“Marketing material for Zoe brand organic extra virgin olive oil targeted at kids brags that it is ‘at the forefront of the burgeoning children’s health food market.’” {From: Olive Oil ‘For Kids’ Is Apparently A Thing – The Consumerist}
Because it’s never too early to teach your children to be insufferable.
Granted, any time I see a story that contains the words, “A recent study suggests,,” my mental barriers tend to go up, but here we go: A recent study suggests that looking a picture of delicious food while eating bland food can make the bland food taste better.
Is it true? Damned if I know. But it would explain why, back in the day, when I used to eat instant ramen for dinner five nights a week, I was almost always watching the Food Network at the time. (This anecdote doesn’t even come close to qualifying as evidence, and I don’t know why I mentioned it.)
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I kind of want to respond to each and every item on this list of the 100 Greatest Cooking Tips at the Food Network website, but I’ll contain myself to just this one, from Guy Fieri: “Brine, baby, brine! Ya gotta brine that poultry to really give it the super flavor.”
Oh at long last fuck off, Guy Fieri.
My my, that wasn’t very clever, was it?
I guess what I mean is that you are probably a fine human being and whatnot, and that you don’t really have to be an insufferable cartoon character all the time, no matter what the Food Network people tell you.
Okay, so the good news is that there is at least one thing that we can eat that won’t kill us. The bad news is that it’s aspirin. Mmm, delicious.
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… because it gives you Type 2 diabetes. Well, that’s just great. I can’t wait until the day comes when we’ve conclusively proven that eating, in and of itself, is bad for human beings. We’ll all get together and celebrate with a big slice of nothing.
“Want to Save on Groceries? Cook like a Peasant.” I’m all for this sort of thing; because, yes, I would like to spend less on groceries, but I also like to eat food, too. However, my nitpicky little brain (fueled by caffeine and MSG at the moment) makes me feel as though I should point out something.
Unless you’re wealthy and classy, you may already be a peasant. (Don’t get defensive, I’m right there with you. I Sure as hell ain’t a duke or a baron or anything.) However you’ve been cooking was already “cooking like a peasant.”
I think what the author of the GRS post means to say is that you should cook like an old-fashioned, agrarian peasant, not a modern (unsophisticated, boorish, etc) peasant.
Old school peasants used cheap, unprocessed ingredients to feed themselves and their families, because cheap processed foods didn’t exist.. Modern peasants eat Hamburger Helper and Campbell’s Soup over instant rice.
Old school peasant recipes use vast heaping handfuls of that most useful of ingredients: Time. Modern peasants rely on recipes (or “dinner kits“) that promise heaping helpings of a different ingredient: Convenience.
It’s a shame that people are so status-anxious that they often refuse to acknowledge their own peasant-hood. But, if they won’t do that, at least they can look to the peasants of the past to learn some neat tricks in the kitchen.
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“Nothing ruins a child’s birthday party at popular pizzeria Chuck E. Cheese’s quite like a violent, physical fight breaking among the adults. Well, except maybe if you happen to be stuck on a ride when your name is called to go on stage. That isn’t fun, either.”{From: Adults Just Can’t Help Getting Into Violent Brawls At Chuck E. Cheese’s – The Consumerist}
I was shocked to learn from this story that Chuck E. Cheese still exists. I was even more shocked to learn that children are still going there. Why? I mean, what the hell? Chuck E. Cheese isn’t Facebook. What is there to even do there?
Well, according to the article, it’s the fucking Thunderdome.
“Apparently tasteful babies in Brooklyn and their parents are ordering something called a ‘babyccino,’ which involves either decaf cappuccino or just steamed milk and foam.” {From: Discerning Brooklyn Tots Now Demanding “Babyccinos” To The Annoyance Of The Borough’s Baristas – The Consumerist}
I’ve been drinking coffee since I was two years old. It’s not something I think about very much (except when I can’t reach things on high shelves). But today I learned that all that Denny’s swill I imbibed during my toddling years means that I was a very, very uncool baby.
What kind of cookies are chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate?? A lot of interesting answers here–but ignore the “best answer.” Without chips, there’s no chocolate in the cookie, so they can’t just be called “chocolate cookies.”
