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If you embark down the vegan road, you denounce the bulk of human culinary practices. Why, then, look upon the evil ways of the unenlightened with nostalgia? Food analogs are an abomination, not just in a culinary sense, but also because they belie a vegan's commitment. Some foods are vegan just the way they are. A chocolate cake is not. For it to be vegan, the chocolate cake must be mutated into a grotesque simulacrum. It is an insult to the platonic ideal of a chocolate cake, to the cook producing this abomination, and to the person eating it. Why do vegans need to own their own perverted versions of desserts enjoyed by the unenlightened, when they can simply eat a peach?

Yes, it does sound like George Carlin, which is why that bit is attributed to him. But it was actually Steve Martin who coined it.

I heartily second or third or fourth the ratatouille endorsements. But even more heartily I urge you to grill the squash over lump hardwood charcoal, preferably mesquite. Cut the squash lengthwise into quarter to half inch thick slices, coat in olive oil, place over very hot fire, cook until flopsy and good-looking. Season with lots of salt and pepper. Serve immediately with more olive oil and whatever vinegar tastes good to you drizzled over. Refridgerate and use later as a pizza topping, or sandwich filling, or risotto ingredient. Grilled summer squashes of all kinds are one of the things I most look forward to as the summer months roll around.

This week, it's actually been too hot to grill. A few weeks ago, I came into possession of a Weber rotisserie kit, and we've cooked at least 12 chickens (2 at a time) since then. The rotisserie kit includes an expander ring, which increases the height of the dome. See here. Thanks to the increased height, I was able to roast a few huge 4-inch thick porterhouse steaks by standing them on end. The t-bone makes a perfect stand. Last week, I used the rotisserie to cook a couple of tri-tips. This turns out to be an excellent way to cook them. Earlier this week we grilled a dozen splendid lambchops covered in olive oil, along with some gorgeous mexican summer squash (I waited until almost 9 pm before I started grilling -- too hot before then.) But mainly, this is wild salmon season, so we try to grill a 4-5 pound fish at least once each week. For years, I've been using lump mesquite coal, which I buy in 40 pound bags, and which varies in size from unusably small to the size of my leg. The larger chunks have to be broken up with a hatchet. A few years ago, other lump hardwood coal became widely available around here, so I've been using that for foods that don't necessarily benefit from the mesquite flavoring, like delicate fishes. The benefits of lump hardwood coal, including mesquite, is that it burns much hotter, leaves less ash, and has no chemical additives. I start the coal in a starter chimney using newspaper. Recently, I began experimenting with oak. Not oak charcoal -- just oak. We have a bunch of oak firewood left over from the cold months. I hack it up into Weber-size pieces and either throw it onto burning coals, or simply start a little campfire in the Weber. The food is flavored nicely, although, as with mesquite, a strong smoke flavor does not benefit every dish. It's great for steak. A wood fire burns plenty hot, but it also burns much faster, so you have to stay on top of it and keep adding more wood. Talk about reinventing the wheel, eh?

You can get drunk faster because the beer can be drunk faster. cf. Eden's post re: chugging, above.

Also, with a straw, you can pretend you're drinking when you're actually not. Just suck your cheeks in, and the illusion is perfect. Otherwise, you have to find a potted plant to ditch your drink and make a show of getting refills.

I think many people are enthusiastic eaters without having the slightest interest in learning how to cook. I think it's common, and I think they keep our economy healthy. If everyone had the time and inclination to cook from scratch, supermarkets would be one-third their present size, Kraft Foods would collapse, millions of fast-food workers would be layed off.... It's the same in many industries, like for instance the computer game industry. The vast majority of consumers are happy to use the commercial products as they are released. Only a tiny minority is inclined to figure out how to write their own.

I like straws because they keep the beer off my exquisitely trimmed mustachios.

S'mores.

That is so COOL!!!

