Moopheus

I've bought vanilla beans from them. Prices are way lower than just about any other source, and the quality is good. An ordinary supermarket is just about the last place you want to buy spices--the markup is high and the quality is low. If there's no good spice shop in your area, you're better off with mail order. On the other end of the scale, Chinese and Indian markets often have very inexpensive imported goods--though sometimes the good prices mean buying stuff in bulk.

That's a fair point. Maybe we should suggest Waffle House as most manly diner chain.

Perhaps it is partly because of the very routine nature of breakfast for most people. I get up, pour out a bowl of granola (which I make), slice a banana, eat it. Go to work. At this time of day I am not looking for anything more complicated than that. On the weekend, we'll go to a diner, get diner food. Or I might make waffles, or some such thing. So it's kind of a home-comfort thing. Very familiar. Dinner can be anything. I have noticed that we have all manner of restaurants around here, serving whatever kind of Asian, European, South American (my own neighborhood hosts a lot of Brazilians), etc., food you want, but few of those places are open earlier than lunch. Presumably some would if they thought there'd be demand for it. But there isn't. It's been a long time since I've had the opportunity to travel internationally, but I'd like to think that if I did, I'd be a little more adventurous on someone else's home turf.

I'd like to suggest Sweet Inspirations in San Francisco's Castro district as the manliest dessert shop. I ate a whole slice of cake there once, and almost regretted it. They suggest sharing, but I am not very good at that.

Presumably it goes for less at a lower-end, non-Manhattan market? It seems to be fairly widely available around here, but I've never paid much attention to it or the price.

If you go back a few years into the archives, you will see a number of discussions about an apparent dropoff in quality of Kitchenaid mixers, after Whirlpool moved to a new factory, and especially the Pro 6-quart model, which was then a relatively new model and was originally made with some plastic gearing that did not hold up well. I don't remember if it was determined if those could be refurbed or not.

Yes, I've been to one. Sure, you can get large egg dishes at diners, but note they call themselves "waffle house" and not "egg house." On the other hand, there are shops dedicated to such calorically-dense foods as ice cream, chocolate, pastry, and cheese. Is the Ben & Jerry's Vermonster sundae a manly dish? I certainly think so!

These two observations would seem to contradict each other--your circle of friends and acquaintances probably contains a far greater proportion of "serious" cooks than a developer's customer base. The developer does not care if the buyer wants to cook, the developer only cares that the buyer can afford luxury products. And the buyer cares about being seen to be able to afford these things. The developer is putting these things into ALL of their units, and they're clearly not going to limit their sales efforts to serious cooks. The appliance industry has successfully pushed the idea that "stainless steel" means "professional" and "luxury." They continue to push features that they can sell as speed and convenience, not so much for using advanced cooking techniques. (During the construction boom, some industry watchers came up with the term "pergraniteel" to describe the generic pergo-granite-steel kitchen that was de rigeur. As in "that McMansion has a pergraniteel kitchen.") The kitchen in our new house came equipped with a 15-year-old Wolf (in black enamel!) with no fancy features of any kind. It's great. If there were anything else I wish it could do it would be to go to 800 degrees, and have steam injectors. Sadly, I can't afford to replace it with a new one; I've checked the prices. They're just crazy.

And yet we have few restaurants dedicated to eating large quantities of nuts, seeds, and eggs.

Yes.

That is to some degree true, but historically, "manly" clubs and restaurants were designed explicitly to exclude; usually women, but also reinforce class distinctions as well. Women were not allowed. Blacks, catholics, and jews were not allowed. They had to go to their own, segregated places. It wasn't even all that long ago that this was still fairly common. Clearly, if you look at what people are calling "manly," you can see the remains of this, especially along class lines. It isn't just about the food itself-I mean, you can go just about anywhere and get some meat 'n potatoes, if that's what you want. The food is actually not what makes the place seem "manly." What the manly American man wants is a place where he can go and not have anyone around who's going to make him eat his vegetables or remind him what the doctor said about his cholesterol. And he wants to be able to do the manly things--watch sports, smoke cigars, etc.--and indulge in some fantasy of being some sort of barely civilized frontiersman living off the land, so that he can demonstrate to his manly man friends how manly he is, and not have anyone think he's gay. 'Cause nothing terrifies the many American man like having someone think he might be gay.

Oh please. I went to a Hooter's once. There were families there. With kids. It was like the Ground Round with hot pants.

