Marcella Hazan, noted cookbook author and proponent of Italian cooking.
Archive for the ‘Food’ Category
Obit watch: September 30, 2013.
Monday, September 30th, 2013TMQ Watch: September 17, 2013.
Tuesday, September 17th, 2013Pullet surprise.
Tuesday, September 17th, 2013More:
Of course, these chickens are not dining on stale loaves from grandmother’s breadbox. On a recent afternoon at the farm, where a few hundred creatures inhabit a peaceful, 15,000-square-foot coop that would dwarf the size of most New York apartments, they clucked and ambled around pans of bread soaked in fresh milk, and white buckets full of leafy trimmings that would make a tremendous tossed salad.
“Some of this is nicer stuff than I have to eat when I get home,” said Mike Charles, a local poultry expert involved in the project.
I could snark on this, but I actually think there’s a lot to be said for chicken that tastes like chicken. (Didn’t Nero Wolfe buy chickens from a farmer who fed them on acrorns? Or was that pigs, and the chickens were fed on something else? I don’t have any of my Wolfe books here at work.)
But:
Yeah, what’s the carbon footprint of these chickens? How sustainable is “driving two and a half hours” to deliver vegetable scraps? Especially since the Amish are likely to have vegetable scraps and day-old bread of their own?
The economics of selling hot dogs.
Thursday, September 5th, 2013And other things, at least in NYC. Have you ever wondered about those pushcarts?
The guy who owns the cart at the entrance to the Central Park Zoo (“Fifth Avenue and East 62nd Street”) pays $289,500 a year to the city parks department.
Can you make money doing this? Apparently so: “…while vendors are adamant about not divulging details about what they make, most pushcart sites presumably turn a profit or they would not attract such high bids.”
More:
A decade ago, the fee paid for the pushcart at the Central Park Zoo entrance was $120,000, less than half what Mr. Mastafa paid most recently. The second most expensive cart is on the West Drive at West 67th Street near Tavern on the Green, where the fee is $266,850.
For many other parks, especially those in parks outside Manhattan, the fees are much lower — $14,000 in Astoria Park in Queens, $3,200 in Maria Hernandez Park in Brooklyn and $1,100 in Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx. The lowest fee, $700, is paid by the owner of a pushcart near the soccer fields in Inwood Hill Park in Upper Manhattan.
The biggest selling item? Apparently, $3 bottled water. That sounds surprisingly reasonable for NYC, but:
Maximum prices for snacks and beverages are set by the department.
Toes in the water.
Tuesday, September 3rd, 2013Sorry about the short blogging quasi-hiatus there.
After work on Friday, I drove down to San Antonio for LoneStarCon 3, the 71st World Science Fiction Convention. It was a swell time. I got to hang out with several friends, including Mike the Musicologist, Andrew the Colossus of Roads, RoadRich, and Lawrence, who was doing a land office business in books. (Who says people don’t read any more? I covered the table for him a little bit, and by Ghu the books were flying off the table like snow crab legs at an all you can eat Chinese buffet.)
I haven’t been down to San Antonio for reasons other than medical for years, and hadn’t been on the RiverWalk since LoneStarCon2. I’d forgotten how nice the RiverWalk is, even though the vendors make things a bit crowded. (I don’t remember there being as many sidewalk vendors there last time I was down. But I’m getting old, and memory fades.)
Mike the Musicologist did most of the meal planning. Breakfast for two out of three of the days we were there was in the Marriott Rivercenter, mostly for reasons of timing. However, it is a pretty good buffet; I’d go so far as to say, with the custom omelets and made-to-order waffles, it comes close to being worth $20+tax and tip. Especially since I really didn’t see any breakfast places near the hotels or along the Riverwalk. (McDonalds and Whataburger excepted. There was also a Denny’s across the street from the Rivercenter; but literally the first thing I heard when I got to the hotel was that a mutual acquaintance of ours got food poisoning from the Denny’s bacon.)
