Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Growing up in Minnesota, we didn't actually have a ton of local doughnut shops at the time, so we had to get them from grocery bakeries.

My local grocery store had both long john's AND eclairs - the key difference being the filling. Long Johns had none and sometimes had sprinkles or coconut topping - where as eclairs were filled evil.

I finally popped my White Manna cherry:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/klg19/3965799933/sizes/l/

DAMN. That is a good, good burger.

I just ordered the Bacon Angus burger and took one bite and noticed it was cold. Upon further inspection, I noticed that the burger was not cooked all the way. I took another bite just to see if it was the outer perimeter, but the middle was even bloodier. I don't mind rare meat, but not with hamburger meat, especially fast food hamburger meat. I tried calling the Micky D's I ordered from, but no one answered. I took the extra time out of my lunch and drove back to the location. I spoke to the manager and she agreed that it was not thoroughly cooked. She offered me a new sandwich, but I felt at that point a new sandwich for all my trouble was not enough. The only thing she said she could offer me was my money back. I took the money. I will say the first time I tried the mushroom n swiss, which was good, but make sure that when you order this thing it comes cooked.

Having grown up on Boston's North Shore I can comfortably state that the best fried clams on the planet are served at the Choate Bridge Pub in Ipswich, MA. Once you have tasted them, you will thank me.

@maxcriden: I don't have the energy to find it now, but I think someone in the New York Times made his own curry powder for this. It differs from an Indian curry, I believe. Just google around for it. I think it was Sam Sifton who did it.

I agree about being forced to do anything. We have Compassion in World Farming over here, which I think does a great job in educating and encouraging without going all PETA on anyone...they wholly endorse the 'Pink Veal', for instance. Their stance is, in their perfect world, everyone would go vegetarian, but that's not going to happen tomorrow. In the meantime, they encourage and support ethically raised meat.

I'm lucky enough to have a farm shop a few miles down the road which raises and butchers its own animals. You can see the pigs and cattle grazing on a few acres of grass, with fresh straw, fresh water, and even some toys to keep the pigs happy. They even have a special pen for piglets so they can stay with their mum, with a bowl of cut up fruit and veg for the public to feed them with. We don't eat much meat around our house, but if we do, it almost always comes from there. My kids are allowed with some exceptions to eat what they want (I'm not nuts about cheap meat or fast food in general) but they both know what a proper sausage tastes like, or how bacon should be, and it's really amazing how much better well-raised animals taste. A hand-made Gloucester Old-Spot sausage or gammon steak from an animal raised on grass and proper food rather than a genetic mutant raised on silage and indifference...there's no comparison. Does it cost more? Yes. Is it worth it, even if it means having it less? Definitely yes.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's 'Meat' book nicely sets out ways to enjoy meat...virtually all types of meat...while still caring for the animal that provided it, and not wasting anything. I highly recommend it, if anyone hasn't read it.

'Milk-fed' generally refers to veal calves fed nothing but formula, kept in tight wooden pens so they cant exert themselves, with nothing metallic around so they get no iron at all. Calves generally don't get their mother's milk...it's too valuable.

The absence of iron and exercise is why milk-fed veal is so pale. The calves need to be restrained or they'll try and drink their own urine to get nutrients.

Britain is trying 'pink veal' as an experiment...as long as you have a dairy herd, you'll have bull calves you don't need. Rather than pen them up, they're allowed to graze freely. The meat looks different, but tastes just as good if cooked right. It's better than shipping them off to mainland Europe for cruelty before slaughter.

As for foie gras, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.

In gavage based foie gras production, the liver expands to two to three times its normal size. I'd call that exploding. An enlarged liver is never a good thing...ask your local alcoholic.

And I am totally against battery chicken methods...I keep the little lovelies. But something doesn't cease to be wrong because something else is more wrong.

Watch a video of a goose (or as you said a duck in America) with a funnel shoved down its throat having a mixture of grain and fat pumped into it and tell me that's okay, because it makes it extra tasty after it's been killed. Would you eat milk-fed veal? It tastes better than the pink stuff apparently. Does that make it okay?

Okay, I'm going to wade into this, probably foolishly.

Foie Gras is tasty, I'll admit. I've had it before.

But a food-stuff that requires force-feeding (usually with a tube inserted down the throat of the goose) is not worth it. Kittens might be tasty. Baby squirrels might be tasty. Hell, human babies might be delicious. But I'll never know.

If we eat animals, we have an obligation to make their lives as happy as possible before they're butchered. Geese are intelligent creatures and excellent parents. Could you live without the flavour of exploded liver? Could you let them live and be killed mercifully, enjoy the meat, and not torture them beforehand (for torture it is).

Bragging about your meat consumption is an internet meme that is well past its prime. (I eat raw lion for breakfast, and wash it down with horse tears. I'm hard, me!) All I'm saying is that exploding a goose's liver for the purposes of a spread maybe isn't a great idea.

Christine, you go girl! Some anti-foie types vandalized a restaurant in the DC area last month, but of course, they did it in the dead of night, anonymously, making their stance seem about as meaningful as lighting a bag of poop on a doorstep and running away.
Now I want one of those "Foie You" 'wiches.

So did David Chang at all his momofuku restaurants.

DAMN that sounds like a good sandwich.

Just saw a commercial for a new episode.. Guess they took him back?