Basically, someplace that will give you heart disease and/or constipation.

I haven't eaten in a missile silo, but I did have breakfast at the cafeteria at the Nevada Test Site once, and then lunch at the bottom of a subsidence crater. The cafeteria had vending machine for microwavable foods that was labeled "nukeables" with a picture of a mushroom cloud.

I remember a place in Troy, NY, the South End Tavern. The last time I was there was the early 80s. This place must have been 50 or 60 years old at the time, and had never been reno'd. There was still a sign over a second doorway that said "Ladies' Entrance." As far as I know, it's still there. You went in, the booths were cracked leather, the waiter was a fat balding guy with an apron, a notepad, and a cigar. Boy, did it smell manly in there.

Well, I did grossly oversimplify for the sake of a one-paragraph post. It's true, in the beginning there were not a large number of these shows, but I think it was clear who the intended audience was. I remember Kerr being on in the afternoon (I watched it after school), but that was East Coast time. The explosion of media channels has meant micro-targeting of demographics, producing ever larger quantities of programming, each of interest to smaller and smaller groups. To me, it hardly even seems worth trying to keep track, so I don't bother any more. Even watching Sandra Lee for the horrorshow thrills has lost appeal.

Except that it's a restaurant: the antithesis of primitive. I mean, if it were really primitive, you'd be slaughtering the animals right there at the table with stone tools and cooking it over a fire pit. I mean, the whole idea of a restaurant is that you've paid for someone to do the "manly" bits for you!

The first thing that comes to mind is a curry shop on Lexington in NY where I had lunch once, a basement cafeteria type place. It comes to mind because I remember noticing that no women were eating there; the only women in the place were working behind the counter. I also noticed I was the only non-Indian there. I don't now remember the name of it.

Back to the kitchen? To the library? Out for a bike ride? Watch less tv and do stuff? Read internet forums? Cooking shows were created for housewives who were home in the afternoon (before there was cable and VCRs) and were expected to cook. It's not too surprising that there are fewer of those shows as that demographic shrinks relative to the overall population. Now we have cable and DVRs and DVDs and video on demand and everything else: we can watch whatever we want, whenever we want. Everyone wants speed, convenience, entertainment, and vicarious thrills. It's on commercial tv, so it's driven by ads, which mostly means processed foods and family restaurants. They're not going to promote shows that say those things aren't needed. They want you to believe that cooking is best left to professionals and people in places you might never visit.

Okay, for laughs, I will post a few. Here's one I like: [Moderator note: This topic continues here, Food Shutter Bug Club (Part 2)]

My wife just calls this a bread sandwich. I've made Didi Emmons' falafel burgers--a falafel mix patty pan fried, very tasty.

I got served a slice of head cheese as an "amuse" at a restaurant once, though I'm still not sure or whose amusement this was for: the chef's? Not mine, anyway. I did taste it, and my impression was that it tasted like it was made from the stuff that didn't make the cut for Scrapple. Oh wait, that is what it's made from. There's a lot of stuff--such as low-grade fast foods and frozen foods--that is unpleasant and not enjoyable and I hope to always be able to avoid but won't kill me if I do. In fact, there's really very little that strikes me as being so awful I just couldn't eat it under any circumstances, even though there are plenty of things I do not care for that much and can easily live without. Growing up, kidney beans would make me physically gag, though I have since made my peace with them. Well, okay, I tell a lie, there was an encounter with a lemon jello-and-tomato concoction that I have tried to blot from memory. There's a special place in hell for a certain group of corporate food scientists.

Some restaurants seem to have the idea that they can make ordering a nonalcoholic drink exciting by not listing any on the menu. You know they've got something, even if it's just soda or bottled water. But you have to guess. At least at an Indian restaurant you can usually get a lassi.

And in addition to all of that, it would mean having more deep-fat fried food at home. One of the factors in the calculus is limits of consumption. Some things I only have once in a while because I only have them when I am out. Other things I only have once in a while because I make them myself and it is too much work/expense to do more than once in a while. I think, hey, if I had my own fryolator, I could have fried clams whenever I want! Which would be all the time.

Did I say it was great naan? No, I only said it was naan. However, the only way to get proper fresh naan is at a restaurant, and that's not always an option. I'm not going out every time I want Indian food; I'd go broke if that were the case. There are places where I can get premade naan, but it is not as good as fresh either, and is not even fresh baked. A hot baking stone does an okay job though.