Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Annie, two things. First, I'm not at all surprised that you wrote what you wrote in the first place . . . it's almost what reality TV aims for - to poke at people in a way that stirs them into emotions that equal at best a football game with a beloved home team playing, at worst what kids do to each other in middle school.

They do this exceptionally well, and it gets the blood boiling, the characters chosen and parlayed against each other.

Liza Garza had all the pieces that people love to "hate" in a character.

And my goodness, your piece was well-written and fun to read, really! I enjoyed it.

That she turns out to be a real person is the surprise, isn't it. Not merely the character but a complex being with aspects of humanity.

I've seen this happen once before, with Amanda Hesser - on a forum. There was the original post picking out the stuff that was waiting there to be picked out (ah - it does exist in us all, in every single one of us in some way) and played with (hopefully with great wit, as your post held) and there was the joining in and the trashing of her and her work, and then voila! A surprise. She personally contacted the OP (no, it was not me ha ha) and turned out to be not only human but rather nice and generous with her time in trying to explain something the OP had questioned.

It happens. It's a part of virtual realities.
I don't think you're wishy-washy, I think you wrote a great blogpost, then you had a surprise encounter because of it that put a new face on things. A real face, the one that belongs to Liza Garza off-screen.

Not wishy-washy at all. A good writer and an honest one. :)

Ha, ha! "Corral pig". Fabulous.

Here's a direct link to the article. Kim Severson does it again. :)

M.F.K. Fisher

Q. If you had to choose one above the other would you say that you are writing about food? Or writing about life.

Yoko paired with California Rolls was also great fun.

I always matched the cooking lesson with a book that the kids would love, for additional focus and fun. Pizza went with Curious George and the Pizza . . . Minestrone went with Stone Soup, of course . . . Hummus went with D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths (that one was particularly fun as I had each child pick a paper from a hat that had a Greek God or Goddess' name on it and they had to tell a story while eating the hummus they had made about who - in their own particular myth - they had fed hummus to or somehow tie hummus into their myth somehow) etc etc.

The first day with the kids will be amazing in many ways, I'm sure - if you're not used to doing this sort of thing - kids in groups are awesome in many ways. :) You'll have a great time.

I've taught kids cooking - both at home and in the classroom. You may not want to "dumb it down" but do remember that with children things take time. More time than with adults. So whatever recipes you choose allow twice as much time as you would with a grown-up, and be prepared to answer a lot of questions that may seem obvious to you . . . and be doubly prepared to keep the kids on-task, whether they like cooking or not.

More than the perfect recipe you'll need patience.

Think like a child and you'll be fine. :)

And don't forget to build in clean-up time with assigned tasks for everyone.

I think it needs no saying that all of us Karens give great thanks for this book.

Goodness knows, FastFoodCritic - that sometimes I do wonder about either boarding school or a nice roast in the oven of one or the other of my children. Either method sure would lower the bickering levels around here. :)

Great story, Foodlexi. Creates quite an image!
Yesterday I came across a review somewhere for a new book released about this topic. Can't find the review at the moment but here's the book itself . I do remember commentary from the review which detailed the flavor in different ways from different uh . . . reviewers(?) heh heh . . . with very different results - which brings up the always-interesting question of how people taste things and whether or not such a thing as a broad-range inclusive "objective" tasting of things exists - or whether how we describe what we taste and whether we think it is "good" or not is pure intellectual construction that rests upon where we come from and what we are taught.
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Another thing that may be part of this topic could be that in theologic discussion of the Catholic rituals of consecration and transubstantiation it is a generally accepted fact that the wafer and wine do actually become a real "corpus". It is not wafer and wine being partaken of in that moment. A modern-day example (once removed and shifted into a different hunger than the physical) of consuming another.

I've hesitated to comment on this topic as I seem to remember it being removed as a topic once before. But with 45 comments and still going strong perhaps the topic will not be deleted.

My thoughts go along with Susquehanna's, followed by Foodlexi's. I don't think anyone can really predict what they would do if faced with this decision. In times of extreme duress sometimes people who daily espouse moral righteousness in their "regular" lives fall apart like a wet kleenexes and sometimes people who do not appear to be stunning examples of ethical prowess can come through with actions above and beyond what one might expect.

It certainly would be transformative, though - to be faced with this decision.
I do think that anyone who had to do this would (depending on their inner resources) laugh in life afterwards though - for like survivors of terrible wars (which we even have going on this very moment in some places in the world) and the acts which occur within them, people tend to forget the worst after a while except for a shadow here or there popping up in memory - or alternately they probably would not survive, really.

There have been peoples in past history whose warriors brought home the bodies of the most important enemy they had killed, to dine upon it in their own villages - as an honorary act. It was thought that if the flesh of the opponent was eaten then their abilities and strength would be taken in by the victor to use in future battles. A very basic thought which extends today into the ways we think of eating meat vs. eating vegetables. Beef is brawn, still, in our minds. A salad is merely rabbit food.

But anyway. I have no idea whether I'd eat a person or not. Probably it would depend on my mood and whether there was brandy available for post-dinner drinks.

fat, juice, cheese, heat, char
(grease spot on my paper plate
ketchup on my shirt)

Luna Pier Cook you're right as usual. I already asked foodvox if he had something against Puerto Rico and Guam. He means well I think but sometimes the details of reality may escape him. Probably been hanging out with Barry Fig a bit too much. :(

beach grill smoke icon
esculent succulent bite
epiphany: MEAT!