Serrano, saluting 

Also pretty rich to see the high holies all up in arms over a mere ice cream. We were just in Buffalo, at the Broadway Market, where we bought a Last Supper rendered in chocolate. At some point we will bite the head offa Chocolate Jesus and be able to thank the Catholic parishioners who molded it. Right now, though, I’m imagining someone Instagraming Sweet Jesus in an egg spoon. And blowing the world up.

Once was a food editor who insisted recipes specify “hot red pepper sauce”

Way back in the last century my consort and I took the Tabasco tour on an awesome trip through Cajun Country, and I still remember we were only allowed to see the factory through a window because of “liability.” I was pissed at the time but now see it was simply another reflection of how far ahead they are on issues. Now it’s global warming. Denial is a pretty crappy defense, even as sriracha eats their lunch.

Showers the color of Champagne

This is how pathetic we the sane were: We were merely looking forward to taco trucks on every corner. Turns out the traitors were strategizing to guarantee caviar carts at every desk. Joke’s on them, though: We may have to walk a little farther for our Tuesday indulgence, but the 1 percent are hogging all the Beluga. Deplorables will have to continue continue scrabbling for off-brand Wonder Bread crumbs. Using the bags for shoes.

A Coke and a syringe

I always wonder whether diabetes would be epidemic today if Americans had been sold mayonnaise instead of ketchup with their fries. Fat and fat have to be better than fat and sugar. Not to mention the satiety factor: You don’t need many duck-fat-roasted fingerlings dunked in chipotle mayonnaise to feel very happy very fast. They’re like a potato Spritz.

Sheet pans, blindingly white

I keep thinking of how the Butter Guzzler was too far ahead of her time. She let her true colors show and was ostracized. Today she’d be a wingnut heroine, waving her doffed hood like a proudly bloody apron.

Also, too, as it becomes increasingly clear what a reality shitshow fraud America was sold (as this great piece on the reverse-engineering demonstrates), it’s also worth considering how the star-making machinery made so many sleazy characters in the fud world household names with ridiculously lucrative empires built on the backs of the gullible. You’d think we’da learned from the Frugal Gourmet, but no. It was all a Croc of orange mierda.

Billy Beer, now kosher

Jimmy Carter was not far ahead of his time, although he did install solar panels on the White House roof 40+ years ago. All the news out of Mar-a-Lago, staffed by foreign workers, makes you realize how mean-spirited it was for Republicans to force him to give up his peanut farm. He coulda opened an agriturismo to sell access to his presidency. Not enough $lust in his heart, though.

RT/UT

The softer the tortilla the longer the ingredient list. // You can tell exactly what the food will be like when the menu lists prices ending in .95 — no one is fooled. // I own a caper spoon. // “Outrage of the Youngs” will definitely not involve Chianti. Maybe favas.

Burgers over borscht

Breaking away from the Twitter to marvel that so few real journalists have connected the absence of stool samples to the opioid epidemic. I think it was two or three years ago I first saw a billboard, in Flushing, advertising an Rx copay cure for the issue Louis Armstrong proudly dealt with via Swiss Kriss (but the Tweeter in chief does not — not American enough?) Then the other day I saw a Tweet noting that most ads on cable are for constipation solutions. And that’s because Vicodin/oxycodone et al will shut you down. Big Pharma now has you coming. And not going.

“San Marzano style”? It’s plum tomatoes.

And the Murdoch Crier has a great new hire covering thoughtfulness in food, and there was much to like in her debut column (link only works if you subscribe). But I can’t eat an avocado these days without thinking of the tradeoff: 99 cents a pop in the short term, no monarch butterflies for forever. In case you doubted there are worse outrages than $9 for toast spread with mantequilla de la pobre.

You say amaro

One of my favorite people in the world, Italian-New Yorkese by way of Patagonia, says he is fleeing the kkkountry for Florence next week partly because he despises the feast of the Pilgrims. I haven’t checked in with the Instagram set yet, but food writers should agree. And this year my consort and I are going to be stuffing-free unless I heed my own advice. Also unless we lay in some Calvados. The trou normand would make an even better president than our cat. 

No free breakfast

As a Twitter shut-in, I spend way too much time obsessing on kkkraziness. But on the day after a nutcase did what I worry about at every intersection on this tiny island, I especially kept flashing back on one of our half-dozen trips to real America in the last year. This one was at least rewarded with good food, and encouragement to come back. But the odds that I might be on the bike path in Lower Manhattan had a scary amount of friends checking in. My consort and I coulda just been making a wrong turn into Walmart in “real” America and never have wandered back out. 

Eye of Newt

“Orange you crazy?” should be the slogan for our time. Who could have ever imagined, back when the black president was getting trashed as elitist for referencing arugula, that the wingnuts would be fine with a Supreme Court judge touting turmeric in his steak rub? Isn’t that muslin powder?