jhlurie

The exact opposite for me, in some ways. The bagels I'm having increasing trouble recalling from my childhood were smaller and firmer than "modern" bagels. Usually hand-made and boiled. Any crunchiness present though was due to staleness, not intent. Basically, the old creed was, when you bite a good bagel, it has to bite back. You have to need to work your with teeth a bit. They were chewy by virtue of being made less out of air than "modern" oversized bagels. There are probably a few older topics from years back where we hashed this to death, but I don't think the ethnic angle has ever been part of those discussions. My reaction, like Jason, is that even Jews are mostly doing it wrong these days, so the best left might as well be Korean or Italian or from whomever.

Plus it's more fun to make it yourself. Unless you have hygiene concerns (I suppose it's a bit hard to know how often, and by whom, those machines are cleaned).

Not sure I'm geting your point. Is is just that its quite a distance from the upstate locations? Mary ← It's about 260 miles. But I also think he was playing around a bit about people's general perceptions about Harlem.

Rave? I think, as a whole, we've been hesitantly optimistic at best. Always good to see another player. I won't say "a new player", since of course you aren't. Shame on Rachel for not knowing where Newburgh is! I mean it's got a Hudson River bridge half-named after it!

Is that a good thing to taste like? Well, either way it DOES meet the provisions of this topic--meeting or exceeding the standards of a national brand.

I suppose the quick breakdown of that sugar is why it's pretty impossible to convince some people from non-corn growing regions how much of a difference it really makes to get it off the back of a truck on the cob, as opposed to out of a can. Basically, if you don't know what you are missing, it's hard to feel strongly. As for the "only in the summer" thing, YOU pointed that out Rachel. I wasn't trying to replicate your post, only emphasize one little part of it! Like Kris, the apparent Japanese obsession with corn has always fascinated me. It's not usually very good corn, so it also puzzles me. And it's not like either the texture or the sweetness that is in even the watered down canned types is appropriate to all circumstances. Also, from a western perspective I think we find it particularly odd on pizza, because for some reason tomatoes and corn seem like very mismatched things. Tomatoes are already providing some sweetness, and why would you want to make it even sweeter instead of more savory? Speaking of sweet, do the Japanese ever put pineapple on their pizza? That was trendy here for a while but has kind of gone away.

Well, now that we've avoided a local disaster here, we can return to discussion of the larger one! But seriously, if this isn't a subject which has most of us on the edge a bit, I'm not sure what would. It's natural, and I'm glad to see we are dealing with it maturely. Here's something interesting on the BBC site, a way to see the destructive force with less bandwidth than video. Flip through the five pictures on this page. Photo 1, you have a town. Photo 2, no town. Photo 3, a ferocious receding tide. Photos 4 and 5, a completely new coast line. Also, as usually happens after big quakes, there have been aftershocks to scare the bejesus out of those left.

With this kind of shabby research and/or deliberate assasination (it's either one or the other), I'd debate the "journalist" part of that statement. I'd never had much of an opinion of the man either way before now, but geez. One theory might be that he wrote it to be, or at least seem, clever. That's the less controvertial theory, because the other logical one would be that he wrote it that way to deliberately take the place down a peg--as if a reviewer couldn't already do that in a legitimate fashion by talking about the food alone. I don't read the Voice regularly, so I don't really feel compelled to write a letter to the editor about this. But someone at Dinosaur should consider it. The logical thrust of the letter really would be something like: "We wouldn't have minded if Mr. Sietsema had simply reported that he didn't like the food, but we took issue with the implications he drew about the authenticity of our cooking methods based on a fairly standard bottle of BBQ sauce, and the fact that we were following NYC fire and building regulations about wood storage and ventilation. If he had questions, he could have called us and asked, instead of jumping to conclusions." Heck, if someone from Dino reads this... go ahead and use those words if your PRish folks can't do better.

Plenty of reasons. Fire and building codes are VERY strict in New York, compared to most of the South. It costs insane amounts of money to comply with those codes, and I'd bet many of them make what's easy to accomplish in the South much tougher here. That's before we even get into the issues of staffing, the availability of ingredients, etc. etc. Heck, the only compensation I can think of for being in the Northeast is that good wood is probably even more plentiful, even if the delivery mechanisms for BBQ joints aren't as well established.

