Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Frosty and Fries (not weird)

Dunking Chocolate chip cookies in Orange juice... YUMM!

Anthony Bourdain is an intelligent guy that cracks me up when in interviews, but his show bores me to death.

Giada's food sucks. It has no flavor! What the heck is AB thinking? Please get rid of Sandra Lee, I get a headache when I hear her speak. I feel like everyone is just repeating catch phrases that the other person said. We need ppl that actually know what they're saying. Bring back Mario, Emeril, Wolfgang Puck, hell even bring back Ready Set Cook!

@gabagool
The Barefoot Contessa was the name of the Hamptons gourmet food store that Ina bought years ago. Her husband spends his week at Yale and comes home on Fridays. Her friends are a little creepy, but so what!

Paula Deen is probably a decent home cook; she tells you that she isn't a chef ~ which is obvious to anyone who ever cooks anything that isn't loaded with butter, cream cheese and sour cream. And/or deep fried. That stunt with the Krispy Kreme donuts as the hamburger bun, still makes me gag a little. I do find her antics mildly amusing and sometimes grossly embarrassing

@grumpyglutton - I completely understand. To sell out your own cause for some ahem... subsidized dollars is unfortunate but not shocking. Such is the history of mankind I'm afraid.

@Mhila - I totally understand that too - there are NONE, not ONE CSA in this area. Even if you wanted to join - tough. There is an organic delivery service though, which is a step in the right direction.

@CJ McD - fight the good fight! To shoot the messenger for the message is to be willfully ignorant.

" I'm referring to people who make less than $1.25/day. At least one in six people in the world fit that criteria. Of those people, the overwhelming majority are severely undernourished. Millions of children starve to death every year. Do you seriously believe that they can afford to spend more money on food? What's your solution for parts of the world with large populations and very little arable land? We're all aware that this isn't an all-or-nothing philosophy; growing vegetables at home is a good thing if you can do it, and buying foodstuffs (notably fruits and certain vegetables) from local farms at the peak of freshness is an enjoyable luxury, but the ideas you espouse as "world-saving" can't really be applied to most of the planet we live on."

You're reading more into my comments than what was written and are twisting my words. I haven't commented on world-saving nor the politics and government policies of world food sources. That's off topic but it merits discussion in another thread. (Let's keep that in mind. It's a great topic.)

All I have done is defended her efforts against critics.

@Doctrine: Bump.

I had the pleasure of being introduced to Alice Waters when she ate in the restaurant I was working. She was very warm and appreciative of the food and menu. I enjoyed her biography and feel the need to point out that Chez Pannisse is not a corporation focused on the bottom line and making profits. As it was represented in the book, the larger focus of the restaurant is to provide good jobs, insurance for employees, and funding to programs the shareholders believe in. This is Utopian, but that is a good thing.

"If her restaurant is an expression of her ideals, then those ideals... will be seen by few people, for the simple fact that few people can afford to eat there.
To me that seems odd (but maybe that's just me)...
I mean, there are many restaurants that charge more than the majority of people can afford to pay for a meal ... you might think it would be different for a restaurant espousing her ideals, but clearly it's not.
I don't know if anyone else finds that to be surprising, but I do."
-----

I would find it suprising too, if it were all she does. But it's not.

From the ChezPanisse website:

"...she created the Chez Panisse Foundation to help underwrite cultural and educational programs such as the one at the Edible Schoolyard that demonstrate the transformative power of growing, cooking, and sharing food.
Among Alice's many board affiliations, she is the Founder and Director of the Chez Panisse Foundation, an International Governor of Slow Food, a Visiting Dean at the French Culinary Institute, an Honorary Trustee of the American Center for Food, Wine and the Arts in Napa, and Board Member of the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers Market.

Alice is author and co-author of eight books, including Chez Panisse Vegetables, Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook, Fanny at Chez Panisse, a storybook and cookbook for children, and most recently, the encyclopedic Chez Panisse Fruit. Chez Panisse restaurant was named Best Restaurant in America by Gourmet magazine in 2001. Alice has received numerous awards, including the Bon Appetit magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000 and the James Beard Humanitarian Award in 1997...."

As with any movement, you don't just talk about it, magically wave a wand and *poof*, it's done. I think you are either missing the message or think she has hurculean abilities.

She is a voice, a leader of a movement. It's up to the rest of "us", the people, the buyer's market to make it happen by our choices, actions and purchases.

@grumpyglutton: thanks for your comments on subsidized agriculture. I live in the heartland where corn and soy are king, and not even all people here realize that the reason the corn and wheat products are so cheap is because of the subsidies and how that plays into the overall food market economy.

One more thing to add to that, my understanding is also that for farmers who take subsidies also cannot grow any other crop on that field. For example, a crop might have the potential to be harvested in July, leaving time for another late summer crop (different food) to be grown, but in order to keep those subsidies, the land can only be used for the subsidized crop. A second harvest of something else renders their agreement void. Someone correct me if I'm wrong in this assumption.

I also don't know about the rest of yall, but the CSA's around here are full with long waiting lists. My family is caught between that rock and a hard place. Sure, I'd love to eat local and we do shop at the farmer's market a couple of times a month. However, fresh vegetables are only available fresh for a short amount of the year up here. Not to mention that in order to balance our desire to eat healthily and frugally, we go for what is inexpensive at the store (i.e. the greenbeans for 99cents this week, the napa cabbage for 89cents/lb next week).

I can appreciate the grandiose vision that Alice Waters has and kudos to her for being able to live that lifestyle. However, if she truly wants it to be universal and not just something that is available to the elites, talk about how to make it accessible to all is necessary.

Too many people are/have grown up not even knowing how to cook something that comes out of a box! My mother and I learned to cook together. We need to start with baby steps. Capture the gems that are universal (such as learning how to grow foods in pots or in backyards or cook and enjoy foods that aren't "typical" and are less expensive) and ignore the rest for now.

Let me backtrack a moment-

The restaurant is her livelyhood. It's a place where people can experience fabulously fresh food prepared in an elegant manner.
It's not her message.

People are using her restaurant as an argument quite a lot, but I don't think the message behind slow food or any other healthy-eating movement is to serve at home what is cooked in restaurants.

I don't know about anyone else, but I eat much simpler meals at home than I do when I dine out.

"I've always been dismayed by the high cost of meals at Chez Panisse. I know I could never afford to eat there as an undergraduate and recent graduate, living in Berkeley (and it wouldn't be so easy for me to afford today, either!)"

You can make them at home for pennies on the dollar.