Fat Guy

William Safire reported in the Times that the first contextual use of the term Blog that he could find dated to 1999. Certainly, in 1997, when I started doing what today everybody would call a blog, nobody every called it a blog. They called it a website. In 1998, when the New York Times did a short piece on my website, the news value was that there was an amateur critic out there keeping a restaurant review journal. Yes, there was a time when that was news. I don't think the term really took hold, however, until the period 2002-2004, when the political blogs became important.

I'm just sayin' it's not necessarily accurate to project those motives and preferences onto the world of bloggers and writers at large. For one thing, the burnout rate is quite high among those who write for pay -- look at how many people write one book and never write another, or work at a newspaper for a year or two before going on to a non-writing career. For another thing, there are tons of people in the publishing industry, at every level from writers to editors and beyond, who have wealthy parents and don't need to work at all -- their newspaper, magazine and publishing company salaries barely cover their taxis and nightlife expenses. And for still another thing, I think you undersell yourself when you say you have no other skills. I'm confident that you could excel in many high-paying white-collar professions, if you wanted to. But you don't want to -- you'd rather make less money and write. Or maybe I'm projecting.

New York magazine was on top of this too: http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2007/03/labor...on_grill_1.html

At the same time, if the only reward for writing is the paycheck then you may as well get a job at McDonald's! (Unless you're J.K. Rowling.) But otherwise I'd say nearly 100% of writers need to get many things out of it beyond the paycheck in order to make it worthwhile. A lot of the folks who are blogging recreationally already have a source of income, perhaps from a job that doesn't provide literary fulfillment, so they don't have to worry about getting paid. They can do it for the pure joy of it. For me, getting paid to write is nice -- essential, actually -- but everything I get paid to write comes with strings attached. There are editors, there are deadlines, there are space constraints, etc. Whereas, when I write online -- in my case my recreational writing consists of eG Forums posts as opposed to blog entries -- I have nearly complete freedom. I find that rewarding, even on top of my paid writing.

The Wayback archive picks up a lot of that stuff. I know that whenever I'm looking for content from dead websites, I find it using Wayback.

I think the challenge with taxonomy is that most observers don't have the patience to pay attention to the fact that the larger web efforts are multifaceted. I mean, take the eGullet Society's webspace. It's virtually impossible to get anybody in the press to describe the Society or any of its web services accurately. We're constantly seeing things like "I used to be really into all the blogs, like eGullet" (that's a quote from an article about Grant Achatz). Our web pages are often cited as eGullet.com even though we shifted to .org years ago. So, I'm sure the poor folks at Serious Eats have the same problem, because they provide so many different services, including blog aggregation. The problem when you're a category-defying effort (like we have here, and like Serious Eats is) is that everybody still puts you in a category.

I think it's the diversity of the subject matter that makes generalizations tricky. In New York, for example, which is a city particularly rich in food media, there are many niches. The Eater blog really came out of nowhere and became dominant in the food-news-and-gossip category, though Grub Street has made inroads there. Those are both professional blogs, which used to be oxymoron but has now become a standard use of the term. Dynamic, interactive, group discussion forums don't really compete with Eater and Grub Street in the area of news and gossip reporting. Indeed, the relationship is synergistic: just last night I posted about the Saigon Grill delivery strike in New York, and when I got online this morning it was mentioned in Eater with a link back to us. Likewise, there are many topics here that start with a link to a story Eater broke. There's no discussion on Eater; there's no formal news-and-gossip reporting function in eG Forums (except for our excellent media digests, which are sort of a different category); so except on the rare occasion that Eater takes a swipe at us or vice-versa, it's mostly a mutually beneficial relationship. Then you have the Diner's Journal blog on the New York Times website. The Times has always been pretty bad at doing online content, but the Diner's Journal effort has at least produced some interesting material. It gives more depth and nuance to the Times's food coverage, and especially to Frank Bruni's work (he's still the blog's main voice.) Those are all things we wouldn't have called blogs back in the day, when blogs were by definition amateur efforts. The other thing non-blog-like about Eater, Grub Street and Diner's Journal is that they're not really journals aka "weblogs." Diner's Journal is even called a journal (the name derives from the print column that it replaced), but it isn't. It has some journal-like entries, but plenty of more news-and-essay stuff. So if you think of blogs as online journals, the professional blogs are really something else. They're news services dressed up in the now-familiar blog format. Of course, New York regional food (mostly restaurant dining) blogs are only a tiny part of the food-blogosphere. There are thousands of blogs that focus more on cooking. There are the blogs by people whose only food writing occurs on their blogs, and there are the blogs by people who are food writers at various stages of their careers.