It's the sly implications of deliberate fraud in the review which get me. As a reviewer he's under absolutely no obligation to like the place, or the product. Even my own reactions to the place were conservative--I mean my superlative for the pulled pork, for example was that it was "good", so I'm not exactly raving. But he's talking about sneaking around sniffing the air as if there were some kind of cover-up going on, searching the neighborhood for wood delivery trucks, and coloring and over-interpreting the fact that the sauce has a fairly standard ingredient in it--smoke flavoring. If that's the case, just write a damn review that says that you think the sauce sucks. Don't invent a nefarious motive for it with no proof behind it.

This photo, right? It's kind of funny that Sietsema named that review "hatchet job", because I get the impression that's his intention here. First of all, it's already dirty pool to compare it (negatively) to some of the regional BBQ greats he mentions, but he goes a step further with his "cute" little story about his poking around sniffing the air for the scent of wood splinters or ash. What is he, Sherlock Holmes?

Interesting review. I'd never say that Dinosaur is world class, but that review seems like a bit of a dive-bomb attack. A lot of BBQ sauces have smoke flavoring in them, but that review is construing it to be some kind of cover-up. That's just sad sad "reporting".

I suppose my own earlier comments are coming back to haunt me here. Twelve hours later, the estimates have already been bumped to 115,000 and climbing. Indonesia seems to be the real nightmare--estimates are as already at 80,000 in that country ALONE (they bumped it by 20,000 overnight), with Sri Lanka also having as many casualties as 25,000. Even countries as far afield as Tanzania have been affected, although obviously losses there are microscopic in comparison. The BBC has an interesting map of regional reactions.

The big thing with Corn, at least in our part of the world, is that it's easily and VERY cheaply available fresh, on the cob, as Rachel says somewhere in that rather detailed post. It's pretty much the default state you can buy it in the American Northeast and Midwest. There's also access to a much wider variety of types of corn. There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of varieties, although for the most part only a farmer would even know the difference between a Hyland and a Pioneer, an heirloom Hickory King from a Country Gentleman, or a home garden variety of Silver Queen from Pearl White. Mostly the layman knows that there's sweet corn and not-so sweet corn, There's yellow, white and occasionally hybrids. In truth that's a huge oversimplification (even within sweet corn there are major types--sugary, sugary enhancer, and supersweet), but most people don't have to know, or care about that. Here, for example, is a small list of just some of the most common varieties. Little known to even most Americans is how much corn is grown for other than eating. Corn meant for animal feed is a huge crop, as is corn grown inevitably to be boiled down into corn syrup. Fancy blue, brown and red corns are grown for making fancy kinds of corn flour or cornmeal. Certain varieties are grown specifically for the creation of "popping" corn. It's the largest agricultural crop in our country, by a very large margin, although I believe that in recent years soybeans have become a lot more common.

The competition, Pathmark, has Florida's Natural brand (which in my opinion may be better than Tropicana) for that same 2 for $4 rate this week.

This is kind of a spinoff of this topic in the General forum. A while into that topic it occured to me that while discussion of private store labels and "house" generic brands is indeed a "national" topic, that's it's pretty difficult to discuss SPECIFIC items in General, because each region of readers has different supermarket franchises locally. So while I think we can leave discussions about nationwide chains like Walmart, Target and Whole Foods there, as well as the larger issues about house brands, I think we can use THIS thread to be specific to our region, and even more to specific deals. As in... local store X has generic item Y, which costs Z, and is as good or better than national brand Q. For example, lately I've been buying Pathmark's Natural Peanut Butter. It's in a glass jar, a $1.99 for 16 ounces (verus a minimum of $2.89 for the cheapest national brand, and considerably more for some others). There are two ingredients: Peanuts, Salt. Not much for them to screw up. Anyone else have SPECIFIC generic items in our local chains they love?

