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.