The Consort had a field day at his CUNY gig comparing the price of Time magazine by subscription with a Starbucks — you can now get five copies for one cup. Even that might be too cheap, though, given the bizarre Organic v Supermarket piece it ran. Just consider: When it came to beef, organic was not even an option, but a friend snared yet another plug for his feedlot stuff. And the presentation was all Organic Fail when the results were nuanced. I guess something had to wrap around the ad for the the anti-fat drug du jour. But even that was not as bad as the wildly ill-timed op-ed the hometown paper ran against locavorism. Right in the middle of a huge recall of industrial eggs is not the best moment to throw up some lies, damn lies and statistics. Right at peak tomato season is not the best month to compare hothouse tomatoes and California hardballs. Right when everyone has moved beyond food miles to the bigger picture is not the savviest hour to engage in fuzzy math. Smarter people than I, particularly at Grist, seized on the hugest problem with the piece, though. Those of us who choose to buy as much local food as we can aren’t doing it for only one reason. Just to name one, we’re dabbling in real estate. Every perfect $5 heirloom tomato could help keep a farm in business and a Gekko out of a trophy house on the Hudson.
Post Category → onward and downward
Today’s $4,000 bag
I’m sure I’ve written about this before, but one of the best classes I took in high school in Arizona was required: General Business. We learned stuff as simple as how to make change and as daunting as how to “buy” stocks, which involved translating the tables and tracking our paper profits and losses. But one exercise must have helped make me a total cynic: We had to analyze a few advertisements (then only in print) to decipher what the company was and was not telling people. Among the ones I went after was Pop-Tarts, then the cool new breakfast but a total disappointment to my family — my mom baked, and we could tell whatever was sealed in those foil packages was anything but food. I don’t remember the specifics, but I got an A for picking the BS to pieces.
So why am I surprised that “real” media should have gone batshit over the opening of a store promoting the processed crap in Times Square? These are the same people who think any edible grotesquerie is worthy of front-page real estate, that an inventor who calculates chemicals+chemicals=profits is worthy of a cheesy, puffy obit. Thank you, internets, for doing the ultimate mashup: Blog-Google Pop-Tarts and you’ll get something on all trending topics: Homosexual Pop-Tarts Tampon.
Saved by a dumb question
Way back when high-end burger joints seemed to be opening at the rate of one every half-hour, I pitched a piece on how they would not possibly be able to source enough quality meat to supply them all. It didn’t fly, so I felt slightly vindicated to see Meatopia exposed. Local, sustainable beef for billions and billions served is the new pie in the sky. Which is sad in light of the study showing 12 percent of farms in the United States rake in 84 percent of the dough. And beef is one of the new bananas in this republic.
Rusty Butz indeed
I read “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” I know where cornhole comes from. So why was I so surprised on opening up the coupons this week to find one for Heinz vinegar with an ad showing an ear of bright yellow corn? What doesn’t start with corn in this country? How monopolized is the food chain by one heavily subsidized food? Once upon a time a country that grew so dependent on a single vegetable would suffer mightily for it. Now we need new bumper stickers: What would Squanto think?
Orchard chicken salad? Again?
The most disturbing story I read all week was about the Subway franchise going up with every floor of the new building at the World Trade Center. We’re looking at an extinction-level disaster in the Gulf thanks to human hubris, and someone decided a deli in an elevator was a good idea? Yes, I’m an absurd eco-snob and would have less of a problem if the sandwiches being dispensed from this insanity were made with real ingredients; if something awful happened and a hero happened to be the last meal of a construction worker it might seem less grim on environmental and spiritual levels. But what the hell ever happened to packing a lunch? My dad worked construction on Arizona highways and always took soup in a Thermos. No composting was needed. Tesellating cheese 50 stories off terra firma can’t be what nature intended. Besides, without rats, can it really be fast food?
And who won the Cordon Bleu awards, huh?
