Florida

The only problem with that is -- as with all mammals -- humans need that NaCl to do its chemical duty. Governments and companies may find a flavor substitute, but good luck finding one that won't destroy the species. Does anyone really believe that one day the government would actually start forcing some strange chemical contrivance upon the people and that salt will be banned and treated like cocaine or heroin? Because that notion itself is utterly ludicrous.

I literally just ate lunch at Hot Doug's. Got there around 11:15a. There was one party in front of me when I arrived and the counter was empty when I left, maybe about 30 minutes ago. However, I’ve got to admit this is unusual, but it was damn nice to just walk in, order, and have my sausages in less than 10 minutes.

The problem lies in the fact that no one really knows what the rules are. In regards to reservations, the website says "RSVP by telephone only." That's it. Nothing else. Considering I'm making a reservation at a restaurant and not responding to an invitation to chef Carlson's pool party, I can only deduct that means I need to call them. And when you call them you're most likely just going to get "the voicemail." A simple paragraph on their website explaining the reservation process would help customers understand the process, while helping to alleviate the unnecessarily large amount of phone calls/voicemails the restaurant receives. Its win/win. But instead of informing the customer of something useful and relevant to running a business, what do we get? All of the chefs' favorite movies! Because somehow, someone decided it was more important I knew the sous-chef's favorite movie than how to make a "RSVP" to actually eat there.

It's been years since I've been to Wintzel's. Gumbo was always good, though I considered it "Mobile-style" as it doesn't resemble the gumbo one would find in NO or LA. Thicker and sweeter, but still tasty. The rest of the food is typical for South Alabama - fried everything. Not sure how long your junket is, but I imagine you'll probably end up at Felix's at some point. May not be high cuisine, but it's still good.

I'm not really that concerned with what a beer is "meant" to be or the trouble and/or effort a brewer went through to make it or why he/she made it - it should stand on its own without context and without explanation. Lots of brewers "mean" their beer to be good, and it isn't. Sour beers are "meant" to be sour, if you don't like sour things, explaining the intention doesn't make it any better. Modern hefeweizens are "meant" to be served with orange or lemon slices, but I don't like stuff in my beer - does that mean that I'm drinking hefeweizens incorrectly? To me, this doesn't make sense. Yes, a sour beer is meant to be sour and, personally, I don't care for sour beers. But that is my preference, it's not as if there is something wrong with the beer. I don't fault the beer for being something it was intended to be. As for IPAs or DIPAs, I feel the same. Beers like Dreadnaught, Artic Panzer Wolf, Exponential Hoppiness, and Pliney are all heavily hopped, but restrained on the malts. It's done to showcase the hops. Aging these beers to see if they will "stand on [their] own without context and without explanation" is pointless and won't result in better beer. I simply can't see faulting an IPA or DIPA (just as I can't fault a sour) for being something it wasn't intended to be. So every beer ends up tasting like some variation of malts and steeped tea? The side of a bottle of Pliney the Elder states: "Keep Cold. Drink fresh. Please do not age." "Consume Pliney fresh" "If you must, sit on eggs, not on Pliney" I'm pretty sure Vinnie doesn't want you to age this beer.

Think about it though. What are you doing now? According to your original post: "The dinner upshot is that most weeknights I've got 15-30 minutes to make meals for myself, my wife, and my two daughters. We're usually all pooped, take-out is not a regular option, and everyone's sick by Wednesday of the stream of leftovers that flows from the fridge after my weekend kitchen projects." Then you note: "Made two massive batches of chili, one meat, one beans & veg. Details here. Bagging them up in small batches today" and "Parceled out many two-serving FoodSaver bags of chili yesterday, and am making 20# of sausages today. I think that having smaller servings are going to help out a lot." You're already not cooking and you are prepping. Planning out the week is just taking it to the next step: you can do as much or as little as you want - you just know and prep for what you are going to do. It does not mean you need to elminate cooking from your daily life. (I can assure you, it has not resulted in me elminating cooking from mine.)

I don’t own either a crock pot or a SVS. I have a 1hr commute each way and a 2 ½ yr old daughter. I still prepare a meal every night. I fall into the category of people who plan and prep their meals ahead of time. My week’s worth of meals are planned during Sunday breakfast, shopping is completed on Sunday morning, and the meals are then prepped later that day. If something can be cooked, it is (soups, stews, curries). If not, it is prepped for cooking later in the week: veggies and meats will be cut up. Last day items (rice, pasta) will be cooked on the day we are going to eat them. I would also note that planning out the week allows for economic time usage. For example, say I am having gumbo, a stir-fry, and pasta in one week. All of those items require onions, while two of them require peppers. So even though I am making the gumbo and the pasta sauce on Sunday and am waiting to make the stir-fry on the day I plan to eat it, I can still cut up onions just once, not three times. And I can cut peppers once, not twice. This will save you a lot of time throughout the week. You’ll also notice that preparing this way is a great stress reliever. There is no worry about what can be cooked, do I have the time, do I need to stop at the store? There is no decision making or consensus building. There is no take out or fast food. All of your decisions are already made, the prep is already completed, and meals are fresh every day. Nothing compares to good ole mis-en-place.

