mcdowell

piss be damned, man, it's full of hussies & hookers.

Waffle House. Tip a little extra and most'll let you bring in your own.

Julie's doing a Q&A over on the Well for those looking for a little interaction.

There's a bar on the corner of Sixth & Mission in San Francisco, no name that I recall... To walk in you had to walk past one of these coin-operated public toliet stalls, two beefy muscle types standing guard as the biggest dealer on the block did business inside, selling his product for $40/rock. I noticed the last time I drove past that they had demolished that drug-stand, this about six months ago. In the bar, if you wanted to smoke, they'd give you an empty can to flick your ashes into. Not unusual in this smoke-deprived city. I was approached one night by a Cuban hooker in a red vinyl mini-skirt who offered to tickle my tonsils with her tongue from behind. I've never had so direct and graphic a come-on before, excepting some dark corners in Mexico. Great Filapino restaurant just across the street.

The small, tiny thing that's made the most difference to me recently (and surprised myself that it did) is breaking an egg into a small bowl and then pouring it onto the griddle (or fry pan) when frying the egg. For twenty years I'd been breaking eggs directly onto the hot surface, until I read the egg chapter in Alton Brown's book a couple of months ago and decided to try it his way. Haven't broken a yolk since.

Right on topic is the latest edition of John Thorne's Simple Cooking, just out today, where he goes on in true Thorne fashion for several pages on Greek Salads, or, Horiatiki Salata: He gives three recipes but, just as I support him, I think you should subscribe and read for yourself, so I won't excerpt any of that here. *not affiliated at all, just shilling for the hell of it.

Here's a link to the NY Times article on Carson Hughes, professional eater. Great read. *free registration req'd on ny times site, but well worth doing just on principle.

Fried okra. Chicken fried steak.

Not sure I agree - the average slaughter age of a steer varies between 18-24 months, skewing closer to 24 months.

Here's some information presenting a couple of sides to this discussion. First, the USDA says that Veal is the meat from a calf or young beef animal. Male dairy calves are used in the veal industry. Dairy cows must give birth to continue producing milk, but male dairy calves are of little or no value to the dairy farmer. A small percentage are raised to maturity and used for breeding. They go on to talk about "Bob Veal" (aged only up to 3 weeks or 150lbs) and "Special-Fed Veal". Anyone eaten 'Bob' veal? The Veal Farmer's association has a short FAQ where they talk about conditions in which they raise the calves. One rebuttal to this can be found in this article responding to a bill in New Jersey calling for humane raising of veal. At the far end of the spectrum, there's the humane society with their Veal Fact Sheet. That one's almost enough to make you forget you're a carnivore. It's all interesting reading.

There are a couple of articles that I have bookmarked on just this topic in the past. A good one is this story from the International Hearald Trib, where they tour some affineurs and talk about their art, for example: In the washed rind cellar - cheeses such as the famed cow's milk Epoisses from Burgundy, Reblochon from the Savoy, Maroilles from the north of France and Livarot from Normandy - each cheese is washed and turned several times a week with a specific, and sometimes secret, brine. I also remember reading a nice article with good pictures in something published by the Slowfood guys, but I can't seem to find it now. It's not just the imported cheeses. I've had trouble, time and again, with some of the more finicky California cheeses right here in the Bay Area. You learn where to shop, but you shouldn't have to. The merchants need to step up to the plate and play the game properly. I can't even imagine trying to find a washed rind cheese anywhere outside one of three or four major metro areas. That's a shame.

Malawry, your the only person other than Xanthippe's mother and her mama's sister I ever heard refer to a "covered-dish" supper. They both were from Durham, NC. Is that strictly a North Carolinianism, or is the term used all over the south? We used to have "covered dish" suppers in my church, growing up in east Texas. I've never heard it outside of that context. Maybe it's a southern Baptist thing?

First of all, 1962 is hardly 1990 or 1995. I would expect there to be a lot more genetic diversity among commercially grown soybean cultivars in 1962 ... I find it very hard to dispute that, but then that's not the question you put forth when you called someone "uninformed". What you asked was this: I read that, felt uninformed, so I went off and looked it up, finding that the truth is that there is 187 chromosonally different (which, as the child of two chemists, you should know is significant variation) varieties of pre-GM soybean. It seemed from your question that you knew the answer (or should have before calling someone "uninformed"). I'm not certain, but I also don't believe that 1990, and certainly not 1995, varieties would qualify as "before GM was introduced" which, again, is what you put forth. Don't want to get into a pissing contest over this, because I don't actually care enough about the subject of soybean varieties. I was just trying to inject some facts in among the conjecture. The problem with these sorts of discussions is that once everyone throws their facts, ideas, and opinions into the forum, the discussion increasingly denegrates into carefully couched name calling, misinterpretation, and the like. I give credit to Shaw for walking out on this when he become morally offended, instead of heading down the rathole of forced population control (his perception, it seems, of what macrosan was saying). As for you, Sam, I found it ironic that you were twisting macorsan's words in almost the exact way that you claimed yours were twisted when you were off insulting midwesterners in that Babbo thread. It is entirely possible to have discourse and share opinions and facts (actual and perceived) without stooping to intellectual name-calling. As for this thread, I'm getting a lot out of it, feeding thoughts and forcing the mind into directions that were previously unexplored. I'm sure I'm not alone in that. And that's the goodness of this place.