It's perfectly normal to have irrational beliefs about food. We all do. Eating connects us to society like no other physical need. We don't need society to breathe, we can find shelter in any number of ways, and most of us can locate a source of water -- but we're pretty much helpless when it comes to food. Even early societies made food supply a communal effort. While some of us have the skills to survive as solitary hunter/gatherers, most of us, if we were cut off from society, would become malnourished and eventually perish. This dependency we have is part of the glue that forms societies in the first place. If we didn't need each other to produce food, what would we need each other for? Even animals, those that hunt large prey, form societies in order to feed individuals. Today, without thinking about it, each of us trusts people we've never met to properly perform a series of complex and difficult tasks necessary to put food on our tables. It's no surprise that food has been ritualized since the very beginnings of society. The expectation that tonight, somehow, there will be dinner on the table is nothing less than a leap of faith. Ever since we got kicked out of Paradise, food doesn't just grow on trees. Given the complexity of the modern food industry, it's a minor miracle whenever anything works the way it's supposed to. Why should I expect there to be a nice line-caught salmon in the fishmonger's case when I go shopping today? Why should I expect the salmon to be fresh? Or afordable? On a large scale, the laws of economics create trends, but there is no guarantee that good, fresh food will find its way to my particular table every night. The twisted path that salmon had to take between my Weber grill and the waters where it blissfully swam two days ago has thousands of links that could fail. The fact that they somehow don't is reason enough to thank Providence for our daily bread. I don't ride on rollercoasters, and consider that a rational decision. If half the people I meet every day are imbeciles, or drunk, or drug-addled, why should I assume the guy who last tightened the bolts on that thing was some kind of clean-living brainiac? I assume, in fact, the opposite. So I don't ride on rollercoasters, and fly in airplanes only under protest. However, just recently I stood and watched a person I have never met before put together a tasty cheeseburger and hand it off to yet another complete stranger, who wrapped it and handed it to a third stranger, who handed it to me. And these three are just the very end of the long and complicated chain of humans, machines and animals that were involved in producing that tasty cheeseburger. Any one of those links in that chain could have introduced dangerous, even fatal bacteria or chemicals into the food. Even mischeif and malice could have come into play. Yet I promptly devoured that tasty cheeseburger without fear. Now, that's irrational.

Yes, everything is suspect in this country. We have food like chicken scampi and shrimp fajitas. In fact, this post is not authentic, but an incredible simulation.

I use lump hardwood charcoal (and lately plain ol' wood), so along with the ashes I get a lot of bits of unburnt coal that fall through the grate. Besides that, in a 40-lb bag of mesquite coal I'll find 30 lbs of useable chunks varying from fist- to log-size, leaving me with 10 lbs of coal dust and bits too small to use. All of this goes into the compost heap. Any idea what all that coal will do to my garden soil? Do aphids get blacklung?

One thing you can do if your pistachios are an unsightly blemishy brown is dye them a bright red.

My thoughts exactly. The rotisserie will be interesting to try, but with this ring I can stand ribs up closer to the edge of the kettle, and next Thanksgiving I won't have to measure the height of the turkey.

It has come to my attention that I will soon be in possession of this marvelous add-on, possibly by this weekend. If you haven't been swayed by then, Mayhaw Man, I will give a full report.

A rare talent, indeed. Does she mention her mom was a lousy cook?

Ok, that's the Foie Gras Activism Group Theory as initially postulated. Either you have to re-define Group B to include "funny looking hypocrite", or create a new group for Chef Trotter.

That's better than "bum pal".

Or, like, you can have Group E that believe in freedom of choice but chew with their mouths open and ask for forks at sushi bars -- then Groups A through D can beat up on E and later go out for pizza and beers.

Where is group D when you need it? Group D -love foie gras -extremely violent -for freedom of choice Groups C and D can duke it out in the parking lot while groups A and B have a nice lunch.

Traveling Japanese businessmen know where to get good sushi everywhere in the world. Follow them.

The writing's on the wall. Kiss your foie goodby, America. We had a brief flirtation with fancy eating here in the States, but face it folks: it was all just a pretense. We're not really a nation of gourmands, we just play one on FoodTV. Other values, in particular the rights of animals, are more important. It takes a lot of time and trouble to grow a foie gras. For thousands of years, there have been people who considered the result to be worth the trouble. I don't think they asked the goose for an opinion, or if they did, the outcome of that conversation is lost in the mists of time. In any case, foie producers continued to ply their trade undaunted until the modern age, when it occurred to people that maybe the duck doesn't enjoy the process after all. For people who would not eat liver under any circumstances, the process is not worth the cost. Then there are those who place the comfort of a goose above the comfort of a human child. There is no fighting this tide. Animal husbandry is on its way out, because nothing can justify our enjoyment of meat at the expense of an animal's life and comfort. I defy you to draw a line between force-feeding geese and keeping gentle creatures incarcerated, feeding them slop laced with chemicals designed to make them obese, hooking them up to giant noisy sucking machines, and, after all that, electrocuting them and hacking them to bits. There is no humane way to mass-produce meat, and we are just beginning to grapple with that fact. In the end, cows and chickens will be released back to the wild, where they will live short, brutish but noble lives, as we tuck in to our salads. As soon as the first all-vegan frozen meat-analog conglomerate goes public, I'm buying stock and moving to France.

By George, you might have something there! And all this time I thought it was my breath!

Well, it's obvious where this is all heading. Time to cultivate alternatives. I wonder if it's possible to force-feed a monkfish? I think I'd be safe there -- monkfish are ugly enough to repulse even the anything-with-a-face crowd.