When the last big salmonella outbreak was being hammered on the news 24/7, I tried yet again to sell a piece on how the whole burden of eating safely has been shifted to the consumer in the last few years. What made it most timely was the absurdity of the current situation: How in the hell do you thoroughly cook peanut butter for self-protection? No buyer bit, so I was a little surprised to see the same notion finally deemed front-page news. Leaving aside the sloppy copy-editing (one more time: potpie is one word), it mostly seemed to be a roundup of uh-huhs that built to yet another consumer freakout crescendo. I skimmed it, my consort studied it, but I didn’t see much mention of the biggest reason why processed food is increasingly unsafe. It’s too fucking cheap. How can a parent think a 79-cent meal is going to be fit for a one-year-old to eat? As the saying almost as old as caveat emptor goes, you get what you pay for. These days it could be a ticket to the hospital.
Post Category → processed crap
Not grilling but drowning
I thought the new quesadilla burger was ridiculous at that chain made famous for its salad bar. But now I see the alternative is a bruschetta burger, with “fresh bruschetta” on top. As they say in Tuscany, WTF? I want whatever they’re smoking in R&D. But it’s also easy to see why the ’bees are struggling. A burger stuffed in a tortilla with cheese for $17.25? For that price they should throw in a couple of tamales in a sesame seed bun.
Put the lavender in the coconut
Things I do not want to dwell on: Lime “jelly” smells exactly like our new “green” toilet bowl cleaner. Worse, my consort suspects the latter probably has more natural ingredients. Beware the inevitable bacon air fresheners. You could eat the wick and be better off than with the “real” deal.
And the rest goes in the wiener
I guess the road to hell is actually paved with really shitty pork. In the photo in a new campaign by one of the “don’t ask, don’t retch” bacon producers, a coupla rashers are presented as the highway between Hash Brown Hill and French Toast Mesa, which is disturbing enough. But the text beneath just makes me conjure a copywriter with absinthe in hand and loaded revolver next to keyboard. He/she clearly had to work very, very hard not to mention the essential ingredient in great bacon to craft “carefully selected, hand-trimmed and naturally hardwood smoked for hours.” It’s sorta like a bogus jeweler omitting mention of how its gorgeous “diamonds” are actually polished from charcoal turds. No wonder satirists are fantasizing about bacon-fed pigs.
Loose shoe leather
Only an overcompensated press corps, though, would continue to do Spam’s bidding and flog the ultimate mystery meat as depression salvation when it is far from a bargain in the post-Butz world. I just got some e-release noting that sales of “fresh meat” are up 7-plus percent lately, even as the country is heading down “The Road” if you believe what you read out of Wall Street. Gullible reporters should get in the checkout line behind the people using food stamps. They ain’t buying canned food when pork chops are $2.29 a pound. And why is it only an opinion columnist who is pointing out the awful price the world is paying for the makings of Spam? I guess because, as a friend just noted, the “news” pages are busy doing restaurant roundups devoted to the Mersa white meat. Quote of the week: Jim Cramer was not an aberration. We are informed by fools and knaves.
Pierced Jelly Bellies
I may be repeating myself, but among the many things that amazed me in my 46 months of watching the sausage get made was how many Peeps landed on the freebie desk and how immune even the most pigeon-like among the staff were to their charms. Not once did anyone take the bait and run any item related to the marshmallow equivalent of toadstools. But now I see National Geographic has succumbed. The misguided there are staging a photo contest for which entrants are supposed to shoot Peeps in some travel destination. I guess they win, because I’m writing about it. But I really hope the payback is huge for their soul. The only thing worse, a friend suggested, would be having contestants photograph a Peep on iconographic images, like the Afghan girl or the pyramids they moved. Next, a “Peep virgin” commercial? If so, I hope it uses the yellow ones, breasts bared.
Natural mystery meat
Latest sign of end times: A purveyor of ridiculously overpriced condiments has branched out to the freezer case. With Sloppy Joes. (Excuse me. Joe’s.) If you want convenient crap, can’t you just buy it in a can? That would be more suitable for Armageddon. Ask Cormac McCarthy.
Billions and billions and billions
If he only had a brain, the Chimp would hire the geniuses who came up with the latest campaign for the wannabe Big Mac. The Gurgling Cod slammed it first, but the ads seem to be working: They’re getting roundly thrashed and trashed everywhere when once they would have instantly faded into oblivion. After all the rainforests are gone, in the next year or so, people will still be marveling that something so offensive could have ever have been produced in a wired world. Now that I’ve vented, though, I’m unfortunately starting to visualize updates of old commercials: Which twin has the Toni, re-shot in the Amazon. Or how about Mikey likes it, in Haiti, maybe? Of course the real offense is the “food” itself, and its cheap allure is not going to end even if “foodies” holler till the cows fall down for someone enlightened as Agriculture secretary. Big Food is a formidable force. And exporting the crap notions only makes things worse — even my latest e-offer from the Molto of India is a set of cookbooks for diabetics. Earl Butz doesn’t have to worry about a legacy. It’s trouble with a capital D.
What made Camden famous . . .
