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I think it's good to have a bit of food snobbery, but a little goes a long ways. I don't know that people who have low standards should be proud of that fact (although, there's something to be said for people who can be happy with whatever is put in front of them). However, there is a difference between common/low foods and bad food. Most recongize that, though, that there's good bbq, good burgers, good tacos. But even beyond that, some "junk" can be quite sublime in the right context: Twinkies, Doritos, Dr. Pepper, etc. btw, making your own stock is about the simplest thing to cook besides scrambled eggs. It just takes time.

Does the herbfarm still have no option for non-drinkers? At over $150 per person, I just can't bring myself to pay the premium for wine that I won't drink. That'd be the most expensive meal I'd ever purchased, and I've eaten at Charlie Trotter's, The Inn at Little Washington, and French Laundry. Do they nail you with a service charge, too?

Would it mean I could drink canned pop again if I cut out hamburger? btw, here are some other links: http://www.hcra.harvard.edu/foodresearch.html#spongiform http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,107632,00.html

Yeah, but even I could tell this was higher quality stuff. I've tried a lot of wine and used to carry around a guidebook to wines under $20 whenever I went shopping for cooking wine.

I definitely don't look forward to the disappearance of farmed salmon. I just hope that it becomes better, both ecologically and gastronomically. Wild salmon is expensive enough right now. I can't imagine what the prices would be like if there was no farmed salmon to compete with and if there was all the farmed salmon consumers putting pressure on the wild salmon industry. Also, ecologically, I imagine we'd have a lot of problems with poaching and over-fishing. I do wish the media did a better job of relating the true importance of such studies. But I can understand why they don't. The problem is that it has a "boy who cried wolf" impact on many people. I've discussed such things with a friend who has less scientific experience than me who pretty says he never trusts any health studies in the news because "one week butter will kill you, then next it's good for you". And unfortunately, that's how the media often portrays it, when truly, scientific studies usually focus are very specific issues such as the effect of some specific type of fat in butter on a specific risk factor for a specific disease in a specific population of people. Generalities are usually dangerous to draw from scientific studies, but the media makes every attempt to do so, at least in the headlines.

I don't really drink wine. The only wine I've ever found palatable was over $100 a bottle. However, I do cook with wine a lot. Sounds like this stuff might be a cheap option for a cooking wine, maybe?

Sure, but obviously there's some shared experience that can be successfully communicated otherwise reviews wouldn't be of much use. There are "different strokes" but there's also a shared world of experience. eg, with Roger Ebert, I often disagree with his movie reviews, but I can still tell whether I might like a film from reading his reviews, no matter what he thought of it. I wasn't challening your integrity, btw, just wondering if there's something I'm missing. If I didn't trust your opinion, I wouldn't give it a second thought. Anyway, thanks for clarifying and not finding offense.

My understanding of the symptoms is that the two diseases are different enough not to be confused by a doctor. I agree. How this is done and what the line is for overreacting, though, we may disagree on.

Mudpuppie, I think that's what the blind taste tests pretty much showed, too. That it was comparable to a decent $8-$10 bottle of wine, but in blind tests didn't quite stack up (with a slightly uneducated palate) to more expensive wines.

Got dinner at Cha Ba Thai again tonight and had the Po Pia Sod, the Som Tum, and the Larb. When they say hot, they mean it. The larb was a little over the top for me. Luckily I got the green papaya salad only medium so that my wife could have some, but it was too much for her, about just right for me. They serve both with cabbage wedges which I like. The larb is good and the som tum is decent. We both really liked the po pia sod. There are two rolls divided into several pieces and each roll is probably about 8 inches or so in length. They're topped with a sauce and crab and shrimp meat. I actually liked the crab meat. Nice and sweet. The plate is garnished with a mustard, too. One bad thing that I hesitate to mention, but is rather important. However, I think I know the cause but it doesn't really excuse the problem. My wife also ordered a fish dish, a filet of tilapia lightly fried with vegetables and a sweet and sour sauce. It looked really good, and the portion was huge. But the filet was inedible. It tasted....moldy....or freezer burned. If we were at a restaurant where the waitress spoke better English, I probably would have let them know. It could be an honest mistake. I suspect it has to do with them pushing the limits of storage because a) they've been essentially out of business the last week, and b) they probably haven't gotten any new deliveries lately. You'd hope that they would just check the food and say it's not good enough and say they're out of it or whatever. But they didn't. I'm hoping it's just an anomaly and the mistake of a small business just getting by. I can sympathize with that, even if it's wrong. I'll wait a couple weeks before I try a fish dish there again, and I suggest you do the same. Overall, I'm still very encouraged. Luckily, I don't like fish much anyway.

