The Amateur Gourmet

EPISODE ONE:
SUNDAY MORNING CELEBRATION OF YOU DAY!

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Enjoy!

And now for the birth of a new feature--ASK THE AMATEUR GOURMET!--in which site readers from all over the world ask the Amateur Gourmet culinary questions that he is completely incapable of answering. Here we go!

Dear Amateur Gourmet,

Sincerely,
Forlorn in Fort Lauderdale

Dear Forlorn,

Your husband is a moron. "Sushi" is indeed an Italian word, derived from the Su Shi clan of Naples, Italy. The Su Shi clan's penchant for raw fish ingestion left them ostricized from their community, forcing them to go live with the Iron Chef Japenese (hence your husband's confusion). Soon after, they lost their interest in raw fish and started a boy band that became known to the world as Menudo. Interestingly, Menudo is Spanish for "raw fish." Hope that helps!

Sincerely,
The Amateur Gourmet

Note: If you want YOUR culinary question incorrectly answered by The Amateur Gourmet, e-mail him your query at adrober@mac.com or post a question in the comments section!

Woohoo! I feel like the pampered subject of E! Fashion Emergency, Extreme Makeover and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy all rolled into one. Ain't this new site design fantastic? Thanks to Colleen who I discovered via another great site, NYC Eats.

Anyway, here's to a happy new site design! Things'll only get better from here on in...

A very happy,
Amateur Gourmet

CNN IS COMING OVER TOMORROW TO DO A STORY ON MY JANET JACKSON BREAST CUPCAKES! THIS IS NOT A JOKE! I REPEAT, CNN IS COMING OVER TOMORROW! THE STORY WILL AIR MONDAY NIGHT!

Remember that skit with Phil Hartman where he's Bill Clinton in the McDonald's and he's charming everyone but he's really stealing the food off their trays? That's why I felt this was relavent here.

What Famous Leader Are You?

It came to my attention last night, by way of site reader Seth, that my Marshmallow film: "How To Make Marshmallows In Reverse!" has a serious flaw. The film, as most of you know, plays backwards: beginning with the eating of marshmallows and ending with the preparing of the pan. Well, that is until at the very end you see me holding up a reassembled torn-up piece of paper that says: "THE END." That's where Seth (and other readers, perhaps) have a problem: if the film is told backwards, this should be the beginning! "The End" should come at the start!

I shall now publicly acknowledge that this is indeed an oversight. For those of you who were troubled by this inconsistency, I apologize. If it's any consolation, at the end of "Memento" they play the credits. Think about it.

Despite my distaste for political discourse, I feel it is time I chime in on one of the more important issues of this modern age: namely, whether or not gays should have the right to eat corn.

Corn is as American as apple pie. It's more American than apple pie! Corn was here long before pie crust. The fabric of our nation is woven with corn husks, and whether you roast it, pop it or wear it: corn is as much a part of our American heritage as Nancy Reagan.

Yet, certain people seek to defile that heritage. There are icky heavy metal bands who soil the name "corn" with misspellings (eg: Korn). There are pesky minorities (eg: "blacks") who dare to wear their hair in fashions that mock our American livelihood (eg: "corn rows.") And now, after years of respectable silence, the gay community wants our American government--the government we finance with our tax dollars--to allow them to eat corn!

I find this repulsive. Corn-eating should be between a heterosexual and his cob. No thought is more repulsive than the thought of a homosexual plucking an ear of corn from God's green earth and stuffing it into his gay gay gay mouth. But while I admit I'm slighlty biased (a gay killed my hound dog), I firmly believe that allowing gays the right to eat corn will not only be detrimental to our community, but to our entire country.

Take this child for instance:

As you can see, this sweet, innocent God-fearing daughter of Heaven is eating corn. As her small body imbibes those kernals, think of the values each yellow nugget is instilling in her: God! Country! Heritage! Tradition! Reba!

