Yes, I’m a public-radio dork. Leonard Lopate says jump, and I say, How high?
When he announced some craft contest involving googly eyes, food and Amy Sedaris, of course I went straight to the website.
This is the photo pool for the contest. Only a few entries so far, but very nice use of black chicken!
Now where did I put those googly eyes?
(You think I’m joking… But, really, I know I had some, in several sizes…)
It must be That’s What I’ve Been Saying All Along Week at the New York Times!
In addition to telling the world how great Queens is, now the newspaper of record has published another fine and sensible essay by Michael Pollan, who has been one of my favorite writers ever since I read Botany of Desire years and years ago (thanks, Heidi, for the rec).
His story “Unhappy Meals” in this week’s magazine starts: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
There’s plenty more, of course, but that’s the gist. He goes on to detail just how we got into such weird federal dietary guidelines (politics, natch), and talks about the rise of “nutritionism”–the particular way so many Americans have come to look at food as sources of nutrients, rather than just food.
Even if I didn’t agree so fervently with him, I would still love Pollan just for the way he writes. It’s never overblown or too alarmist, but he allows himself the occasional bit of flair–characterizing the produce section lying “silent as stroke victims,” for instance, while all the processed food boasts about its health benefits. Because he writes so simply, without manipulation, he gives me hope that he’ll be able to convince people.
He also makes the brilliant observation that we shouldn’t be so surprised that carbs make us fat–humans have been fattening up animals on carbs ever since we started domesticating them.
If you’re overwhelmed by all 12 pages of it online, you can skip toward the end, where he outlines his basic suggestions for how best to eat, slightly expanded from his opening sentences. But then you’d be missing out on all of Pollan’s great writing.
William Grimes, former restaurant reviewer for the New York Times, is probably the single most famous current resident of Astoria. Brooklyn has all those big-time novelists–what-ever. We’ve got Grimes, and he tells us about when live chickens show up in his backyard.
Now he writes in “Queens Now Has Less Feta, More Jellyfish” in the NYT about why Astoria, and Queens in general, is so fabulous.
For me, Astoria is not a satellite of Manhattan, it’s the gateway to Queens, a jumping-off point for the borough that, when it comes to ethnic diversity, knows no equal. For me this is not an abstract demographic issue. It is as real as the food on my plate.
That’s what I’ve been trying to say for years. Go read, and weep at the bounty we Queensians are relishing every single day.
P.S. Athena’s nail salon even gets a name check! I saw “Athena” out on the street the other day, in civilian clothes. It was very disorienting.
Bob forwarded me a news story about a Guyanese guy who got lost in Queens for five days. I know Queens can be confusing, but…really?! Five days?
Damon Mootoo had just arrived in the U.S. for the first time, and went out for a walk, and then apparently got disoriented. He wound up subsisting on nothing but begged water until some guy saw him huddled in a corner, shivering (yes, the weather finally got cold here), and took him home.
I know, this does not look good for the boosters of the Queens street-numbering system, such as myself. Everyone from elsewhere complains about it, but I think it makes perfect sense.
But some crucial detail must be missing from the whole story. There are some factors that account for his getting lost, but not enough. It’s true, according to the story, Mootoo can’t hear so well. I suppose he could’ve been feeling discombobulated after his long flight from Guyana–although I don’t think there’s much of a time change, if any, so he shouldn’t have been too wigged out.
And he had apparently heard so many horrible stories about New York City that he was afraid to ask anyone for directions, lest he get attacked or deported. This is truly awful. (It also leads me to a side harangue about guidebooks that are chock-full of warnings about crime, scams, leering men, terrible pestilence, etc., etc. By the time you’re done reading, you’ve decided to just eat dinner in the hotel cafe–but inside, where the pickpockets can’t get you.)
But the guy does speak English. And he actually did have the address of his brother’s house in his pocket. So how on earth did this happen?
Either Mootoo really is one sandwich short of a picnic, and the reporters are too polite to mention it….
Or I suppose it really could be that when he stepped outside and saw himself at the corner of 152nd Street and 123rd Avenue, all his synapses just fried at the sight of so many numerals. Then it was all he could do to find an abandoned car to crawl into and rock quietly until the numbers in his head stopped dancing, and dancing, and dancing.
