don't point that at me

okay i'm totally stealing this idea from this guy but i thought it was cute and thought i'd give my own version a go...

what if we attributed the wine spectator points system to things other than the grape?

mr. jefferson's university: 92

mark wahlberg: 94

hugh grant: 53

arizona republic's food photography: 4

the onion: 100 points

walruses: 87

um... can i use negative numbers?

a rose by any other name is NOT as sweet

c/o Treehugger.com :

USDA WATERS DOWN ORGANIC STANDARDS. Organic food is organically grown, except when it isn't. Confused? So are we. (Man, are we ever.) The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) greenlighted a proposal late last Friday allowing 38 new non-organic ingredients in products bearing the "USDA Organic" seal, despite more than 10,000 e-mails and letters from concerned consumers and farmers, according to the Organic Consumer's Association.
The USDA's proposal will mean that Anheuser Bush will be allowed to sell its Organic Wild Hops Beer without using any organic hops at all. USDA Organic-certified sausages, brats, and breakfast links will be allowed contain intestines from factory-farmed animals raised on chemically grown feed, synthetic hormones, slaughterhouse waste, and antibiotics. Fish oil with the USDA seal of approval may also contain toxins such as PCBs and mercury for that extra flavor. Cats and dogs will be forced to live together. (Okay, we made that last one up.)
If, like Howard Beale on Network, you're mad as hell and you're not going to take it anymore, seize advantage of the 60-day public-comment period and send a letter to the USDA now. ::more ::"Organic Food is, Like, Organic, Right?"

more equal than others

this is a great photo essay showing the different ways that people interact with different animals - some destined for the dinner table, some preened for show, some tested with medicines, some cuddled for therapy.

and it has another cute duck picture so i couldn't resist sharing...

paradigm shift

good read

first date: dara thai

i know that it's probably a good idea to wait to try a restaurant until they actually have a permanent sign posted out front.

anthem is trying to grow as fast as folks are flocking up there, and commercial rents aren't cheap, especially on the main drag, anthem way. so i understand the push for places to open their doors and try to start bringing in revenue.

i have no problem with high school kids having to use the large button calculator at the counter to figure out tax and change, or the lack of a liquor license, but one should at least try to get all the ingredients necessary for the dishes on the menu before asking people to try them.

i ordered the pad thai which had all of one tiny piece of green onion for any greenery other than school-lunch-lady shredded lettuce with the pieces of beet thrown in (for no real reason 'cause kids won't eat something purple unless it's frozen on a stick.)

the chicken was very dry, with kind of the same consistency as the overcooked scrambled egg thrown in. mushy flat noodles more like fat fettucine than rice noodle, no tamarind perceptible...

i can't judge a place on one dish i know, but the whole experience of the place felt so unfinished, just like the recipe. i anxiously await the signage... perhaps their thai iced tea is so intoxicating that it overwhelms the rest of the underwhelming.

duck... duck....

i really don't think the world would stop turning if overpaid celebrity chefs couldn't put foie gras on their menu. i mean we've already got the word "truffle" which can add a perfectly respectable $23.00 to the wording of any dish in which it appears. come on.

clean plate club

not to be outdone by America in anything, under the guise of conservation, China is now chasing the big American bottom-line.

Hong Kong restaurants will now charge money for food left on your plate at the end of your meal. apparently foodstuffs make up 1/3 of all landfill fill now.

so clean your plates, you know you'll just be hungry in an hour anyways.

a very simple wish

by nikki giovanni

i want to write an image
like a log-cabin quilt pattern
and stretch it across all the lonely people
who just don't fit in
we might make a world if i do that

i want to boil a stew with all the leftover folk
whose bodies are full
of empty lives
we might feed a world if i do that

twice in our lives
we need direction
when we are young and innocent
when we are old and cynical
but since the old refused to discipline us
we now refuse to discipline them
which is a comtemptuous way
for us to respond to each other

i'm always surprised
that it's easier to stick
a gun in someone's face
or a knife in someone's back
than to touch skin to skin
anyone whom we like

i should imagine if nature holds true
one day we will lose our hands
since we do no work nor make any love
if nature is true
we shall all lose our eyes
since we cannot even now distinguish the good from the evil
i should imagine we shall lose our souls
since we have so blatently put them up
for sale and glutted the marketplace
thereby depressing the price

i wonder why we don't love
not some people way on
the other side of the world with strange customs and habits
not some folk from whom we were sold
hundreds of years ago
but people who look like us
who think like us
who want to love us why
don't we love them

i want to make a quilt of all the patches and find
one long strong pole
to lift it up
i've a mind to build
a whole new world

want to play

bacon butties

N = C + {fb(cm) · fb(tc)} + fb(Ts) + fc · ta

(this, according to British scientists, is the formula for the perfect bacon sandwich)

there are a lot things happening right now that have me really thinking about food and my impact on animals and the environment.

now i know this sounds strange to say about what is probably the most suburbanite planned community in existence, but i can attribute a lot of eye-opening to my impending move up to anthem.... 30% of the community there was required to remain wild and undeveloped, so there are large desert washes and bunnies and turkey vultures looking for bunnies.

there has been so much hype and hoopla about 'going green' and organic products. phoenix needs to join the 'green' movement - and go brown. the amount of damage and displacement that the development here in the Valley does is staggering, and kudos to anthem for making an (albeit bland HOA approved shade of brown) effort to preserve what arizona is supposed to look like.

the damage done by poisonous pet food was another wake-up call, obviously.

and the clincher is that i have been reading a book lately called the way we eat which traces families' diets backwards from store to source. now i by no means purchase food from wal*mart, but the authors traced a typical family's groceries from that big box store back to the horrific processing plants and pig farms and the deplorable conditions that so many animals live and die in.

so remember that your dinner has a face not just a formula.

happy easter

organic anthem?

