I’ve been wanting to write about this for $$$ but will go ahead and spill the legumes here: My consort and I are now eating more meat than we have at any time in three decades together. Neither of us was ever big on the four-letter food, particularly beef, but the mad cow outbreak, which broke out while we were in Hong Kong on one of his shoots, pushed us both over toward ABC — no cows for us. Then a funny thing happened on the way to near-vegetarianism: Better, cleaner, safer, better meat kept turning up wherever we shopped/stopped. Heritage Foods started marketing great pork, Fairway started carrying organic, Niman Ranch and Chipotle built businesses on non-mystery meat and, especially, the farmers at all the Greenmarkets started offering meat with both taste and integrity. Others may be eating less meat. But I seriously doubt that it’s because the Egopedist is now arguing against the industrial protein he hawked like a Crisco Deen for 13 long years.
Post Category → egopedist
Asparagus paruresis
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?
Kettle is the new Lean
I’ve written too often about how fascinated I am by the slingers in the weekend papers with those coupons for the most bizarre processed crap. But lately they seem to be glaring evidence of what’s always left out of the unceasing hectoring over fast food versus home cooking: All the junk in the supermarket. Someone’s gotta be buying the boundless frozen Macaroni Grill “lasagnas” and instant potato gratins and “pizza stuffers” and egg-and-sausage biscuits. And it’s really no better than McDeath, which always gets the blame for the great American bloat. Technically, popping open a tube of crescent rolls and wrapping them around hot dogs and processed cheese “food” is home cooking, or at least fixing food. But junk is still junk. And the ads in the food magazines definitely promote it (although even that is better than 92 pages of lawyer listings). How is anyone supposed to get in and out of the supermarket with only canned beans and a bag of rice without being tempted by three days’ worth of calories in a single freezer box? Are you supposed to avoid the near occasion of sin and shop only in farmers’ markets? And I really would like to see a study showing just how the Wall-Eization of America correlates with the introduction of the microwave. Once upon a time you had to wait 45 minutes for instant gratification of the pizza or enchilada variety. Now you can gorge in seconds. And take comfort in knowing obesity is the last taboo. Only your doctor can call you fat.
Chopped liver on the dollar menu
Finally, where do I even begin with the Egopedist’s latest half-him/half-think-tank tirade? Are we talking junk food? Or fast food? Do we really need to trash organics and farmers’ markets and farmers who care enough to grass-feed cattle the way nature intended? Do we, with our uncredited help, really need to shame the couple in “Food, Inc.” even more for working two jobs and doing the drive-through to feed themselves and their kids? Do we — really? — ever fucking eat bland beans with plain rice with a glass of milk that, at that price, has to be produced with hormones and antibiotics?
No link because I hate to encourage. But mostly what I took away is that readers of a newspaper advertising $900 shoes and touting $245 prix fixes are supposed to reform their slovenly ways and suffer cheap, dirty birds after an hour in the kitchen. I don’t even eat chicken, but there’s no way in hell I would let my consort ingest one that can only be sold for that little because of all the corners cut in its rush to the supermarket. I haven’t fully worked my mind around this, but it just seems like one more disconnect between “journalists” and “real America.” Do they not know from Taco Bell?
Left out of this whole debate is the minefield the supermarket has become. You go in to buy that cheap dirty bird and you’re going to pass the most amazing cornucopia in the history of mankind in the freezer aisle. Are you really going to bring home poulet perdu rather than nuke a few Hungry Mans? J’doubt it. So, yes, please, keep working the talking points and making it a choice between fatty/sugary/filling McMeals and dreary, bland, time-consuming fodder. That will get the asses onto the kitchen stools for sure.
Oh, and did anyone think to price out the kohrabi slaw? Or the Brussels sprouts slaw with all the exotica? I wonder what the poor folks are making of saffron aioli. . .
Think, tank
Chipotle’s Willie Nelson video is “Our Daily Bread” condensed to mere minutes. But it’s funny how one short is worth a thousand Egopedist textings.
Isn’t it Rich?
One great thing about the stop-time, eerily silent weekend in Manhattan was that we woke up on Sunday morning to neither of our usual hometown papers on our doormat. No deliveries were getting through; even Famous Famiglia was closed for the first time I’ve ever noticed. Which meant I was spared having to see whatever blithering Panchito engaged in and could instead just watch him get eviscerated all over Twitter and the blogs all day. Happiest part: Finally, after nearly 10 years of me getting ragged on for using that nickname, people have caught on to the idiot who was responsible for bestowing it. Next hurricane, though, should start on Friday so we’re spared 6,000 ways to eat your lobster. How does that fit with sustainable/local/who-will-feed-the-poors?
You say tomato?
And with the wingnuts holding the economy hostage, I guess this was the perfect moment to argue for higher taxes on junk food (definition to be determined, with of course no marketing money involved). The only good thing about the kkkrazies taking over is that epithets need one character fewer; tax is the new four-letter word. But since this notion would hit the poorest hardest, maybe it does have a chance. Which makes me long, yet again, for the good old days of recycled “French Cooking in Ten Minutes.”