Clearly, if you are opening your home in Queens to any foreigner, whether it’s a Brooklynite or a deaf Guyanese man, your very first responsibility is to teach them The Poem:
In Queens to find locations best —
Avenues, roads and drives run west;
But ways to north or south, ‘tis plain
Are streets or place or even lane;
While even numbers you will meet
Upon the west and south of street.
Peter and I made sure Bob learned it, and he managed just fine, even though we live dangerously near the paralyzing confluence of 30th Avenue, 30th Road and 30th Street.
Well, honestly, these guys are supposed to be real tasty. But not when prepared this way:
Ranchland Prairie Chicken
presented by Palmer Ranch HouseBreasts, and thighs of about 4 birds
1 can of cream of mushroom soup
1 quart of whipping cream,the kind in the milk dept.Put in a pan that will hold everything. Turn oven to 200 degrees. You want to cook these real slow. For about 2 to 3 hours. Doesn’t taste gamey and the sauce makes good gravy.
Hee. I’m glad they specify about the whipping cream. Otherwise I would’ve used Cool Whip!
And now I know where not to stay when I’m in South Dakota.
As part of my research for the forthcoming Moon New Mexico guide, I end up reading all those glossy visitors guides that are always in your motel room, usually with a coffee ring on the cover left by the previous tenant.
Every sad little town has one, written with varying degrees of cogency and featuring more or less faded photos. The most desperate ones–which combine tourist info with data on why you might want to invest in this particular exit off I-40, for instance–always make me depressed. Like seeing the ugly puppy left at the pet store in the mall. Sad. But I’m not going to help it either.
The worst part is when the reach so clearly exceeds the grasp, as in this kicker from–well, it seems too mean to name the chronically windy town of 5,000-and-shrinking-every-day:
It has been said that living well is the best revenge, and […] has all the ingredients to make that dream a reality.
I wish them all the best. I really do. It’s just that I can’t help. I’m sorry. (Turning away. No eye contact. Stepping on the gas…)
Florida, in my mind, is just a long list of examples why America is so fucked. 1) Jeb Bush, 2) all his cronies, 3) Disney World, 4) nudist condo resorts (doesn’t sound horrible, but trust me), 5) gigundo retirement towns that use their own currency, &c., &c.
On that master list of Hateful Things in the FLA is the fact that they have a Tomato Committee. Apparently one company grows these tasty tomatoes down there, called the UglyRipe variety, and the high-and-mighty Florida Tomato Committee won’t let them be exported because….OMG, they’re UGLY! Which is to say, they don’t look like they’ve been crapped out of the giant Industrial Tomato-izer 3000 (Guaranteed Red Styrofoam or Your Money Back!).
As the New York Times puts it:
The committee’s rules, called marketing orders, are very strict as to the shape and uniformity of Florida tomatoes that can go to other states…. Flavor is not a factor because, in the committee’s view, it is too subjective.
Choke. Gasp. Those bastards. I can’t tell you what a rage that puts me in–like I’m the only person left in a nefarious near-future world who can actually see the truth, but am powerless to change anything. So I swaddle myself in discarded produce and blow myself up in the city square, in a futile gesture that no one even notices, because they’re so busy eating their perfectly shaped food.
But now I’m trying to calm myself down a little because, ayyyy-men, the morons on the FTC have been given a beat-down by the USDA, and they have to allow UglyRipes to be free at last. (Right after MLK Day–a coincidence?) The change of heart is due partially to an aggressive write-in campaign guided by Santa Sweets, the company that will be marketing the UglyRipes outside of the state. (For the record, Jeb Bush is anti-UglyRipe export because it would give an “unfair advantage.” See what I mean?)
I was very interested to see that it’s Santa Sweets in charge of the whole thing, as I’ve noticed that they’re a reliable brand of those sugary little grape tomatoes, which are about the only supermarket thing that taste tomato-y anymore.
The larger problem, though, is–do I have a right to buy yummy tomatoes in the winter? Isn’t it a horrible waste of petroleum to get those ugly little guys up here to my Trade Fair?
