Post Category → processed crap

And cheesy was once a dis

Naturally it’s behind the paywall, but the New Yorker has a great feature this week on the richest woman in India, who made all those rupees developing drugs. One graf near the end is worth the price of the issue: Her company has been working on the “holy grail” for Big Pharma, which would be oral insulin in a processed-crap world where everyone is developing diabetes (50 million in India alone). And Biocon came close until the patients who were given placebos in trials improved because they wanted to impress their doctors. “Suddenly, their control group of diabetics had started exercising and eating better.” Message? Diabetes is both preventable and curable senza drugs. Maybe it’s time for Occupy the Pharmacies. Walk away from the Lipitor. And eat beans.

Belly bombs not allowed by TSA

Which is my way of leading into this: I’m a total advocate of the attempted reincarnation of the Fulton Fish Market, not least because I believe food is the future in this country; everyone has to eat, and the opportunities for entrepreneurs are as boundless as the frontier once was. But at this last one, for the first time, I started wondering the same thing I do at the “fancy” food shows: How in hell can people possibly hope to build a business on stuff that just tastes bad? Why don’t their loved ones tell them? I wound up buying a (great) ginger cookie midway through just to get the nasty bits out of my mouth. I know I have only myself to blame for even trying the “organic soy-and-oat tempeh” I was lured by after noticing tamales were involved. But jeebus, was that ever a crime against natural. And the “Peking duck cookies,” made with duck fat and five-spice powder, were nothing short of foul. Duck fat is lard’s funky cousin, and I love duck. I would ask if the food revolution now heating up might be hampered by its weak food soldiers, a generation raised on processed crap and now setting out to change the world with no palates. But I also tasted two fish soups that were pretty bland. And those were all made by established companies. Coming soon to the Javits Center . . .

No LaFrieda, please — we’re trendy

Epistemic closure is the undeniable diagnosis for most of wingnuttia, which probably explains why the deluded would look to an “economics” blogger sans calculator for advice on cookbooks. Naturally, she did not mention the manual for the socialist contraption she so proudly hailed after dropping $1,500. But she did “inform” readers that Maida’s books are out of print. Because that’s how capitalism works — no reissues are possible if the market demands. My advice to the closed-minded: Ask a liberal. We think anything goes anywhere, but especially in the kitchen.

Also, too, it’s unfortunate there’s no place where good people like Willie Nelson can go to get their food message out to a wide audience online. He’s totally right on Occupy the Food System, but I ain’t linking to a site that apparently believes we can all eat well when outlets don’t pay. Might as well shill for Smithfield processed crap behind photos of frolicking heritage hogs.

Mocha and caramel frappés and oatmeal

I read the WSJournal’s cheery report on the boom in fast-food deliveries in China and just envisioned a worse “Wall-E.” Isn’t getting the diabetes diet to consumers quicker, with no effort, only going to make humans fatter and more unhealthy? Isn’t the use of millions and millions of motorbikes just going to mean more pollution in a country where the air is already pretty near apocalyptic? And I don’t know which detail was more chilling, that two-thirds of McD’s sales in this country come from drive-throughs or that overlords of the evil empire are salivating at the prospect of web orders enabling them to shut down call centers (a k a places where actual humans earn money). Good move in a 99% world. Maybe next they get rid of the workers who pack the crap into the special compartments on the motorbikes. And then ask Henry Ford why they need to move to Pandora.

Quorn is not the answer . . .

It says everything that it took the Taiwanese animators to make the most fair-and-balanced sense of the cheval scandale. As someone who spends way too much time reading and not nearly enough writing, I already knew the issue was complicated. With hearts bleeding for ducks allowed to gorge to their guts’ content, everyone assumes inhumanity is involved in turning Seabiscuit into supper. But forcing the poor animals to be trucked out of the country for slaughter sounds far more traumatic to me. (Not that I’m whinnying, but the longest, hardest day of my life was the one spent getting from a hospital in Torino to our apartment in New York on a broken femur — and I had warm nuts in business class to ease me through it.) It’s fascinating to see people who happily eat cheap pork from abused hogs worrying about a protein many cultures regard as perfectly acceptable, even commanding a premium. I’ve tasted it only once*, the first time my too-curious consort insisted on ordering it, in a swanky restaurant in Florence where it was served in thin shreds as an expensive appetizer. I remember it was surprisingly good. But mostly I remember that the waiter kept wiping his oily nose and I later developed what felt like a particularly brutal form of bird flu. I would say “sick as a dog,” but that would be dinner in other cultures. Cooked at fever temp.

*Amended after a long walk: I remember I tasted it again, also in Italy, in Treviso, on bruschetta. And definitely not priced like dog food.

6 ingredients, starting with “lamb meal”

As much as I dread the possibility of reincarnation, I do have an uncharacteristic urge to plan for it when I spot really good gigs for the next life. Like recipe developer for the Idaho potato pushers, who must be paid in serious drugs. I unfolded the accordion folder of eight and thought I’d picked up the Onion by mistake. They didn’t really coat chicken cutlets with hash browns (and Bisquick!), did they? How much gravy were they huffing when they stuffed acorn squash full of mashed potatoes? And what in the name of Montezuma’s Revenge were they thinking, using potatoes in tortilla soup? Why? The vichyssoise leeks were taken?

Does “pompom” juice come from cheerleaders?

