Category: General

for the love of god, someone stop me — i can’t keep my head out of these foodblogs! Argh. This one is a new entry in my Register of Frustration & Deprivation**: the crisps and snacks category of snackspot.org. Memories of lamb & mint, chicken tikka, and pickled onion potato chips come flooding back…. yum. Sigh.
** thanks to Calvin Trillin for articulating and naming the horrible torture that comes from being a traveling food whore, wherein you discover and fall in love with delicious foodstuffs not available outside their native land.

I have long taken comfort in the presence of littlelee, spleen and hedge in my life, fellow foodsluts who provide companionship and emotional justification for my chow-related excesses. And though I knew there were others of our kind out there, now I can find them and read them at all hours of the day and night. Huzzah, MORE FOOD INFORMATION!
Of course, this should not be so shocking and exciting for me, since after all I have my own food blog here to provide entertainment and happy food thoughts to the public. But it never really occurred to me that anyone would read it; it was mostly for my own amusement. Then tallasiandude set up usage tracking, and it became clear that people are actually linking to, bookmarking and reading this here blog. Ay caramba! This of course led to a delightful two hours wandering around other people’s food blogs, our favorites of which (so far) are listed under links, below left.
Some of these have awesome recipes on them. Others are even nerdier than mine, which is utterly wonderful. And others are just plain people I want to eat dinner with. For instance, consider this musing on weight-loss. Not only is this exactly my own attitude on the subject, but it includes a diatribe against low-fat cheese, mentions of suet pastry, a completely justifiable gyoza bender, and a delicious recipe for cucumber salad. The only thing I’d add is a link to Margaret Cho’s website, wherein she discusses her own weight-loss epiphany.
I’m not sure this approach would work as well for us as it did for Margaret, because we didn’t have such effective hangups around chocolate cake and pizza in the first place — sometimes I think my whole life is a fuck-it diet — but there are fundamental truths there. The idea of leaving delicious food on the plate uneaten because YOU CAN GET MORE LATER is a mindblower. (I’ve only recently gotten to the point where I’ll leave it on the plate but then bulldoze the server into wrapping it to go for later.) There is not one thing wrong with eating suet pastry and triple creme cheese and white bread and toro nigiri and Kraft Mac & Cheese and b’giant steaks… it’s only how much of them you eat. And since I am no longer poor, I need to accept and internalize the fact that I don’t have to snarf up the entire contents of the free buffet, but can just run out and buy more nevat or organic chocolate or wild arugula or bulgarian feta anytime I like.
America. What a country. *grin*
(thanks to everyone who actually reads this blog, and to maki for having such a cool blog: I am inspired now to stop being such a lazyass and actually write out specific recipes for things.)

Dude, I have GOT to find me a White Castle. Tiny little burgers with fried onions, in a cute white castle. Never been to one, but yum. And cravings aside, this movie’s awesome — love it, quoting it already.

check it out: the Onion AVClub reports on nasty dollar-store confections. Heh.

http://dlazarek.web.wesleyan.edu/vegas/cuisine
This is so excellent it makes up for the fact that I haven’t blogged in a while.

This may not be the start of the new all-butter diet fad, but a new study has been published that suggests that fat isn’t the evil-doer that many take it for and may even be good for you. [Reuters]

“A relatively high amount of fat in the diet may be a boon to a healthy person’s cholesterol levels, a small study suggests. On the other hand, limiting fat intake too much could have the opposite effect.”

So no more funny looks when I request aggressive butter application on my popcorn at the Coolidge, thank you very much.

Thanks to P for taking us to a great mexican place in Albany — El Mariachi. Authentic dishes, good flavors, fresh ingredients… mmmm. Try the sangria — it’s excellent and better than the margaritas. WHY don’t we have any decent mexican food here? Perhaps it’s hiding in the neighborhoods I don’t frequent, much the way the decent BBQ is in Dorchester.
California strawberries are in season again, and cheeep in the markets. Get ’em while they’re yummy!

from brian:
The following appeared on Boston.com:
Headline: Monument to processed cheese planned
Date: April 29, 2004
“Moscow, not short of monuments, will soon boast one to a Soviet-era processed cheese.”
I love my friends. They know me so well.

Check out Taquitos.net. The site is a bit cluttered, but their hearts (and stomachs) are in the right place.
I initially thought it was a commercial site, (I must have been thinking of Tostitos® corn chips) but that misconception was quickly corrected with a quick peek at the FAQ:

Q: Do you manufacture chips?
A: Nope. Mainly, we eat chips.

Well, there you go.

Check out this article on Slate where the author runs a head-to-head comparison of the Häagen Dazs vanilla ice creams of potato chips. They evaluated 8 types of “gourmet” chips, although only 5 different brands: Lay’s (2), Kettle (2), Boulder, Terra (2) and Cape Cod.
My only real issue: where’s the control sample?