How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the GMO
Here is your happy thought of the day: Maybe the thing that will do us in will not be the bomb or global climate change, but rather some other disaster of our making.
I only say that because there is new evidence to suggest that genetically modified corn causes organ failure in some mammals.
It’s not like genetically modified corn is in everything.
It’s easy enough to avoid corn.
Except it’s not. Corn is in everything.
From our meat to our sweets.
It’s even in our milk.
Nice, Good & Reasonable: Roundup
I guess I still have some eating to do. After last week’s post about my sliding scale for evaluating restaurants, Steve Barnes over at Table Hopping picked up the gauntlet.
Mr. Barnes began musing on my desire for “A nice restaurant with good food at reasonable prices.” This statement was really just the coda to a post on a separate topic, and when I wrote the words, I had intended (and still intend) to more precisely define my desires. But all the same, it seemed as if Steve had an intuitive sense of what I meant.
He cited the “Mystic clam hash and huevos traditionale, both $10 on the brunch menu at New World Bistro Bar” and the “$2.50 side of yummy Utica greens at The Hollywood Brown Derby.” It was also refreshing to see him note that some restaurant prices seemed too high for the food being served.
Then Steve put the question to his readers, and that brought the flood.
A Very Good Year
Many people find wine intimidating. I like to spend my Sunday mornings demystifying the subject and encouraging people to enjoy wine.
One thing that people seem to get hung up on is the subject of vintages. And it is easy to understand why.
– The wine press glorifies some years and demonizes others.
– Some vainly attempt to drink wine only at its peak.
– Popular culture shows wine drinkers appreciating “a very good year.”
Yet for most people having a deep working knowledge of vintages is an unreasonable expectation, mostly because wine is now a global industry. If you only drank local wine, all you would need to understand vintage is a good memory.
– It was so hot last summer, every time I mowed the lawn I sweated buckets.
– Spring of 2007 was so rainy that all my seedlings got washed out.
Today we don’t exclusively drink the local wine. To name a few, we drink wine from France, Spain, Italy, Germany, South Africa, Australia, Chile, Argentina, California, and New York. And each of these countries and states have their own growing regions with their own micro-climates. To keep all of this information in your head, you would need to be a wine scholar and do nothing but study historical weather reports for the world’s major wine-growing areas.
That said, I would like to make a bold statement and talk about it a bit further: For most wine, vintage does not matter.
Sweet Sweet Vermouth
Sweet vermouth is a critical ingredient of my limited home liquor cabinet.
Officially it’s an aromatized wine. Which essentially means a bunch of herbs and flavorings have been added to it in addition to brandy, which helps to preserve the wine a bit and raises its alcohol content.
The conventional wisdom is that once opened vermouths should be consumed within a few weeks, even if kept in the refrigerator. This is no small task especially considering vermouth is often used by the tablespoon, or even less.
I was curious about this conventional wisdom, so I put it to the test.
Living in a Winter Guilderland
It is difficult to tell people where I live. Generally I will say that I live in Albany, which is true. Not only do I live in Albany County, but also my home has a City of Albany mailing address.
But officially, I live in an adjacent town called Guilderland. Guilderland spans a much greater area than one might expect for the size of its population. So township residents really want to know which village you live in. For me, that would be the village of McKownville.
Apparently the postal codes here do not correspond to the geopolitical boundaries.
“Okay, sure. But isn’t this a lot of very specific personal information to be giving out in a blog post?”
Well, yes it is. But I have already made that information public, although perhaps you didn’t see it.
That is because after a bit of soul searching, I agreed to write a weekly post for The Guilderland blog on timesunion.com. My first post went up yesterday.
A Sliding Scale
There are a few bright spots about a down economy. Happy hours come back into vogue and restaurants start running all kinds of fabulous specials. Sadly I’m not participating in too many happy hours these days. But at least I can take advantage of a few of the restaurant specials.
I recently heard about one such special over at Table Hopping. The deal seemed almost too good to be true: $20 for a take-out family-style dinner for four on Tuesdays. It’s a fixed meal that changes every week but consists of a half platter of salad, a half platter of an entrée, and a warm loaf of bread.
The restaurant is Bellini’s. I had never been, but I have a friend who says it’s her favorite restaurant. To put the price in context, one dinner portion of their Bolognese would set you back $14.95. Our dish (of what I can only assume is that same pasta) came in a 9” x 11½” x 2½” pan with a matching pan full of salad greens, shaved parmesan, cherry tomatoes, dried cranberries and diced cucumber.
Is it a good deal? You bet.
How’s the food? Well, that’s a harder question.
When Life Gives You Onions
Brining onions into the fussy household has been an uphill battle. You see, Mrs. Fussy hates the little buggers. And yes, I knew this before we were married, but as I have said before, she has many other wonderful qualities.
It used to be that I wouldn’t even keep onions in the house.
But as soon as Mrs. Fussy would leave town, the onion love would commence. I would thinly slice half an onion, slowly caramelize it over low heat, add an unhealthy amount of butter, and scramble in two eggs. Eggs with onions has been a comfort food of mine since I was a child.
To her credit, Mrs. Fussy has been working very hard to overcome her revulsion to this allium. And I have been working with her.
Mostly this results in two things:
Read more…
Tearing Down a Brand
It feels like a million years ago that I used to work in advertising. I even got to work for a few ice cream brands (for the sake of full disclosure: brand 1, brand 2 and brand 3).
Once I was on a brand retreat with one of the ice cream clients, and they were doing a blind tasting. The client’s brand was “Brand A” and Breyer’s was “Brand B”. Would you believe I was the only one in the room who claimed to prefer the competition?
The rest of the retreat was a bit rough, but I kept my job.
Honestly, I’ve always liked Breyer’s ice cream. Sure, it’s not as thick, rich and creamy as its competitors. But sometimes one wants ice cream to be light and refreshing. No? Especially if you are using it to top an already thick and rich dessert, like a fudgy brownie or a hot caramelized apple pie.
Plus, I have a soft spot for their old commercials. They appeal to my very current sense of what food should be: minimally processed, with real ingredients, and not too many of them.
Here’s an old spot (circa 1984, if you believe the internets).
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