Things like this bother me–which explains a lot about why I have so many problems with people and with baking.
So: It appears to be Valentine’s Day again. Whatever, it’s cool. I think people in relationships deserve to a have a day in which to throw their tenuous connection to another desperate human being into everybody’s faces, since they’re normally so discreet and timid about it the other 364 days a year.
I don’t really have a good Valentine’s Day story to share about my own past relationships. That’s partly out of respect for the other people involved, but mostly I can’t think of any in which I come off looking like anything other than a mediocre partner. I like a certain amount of distance in a relationship, and assume that others do as well: “I should call her–but wait, it’s only been two weeks. Jeez, give the girl some space.”
Instead, let’s talk about other people’s relationships.
One weekday, a few years ago, I went to an Italian restaurant for lunch. It was in a not-very-well-known wine-producing region, off the side of a road, surrounded by a picturesque stand of trees. It was an okay place.
As I sat there, waiting for my food, I started discretely checking out the other tables, and I slowly began to notice something. There was a distinct, but subtle, Twilight Zone vibe emerging. It was a growing sense of weirdness–the cause of which seemed to be just below a conscious level of awareness.
At the table nearest to me, there was a couple. They appeared to be married. The man was somewhere around fifty or so. He was tall, thin, and had a salt-and-pepper beard and hair thing going on. He had Caesar-style hair cut. The women he was with looked to be in either her mid-to-late thirties, or possibly early forties. Long, mousey brown hair. She was shorter than her date, with wide hips and glasses. I don’t think it’s too much of a jump to suggest that the first preset on their Mercedes’ stereo was an NPR station, but the most common sound in the vehicle was likely either jazz or a baseball game.
That’s not the weird part.
I was slowly beginning to realize where the peculiar sensation I was feeling was coming from. And then suddenly, it was as clear as glass. I took a good, hard, rude look at the table next to them. And there they were.
No, wait. There they were.
A near identical couple–as near enough as to make no difference. Another silver fox, another set of friendly, child-bearing hips. Another pair of glasses. Another brown cardigan. Another Mercedes with a child’s car seat in the back.
I rubbed my eyes. I took off my glasses and tried again.
What were the odds? I wondered. What where the odds that a couple and their doppelgangers would decide to visit the same restaurant, at the same time, on the same day? Pretty remote, I thought. And yet, it was so.
I turned my head to look at the table behind me, on some Fortean hunch. And there they were. Again.
Things went a bit swimmy, but I craned my neck around, finally taking it all in. In this small restaurant, on this strange day, I counted six virtually indistinguishably similar couples. If they all had to go to the bathroom at the same time, I wondered if any of them would end up back with the people with whom they’d arrived. To be fair, I’m sure they all had distinct personalities and varied outlooks on life, but if the ensuing conversation involved a discussion of someone named Madison’s progress in Gymboree, the swtich up might not have been noticed for a couple of hours at least.
In my heart, I know that the world is a teeming menagerie of unique and heterogeneous individuals–a vast array of diverse human beings representing every imaginable physical configuration. But no, not at this restaurant.
The thing I found so uncomfortable about the situation wasn’t the stark evidence of reality’s own copy/paste hackwork; nor was it the realization that, even though I am normally out of place in most places, I was especially so in this particular locale. It was the fact that all these similar people had to know that they were all currently drinking wine and eating brushcetta whilst surrounded by their own virtual clones.
Empathetic as I am, I could not get a bead on what they must have been feeling. Did they find it comforting to be with so many people who were so similar to themselves? Was it an assault on their sense of hard-won individuality? Were they too relaxed and centered to even notice? Being a rather neurotic sort of man myself, I had plenty of discomfort to go around, if they needed it.
I suspect that yes, they probably did notice. And I also suspect that, if they really cared to think about it at all, they probably found it harmlessly amusing. The easy, confident satisfaction they all seemed to radiate implied the kind of serenity that would remain unmarred by such inconsequential happenstances. They would all go home to their golden retrievers and leather couches, and probably not even remember the scene.
But I would remember. I would gnaw on my bread stick and my marginal, fringe existence, and remember. I would be comforted by the fact that the contentment that each of them had found was rare, but not unrepeatable.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
