Post Category → petrified newsstand

Real moms go on book tours for Thanksgiving

I jokingly Tweeted that no one in the food world appears among Time’s candidates for “person of the year,” but when followers started asking who I thought should be I realized it wasn’t funny. I’d been obtusely mocking the silliness that has broken out over the holiday windows at Barneys, with some in the food coven upset that other old legends are not honored with a severed head on display. But why shouldn’t Michael Pollan be considered for the cover? (Aside, of course, from the fact that his last book came out early in the year and fame now lasts 15 seconds on the teevee.) Or why not Mrs. O, who really has stirred up the organic hornets’ nest by going all Jamie Oliver on America’s ass rather than sitting in the White House and smoking and reading as her predecessor did? But maybe the best choice, given Time’s contrarian bent and its inclusion of the Wasilla Snowbilly on the ballot now, would be the greedy fuck responsible for the recall of more than 380 million filthy eggs. Did anyone else in 2010 do as much to raise consciousness of a broken food chain?

And speaking of Pollan, I was underwhelmed by Newsweek’s clumsy take on food as a class issue. But I have been paraphrasing him nonstop since reading it: In this country, wealthy farmers grow cheap food for the poor, while poor farmers grow pricey food for the rich. Of course the story is more complicated than that, so I was glad to see dueling pieces in two newspapers on one Sunday on food as the new culture war. The first, in the hometown daily, took the long view, from the ivory tower, and concluded we just have to submit to the market’s power. Smoking, after all, was wiped out organically, her expert insists — apparently having forgotten the whole Joe Camel push-back to stop marketing targeted at kids. The second essay was much more persuasive because the authors are actually putting their money where their mouths are, having moved to one of the most nutritionally hopeless cities in America and started cooking and eating well, with dinner for less than the price of a McRib even with ingredients from those hopelessly elitist, ridiculously expensive farmers’ markets. Getting a book out of it is smart, too, because I’ll go to the crematorium wondering how Big Food persuaded so many that cheap garbage is a birthright. Maybe they should call it “Stupefy Me.”

Roz Chast & the last Thanksgiving

Also to be filed under “this didn’t have to happen,” I spotted the most depressing title ever while killing half an hour in a magazine store the other day. Apparently there’s a market big enough to support Diabetes Living — which means a disease that was once rare is now so thoroughly accepted that advertisers are lining up to cash in. Which, as I’ve noted before, is probably not a coincidence. First you make people sick with cheap crappy food, then you have a drug customer for life. But let’s just argue about Happy Meals.

Did I really ask about food stamps for soda?

Just because I’m a cynic, I Tweeted a link to Time’s piece on the new project by one of the world’s most starred chefs, training poor immigrant women in Paris to become cooks. I carefully phrased my reaction by calling it “interesting” and “small,” just to watch the reaction. And I think it might have been RT’d almost more than any of my 12,000-and-counting other 140-character outbursts. Only one follower, who not coincidentally is a restaurant critic in Brussels, had the right reaction: “Nice PR operation.” Because if you poke that story too ungently, you see that 15 women is the proverbial drop in the bucket with a problem so pervasive. And as the piece noted, some of them are too old ever to make it into a professional kitchen, let alone one as male-dominated as those in France. With such a huge empire — 27 restaurants alone — his heart is in the right place, I guess. But his wallet is stowed somewhere even safer.

Where is the lard?

Speaking of which, it’s been entertaining to watch the high-fructose corn syrup marketers contort themselves to shed the scary name rather than the crappy ingredient. Turns out “corn sugar” is taken already, so it’s back to the obfuscation table. But at least they’ve accomplished something: They have totally redeemed sugar’s reputation, maybe even polished it. Which is wild considering I came across a clip on my desk from USAWeekend, from March, titled “Healthier alternatives to sugar” (raw honey, agave nectar and stevia). I had had some crazy idea of pitching a story contradicting that. But now that we know the white stuff’s not so bad, I guess it’s not surprising the same magazine is still peddling the biggest lie in food equivalencies. The latest issue has a tout for yogurt as a substitute for sour cream. Yeah. Right. And espresso granita is as richly creamy/satisfying as coffee Haagen-Dazs. But consider this message accomplished: All the blather about cutting calories and fat was balanced by the full-page ad for microwaveable French toast sticks, with sausage, as a great choice for children. Breakfast of fatties.