*photo credit: madelyn's restaurant... i didn't take this shot

so it looks like greasy spoon is going to be relocating upstate, to more "polished silver" digs (hidden outdoor webcams are very useful things).

now anthem is not exactly on any culinary maps whatsoever, but i'm hoping that one upcoming new spot looks promising: brian ford is bringing his fresh organic fare from his farm at south mountain days to the city with madelyn's restaurant (named after his daughter, cute)

we're trying to figure out why the dining options up in anthem are so sparse... is square footage too spendy? is the country club really all that good? are there so many building restrictions that we just can't find the good restaurants that are already there? ford is the first chef to venture into that territory, and hats off - it will be a huge change from the gardens at the farm to the approved-shade-of-brown-stucco strip mall.

go nobuo!

well the valley takes a (hopefully temporary) step back in the culinary world standings with the departure of our one james beard award winner bradford thompson from mary elaine's at the phoenician. bradford resigned today but will stay on through april.

nobuo fukuda: omakase, bro. you're our only hope this year for a prize.

next year: kevin binkley.

debutante ball

uppity baseball food in scottsdale = wok fired soba noodles. kudos to this guy flaming up a storm at scottsdale stadium during the giants-cubs series this march. i can only judge from my own uppity principle standpoint, as i just can't bring myself to buy these dang things at a baseball game. call me closed-minded but my love of baseball was bred at camden yards and wrigley field.

here in the sand canyon state i see more of these chinese food boxes with chopsticks sticking out around the stadiums than mustard-stained mouths at giants home games. (except for when the cubbies are there, then there is at least some sense of normalcy to the place)... hence this shot:

i don't care if i ever get back...

in like a lion...

i like this guy. there is an article in the new yorker on gordon ramsay that i think really shovels through all his screaming and ranting and really hits on his food.

bruni gave him only two stars in the times; for the most part because he thought the food was boring... the interior of Gordon Ramsay in the London is white on white and the dishes had the slow-calm of walking through a cloud of dry ice, the complete opposite of the firey underworld of Hell's Kitchen that we all know and love/hate.

buford in the new yorker explains this quite incitefully, saying that for all of ramsay's torments, he finds solace on the plate and in the taste of his food, even though getting there is laced with so many vulgarities.... what matters is what goes into your mouth not what comes out of his.

hello? hello? *hiccup*

funny gift idea: it's a flask

radio arcadia

we finally have a little bit of word on what is going to be the next incarnation of la grande orange at 40th street and campbell - construction is well underway, the building has a series of stucco arches and the republic says the new place will be updated italian classics. the new name: Radio Milano.

i unfortunately haven't been back to see my favorite bartender Sander at postino's since the place has suddenly gone hip and inaccessible. we always used to go in monday nights for the pizza/wine deal there but we stopped at the beginning of football season.

Sander is the quintissential 'tender, who, only the second time we visited, would see us come in and before i could even set my bag on the back of a barchair, he had out two wine glasses and my favorite russian river pinot and without a word waits for my smile and nod. that's a bartender.

eat this book

new book on my nightstand... it's another book where putting it down, you feel as if you were just having a pleasant conversation with a good friend who knows your thoughts very intimately. she's very comfortable and a lot of her thoughts frighteningly feel like they are straight out of my own head, although i find myself judging her whims at the same time envying her adventures.

anyways i include it on a food blog because the book's first section is all about the goal of finding herself through the pleasures of eating and drinking in italy. it's light on the gastronomy and heavy on the sheer enjoyment of beautiful meals.

huzzah

i hit the arizona renaissance festival last weekend and it was a complete hoot. there are so many folks that come dressed the part who aren't working there, it's hilarious. while i did not partake in any of the many foodstuffs available on-a-stick, it was a killer day.

fake jousting = WWF on horses with mug of wine instead of plastic cup of beer.

what an interesting community but it makes me wonder just what the scene behind the scenes is really like. i've met actual warlocks and witches - sat right across the dining table from a man who morphed into a demon and back in barely a second... it happened. the whole "goth" thing isn't just black fingernails and skull earrings.

i hope that the renaissance community isn't scary and dark behind ye olde false facades.

please drive through

phoenix is now about to find out how well their air conditioners in their cars work. or don't work. these drive-past coffee houses are such gems up in the pacific northwest, basic little sheds you could probably buy at lowes with lanes to drive up, grab your joe and go. no frills, the only challenge is to keep track of which punch card to use at which hut.

as i was saying before i was so rudely interrupted...