The one non-Marriott breakfast was at the Magnolia Pancake Haus on Embassy Oaks, which was packed to the gills. We waited 40 minutes for a table, but the Munchener Apfel Pfannekuchen was worth it. I’d love to go back (and maybe try the wild mushroom hash) but I’d make sure I brought a good book.
(At some point in the near future, I want to do a post on how tablets, and especially the iPad, are transforming the restaurant industry, with Magnolia being one of my examples.)
We also had an excellent meal at Moroccan Bites (I loved the lamb shank and the chicken bites) and a pretty good meal at a place called Charlie Wants a Burger. (I had the pulled pork sandwich. And wings.) Sunday night we went to Fogo de Chao…which, you know, is Fogo de Chao. If you want huge amounts of roasted meat, you know what you’re getting into. For reasons I won’t discuss here (think Tim Cahill’s rule #6, corollary 1), I just had the salad bar. Which is actually a reasonable thing to do at Fogo de Chao (especially since you also get to eat the fried polenta, bananas, and cheese rolls), and I didn’t feel ripped off at $22.50. (I did feel gouged by the $3.25 iced tea. Note to self: water next time.)
(If you think you detected a trend, you may be right: Moroccan Bites and Magnolia have both been on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. Guy Fieri may have problems running a place of his own, but as far as recommendations go, he’s batting 100% with me.)
Oddly enough, I bought more t-shirts (three) than I did books (two). Of course, one of those shirts is a gift for my brother. And one of those shirts I don’t actually have yet (they’re shipping it). And one of those books I bought mostly so I could support my friends. (I would have bought more books, but nobody had any Robert Frezza. “The Whistling Pig” was the theme to my last few months at 4LCC.)
I do want to say a few words about the best thing that happened at the convention. I don’t like bragging about famous people I know, mostly because I’m always afraid someone will ask them about me and they’ll say “Dwight who?” (Or, if they’re talking to Gardner Dozois, “That a–hole Dwight?!”)
(If you’ve never met Gardner in person, let’s just say he has a puckish sense of humor.)
But I digress. The best thing that happened at the convention is that one of my closest friends in the world won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette. That put the cap on a pretty swell weekend.
Congrats, again, Pat.
TMQ Watch: August 27, 2013.
Wednesday, August 28th, 2013This week’s TMQ, after the jump…
Stuff your sorries in a sack, mister!
Sunday, August 25th, 2013Sometimes I think I feel sorry for people who maybe don’t deserve my sympathy.
For example, the SDC restaurant last night was in a strip center. There was another restaurant in that center, a Chinese buffet, that I’d been to a few times. The last time I went (over a year ago) it was pouring down rain, I had the beginnings of a cold, I went in…
…and water was pouring from a hole in the roof into buckets on the floor. And yet, the buffet was still going. (I’m not ashamed to admit I stayed, even with the roof leak; as I said, I wasn’t feeling well, and didn’t feel like driving anyplace else. Of course, I still didn’t feel well after I ate…)
Anyway, I thought I’d walk down and take a look, since they’d changed their sign from “Chinese Buffet” to “Asian BBQ”. What I found was:
- A lockout notice from the landlord.
- A second note from the State Comptroller’s office, requesting an urgent callback to discuss unpaid taxes.
- A third note from the Texas Workforce Commission, requesting a call to discuss quarterly reports.
In short, a trail of screwed-upness. I mentioned this to Lawrence, who suggested it might be blog fodder. I told him I wasn’t sure, and that I kind of felt sorry for these people. After all, they’re probably hard-working immigrants who got in over their heads (though that place has been there for years). Lawrence, in turn, felt they didn’t deserve any sympathy. After all, he said, he pays his tax bill to the comptroller’s office, and he pays what he owes on his property, and by not paying the TWC, they were probably screwing their workers, so why should I give them any breaks by not naming and shaming them? Not to mention photographing the collection of notices stuck to their front door?
