MarketStEl

Well, since one of the specials slated for this spring is obviously the bastard spawn of a love triangle involving TLC, Food Network and Spike TV, there must be some serious uplift involved. (I'm referring to "Grill-Gantua," slated for May, which sounds like the Al Roker version of "Monster Garage.")

The feast was inspired by the residues found on dishes and jars in the king's tomb. The feast in question was supposed to be the monarch's funerary dinner, IIRC; the speculation (oops! theory--this is academe we're talking about) was that this particular ruler may have been the "King Midas" of legend, based on the location of the tomb, the time period when the person in the tomb lived, and markers of great wealth and status found at the site. And "local brewery" above is defined broadly. Last I looked, Lewes, Del. -- home of the Dogfish Head brewery, which the Penn Museum contacted about brewing the beverage -- was beyond the Philadelphia metropolitan area. Dogfish Head had previously brewed a batch of beer for the Museum based on the earliest known beer recipe (about 6,000 years old), which Penn archaeologists uncovered on a dig a few years back Need a delivery person? I can walk on water for a small fee.

Those are two slightly different motives for selling. Often, it's the ones who can't afford to grow on their own that are the most poignant or interesting. Think Ben & Jerry's, whose eponymous owners sold the company to Unilever about five years ago. (Unilever. Now there's an interesting consumer-products conglomerate for you. Formed in the early 1930s by the merger of a British soap maker and a Dutch margarine company. The company still has two CEOs and two HQs--one British, one Dutch in each case--and a bewildering array of products, many of which are specific to a given country and most of which people don't associate with the parent company [think Ben & Jerry's again].) Moving through conglomerateland, picking up where a post upthread left off: RJR Nabisco is no more--the tobacco company sold the cookie-and-cracker maker because the taint of tobacco artificially depressed the food manufacturer's price. Kraft, which acquired General Foods some years ago, took Nabisco off RJR's hands. The other major global food manufacturers I am aware of: Nestle SA (biggest of them all, if I'm not mistaken) Campbell Soup Company (I came close to getting hired by their PR department for an internal communications position) Grand Metropolitan (British parent of Pillsbury and General Mills, former Minneapolis crosstown rivals; I believe this company merged with a French firm and is now called Diageo) ConAgra (don't know if they have a significant presence beyond North America, though) H.J. Heinz Company Since the main subject has been seeds and crops, I guess there's been no reason for Archer Daniels Midland to come up in this thread, but I am surprised it hasn't, given how this processor of soybeans into just about everything is known for currying favor with politicians. As for the concern with food affordability, I don't think the emphasis many place on low price is misplaced, even though the Feds say that the typical US family spends only about 15 cents of every dollar on food. I do agree that if the cheap food is the product of policies that may cause unforeseeable (or even foreseeable) damage to the Earth or the food supply, we need to revisit those policies.

Don't think I'll be sending them my resume, though. For one, I'd have to move to St. Louis, and while it has its charms and is close enough to Kansas City, there are many places I'd rather live; for another, I don't think I'd like to field criticism of the type seen here.

I don't know whose monitor you were comparing it to, but mine is a 17-inch flat panel LCD, so I don't think what I saw would be caused by problems with the screen resolution.

I make my own barbecue sauce all the time, according to Ollie Gates' recipe. Easier, faster and cheaper than ordering it from Gates' Bar-B-Q. I try to make stock whenever I roast a turkey or chicken. I've got some turkey stock in the freezer. I also have the liquor left over from cooking pigs' feet in a pitcher. I haven't yet figured out what I might use it for, but it had an enticing aroma, so I figured there must be something I could do with it.

Since even the major brands have jumped on the green-tea bandwagon (my local supermarkets stock Lipton, Salada, Twinings, Bigelow and Harris green teas), I would have liked to see at least one of these in their comparisons to see how they stack up. I do not find the flavor of green tea at all objectionable. Unlike black tea, I find I do not need to add sugar to it.

Paper in hand, it looks like a classic Tony Luke roll. ← In the online photo, I detect what appears to be a dark streak along the edge of the bottom half of the bread, which sure looks to me like it was toasted.

It's not selling it that I see as a problem, its the use of it at the table. ← So order takeout! Chances are they will give you the sauce in a little plastic tub rather than hand you an entire bottle. Your neighborhood diner probably has bottles of ketchup and mustard at every table--and if it has dispensers rather than bottles with labels, it's probably because the ketchup and mustard they use is from a foodservice company and they don't want patrons squawking because "it's not Heinz!" (And even if the bottle says Heinz, it still may not be. You're not supposed to refill those bottles, but it happens all the time.) Most barbecue restaurants I've been to are closer in spirit to the neighborhood diner than to Jean-Georges' restaurants, even those with table service. (Most of the 'cue joints I've been to in KC and in Philly have counter service, not table service--and a few of them don't even have many tables; the bulk of their trade is carryout.) One more reason for providing bottles of sauce at the table: Patrons' tastes vary. Some may want no sauce with their 'cue, others a little, still others lots. Sauce is usually added after the meat is served, anyway, so why go to the trouble of saucing the meat before serving it to the diner if you can't be sure how much he wants beforehand, if any? If those labels on the bottles trouble you, maybe you could suggest the establishment take a cue from Arthur Bryant's and serve its sauce in unlabeled bottles.

