tanabutler

Um, where do I get the Newbie temporary tattoo?

Tommy, I have a ton of stuff I'll e-mail you, okay? Links and suggestions and just a buttload of stuff. Later today when I come up for air. I'm slammed with work right now.

Hey, Tony, you could tell Burger King to pay you to shut up about their sandwich. But what you wrote is the essence of everything I've thought, and it is incredibly saddening to me. Maybe Bayless will reconsider his endorsement. Maybe he'll wake up from the bad dream that supporting Burger King was a good idea.

?? How is that that the winners share third place? I don't get it.

Never mind.

An entire day has passed since I sent an e-mail to the Chefs Collaborative. No answer. None.

Suvir, I always learn so much from your multi-cultural upbringing. I am in awe of the opportunities you've had, culturally and educationally, to experience so much. There is always so much richness in your thought, and most especially in your desire to show the commonality in our differences. That is perhaps the most important thing in the world, to me, these days. To find a way to embrace diversity. For some reason, a funny thing just popped into my head. My mother worked in the Seventies for a wonderful man in Atlanta named Sidney Glazer. He owned Sidney's Just South, a funky and very popular restaurant in a little house on Roswell Road. Sidney and his older sister, Molly, were New Yorkers. So New Yawk. I loved these people. Mama came home one night and tried to describe an "argument" (not really) between Molly and Sidney. She didn't want him serving pork. She cited their religious upbringing. Sidney replied, "Molly. It's 1975. Don't you think the Good Lord knows we have a health department?" So, no, Sidney didn't keep kosher. And as they say, it takes all kinds. Were I one of the strict kinds, I would certainly appreciate someone looking out for my interests. Maybe that's why vegans have adopted such a strongline position. (I think I just had an little enlightenment there. I'm not one of the strict kinds, and I can understand the insistence, although not the dourness, where I couldn't before.) I guess what I am learning here is that the word "vegetarian" has a lot of play in the dial. If I were the one designing the panel, I would definitely make the most generous definition "ovo-lacto." Shrimp and chicken just don't cut it. Thanks again, Suvir. (I confess I don't know what secular religion means. Does it mean honoring your faith while living in a world of diverse people and diets?)

If you just glance at it, I think it kind of looks like bad makeup for a burn victim. Something Joe Bob Briggs would give one star to...

Well, I stopped by the Burger King on my way home and plunked down $3.23 for a Santa Fe Chicken Sandwich. I took some not-great photos of the item. I wish the lighting were better—these photos are not going to do my reputation as a food photographer any good. On the other hand, I didn't have Hugh Hefner's team making this sandwich look pretty like the BK sandwich does. Visit the Burger King website. And I quote: "Introducing the sandwich that gets it's [sic] flavor from fire-grilling...and not from fat." If I had to guess how tall the sandwich in the ad is, I'd say 3-1/2" or so. Look at all that stuff just bursting from the bread! The sandwich I unwrapped was about 2" tall. The only thing visible at all from the front of the bun was a little corner of chicken (about 1/2" triangle), the tip of an onion, and a smear of grey juice. Not appetizing. There was absolutely no indication of the contents of the sandwich, other than that little corner of chicken peeking out of the flattened baguette. No red color, nothing. Just greyish juice on the edge of the bun. The bun wasn't toasted brown, and the overwhelming taste was of smoke flavor (which I suspect comes from a plastic bottle). It wasn't the worst thing I've ever eaten, but it was not something you should pay $3 for. It's not something a chef with a fabulous reputation should endorse, I don't think. NEW: Note the damning words on their site: "Not low in sodium." So the nutritional information is now available, and the sandwich contains 1225 mg of sodum. Even more than the "healthy" Chicken Caesar salad. Nutrional Information for Santa Fe Chicken Sandwich

BWAH!!! IngridSF, that is hilarious! I feel like printing it up and sending it to Millenium in SF. I'd just like to go on record as saying that I am all for women baring their breasts in public, for whatever reasons they may choose. No need to restrict it to breast feeding only on account of my delicate sensibilities. I'm still laughing at this whole thing.

Wow, Craig, I guess I was in the right place at the right time to find my fantastic meal in Siena.

BWAH!!! IngridSF, that is hilarious! I feel like printing it up and sending it to Millenium in SF.

I would not want to judge someone's motivations for being a vegetarian. Even atheists can be completely moral, and who is to say that their integrity is any less important than an external influence like a religious decree? "Lifestyle"? Not always. A deep commitment is a deep commitment, and it's no one else's place to judge or dismiss that. (The kosher restaurant scenario? I wouldn't know much about what is and is not permitted, were I to visit one—I don't even know if I'm a shiksa or a goy). I would welcome an education in the event I went to a kosher establishment, and would welcome compassion and understanding even more.)

Mmmm, I had one last night. Mmmmm.

Yes! As posted elseforum upon my return from Italy in 2001: I discovered it when I was doing laundry at the lavanderia across the street. I went outside for change, and the proprietress opened the door to answer a man's question. It was like a cartoon where the smoke curls lift someone off their feet and float them to the food. The aroma was heavenly, especially on that cold April morning. The man she'd spoken to told me it was quite popular with the locals, and with Italians who visited Siena from elsewhere. He himself was a very well-dressed Roman, very well-spoken and kind. It gets my highest endorsement for a lovely meal. Nothing fancy, but everything perfect. P.S. The proprietress is gorgeous.