I can’t answer that question. But I can compromise by writing here. If someone wants to name the place in the comments, they’re more than welcome to. I didn’t go back and photograph the array of notices because I was distracted by other things. (And I am curious about “Michael K.” from “Northridge, CA”, and his comment “I like Korea House, but hated driving out there. Now I found a better place even closer.” Where is he driving from, I wonder? If he lives anywhere along the 183 corridor, sorry, but Korea House isn’t that much more of a drive from where Restaurant X used to be.)
(Yes, I realize I just gave everyone the tools to figure it out if they use the Google and put in that phrase above, with the site:yelp.com modifier. Good for you.)
There’s another place I’ve been to a couple of times. Some very good friends of mine seemed to like it. We had an SDC there. I remember the menu had their origin story printed on the back; basically, as I recall, Mama retired from school administration, the family had money, so her children bought her the restaurant (formerly a Thomas Super Buffet) to give her something to do.
The food wasn’t horrible, but I never really thought it was very good. The burgers were the best thing on the menu, and the place always seemed kind of heavy on staffing, while the waitstaff mostly sat around, played with their phones, and looked bored. I feel bad saying this because my friends did like the place, but I felt it was begging for an intervention from Robert Irvine.
I went by the location today, on my way to Fry’s, as I’d heard rumors the place had closed and thought I’d check for myself. The rumors were correct. At least they didn’t have notices from the comptroller and TWC on the door; just the lockout notice from the landlord and a big warning sticker from the NuCO2 people.
Again, I really want to feel sorry for these people. But buying Mom a restaurant so she’d have something to do after she retires? That’s not the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, but it is in the Top Ten. Let Mom enjoy her retirement. If she wants something to do, she can join the Red Hats. Actually, that’s probably an even better use of Mom’s talents, as she can criticize the food served at Red Hat meetings, without all the problems of running a restaurant.
I don’t know what I’m trying to say here. Maybe that it is sad and depressing when the hard-working family shuts down their Ethiopian place (even though there are better Ethiopian places in town, and what a weird thing it is to be able to say that these days), but it is full of schadenfreudeay goodness when some corporate monster without a soul closes their doors? Even though the corporate monster is probably throwing just as many people out of work? Possibly even more?
Or maybe I’m just looking for cheap blog fodder.
Random notes: July 24, 2013.
Wednesday, July 24th, 2013Man, this is a day for sad sports stories in the NYT.
George Sauer Jr. passed away in May.
What makes this story interesting is that Sauer, according to people who knew him, was a really smart guy who may have never wanted to play football in the first place; what he really wanted to be was a writer.
On a slightly more upbeat note, there’s an interesting piece by Frank Bruni in the paper of record. Vetri, a very well regarded Italian restaurant in Philadelphia, transformed itself for three nights into Le Bec-Fin, a legendary restaurant that closed (temporarily?) in 2012.
I like the idea of recreating legendary restaurants for a few nights. I’m not sure what Austin restaurant I’d like to see do this; I think that needs some more consideration than I am currently able to give it.
And since this isn’t behind the paywall, i’ll link to it: the Austin Police Department has fired another officer. What did he do? Well…bad guy broke into someone’s home and stole their pickup and gun. Police chased the bad guy. Bad guy wrecked the truck, fled on foot, and broke into another house.
This has gone to the arbitrator:
And the arbitrator said:
I think the take-away here is: hit what you aim at. And always be sure of your target and what’s behind it:
I went back to Ohio, but my city was gone.
Monday, July 15th, 2013Well, not really “gone”. I hadn’t been back to Ohio for nine years, and it amazed me somewhat both how much and how little has changed.
For example, there’s an entire grocery chain that I don’t remember from my last trip…that takes the Discover card and cash. No Visa/AmEx/MasterCard/Diner’s Club, not even debt cards with a PIN, just cash and Discover. Who came up with this idea?
