From Required Eating
Posted by Deb Perelman, August 30, 2007 at 12:00 PM
The French hate McDonald's. The notion of "fast food" clashes with their belief that meals should be long and leisurely; that they should be cooked carefully, with prized ingredients. It couldn't be further from the notion of terroir. But mostly they hate it because it is as shamefully hip-packed and loud-talking as those god-awful Americans, and Americans don't know how to eat.
Have you heard this before? Did you believe it? Well, then you might want to sit down for this one: In the first half of this year, combined sales at the chain's 6,400 European restaurants rose 15 percent, to $4.1 billion, compared with a 6 percent increase in the United States, where McDonald's has 13,800 restaurants and where sales totaled $3.9 billion. Every 12 months, one out of two French people visit McDonald's at least once. Annually, they consume 22 million McDonald's salads, 60,000 tons of french fries, 32,000 tons of beef patties, 12,000 tons of chicken, and 600 million buns. Oh, and these numbers are a little outdated.
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From Required Eating
Posted by Deb Perelman, August 15, 2007 at 11:30 AM
A few weeks ago, the website Blackle.com crossed my path and I was instantly fascinated, but I'm going to spare you a click and give you the long and short of it: It's Google search, but it's not sponsored by Google, and its black. Fine, go. Click, I know you're going to, anyway.
Despite being a black-clad, large sunglasses-sporting stereotypical New Yorker, it wasn't the site's chi-chi and fashionable affect that drew me in, but that it was built on the notion that the color black uses less energy on the web, and even eensy amounts of savings—especially when you consider the scale of a web behemoth such as Google—add up.
Sadly, this premise that black uses less energy than white on the web has been disproven, mocked and shamed by countless writers evidently smarter than me, but I suppose in hindsight, the theory was kind of ridiculous.
But the principle behind it was not. I don't mean to break into a kind of kumbaya-style "all we are saay-iiing"–type song here, but the tiniest adjustments to energy consumption have been proven to make a difference. And in few rooms do we use energy as blindly as we do in the kitchen. Thus, I have scoured the web for small modifications you can make in your kitchen and in you cooking that have the potential to make a big difference in our overall dent on this lush, green land.
Better yet, I'm hopefully leaning on sources that will not disprove, mock, or shame you later on for your good intentions. It's a start, right? Start cookin' green after the jump.
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From Required Eating
Posted by Deb Perelman, August 7, 2007 at 2:15 PM
Before we begin the feature presentation here, we'd like to introduce the author of this post. Deb Perelman, whose work you may already know from Smitten Kitchen, will be joining us weekly to write about current trends in the food world. Say hi in the comments. And now, on with the show. —The Serious Eats Team
Ratatouille, Babette's Feast, Chocolat and now No Reservations. Sense a theme? French cooking, French feasts, French chocolate, French restaurants—if an alien landed in the Twin Cinemas in your town, it would think we ate nothing but crepes, bonbons, and rustic Provençal fare.
A raging Francophile myself, I'd be the last to complain, and yet in my own kitchen pot-au-feus and consommés are constantly pushed aside in favor of Indian dals, Vietnamese pork and noodle salads, Russian dumplings, and Moroccan couscous.
And it's got me wondering: Why don't the most romantic gastroflicks have chopstick-crossed lovers or eyes meeting across overstuffed banh mi thit?
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