Now think of that same corn, only now it has been touched by the hands of a recently empowered gay corn eater. This American daughter--one who might have made her family proud, marrying a football star or a televangelist--is now poisoned by the gay seed. Her values will evaporate, leaving behind a raging, seething corpse; fiery nostrils and hooves to boot. America, do you want your daughter to look like this?

It is with great pride, then, that I recall the president's words today to our great nation. His decision to support an ammendment ending gay corn consumption is a sign that American values are not a thing of the past, they are a thing of the future. If we allow gays to eat corn, what next? Give midgets the right to eat bacon?

Please, America, urge your Congressman to ban gay corn consumption. The future of our great nation depends on it. Do it for the children:

WEDNESDAY FEB. 25 2004, 10:53 PM
I am making guacamole. Lauren is watching Will and Grace. Suddenly, and without anyone warning, the electricty snaps off. We are in utter darkness.

10:54 PM
I begin screaming like a girl. Lauren smacks me across the face. She misses and knocks over a lamp. "Get a hold of yourself!" she yells.

10:55 PM
We begin lighting candles. "Don't light the violet candle near the apple candle," I instruct, "their aromas don't fuse well." It's too dark to see, but I think Lauren rolls her eyes.

10:59 PM
The candles are lit. Lauren starts to pack for a wedding. I continue my guacamole by candlelight. Have you ever chopped an onion in darkness? I think you should be very impressed:

11:08
The guacamole is finished. The apartment smells like onions. I scoop some up on a chip. At least I think it's a chip. It's very dark. "Mmm," I say, chewing our phone bill. "Delicious!"

11:11
I am tired of the guacamole. Lauren is finished packing. "Ok," I say, "I guess I'll go to bed."

11:28
I am in bed. I attempt finishing "100 Years of Solitutde" (which, by the way, grows in length each time I put it down; I have been finishing this book for a month). I fall asleep.

THURSDAY FEB. 26 2004, 9:03 AM
Lauren wakes me up. It is freezing. The power is still not back. "Rise and shine," she says. "Leave me alone," I say. It's too cold to get out of bed. "Very well," she says and leaves.

Three hours later.
It is 12:03 PM. Business Associations starts at 12, but I figure it is cancelled. I look out the window and see this:

Atlanta doesn't do snow well. School must be cancelled.

12:04 PM
Lauren calls. School isn't cancelled. Since I missed B.A., did I want to go to lunch? "Ok," I say. "I'll meet you at Doc Chey's."

12:32 PM
I get into my car. This is what I see:

This may be a familiar image to Northerners, but I came of age in Florida. And windshield's don't freeze in Atlanta. Until now. I think fast and turn on my wipers. That does the trick.

12:42 PM
I arrive at Doc Chey's. We order our food. I take a picture of the kitchen.

Some woman says: "Did you just take a picture?" I shake my head "no."

12:52 PM
Our food arrives. I get Thai Fried rice. It is good but with the Thai Iced Tea the bill came to like $9.50. That's too expensive for lunch.

1:05 PM
Lunch is over. Lauren leaves for the airport. I leave for my second class, Juvenile Law.

2:45 PM
Class is over. I call my community office and the power is still out. They expect it back on at 5:30 PM.

3:15 PM
I go to the movies. I see Bertolucci's newest film, "The Dreamers."

5:40 PM
The movie is over. It was way disturbing. But I loved the way it was made. (Not for the faint of heart, though). There's an egg-making scene that'll turn you Vegan.

6:00 PM
I return home. The power is back!

6:05 PM
Josh and Katy call. We decide on dinner. [For further detail, see "Dinner: The Musical."]

8:00 PM
Arrive at "The Flying Biscuit."

8:17 PM
We order.

8:30 PM
The salad and biscuit arrive.

8:45 PM
The Brie in puff pastry with raspberry sauce and apples arrives.

9:00 PM
My meatloaf sandwich arrives.

And then...
We return home; I write a musical and we record it.

THE END

I am in a coffee shop in East Atlanta--Joe's--using the wireless internet to work on reserach for my "Sexuality and Parenthood" term paper.