Ooooh, Roz, that place (and their website) is so beautiful.

Yes, California is full of people who say, "I'm a vegetarian. I only eat chicken and fish." My term for those people is "nitwits." If it had a face, it's not a vegetable. If it had a mother, it's not a vegetable. (Well, then we get into "are eggs meat?" and that whole thing.) But shrimp? Chicken? Stop kidding yourselves. You eat meat. This reminds me of the time I took my 18-month-old baby girl to Texas (where the state flower, as you all know, is a cow). They knew she did not eat meat. She was sitting on a relative's lap, and he was starting to shovel chicken soup into her mouth. "Shad! She doesn't eat meat!" He looked up in surprise. "This isn't meat. It's chicken!" Good Lord. So yes, perceptions vary, but dead meat is dead meat. I sometimes think my eyes will roll right out of my head when I hear those chicken/fish vegetarians. "Hey, you, get off your high horse...and eat it!" (Kidding. I'm kidding. I know horses aren't plants.) (Glad to see Suvir weighed in on this. He's a vegetarian with some natural flexibility and no apparent dogma.)

That is a very eloquent post, Bux. (I didn't mean to say that the owners weren't there. Just that none of the eGullet folk were—we'd been led in from the newspaper story.)

Couldn't you toss it into pasta with a cream/lemon/parsley sauce, like a crabmeat substitution?

"HAS PORK" just cracked me up.

I'm not defending the mother, I am simply saying that discussing her parenting is not a good line of discussion. She may be completely clueless and insensitive, but as far as anything else goes, who gets to say she's got a screw loose? I am positing the idea that she may be been stressed out of her mind that day, and that perhaps a phone call to CPS (Child Protective Services, as it's called here) would be premature and unfounded. I don't approve of what she did, and clearly the news story had a slant on it. If she's really crazy, she'll sue. No wait, she doesn't live in the United States. (heh) On the other hand...maybe she is clueless, and clueless about how bringing an 8% solution of chicken into a vegetarian restaurant might not be welcome. None of us were there. It's a "she-said, she-said" thing. Perhaps the truth is somewhere between what Ms. Graham and Cotton stated. Maybe Ms. Graham felt defensive and ashamed, for not knowing the rules. (I'm not saying she did, because it certainly reads as though she took on entirely too much.) Nowhere are tones of voice indicated. We really don't have a clear picture. I'm just saying. I could imagine this scene in any number of ways—as a very odd scene in a movie, for example. It's an entertaining concept. It isn't clear whether Rendezvous is vegan or vegetarian. In my experience (coastal California, doncha know) that there is a vast difference. VAST. I cannot emphasize this enough. Vegetarians (many in my life, and me for quite a while) are, well, nicer. I don't want to go too much into detail, because I might get myself into trouble here. (On the other hand, I might tell a tale if I can figure out how to do it.) Um, read Anthony Bourdain's book, A Cook's Tour, for the chapter on the vegan pot luck in Berkeley. It made me laugh and cry. For the record, I am on the side of the owners of Rendezvous for adhering to their moral standards; I only hope they did it in kindness and clarity. Because the only way to persuade people to be vegetarian is through kindness and compassion. Neither of those is always my strong suit if, say, cigarettes are involved. Strident? Me? Gulp. Busted.

I don't think judging the mother's parenting is a really productive line of discussion. She might have been having a bad day—you simply do not know. God knows I feel compassion for the parents in line at grocery store with wailing babies. I'm not standing up for this woman, but I don't think it's right to condemn her, either. For the record, I never took a jar of baby food with me to a restaurant. We did not feed our daughter meat until she was old enough to make that choice for herself—as tender-hearted as she was about animals, we didn't feel we had the right to make that choice for her. She was an ovo-lacto vegetarian for about eight years. When she asked to eat meat, we told her as much as we could about, well, dead animals and how they got that way, and she decided she would eat seafood and poultry. A few years later, she chose to add other meats to her diet. Now she is an omnivore. Well, at fifteen, she's a pizzavore.

My daughter, who was breastfed, did not eat any food at all until she was eleven months old. She just wasn't interested. I mean, she'd suck a little avocado off my finger every now and then, and she would taste things, but this wasn't exactly eating. Then one morning, she crawled into the kitchen, pointed at my breakfast and let me know that she wanted some of that, and I mean now. Other babies might not have teeth at that age. (Mine got little white razors on the bottom at fourteen weeks. Argh!) I wouldn't assume anything about the mother or baby based on the baby's age.

I didn't mean it in any kind of insulting way. Honestly. I haven't been able to understand your questions about who judges Rick Bayless and why. Forgive me for being awkward about it.

Matthew, are you some kind of a Zen monk? Are you a saint? I'm neither. I'm a hypocrite in my own life. I know this. (I once had sex with a Republican.) But I'm not a high-level person like Bayless, who is one of the voices of a movement to support sustainable/local/organic (etcetera) food. He's got a huge responsibility, almost like someone running for office, to walk the walk. He put himself in that position, and earned a tremendous amount of respect. That respect is now in jeopardy because of his affiliation with Burger King. I guess I don't understand why you don't understand that people are judgmental. I am judgmental. I'm human.