JimH

363 glasses of Iced Tea and I'm history.

I think that's one of those situations where, if you have to ask . . . JK, of course. I'd rather be cheesey than a foodie any day. ←

Amateur woodworkers consider themselves "wood butchers", so food butchers. Nah, just doesn't have that ring to it.

Food Advocate, Food Aficionado. I don't like labels either but they call me a big eater. I don't think I'd be comfortable being called a foodie. I enjoy good beer does that make me a beerie? I enjoy cheese am I cheesey?

When I go to a new restaurant where the food is good & service is decent (meaning I'll be back) I tip around 25-30%. When I come back the staff will fight to get me in their section and they remember me by name after the second visit. Not suprisingly, when I order Chinese or a pizza delivery a $5 tip ensures I get my food hot and usually within 20 minutes instead of the usual 45 minutes to an hour. If the service is terrible and the staff is ignoring me then 10%, everybody has a bad day now and then.

Ceviche is great if you have firm white-fleshed fish. ETA: Ceviche recipe from the recipe section above: http://recipes.egullet.org/recipes/r360.html

I have some pulled pork I could put into a pot pie. I'll have to look for a recipe.

Yes, Good Luck! I'd like to see a picture of the operation, I've seen a picture of the taproom in the other thread.

I agree.

No most of our aid is corn, rice, wheat etc. I beleive very soon most of the sewage from our feed lots will be used to make fuel. What do you propose as a solution? Is it eat less & pay more? That works for the well off what about the single mother trying to make ends meet? What about the family whose breadwinner is on disability (that means he is getting less that 60% of his usually wages)? Don't you care about the poor?

No, it comes down to whether or not you have the $$ for food. If a poor person was fully educated, to your satisfaction, and given the choice between lovingly raised free range chicken legs for $1.50/ lb and industrialized chicken from the mega chicken slaughter house for $0.79/lb they would still take the lower price. I think the difference here is priviledge. I've had the priviledge of being poor and I understand the difference between want and need. ETA: "Its easier not to think" It's also easier to not to think analytically.

Again I'm not talking about fast food, I'm addressing groceries from the store. Again, just how many more acres of land would have to be cleared to grow the same amount of organic "anything" vs the industrialized "anything". That additional land would have its trees cut down and of course you then have the additional run-off silting rivers. Dredging rivers is not enviromentally friendly. Then you also have the increasing the size of dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico. While you may be raising vegetable "X" organically you still have to replace lost nitrogen in the soil. Even organic nitrogen can have a negative affect on these dead zones. "Food industrialization is responsible for a catalog of ills..." It also feeds 300 million + people and our poor enjoy a feast as compared to the poor in other nations. The overflow actually does go to other nations to help feed their poor. "Many cultures know how feed themselves well and cheaply." Yes, necessity is the mother of invention. "It is a shame that in such a multi-cultural society as America, these skills are being lost to generations only interested in McNuggets." You have to get past this fast food thing, nobody is pointing a gun at someone to get them to buy the happy meal. Even in this fine forum there seems to be a fascination with convenience foods & confections. People still have the choice of where to get their food and what food to eat. You stroke with too broad a brush I think, otherwise I'd see Happy Meal Illustrated rather than Cooks Illustrated and this fine forum would be dedicated to the art of eating fast food.

OK, so now you want to make spinach too expensive for the poor. I wonder what the cost basis is for watered beds vs field grown spinach. I don't think they use antibiotics on spinach nor do I believe do they feed it "frankenstein foods" to make it grow. Again, it would be nice to have a selection of organic foods at our local stores but to feed our population we do need "food factories". I would like my food to be humanely treated as much as possible. I don't want my chicken to be drop kicked before it's killed nor do I want my beef to be skinned alive. Nothing's perfect so I expect some problems like this to creep into the system, people are not perfect. To be honest though, if it takes the occasional kicked chicken to put some meat on the table of a poor family I don't mind. Another thing, up thread you mentioned having a farmer's market. It's a wonderful thing, something I've brought up with our Mayor. The poor shop for the lowest prices to stretch their food budget, that means chain stores. Farmer's Markets are for people who have the leisure time to shop. When I was a young child (before the advent of a grocery store every few blocks) my Mother bought meat from the butcher, greens from a produce stand and groceries from the corner store. Milk was delivered and in the Summer you would have trucks drive down the ally hawking fresh produce. Since then our population has almost doubled and continues to grow. You cannot expect to feed a growing population using organic methods without price increases. Price increases hurt the poor disproportionately, look at what happened to corn prices when the U.S. switched from MTBE to ethanol. Should the poor in Mexico, Central & South America make do with less corn for tortillas and other staples? If you have a problem with fast food, that's fine, more power to you. Having been in a position where all I could afford to eat was rice for a month I can see where this push for organic foods, regardless of the consequences, would seem offensive.

Food choices are guided by budget and ground beef is nowhere near $1.05/lb. Having been poor I can understand the need for cost effective shopping and again I'm not talking about fast food. We all would like to have the ability to buy organic foods but you could not feed 300 million + people using only organically grown/raised foods. If you tried, it would be ecologically harmful to the enviroment.

You mentioned organic spinach, I wonder how many acres of farm land it would take to producde the same amount of organic spinach?

OK, I see, let them eat spinach. The poor should be vegetarians. I'm not talking about chain burgers, I'm talking about ground beef. Ground beef is a staple in many poor households, not to mention chicken and cheap pork cuts.

What about the poor? Let them eat cake?

They are going to open a store near me this Summer.

I wonder how much grazing land it would take to produce the same amount of organic beef?

White Oak, specifically Post Oak is what they use in C.T. BBQ. I'm just as happy with Pecan, though a lot of people complain that it's too strong for long smoke sessions. I've tried Maple, Cherry, Pear etc but keep going back to Pecan. Red Oak is supposed to be good with ribs but I've never tried it. Maple is good with chicken (hard Maple being better than soft Maple) and makes a great bed of coals for hot grilling anything. I try to use Mesquite but it's so dense and resinous finding it properly seasoned for smoking is tough. Pecan is so plentiful around here so why not use it? I guess White Oak is too and it burns hotter so maybe I should experiment with it more. I'm sorry, sometimes I just ramble on and on...

OK, that article clears it up. The pit boss quit and now it's being run by a chef. Somehow I doubt that Houston's fire code would allow an old style horizontal pit with a fire at one end. You would have to use a commercial pit of some sort. Both the old and new horizontal pits cook the same way, they are simply a vehicle for conveying heat & smoke. The difference being the quality of the meat, the type of wood used and the experience of the person running the pit. I don't see anywhere on the menu where they claim to be selling Central Texas style BBQ but I do see that they tout that everything is all natural and drug free. Considering the quality of the meat, if you had "bad" anything then they are doing a very poor job of BBQing. Berkshire ribs are tender before you cook them, how can you screw that up? Considering all of the appetizers, sides and extras BBQ just seems forced into the menu. It's like they were going to open a burger joint then switched to BBQ because it's the new happening cool thing.

Meatloaf, smoked chicken, leftover cooked bacon, lo mein, fried chicken, sirloin tip.

That came out of a commercial beer in a can?

Smoked sausage would be great and smoked venison sausage would be good too. You have to have a local butcher that can fix you up with some smoked sausage. A big jar of pickled eggs?

Just picked sweet corn, steamed till it's just heated through. No salt, no butter, just sweet corn. ETC: spelling