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Let my people eat bread.

Thursday, February 7th, 2013

My mother sent along an article from the WP that I had missed, “Better bread starts with a sponge“, which discusses some sourdough techniques for home bakers.

I appreciate her sending that along, and have already sent her some comments. But since they’re easy blog fodder, I’ll repeat them here. I don’t really have any problems with Marcy Goldman, or her article; I want to try her “Favorite French Bread“. But there are some questions I have and comments to make.

  1. Goldman quotes Cook’s Illustrated as saying home bakers should “forgo a starter to save time and simply add vinegar for that characteristic acidic taste”. This is, so far, the dumbest thing I’ve read in 2013. To her credit, Goldman does not endorse this, but I expect better from CI and that tweedy little bow-tied jackass.
  2. Why is this dumb? Because anyone can make a starter. It is not the nuclear rocket brain surgery. It isn’t hard. I have made starters and baked with them, and I’m not Thomas Freaking Keller in the kitchen. All you need is flour, water, and time; that’s how the original Alaskan sourdoughs were made. Yeast is a possible addition, but isn’t strictly needed. (I’ll touch on that in a minute.) As far as time goes, you can get a starter going in 72 hours, and it will keep indefinitely with reasonable care.
  3. Goldman’s stater recipe calls for a cup of spring water, 1 1/4 cups of unbleached bread flour, 2 tablespoons each of whole-wheat and rye flour, and 1/2 teaspoon of instant yeast. The starter recipe I’ve been using calls for 3/4 cup of milk, “heated to a simmer and cooled to 100°F”, 1 cup flour (white, whole-wheat, or rye) and 1 1/2 teaspoons of yeast. Both make enough starter for one loaf in their respective recipes; I’ve doubled the recipe amount for my starter, and am feeding it with 1 cup heated milk and 1 cup rye or whole-wheat flour whenever I pull some starter out. That way, I always have enough starter. (I keep it in a crock on the back of my stove.)
  4. Here’s the thing, though: if you’re starting your starter with yeast, aren’t you just…growing more of the same yeast? I mean, if I want Fleischman’s, I can go buy that stuff all day long at the HEB. Or do the natural yeasts in the air eventually overwhelm your starter yeast? I have heard it said that’s what happens with packaged sourdough starter, like you might get as a souvenir in San Francisco or Alaska; you may get it home and bake some bread, but eventually the original strain will get overwhelmed by your wild local yeasts. (That doesn’t mean I don’t want to try baking with one of those starters; I do.)
  5. The one starter I’ve found that doesn’t call for added yeast is Nancy Silverton’s in Breads from the La Brea Bakery. I’d like to try that, but it takes 14 days to get to the point where you’re ready to bake with it, and it seems very fussy. While I was looking up Silverton’s starter, I found this starter recipe from Michael Ruhlman, which doesn’t take 14 days, doesn’t call for added yeast, and also looks like something worth trying.
  6. Speaking of Ruhlman, he’s probably worth a post of his own at some point. (I’ve been reading Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking and The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute of America, the latter of which I paid $1 for at the Austin Public Library bookstore. At one point in Making, Ruhlman mentions a CIA chef who has a starter he’s kept going since 1985; the book came out in 1997, so that was at least a ten-year-old starter.)

Posted in 2013, Bookmarks, Bread, Clippings, Food, Stupid | 2 Comments »

Over The Hump to La Tuna.

Tuesday, February 5th, 2013

A long time ago, I noted the scandal over the Santa Monica sushi restaurant, “The Hump”, which closed after it was discovered they were serving whale sushi.

A few days ago, Typhoon Restaurant Inc. (“The Hump”‘s parent company), chef Kiyoshiro Yamamoto, and chef Susumu Ueda were indicted on federal charges. Specifically, “nine counts of conspiracy to import and sell whale meat from 2007 to 2010, a violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act.”

Quoth the LAT:

Yamamoto could face up to 67 years in federal prison and Ueda would served up to 10 years if convicted.

Other sources reported other possible sentences, like 77 years and even “life in prison”.

So? Well, beyond the followup aspect, Ken over at Popehat has the kind of brilliant post that only Ken can write, using this indictment to explain how sentencing in the federal system actually works.

Those numbers bear no relation to reality.

I encourage you to go read the whole post, as it shines a huge frigging spotlight on a little understood area of federal law. Cutting to the chase, Ken (who has worked both as a federal prosecutor and a defense attorney; he’s a for-real lawyer, not just someone with an Internet GED in law like me) figures that the defendants are probably looking at 24 to 30 months, and that’s if their lawyers can’t make a good argument to the judge that they should serve less time.