http://biz.yahoo.com/rm/040109/food_excel_layoffs_4.html

SORRY ABOUT THE EXTRA -- GOT AN ERROR AND REPOSTED -- PLEASE DELETE New AP article: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...lth_fish_salmon

New AP article on the industry's response: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...lth_fish_salmon And another on the fish food makers: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...britain_fish_dc

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/Busine...y_040109-1.html In a blind taste test at an AI culinary school (not exactly experts judging from my experience with culinary students), it did pretty good. But when they knew ahead of time the price, it outscored almost all of the other options. They also had a thing on speed eaters: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/US/spe...s_040109-1.html

I'm sorry if you took it harshly. I didn't think I was belittling you.

That, then, would mean the American Heart Assoc. recommends 24 times the "safe" amount of fish. Man, Japanese people and Scandanavians must be so screwed.

No, don't worry, I don't take offense at such things. I don't mean to disrespect your or Jim's opinion, either. I value Jim's opinion. If nothing else, I can actually choose good olive oil because of Jim. But I think there's a lot more to value of Jim's opinions than just olive oil. It's more of a matter of questioning why some are so high on Navarre. Jim offers it up a lot as a rec. I just don't get it. That's true. I do think it's fine to hash these things out. Ultimately, it's not that important. There's only been 83 reads of this topic so far and I'm sure many of those have been repeats. eGullet is not going to make or break Navarre. To reiterate, I don't think Navarre's bad, just very inconsistent and not as good as the other restaurants within a couple blocks of it. If I knew for sure certain dishes were there, however, I'd certainly be tempted. I think the form of the menu disrupts that possibility, though. I also personally don't like the atmosphere because I've never really felt welcomed or waited on, both as a single when it was slow, and as part of a large group when it was starting to get busy. Maybe I should keep my mouth shut when I don't like something (or fingers off the keyboard, as it were) and heed my mother's advice: if you can't say something nice.... But that's just not who I am. I like to praise and punish, especially when I'm shelling out the dough.

But the problem is that presumably any animal could get the disease from eating the nervous system tissue of an infected animal. It has nothing to do with cannibalism or herbivores eating meat. There are many animals that are naturally cannibalistic, such as trout and salmon. Even some mammals, and many carniverous or omniverous animals, especially when their food supply is stressed. Rats will eat their own young if they get low on food or water. I just never really buy into the natural = good arguments. It's contextual. Sometimes what is natural is good, sometimes it isn't. Sometimes cannibalism is okay, sometimes it isn't. I make moral claims as well, but I try not to confuse them with scientific claims. eg, I feel uncomfortable with eating animals such as dogs. And the higher up on the intelligence scale you go up in animals, the less comfortable I feel, until eventually you get to apes, dolphins, and humans, and I think it's clearly wrong. But that's a moral belief, not a scientific one. There may be problems associated with humans eating any of these things, there may not be. But the two issues have nothing to do with each other.

Here's a link to that NPR report. I don't have audio on this computer, so I can't listen to see if it has the whole thing or just the basic report (and I'm too lazy to change the switchbox to another computer and find it there or to get up and go to my laptop). http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1589737

I like it: Blame Canada. It's interesting that the cheapeast producer is also the least polluted.

Dude, Mexican Coke (in the glass bottle, natch) is awesome stuff, way better than the American product. I'll often order it when I'm at a tacqueria... I second that, man its so good in those tall glass bottles!..nothing better on a hot day along with some good "cart taco's"! Except for a tamarindo or guyaba Jarritos in a glass bottle. Yum. Kills the burn of a firery salsa so you're ready for another loaded up bite. Glass bottles rule. Man I miss Mt. Dew in the bottle. Nick

I called them since I had always done nee-man as well but got corrected. And the answer is: Nie-man (long i)... 510-808-0340

Interesting. I'll be very interested to hear your take on it. It's good regardless, but it'll be interesting to understand how good it is in relation to food in Thailand. Now I'm tempted to go there today and try the larb and green papaya salads. I need to get back to Khun Pic's, too. A quick count of the number of Thai restaurants I've been to in Portland metro: 18 (and I've probably forgot some), not including Vietnamese or Chinese places that serve some Thai dishes, and not including multiple locations. Pretty soon I'll catch up to the number of taquerias I've been to. I guess after that it'll have to be Pho/Vietnames.

We had a lot of fresh vegetables because we were poor but always had a garden. However, there were a lot of vegetables that I just ignored or had to coat in sauces growing up because my mom insisted on boiling the hell out of them (and I liked vegetables way more than most of my friends). In fact, now that I think about it, I really should get her a steamer basket.