jhlurie

Okay... so NO parking volunteers? Not even for the "sitting in a lawn chair and pointing" job? BTW: As of a minute ago, the Sunday forecast for the area where the Potluck is being held.

Question for Ugo: If you went to a fortune teller who predicted that despite your narrow escape from the life of a food taster you would STILL someday be fated to die from some form of poisoning, which poison would you choose--assuming such a choice was possible? Or were all poisons pretty much the same to you, since the ultimate result was the same? Question for Peter: Do you have any clue why Andy Kaufman's Taxi character was named after a Jewish potato pancake? Also: in the very brief time you worked with him, did you see any signs of some of the odd obsessions he later developed around food?

Lobel's has a mass media presense unequaled by any other butcher in the world. In addition to your own books and personal media appearances, Lobel's as an entity is mentioned frequently on mainstream TV shows like Late Show with David Letterman, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and others. Has this wider awareness of the Lobel's "brand" changed the way you do business?

Okay, since Rachel dumped Parking coordination responsibilities on me, I'm going to put out my call for volunteers now. The parking operation needs at least 2 people per "shift". The easy job being to stand still on the road-side to point people inside and the tougher one to march around the nice muddy field, help people into a parking spot, and then guide them towards the other muddy field we are set up in, or to the barn if its raining. We figured that people will be "arriving" between 1:00pm and 2:00pm. I'm covering the "muddy field" job myself for the first half-hour, so ideally I need three more people for half-hour shifts. At least two of you can sit roadside on a lawn chair with a nice drink in your hand pointing people to the parking entrance (its different from the normal Bobolink Dairy entrance--so basically the job is to get people to roll down their windows and ask them if they are here for the eGullet event or not, then direct them). Yes, I know it sounds glorious, especially if it rains. Hopefully Rachel and the others can come up with some suitable bribe/reward for helping out.

The people of Randolph should have been out there with pitchforks and torches stopping this.

You know... its funny... but one of the more satisfying breakfasts may be at a place in Oradell called "The Diner", which is a diner run by a guy who also runs Le Jardin in Edgewater. I suppose with that background, he may occasionally break the Diner stereotype and do something interesting. Do NOT ever eat in "Le Peep Restaurant" in Paramus (does it still even exist?). A breakfast themed place which sucks.

Just tried my Diet Cricket. I can't rate it as highly as the sugared... but it IS pretty good. Bevnet's review claims that the Green Tea tastes more "medicinal" in the Diet, but that's not quite right. I think its more accurate to say that the sugared blends OVER the Green Tea a bit more and the diet reveals it a bit more. I seem to prefer it more in the background, for the way it softens the bitterness of the cola, so I like the sugared more. Somebody who is really fond of Green Tea taste might actually like the Diet Cricket more than the regular Cricket.

I wonder if See's realizes the potential goldmine they have in marketing on the East coast...

Yes, but those slow-cooked meats are cooked at a lower temperature. It's a complicated formula, and we need an expert like our old buddy col klink to comment, but trust me... its totally different from "overcooking" something at a higher temperature. And something like a Pork Chop? I dunno... I think like this:

I'm guessing the nearest Rabbi would be... well... there ARE a few in China, right? Seems to me, in a country with LESS than 1% arable land (and that's apparently a recent development), Meat and dairy will be inevitably mixed. Area: total: 1.565 million sq km water: 9,600 sq km land: 1,555,400 sq km Land use: arable land: 0.84% permanent crops: 0% Irrigated land: 840 sq km (1998 est.) from the CIA Factbook Entry on Mongolia Unrelated to the kosher question, but one interesting thing from the Factbook. 99.1% literacy? China is only 86%. Even the US is ONLY 97%. It must be a hold-over from the Soviets. Even today, Russia has 99.6% literacy.

Okay people, why does this post NOT have ten million or so responses? Somebody is crazy enough to go to Mongolia and get wrapped in raw horse meat, we need to appreciate/ridicule/gasp/wince/marvel at her!

The only two words I can think of are "good" and "lord".

Given how slow submissions are, I fully cede the right to reuse anything I've already used. Build something nicer on my sweat! I refuse to get third place merely by default. I want sixth place. Tenth!

Kick-ass hat, El! Great piece. I predict Mongolia will be the next big vacation spot! Visit Mongolia 2003 site!!! (warning: REALLY slow site) Some great quotes... So it's BOTH "Visit Mongolia year" AND "Welcome to Mongolia Year"? Wow! I feel doubly welcome! "The" one? "The" 737? The only one? So, does EVERYONE in Mongolia have those broken blood vessels in their cheeks from the cold (at least I'm assuming that's the reason)? It looks like even you were developing them...

