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An exchange from The Motley Fool, Gestalt of Cooking Discussion Board: ChocoKitty: "I want to know how (Ruhlman) is so #@^$#@$%* prolific!" SRHCB: It's easy. While doing research for his books he just adapted the "restaurant kitchen division of labor model" to his own line of work. Just like the celebrity chefs he writes about, he has all the dirty work done by his minions. Somewhere there is a metal building in an industrial park where scores of Central and South American immigrants labor under harsh conditions to sort, sift, cut and paste the prospective material. Lack of Englsih literacy is no impediment at this level of production. The rough material is delivered twice a day by courier to one of those anonymous looking office parks, where cubicles full of tranlators, (most of whom are actually US Citizens), shape the rough material into basic components of the finished work. Next, the material moves downtown to fancy designer decorated offices. There, under the watchful eye of washed out former writers whose predilection to drink shortened their own careers, young interns, grad students, and food-writing groupies assemble the final product. Finally Mr Ruhlman shows up. He adjusts a few phrases here and there, okays the dust jacket design and blurbs, and poses for photos with the finished work. Then, after a short meeting with the publicist to arrange his next tour, he jets off to California to dine at French Laundry with his celebrity buddies before going on vacation to conceive his next project. Nothing to it!

Well, Steve said to Dick, can always resort to one of the Three Eternal Topics of Death, Shit and Dairy Queen Man.

KIDS! DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME, OR ANYWHERE ELSE "Psilocyban Mushroom Comfit" Mice' In Place: 1 Beautiful Spring School Day 6 Grams Psilocyban Mushrooms * 2 College Buddies 1 Oldsmobile 442 2 Road Maps (divided) Remove School from Spring Day and discard Add Psilocyban Mushrooms in equal amount to Self and College Buddies Combine Buddies and Spring Day and stir vigorously As Spring Day is consumed place Buddies in Olds 442 with 1 MN Road Map Remove Olds 442/Buddies/MN Map to North Dakota on route to Mt Mushmore When mixture reaches Fargo ND combine MN Map with 1 ND/SD Road Map Digest information in ND/SD Road Map re: miles between Fargo-Mt Mushmore Abort Mission Return Buddies to point of origin Remember Fondly * http://www.erowid.org/plants/mushrooms/mushrooms.shtml SB (what can I say?)

"First, you take a leak." SB (With apology, and declaration of utmost respect, to Julia)

I forget the exact title, but it's from the old Andy Griffith Show's Aunt Bee's Mayberry Cookbook. It's done in the style of community cookbooks with references to the shows various characters and episodes. COntain some pretty good recipes too! SB (love the way Aunt Bee used to say "Oh, Andy.")

The second hardest I ever laughed in my life was while watching one of my friends eat a slice of plain white Wonderbread right from the bag. I don't know why this seemed so funny, although pot did have the ability to warp not only your sense of taste, but also your sense of humor. The hardest I ever laughed in my life was also drug and food related. Although pschedelic drugs were not generally appetite enhancing like pot smoking, they had an even more dramatic effect on your funny bone. While under the influence of psilocybin mushrooms, two friends and I visited an all-night supermarket in the wee hours. The place was almost deserted, and we would joke and laugh uproariously as we walked down the seemingly endless corridors of the brightly packaged bounty of America's farms and factories while trying to impersonate serious shoppers as we rounded the corners at the aisle ends where the employees could see us. Luckily, a girl we knew was working the check-out or I don't think we would have been able to escape from the store with our purchase of two packs of cigarettes and two pound ingot of Velveeta!

Better late than never: I didn't enter the contest, but once you start thinking about something like this it can become an obsession. "It's easy to get pancakes browned on both sides." he said flippantly. "I don't have time to eat today." hey stated fastly. "Roast at a very low temperature for a long time." he stated slovenly. "I refuse food." he held fast. "No, I said 1/4 Cup!" the instructor issued fourth. My favorite, "I detect a minute amount of a green leafy herb" said the Chef parsely. SB (now, back to your regularly sceduled program)

A great article. I often poke fun at eGullet for a perceived tendency towards pretense, but this was a piece of genuine solid writing. THANX SB PS: I once had a friend who was a "terrible" cook but didn't realize it. Turns out he had no sense of smell!

The highest accolade I can award a web site: I Laughed Like Hell! THANX SB

Retired Chef, I'd tip my Toque to you, ........ THANX SB

I guess it didn't surprise me that the two kids featured on this show proved to be considerably less clever and sophisticated than the Posters to this Board. However, I am amazed to learn that so many people must have television sets in their wine cellars. Otherwise I can't imagine they would condescend to emerge and watch common cable television with the rest of us? Lighten up! It's a tv show. Entertainment is the point, not culinary exactitude or history!

If bread is fresh, ie: still warm, or specially baked to be served warmed, fine. If not, it's a disguise. Then again, warm bread will quickly cool to room temp, whereas a diner has no means of heating cool bread? SB (six of one, half dozen the other)

A friend of mine raised Scottish Highland Cattle for years. Beautiful Beef! But his kids' favorite treat was to get a big greasy take-out pizza from town, and he confessed that it was a nice change of pace from the beef. PS: I'll bet your Mom was wise to your eating "tricks"? SB (Has great faith in Power of Moms)

Based on reports from a usually reliable source on such matters, my Mother, I was definately NOT a picky eater According to her, my first word was "bite". Then again, I may attribute this trait to one of my Mother's dining policies, phoneticly transcribed from Serbian as, "oches neches modach", and literally translated as, "you want it or not, you got it". SB (never did like oysters though)

As a Gastronomica subscriber who considers himself quite unpseudo, unpretentious and relevant, I might characterize your depiction of the magazine in that light as perhaps a case of the "pot calling the kettle black". Otherwise, I agree 100%, and you have my offer of any relevant support for such a venture, under whatever pretense, intellectual or otherwise. Best Wishes, SB

WOW! Is that an eye-opening list or what? How much of a future does the hard-copy magazine have anyway. looking ten years out? At what point will the spill over effect of traditional paper magazines vs captive web site publications start to favor the e-versions with all their attendent updating and linking advantages? SB (loves and save magazines, but ........