Seems there was a short piece last week in the Times Metro section about this strike, which may really be more of a protest after a lockout. The story, by Anthony Ramirez, titled "Hoping to Unionize, Deliverymen Picket Upper West Side Restaurant," ran on 8 March 2007 and is available only to TimesSelect subscribers. The core anecdote in the article involved a Saigon Grill delivery man named Jian Xie, 23 years old. He makes 30 or 40 deliveries a night, going as many as 40 blocks (80 round trip) by bicycle to deliver a single order. One night, he was held up at gunpoint and lost $300 of the restaurant's money. He was required to compensate the restaurant. Nice.

Interesting. I must be going by too late to see the picketing. If you happen wander by with a digital camera in hand, it would be great if you could post a photo.

For those of you with access to Crain's New York Business, I did a roundup of "haute cheap" restaurants in this week's issue (March 19, 2007). It's on pages 31 and 32.

I hasten to add that by professional I mean for pay. I don't think professional blogs are necessarily better than amateur (as in not for pay) blogs. Certainly some of the best blogs are amateur blogs. But professional blogs have resources. They may be have multiple contributors who are getting paid, they may be attached to a media corporation, etc. These factors can keep them functioning beyond the tenure or enthusiasm curve of any individual. And their agendas are different. The professional blogs aren't necessarily about the enjoyment and expression of the blogger(s). They're calculated to have relevance and reach.

Has anybody been to the Pepe's pizza outpost in Fairfield? There was a brief (and uninsightful) review in the New York Times on Sunday. I'm so out of it, that was the first I'd heard of its existence. 238 Commerce Drive, Fairfield, CT 203-333-PEPE (7373) http://www.pepespizzeria.com/fairfield/index.html

Kent, they don't look quite like small spoons. They look more like very small, very narrow, but very long shovels. I believe "scoop" is the preferred technical term for this item, as in "marrow scoops." You'll find quite a few antique marrow scoops on eBay and from other places. Usually they're silver or silver-plate, but sometimes they're made from pewter or other materials. If you want to match your current scoops exactly, you can try Replacements, but be prepared to pay. They also make new marrow scoops. For example, there are some reproductions available, but they're not exactly cheap. I think there may be cheaper stainless ones out there, but I'm not sure what source to use -- you'd probably want to find a restaurant that uses this utensil and ask about a supplier. The other option is to go with something that isn't specifically a marrow scoop but works just as well. For example, these stainless seafood picks have scoops on one end that are almost the same as marrow scoops -- and they're really inexpensive.

Interesting you bring this up today, because just a couple of days ago I was chatting with a friend and we were wondering whether the blogging phenomenon would eventually collapse under its own weight. I think a lot of the food blogs are great, and the professional blogs like Eater and Grub Street have raised the bar and put even more pressure on old media. There are so many issues to discuss under this heading. It seems everybody has a blog these days -- you look at a lot of signature lines of eGullet Society members, five years ago almost nobody had a blog and now lots of our most active members do. On some topics, it seems like six or seven bloggers are debating an issue. The typical blog seems to have a life cycle that begins with high energy and enthusiasm and then things trail off. Blogging is lonely, and after awhile it becomes exhausting. But some blogs go on for years, and the professional ones will go on as long as their business models remain intact. The proliferation of blogs means, of course, that it's harder and harder for any one blog to get noticed. This has got to start discouraging new bloggers at some point. The best blogs still seem to rise to the top, though.

Perhaps a food mill.

I don't use a lot of bread crumbs. I almost never use the fresh ones, and when I make the dried ones I often make them from cracker-like sources such as, well, crackers and also pretzels (pretzel crumbs are great). So I'm no expert, which won't stop me from sharing what I think I know. The few times I've made fresh bread crumbs, for example to use in meatloaf, I've used day-old bread. Fresh bread crumbs are, I think, supposed to be pretty bready. While you don't want to use bread fresh out of the oven, you also don't want to use week-old bread. Day-old bread seems to me to be ideal for fresh bread crumbs -- so, not really stale. I think some types of bread are likely to perform better than others, but I've not had a serious failure. I also think uniformity of crumbs is no big deal with fresh because they're usually mixed into something. I've never used fresh bread crumbs to create a crust like on fried chicken or fish (as opposed to on top of a mac-and-cheese casserole, which is a different kind of crust for which fresh crumbs are ideal) -- that's really more the job of dried bread crumbs I think. Correct me if I'm wrong. Once you start dealing with dried-out bread (bear in mind the term "stale" means a few different things, not all of which correspond to dry -- indeed, crust gets stale because of too much moisture, not too little), you're in the realm of dried bread crumbs. Toasting, as in using temperatures that put color on the bread, gives a certain flavor. You can also dry the bread at lower temperatures so you're removing moisture without adding toasted flavor. I'm not picky enough to care, nor do I do this very often, but I've found that some bread is just better for bread crumbs than other bread. I know this goes against the attitude that bread crumbs can be made from any old leftover bread. Sorry. I also don't mind the dust. I think unless you're willing to take extraordinary measures, dust is kind of inevitable, like when you grind coffee beans in a mini-chopper. You can't expect the same results as with a conical burr grinder. If you make your bread crumbs with a grinder, that might work to create more uniform crumbs. That must be how it's done commercially.