Except, as usual, my research has morphed into a delirious bout of web-surfing and day-dreaming.

This morning, I received an e-mail from the lovely Clotilde of the scrumptious food blog Chocolate and Zucchini. She told me she would add me to her link list and I thanked her profusely.

And so, sitting here, I've been scrolling through her blog. My reactions are two-fold:
1) Jealousy;
2) Awe.

Why the jealousy? Why the awe?

Clotilde lives in Paris ("Monmartre to be precise" according to her About page) with her boyfriend Maxence. First of all, I am jealous of their names. Second of all, though, I am jealous of their lives! Like Clotilde's visit to L'Etoile d'Or "a little candy store in the rue Fontaine, sprung right out of a fairy tale." Or her description of Brittany, "a fantasy land of wonderful crepes."

Very nice, Adam, but we need a telling flashback to flesh out your envy.

Rewind to three weeks ago. I am in a book store--Chapter 11, in the Ansley Mall--and on a themed display shelf there are books relating to Paris. The one that caught my eye was Ernest Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast". Here's the quote that did me in:

"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."

My recent birthday puts me at the very tail end of my "young man" years. My New York plans (I plan to move to New York at the end of the summer) are incredibly exciting and seem the inevitable route. But there is this daydream in the back of my mind: there I am, on the Seine, with my laptop and beret, writing to you about the croissant I just digested. I become a regular at the French Dunkin' Donuts and sing all my Thursday Night Dinner Songs with a French affectation, like Maurice Chevalier.

Sigh.

Ok, so maybe not. I mean, for starters:
1) I don't speak French;
2) Where would I work?
3) Where would I live?*

* Ok, the third one was addressed slightly last night in the car with my friend Andrew. I brought up my repressed desire to live in Paris and Andrew--who lived in Paris for a whole year--said he'd totally go to Paris with me and share an apartment.

Maybe, though, I can use my writing ability and infectious juvenile obsession with food to convince a magazine editor or book publisher to let me live in Paris, on their money, on the condition that I write frequently and enthusiastically about my adventures. Anyone want to sponsor me? I'm good for it, I swear.

Sigh.

Ok, back to my research. Maybe I won't get a moveable feast. But at least my daydream was a nice moveable snack. C'est la vie.

ATLANTA, GA--(AP)

The Gay Corn Eaters of Georgia marched on the Capitol today, chanting "We Shall All Eat Corn" and other rousing spirituals. They were met by the Anti-Gay-Cornists who wielded Bibles and posters espousing anti-gay-corn-eating rhetoric.

One of the Anti-Gay-Cornists, PJ Owens, held a sign saying: "Homo Sex is a Sin."

"What does that have to do with corn?" asked a leery spectator.

"Well," mumbled PJ, "it's like corn is phallic right? And if a man eats something phallic that's homo sex, right? Well that's a sin."

Others met on the steps of the capital and attempted to reconcile their differences with discourse.

"I don't belive in cornohomophobia," said a woman with a pink sweater with an unhappy looking daughter.

"I think that's just the media trying to brainwash the public."

A man in a white t-shirt responded: "But that's easy for you to say, you can eat corn. We can't."

The woman shook her head.

"I just think the family is sacred," she declared, "and if we let gays eat corn we'll soil the fabric of our society." She then smacked a cob from the hands of her daughter, Ida Mae, lamenting: "Ida Mae if you eat that cob you're gonna be fat! Mommy doesn't love a fatty!"

In another corner, three Baptist preachers held colorful signs kindly suggesting that gays not eat corn.

"I now pronounce you pervert and pervert!" read one sign.

"What does that have to do with corn?" asked a leery spectator.

"Corn eating is like marriage," explained the preacher. "And a gay and a cob who unite in sin are perverts."

Other signs quoted Leviticus: "Thou shalt not eat corn with mankind as one eats corn with womankind. It is abomination."

"What about polenta?" shouted Connie Chung from a helicopter.