Anti-Cobb
Wasn’t it rich that the same guy working up a head o’ outrage about industrial tomatoes was simultaneously flogging a recipe using a fruit that was then, according to farmers in our market, weeks away from being locally available? And I’m not talking melon. And how sad was it that the same chef who was humiliated by one jackass picked himself up, dusted off the Pepsi foam and did it all over again? Almost makes me long for the good old days of Betty Crocker, when a fake home cook really was a fake home cook.
Times that try $58 sole
Now back to the home of the food coven: Why, when you report a chef is leaving, would you not also reveal where he’s heading? Is the gold plating for the bidet thicker from the spurned party? And no wonder the Egopedist has been MIA from print and his name was conspicuously absent from the flier that came with the hometown paper boasting of the big changes coming to the Richless section. If you want “Tomatoland,” why not read it in the original English?
$1.99, used to be $2.99
Admittedly, I’m not sure there is any way at this point to persuade people to give up meat. But the latest argument printed in the $2-a-day birdcage liner really was an insult to thinking cooks everywhere. A rural grocery store is the new cab driver as the new barometer of a country’s condition? Sentences you need to drop crumbs through to find your way out? This had all the depth and grace of an extended recipe intro. Forget phoning it in. The new sin is texting it in.
More tacos good, love bugs bad
Not sure how I wound up slogging slack-jawed through the Egopedist’s post pegged to “Tomatoland,” but I clicked away feeling as if I had just watched him not just dissing a waiter for wearing a bad toup but pissing all over the table. What kind of narcissist could helicopter into one of the most horrific farm-crime scenes in America and buzz right out blissfully blogging about his next high-end adventures? Thank the nightshade gods the barely unenslaved tomato pickers do not have access to the series of tubes. I’m sure they would totally appreciate the idea that “one needs a little downtime, after all.” Jeebus. And people mock his Spain fellow traveler?
Meanwhile, artichokes and maple syrup
I try to stay out of comment swamps, but the feedback on the Egopedist’s unclichéing of roast chicken included (at least temporarily) some snarky but dead-on takes. As in jumping the shark. And how it’s deja turkey all over again. But two other things struck me. The first was how a Facebook update from a real friend in France was dissing the feature a full day before a print version landed on our doormat. Wasn’t the editor boasting that the magazine would “own Sunday,” while the news magazines were still dribbling out on Friday? But the bigger one is how obvious it is that the well is beyond dry; anything dredged up at this point is just going to seem like DI/DO recycled. Or Men’s Health. Or . . . Maybe you can cook everything.
Burger fingers & foie gras meatballs
I killed the lunchtime mood on Saturday by mentioning the death of the 575-pound spokesmodel for the Heart Attack Grill just after a heap of French toast, barbecued short ribs, bacon, poached egg, Cheddar and onion rings arrived on one plate, with a huge side of fries. Which was dumb, because the friend who ordered that irresistibly bizarre combination is such a careful eater he can indulge in overkill on any occasion. But you do have to wonder about a country so confused that a restaurant could make international news by proudly promoting killer food while Mrs. O continues to be attacked for suggesting maybe we could all eat better and move around more. As I noted over on the Epi Log, though, lard is the last four-letter villain in the piece. The offending restaurant may have boasted that its fries were cooked in the white stuff, but that’s the least of the problems. Consumption has dropped as asses have ballooned over the decades. Which is just one more reason I wish the Egopedist had been required to do a little more reading before being allowed to step onto the soapbox. A lot happened between the Depression and the Great Backside Inflation. Just Wiki Earl Butz, and not for loose shoes and warm places.
Putting the rrristica in Rao’s
I should ignore the great redesign of the Sunday magazine just the way advertisers did (11 non-house ads over 56 pages on debut weekend?) But I was pretty awed at the miscalculation of the premier food column. Weekends are when home cooks want to kick back and think about cassoulet and other Everests they can take the time to climb. Not “git ‘er done” soup formulas from Dinings past. (Don’t even get me started on the Lives column on the “tamale” I read months ago on the infinite internets.) I’m no admirer of the Wicked of Oz, but the WSJ’s Saturday food coverage shows how it’s done: mini recipes that are almost haikus in their lyricism and precision but come from a plethora of different palates. Not from one “boil an onion in plain water, then add spinach” recycler.
No hairs in the McCann’s
I spend more time on pol porn than following the vacuity in the food world these days, obviously, so I shouldn’t be surprised there’s smarter commentary on the McD oatmeal outrage over there than you’ll get from the Egopedist. It’s as if he never read all those Wells we slaved to make publishable. And as much as I enjoy the old “always exaggerate — it makes life more interesting” cartoon caption, a sausage biscuit is just hyperbole when it contains nearly as many calories from fat alone as the oatmeal does altogether. Still, I’m assuming the designated thinker is paying for all the Twitthelp and research. Unlike a nobler character who’s compiling his next best-seller Arianna-style. (I’m all in favor of crowd-sourcing, but at some point there’s gotta be profit-sharing. Or look out, Egypt, here we come. . . )