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.
What is the smell of pistachio trees burning?
Put $16 worth of heavy cream into a $240 churn and after 15 minutes of labor you get a pound of butter? Would make more sense to keep a cow for morning cappuccino.
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?
Guzzle your butter in a special cooker
A decent country would not allow a racist-enabler back out into polite food company. We, however, do not live in a decent country.
RT/UT
Imagine being nearly 80 years old and typing “yummy skills.” // No birth control like high chairs at happy hour. // Friend IRL served squash blossoms, two ways for dinner the other night. I told her forced-birthers couldn’t eat ‘em: fetal zucchini. // If your app takes your flack two screens of text to explain, maybe pitch it into the trash? // Explosive flavor sounds like an Ex-Lax promise. // Agriculture secretary sez food stamps “should not be the whole enchilada” for recipients. Dog-whistle much? // GOP tax cuts are just golden showers all over again. Free salt for the peed-ons. // One more reason never, ever to elect a teetotaler. He doesn’t care about wine people. // I will never forgive him for depriving us of taco trucks on every corner . . .
Toss ’em some canned chicken
A senator the other day described the so-called president’s foreign policy as “a dirt soup of incompetence, amateurism, neglect and braggadocio.” I’d say it’s worse. It’s a bone broth.
Instagram duped and tripled
If your eggplant flesh is almost devoid of flavor, you’re buying from the wrong farmer. And shouldn’t it be “from Parma to Pittsburgh”?
Swamp water in Riedel glasses
The orange feces flies so fast these days you can’t keep up, but I do have to note how pathetic it was that he chose Le Cirque for his $250K-a-couple fundraiser (because of course Hillary is pure evil for raking in the bucks). I mean, really. Donors have that kind of cash and you feed ‘em bankrupt chicken? But the story got even sadder — as with everything he reverse-Midas touches, the resto is ruint. It’s closing after New Year’s Eve. And probably without even collecting what he owes. The whole sad debacle gives new meaning to the term “celebrity haunt.”
Down to the deer heart
The latest mass slaughter of humans has me remembering being outside Pittsburgh on a story for Al Jazeera a few years ago and coming to have grudging respect for hunters who use rifles to “ventilate fauna,” as the inimitable Charlie Pierce puts it, to put food on their families (and in soup kitchens). My dad kept guns to shoot deer and jackrabbits, back in the days when the NRA was for hunters, not lethal weapons manufacturers. So I’m not in favor of a total ban, although keeping assault weaponry out of the hands of angry white guys would be a healthy first step. But I also keep flashing back to the frigid morning when my consort went plunging into the icy woods with his camera and audio recorder while I stayed behind in the rental car to try to stay warm. At one point a truck pulled up and two big guys jumped out with huge guns, and I realized I had all the doors locked but was completely vulnerable if they wanted to rob-and-rape. They could shoot out the windows, do their evil and drive right off. Their penis substitutes gave them all the power. But I still don’t think I’d have been any safer with one of my own.
$500K gossip at “Tacos Mexican Style” trough
As much as I rant about risotto emails getting us into this mess, I have to remember the botulism goes much deeper. The puke funnel that slimed Hillary for the last 25-plus years was mainstreamed by the likes of MoDo, who had such a giddy old time at a $505 Beluga-and-Porterhouse-and-1990 Corton-Charlemagne dinner with the junkie who would go on to gull listeners into staying behind in a liberal-hoax hurricane while he decamped to LA. Hooker or reporter? You decide.
A chicken (part) in every wok
More and more, it’s becoming obvious that the guano is getting real with all the foxes in charge of the Orange Henhouse. A report in the unlinkable Murdoch Crier detailed how the chicken industry is carping the diem to demand rollback of yet another rule imposed by the successful black prez, the one that limited poultry factories to whacking up a mere 140 birds a minute. A minute would now have 175 carcasses flying by, sort of Lucy-on-the-chocolates-line pace but now with more salmonella. The LOL, however, may be last on the greedsters. Their racist hero and his brownshirts at ICE are guaranteeing there will be no one available to do the work. Unless, of course, he succeeds in doing away with disability and Social Security. Guys on oxygen tanks and grandmas in wheelchairs will surely flock to feather their mitts with that sweet, sweet unliving wage.