Moopheus

Brunch in Fort Greene? Juniors. Downtown Brooklyn.

Indeed--self-help and diet books are not worth owning. They are more aspirational than informational. They sell hopes and dreams, and no publisher has any incentive to publish one that actually works. That would be killing the goose that lays the golden egg! The whole point is that they fail, and so create the market for the next one. When I worked as a editor, and would hear proposals for this or that diet book, eventually I came up with the idea of submitting my own proposal for a book, called the "Eat real food, not junk food" book. On page one, it would say, "Eat a reasonable amount of real food. Do not eat too much junk food. Get off your fat butt and get some exercise once in a while." Then it would be followed by 150 blank pages. To date I have not seen a book with a better idea. But people in the business tend to be humorless about such suggestions (Once, after hearing about Yet Another Celebrity Cancer memoir, I said, out loud, "Why don't we just publish the Encyclopedia of Celebrity Cancer and be done with it?" I am not an editor any more.).

Jamie Oliver recently gave a TED talk about the importance of educating our kids about food. Along with the talk, he gets a grant to support the work he's doing to change eating habits. The TED Talk page.

Getting rid of used books in New York is indeed a major and generally unrewarding hassle. A friend of mine is the used book manager at a bookstore in Cambridge; when I lived in Brooklyn and needed to unload, it was easier for me to ship boxes to him rather than sell locally. This Amazon deal sounds pretty marginal for the effort involved. I've done small-press publishing, so I'm familiar with the mailing difficulties you speak of. My friend might be willing to take some stuff off your hands--if you want, pm me and I'll give you his contact info.

Unfortunately, tastes and culture are fluid, even more so now in our tightly connected world of instant global communication. Why do you think your egg is perfect? Do you think that an egg cooked to "melt-in-the-mouth" texture will be universally appealing? That even if such cooking became widespread, people would not eventually become bored with it? That in fact multiple ways of doing things can coexist? Why do I want an egg yolk gel? That doesn't sound very appealing. Can you make something that I can actually chew? I'm sure that what you make is fine, but there have been many claims of perfect things in the past, only to be thrown over for some more perfect thing later. I don't think I would bet against that pattern changing any time soon.

I guess it depends on the venue--if I'm going somewhere to hear music, that's what I want to hear. If I'm at a restaurant, I don't want to hear everybody else in the restaurant yakking away. That's not what I'm paying for.

equals snake-oil salesman.

Also, high infant/child mortality--brings the average down a bit. Arguably, one of the reasons we have so much cancer and heart disease now is because we have less early death from tuberculosis, pneumonia, smallpox, etc. It used to be we didn't live long enough to have heart attacks. Yes--we've had agriculture for 10,000 years (approximately!) and only relatively recently have obesity and food-related chronic conditions become widespread problems. It's industrialization--an overabundance of cheap, low-grade, low-nutrition food supplied to people who live relatively sedentary lives--not agriculture.

The restaurant-supply shop half-sheet pans are great for cookies and a lot of baking tasks. If there is a restaurant supply place in his area he can shop in, there a great place to pick up all kinds of handy tools for cheap. I would definitely encourage him to get a scale. I use mine pretty much every day. And Bittman's how to cook everything is a good book for someone starting out. Good, basic recipes for just about everything. Might also look at a book like Peterson's Cooking that has a lot of demonstration photos.

Not every place necessarily needs to be romantic and quiet, but deliberately designing a restaurant to amplify ambient noise is stupid. Like Meanderer, we've encountered restaurants where the background noise was just too loud to even have a conversation at the table. Maybe some people like that, but I won't go back to place like that.

If they were easy to find, they wouldn't be a specialty item, now, would they?

Well, exactly. Publishers can fill their lists with the likes of Keller, Boulud, etc., and translations are very expensive. So many books will go untranslated. Even when there were more translations, they were only a tiny fraction of available books. How many contemporary French chefs have enough name recognition outside of France to make translation worthwhile?