Ditto on the BLT. Tomatoes with a sprinkling of salt or a dollop of mayonnaise or some fresh mozzarella. Cheddar cheese and peanut butter on crackers. Vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup. Poultry stuffing with sage. Any sandwich with Dijon mustard, except a hoagie, on which good old yellow mustard works better. Hot dogs and sauerkraut. Cottage cheese and hot sauce!

I like all kinds o' fish, especially if they're served with hush puppies. I can't wait to meet the Philly crew! ← The ratio of Midwesterners to the total group population would instantly double upon your visit. You never told me which part of the Midwest you were from, though, Fresser. This does matter a bit, as it would determine whether it would be worth it to seek out what passes for great barbecue here and share it with you. (You might want to wade through the discussion of The Smoked Joint in this forum by way of preparation. I haven't been there yet, so can't comment on whether it's better than the best stuff I've had here yet--served at a hole-in-the-wall at 55th and Baltimore called Belmont Bar-B-Q--but it's gotten a warm reception.) Whether or not this happens, though, let me join Katie in encouraging you to visit here soon. --Sandy, who makes his own Gates' Sauce

A further comment on decor: Gates' & Son's Ol' Kentuck' Bar-B-Q at 12th and Brooklyn in Kansas City--one of the two direct predecessors of the current Gates' Bar-B-Q--was housed in a building that looked like a 1950s coffee shop, only with darker wood paneling. The current architecture and decor of Gates' six red-roofed locations today just screams "chain," just as the servers scream "Hi, May I Help YOU?" the moment you walk through the door. In other words, the atmosphere at Gates' is in some ways as inauthentic as the 'cue is genuine. And there's no better sauce on the planet. What was that somebody said about judging books by their covers? Knock the place because the food isn't good, but don't make assumptions about the food based on the decor.

Here's one: One first-rate barbecue joint does not a great barbecue town make--unless the town in question is small and the joint so good that people will drive from a couple of states away to eat there. I could see where you could infer from Severson's review exactly what you say above, ghostrider, but I would say that the inference is stretching it a bit. The most I'd be willing to assert on the basis of the review is that Syracuse has a damn fine 'cue joint.

Based on my own visits to Texas, I suspect that either or both of the following are true: --You were there a very long time ago, prior to the mid-1970s, when I had a tequila sunrise--illegally--in a Dallas TGI Friday's (a schoolmate of legal age ordered it for me); --Texas, like many other states, has a local-option provision that allows counties to restrict or ban outright sales of alcohol, much as New Jersey allows individual townships and boroughs to do so. There is no doubt that the current PLCB chairman has done much to make the state system more consumer-friendly on all counts. FWIW, last I looked into this, 15 or so U.S. states and one county in Maryland have government-run or -controlled alcohol sales. Of those, the notable exception to the rule that state-controlled liquor stores are unwelcoming places to buy booze has historically been New Hampshire, where the state liquor stores are a major source of revenue for the state government, much of it from residents of neighboring Massachusetts. (Didn't someone say something about liquor stores on freeways upthread? Well, don't laugh. Each of New Hampshire's three turnpikes has at least one state liquor store located on the side of the road where in other states you would find service plazas. Fill your trunk with booze, but remember, drinking and driving don't mix!)

I offer my apologies for the offense. I put the phrase in quotes because I was citing a rather infamous remark about the state made by James Carville, the mastermind behind Bill Clinton's 1992 election victory. He hails from Louisiana, where they apparently like their comments as highly seasoned as their food. (For what it's worth, Carville--a liberal Democrat--is married to Republican campaign strategist Mary Matalin.) The comment refers to the generally more culturally (and politically) conservative outlook of the interior of the state. Of course, as you rightly point out, not everyone in rural Pennsylvania is a cultural conservative or a "redneck," nor is every Philadelphian a commie-pinko-liberal. (We hear they're having problems with the Ku Klux Klan in Montgomery County.) But in the broader sense, big-city Pennsylvanians (here defined mainly as--to cite Carville again--"Philadelphia on one end and Pittsburgh on the other") are more culturally liberal than rural and small-city Keystone Staters. Moving this back to food-related discussion: Lancaster County's agricultural products are one of a number of reasons to take pride in Pennsylvania. In the "place-specific food" discussion over in General Food Topics, I argued that the Pennsylvania legislature might want to consider some sort of certified-place-of-origin status for Lancaster County foodstuffs much as Georgia has done for Vidalia onions. Such a move might also help Lancaster County farmers fend off development pressure more effectively as well.

