Maybe the new JGold Wannabe shoulda packed up his silver and china, though. Reaction to the “let ’em demand cake” by the food coven’s nastiest bit was fast and furious. I would have been oblivious to it if not for a FB posting by an unmet friend I take for a sweetheart, so I didn’t post over there what I alluded to on the Twitter: Who in holy hell would listen to etiquette advice from someone who puts the C(word) in coven?
Best sign yet we’re living in a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world: Frappuccino bottles used as Molotov cocktails against Muslim and Hindu and capitalist targets alike. Plus the hometown paper is even giving guidance on why/how. We are now officially so far down the rabbit hole thanks to wingnut lies printed as truth that no one even freaks out over domestic terrorism. As long as the TSA kabuki artists keep confiscating cupcakes for “gel” frosting, we’re all safe. But now I’m realizing why some employees of the chain were shutting down its pissoirs: It must be to prevent reloading with inflammables. Definitely the few times I’ve ever waited forever at one I’ve been ready to lob something incendiary.
Wondered this last night over to the Twitter: Meatballs or melanomas? And it was even more gruesome in print. That sauce splotch looked like a pulled scab.
Maybe the only good thing to come out of the clown car KKKraziness out in Middle Earth is the national exposure for Pizza Ranch. I only picked up on it after all these decades (and I lived out there) when Gail Collins mentioned it was an Eyetalian kinda place with a Western motif, but now it’s everywhere. And it’s weird. WTF kind of business advises potential patrons to “saddle up the family”? You ride the kids in? The crowning touch was its introduction of a Santorum Salad. Which is the ultimate metaphor for what the no-regulation crowd is selling: Cold chicken with frothy E. coli.
Ron Paul is making it clear that anyone in this country can now walk away from responsibility for even the most insane guano published under his name. But I was still (somewhat) surprised to see the Egopedist calling for fresh tomatoes and basil in recipes on the same day the front page of his enabler was dissing organic farmers in Mexico for growing and exporting those very same ingredients out of season. I guess if you moosh up beans and oats as a burger you get right with the Berkeley food gods?
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.
Relatedly MTweeting myself: In going through my notebook from our last excursion to Buffalo, I found the saddest thing I saw was a “pet food pantry” billboard outside a church. I just hope they were collecting for Fido.
I always feel guilty dragging Murdoch’s WSJournal back to bed along with the hometown paper most mornings, so I’ll blame my consort for insisting we need it as a counterweight. And it does some things really well. Like a feature the other day on how your jawbone’s connected to your lifeline — undiagnosed and untreated gum and tooth disease can kill you. Which got me wondering, again, why dental insurance is sold separately from health insurance, and why it’s so shitty. Alert Blue Cross: Your piehole is a portal.
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.
I typed a “no cussing” elegy for Charlie Trotter’s over to the Epi-Log, but I’ll add a bit more here because he really is one of the good guys — his food and his integrity are on a rare par. I’ll always be grateful to him for actually picking up the phone and calling to alert me when the food coven was out with pitchforks after I’d reviewed a cookbook and pointed out that the empress of the farmers’ markets was wearing no apron. And he was extremely (uncharacteristically) patient with me when we worked on “The Chef” column together back in 2001. But right now I’m impressed that he’s saying nothing more after making his big announcement. Which makes chefs gloating about still being in business at 25 look even more unseemly. Of course Burger Krap money will buy you time.
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.
Speaking of the New Yorker, did the hometown editors think no one gets both publications? Faux News attack aside, that lead story read like deja vu all over again.
Even I get weary of picking on Panchito, but he really should take that huge target off his posterior. Didn’t he help keep the Lump in the Bed’s fatal distraction off the national radar until the Chimp was duly installed? And at least he could be gracious enough to address the dissing her successor is taking from the KKKrazies. He is, after all, a guy with his own twisted relationship with pretzels.
I’m starting to think I may have to start my own campaign against duck abuse. And I don’t mean against putting birds on the equivalent of a fast-food diet to keep us in foie gras. I’m more concerned with using duck fat to bake cookies that make you crave Crisco for its neutral flavor. And, even scarier, turning roast duck into ice cream. Young chefs, get a slippery grip: Just because the luckiest peach uses it does not mean one fat fits all. Bacon hogs the spotlight for a reason. It goes better with everything.
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 . . .