Moopheus

You can't really teach people to write creatively. And you can't really write creatively if you don't have a very good idea of how the written language works, and that isn't taught very well. I can't say for food writing specifically (I don't read that much of it), but I do see a lot of books in manuscript (thankfully, I no longer have to read slush), and there's a lot of people who can't write very well who are getting published. You should see the one I'm working on now! Oy!

That just reminded me of the funny scene in Woody Allen's movie Hannah and her sisters, when Woody is considering converting to catholicism and brings home a bag of groceries with a loaf of Wonder Bread and mayonnaise. Clearly, the stereotypes (Jews eat rye and mustard, gentiles eat white with mayo) exist or the joke wouldn't work.

I ate at Vegetaian Paradise once, it was okay. In Chinatown there is also House of Vegetarian, which I have not been to but have heard is good. Not sure how strictly vegan these places are. A lot of Indian food is made with dairy, and ghee is often the cooking fat. So you can't just assume. Viva Cafe, and I think they have several locations in the city.

Was watching the very non-atkins-friendly "Unwrapped" the other night and they were showing a baker using "a special ingredient called Plugra, which is like butter, but has more fat." Let us also not forget all the wonderful Indian flatbreads--paratha, naan, and so on, which can be stuffed with even more carby goodness.

There's about 700 episodes of St. Julia's various shows--enough for a month of 24-hour broadcasting. Works for me. I'd like to see Deborah Madison get a show.

When I'm sick I like to drink herbal teas like the ones made by Traditonal Medicinals, which aside from being soothing tea, provide a little symptom relief without the drowsiness of regular cold pills. My philosophy has always been feed a cold, feed a fever--I figure your body has a better chance of fighting off the cold if you give it something to work with. If you are having trouble keeping down solid food, soup broth will get some nutrients into you and prevent dehydration.

If it was the best upside down cake you've ever had, then the answer to the question what did you do wrong is clearly: nothing.

But an oversupply in the general market doesn't really affect your decision whether to have wine in a restaurant, does it? All of that suppy isn't available in the restaurant. As long as there are enough customers willing to pay while in the restaurant, the restaurant can charge a high price. The customer chooses whether or not to have the wine; no one is forcing them to buy. If the customer pays they must have decided that at some level it's worth it to them, so they really shouldn't complain about the price in that case. And yes, it is also true that many consumer goods, including wine, don't respond perfectly to commodity pricing; other factors come in to play. But super-premium prices can only mean someone, perhaps a lot of someones, is willing to pay.

Boston--Ice Cream

You mean "tall".

If you go to a restaurant and feel the wine prices are unfairly marked up, the obvious answer is to not buy the wine. If wine sales drop because the prices are too high, market forces will come into play. As long as you keep paying, the situation will not change.

I can live without the cherries, but Li Lac does make pretty good chocolates.

Of those three I have only had the Torres chocolates, so I can't say if the others are "better" but they are certainly far better than anything you are likely to find in a department store. Every now and then I have to have some of his chocolate-covered candied ginger, that's pure bliss. Hmmm, maybe I will have to walk down there later, now that you've made me think about it. . . .

I agree with ned--practitioners of every practical trade inevitably come up against this question, with the same non-result. I guess tradespeople aren't satisfied just with being good at what they do. It's gotta be 'art'. But making something aesthetically pleasing isn't the same as making art--the product of a craft remains within the practical constraints of the craft, a constraint that doesn't exist for art. Art is pretty much whatever you can get away with. A badly executed craftspiece may be physically dangerous or harmful in a way that bad art is not. In fact, bad art may even be interesting. Whereas the culinary equivalent of this or this might make you sick.

When I make it I just throw in whatever veggies I've got in the fridge to be used up; tonight it was french green beans and diced tomatoes. Was pretty good.

That's the way the patent came out after the lawsuit; the original patent claim was much broader. Some of the claims of the Unilever patent refer to the breeding of plants with specific traits, some are more general. And part of the problem is not whether Monsanto really does anything with the patents, but the general principle of allowing a legal precedent on which potentially even broader claims could be based.

This article and this one offer some more detail.

There was a partial win in the Texas Basmati case--RiceTec withdrew some of their claims, and the USPTO revised the patent to apply only to three specific strains developed by RiceTec, and not to Basmati generally. Weirdly, RiceTec is owned by Price Hans Adam II of Lichtenstein.

"let's get tall!" What the heck does viente mean anyway? IF I happen to find myself in a place that has this sort of labeling (it's not just Charbucks) I just ask for "coffee" just to see the confused look.

Is there some reason you have to buy both?

There's a couple of bakeries in my neighborhood that have mini items. I suspect for some people it's feeling a little less guilty if they have a smaller piece, for myself it means not having to decide between the cannoli and the napoleon; I can have both.

Somewhere in the Talmud the apocryphal (non-canonical) story is recorded that before Yahweh made the Earth, he made and destroyed many worlds before coming up with the one he thought was good. And when he presented it to Adam and Eve, he basically said (setting a precedent for every parent since the dawn of time) "look at the effort that I have made for you. Take care of it, don't screw it up, because I'm not making you another one."

Actually, judging by archeaological remains, our primordial ancestors ate an awful lot of fruit (you can tell a lot from the teeth). Also snails, clams, and the like, at least guessing from the huge midden heaps left behind. Clothing is a relatively recent invention, evolutionarily speaking. The survival of the species didn't really depend on it, but it did allow migration and settlement of otherwise inhospitable areas.

In King James' day, 'meat' was still commonly used to mean 'food' and not necessarily specifically 'animal meat'. Likely this was even more true for the word being translated.

That's the argument of this book. The author is a conservative catholic and a vegetarian, his views are very similar to those expressed Bruce Friedrich. I can only half-heartedly recommend this book, though, with the caveat that I read it as an unedited manuscript and it was in need of a lot of work--there's some good stuff in it, but the author has a hard time building strong logical arguments. Well, he works as a political speechwriter, and logical argument isn't a job requirement.