I can't wrap my brain around the idea of McDonald's selling premium coffee either, at least not in its existing restaurant chains including Boston Market, but as far as places that do sell premium coffee are concerned, let me assure you that you can indeed get the stuff in a paper cup. Not everyone who patronizes the three coffee shops that are within a half-block of my apartment (I swear I live on the most caffeinated block in Philadelphia) lingers at them, and for those on-the-go customers, all three offer coffee to travel in paper cups. I will grant that these places serve their sit-down customers coffee in real mugs.

Every Republican governor of the state from the 1970s up to but not including Tom Ridge has made a show of moving to privatize the state liquor stores. And I think even Ridge paid some lip service to this. Besides the reasons others have already given here, I think one of the big reasons the state liquor laws remain as they are is because of the rural-urban divide in this state--compounded here by a geographic difference between the two biggest cities. The people in the "Alabama in between" parts of the state really have little or no interest in changing the way liquor and beer are sold; by and large, they sympathize somewhat with the religious folk who picketed the 1218 Chestnut Street PLCB SuperStore on the first Sunday it was open for business. If Allegheny County were closer to a state that did not also have a controlled system of alcohol sales, there might be more efforts to change things, but as it stands now, the main people agitating for a more drinker-friendly system are Southeastern Pennsylvanians, who live just a hop, skip and jump away from New Jersey, Delaware and (in the case of southern Chester County) Maryland. As long as it's only Philly-area consumers who are doing all the agitating, there won't be any real changes aside from those that can be made by an oenophile Liquor Control Board chairman such as the one currently in charge.

New faux-English pub: Bismuth & Salicylate Cucina frontera: Montezuma's Revenge Featuring the other red meat: Buffalo Pie Downscale French cuisine in Rehoboth Beach: Chez la Merde Or, if you prefer, downhome upscale: Caviar 'n' Chitlin's

So would that make the bistro around the corner from me at 1126 Walnut Street the "Caribou Nonfat Cafe"? Ad slogan for the last one: "When you need a comfortable place to catch your forty whacks"

For small to moderate quantities that you want to keep in the fridge (i.e., leftovers), I find those cheap Ziploc/GladWare/... plastic containers work fine. (Store brands work just as well in this category. I just picked up a pack of four "Good Cook" containers at my local Acme for $2.49; they look like they are made of thicker plastic than standard disposables. The label said "Reusable containers at disposable prices!" but in my experience the "disposables" are plenty reusable too.)

This varies from place to place. Oklahoma City for example is not a dense city, many poor people live in single family homes with plenty of room for gardens that could make significant contributions to food security. People in densely population urban areas like NYC or Philadelphia have different challenges. ← Welcome to the upside of inner-city abandonment. There are some areas of Philadelphia--in particular much of North Central Philadelphia, but also some spots in Kensington, South Philadelphia, West Philadelphia and along the Delaware riverfront--where abandoned houses and vacant former factory sites outnumber intact structures. In some of these areas, large community gardens have taken root--Amtrak passengers get a good view of one of these northbound on the right as trains approach North Philadelphia station. While City Hall would love nothing better than to see all this vacant land sprout houses, offices, stores and factories, right now, all that grows on most of it is weeds. The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, various community groups, and other institutions, including my former employer (the University of Pennsylvania), are engaged with local residents to promote and develop community gardens, but more could be done. Many of those empty houses could be torn down (much though this pains the preservationist in me) and the land cleared for gardening. There are still plenty of weed-choked lots that could be converted into city farms and gardens. Tangent: This isn't really what we're talking about, but high school students in University City grow herbs for local restaurants as part of a Penn-sponsored partnership program. Here's something I wrote about the program for Penn's staff newspaper back in the fall of 2002.

I told you that I wasn't in the same league as the other folks on this board, didn't I, GG (over in the "How did you discover eG?" thread). I'm now convinced of this after perusing everyone else's signature dishes. Here are mine: Chili Macaroni and cheese (also DIY Cheeseburger Macaroni) Barbecued spare ribs (which I've been unable to make since moving to my current apartment, which lacks any outdoor space) My chili is a staple of our annual Christmas Eve celebration, and it always disappears within about 30 minutes of the time I put the Crock-Pot on the serving table. I usually throw in three or four different varieties of pepper (dried ancho, dried habanero, cayenne, chipotle) in addition to the chili powder. I'm working on expanding my repertoire.

I see you and yours are featured dining companions in the article. There's one of these in Philly too, in Chinatown on North 10th Street; it's been open for at least six years. I don't think it's been reviewed recently; it got decent writeups when it opened.

Lessee... she makes nods to Texas, Memphis and Carolina 'cue in her review. Yet she opens with brisket, unadorned by any reference to place. Something's missing from her Barbecue Name-Droppers List.

That's what Velveeta's made for! Don't fight the feeling! Although I must admit that I find that dumping a ton of Cheddar, Swiss, Romano and blue cheeses into a bechamel sauce also does the trick. I suspect you could do this without a trace of guilt.