Lessons:
1. Maximum sentences have very little relation to actual sentences in federal law. When the government quotes the maximum sentence, they are trying to scare you. When the press quotes it, they are uninformed or lazy. Exercise skepticism. Resist emotional appeals to “how is this sentence reasonable when murderers get less?”

(FCI La Tuna.)

Posted in Clippings, Food, Law | 1 Comment »

Bread blogging: Sourdough Chèvre Bread

Monday, February 4th, 2013

This recipe is from Brody and Apter, pages 149-152.

I followed the recipe without deviations or alterations, carefully measuring out exactly 5 ounces of goat cheese (interesting that Brody and Apter call for 5 ounces, when goat cheese is usually sold in 4 ounce packages in my neck of the woods), using my on-going sourdough starter, and yes, even using the powdered goats milk.

How did it turn out?

(more…)

Posted in Bread, Food | Comments Closed

Random notes: January 30, 2013.

Wednesday, January 30th, 2013

Gun control works! Just ask Chicago!

And yet Chicago, a city with no civilian gun ranges and bans on both assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, finds itself laboring to stem a flood of gun violence that contributed to more than 500 homicides last year and at least 40 killings already in 2013, including a fatal shooting of a 15-year-old girl on Tuesday.

More:

Chicago officials say Illinois has no requirement, comparable to Chicago’s, that gun owners immediately report their lost or stolen weapons to deter straw buyers.

Uh, that’s not what a “straw buyer” is, Monica Davey. (Nor does Davey mention that “straw purchases” are also a violation of Federal law, though rarely prosecuted according to the WP. One wonders how much of a deterrent Chicago’s law is to people who are already violating federal law.)

(Likewise, purchasing guns in other states, bringing them across state lines, and selling them on the Chicago streets violates multiple existing federal laws. Davey ignores that fact as well.)

Edited to add: Just saw this, and found it appropriate.

 

And I said, “What about ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’?”
He said, “I can’t afford a million dollars,
and as I recall, you’ve got plenty of money.”
And I said, “Well, that’s one thing we have not.”

The Bell trial picked up again yesterday. Rebecca Valdez, the former city clerk who wasn’t actually the city clerk at first, is still on the stand.

Rebecca Valdez said that when she began working for the city, she learned the key to survival: Do whatever City Manager Robert Rizzo asked.
Valdez testified Tuesday that she was directed to sign unfamiliar documents, hand out incorrect salary information in response to a public records request from a resident and obtain signatures for doctored salary contracts.

The defense is attacking her credibility, “seeking to show that record-keeping in Bell was in disarray. Valdez testified that she signed minutes for meetings she didn’t attend, was appointed to the job in name only and sometimes made mistakes marking the times that meetings began and ended.”

And what’s this about her being the city clerk but not being the city clerk?

In 2004, then-City Clerk Theresa Diaz moved out of town, making her ineligible to hold the elected office. Valdez was given her title, but continued her job as an account clerk. Diaz continued to act as the record-keeper for the city, but Valdez testified that she was told to sign documents as the city clerk.

Also interesting:

The city clerk also testified that Victor Bello, one of the defendants, was banned from City Hall toward the end of his tenure, except to attend council meetings.
If Bello showed up, she was to tell the police chief and her supervisor. Twice a week, Valdez took Bello’s mail to his home, accompanied by code enforcement officers, she testified. Bello resigned from the council in 2008 but retained his six-figure salary after Rizzo named him assistant to the food bank coordinator.

Not “food bank coordinator”, but “assistant to the food bank coordinator”, and pulling in at least $100,000 a year. How do I get this job?

Ah, the Texas Highway Patrol Museum. You do remember the Texas Highway Patrol Museum, don’t you? Shut down by the Attorney General last year? Assets, including the building, being sold off?

Well, about that…

Lawyers for the Texas attorney general’s office said Monday that a “cloud of procedural impropriety” is casting a shadow over the pending sale of the former Texas Highway Patrol Museum, and they recommended that the building be put back on the market.

The “procedural impropriety” seems to be that the high bidder says her bid was ignored. Also, the real estate broker would make a larger commission if the other bidder got the property. There’s some technical aspects that make it unclear which bid is best; that’s why the AG recommended that the building be listed again.

(Hattip on this to Grits for Breakfast. If Ms. Wong winds up getting the building, and we’re all still here, I want to do a road trip to Rosario’s Café y Cantina.)