Horsefeathers

I can’t remember where the list was, but Buffalo was ranked among the “10 worst American cities,” written off as “irreparably damaged.” Whoever compiled it was looking only at the loss of population and industry. And showed a rather impressive lack of understanding of how cities can not only survive but regenerate these days, thanks to the most essential essential in life. Slums can be razed and converted to urban farms. Artisanal producers can take over abandoned factories (can you say Chelsea Market?)  Ambitious chefs can take advantage of low rents to open quality restaurants with affordable prices, supporting those local farms and producers. Not sure when old media, itself heading for obsolescence, is going to wake up and smell the coffeehouses. A country that doesn’t make anything anymore still has to eat. And the future is in food.

Pie holes are for shutting

For all my mockery of the WSJournal’s new New York section, it does occasionally run something our other daily delivery does not, like the piece on the new rules for the Greenmarket cracking down on the crappy baked goods they all sell. I understand they’re holdovers from the bad old days when local farms were few and far-flung. But keeping them does tarnish the image of the whole system. Forcing them to use 15 percent regionally grown and milled grain will build more of a market for local wheat etc. As will the requirement that eggs, dairy, meat, honey, maple syrup and produce all be from around here. And of course who is howling loudest? Not a farmer. A commercial baker.

Lies, lies & USA Weekend

I never thought I would say anything positive about GE and its inescapable kitchen appliance ads, but I was surprised in a good way to see the latest, featuring a gay couple, pizza-making and tea-drinking away in their manse in Connecticut. Given how much focus-grouping goes on in that world, you know Madison Avenue knows the “real” America better than anyone quitting in Alaska ever could.

Criticism abandoned for trends, they said

I really want to like the WSJournal’s new New York section even though I think one  monopolist with dual citizenship has done more damage to this country than any terrorist, and that was even before he hired Turd Blossom to pontificate. The Goliath the new section is looking to take down could use a few slingshot hits to remember it’s neglecting the super-blue city where most of its readers live. But every day the thing looks sillier, most often when it comes to food. That Lunchbox column in particular is clueless. One day it’s describing Xie Xie as being “on the West Side” and “near Times Square” (why not just say Hell’s Kitchen? Or even foolish Clinton?) The next it’s introducing a vast readership to . . . the Oyster Bar in Grand Central. And it’s not just one reporter mucking up the job. They’re serial fools. Food is the second-biggest income-producer in this city, after finance. Can’t it get some respect? Otherwise, just ramp up the stupidity to satirical level and call the thing the Red Onion.

While Rupert outlets gripe in harmony

I’m so old I remember when the Big Homme published a newsletter on cooking what was in season, back when the idea was about as alien as pork belly in this country. And it was truly excellent; I saved the whole run in my cobbled-together binder for story ideas as editors finally caught up to the wisdom of eating locally/seasonally. So it’s doubly odd to see “his” latest column in the Bullfighters’ Mag, with a recipe for zucchini-tomato tian to go with Easter lamb. Whiskey tango foxtrot? Bad enough that so many allegedly serious cooks are already jumping the gun and using asparagus when it’s still coming from Mexico. But tomatoes and zucchini belong in basil season. They make as much sense as Peeps in August.

When ambling is too fast

I despair every morning on seeing the WSJournal devolve into the NYPost, or worse, but it gets points for beating Panchito to the punch. The piece on an apparent mediocrity clawing her way up to the Food Network had more to say than any 13 long magazine thumb-suckers could about a faded celebrity’s wife cashing in on fame once removed. Hope she at least snapped a towel across his ass the way the Chimp apparently did. It helps so much with character assessment.

All the Haitian mangoes you can eat

After reading another WSJournal story, on the crisis-level tomato shortage, I stupidly expected to see stores looking the way they really should in snowy March, free of flavorless hardballs. But there are big piles even at our neighborhood Food Shitty, and the Manhattan Fruit Exchange had the usual half-dozen or more varieties, if pricier than usual. Once again, it illustrated the disconnect between semi-food, the processed crap delivered to fast food outlets in tractor-trailers, and what most Americans throw into their overloaded baskets. And how the two are covered.

But I have to give the Journal credit for setting the record straight on macarons. They are not fucking macaroons. Buried deep in its late-to-the-meringue front-pager, though, was a funny detail. McDonald’s actually started selling the things three years ago. So all the hysteria online and off over the fast-fooding of high-end patisserie was actually driven by ads, the ones that only recently started showing up in the Paris metro. Guess I’m only amazed we aren’t seeing more MSG-free “soup is good food” pieces as winter winds down.

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.”