On the issue of toasting: I thought the idea was that there's a difference between fresh bread crumbs and dried bread crumbs, with only dried bread crumbs being toasted (either before or after processing into crumbs). Edited to add: I see Mr. Baker is all over it.

Milk with pizza was a mainstay for me as a teen.

As I mentioned on the Saigon Grill topic, the delivery teams at the Saigon Grill restaurants are on strike. It is not possible, at present, to sit around in your underwear and have Number 19 (goi du du aka green papaya salad with beef) brought to you; now you have to schlep to Saigon Grill to get it. I first noticed this a couple of weeks ago, when I tried to order from Saigon Grill on the day of this winter's first major snowstorm. The lady on the phone said "Pick up only!" and I figured it was because of the weather. But when I went to pick up food, I asked some questions and was told "Delivery men on strike!" I couldn't get answers to the why-type questions. I figured it might be a temporary condition, but as of yesterday it's still "Pick up only!" at Saigon Grill on the Upper West Side. Luckylies reports that the Saigon Grill in the Village is also experiencing the strike, and that the people working at the restaurant there said the duration of the strike would be indefinite. The Upper East Side branch, for its part, has been closed for renovations for several months. I wonder if this strike is a sign of things to come. The circumstances under which restaurant delivery workers -- particularly Asian restaurant delivery men -- labor are brutal. These are not the spoiled-rotten union workers at the hotel restaurants, who shriek when their pedicure benefits are placed at risk. The Asian-restaurant delivery guys risk their lives every time they set out on those bicycles and mopeds. They're surely paid almost nothing, and their tips can be unpredictable -- who knows what they actually get to keep. These workers seem to be almost completely unorganized -- I'm actually surprised they could pull together a strike at more than one restaurant. But more than that they seem to fall outside the notice or protection of any agency or group. We as consumers are of course partly to blame. We demand rock-bottom prices and have incredibly high expectations for speed of Asian restaurant delivery. When the weather gets bad, we order more. If the price of beef lo mein goes up a dollar at one place, we can order from five other places in the same delivery radius -- and many of us do just that. We expect free extras like cold noodles and sodas. And because the price of the food is so low, even a generous tip isn't all that much as an absolute number -- there's only so much money you can make $2 at a time. Does anybody have more information about the dark underbelly of the New York Asian-restaurant delivery world?

I believe fuzzy logic rice cookers do pretty much the same thing, minus the circulation.

Further evidence that convergence would be easy, here's a rice cooker that's also a crock pot: http://www.krupsusa.com/All+Products/Egg+C...H212/FDH212.htm

According to my relatives -- and my experience backs this up -- too strong a color causes bitterness and off flavors in most batches, but in a few batches it doesn't. The strong-color, strong-flavor, no-bitterness batches are the creme de la creme, the stuff you will likely never fine retail -- not even at farmer's markets. It goes to friends and family pretty much exclusively.

I was at the UWS location last night and asked about the UES location. They said "a month," for what it's worth. P.S. The reason I was there is that the delivery guys are on strike so I had to pick up. We were going to my mother's for dinner and planned to have Saigon Grill delivered, but they said there was pick-up only, on account of the strike.

Right, it seems that if we think about appliances in terms of their shapes, the feature sets can flow from there. The convergence I was talking about above is basically anything that looks like a pot. Because really, why can't they just do that? I mean, if you take an electronically controlled rice cooker, you already have a computer taking care of the heating elements in something that looks like a pot. So all you have to do is program that computer, make sure the heating elements have enough power to do what needs to be done, and in the case of pressure cooking you need to do something with the lid. It shouldn't be a big deal. The only thing that would require a real technology upgrade, I think, would be a recirculating feature in order to do sous vide cooking in the thing. The George Foreman device demonstrates that it should be possible to replicate all the functions of all the different chamber-type contraptions. Here you might need more systems in the chamber -- it's more complex than the converged pot idea. But all the pieces of the puzzle are out there, waiting to be put together. Microwave/convection is already here. So you've got to figure if you build on that platform you get to toaster oven, and if you add a motor you get rotisserie, and if you add the right programming you can do things like let dough rise and make yogurt in there, and with a reservoir you could have a steam oven too.

At least in theory, water is a solvent too. In chemistry class they called it "the universal solvent."