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Cops, Food, Guns, Law, Museums, Sarcasm, Theatre | 1 Comment »

Bread blogging: French Onion Bread.

Saturday, January 26th, 2013

This one is from Laurence Simon. So finally you have a recipe that you can follow at home without purchasing a book from Amazon.

I followed Simon’s recipe more closely than I have any other recipe recently, even making several special trips to find date sugar. Sprouts didn’t have it. The Gateway Whole Foods didn’t have it. HEB, of course, doesn’t have it, even at Central Market.

(As a side note, I think the downtown Austin Whole Foods is the best place to go if you’re looking for unusual stuff. I griped previously about getting powdered goat’s milk; actually, both Sprouts and Whole Foods have it in large cans, as does Amazon. The recommendation is to use the can up within 8 weeks of opening, and I wasn’t going to use that much in 8 weeks. Amazon has smaller packages as well, but the shipping costs more than the product. It turns out the downtown Whole Foods also has the smaller packages, and date sugar too. So: shop the downtown Whole Foods. Thanks, Egon.)

Anyway, the only significant variation was that I used shredded Gruyère instead of Swiss or Emmenthaler. That’s what I had on hand, and I think that’s more traditional for French Onion soup. (Also, my machine doesn’t have a fruit and nut hopper; it beeps instead to let you know when to add fruit or nuts, so I threw the cheese in during that part of the cycle.)

How did it come out? I’m going to put the rest of this behind a jump; those who are bored with my bread blogging are cordially invited to skip to the next post, or for that matter the previous post. If you don’t like this one, just wait; there will be another one coming along shortly.

(more…)

Posted in Bread, Food | Comments Closed

More people who deserve your support.

Thursday, January 24th, 2013

I’m not putting this under “endorsements” because, technically, it isn’t one. I haven’t used the products of this company yet.

But I’d like to suggest that Guntag Signature Seasonings deserves your support.

Here’s the story: Guntag makes a lot of their money exhibiting at various outdoor shows. One of the shows they exhibit at is the Eastern Sports and Outdoor Show, which draws more than 200,000 people. This is a big event in terms of Guntag’s finances.

Well, this year, the people who run ESOS decided that they were going to ban modern sporting rifles from the show. This was a Bad Idea. Exhibitors, sponsors, and people who were doing promotional appearances all pulled out of the show. Smith and Wesson pulled out. Cabela’s pulled out. Ruger pulled out.

And Guntag pulled out, too.

We have made the costly decision to withdraw because it is the right thing to do. We are a young company that relies on this one venue to create our operating capital for the year; however we cannot support uninformed businesses caving to political pressures caused by broadly politicized events. We proudly support the 2nd Amendment in the capacity for which it was intended; the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. Our freedom to do so was not for hunting or competition shooting, but protection for law abiding citizens.

ESOS has now been postponed, but Guntag pulled out before the announcement was made. They took a stand on principle, even though it is going to hurt them.

I don’t have money to buy stuff from Guntag right now, but I can give them something to thank them for their stand. And that’s publicity here. If you’ve got the money, why not order up some seasonings from Guntag? I will if my finances ever improve; in the meantime, I’m willing to give them some free publicity, for whatever that may be worth.

Guntag guys: if you’re reading this and want some free ad space here, contact me. I’ll be happy to give it to you.

(Hattip on this: Borepatch gave me the idea for this post, and Shall Not Be Questioned has been all over the ESOS story like flies on a cow’s head at a Damien Hirst installation.)

Posted in Food, Guns | Comments Closed

Bread blogging: Sourdough Beer Bread.

Sunday, January 20th, 2013

I thought I’d go back and revisit a recipe I’d made recently, but didn’t document here: sourdough beer bread from Brody and Apter, pages 141-143.

I kind of screwed this one up. Instinctively I put in an entire tablespoon of yeast, which is standard for most Brody and Apter recipes. But I forgot this was a starter-based bread until after I added the yeast; I really only needed half that much (one and a half teaspoons). The end result was a bread that I think was over-yeasted and over risen, making the top kind of ugly.

(This time I used a better camera than the spectacular cell phone CrapCam.) Here’s a top view:

So, yeah, kind of lumpy and mis-shaped, at least as far as the top crust goes. But I blame the over-yeasting/over-rising for that. How does it look inside?