"No," the preachers responded, "that's a sin too."

The Gay Corn Eaters and Anti-Gay-Cornists butted heads on almost every issue except one. This guy, most certainly, should not be allowed to eat corn.

END COPY

It's my grandmother's fault.

Back in the day, we would go to Wendy's and she would say: "go get us some napkins." I would come back with two or three and she'd say: "No, no, no! Here, let me show you." She'd hold my hand and lead me over to the napkin dispenser. "Like this," she'd say, sticking her fingers deep inside and yanking out 40 or 50 napkins. "That's how we do it."

"But grandma, we don't need all those napkins," I'd say.

"We need 'em, don't worry about it," she'd reply.

And so, when some environmental committee comes beating down my door for reckless napkin consumption I will point the finger at my grandmother, floating on her sea of napkins in Delray Beach, Florida. For to this day, I still yank a handful of napkins out each time I get napkins from a napkin dispenser. I'm a creature of habit, and this is one of my worst.

I try to relegate my need to yank out large quantities of napkins by yanking them out, leaving the pile on top of the dispenser, and only taking a few. But this is still morally questionable since most likely the next napkin user will not collect napkins that have been previously yanked, but will, indeed yank their own.

Oh, grandma, what have you done to me? I'll never know the joys of a single napkin yank. I'll never eat a guiltless meal, staring at the stack of napkins I have exposed, unused, to the world. How cursed is my fate.

Tonight at karaoke (Tuesday night is karaoke night), I asked my friend Andrew--who is a waiter--the following question:

"Andrew-Who-Is-A-Waiter," I began, "what is the grossest thing about the restaurant business that most people don't know about?"

Andrew didn't pause. He said: "Ketchup."

I looked at him with slight confusion. "Forgive my look of slight confusion," I said, "but why ketchup?"

"Well," he responded, "when we close up we 'marry' the ketchup."

"You marry the ketchup?" I asked incredulously.

"Yes," he answered. "We take all the ketchup and put it in this big carton. And then we redistribute it the next day. So it's really gross--it's like this ketchup from God knows when all combined in this big box that keeps getting recycled over and over."

"That is gross," I agreed.

Someone began singing "The Rainbow Connection" from "The Muppet Movie."

"Thank you for sharing," I concluded.

"No problem," said Andrew.

A good history of pizza at NYC Eats. (Lombardi's is where Lisa, Ricky and I ate at in our Eating the Lower East Side video).

First of all, today has been a frustrating day for The Amateur Gourmet. I spent like 8 hours on the phone with godaddy.com trying to figure out why the site wouldn't load, and then--after two unhelpful phone conversations--it came to my attention that the problem was with Typepad. In a flash of good luck, the site went back up and I was able to load it. Then it all went away again. As of right now, I can't see the site when I type in www.amateurgourmet.com. Can you? If you can, post a comment and I'll see it in the edit page.

Until then, check out John Kessler's witty guide to being a food critic: Eat, drink and try to go unnoticed. I think fans of my New York trip reviews will agree I had the bathroom thing down pat.

I am a food magazine impulse shopper. So much so, in fact, that two weeks ago I threw away a stack of food magazines that stacked up taller than me--and I was wearing heels!

Among my guilty food magazine pleasures are: 1) Cook's Illustrated; 2) Bon Apetit; and 3) Saveur. (I subscribe to Gourmet, otherwise it would feature prominently on my list). Perhaps my guiltiest of guilty food magazine pleasures, though, is the magazine of America's favorite WASPy convicted felon: Martha Stewart Living.

Now, I'm a Martha Stewart fan. I think her show is unintentionally hilarious: the remove between how she perceives herself and how others perceive her is astounding. It is amazing to me that someone can be a successful television personality with an audience barometer as off as hers. Does she not realize how ridiculous she sounds when she says things like: "The glorious aroma of ginger marinated rose petals is a real treat on Christmas morning."