There’s always something to feel guilty about, I guess. If the American food industry is going to insist on flying produce all over the country–and all over the globe–then it may as well taste good. Or, as the guy behind the UglyRipe says, “If Harry & David can sell pears in a box, then we can sell tasty tomatoes.”
There’s a great op-ed today in the New York Times by chef Dan Barber, “Amber Fields of Bland.” He argues in a very smart way for changing federal food regulations. Rather than bombard you with truly horrible details about what’s wrong with the current food production system, he asks: Don’t you just want your food to taste good?
Eerybody laments how crappy tomatoes are now (not Barber’s exampe, just my personal gripe), and how chicken doesn’t even taste like chicken. Whose fault is that? Stupid agribusiness. And of course there are all the other gruesome flaws (E. coli, zombie chickens, mad cow, etc.), but, Barber says, if we look at regulating in terms of improving food’s flavor, then, by happy coincidence, we also solve a lot of these problems.
Of course, coming from a super-high-end chef who cooks for rich people all day long, arguing for flavor in the face of economies of scale smacks of plain old snobbery. But he dismisses that with a smart historical analogy:
Some people argue that the desire to promote smaller, family-run local farms is gratuitously effete and nostalgic. That’s just nonsense. It’s the agriculture industry’s mind-set — high on capital, chemistry and machines — that is actually old-fashioned. Just as the Industrial Revolution of factories with heavy machinery and billowing black smoke is yesterday’s news, so too are our unsustainable farming operations.
It is interesting that he doesn’t argue against farm subsidies per se–I guess that would be just way too crazy to consider–but he does suggest giving them instead to farms as an incentive to diversify and concentrate on food crops, rather than corn and soy, which need to be hyper-processed before being eaten. Maybe that is a good middle route.
This whole op-ed is linked to the fact that the every-five-years reexamination of the farm bill is coming up in Congress soon. As Barber proposes, anyone who cares how food tastes–never mind their stance on or knowledge about Big Food Biz–should speak up to their representatives now. Maybe some tasty treat mailed to Senators Clinton and Schumer would be more effective than a phone call?
I was just doing some research and happened across these images within just a few minutes of each other.
FIRST:
THEN:
Food safety: It doesn’t stop at the kitchen door.
In an attempt to stave off actual writing, I was investigating the mystery of why my old blogspot URL still gets all the action. Following some links in my stats, I happened across a truly mind-expanding item on now-defunct Saute Wednesday: a recipe for toast topped with melted chocolate, olive oil and sea salt.
I don’t recommend it if you’re still trying to get your head around salt caramels, but for those who’ve made the leap, it’s really just the next logical progression. (It’s like guitar with feedback. Could you listen to, say, Wham! after you heard the Pixies? I couldn’t.) And because it’s salty, it seems like a totally legit afternoon snack.
However, it must be said that this is further evidence that the Spanish are very scary (hence, fascinating) when it comes to food. Thanks to the Spaniards, I have nearly a quarter of a whole farm animal in a closet, held in a magical state between rot and not-rot.
More specific to dessert, AV told us all about the highly medieval candied egg yolks (scroll to “For science”), and it seems like every Spanish sweet I’ve seen comes in a super-Goth-looking all-black wrapper and is either stark white or bright yellow. (One exception: the maraschino-cherry-studded egg marzipan I’m eating now–but of course those cherries are red, like BLOOD.)
I would not be the least bit surprised if some Spanish village specialized in, say, rabbit brains slow-simmered for nine days in sugar with saffron, sold in a black box sporting a not-cute-at-all bunny on the label. They would, of course, be a strange texture, yet delicious in a very rich way. You would savor a little bunny brain for an hour, probably, with bitter coffee.
And even though this chocolate/salt/oil toast is apparently some Ferran Adria modern invention, it is not out of keeping with more traditional Spanish sweets. In fact, come to think of it, even the color scheme fits right in with tradition: black chocolate, white bread, yellow oil. It’s so dour and joyless in appearance that it can’t possibly be dessert. You cannot possibly enjoy it. Clever, perverse Spaniards.