One of the awful truths of the food world is that honey really is more effective than vinegar. Some serious snakes out there know exactly how to play nice to co-opt if not defang critics. Then they can keep on with their snakiness and be assured no one will call them on it. So I got a pretty good laugh seeing how easily the allegedly riled-up counter-”foodies” were led to the Center for the Removal of Rocky Mountain Oysters. A simple ticket to the prom did the trick, and next thing you know they’re profiling a schtick that would not exist if not for the phenomenon they claim to revile. I mean, I had no idea who he even was. But he said some nice things, so he’s a good guy now. Unfortunately, I can’t be too appalled, because I realize I was hesitant to write about a contest proudly judged by someone I met once and liked. First prize was industrial chicken for a year. Second prize, I assume, was two years’ worth?
Too skinny? Eat salad.
This week was probably the nadir for food coverage. The Huffington Post started what has to be a parody, and the end of the Craig Claiborne line did KFC’s dirty work. The vendors whose fish has to be eaten the same day you buy it were touted as selling the freshest in Manhattan. Airline food was reported to be “striving to be tasty” (and Francisco Franco is still dead). The WSJournal pretty much declared wine coverage will now be only about wealth-worshiping and name-dropping, as Dr. Vino put it. (But that ridiculous adjective “delicious” will live on.) And I seem to recall some nonsense about ramps being the new arugula, hold the fiddleheads. But on the bright side, a new generation (of wide-eyed bloggers) has just learned a sobering and essential lesson: The Pillsbury Bake-Off is about nothing but crass commercialism, a relatively cheap way for Big Food to gauge what Americans are stuffing into their pie holes and an even better way to inspire those same suckers to consume even more processed crap. The only thing I’m curious about is whether the editors gathered from “real” media to cover the charade were any slimmer than the ones I reeled at the sight of 20-some years ago. (Those broads could pack it away; breakfast was always like the descent of a plague of very large locusts. And they uncritically, even gushingly, wrote up the gruesome results of Poppin’ Junk topped with raspberry and spinach and dipped in chocolate.) Personally, I think any cook who can turn a canned biscuit into a fish taco is going places. Nowhere I’d want to go, but still.
Aerosol scent of the dragon fruit
I see Eater is declaring the food truck trend over already, but I’m sorry: Nothing has peaked as fast as macarons — and this country has survived cupcakes. They went from Paris delicacy to McCrud staple quicker than you can say “leave out the extra O,” and now someone is getting cash money to lead macaron tours. My teeth hurt just thinking about it.
Full java jacket
I kinda doubt my NRA dad ever set foot in a Starbucks; he was probably more a Dunkin’ sort of caffeinator, given that he initially attributed the first symptom of his fatal brain cancer (passing out after puking) to a Subway sandwich. But even he would have to agree this latest movement by wingnuts to play out their paranoia by packing heat into latte central is seriously kkkrazy. Call me old-fashioned, but I’m less afraid of “muslins” than guys with penis issues heading into stressful places while armed and stupid. They get behind too many patrons demanding stuff like half-decaf, quarter-skim, and the macchiato will run red.
When pigs fly into the USDA
Hellmann’s is the Rachael of the processed food world — its name is 98 percent likely to be misspelled every time. It’s equally good at catapulting the propaganda, too, garnering huge publicity merely for switching to “cage-free” eggs in one of its several lines of mayonnaise. Not to be all unappreciative or anything, but wouldn’t it send more of a message to save up a few extra million dozen until you can promote a switchover for the non-lite stuff? Otherwise, clean-conscience eggs are squandered in fud Michael Pollan would not advocate eating. But at least it’s not as silly as Chipotle hyping its change to “vegan chicken” for its burritos. I mean, really — those poor birds are sentenced to live without natural worms in their diet, only to wind up as mega-meals for meat eaters? Why not just keep them gluten-free and wrap them up in flour tortillas?
No Rosa P w/food stamps
I also had a mixed reaction to news that breakfast sales are way down at fast food chains. It’s good that people are giving up semi-food (which arrives in tractor-trailers). But bad that it’s apparently because they no longer have jobs to rush to. And so the rippling continues: More firings because drive-throughs don’t need serfs to assemble the EggaGrease and food factories don’t need slaves to crank out the egg-like substance to fill the biscuit-like material. And that’s just one reason why the latest online crusade to get people to eat only home-cooked food for a week is beyond ridiculous. I’m all for homemade, but doing it because you can afford to just yanks the whole food chain out of whack. Way too many fellow citizens have no choice but to eat in. And some of them are exploited immigrants rushing soggy takeout to the privileged. Go ahead, spring for some. They deserve a break. You can “eat down the fridge” when the banksters start loaning again.