Okay, for the record... I really dislike Iced Tea. Warm, I'm an occasional Tea drinker, but cold... I just don't like it. The idea of mixed iced tea beverages also weirds me out a bit, and I'm not usually the guy buying at the Seven-Eleven, trying every new variation Snapple or Arizona pumps out. So why was I attracted to the display of Green Tea drinks in a back corner of the King's Supermarket in Fort Lee, New Jersey? I'm not entirely sure, but at least part of the equation was that they were SODAS and not the Tea/Juice hybrids I'm so sick of ignoring. A whole selection of flavors was available from a company called Steap (name makes sense, eh?). The Steap website (click here) probably describes them better than I could. Out of that pack of flavors, I grabbed a bottle of orange--as yet untried. The in-store stock of Steap didn't include the Cola flavor, but another manufacturer, Cricket Cola, was sitting right there on the shelf in its place. Like Steap, Cricket is a Soda/Green Tea hybrid, and sitting here drinking it I can tell you how surprised I am at how good it is. The Green Tea (maybe the sixth ingredient) really mellows out the usual bitterness of Cola, and makes it unbelievably smooth. I'm currently drinking the "regular" Cricket Cola, with Cane Sugar, but later on I'll try the Splenda version and report back on that. Here's the Cricket Cola website for those of you who care. Also, a very favorable BEVNET review, which I've only just read as I'm typing this. Anyone else seen these things, or other brands of Soda/Green Tea hybrids? One important distinction seems to be that Green Tea is NEVER the primary flavor, so a Green Tea flavored soda, if such exists, might not count.

The "soap" thing... I don't think it CAN be explained if you don't perceive it that way. I've TRIED to taste "soap" in Cilantro and have never come even close. It just DOESN'T taste that way to my taste buds, and I've chewed on springs of it all by itself to experiment. To the "soap" folks... do you also perceive soap taste when cilantro is cooked into something, or is it just the raw form? Does this soap thing carry over to Corriander seeds as well?

Suzanne, as we well know, wants to change the world one city block at a time. A good goal, even if she's sometimes the Don Quiote of NYC. I would hope that the building at least gave some small businesses the chance at those spaces.

Suzanne, as chains go it could have been MUCH worse. Taco Bell? Wendy's? Pizza Hut? XXXX Ray's XXXX Pizza? Au Bon Pain? MUCH worse. Of course a Starbucks will be showing up ANY second now.

We have to go back sometime soon. Next time we eat 10 each instead of 5. Taco Bell should burn in hell (Can an entire franchise burn in hell? Would they put the fire out with a cool refreshing Pepsi?) when Mexican food which tastes like this is available for pretty much the exact same price.

And this is the SAME Bravo who is currently airing a show about how fake Reality Shows are? One other thing, although it only loosely has to do with Rocco and The Restaurant... The follow-up to the Restaurant? Will be... "The Casino".

Joyce, first of all I want to thank you for giving all of us at eGullet an opportunity to question an expert in the only truly American cuisine. One long running discussion here at eGullet centers around the PROPER way to prepare Fried Chicken. Some philistines (like eGullet founder Jason Perlow ) hold out that deep frying, because it is a more even and a "safer" method results-wise, is the way to go. Others contend that the only real Fried Chicken is pan or shallow fried. What's your opinion on this matter of great importance?

This was apparently the root of the recent Hitler Wine stories, although apparently the Germans have been protesting to Italy in various ways since 1997. Here's a Google mention from 1997.

Good lord, this is harder than I thought. I had to mangle the english language pretty badly and cheat left and right. Feh. I'm only posting it to get the topic going. As the sun set, rosie behind the Hollywood Hills, it was just another of those "Jonathan" days... where everything panned out really nicely for Jon, and he didn't feel like some blue hero needing to dodge 621 different threats to his life. Then again, he mused, Basil, dog that he was, hadn't come through yet with the "bux" he needed, and if he didn't have the cash by tonight, "Scotsman", the Scottish loanshark, would probably send some big bear of an enforcer to make girl chow out of the tissue of his face! Here he was, just an ordinary fat guy, finishing up some of those all-natural hormone free "macro" sandwiches they served in this idiotic California health food restaurant--eating with Eddie, Maggie, the cat she was jazzed on lately, and a few others--when some little varmint runs over to the table like she's part of the NY Fire Patrol! "Chef", he yelled into the kitchen, "is this Dave, the Cook's kid?" The chef didn't answer, and neither did Mark, Sommelier of this crappy joint. The kid, making a nuisance of of herself, spilled the beans and said... "my name is Anna n' my daddy is going to kill you!" Jon knew at that point that this wasn't just malarkey, that the presence of the huge man walking up behind the girl, as hard as stone, meant that the damned Scotsman, who advertised hits with elegant simplicity, had hung up a sign somewhere that set a limit on his lifetime: Jon=Mark.

Ha. I can never be infamous now. I used a concoction based on my own real name instead of some clever alias like "tommy"! And my name doesn't sound like anything else. Oh the pain! Nevertheless I will have fun with this one.

I think the idea that pleasure + a little pain = more pleasure has been around for quite some time in various forms. Frankly, over the years, the more tolerance I get for capsaicin, the more I find it actually enhances the other flavors. Capsaicin and ginger, for example, work together better than alone. Whether this is due to endorphins or pure adaptation, I don't know. I've at least convinced myself that its not just that I'm getting better at tasting through the "heat", but that the other tastes actually ARE stronger. I could be fooling myself. I don't know. There's also an element beyond that which is even harder to explain. Sitting down to a nice bowl of TOM YUM GAI and just breathing it in... who can explain that?