And, may I also add, that putting research before conclusions may not be satifying, (in that you can't automaticly make yourself right all the time), but it is the more time honored method of carrying on intelligent discussion. Feel free to be wrong. The rest of us do it quite often. SB (outa here)

While I'm willing to grant that newspaper editors and publishers know their customers better than I do, the internet, and related 'zines, offer an alternate means of communication that can adjust to any niche market, no matter how small. The mass media watches these smaller markets for developing trends, so perhaps there is hope. Just a few related thoughts: I notice the CIA, and probably some other culinary institutions, offers courses in food writing. Is anybody familiar with the contents of these courses? Gastronomica magazine does restaurant "reviews" based on more sociological and aesthetic considerations than any other publication I'm familiar with. I would also hazard a guess that restaurant reviewing in Japan might reflect more aethetic concerns than ours.

I hardy think Americans were "afraid of anything foreign"? It just takes a while for habits and styles to change, especially for something as ingrained as the type of food we eat. There was no established "isolationist" trend involved, (in fact just the opposite can be argued just as well); just the gradual overcoming of an isolation based on physical and technological limitations. Remember that even as late as the 1950's many families were only 2nd Generation Americans, and were themselves in the process of adapting Old World cooking to the abundance and convenience of American supermarkets. The returning GI's, modern communications, especially television, and the luxury of being able to think or write about food in any respect other than "is there enough of it" set the stage for a person to function as the focal point of a "new" way to look at food, cooking and eating. Julia best and beautifully filled that bill. I'm sorry, but I think that to read much more than that into it is revisionist History.

I look forward to learning more about Ms David's influence. While I've read some of her books, I never had occasion to place her in any particular context before. I mentioned MFKF because she had a unique perspective on the US and British culinary scenes just previous to the Post WWII period being referred to here, and her writing style gives us great insights into how people thought and reacted in those days. Probably a bit Off Topic; sorry. Perhaps what we have here is some sort of a generational or geographic failure to communicate fully? Are we looking at the same situation from differing perspectives? SB (50-midwest)

Oddly enough, considering this just came up on another Thread, I view the Post WWII car and food situations as similar. The GI's retuned from Europe having been exposed to food that was entertaining to prepare and eat and cars that were light, responsive and fun to drive. At first, both were almost underground movements. Julia led the way with her PBS series in exposing us to French cooking in the same way that Road & Track magazine (there were others but R&T was, if I may be so bold, the Julia Child of auto enthusiast publications) introduced the sports car concept. While neither ever came to actually dominate out culture in their respective fields, there is no doubt that they had significant influence on the poplular culture.

I share your frustration with what is known as restaurant reviews, and I think you touched on the answer to some of your questions in your critique. Restaurant dining experiences, like autos, are physical products marketed to consumers. While the cooking, or even the setting or organization of a restaurant may be akin to an artistic production, the patron/consumer is not expected to purchase and live with the product but only to enjoy a temporary experience. Being a long time devotee of auto enthusiast magazines I can assure you that your comparison with a Lexus driving review is spot on. This could be because of the similar disconnect between the subject, (customer/critic), and the purveyor, (auto manufacturer/restaurant) which eliminates direct contact with the actual person (artist/designer/ chef/engineer) responsible for the work. I share your preference for writing about "food from the perspective of culture", but I guess we must look to books by food writers and specific journals such as Gastronomic, (along with some innovative new internet sites), for this information. THANX SB

Say what you want about Ron Popiel but he's one fasinating guy: http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/popeil.htm You could even say that his combined influence on both food and television may be second only to that of another fasinating person, Ms Julia Child. Please note that I went to great pains to avoid mentioning both names in the same paragraph. SB (loves Julia)

And I AM NOT a lawyer, but probably with the laws pertaining to "insider trading" being as vague as they are Ms Stewart's circumstance makes her situation more useful to the government for it's publicity value, (and inherrent political associations), than as an actual criminal case that could be successfully tried or used to set precedents. SB (but, live by the sword .... )

You are more far qualified to comment on the subject of eGullet pedantry than I, so, yes, I guess so. I would love to be able to visit this exhibit, and the Smithsonian in general , but being forced to put aside that pleasure for the time being I can only comment on the topic as it was framed by your original Post. To continue, I think Elizabeth David's position in GB is not quite analogeous to Julia in this Country in that Ms David was always more "British" than Julia was "American". (How's that for a sweeping generality?) Also, with Ms David's works being confined mostly to printed media she was unable to reach as popular an audience as Julia, who was really at the cutting edge of communications technology with her early shows. At risk of being considered Off-Topic, I submit the observation that the person whose work may have best encompassed the emerging importance of food in culture was MFK Fisher. Having both grown up in a rather privileged, (and isolationist), environment, and spending WWII and the times immediately following coping with the rationing and shortages of England, her views are perhaps uniquely pertinent when comparing the American and British food/culture relationships of the Post WWII period. SB (or, maybe not?)