ideefixe

I think Ruth is heavily influenced by Outside--hence the coffee grower story. Outside has a heavy influence within the mag., biz. I like most of the pieces, but I loathe the Sterns whose only interest seems to be big portions. But I was disgusted that in the "Salute to Italy" issue, the best home cook in Rome was some skinny American who paints precious little water colors. I'd say they have little to no newstand revenue. But their ad pages are decent, and that's what pays the bills.

The Getty has great food. At the Smithsonian, you want to eat at the members' dining room in the Castle.

I love the Trader Joe's imported Italian thin pizzas. The 4 cheese is better than the 3 cheese and I don't like the vegetable one as much as the others. But, they've got a good crisp crust, and the sauce and cheese are real.

When I was a bodybuilder I ate tons of Chunky, but only the health food store type. I can't bear Jif and Skippy. Icky. Now, I still eat Laura Scudder with jalapeno jelly, but I still won't eat the grocery store stuff. It's got other oils, corn syrup and probably soy.

Hre's why it shouldn't be fawning: Alice Waters started a food revolution amoung rich people in this country. Whenever she's tried to influence any other group, she hasn't made any impact. The ill-starred Oakland food program is a good example. While I don't expect PBS American Masters to be a hachet job, I think that proving balance and some explanations might be a good plan. Her relationships with growers is a good thing--but while France provides heavy government subsidies to small famers, in this country Agribusiness gets the breaks and many family farms go under. Never mind that most family farmers are sneered at by the PBS/Chez Panisse crowd (See Bob Kerry's ad for the New School that ran in an Omaha high school paper.) The snob factor was very high with this show. I loathe that same snobbism in the food community.

I though it was very well done, but definantly fawning. As her school lunch program in Oakland tanked, the producers must have finished before that happened. I thnk she's wonderful, but living a rarified life.

My 16 year old will eat anything now and feels he's on his way to becoming the World's Greatest Curry Expert, but for years and years, he ate only white food. Plain rice, plain pasta, oatmeal, bread, bananas and chicken. After a while, I stopped struggling, fixed him what he wanted while we ate real dinner, and surprse! He started trying more and more things and the rest is history. His little sister ate everyting since she started on solids. There's no positive point in getting emotionally invested in what a kid chooses to eat. And I love hot pepper jelly with peanut butter. Indian lime pickle is good with cottage cheese, too.

ANd white popcorn beats the yellow, to my mouth.

I think this has more to do with cinematic shorthand. Cartons of food can mean "late night, working session" or "urban gal or guy on the go, too busy to cook" or "harassed mom, too stressed to cook". Like full ashtrays next to a Remington typewriter used to be used to show a journalist on deadline. Dirty plates don't convey the same thing, nor do crumpled fast food wrappers (unless they're product placement).

LA Serenita di Garibaldi is heavy on Mexican seafood and the accompaning sauces. La Serenata de Garibaldi is at 1842 E. First St., (323) 265-2887. It's in Boyle Heights, and is moderately close to downtown. The food is great and it's not like anything back home.

But aren't there any number of "Father's Office" "The Library", Your Sister's Place joints? So you can truthfully say you were at the Library, when you get home late. And there's an Oarhouse in Bozeman. Montana, too.

And yet I love home cooks. My local paper, the LA Times, used to have a sporatic series on Great Home Cooks, but now the food section is really the Nancy Silverton tribute section.

To get back to the original poster, I think you also have to know your audince. I've made and given truffles for years, for Christmas, teacher gifts,etc. and I've found a goodly number of folks who really don't want their choccies to be as bittersweet and, uh, rich, as I like them. I prefer Valrhona but I've had great responses from people when I used the Guittard. I'm not trying to open up a snob war, but if "pearls before swine" is too harsh, at least some people just have a different taste in chocolate than I do.

I posted this before, but after my husband the chef saw Mostly Martha, he told me he felt like he's worked a double. Impaling the raw steak on the table was a dream come true for him, though. My personal favorite is Christmas in Connecticut.

ranitidine--People eat in Scorsese's movies--and his mom cooked her own food for the scene in Wiseguys, where the guys borrow the knife for the deer. Food's huge for Scorsese and he talks about it a great deal in a number of interviews. Eating is emotional in his films, but not always comedic. Although Jodie Foster's Iris and her sugar binge is pretty great. And after seeing Chocolat, I just had to make a whole bunch of chocolates. I had submitted a proposal to produce the DVD, and had included recipes, but I didn't get the gig, alas. My husband , after seeing Mostly Martha, an admitted chick-flick, he felt like he'd been at work.

Aww! I missed this! But my local PBS, KCET in Los Angeles, shows Lawrence Welk re-runs during pledge drives, for some wacko reason. Why PBS is in the cooking show business these days is beyond me. I can think of better uses for my tax dollars.

