Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

It does sound delicious but I live in the south where fresh cherries come via truck and sour cherries NEVER appear. Sometimes I hit NYC at the right time to catch them but not always. Any suggestions?

Soup sounds wonderful but I do wonder about how much it makes. Regarding Nordstrom without an s, please note that it is also Tiffany and Company, Truman Capote must have known he was employing a colloquial usage in that Holly Golightly story with breakfast in the title. He was too careful with language to not know it was wrong.

I looked up a picture of the Cathedral of Learning cake and I am very impressed. A gothic skyscraper as a cake is quite a feat. http://twitpic.com/i0psq Kudos to Duff and his cake team.

Piercy, Iron Chef has a long pedigree even in this country compared to the rash of reality shows currently filling the airwaves. Once you watch enough of them you get a sense for the created drama. I think Iron Chef does a good job of staying real by putting the emphasis on performing under tight time constraints but I am sure they look to liven things up with additional bits whenever the opportunity arises.

When ALL the drama is concocted it gets fakey and boring. I think we have now been spared any more episodes of that show about the Greek sisters with a cupcake shop in Georgetown. They had to bring in their "mommy" to provide opportunities for stress and they were always "accepting" assignments for 1000 cupcakes for a good cause the day before they were due. Please. Baking and selling cupcakes does not make good television. Iron Chef is far better but like all television, you aren't getting the whole story.

For the benefit of the True Adonis and others who take comfort in the anti-organic i.e. sustainability argument. I asked my friend, a PhD in environmental science at Duke for her opinion and although not ready for journal publication her response points out that assumptions about continuation of unhealthy habits impacts the argument:

This is a complex issue, but let me ramble a little bit… I think people make the issue too simple (it is not just about organic versus not); it is actually about climate change, fisheries, health, land use and change, etc.

(good book – Diet for a Hot Planet – Anna Lappe – Mom Francis Moore Lappe wrote Diet for a Small Planet)

We need so much land for our food, because so many of us eat so much meat, which in our world now is a product largely based on corn. In fact, most of the food eaten by the industrialized world is based on corn. And now, we are basing some of our transportation fuels on corn. Turns out that corn is a huge hog in terms of fertilizer, most of which is nitrogen based. It takes a lot of fossil fuel to grow, and the animals it feeds contribute in huge ways to emissions of some of the worst greenhouse gases. In fact, CO2 is not at all the worst greenhouse gas; nitrogen (i.e., from fertilizer) is much more potent (60x?), and methane (from cow farting and burping – not kidding) is over 200x more potent than CO2. As a group these are called greenhouse gases (GHG), but we tend to think only of CO@. If we ate less meat and if what we did eat was grown humanely and eaten locally, we would use less corn, which would mean less fertilizer use and methane and nitrogen production. Since we don’t really need all that protein anyway, eating less meat (a) helps our health, (b) causes less habitat loss of land mostly used for forests thus sequestering carbon, (c) causes less GHG gas emissions, and (d) leads likely to more humane lives for animals, and a more thriving local economy.

We grow corn for animal food, for corn syrup, for many products way beyond corn that we eat directly (good book; omnivores dilemma). We don’t need all the meat that we eat, and if we ate less meat we would need less corn for food. Corn is a HUGE user of nitrogen fertilizers and other synthetic chemicals that are based on fossil-fuel. In fact in the US as we now work on making more biofuels, non-industrialized countries around the world are cutting down rainforest and other types of forested properties to grow corn for animal feed, or to generate grazing lands. By the way, we way overuse nitrogen fertilizers, because they are so cheap to produce. Farmers apply them way more than needed because they can afford to and the extra just runs off.

SO, if we ate less meat, we could feed the world on the land that we have organically. Other very important benefits of this would be less runoff of fossil-fuel based synthetic fertilizers and pesticides that harm the environment and create dead zones in estuarine waters; more ability to eat locally for large parts of the world (not all); animals that are happier during their lives before we eat them; more carbon sequestration from ag land to forests (or not harvested in the first place).

In terms of nutritive value, I think the higher value of organics is better – I would just purely disagree on that front. However, beyond that, organic production is better for the soil (see above), and better for the workers who otherwise have to apply chemical pesticides and herbicides.

In all the arguments, one can make any case one wants depending on where you start. For example, if you start at the cow on the farm, you can argue that the ag system is maybe 10 percent of the climate footprint overall. However if you take into account all the fertilizer and other synthetic products used, and that means that you take into account the fossil fuel needed to grow the corn to feed the cow, and the methane produced by cow burping and farting, now the ag system is over 30% of all the greenhouse gases we’re emitting.

I know this is rambly, but I figured for you I didn’t need to have an organized essay. :>

Again…strongly suggest

Omnivores Dilemma

Diet for a Hot Planet

Animal Vegetable Mineral

I read in my church bulletin yesterday that the definition of the difference between rich people and poor people on a global basis is that rich people don't have to worry about having food to eat the next day. We are all rich and I would have to agree with the people who think that this show basically makes fun of people who live on a subsistence diet. No one literally eats crap because they want to. Shame on us for making it a form of entertainment.

Thalia at 8th and 50th is right in your neighborhood. Just make reservations and you should be fine. Rachel Ray was ecstatic over their hamburgers a few years back and it was really difficult to get a seat for a while. But things seem back to normal now. Their fries are yummy, esp with their Dijon mustard. But it is also a seafood bar restaurant and I would be willing to try anything on their menu.

It is discussions like this that reinforce my decision to never be in the food service business. I love good food. I love being hospitable but the opportunities for disaster are just too high for me.

That said, I think it is the innate hospitality of the server that can make an enromous difference. Recently my partner and I went to Las Vegas for vacation. He used points and we went first class. The first three legs were okay, but the attendant on the last flight was just superb. She really made us feel like we were special and taken care of. The food/alcohol was same as a flight we had had just days before but she made it special. I wrote an email to American about what a wonderful asset she was. It really is the service that can make an experience memorable.

Last year we started a tradition of have a couple we are close to over for Christmas eve dinner. Last menu was seafood pasta and trifle (they're British). This year it is chicken picata and Amy's Bread's pink layer cake. I think our food tradition will be to be eclectic.

Grilled kielbasa is delicious. Traditional in my family is to serve it with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. My part-Polish granmother boiled/steamed the kielbasa and added it to the cooked sauerkraut. Simple but good.

It is both ironic and appropriate that we discuss this topic in this place. I realize I have a real problem listening to my body and understanding the difference between true hunger and the desire to eat caused by having outside stimulation (reading about the best hamburger in NYC or watching Public Television food shows) or the fact that food remains on my plate. I have to take responsibility and not blame my grandmother for urging me to clean my plate. But leaving food feels bad and the potential to be "hungry later" as opposed to feeling full NOW keeps my eating beyond my true needs. I feel much better when I am eating healthy, appropriate portions, less fat, less empty calories. And I want to exercise more. But truly hearing what my body wants and differentiating that from what feels good at the time is really hard for me to discern. Really hard.

Enjoy the moment. Go out with him if you want to. Skip it if you don't. You are 21, bright and attractive. Do what you feel like. You've got years before you need to devote such introspection to casual encounters.