Laura Miller: “We’re so used to linking masculinity with carnivorousness that we seldom stop to recognize how illogical it is. Just because vegetarianism is correlated with pacifism — people who draw the line at killing animals are probably loath to kill human beings, too — it doesn’t follow that eating flesh, and especially the flesh of mammals, causes the battery of aggressive behaviors we choose to call manly. Yet even today, insulting vegetarians is presented as a display of bold, defiant machismo, a way of saying, ‘I understand and embrace the bloody truths of life with lusty vigor, unlike you salad-noshing pansies!'”
Category / Food
On the Upside, This is Good News for Those Who Sup Upon the Bland Monoflavorous Offerings at Red Lobster
New York Times: “Cod, haddock, white hake, halibut, cusk and dozens of other groundfish, fish that live near the ocean bottom, mingled with clams, shrimp, lobster and mussels under the creamy surface of the stew, cresting a puddle of yellow butter here, a slick of smoky pork fat there. Today there is nothing but lobster to be fished commercially near Stonington. Lobster floats alone in the local chowder, pinking the cream and, in the mind of food lovers, perhaps elevating Everyman’s dish to luxury status. But when Mr. Bridges looks at a single species stew he sees a dangerously impoverished fishery.” (via MeFi)
Politics and the Culinary Language
New York Times: “And according to [food service industry research firm principal] Tom Miner, ‘The food has to be fast, it has to be handheld, and No. 1 across the board is egg and cheese on a bread carrier.'”
I don’t know if I find the phrase “bread carrier” as appealing as Jenny D, in large part because I think it’s silly to put “bread” and “carrier” in the same noun phrase. I can get behind “bread bowl” because the bread has been constructed as such. But to me, “bread carrier” sounds like a Samsonite innovation gone terribly wrong. It also suggests a strange cowardice on the part of Tom Miner. Why not just say bagel like the rest of us? Or did Miner, forced into the position of advocating food at large, feel the need to be non-exclusionary about bread in general? Did he fear an array of phone calls and emails from those restaurants and wholesalers using English muffins? Who knew that bread could be so political?
Litigious Eating in San Francisco
What do you get when you cross DVD Verdict with Chowhound? What else? Fud Court!
The Carrot Stick Conspiracy
Okay, folks, there is a vital issue that has been troubling me this morning, one I hope that I’m not alone on.
What on earth happened to carrot sticks? There was a time, perhaps fifteen years ago, when one went to a party and found copious carrot sticks available on a vegetable platter. These carrot sticks were not ellipitical, but pared down into a thin three-sided stick. If they were particularly compelling carrot sticks, each end would form a perfect isosceles triangle. The sticks, I must point out, were much longer than the baby carrots we enjoy today.
But those halcyon days of veggie snacking are gone! Now the carrot industry, having made something of a splash on the baby carrot front, has now made our decisions for us. One now picks up a baby carrot and dips it into ranch dressing, wondering what became of those glorious orange triangular prisms.
Understand, dear readers, that I harbor no particular ill will towards ellipitically pared vegetables. I’m just wondering why everyone has willingly accepted this development without question. Why is there no army of scruffy twentysomethings picketing Safeway, pointing out that the carrot stick is now near extinct and that this insensitive move on the part of carrot growers simply will not stand?
Am I the only one who misses the carrot stick? Am I the only one who nibbles the ends of a baby carrot, hoping that the triangle will emerge like a sculpture embedded within a slab of clay? Why didn’t we get a vote on this? Surely, the triangle is just as compelling as the circle!