[he LA Times has two fabulous food writers--Russ Parsons and Emily Green. Why Regina Schrambling has been brought into the mix is beyond me. I like what the new editor has done with the section, EXCEPT for her bizarre devotion to Schrambling.] But how can you leave out Charles Perry--a true scholar, a great writer and so witty, too. I've seen Gold in action, and he's a sight to behold. He does everything but wear a Tshirt saying "I'm a Critic, Grovel". I think Schrambling's pieces for the LATimes have been awfully lame. The TV dinners piece was just silly--doesn't she go to the frozen food aisle? But the letter to the editor who nailed her on the accompaning recipe was great. The LA Times varies between sublime and foolish, but at least they got rid of Rose Dosti. While I'm new to egullet, I think that all forums, except fot the NYTimes, which employs full time posting nannies, have personal vendettas and feuds. That' s what's fun--and far less nasty than Usenet newsgroups. I like to see people take apart the high and not-so-mighty.

About 800 in the house and another 1,000 or so in storage. I have an Excel file that allegedly tells me what book is in which box. But this pales by comparison to all the vinyl all over the house. A friend of my 16 year old's wanted to know if my husband is a DJ.

As my husband's a chef and we inherited my late mother in law's vast collection (except for the stuff she willed to Radcliffe), we have a huge amount of books, pamplets, torn-out and downloaded papers but I find that we use these over and over and over again: Cake Bible - Rose Levy Beranbaum Pie and Pastry Bible - also RLB Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone--Deborah Madison Chez Panisse Desserts The Italian Baker--Carol Field Land o' Lakes Butter Cookie Cookbook The Art of Mexican Cookery & The Cuisines of Mexico--Diana Kennedy Talk About Good! American Charcuterie : Recipes from Pig-by-the-Tail The Hong Kong Gas Company Cookbook

rader Joe's began in 1958 as a chain of convenience stores called Pronto markets in the Los Angeles area. It's founder, Joe Coulombe, wanted to expand the stores and enhance their image. In 1967 he doubled the floor space and began to offer imported wines and gourmet food items and reasonable prices, and "Trader Joe's" was born, opening the first store in Pasadena, Ca. The California Trader Joe's are today the state's leading wine retailer. In 1979 Trader Joe's was sold to the Albrecht family. The two brothers from Germany, Theodore and Carl, also own and operate Aldi's. Aldi is a 4500 discount food chain in Europe and parts of the central Uniteds States. It also holds about an 11% stake in Albertson's, a national supermarket chain. The Albrecht brothers are often listed as one of the wealthiest families in the world. They were the 11th richest in 1997 Forbes "Richest People" list with $11.5 billion.

The manager at my local TJ's told me that some mom and pop outfits are buying cases, decanting it and reselling it as a "house wine". I think they're okay, but they vary from bottle to bottle.

I think any place in LA with even a whisper of show biz clients makes stuff off the menu---it's a religion with most entertainment industry folks to get exactly what they want, no matter how strange. It's sure no stretch for Spago.

This seems so typical of the Times, though. They must sit around in meetings and think up trends and then find ways to support their premise. Remember when every Times story on the homeless took the tone that "everyone is one paycheck away from being homeless" ? Not to mention the whole manufactured Masters Golf Club crisis. The Times is convinced we're in the middle of the Great Depression of the 21st century and so, they've got to find "news" to go along with this.

I don't know if the Tune Inn is still around in DC, but I once saw the fry cook blow his nose into some guy's soup. I figured it was safer to just drink there, after than.

My husband's in Moscow now. He's opening a new place and he says the restaurant scene is wild. His last meal out was at a Ukrainian place, decorasted with a live 3 storey oak tree, growing in the middle of the seating area. It also featured a glassed-in barn-yard, with live animals (imagine that in regulation-ridden California!). Ukrainian farmhouse cooking is very popular, I guess as all the real peasants were slaughtered or starved. The food was great--esp. the pork products and the game. He's been to a number of farmers' markets and says the quality of some things, such as honey and lamb, is remarkable. There's no shortages or line or any Soviet style nonsense. Big city Russians spend 80 % of their income on consumer goods, and eating out is a hobby. The NYTimes Sophisticated Traveler had a great story on Moscow last Sept. http://query.nytimes.com/search/article-pa...atures%2fTravel London used to be a culinary wasteland, so it's quite likely that Moscow will blossom in a big way, as well. Here in Southern California, there's a sizeable Russian emigre population but not really any good restaurnts, yet. But our local chuch serves great stuff at fund-raisers. And Trader Joes has frozen peirogi that aren't half bad.