The QPR on Forschner can't be beat. I grew to love them when I worked in the industry, not because they're the best knives, but because they are very good knives for the price and "losing" them was easier to deal with than losing something more expensive. BTW, get rid of the knife block.

NPR talks with Diana Kennedy: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130271914 There's a couple of recipes as well.

I'm a big fan of cellaring IPAs and DIPAs (especially) actually. Two things to note: 1) it's easy to mask poor brewing skill with a lot of hops, by cellaring an IPA it clears out much of the "bombast" and reveals the "true beer" underneath the IPA; in my opinion, if an IPA can cellar well (admittedly the malt qualities shine through, and hops change) the brewer has done his job of creating a balanced, well-crafted beer; 2) the hops quality certainly changes and they become less "alpha acid" bitter and over-the-top, but much of the bitterness will remain and the grass notes and a "tea-like" quality comes out, I like this change and often IPAs and DIPAs become much more "old ale" or "strong ale" like. One of my personal "aged favorites" is the Great Lakes Lake Erie Monster. So, take that for what it's worth. I’m not sure I agree with this. Modern IPAs and DIPAs really aren’t meant to be aged. They’re hopped to hell because that is what people expect out of them and, while I cannot speak for every brewer, I can’t imagine a brewer going through the trouble to hop to hop/wet hop/dry hop a beer just to have the customer put the beer down to rid the beer of all the benefits of the hopping. It’s not as if bittering hops are the beer equivalent to tannins in wine with the brewer adding hops with the intent that the beer with “mature” with age. And, sure, hops can mask a flawed beer, but so what? If we’re going to use that standard, then we should give credit to the folks who brew Miller Lite and Budweiser because their beers are so consistently devoid of any flavor there is absolutely nothing for any flaw to ever hide behind. If a brewer is intending to make a hop-heavy beer, then that is the intent and, in my opinion, criticizing a beer that is meant to be consumed fresh (Pliny the Elder comes to mind) for being a poor beer underneath is the equivalent of attempting to age a Beaujolais Nouveau and being upset with the results. If you’re looking for an old ale or an American Strong ale, why don’t you just purchase beers that were intended to be old ales or strong ales in the first place? Of course, in the end, these are your beers and you can do whatever you want with them.

I collect chopsticks as well (it's a relatively cheap hobby) and have over a hundred pair. However, there's probably only about 10 pair I and the wife use on a somewhat regular basis and we only use them about once a week or so. We vary which ones I use depending on what we are eating. Never thought about putting them in the dishwasher. After all, they're just sticks: takes about as much effort to wash them by hand as it does to put them in the dishwasher.

Pretty soon we'll need to have schools where they teach people to cook....

Am I the only person who thinks veggies are easier to cook than meat? To me, meat is the ingredient that is “a pain.” Not to mention that vegetables are ridiculously cheap when compared to meat. Also, I think the best way to cook most vegetables is also the most simple. Just steam or sauté. Maybe some butter and garlic, but I typically don’t want much else because adding other ingredients just seems to muck up the flavors. When I’m through cooking my broccoli or carrots I want them to taste like vegetables they started off as. As for me, my diet is primarily vegetables and grains, though I am not a vegetarian by any stretch of the term. And I’ve noticed that once veggies and grains become the norm, eating a large quantity of meat can be a bit difficult on the digestive tract.

Suppose the GM salmon gets out into the wild. It grows at an exponentially quicker rate than natural salmon. If that happens, we might as well kiss natural salmon good bye, because guess which one is going to win. Currently Michigan is suing the state of Illinois in an attempt to stop the potential invasion of Asian carp into the Great Lakes with the fear that if these fish make it to Lake Michigan, all of the Great Lakes will be decimated. Much like GM Salmon, Asian carp were originally brought to the US as a food fish, but now virtually no one eats them and they are considered a distructive, invasive species. Yet we're still considering doing the same thing with GM salmon. It's as if we're too ignorant to understand we've already went down this path before and it just didn't work out quite the way we planned.

You must lead an awfully privileged life if the food you eat daily is so much better than what Kevin prepared for the finale, that you couldn't be troubled to eat at his restaurant. Yup.

He admitted on his blog that the level of the cooking throughout the season was below normal. That doesn't sound like denial to me. On the other hand, he said that this was one of the best finales ever. I can't prove that that's true; by the same token, I don't see how we could dispute it. Then maybe he could have done us all a favor and just aired the last two episodes.

What is Colicchio going to say? "This season sucked and while you're at it don't shop at Whole Foods." He has no choice but to defend the show. Advertisers paid a lot of money to put their products on TC and I'm sure it wouldn't go over too well if Colichhio himself starting shitting on his own show. Simple fact is that Kevin managed to not get eliminated for the entire season and then he, deservingly, won the last challenge. That makes him "Top Chef." That's the way the show works. I still don't want to eat at his, or Izard's, restaurant.

I can't believe they gave the title of Top Chef to a guy who has never cooked with a wok and is scared to touch a live prawn. And while I will say that his dishes last night all looked top notch, I have about as much desire to seek out his cooking as I do in going to Stephanie Izard's bestiality-referencing restaurant (which is to say absolutely none).