On the other hand, the tractor tire store that was a landmark on the way to Grandma’s place is still there, after 40 something years. And Grandma’s place still feels remote from everything, even though there’s major strip centers at the end of her road, and even though much of the land was sold off over the past few years (and now has houses sitting on it).
And the old NASA hanger is still visible from the airport. That was another landmark for us kids. (My dad worked there, back when it was still the Lewis Research Center, before it was renamed “NASA John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field“. Which is a mouthful. Not that I’m bitter or anything over the renaming; by gosh, if anyone deserved to have a NASA facility named after him, it was John Glenn.)
This is shaping up to be a long post, and sort of “stream of consciousness”, so I’m going to put the rest of it behind a jump. Before I do, here’s Grandma’s obituary, just for the record.
Happy Bastille Day, everyone!
Sunday, July 14th, 2013Whether you’re eating Beef Bourguignon and drinking a good Burgundy, or storming a prison to get at the gunpowder inside, I hope your celebration is a happy one.
Ist das nicht eine schnitzel bank?
Saturday, July 13th, 2013
Ja, das ist eine schnitzel bank!
Supreme lager, always!
(Poster found on wall at Great Lakes Brewing Company, Cleveland, Ohio.)
Related:
Important safety tip. (#17 in a series)
Friday, July 12th, 2013I shouldn’t have to say this, should I? People aren’t this stupid, are they?
Apparently, they are. So, safety tip:
If it is hot enough to fry an egg on the pavement, for the love of Ghu, please use a pan.
Found in the supermarket.
Thursday, June 27th, 2013I understand that there are a lot of folks into the gluten-free lifestyle these days. Whether it is because of real or perceived health issues, I don’t care: as long as you’re not imposing your food choices on me, it isn’t my concern.
But I have to ask this question:
Aren’t gluten-free appliances carrying things just a bit too far?
This amused me.
Friday, June 14th, 2013I was out with my mother yesterday afternoon, and we stopped for lunch.
Something about the juxtaposition of the “this way to the bathrooms” and the Emerson quote kicks over my giggle box. I mean, what is the message they’re trying to send here: don’t follow the path to the men’s room, but instead go outside and…shall we say, leave a trail to mark your territory?
(Pieous, Dripping Springs, Texas.)
(By the way, the Bacon Bleu pizza and mozzarella plate were both really, really good.)
Random notes: May 15, 2013.
Wednesday, May 15th, 2013Obit watch: “flamboyant swindler” Billie Sol Estes. NYT.
Mr. Estes’s daughter Pamela Padget said that he died in his sleep and was found in his recliner.
The AP adds the telling detail that he died with chocolate chip cookie crumbs on his lips.
Billie Sol was a little before my time, much less the time of some of my younger readers, but the NYT gives a good one-paragraph summary:
Paging Mayor Bloomberg! Mayor Bloomberg, white courtesy phone, please!
I remember when the blood alcohol limit was 0.10%. I remember the arguments at the time for and against lowering the limit to 0.08%. The one question I had was: how many accidents were caused by drivers who were at 0.08% or above, but below 0.10%? I never got an answer to that question, and it didn’t matter anyway, since the government issued a decree:
And now the government is talking about dropping it down to 0.05%. Again, I ask: how many accidents are caused by people at or above 0.05% but below 0.08%? There was a report on Reason‘s website (I can’t find it right now) that estimated “500-800” lives saved per year by lowering the limit to 0.05%. But does this take into account the number of lives that might be lost by diverting police resources to pursue drivers at the 0.05% level, instead of pursuing other crimes?
Larry Wayne Mahoney, the intoxicated driver, had a 0.24% BAC at the time of the crash, so he was already DWI even by 1988 standards, let alone the 2000 standard or the proposed 0.05% standard. Most of the serious DWI accidents I hear about involve people who are above – in many cases, way above – the 0.10% mark. Would we save more lives going after the highly intoxicated drunk; the guy who blows a 0.20% or the gal who blows a 0.25%?