Comments on: Eat the Rich

By: James

James — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 02:36:20 +0000

I love the vocabulatory swagger. The contrast between ‘corpulent title’ and ‘lazy bastard’ is like watching a foodie wash down a teaspoon of caviar with a can of Coke,and I’m practically itching to use ’smug simpleton’ in a sentence.

Don’t change a thing!

(Just discovered the blog after being a Bat Segundo fan for years. I love that too!)

By: DrMabuse

DrMabuse — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 11:57:27 +0000

albtraum: wld u like 2 hv my baby and sit n front of da tv? lol!

By: albtraum

albtraum — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 07:43:03 +0000

I guess what I was trying to say is that you should ignore your “inner thesaurus”.

That little voice that told you that “dissipate” or “ineluctable” made sense the way you used them above.

You’ve more or less admitted that you think more syllables = importance, in your post about how “France” is too short of a name for such an important country.

If that were the case, Ouagadougou and Montevideo would be the world’s most important capital cities, and every sentence would be improved by adding “ineluctable”. I’d like to respectfully disagree.

By: DrMabuse

DrMabuse — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 06:12:15 +0000

I wrote this piece in less than an hour without once consulting a thesaurus. So sorry to disappoint you.

By: albtraum

albtraum — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 05:38:54 +0000

Your writing is possibly the most advanced case of adult thesaurus-itis I’ve ever seen. Almost every single word has been replaced by a clumsier, “fancier” substitute.

Is this some sort of performance art?

By: B²

B² — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:59:42 +0000

So OK, Laura Miller’s a bit of a ninny, as any reasonably aware Salon reader knows. But I’m interested to know what your beef is with Mark Bittman in particular. Speaking as someone cooking about 80% vegetarian and mostly organic, whose weekly household food budget is less than a typical dinner for one at the local upscale restaurant, I’ve actually found Bittman (speaking mostly of his blog and his How to Cook Everything/Vegetarian book here) to be a valuable resource, and his “mostly vegetarian” diet a reasonable and workable alternative to my former meat-centric ways. I haven’t read this book in question yet, but everything I’ve heard from him regarding food has been so inoffensively moderate, I’m curious to know what positions he’s taking that are so controversial.

By: Elizabeth McCullough

Elizabeth McCullough — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:47:10 +0000

I was interested to learn from Miller’s review that biscuits are a “special occasion” food. My grandmother baked a pan of biscuits nearly every day of her life.

By: Miracle Jones

Miracle Jones — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 06:47:53 +0000

If I had money or time, I would code a web database that was the opposite of a cookbook so that poor people could eat well, too.

What do I mean?

Cookbooks all work the same way. You flip through the pages searching for something that sounds good to you, and then you see if you have the tools to make it. If you don’t, you keep flipping until you see something that fits with your “kitchen” and abilities. Finally, you settle on something close to what you want and then drag your ass to the store to buy the four ingredients you don’t have. Taragon, for instance.

People who must cook to save money as opposed to people who choose to cook because of some sort of ethical position end up making the same four dishes because that’s all they can remember every time they shop. They shop like scared rats, afraid to buy anything wrong. One of the dishes they make is always pasta with something old from the refrigerator mixed into it (like baking soda), often still cold.

If I had money or time, I would create a database of recipes that was instead indexed to INGREDIENTS. You would plug in what kitchen tools and ingredients you have, and then it would tell you what recipes you can make, broken down by amount of people you need to feed, prep time, and nutritional value.

YOU HAVE:

A spoonful of flour
A cup of hot water
A knuckle full of salt
Fire
A spoon
A cup

YOU CAN MAKE:

Crackers
Salt-Water Soup
Room-Temperature Water Paste Salad

People could upload every accidental discovery, and people could rate the recipes as they use them so that everyone is part of the open-source discovery-making process. Sort of like “Pandora” for food. We would all discover what ingredients are extraneous and how to get the most out of what we buy.

This would make going to the store great. You just buy whatever you can afford, toss in something peculiar, and then see what new recipes you can make when you get home. Also, this would reveal what ingredients are the most universal for your particular palate so you could make sure to always have them in stock and to always use them up in every recipe you can find that calls for them, so that nothing goes bad and your kitchen doesn’t become a rotten sinkhole due to your drinking binges like mine would be if I had a refrigerator.

“Chuck, it says we can’t make anything. We are going to starve to death.”

“Smash one of them earwigs, Mary, and then type in “earwigs” and see what we get. Also, type in “dignity, perseverance, and toothpaste.”

“We are saved! I love you!”

(Chuck and Mary spent all their money on a laptop and this month’s internet bill, evidently. Bad Chuck and Mary! Type in “remorse!”)

Maybe this open-source ingredient database already exists. If so, let’s hear about it! Let’s use it!