The produce show held in the very “Brazil” setting of the Hilton in Midtown is one of my new favorite events, not least because every time someone at a booth asks me Where you from? and I say I’m a writer, he/she just responds Oh and turns away. Those guys are very definitely there to sell their stuff, not their stories. So I can walk around and stock up on promo pens for the year, taste a few things, take a few photos and generally work in peace. And, in the process, learn that tofu is produce. That Tofurky is even viler than you could ever imagine, let alone describe. That Dustin Hoffman’s character really did miss the megaboat with plastics (individual potatoes and sweet potatoes are inevitably wrapped in it, and now even those synthetic baby carrots are being packaged in individual bagettes, like raisins). That the pros who are slicing and dicing vegetables for nukable sides have even worse knife skills than I do. That the cucumber world is definitely dominated by guys (even the Santa suit I saw was occupied by a zaftig woman). And I absorb all that while wondering why all Vinnies either look or sound alike. And whether I really overheard a cantaloupe promoter, demo-ing three varieties, saying “the Sharon Tates don’t last. . .”

McRibs, as they say

I wrote this over to the Twitter, but it’s amusing to see stories touting the accessibility of Eleven Madison Park’s cookbook that all run the same recipe: the granola. And I did not write this, but the macaron trend is officially past its sell-by date when Sur La Table is hawking ornaments shaped like them. Which would, however, be less cheesy on your pagan tree than the “chef” ornaments in the form of jacketed pigs. Even more WTF was the slinger in the Sunday papers emblazoned “give thanks this Veterans Day — receive these valuable coupons,” for the likes of Hormel and Hungry Man and Duncan Hines. Why not just say: “Support the troops: Buy processed crap”?

Bad lip reading

ReTweet 3: Why in the name of crap would you want to make your own Velveeta? Spam I could see — it’s apparently the next best thing to the most-written-about “sandwich.” But this recipe would cost more than what the cheese substitute was invented to replace. And when you’re all done you have . . . orange grease. Or solid Olestra.

“Balsamic” ketchup

In a similar artery, my favorite “Food Day” newspaper blog post (it had goddamn better not have been an actual story) was the one offering gruesome recipes from some organization fronting for a dairy marketing group. Nearly every suggestion for healthful, wondrous shit for dinner included cheese/butter/cream/cheese. To which, being Mrs. Sprat, I would have no objection. But can’t newspapers just pull back the curtain and show who’s manipulating minds?

Short answer, given the news on the latest attempt to make nutrition labels easier to understand: No. As long as avocados and pistachios and spinach and other foods straight from the tree/field are not what most Americans are presumed to consume, the subterfuge can continue in the guise of elucidation. Whatever the “Institute of Medicine” might be has the bright idea of giving processed crap labels like the Energy Star ratings, but of course they would only apply to processed crap, which is where all the money is in food. The real answer would be to educate consumers from kindergarten on, to train them to think, but that’s not going to happen in what’s left of my lifetime, although it did back in the last century. One of the best classes my small high school required was General Business, in which we learned everything from how to make change and balance a checkbook to how to analyze the propaganda catapulted at us in advertisements. One assignment required reporting on a single ad on what it both revealed and hid, and I remember one of my choices was the then-new Pop Tarts, which even my relatively poor family had started eating. As I recall, the ads told you nothing except “eat me, be happy!” Imagine that exercise in a school where the vending machines are loaded and the corporate insignias are on everything and you raise money for uniforms by selling . . . processed crap. As always, my big fear is reincarnation.

Wedding Fribbles

Finally, my goal is to either get back on Sunday track or start posting every a.m. Because too many objects start to look smaller in my rear-view mirror as time fades away. Like the phenomenon formerly known as Mr. Cutlets’ contrarian take on the demise of Friendly’s and other mediocre ubiquities (ubiquitous mediocrities?) He contends that their going under in a country that was sold urine as trickle-down is a bad thing. I would say this will open up the restaurant world to entrepreneurs again. My new mantra is that food is the future. The last few decades of what I call semi-food, delivered in tractor-trailers everywhere, wiped out the places that dominated the landscape back when the Sterns hit the road, when I lived in Nebraska and Iowa. Too often since St. Ronnie of Alzheimer’s my consort and I would land in some little town late at night and be told by the motelier or B&Bkeeper the only option for dinner was: “There’s a Friendly’s out on the highway.” Real “eateries” once thrived. And could again since Americans are now so conditioned to eating in the mid-level between Taco Bell and “fine dining” that chefs who focus on serving good food at a good price should do well once the marked-up, underpriced processed crap is taken off the table. Of course, it may mean one chain in particular has to go under to show how easy the transformation would be: Pasta costs pennies; any mom & pop can make it here. Any downside to losing Olive Garden?

Cake balls

I hate getting suckered into promotions of processed crap, too, but I was mildly entertained by the notion of taco shells made out of ground-up Doritos. Could there be a better metaphor for America today? And it made me wonder why there are no mashed potatoes made out of ground-up chips. Until I realized we already have those. Many Americans will be serving just that wet-and-eat crap on Thanksgiving.

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.

What Frieda’s said

Which leads me to the most ridiculous brouhaha since, well, the last time food idjits got taken. What fascinated me less than the fact that a bunch of dolts were duped with processed lasagne was how the story progressed, from blogs to the hometown paper and back to blogs again. You’d think no one knew how to get out and report these days. And everyone who jumped up to attack the flacks who did the duping seems to forget that old story, possibly apocryphal, about Winston Churchill asking a woman if she would sleep with him for a million dollars. When she said yes, he asked about doing so for five. She indignantly responded: “What do you think I am?” And he said: “Ma’am, we’ve already established what you are. Now we’re just negotiating the price.” Cynic that I am, I did a little noodling on the Google and turned up no end of bloghos who happily touted that garbage for nothing more than a free sample. The outraged should be glad they got a couple of drinks and a reason to put on their “rig” and get out and mingle. Besides, didn’t Panchito just say this kind of chemicals-and-additive carping is all about class? I’m sure ConAgra just wants to make sure the poors have fud.