Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Blue cheese. Seriously.

Restaurants usually overcook meat, undercook vegetables and put too much salt on potatoes.

Blue of any sort: stilton, roquefort, maytag, gorgonzola.

Jimmy Jacks -- bad name, good barbecue.

Of course I wish Grant Achatz the best, but I do wish the food press would stop with the "facing his worst fears" headlines.

Is this really Mr. Achatz &mdash a father and husband as well as a chef &mdash his worst fear? I have yet to read him say this is the case.

Obviously his condition could be professionally devastating and I'm not suggesting otherwise. It is a dramatic story without dramatically calling it his worse fear.

As a vegetarian, I have a lot more respect for hunters than I do for someone who refuses to touch “icky” raw meat but will happily chow down once someone else has cooked it. Hunters have actually thought about the meat; they understand where it comes from, they don’t shoot more than they need, and they use as much as they possibly can from the animal. I think that if you're going to eat meat, you need to understand where it comes from.
And yes, I have grown my own vegetables, volunteered at my local CSA, so I know where my food comes from! ;-)
Chocolate/Olive

@Karen, I'm suddenly curious as to how much coffee you had prior to 9:30 this morning. ;-)

Great line, LunaPierCook. Sounds like a rose is a rose is a rose which leads one to ask (maybe it does, for some people anyway but maybe not for others undoubtedly) the same thing about meat.

Meat: Meat is meat is meat. Or is it?

Meat once was a living thing that, when living, can take on anthropomorphic shapes in the mind of man (or woman, for that matter).

If one likes to think about closely exploring the personal philosophic and moral territory that goes along with what one puts in ones mouth, then one might want to think about killing what they eat - but if one does not like to think about these things then there is certainly no rule that says one has to do so.

One does learn things (if one is prone to thinking - it's quite obvious to me that there are people who either are not prone to thinking or alternately work very hard to only think in certain ways that keep them comfortable) the closer one gets to anything.

If you go out with a road crew to help build a road, yes - probably the experience of driving on that road will be different afterwards. That is, if the brain and heart have been paying attention during the time spent rather than thinking about any number of other things like "when can I eat lunch" or "this is really boring - when can I get to a computer to see what's going on at Serious Eats".

If you milk a cow, then drinking a glass of milk might have a certain different shape than if you always buy milk in a paper or plastic carton and have never seen a cow in real life snorting on your face and perhaps pooping on
your foot.

I do not believe there is a "foodie" (silly word - not authentic in any sense I can find) here that would argue that making their own pasta brought them closer to some sort of revelation about pasta in some way - usually it takes the form of a swooning conversation about how wonderful it is in all ways to make one's own pasta . . . that it not only improves the taste-level but also the soul (in some undefined fashion) so that one becomes a more worthy person of esteem in the eyes of fellow-men (and of course, fellow-women).

I like to do as much as is possible in terms of things that I enjoy learning about. So yes, I have killed some things I've eaten and will kill more (heh heh heh - so bloodthirsty! Dearie me!). The knowledge gained (both personal and practical) in those experiences is something valuable to me.

That's not to say that "everyone should". That's rather extreme and to say something like that is to make the species we call human more animalistic and predatory than thinking and non-predatory.

Meat is meat is meat. Except when it's not, I think.

And LunaPierCook, you'll have to try harder to be disagreeable if you really wish to hit that stride. :)

I think it's good idea to participate in the slaughter of an animal at least once.
It isn't fun, it troubling, and it does make you think, hard; I held chickens down for a friend when she was slaughtering several on her and her husband's farm. I was shaking, afterwards. I don't know that I could actually slaughter one myself without very very strong incentive.

I don't think that newspaper/tree or driving/paving analogies quite hold up, because neither of those instances involves a living creature, struggling frantically to REMAIN alive. I also don't mean that people should do this as a sort of act of contrition/penance for eating meat; it just seems that one should be willing to understand what is involved in getting a tasty roast chicken or steak on the table, and there seems to be no sound argument for not facing the reality.

I still love meat, I still eat meat. But I also consider what went into the end product, and I do put a lot more thought into my selections when buying meat.

Eggs are DEFINITELY the worst offender. EVERYONE overcooks them. Even the best places in town can't get a reliably runny poached egg, or an omelet that isn't overcooked. I guess maybe because it's one of those meditative foods that requires patience and concentration.