Even more delightful, though, are her exchanges with guests. Occassionally, an underling will assist Miss Martha with a recipe. You can see the fury in Martha's eyes when the underling's techniques are wrong. "Here, let me beat those eggs," she'll mutter, maintaining a level front while seething beneath the surface.

Nothing beats the bliss, though, of Martha's exchanges with her mother. I love them. When Martha's mom is on, the world melts away and I sit glued to the TV--waiting for a famous Martha-Mother moment of tension. My favorite went like this:

Martha: Mother, shouldn't you be using a wooden spoon to stir that?

Mother: No, Martha, I think a metal spoon works just fine.

Martha (laughing, shaking her head): Ok, mother, very well.

Actually, that ranks second next to the time Martha brought up her mother's age and intimated at her death. I don't remember the exact circumstances, but it went something like this:

Martha: How old are you, mother?

Mother: A woman never reveals her age, Martha.

Martha (chuckling): Oh, mother. (to camera) Mother is 80 years old and still kicking. Though (sadly) grandmother only lived to 82.

[Strained silence.]

Mother: That's true, Martha. Now shut the fuck up.*

* = Poetic license.

Yes, so I am a true Martha Stewart fan. I had to tear the cable box from my room several months ago because I would stay up until 2:30 just to watch her on the Food Network. Now they don't even play her late at night any more. Things ain't like they used to be.

This month's Martha Stewart Living looks like it usually does:

But beneath the surface, crackles the shame and horror of Martha's criminal conviction. I will now employ my skills as a former English/Creative Writing major and deconstruct the text of page 8's "Letter From Martha."

Historically, the March issue of Martha Stewart Living has focused on gardening, an area of continuing and growing interest to the American homemaker.

Martha begins with a subtle show of contempt for America and its homemakers. Her use of the word "historically" underlies a sense superiority. She is really saying: "I read history, dumbasses, and you don't. So suck it."

Gardens surround our homes with greenery in the form of shade trees and shrubs, they provide color and scent through flower beds and cutting gardens, and they even give us delicious flavors and healthy nutrition in vegetable patches.

Here, Martha uses the metaphor of a "garden" to describe the American public. "Greenery" should be read as lawyers: they provide shade (sunglasses) and are frequently shrubs (short Jewish men). Flower beds and cutting gardens are gay men providing color, scent, and scathing testimony from Douglas Faneuil, the prosecution's star witness. Vegetable patches are, of course, the handicapped, elderly and mentally unstable who provide "nutrition" by continuing to feed Martha's waning empire. (I count myself in this category).

For the past several months, I have been happily immersed in scores of wonderfully written and beautifully illustrated garden catalogs.

Martha confuses "garden catalogs" with "subpoenas" and "affadavits."

They never cease to amaze me and inspire me to try new species, plant new cultivars of old favorites, and expand my growing universe of plants to include things I never dreamed I could grow because of pre-conceived notions of zone restrictions and soil conditions....with forethought and experimentation, my garden can become more diverse and more botanically interesting.

Touchingly, Martha uses the garden metaphor to prepare for the likelihood of lesbian activity in prison. Her willingness to "experiment" with "new species," eschewing "notions of zone restrictions," brings, for Martha, the promise of a more "diverse" and "botanically interesting" garden. Chlamydia anyone?

There's always more to learn, and recently, I was lucky enough to visit the western Washington garden of Nancy Heckler....No matter where one walks, looks, or sits in Nancy's garden, there is something to see, to touch, to smell, and to taste.

Martha takes the lesbian motif to an extreme, "see[ing]", "touch[ing]", "smell[ing]", and "tast[ing]" Nancy's garden. Poor Nancy becomes a victim of a grand and intricate Martha Stewart prison rehearsal scheme.

To explore this unusual terrain yourself, see "Vegetables, Beautiful Vegetables" on page 100. MARTHA STEWART.

Guilding the lily, Martha prostitutes her friend's garden to the general public. A cool, insensitive ending to a severely cloaked and troubling essay, Martha's letter reveals a woman at the end of her rope. How long she can hang on depends on her resilience, her inner-strength and the quality of leather her glove-maker employed when constructing her patent leather gloves.