Personally, I'm going to lean towards the hopped up examples of the syle. My favorite is Half Acre's Ginger Twin, but that recommendation is pointless as it was a limited release beer only available in Chicago. More accessible beers would be: -Stone Levitation -Green Flash Hop Head Red -Bear Republic Red Rocket

Personally, I didn't buy the book, just borrowed it from the library, and I doubt I will be purchasing it anytime soon. It's not nearly as helpful as his other books and I just don't need the half dozen different guac recipes. As a person who watches One Plate at a Time on a fairly regular basis, I was surprised to see many of the recipes that he does on the TV show to be in this book (and, if you know what you're looking for, many of the recipes are available straight off of his website). I've actually cooked many of the recipes in this book before I ever opened it; I just never realized it until I did...

Everything here is based on speculation. According to the complaint "This action is for breach of contract, trademark infringement, and deceptive business practices." None of us have the contract, so none of us can say whether there is a breach of contract. Maybe yes, maybe no. As for the trademark infringement, the standard is whether "a likelihood of confusion exists." According to the complaint "the defendants have infringed the plaintiff's trademark and deceived the public by opening a restaurant that mimics plaintiff's well known line of restaurants." Considering the above posts and BLT's allegations there could very well be enough "confusion" as to award damages for trademark infringement. I personally can't say either way. Whether you agree with it or not, the suit has merit. This clearly isn't one of those "I was wrongly injured while taking a bath with my hair dryer" suits.

Missed the chat room. In terms of TC, I think its a great idea.... Never-the-less, a couple of items from last night's episode: 1) I feel the challenge was disingenous, or, at the least, presented in a misleading way. My perspective was that the chefs were to create a dish that could feasibly be sent into space, and while I realistically understand Padma was never going to be sucking reconstituted glazed short ribs from cryovac pouch, I do think Ed's bone-still-attached rack of lamb was so impractible as to basically render the challenge to be "do whatever the hell you want." The mere thought of freeze drying and reconstituting Tiffany's fish curry dish, along with the mussels she was planning on adding, is so unappetizing that if I were on the ISS I'd jettison her bag of fish flavored curry goop before I'd ever consider actually eating it. Same goes for Kelly's fish broth. 2) What was up with Bourdain? It was like he and Ripert got in a lover's quarrel on the cab ride over to the ironically named Ronald Reagan Building. Bourdain seemed to just want to shit on Ripert for the sheer pleasure of doing so.

The problem with authenticity is that it can be defined in same way Justice Potter Stewart defined obscenity: "I know it when I see it." Of course, this means each and every person can view the same thing as being either authentic or inauthentic depending on how they choose to view it. Obscenity was later defined, in part, in terms of whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards", would fine the material obscene. Again, in terms of authenticity, the "community standards" will affect whether or not a dish is considered authentic. So a bowl of pho served in a Chicago Vietnamese restaurant, owned by Vietnamese immigrants, to a largely Vietnamese customer base may be considered "authentic" here in Chicago, while in Ho Chi Min City, the same bowl may be considered to be "not authentic."

Your resemblence to Tom Servo is uncanny.

Interesting article. Thanks for the post. I imagine this would dispell Bourdain's "idea of a vegetarian traveler in comfortable shoes waving away the hospitality" of a foreign guest. Yes, because one person's POV dispells the notion that there are some "vegetarian travaler[s} in comfortable shoes" that actually stick to their beliefs and continue to shun the foods and hospitality of their hosts. Having lived in a country where pure vegetarianism is uncommon, my experience has shown me that Bourdain's idea of the vegetarian traveler is more in line with reality. But that's just my experience, and I would surely refrain from generalizing my own experience in order to nullify anyone else's. May I also note that the person who wrote the article was not merely a traveller, but was someone was in the country to learn about and experience the culture for a longer term. I suspect the actions and outlook of vegetarians who are short-term visitors vs. those who are long-term might be different. I regret making any comment on the article. I truly do. I made a brief statement that was apparently too brief and it was my folly for doing so. Never-the-less, thanks mkahara, thanks for posting the article as I do think it fits well with the topic in general. With that said, generalizations are just that. They are not accurate reflections of a community. Clearly, despite Bourdain's incorrect assumptions to the contrary, vegetarians are capable of making decisions about how they accept hospitality. Even you note "I suspect the actions and outlook of vegetarians who are short-term visitors vs. those who are long-term might be different," which is to say that some vegetarians may make different decisions than other vegetarians. From my perspective at least, such a comment would indicate there would be some prudency in not making blanket statements regarding vegetarians as it is evident not all vegetarians are going to act in the same manner. Justifying a disdain for a group of people becuase some of them "actually stick to their beliefs" seems rather ignorant. As for short term vs long term, are we now at the point where long term vegetarian travelers are okay, it's just the short term tourist vegetarians that are assholes? Because that is beyond ridiculous. Tourists are typically not held to the same societal norms and there is typically an understanding tourists/foreigners/travelers would not understand all customs within a society. The vast majority of vegetarians could travel to a different country and exist in that country quite happily without a single person ever knowing they were a vegetarian to begin with.