Not too bad, actually. It has a nice texture and a slight, but not overwhelming, sourdough tang to it. It toasts up well; I’ve been eating it for breakfast with some butter and honey. I also made a big pot of French Onion Soup, and this bread was a nice compliment to it just placed in the bowl with some grated Cheddar cheese (not traditional, but I was trying to use it up before it went bad). This would be a good sandwich bread, too; perhaps a nice patè, or some good meat and cheese.

I think I’d like a little bit more sourdough tang to it, but that may just be my starter. The nice thing about this bread is that you don’t need much beyond starter to make it; flour, yeast, salt, sugar, and some beer, all of which I generally have on hand. This is probably a B; maybe an A if I make it again with the correct amount of yeast.

I’ve got everything lined up now to make Brody’s Sourdough Chèvre Bread (have you ever tried to find powdered goat’s milk?), but I want to take a break from Brody. The next bread in the queue is Laurence Simon’s French Onion Bread. (Sorry, Mom.)

Posted in Bread, Food | Comments Closed

Bookmarks.

Saturday, January 12th, 2013

A couple of things I want to bookmark here, even though they’ve been all over the web, for two reasons:

  1. I want to get more serious about doing a “best articles” of the year for 2013, assuming we’re all still here at the end of 2013.
  2. I want to bookmark these for future reference.

These are mostly bookmarks for myself, so the rest of you can ignore this post if you’d like.

So:

“Here Is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie“, the absolutely crazy account of what happens when Paul Schrader, Lindsay Lohan, Bret Easton Ellis, and a porn star try to make a low-budget, funded on Kickstarter, movie. Hilarity ensues.

Also: “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek“. This is supposed to be an amazing use of interactive media to tell a story, and it is the kind of story that’s right up my alley; I just have not gotten around to going through it yet.

This isn’t really an “article of the year” candidate, but I wanted to point it out and bookmark it for future reference: “The Minimum Viable Kitchen“, or how to cook great food for an investment of under $1,000 in tools. I wouldn’t take this as gospel: while my two favorite kitchen knives are both Victorinox (and I should probably add that paring knife to the battery), I’ve heard some pretty negative things about the accessories for the Kitchenaid mixers. So take this with a grain of salt and do some hands-on work before making a major purchase (or even a minor one: Blood Bath and Beyond should let you fondle that Oxo whisk for a while before you buy it).

Posted in 2013, Clippings, Food, Reading list | Comments Closed

Bread blogging: Avery Island Hot Bread.

Wednesday, January 9th, 2013

The recipe came from Brody and Apter’s Bread Machine Baking, pgs. 236-240.

Slight modifications:

  • I coarsely ground some Chinese red chili peppers and cooked those briefly in three tablespoons of chili/garlic oil, and added that to the mix. (The recipe calls for “1 cup chopped red peppers sauteed in three tablespoons of olive oil, OR chili oil”.) Safety tip: after grinding spices, leave the grinder sit for about 15 minutes before taking the top off, unless you like breathing aerosolized spices.
  • For the one tablespoon of chopped canned chiles called for, I used canned chipolte peppers in adobo sauce, and included a fair amount of the sauce. I think the adobo gave the bread an interesting color.
  • I used habanero Tabasco instead of the regular Tabasco called for. I probably put in more like 15 drops instead of 10.
  • I made my own chile honey with a tablespoon of ground chipolte and a eight ounce container of honey, warmed a little in the microwave and left to sit for about two days.

End result? Well, the photo of the loaf I took before cutting it turned out crappy. I’m mostly happy with the way the top crust turned out, but there’s a weird indentation on the bottom at one side of the loaf; almost as if it didn’t rise and expand around the bread paddle. I’m not sure what happened there.

As for the inside:

It has a slightly coarse, but not unpleasant, mouth feel (probably due to the cornmeal). In terms of taste, this is a really assertive bread. It isn’t overwhelmingly hot, but there’s a slight and lingering spice burn to it. I wouldn’t recommend this as a morning breakfast bread, but it tastes pretty good for lunch with some leftover fresh cheddar on top, or just with some butter and perhaps a little honey. I think it’d go well with chili or perhaps something Cajun.

I think I’m going to give this a B, mostly because of the bottom crust problem. I’d make it again, especially as an accompaniment to something that would stand up to the flavor. Next time, I’d take the two teaspoons of salt the recipe calls for and substitute a small amount of ghost pepper salt for part of that. (Trust me: a little ghost pepper salt goes a long way.)

Next up, I was considering making a sourdough goat cheese bread, but the recipe calls for “powdered goat’s milk”. I can actually get that at Sprouts, but they want $13 for a large can that I won’t use all of in eight weeks. I’ll have to see if I can find a smaller size.