Patent leather gloves. They're a good thing.

I give you: Save Martha!

I love Springtime in Atlanta. It's my favorite Spring anywhere. The whole world changes: the air is crisp, but warm. The trees are in bloom. Everything smells green and fresh. Unless of course you're talking about the Dead Shrimp Trees.

This is what I call the Dead Shrimp Tree. Beautiful, no? I love Dead Shrimp Trees. From a distance, through a window and over the internet they are quite lovely. It is only when you smell them that you begin to wonder if you're not really present and that you're actually passed out in a Red Lobster bathroom. Why do these trees smell like Dead Shrimp? Why do I keep capitalizing Dead Shrimp? These things I do not know. But this phenomena needed to be mentioned. I am glad I mentioned it.

Wow, Anthony Bourdain's review of Masa on eGullet makes me want to hop on a plane to NYC tomorrow morning. At the risk of overquoting, I am going to post his entire review below because it's just that good. [And for those that don't know, Anthony Bourdain is an ultra famous food writer and host of his own Food Network TV show.] Anyway, here we go:

"I have been to the mountain top.
I have seen......things.
Everything is different now.

Let me describe the scene:
You enter through a non-descript door on the 4th floor of an empty,nowheresville mall. Standard push-it-out-of-the-way hanging. A door. One long, utterly gorgeous monster beam of raw, blonde wood. The kind of wood you want to sniff for a while. You want to rub your cheek along its warm, unblemished surface..build a fucking house out of it. You never want to see another piece of wood that isn't THIS piece of wood. About 12 seats at a sushi bar type set-up. The space behind the bar is as roomy as the customer side. Green bamboo trunks floor to ceiling (this is the food prep side) LOTS of luxuriously extra space. There's nothing on the bar but chopsticks and a napkin. NOTHING. Not a glass, a condiment, nothing. No glass fish display either. 2 blocks of ice, 2 working trays of hunks of fish. which the chef grabs out of.
As your reservation was for 9:30, you and your friend are quickly the only customers. It's just you two, and Masa, directly in front of you, with an assistant on each side. And you KNOW--with absolutely Biblical certainty that at this precise moment, noone, anywhere on this planet is eating better than you.
There is NO garnish at Masa. Zero. Not the slightest attempt to pretty up, distract, improve on or embellish what is clearly--from the second you see it--or put it in your mouth, the asbolute finest raw ingredient available anywhere on earth.
If o-toro tuna so pale and beautifully rippled, so buttery and unctuous as this does not immediately make clear why you're paying big bucks , than you will never understand even the simplest movements of the universe.
Hunks of foie gras, dunked "shabu shabu" style in broth...raw tuna with dictator-sized heaps of caviar...the aforementioned tuna--alone worth dragging a rusty blade across your best friend's throat. Monkfish with black truffles...
2nd half of the meal eaten with the hands.....Sea eel. Raw, sweet sweet baby shrimp...every piece of sushi like experiencing it for the first time. Everything served on ultra rustic handmade pottery ( I believe made by the chef). It is the most puritanically ingredient-driven meal I've ever had. Ingredient ingredient ingredient. Put all thoughts of cost right out of your head, because no restaurant has ever been less concerned with justifying its prices. Res Ipsa Loquitor is their policy. The thing speaks for itself. And it does. Any price you pay for the full-on Masa experience is a STEAL . This is a once-in-a-lifetime, tell-the-kids-about-it experience. These are ingredients that may well not EXIST in a decade or two--at any price.
And I should point out that Masa had no fucking idea who I was--and couldn't have cared less in any case. If you're willing to: a)Shell out the money.. b)Smile. And c)enjoy? You'll have the same experience.
Beg, borrow, steal...max out the cards...dip into the kids' college fund..crawl naked across broken glass...stick up a liquor store...make a deal with Jeffrey Chodorow--ANYTHING to experience this."

