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No fur on SD livestock

I’m not going to link because there was nowhere to link, but I was rather amused on reading some private club in London has apparently caved to the loons and stopped offering foie gras. Really, fools? Fattened duck livers are like abortions. Don’t like ’em? Don’t get ’em. Also, too, what does it profit a cause to save the geese and fuck the Amazon workers?

Barclay Center “palate”

I also have to note yet again how funny it is every Saturday to open up the Murdoch Crier’s getting-and-spending section and have a slinger fall out. Most recently, tucked inside pages covering $10,000 coats, we got an offer of $1.50 off on TWO (2) bags of any frozen “chicken” “product.” Maybe that’s for the staff? Or at least for the ones who have to make Ginny Noonan’s sloshings publishable?

How many patty melts can one man eat?

And I don’t even know where to begin with how fucked up the Teabaggers have made government involvement in food aid. So farmers should continue to get subsidies whether they farm or not, but the poors should pull themselves up by their Nike laces and go get jobs and feed themselves — no matter that taking benefits away from them is literally sucking income out of supermarkets. (Again: Beneficiaries don’t eat those debit cards; the tax dollars are laundered through the Krogers.) The bigger question is why, if farmers constitute a protected species, Willie Nelson was on his bus, out on the road again, raising money 38 years on from the first Farm Aid. Surely billions can trickle down? But what it’s really all about comes clear every time some whiner goes into the comment cesspool to bitch that the food stamp users they see have better cars/clothes/shopping carts. My response? Get a better fucking job, loser.

Red beanies and risotto

As for the short-lived pasta backlash, it’s a pretty safe guess Barilla is not eaten in the politically correct Vatican these days. Even though the price point would put it in the sweet spot. It’s the durum equivalent of a beat-up Fiat.

5 hot dogs, chopped

I don’t know why everyone’s hating on the li’l grifter. It’s not as if “her” work is her work. Also, too: Some days you screw the blowup doll. Most days she screws you. I made an orzo mess and am not about to waste Kahlua on chocolate soup.

Mushroom scrapple

I also got some useful perspective on our respective food scenes. A woman we met at the Fair Food Farmstand in the market said she had moved south not least because “What’s happening in New York has already happened. It’s still happening in Philadelphia.” (Even though Fette Sau has opened there, too.) And just before we went we were advised that Vietnamese food in the home of the cheesesteak would be superior to NYC’s partly because more immigrants have gone into restaurants there, rather than into nail parlors, but also because the essential ingredients are easier to come by. Philadelphia, as @atrios Tweeted me, does not have one tiny market but three actual supermarkets just near his home close to the Italian Market. And the one we meandered through in fascination was like nothing here. There must have been 20 kinds of rice paper alone. (Our favorite detail was the sign threatening a $100 penalty for opening the box of live frogs. Or maybe the one advising parents not to let their children play on the 100-pound bags of various brands of rice.) But I also came home feeling less envious of Philadelphia’s plethora of BYO restaurants. The food this trip seemed much pricier in them, I guess because they can’t take the mega-markup on alcohol. And who wouldn’t rather pay for wine in a civilized restaurant than set foot in one of those soul-sapping state stores?

Hebron is a place . . .

I do like how the internets opened a big glass window on the sausage factory. Once upon a time readers could be duped into thinking any rave for a product or place was pure and simple. Now the comments sections are loaded with tip-offs on who bought that affection. Judging by my inbox, look for Mazatlan overload this winter.

Faster, Pussycat

Speaking of horses, much in the news as food recently, the lede of the hometown paper’s front-pager on banning beast-of-burden-drawn carriages in the park was buried in the last graf. For once I’m on the animal-rights activists’ side, because this city will beat the manure out of the strongest human; horses don’t belong in the bedlam and mayhem. I also feel sick every time I see some sad old steed plodding along pulling the gross national weight of Iowa. But, as always, the issue is a little more complicated. As the last quote quoted noted, every horse saved would go straight to slaughter because there are no refuges to take them in, especially in a depression. At least the slaughterhouse would be on American soil. But horse tartare is still horse tartare. And I kinda doubt tourists would line up for it in the Plaza food hall, for a “real” New York experience.

Add an A to agoraphobic

On our way to buy hardtack the other day, my consort and I stopped at an NYPL branch to return a carefully culled DVD and by chance found “City Island” on the shelf. I remembered several touts by our co-op’s own private Ebert, the Sun-thru-Thurs elevator operator whose taste is unerringly right-on, so we brought it home and watched it with great pleasure. Now all I want to know is why NPR’s producers weren’t mentioning it in their segment on the Butter Guzzler, the one that alleged her appeal is to “people who live alone or have fractured families.” I suspect what’s up is more the feeder/feedee dynamic the filmmaker ID’d in his quest for an obese actress in a celluloid world where 170 pounds is deemed over the top. And I don’t even want to  delve into how Liberace had the same appeal to my lonely mom after her nine pregnancies in 8 1/2 years . . .

“Fresh & fly”

I’ll never forget going to see “Magnolia” one xmas day and an old guy in the audience storming out halfway through, bellowing: “What’s wrong with you people, just sitting here?” Early in our Saturday lunch I wanted to do the same thing at Nom Wah Tea Parlor in Chinatown, where the food was so soul-sapping I’m not going to give the place cover in Trails. By the second greasy dish I was mentally composing my Tweet: “This is why I always hated Chinese until we went to eat in Hong Kong.” The fried noodles not only tasted greasy but smelled burned-greasy, and not just from the charred scallions. The fried pork dumplings were doughy grease balls, and if there was even a hint of green in the filling you’d need an electron microscope to spot it. The turnip cakes were three oil sponges also seemingly absent of shrimp and Chinese sausage (by then I’d given up on flavor). The “scallion” pancake was like a disposable slipper soaked in oil and fried to a very brown crisp. Even the wasted greens were awash in nasty oil, and the hot sauce we had to request was, yes, oily — the table needed a BP cleanup crew by the time we’d been fully disappointed by a few tastes of each dish we’d over-ordered. And can someone please explain why a place with tea in its name would have the gall to serve bitter brown water and charge for it? (Also, too, I would say I hate to wonder why there were kitchen tongs in the wet-floor ladies’ room, but I already got some obvious answers over to the Twitter.) I’ll admit I was a sucker for old Chinatown/new generation in wanting to try the place, and I’ll acknowledge that the boss men were friendly and efficient (although the servers seemed to be the sort who believe “minimum” should only be modified by “bare”). But you can’t eat nostalgia. What’s most depressing is that the place was consistently packed, mostly with youngsters, way too many of them Asian enough to know better. This was the kind of slopped-out stuff you’d expect from a $25 & Under. Did none of those kool kids realize how close NY Noodletown is? I thought this was Generation Food. The only thing that would have made the whole experience more dispiriting would have been seeing “Kinfolk” for sale . . .