Lock up your bun bags
I’m starting to think every day is Groundhog Day, most recently because of the hysteria over hot dogs. Didn’t we already go through this “OMFG, kids can choke on tube steaks”? What’s really ridiculous is that any parent would let a Baby Jesus ingest something so suspect in any form. If the stuff came in a Spam can, no one would ever think it socially — let alone nutritionally — acceptable. Anyone who spurns food with a face has to know this is face food, and not of the trendy nose-to-tail variety. Over and snout. . .
Corn: A grain in Tostitos, a grass in cattle feed
It was easy to Twitterize NYMag’s story by a usually smart writer doing his part for the salt package by eating badly for nine days: “The man who mistook grease for sodium.” Please. Salt does not give you zits, or stomach cramps. You do not need to over-ingest cheeseburgers to abuse the stuff. You don’t even have to combine it with fat to fuck yourself up. Just open up a can of MSG-free soup. My stomach cramped as I was thinking about how the media is no smarter about nutrition fads than it was back when I got sucked into the fat-fearing insanity simply because the Snackwells ads were paying the magazine bills. I always used to say nutrition is an infant science (never say it to a dietician at a party), but Michael Pollan is even harsher. The salt crusade is just misguided, and the media is just playing the same role it did in the run-up to the Iraq War. But they need the eggs. Like the ad for a “doesn’t get better than this” sandwich that contains half a day’s sodium allowance in one too-dainty-for-a-construction-worker handful. I grew up watching my dad eat salt out of his hand to settle his stomach, before he could afford Tums. His kids all developed a taste for salt on cantaloupe. Six of us are still standing. No one with ads to sell is going to tell you salt is not an issue if you cook your own food. For all the bitching about the nanny state, someone needs to stop the enablers. Which is a funny thought now that the old-media blogs are the new salt mines. And I doubt they will even get the tagline on that ad: “Oh goody, it’s Monday.” We are living in a 24/365 world. It’s too late to demand: “Give us salt or give us liberty.”
No NFL award here
I was also pretty amazed at how craven Fresh Direct sounded as soon as the Blizzard of the Millennium was being talked up all along the Eastern Seaboard: Get your orders in NOW or you all die. Come on, we live in a city that can take a licking and keep on eating. Even after 9/11, when credit cards didn’t work anywhere and no semi-food trucks could get onto the island, I don’t recall people starving in the streets. All the delis in my neighborhood were open during the last blackout, for cripe’s sake. The worst snowstorm is never going to keep exploited immigrants from bicycling to your building with steaming Vietnamese or sodden pizza. But it would keep trucks bearing way too many underpacked boxes off the streets. Plus, everyone hyperventilating about salt should look at what this same hysteria did to the streets and sidewalks: They’re inches deep in white stuff, but it doesn’t melt. How dangerous is inhaled sodium?
“To be immortal you have to be dead”
If I were the despairing kind, I’d be socking back the bourbon these days. The founder of one of the literally shittiest food businesses in the country kicks off, and he’s the taco-talk of Twitter, rates obits in legitimate papers and was probably all over the teevee, too. Then one of the most influential Southern cookbook authors and cooking teachers dies at 100 and gives new meaning to “joining the choir invisible.” Camille Glenn’s hometown papers gave her sendoffs, but farther afield it’s as if she never lived. Once again, I’m very glad I’m old and won’t be around when Rachael and Paula kick the EVO/butter bucket. . .
At least the writer of one of the most compelling food songs ever warranted international attention once she was no longer among the singing, but she was smart enough to leave two super-talented children behind. “Leftovers with mashed potatoes” really is an eloquent expression of what eating involves beyond sustenance. And somehow I suspect she lived a richer life than her ex with his “how many patty melts can one man eat?”