I cannot wait until this campaign is over. Not the one between the cool guy and Caribou Barbie/Bible Spice, and not just because the latter really oughta get those girls back in school before they turn out as hollow-headed as she is. The true annoyance is the mega-bucks ad war between Andy Warhol’s inspiration and Thomas Keller’s pantry staple. This is as stupid as a horny old guy choosing a second-rung beauty queen and then trying to concoct attack ads about inexperience. If you’re going to trash the competition, clean up your own lab first. And why do I suspect the whole hoo-hah has been underwritten by the latest better-cooking-through-chemistry MSG substitute? Soup. It’s scary food.
Pizza as casserole and cookies
Another book, though, pretty much made me lose my faith in Amish cooking. You would expect a horse-and-buggy belief system that bans worldly things like telephones to stay true to real ingredients, especially in a collection of recipes built around the seasons. But you would misunderestimate the corrupting reach of Big Food. In donkey’s years I would never expect to come across “1 package taco seasoning” in a book filled with Martha-worthy photos of laundry hanging on clotheslines, and wringer washers, and chickens in the yard. Let alone Bisquick and M&M’s and cream of mushroom soup. How are you gonna keep them on the farm once they’ve tried Velveeta?
Now with more cottonseed oil
Interesting how the McSame approach to advertising is invading the food world, too: all nasty all the time. Campbell’s has some nerve, though, attacking Progresso for using ingredients that don’t sound like food. Why is hydrolyzed corn protein any scarier than dextrin and soy protein concentrate? Why is “naturally occurring” MSG better than regular MSG? Let’s face it: Both chowders are processed crap. But at least we don’t have to live with them for four more years.
Keffiyah, meet kibble
Just as ridiculous is Yummo for dogs. Why doesn’t she take it to the obvious extreme and slap her name on toilet paper, too? Cover both ends of the alimentary canal? And do they really think the world is dumb enough to believe she “created” the recipes? That is a job best left to the nutrition experts, not even to developers for hire. She could be scarier than melamine. Most revealing is the description of the line as “charity-driven.” Read the fine print and you’ll see “a portion of the proceeds” will be donated. Paul Newman, with every penny turned over from his products (including pet food), can truly rest in peace.
Banning tofu noodles
Say one thing for Hungry Girl and her cult of lemmings: At least she knows her place is in the supermarket, not a heartbeat away from the nukular button. As freaked as I am over the female version of Go-Fuck-Yourself, I am only happy she is not talking about food at all. Otherwise women who don’t know their Manolos from their Naughty Monkeys would be not just drinking the diet Kool-Aid but eating the processed crap.
Now with Shinola
Why it so difficult for people who are paid to gather and disseminate information to grasp what trans fats are and what the damn things do in food? (Hint: not make it taste better than butter or lard.) I hate to keep pointing out the obvious, but doughnuts and cannoli and muffins were invented long before Crisco was ever perpetrated on the planet. The latest prize for most blatant exhibition of willful cretinism was the inclusion of a quote in the NYPost from a guy who loves him some trans fats and puts “a stick of butter on everything.” To steal from the superb “Passing Strange,” whoever edited that story let his ignorance fuck his stupidity and called the bastard journalism.
When ginger met pear
After reading cyber-commentary on the “Fancy” Food Show, I’m going to revise my notion that anyone trying to cover it is like a blind person describing an elephant. This year it seems the blind took the elephant on a honeymoon to Niagara Falls. Dicks are the New! Big! Thing! Really, you could substitute anything for herbs there and build a report around it (especially with Bangin’ Blueberry “pesto”). What I noticed was that the last day is the best day; the usually hyper pushers in the booths are too fried and stupefied to harass the hell out of you when they see a press badge. Ask what a coolly packaged drink called Twelve is and the beaten woman pouring it will just say: “Twelve.”
Aside from grits in a tube, the things that jumped out at me were seasoned skewers (much easier than buying grillable chicken with flavor) and energy bars for pregnant women (Baby Needs Chocolate? Right. Baby Probably Also Could Use a Stiff Drink Now and Then). The first booth I stopped at was showcasing GOP and Democratic cookies, and when I asked what the difference was, the sheepish vendor could have been describing the general election: Nothing but the package. I decided not to taste until I saw either something new or something weird and went through two whole long aisles before succumbing to Smoky Mango Barbecue Sauce (which was just as awful as it sounds; all it needed was white chocolate).
Other random thoughts: Crab can be really scary (especially when a bite of dip will send you straight to Paula Deen chemical dressing to erase the taste). Cheese will absorb anything: pickles, olives, Thai curry. But the three scariest words on a cheese label are “no refrigeration needed.” Then again, someone thinks the world needs pasta in the shape of the Star of David. And pumpkin pie fudge, too. Bad riesling makes worse ice cream. (Champagne, however, was made to be sorbet.) “Quality is not an option” is a very strange slogan. And could chocolate possibly benefit from being stone-ground? Stone-washed I could see. . .
Given that it was the last day, the celebrities on so many labels were mostly not to be seen, aside from the suspiciously thin orange-freckled arms on a bag of mixed grated cheeses coming soon to supermarkets everywhere. But one ubiquitous big name I did spot signing autographs made me realize a plastic surgeon is not the best friend a famous face can have. Photoshop is much, much kinder.