Comments and criticisms welcome below.

Posted in Bread, Food | Comments Closed

Resolved.

Friday, January 4th, 2013

I think Calvin has the right idea.

But I was puttering around in the kitchen yesterday, putting together a loaf of sourdough beer bread, and a couple of thoughts occurred to me.

  1. There’s something kind of magical in the transformation of water, flour, and yeast to bread. I know some of the science, but it still kind of amazes me when I dump a bunch of stuff in one end, and get something I can eat (that tastes good!) out of the other.
  2. I have a really nice bread machine that I haven’t been using as much as I should. I need to step that up, and I’ve already started working in that direction.
  3. I’ve been working through, or plan to start working through, several cookbooks: primarily Bread Machine Baking, though I want to try adapting some of the ones from Breads from the La Brea Bakery to bread machine use. Laurence Simon has some recipes on his site that I’d like to try as well.
  4. I’ve also been improvising some breads. For example, on Sunday I made a basic white bread from the cookbook that came with the machine, but I added a tablespoon of Penzeys Italian Herb mix and 1/2 cup of grated parmesan. It came out okay, but a little salty for my taste. (A major reason it came out that way is that I misread the recipe and added too much salt. If I had put in the correct amount, I think it would have been better, even with the added salt from the cheese.)
  5. But I haven’t been documenting the recipes I’ve tried, or my improvisations.

So I’m going to start keeping a bread journal of what I bake, where it came from, what changes/improvisations I’ve made, and how it came out.

I’m just using a simple notebook for this right now. But I’m thinking about posting these as regular entries (maybe once a week; as a single guy, a loaf a week is about what I go through) on a blog. Probably here; I thought about doing this on the SDC blog, but that’s more restaurant targeted than food in general. I don’t see that fitting in with the shared vision Lawrence and I have for that blog.

Would folks be interested in this? I don’t think there’s any danger of me turning into a foodie d’bag: TJIC would probably…well, maybe not sneer, but at least say something to me for using a bread machine rather than mixing and kneading by hand, for starters.

I’d also like to get some feedback on what I might be doing wrong. The sourdough beer bread tastes pretty good and has just about the right texture for my taste, but the top crust came out cracked and uneven. (The basic white bread+ I made came out distorted: one end rose to a normal level, but the other end just barely rose at all. I blame that on the salt problem. It was also pretty dense, but again, the salt problem, plus I kind of expect cheese breads to be dense.)

How about it, folks? Feel free to leave comments.

(I haven’t said this in a while, so let me drop this in here: if you buy stuff from Amazon using the links above or the search box to the side, I get a small kickback which I could use right now. Just saying; no obligation to buy.)

(Oh, and speaking of magic/science, I’ve started reading Ruhlman’s Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking. So far, I’m enjoying it; he’s making me want to try some of these things for myself, which I think is a high compliment for a food book.)

(Note to self: look for good kitchen scale when out thrift-shopping again.)

(Note to self 2: they’re really not that much on Amazon. Does anyone have a recommendation?)

Posted in Admin, Books, Food | Comments Closed

Random notes: January 2, 2013.

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013

“It is my belief that any commander that orders pilots out for combat in a F2A-3 should consider the pilot as lost before leaving the ground,” wrote Capt. P. R. White of the Marines.

Would you like to make great coffee and espresso? Well, you could get the NYT to pay for you to take classes from people with names like “Ant”. And you could pay anywhere from $100 to $600 for a burr grinder.

Or instead you could read this rant by Stingray, which pretty much tells you everything important about making good coffee. (Language warning on that link, just FYI.)

I do think there’s something to be said for the NYT piece:

The essence of good espresso, of good coffee in general, revolves around three numbers: the amount of quality dry coffee used, the amount of time water flows through it and the amount of coffee that comes out the other end. When the ratio is right, the process extracts the best flavor. If it is wrong, the good flavor never surfaces or is watered down. A mistake in seconds or grams, I am coming to learn, is the difference between something wonderful and awful.

It seems like the important thing is to use good coffee, use enough of it, and don’t let it sit and burn. Unless you’re a supertaster (which I am not), I doubt you can tell the difference between a $250 burr grinder and a $10 blade grinder, or an AeroPress versus a Chemex.

It isn’t rocket surgery, folks. It’s just coffee.

Posted in Clippings, Food, History, Planes | Comments Closed

Random notes: December 21, 2012.

Friday, December 21st, 2012

I have been critical of the HouChron in the past, but I have to give them credit for this headline:

(Click to embiggen.)