Here's a Mexican Coke story from the AP which I don't think has been linked yet: http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20...1b9mexcoke.html

I've tried this now. My rating? It's good. Very good. The key? It actually TASTES like Dr. Pepper. I'm glad the Vanilla is subtle, because otherwise it wouldn't. Well done, oh great soda makers from Texas. You hit a bullseye. I've only tried the diet version thus far (my supermarket isn't even stocking the non-diet version of this variety), but like with "regular" Diet Dr. Pepper, you really don't miss the sugar. Does anyone know the "end" date for it's nationwide distribution? I need to know when to stock up. All of their initial press releases and their website indicate it's temporary, but not HOW temporary. EDIT - Bevnet's page on this soda is a bit confusing. They say: If I'm understanding this... the NON-Diet Cherry Vanilla has a limited national rollout, but the Diet version does NOT. I think.

What's so odd is when you watch the videos people took of the wave, it really goes against the general impression I think most of us have that a tidal wave is blindingly fast. It's slow--not slow enough to outrun in most cases, admittedly, but you can clearly see each and every thing that goes on. That's part of the danger, I guess, because on some of these horrifying videos you can clearly see people standing around watching the thing and then have this moment when they realize the wave ain't stopping. As for the effects on local agriculture, my initial statement that I thought there would be a big effect was taken from several media reports which talked about inland flooding. It's not the energy of the wave per-se that's causing the damage there, it's the pure volume of water. Latest news reports seem to have upped the death estimates approaching (some estimates already exceeding) 80,000 and they are still counting. The Red Cross, which I tend to think would be conservative about such things, is estimating the eventual count could be over 100,000. Sri Lanka seems to be hit especially badly with disease. Visionary Science fiction writer and scientist Sir Arthur C. Clarke, who has lived in Sri Lanka since 1956, has promised updates on the situation here. There will be many points of view given on this over the coming weeks, but Clarke's may be especially fascinating. If we want to localize this story in the U.S., there's more than just the angle of western tourists. Here's an article on the potential risks of a tsunami hitting our own west coast someday.

I'll second that. Banana... yuck! But I DO like the idea of Honey and Butter.

Hopefully your telecommunication limitations won't interfere too much. If not, we might do something creative like pester Soba to permit something one-time and non-traditional like allowing some further updating to the blog once you get home. Hopefully that's not necessary though, since there will be much more impact if we see those pictures while you are still there. Here's a tip. If you are dealing with dial-up, turn the display of pictures off in your web browser temporarily while you do the bulk of your eG catch-up reading and posting, but turn it back on again, to check things, after you upload the pictures and integrate them into your posts. I believe in Internet Explorer at least, if the Internet Cafe allows you access to it, it's under Tools menu--Internet Options--Advanced tab--Mutimedia Section--"Show Pictures". By the way, for those who want to discuss the earthquake and tsunami outside the bounds of whatever reactions or observations melkor gives, we've got a topic going for that here...

What's a bit sad are the articles talking about some individual westerner or other who was killed, or is missing, which breeze over the tens of thousands of other deaths. I know people need symbols to make a story seem relevant to their lives, but man that really rubs me the wrong way. The current estimate is 58,000+, and you have to figure the toll of disease is going to make that much worse, assuming that's counted in whatever figures eventually get published. Melkor's blog will be especially interesting, because, I admit, it will be interesting, even if a bit morbid, to see if life goes on as usual a mere few hundred miles away from all of this. I'm actually betting it will, but we'll see.

If I had to take a wild guess, it would be that not all bottlers make Kosher Coke. I'll bet it's one or two bottlers who supply the entire country. Still, it might be easier to chase down than Mexican Coke. But the glass bottles seem to be part of the Mexican equation too. The Kosher Coke is still in plastic, I believe.

Geez. For a moment I thought you were kidding. But no... (click)

I've been TV and (mostly) PC off for the past few days, so it's pretty appalling to read all of this. Literally, earlier today was the first I heard about it. It's not just the immediate cost in human lives, as incredibly awful as that is. Seems to me, if we take this back to the kinds of things this board usually analyzes, that not only will there be immediate issues with food distribution, but also long term effects--in terms of crops along coastlines, fishing, etc. Even inland crop areas seem to be threatened by flooding. Add to that the long-term effects of disease not only on the human population, but the animal population, and this is seeming almost biblical. Has anyone spotted any good analysis' out there on these long-term effects? The ecosystems of that area have to be pretty much kaput.