds and cocoa — just needs raspberry Doritos). // I’ve finally tasted  the real pink slime. It ends in berry. //  Guess I’m not the target audience. I won’t buy a cookbook just cuz there’s cleavage in the trailer. // And it sounds like the Queen ate Taco Bell. . .

I’ll tell you when salt is dangerous: in chocolate. Makes the bearable addictive. //  Always wash the washed spinach (if the E. coli don’t get you, the grit will). // Sign spotted on sample plate in Chelsea Market: “Peanut butter chocolate cookie. Contains peanuts.” // Latest verbal abuse: “Craft-canned” tuna. Even the bearded have to need mechanical help. // Funny how many people don’t realize frig is not a kitchen noun. It’s an all-purpose verb. // And I’m thinking about giving up Lent for cheese.

ET, as in Expanded: I’m not sure why cheesy became a pejorative. Fromage is lait’s leap to immortality, as someone famously said. Now a new study has shown there is a big difference between quality grass-and-clover in and high-quality cheese out. What’s depressing is that anyone besides Velveeta thought a study was needed. Look what they’ve done to orange juice, for krapf’s sake . . .

I read “low sodium” on a label as “just add salt.” // Great word you rarely come across these days: decoction. Antithesis of “Modernist Cuisine.” // I spent almost as much time cooking as dicking around on the internets today. Good thing I already know neither pays. // Once again, the All-Clad is encrusted, soaking its wounds, while Lodge cast iron’s been wiped clean, ready to report for heavy duty again. // America: Where kimchi carries an expiry date. . . // Don’t want to sound bigoted, but one red leaf will rot the whole bag of mesclun.

Would like to steal from Jon Stewart for “celebs” promoting veganism under the cover of animal rights: Shut up and shut up. //  Finally, the animal rights movement is extending to humans: App to find restaurants that treat workers well // Better than pie: burger chart // Because who doesn’t want brominated vegetable oil in a “sports” drink? Fascinating look at the GRAS process. // Malort is starting to sound like the durian of alcohol — so disgusting you have to try it. // Two and a half hours into a press lunch the other week, the other olds at the table were grumping about Twitter: “How does anyone have the time?” I certainly wouldn’t know. I skipped dessert and came home to find out.

Is spatchcock code? For wide stance, say? // Sometimes I read a chef profile and hear horseshit calling, saying it wants its reputation back. // Definition of stale: four-year-old linkbait. // Signs seen at Union Square Greenmarket: “gords” and “hairy balls.” // Was Iron Chef sponsored by Crisco cuz lard has no ad budget? // Glazed chicken thighs sounds like a geriatric spa treatment. // Frank Prial was a prickly character. But jeebus, did he ever know the regions/wines/winemakers about which he wrote. . . Terroir is not a wine shop.  // At this point it’s starting to seem as if there’s a thin line between a Julia biographer and a ghoul. Let her RIP. // Often wonder if many food world people don’t step away from an air kiss thinking: “That smelled like ass.” // And I always suspect Trump & the Furry Anus were separated at birth. Both share the reversed end of the alimentary canal.

Saw a woman at a neighborhood market studying the long label on an acorn squash and wanted to go over and give her the short version: Buy. Any. Other. Kind. // One of my favorite parts of eating on the Upper East Side is watching women try to fit food into their overfixed pie holes. // This would be a good week to revive the eclair. //Pretty clear there are more cheeses on the planet than clichés to use in headlines about them. // And I don’t want to sound weightist, but Walgreens staff “happy healthy” T-shirts should not come in XXXXL . . .