187 varieties, according to FJ Herman's 1962 USDA Technical Bull. A revision of the genus Glycine and its immediate allies (revised down from the suspected 323 after chromosonal testing). I'm not a horticulturalist, or anything close, so I can't tell you if that's "not very much" or not. Seems like a lot to me. I could just be uninformed. Even so, I interpreted badthings use of soybeans as example to make a point. I'll step out of y'all boy's way now.

Actually, thinking about it, one of my favorite food celebrities would have to be Steven Shaw, F.G. He needs his own show, he & Sam. Maybe a Sunday morning show on Food TV, opposite Tim Russert and that shady guy who replaced Sam Donaldson. It should to be a round-table discussion of all things culinary, in the style of the McLaughlin Group, throwing out topics to a regular panel of irregulars culled from the past week's postings to eG. Could work. Petition the FoodTV folks immediately. I know I will.

My most embarassing food spill was also in college. I was hung-over from my first frat rush party, freshman year. It was a terrible drinking night; one of those ugly drunks where you wake up at 5am in the middle of the football field, campus police lightly nudging you with their boot to see if you're passed out or dead... that kind of drunk, with the corresponding hangover. My folks decided to drop a few hours after my passing out to take me to lunch. Pancho's Mexican Buffet, just what I needed. Grease. Peppers. Oh, God. I started to weave and, in straigtening myself, catapulted a fried corn tortilla nicely piled with melted cheese off of my plate and straight up into the air, where it rotated a few times, before landing in my lap, cheese side down. There was no cleavage involved, sorry tommy.

48 B, though I'm usually sans bra. That help the mental image, tommy? Oh, and I usually keep my cleavage hidden, so no food drops in there. My trousers, however, usually carry stains from where my hands miss my napkin. Pesky bbq sauce.

In this weekend's NY Times Magazine, they profile Carson Hughes, competitive eater, who can eat 2.5 pounds of collard greens in 17.5 seconds and is currently ranked 17th on the planet. But Hughes still trains hard, taking cues from top-ranked Japanese chow-hog Takeru Kobayashi, who can down 50 hot dogs in 12 minutes. Kobayashi "works out three times a day, eats 10 packs of Ramen every night and talks to his stomach." I've been in crawfish eating contests, drinking contests (those pesky college years), and the like, but have never even considered stretching my stomach with ramen. Anyone here been in an eating contest? Any pros among us?

The Culinary Artistry book is good in that it has abundant ideas for flavor pairings, some that might not be so obvious until you read them and have one of those "hey, yeah" moments. Great book that I take off the shelf a couple of times a year to just browse for inspiration. I do think that you need to be able to riff a sauce or be comfortable throwing ingredients together without direction and in a way that sounds good to you to be able to use the book effectively (though there are recipes within). This whole idea of being able to "cook without a recipe", for anyone with even a modicum of kitchen experience, plays more as issue of self-confidence and expectation than one of skill. After all, there are only so many ways to cook food (and a very few at that). It just seems that the recipes are complicated. I think you'd be suprised at what you could accomplish if you just jotted down a few ideas (even a very simple one like "pork & apple") and attempted a simple dish around those pairings. It can be scary as hell, no question, but if it's not good, you throw it away and try again, ordering pizza in that night. Nothing's really lost, and there's even knowledge to gain with each kitchen failure. Each success will make you more comfortable and confident and soon you'll be glancing over recipes, working only off the descriptions. I'll bet you don't use recipes to scramble eggs or make an omelet, but rather add in what you want, leaving out what you don't - it's something that's probably very comfortable to those of us that find our way here. Different ingredients don't complicate things, it just makes it different. Don't expect Thomas Keller, but rather something that's simply satisfying. I bet you have it in you.

Another quick datapoint, this time from an article at the DEA web site, excerpting an article from Forensic Drug Abuse Advisor that says, in part:

He was asked about this by the SF Examiner to which he said: As for me, I don't really care. These shows are there primarily for entertainment, secondarily for education. So long as the food's honest, it's cool by me.

In my religious studies I've discovered that Adam & Eve, between the cheese courses, ate horseradish in the Garden of Eden, with bloody beef and a good Bordeaux. Bless you.

Coincidences abound. I'm eating turkey sausage (Aidell's, with Artichoke & Garlic) with scrambled eggs and diced potatoes, light and crisp, cooked in olive oil.

We've been trying to have her do a eGCI class or to write for TDG. A Q&A is a possibility, but hasn't she done that for the last year via the comments section of her blog? She hasn't really done much Q&A in her comments section, barely participates there, it seems. I've read her for about seven months, and I think a Q&A here would be a good thing. Instead of a normal Q&A, we should have Bourdain interview her. They seem very much the same person, Julia providing just a slightly more effeminate version of Tony's voice.

If we're talking locals, I simply adore the Vegetarian Indian lady who does the show on Cupertino public access cable. Can't get enough.