Heck, if your wok has any brand name on it at all, you've probably spent too much. As much as I generally disdain buying cheap crap from China, there's one thing that should be cheap and made in China, and that's the wok. My rice cooker is a very basic and cheap Panasonic model (on/off, not even a warmer) that was left to us about 15 years ago by a Japanese post-doc who was going home to Japan. I keep thinking that someday I'll get a "better" one, but never seem to actually get around to it.

Then what's the point of sealing it in the bag?

That reminds me of when I was visiting a friend in California a few years back, and I made him stop at a Jack in the Box. I hadn't seen an open one since I was a kid, since I live on the east coast. Let's just say that some childhood memories are really, really better off left undisturbed.

If the kombu is sealed in a bag, how does it flavor the broth? I've never bothered to measure how much kelp or bonito flakes I'm using--a couple of pieces of kombu, then a handful of flakes. This is what I make when I'm feeling lazy--I can't see making it more complicated.

Tater Tots always disappoint me--it's the sort of thing I have a craving for from time to time, and then when I give in to it, it's not as good as I thought it was going to be.

Yes, around here it's Hostess or nothing. HoHos, especially. I do not like to drink any wine or beer. It just tastes nasty and unpleasantly sour to me. Doesn't matter how "good" it is. The odd thing is that sometimes I will cook with it--when it is diluted and the alcohol cooked away, it is tolerable.

Think of it more like a large holiday gathering with all of the relatives you don't really like that much. I'm also imagining a real family-style restaurant, where you don't get to order, the chef just brings out a plate of food, and you have to eat it whether you like it or not. The chef says, "look, I've had a long day, so just shut up and eat."

Can you still get whey ricotta in Italy? Here in the US, almost all ricotta you can buy now is whole milk.

There was an amusing article the other day about how economists apply the "opportunity cost" argument in their own lives. The upshot was that many economists are cheap bastards, but will generally pay to have other people do things for them. And given that our current economic situation is in part a testament to the wisdom of economists and the value of their theories, I tend to ignore this argument, which taken to its logical extreme, would imply that the guy billing $375/hr should choose to do almost nothing except work. Personally, I don't want to be that guy, or put a dollar value on my every waking moment.

You have to try to eat them first. Actually, I've never eaten lunchables, either, but nothing I've ever eaten in similar packaging would inspire much confidence. I guess they're mainly intended for kids, though. But it is really so hard to throw together a sandwich?

Also, whether you count it as "leisure" or "labor". I suppose I could count cooking dinner as "labor," since there has to be dinner whether I feel like cooking or not, and there may be a certain time pressure (having it ready by when the spouse gets home) and then the labor/convenience/take-out trade-off can come into play, but much of the baking I do is more discretionary: I'm doing it because I want to. It is at least partly a leisure activity. Admittedly, then the tradeoff is whether I might prefer doing other leisure activities that might be possible at the same time. And of course, even in the home there can be some economy of scale: some types of soups and sauces, for instance, can be just as easily made in large amounts as small, so the extra can be saved in the freezer for when you don't feel like cooking--you make your own convenience.

I still don't know why these boards haven't taken the culinary world by storm. They are the best cutting boards around. They're made of a hard rubber that still gives like wood when cutting (i.e., much softer than the white plastic boards). They can be sanded down like wood. They can be put in the dishwasher. If they warp, put them in a warm oven for a few minutes and all will be flat again. They last forever. Sure, they're heavy and a bit expensive, but there's really nothing like these. I've had mine for years, and I hate it when I have to use anything but this cutting board. I'd guess because it doesn't look upscale enough to justify the price. I got one a few years ago at a restaurant supply shop, and I agree, I prefer it to anything else I've used. But it is kinda ugly. It's not going to impress anybody. Your neighbor sees a John Boos board and they know you spent money on it; they see a Sani-Tuff and they'll probably think it came from the dollar store.

Juice is usually filtered, and also pasteurized. Cider is not. At least according to the Mass Department of Agriculture. Apparently, there is no strict, universal, official definition, so usage may vary. And now the USDA requires pretty much all juice sold retail to be pasteurized, even cider. Apparently, the "unfiltered apple juice" is more of a West Coast thing.