Post Category → drivelist

Sheet pans, blindingly white

I keep thinking of how the Butter Guzzler was too far ahead of her time. She let her true colors show and was ostracized. Today she’d be a wingnut heroine, waving her doffed hood like a proudly bloody apron.

Also, too, as it becomes increasingly clear what a reality shitshow fraud America was sold (as this great piece on the reverse-engineering demonstrates), it’s also worth considering how the star-making machinery made so many sleazy characters in the fud world household names with ridiculously lucrative empires built on the backs of the gullible. You’d think we’da learned from the Frugal Gourmet, but no. It was all a Croc of orange mierda.

Is that a cigarette or are you just glad to cup-size?

I know I’ve said this many times in the going-on-15-years here, but an old Redd Foxx joke increasingly comes to mind. It was about the waitress (as they were professionally correct to be called back in the Sixties) in a skimpy uniform/costume who was serving coffee in a Las Vegas cafe. “Sugar?” she asked, pulling out a couple of packets from her bosoms. “Cream?” she proceeds. Punch line? “You wouldn’t dare!” Starting to think of that every time I see tops teasingly tweaked open to sell cookbooks. I might wonder who really did the recipes, but I do not need the dairy.

And then there are MILFs slurping . . .

I might have missed some news by sluggishly reporting a piece for Eater, but I did take away a big revelation: Print is still a BFD — indie magazines not only sell well, they command collectible prices. So it was no surprise to read a @carr2n column on the allure of the old way of reading. Which happened to include a nugget on what turns off readers from online ingestion — all those goddamn ads. And that reminded me why I get only two magazines delivered: one because I don’t know why, the other because my in-law equivalent just will not listen when I tell her it ain’t what it used to be. I hadn’t seen the Amex food pub in years before picking up a copy at a promo event, but I was amazed at how impossible its dense pages made discerning editorial from ads. No wonder people will drop 8 bucks for the likes of Modern Farmer. If they want nothing but ads, they’ll click on a listicle.

A day late & an anchovy short of Green Goddess

I also enjoyed hearing an EO12thStWinner™ nattering on about the best filling for pumpkin pie: butternut squash! Take her to the Morton, Ill., cinema and seat her outside the canneries. Not a pie pumpkin to be seen. Meanwhile, the elusive buttercup? Find it in any supermarket. Usually next to the watermelons this time of year.

Ghost in the hood

Funny to think how the fast the Butter Guzzler scandale went from all-N, all-the-time to nearly forgotten. So I shouldn’t be surprised the forthcoming cookbook is still forthcoming. I do wonder why there are no morals clauses in contracts, though. And I’m enjoying the notion of people mailing butter wrappers in protest when you know most fans can only afford margarine.

No lard, please, we’re in the New South

The other “lie down with dogs, wake up with butt scent” angle to the summer scandale is the way a longtime collaborator has suddenly gone silent as a ghost on their BFFness. All those cookbooks churned out together, and not even a whiff of her true colors was detected?

Chick season

My Panchito tracker again alerted me he had horked up another hacktastic word salad, but I again made it only a graf in before clicking that tab straight off. The real amusement came over to the Twitter, where his BFF was lauding his singular wisdom as if her gig depended on it. And, even better, where a big name who actually can eat and write DM’d me to observe that “his lack of wit almost rises to the level of a medical condition.” Well, he did once sell a joke: the Chimp. Too bad it was a terrible one.

Stick an insulin needle in it

Nice to see the ghost of Time choosing only the Butter Guzzler as the fud world  candidate for its 100 list. If it was trolling for linkbait, it succeeded. But surely someone, somewhere is doing anything more significant at a time when so much is changing for the better. I guess it could have been sicker, though: It could have chosen a ghost who was happy to slap her name on a spinoff of the cash-in on The Sugar. I guess we should never forget how James Beard made enough to buy that townhouse with the mirrored bathroom . . .

“Used up” Manischewitz

Relatedly, the sugar-water industry can keep fighting Big Gubmint restrictions or it can get smart. And move into the wine world. Already moscato is a top-selling fermented grape, and aside from the mild buzz, what sets that apart from Karo’s finest? Wandering   through the big-case wine store near us the other day, I almost went into a diabetic coma just reading the chocolate-syrupy descriptions. And I walked out past a huge display of Jellybean wines. Which I assumed, this being the season for reincarnation, are liquid Peeps.

Heirloom tomatoes and bland cheese

And if your bio is longer than your blithering introduction to a venerable book, you might need to worry about a tornado in a Colonial graveyard. The horseshit is six feet high and rising if you can actually imagine that a cook who was writing recipes for only what was on hard-scrabble offer was actually a locavore making a political statement. WTF else was she supposed to cook with? Tuscan olive oil and the finest sriracha?

Guildhall, 10 Downing — what’s the diff?

Just saying: If you want to write about DIY mayonnaise this summer, there’s an actual news peg. The price on the commercial kind has suddenly gone caviar-high. We walked into a Gristede’s the other day, and right back out, on seeing Hellmann’s for $6.99 a 30-ounce quart. On sale — the regular price was $8.19. Even using Knoll Krest eggs and Planter’s peanut oil, you could make your own for less. Unfortunately, I pay for the permanence. Even the best homemade mayonnaise has the shelf life of local strawberries.

Where’d you get the splayed chicken?

Also, too, I couldn’t slog through the dirge, but was Duncan Hines mentioned in the hometown paper’s onanistic ode to one of its own? Too bad for the premature exultation, too. One more day and they could have trotted out their guy to insist he was also responsible for evolving the Big O toward marriage equality.

For color, age your green beans

And I Tweeted this earlier, but someone really needs to come up with a “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster for Thanksgiving. It’s just a big chicken dinner, although you’d never know it from the hometown paper. The whole year is spent sanctimoniously sermonizing about how easy and fun cooking is, and guilting anyone who prefers to fix food or eat out for convenience, and now it’s time to switch messages and freak everyone the fuck out?  Also, too, if so many readers apparently want to kill their families rather than just find nice friends to eat with, why warn them about the stuffing?