Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

yeah

great

I'm just not comfortable with the concpet of pizza snobs.

I try to avoid mixing food and politics, but in the interest of equal time:

Obama voted that it would be okay to remove the live strawberry, squash it, and flush it!

100 anything is way too many.

This may not have happened had I lived in New York or some other large city, but growing up in Northern Minnesota I can remember .... BEFORE THERE WAS PIZZA!!!!!

I thought he'd moved to Canada?

Depends on how much you pay for the water.

I'm shocked and dismayed that the head of the Humane Society would take peanut butter aboard a plane, and purposely endanger the lives of fellow travelers who might suffer from severe peanut allergies!

Lill the Waitress

Back in the 1970's my friend Lightning was a guitar player in a local rock band. One night, after he'd finished playing a dance job, we arranged to meet some girls we knew at the pizzeria which was a popular destination after the bars closed. He and I arrived somewhat late after helping to pack up the band equipment.

The restaurant's seating consisted of a row of booths along the wall opposite the entryway, several small tables in a row down the center of the dining room, and two larger round tables near the door, alongside the kitchen area, that usually weren't occupied unless when the place was really busy, as it was that night.

The girls we knew were eating a pizza at the round table nearest to the door. Lightning decided to order something to eat and I was just going to have coffee. At the other round table sat a couple of older, large rough looking characters who had obviously spent quite a few hours in the bars up the street. They were acting up, making the usual wise-guy remarks about long hair, funny clothing, suspected sexual orientation etc.

One of the girls had to work the next morning and asked me if she could get a ride home. She didn't live far away, and since I wasn't going to eat it posed no problem. While driving I mentioned how obnoxious the two guys at the other table had been. She told me that before I arrived they had been behaving even worse. After hearing her relate a few stories I became incensed. I dropped her off and sped back to the restaurant. I searched under my car seat for anything I could use as a weapon, but all I could come up with was pair of pliers, which I stuck in my pocket.

Back inside the other girls had finished eating and were getting ready to leave a bit earlier than they might have otherwise, no doubt due in part to the unpleasant atmosphere. The fact that this now deprived Lightning and I of any chance at some pleasurable female companionship later on didn't put me in any better mood.

While Lightning ate I had a cup of coffee and tried to ignore them. They were still trying to keep up what I'm sure they considered to be a line of witty banter. They even made rude comments to Lill, the matronly waitress. She was used to putting up with drunks on the night shift, and while she maintained her normal neutral disposition I could tell she was irritated by this particular pair. While she refilled my coffee cup I alluded to their antics and she gave me a knowing nod.

Just then one of their jackets fell off the back of the chair where it had been hanging and landed near my feet. I picked it off the floor with the toe of my boot and kicked it off to the side, making sure to leave a dirty footprint.

Now the drunks quit talking and just concentrated on glaring at us. Moments later Lill came back with our bill and, after glancing furtively around, she took a long sharply pointed metal spoon out of her apron and slipped it to me. I took out the money to cover our tab, and just as the two thugs at the next table got up to leave I handed the spoon under the table to Lightning and motioned with my head for him to follow me.

We elbowed our way between them as they went out the door, and once outside we leaned up against the front of the building. Our adversaries stood at the curb facing us. I'm an average sized guy, and I was young and in pretty good shape, but they were both larger than me, and from their outward appearance not unfamiliar with the physical resolution of conflicts. Unfortunately, Lightning was what you might politely describe as scrawny. In a fight he would doubtless prove to be a hinderance more than an asset, but under the circumstances he was all the help I could expect. While I made what I hoped were menacing sounds clicking the pliers he twirled the long pointed spoon that Lil the waitress had so kindly supplied us with between his fingers.

So there I was, leaning up against the front of the pizza joint, armed with a pair of pliers and reinforced by the physically unimposing Lightning twirling the pointed spoon that Lill had provided to us for use in an impending battle against two large drunken ruffians.

The best I could hope for was that either the police would be stopping by for coffee, (since the pizzeria owner's son was on the force), or that restaurant patrons who knew us would intervene before we were pummeled too badly.

Right then our fortunes took a strange turn for the better. Our adversaries turned around and set out across the street toward the town's Pool Hall. They may as well have walked right into my living room. In fact, if you only took waking hours into account, I spent far more time at the Pool Hall than I ever did at home in the living room.

My despair suddenly changed to boldness, I crossed the street with Lightning in tow. Zippy Zollar was on duty behind the counter in the Pool Hall, reading the paper. "I didn't see nobody", was his reply when asked where the strangers went, but just then I spotted them starting down the stairs to the basement.

Although I hadn't recognized them as being locals, they apparently were familiar enough with the town to know about the late night poker games in the Pool Hall basement. This was really turning out to be too good to be true.

We went downstairs and walked around to the opposite side of the card table from where our now-turned-potential-victims were standing. My friend Polar Bear was acting as House Man, and the card players at the time, Geno, Kocko, HJ, Toodles, Secundo, Johnson from Wisconsin, (whose name wasn't Johnson and he wasn't from Wisconsin), and the Spagnolo Brothers were all familiar to me. I leaned over and whispered in Geno's ear for him to look at the two guys standing across the table, whisper to Kocko on his right to do the same thing, and then pass the word around the table.

Before the message reached the first Spagnolo Brother the thugs were hightailing it up the stairs. By the time Lightning and I got around the table and back upstairs they were nowhere in sight. Zippy motioned up the street with a nod of his head, and when we got outside a car was already pulling away from the curb and quickly driving away.

We returned the spoon to Lil at the restaurant the next evening, and she got a good laugh out of hearing our story.

Meow?

I shudder to think of it!

Assuming the "nation" referred to in Slow Food Nation is the US, and that other nations are represented as well, why do the always have their convention in Italy?

Not that I wouldn't love to take a business trip to Turino every two years, but it does lend credence to the argument that the movement is somewhat "elitist"?

Dylan also said "Lotta people ain't got no food on the table, but they gotta lotta forks and knives, and they gotta cut somethin'"

(although Woodie Guthrie wrote it)