If only they’d added “Women, minorities hardest hit” as a subhed, it would have been a classic.

Marijuana has, in many parts of this state, become the equivalent of a beer in a paper bag on the streets of Greenwich Village. It is losing whatever stigma it ever had and still has in many parts of the country, including New York City, where the kind of open marijuana use that is common here would attract the attention of any passing law officer.

Heh. “a beer in a paper bag”. Bunny Colvin, call your office, please.

Black truffles are selling in Paris for around $1,200 a pound.

Black truffles and other types of truffles are becoming scarcer, and some scientists say it is because of the effects of global climate change on the fungus’s Mediterranean habitat. One wholesaler says prices have risen tenfold over the last dozen years.

Posted in Clippings, Food, Law | Comments Closed

Signs! Signs and portents!

Wednesday, December 19th, 2012

More evidence that the end of the world is coming: Lawrence and I actually disagree on something.

Specifically, what we disagree on is that I don’t think Thai Noodle House is the worst Thai restaurant in Austin. It has been a while since I’ve eaten at Thai Noodle House, but I don’t remember it being as bad as Chang Thai.

Posted in Food, Guns, Media | 2 Comments »

Random notes: December 5, 2012.

Wednesday, December 5th, 2012

So has anyone been following the Indian Olympic Committee story? In brief: India wants to elect people to their national Olympic Committee following their rules, the IOC says “No, you’ve got to follow our rules”, and suspends the Indian committee. Suspension means that Indian athletes can’t compete in IOC sanctioned events, there will be no IOC funding for Indian athletes, and Indian sports officials can’t attend international meetings.

The Indian committee has basically said “F you” and elected Lalit Bhanot secretary general of the committee. Bhanot was unopposed.

Bhanot also spent 11 months in jail before he managed to make bail. Why? Corruption charges, specifically related to the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

The humiliating Olympic suspension follows India’s hosting of the Commonwealth Games in 2010 in which a pedestrian bridge collapsed, suppliers went unpaid, human excrement was left in athletes’ quarters and the budget ballooned to $8 billion from $75 million, much of it unaccounted for. Local newspapers, citing internal documents, detailed $80 rolls of toilet paper, $61 soap dispensers that normally cost $1.97 and $250,000 high-altitude simulators that usually sell for $11,830.

“to $8 billion from $75 million”? Wow. That’s corruption on an epic level: gold medal worthy corruption, if you ask me.

And speaking of corruption, the NYT explains how a Ferrari crash led to a change in the leadership of the party:

China’s departing president, Hu Jintao, entered the summer in an apparently strong position after the disgrace of Bo Xilai, previously a rising member of a rival political network who was brought down when his wife was accused of murdering a British businessman. But Mr. Hu suffered a debilitating reversal of his own when party elders — led by his predecessor, Jiang Zemin — confronted him with allegations that Ling Jihua, his closest protégé and political fixer, had engineered the cover-up of his son’s death.

“The Maid of the Mist” folks, who run the tours on the NY side of Niagara Falls, have made a new deal with the state that should keep the boats running. (Previously. Also.)

“Restaurant Impossible: The Musical!” All singing, all dancing, all Robert Irvine!

Okay, we kid. Slightly. But Adam Gopnick of the New Yorker is working with some other folks on a musical based on Gopnick’s book The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food.

As long as we’re on the theatre beat:

The musical “Scandalous,” Kathie Lee Gifford’s Broadway debut as a lyricist and book writer, will close this Sunday after 31 preview performances and 29 regular performances, the producers announced on Tuesday night.

It is a little late now, but perhaps, if we’re lucky, this will free up Ms. Gifford for more Christmas specials.

Also closing: “The Anarchist”, David Mamet’s latest play.

Posted in Clippings, Food, Law, Sports, Theatre | Comments Closed

Darden, Darden, Darden…

Tuesday, December 4th, 2012

The Olive Garden, Red Lobster and LongHorn Steakhouse parent lowered its profit and revenue projections for the quarter ended Nov. 25, blaming sour promotions in its eateries, Superstorm Sandy, its purchase of the Yard House USA chain and even its efforts to mitigate the coming costs of healthcare reform, also known as “Obamacare.”

Also blamed: global warming and the vertical integration of the broiler industry.

Mostly, though, we’re using this as a transparent excuse to link to the legendary tale of Red Lobster and the all-you-can-eat crab fiasco. It nearly put the chain out of business, but it also has provided us with laughs for the past decade.

Posted in Clippings, Food | Comments Closed

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