“I believe it’s weal”

And this is just hearsay, and clearly she had an ax to hone, but a farmer at one of the Greenmarkets this week overheard me talking to a chef about the Seconda Venuta and snapped: “It’s a hoax!” Apparently they promised to buy a cornucopia. Maybe local grows on espresso beanstalks?

Counterfeiters, you say?

Of course there’s ingredient abuse and then there’s ingredient abuse. I generally ignore the foie gras whack jobs outside Fairway, but next time I pass them I hope to be packing a few printouts of photos and stories on force-feeding at Guantanamo. It’s one thing to shove corn down the throat of an organism genetically programmed to gorge before migrating and another altogether to snake yards of rubber tubing up the nose and into the stomach of a helpless guy in an unlawful prison. Ensure sounds nasty enough, but true torture would be having it forced upon you “Titicut Follies”-style while strapped into a “restraints chair.” Someone needs to remind PETA that humans are animals, too, and this is a long, long, long way from ethical. Not to be uncharacteristically flip, but ducks at least get to be organ donors.

Worse would be Rachael

Clearly I’m spending way too much time online if I spotted a request from a mother for advice on how to dress her 3-year-old daughter, by request, as Molto for Halloween. That kid doesn’t need a costume. She needs a therapist. But I shouldn’t be mean to the orangeman — he’s putting candy in the right aspirant’s bag, unlike another annoyance who is backing that 365-day-a-year Halloween character who is known as Ghouliani in blogville. No wonder people shun his restaurant. Who wants to eat with a tiara shining in their eyes?