Category: Links

Less Dining Out, More Cooking–hell, yes!

Not that financial hardship warms my heart, but it does make me glad to read an article like the one Marian Burros has in today’s New York Times: From Dining Out to Cold Turkey.

It’s about damn time people started cooking again. There are some smart, enterprising people quoted in the article (love the woman who put up more than 700 jars of canned goods from her garden), and overall the outlook is positive, even in the face of tough economic times.

But then there’s the woman who, even though she knows how to cook and her own parents were caterers, lets her kids make her feel bad about cooking instead of going out to restaurants. Eating canned ravioli and whining when their mom makes pot roast? Somebody get those little brats in line!

Now I sound like a total I-survived-the-Depression crank, but can I say honestly? Cooking and feeding myself at home has been one of the most consistently rewarding things I’ve done with my life. And damn, but it has also saved me a ton of cash.

It is such a life-changing thing, in fact, that I’m borderline evangelical about it–I almost want to go around knocking on people’s doors, asking if I can help them get their kitchen set up (and maybe asking if their refrigerator’s running, while I’m at it).

That’s why I’ll be starting a new, more structured website dedicated to home cooking, and how to get better at it–look for it in the new year, especially if your resolution is to save a little money by not eating out so much.

Like I’ve Been Saying: Marcella Hazan in the NY Times

In an op-ed called No Chefs in My Kitchen, Marcella Hazan is in fine form: concise, pointed and just a tad crabby.

First she takes issue with the growing tendency to call home cooks “chefs”–it would be just quibbling over words if she didn’t also point out that “chef” suggests a field “where food is often entertainment, spectacle, news, fashion, science, a world in which surprise — whether it’s on the plate or beyond it — is vital.”

This ignores the value of a good home cook, who feeds and nourishes family and friends, often with the simplest food. And the ascendant “chef” also points to an increase in eating in restaurants–to the detriment of our health and bank balances.

Her kicker is something I’ve been thinking for years, but have never managed to express so concisely:

Like other forms of human affection, cooking delivers its truest and most enduring gifts when it is savored in intimacy — prepared not by a chef but by a cook and with love.

Actually, Barton Rouse said it more concisely: “Food = Love.”

Cookstr launches!

Have I mentioned? Book publishing is impossibly slow. It makes my life as a guidebook writer infuriating, knowing that the book I worked so hard on is deteriorating as it sits at the printing press, and then bobs its way back here, on the slow boat from China. And yes, publishers are now actively choosing cheaper presses, in China, even though it slows down the production process.

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Circus Peanuts, Explained, Slightly

Tal forwarded me this Straight Dope column about circus peanuts. I do not like them. They are a disturbing texture and just plain taste bad.

Buried in the middle of the column is this:

“Over the years the best-selling item has been orange in color, banana in flavor, and peanut in shape.”

Banana flavor? I never would’ve identified it as that, being misled by the color and the shape. But now…yes, banana. I guess that’s what it is.

No wonder I dislike them. “Banana” is perhaps the worst of the artificial fruit flavors, with “lime” coming up not far behind.

Rare Moment of Interactive Bragging, I Mean Blogging

I’m at a job in an office, waiting for work to come my way, so I’ll actually do one of those things that office-job people do: a clever meme post!

From the British Very Good Taste blog, here’s a list of 100 things any good omnivore should’ve tried. A few years ago, I thought I’d aspire to taste everything possible. Now that kind of accomplishment makes me feel a little tired–maybe if every flavor of the world were brought to me on a little platter, while I reclined on the couch? (Maybe with a bucket next to me, for when we got to the balut.) I would also consider being whisked via first-class Asian airline to the source of the flavor.

In the meantime, here’s at least what I have eaten, in bold:

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