Lisa wants me to enter this contest. Who'll vote for me?

NYC Eats concludes its history of New York Pizza. I liked it because it finally explained who Ray is and why there are so many Ray's pizzas in NYC.

Today was such a pretty day!

I went to the park and saw two things that were food relevant.

1) This guy in a gazebo? He caught a fish. You can't see the guy or the fish, but he did it with a stick and fishing wire. Who knew there were fish in the Piedmont Park lake?

2) These people were having a picnic. I sat on the grass watching them, taking pictures. Is that weird? I began taking my clothes off and drawing them too. That's normal, right? I mean, it is a public park.

Some people are silly. They think the best Girl Scout cookies are Thin Mints.

Wrong!

The best Girl Scout cookies are Samoas.

Look at the box:

It's purple. What's purple? The color of royalty. And what color is the Thin Mint's box? Green. The color of envy.

Now look at the cookie:

See how complicated?

Thin Mints are like two mint crackers dipped in chocolate. Big deal!

Samaoas are carefully constructed coconut patties with caramel and an intricate chocolate design. My friend Ricky once ate two boxes of Samoas. Did he eat two boxes of Thin Mints?

I rest my case.

As someone who appreciates Martha Stewart Living for its dark humor and camp value, I will occassionally review the episodes I am able to catch after a long hard day at school. Today's episode was severely disturbing: a Barbie birthday party for Martha's colorist's daughter.

Perhaps my liberal education has made me overly sensitive to issues that might not concern the ordinary American. One of these issues is the often touted "Feminism." I have learned, for example, that the clitoris is really a penis and that if women think of it as such they will be empowered.

Martha Stewart shuns her peni-clitoris in lieu of Barbie Dolls. The birthday party she prepared was grotesque on so many levels. "Pink tablecloths, pink cups and of course," she adds, "pink heart-shaped straws!"

The cake is a Barbie doll dress with flowers. The placemats are red and also flower-shaped. A pink napkin folded in a red napkin adorns the pink plate.

And now for the children: they are all blonde, all white, and all severely well dressed. They're like mini-clones of Blair from "The Facts of Life." Martha beams with pride as the girls play a party game.

"Aren't they lovely?" she beseaches the camera.

Soon, you can hear marching, and the girls are goosestepping around the table.

"I've prepared goody bags," explains Martha, "each containing Barbie sunglasses, combat boots and Mein Kampf."

"Heil Martha!" sing the girls; saluting Martha with their freshly manicured hands.

"Oh girls," laughs Martha, a glob of icing mustached on her upper lip.

AGE: 25

HEIGHT: 5 foot something

ROOMMATE: The Amateur Gourmet

WANTED FOR: Eating gigantic bags of potato chips before she goes to bed.

ANYTHING ELSE: Yes. Crazy Potato Chip Girl is incredibly dangerous. Her breath reeks of potatoes and she has been known to belch without saying "Excuse me." Crazy Potato Chip Girl will EAT YOUR POTATO CHIPS and she will NOT say she's sorry.

If you have any information regarding CRAZY POTATO CHIP GIRL, please contact THE CRAZY POTATO CHIP GIRL AUTHORITY at pringles@lays.ruffles.com.

Today I found out that I got into the Tisch School of Dramatic Writing!

This will make me the first ever lawyer, Playwright food blogger. Just call me Emeril Chekhov-Cochran.

I just finished a fantastic book by New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell called "The Tipping Point."

The premise of the book is that social epidemics have a tipping point, a moment where they go from marginal obscurity to intense popularity. The book uses examples like Hush Puppies, AIDS, and smoking but I think there's definitely a correlation to food.

Take for example, Starbucks. How did the idea of expensive gourmet coffee drinks "tip" to the point of such intense popularity? There was a time, believe it or not, where the word "cappucino" had no cultural relevance; asking for frothy milk at a truck stop in Tuscon would likely get you a black eye.

Yet somehow the fancy coffee drink phenomenon tipped. How?

Gladwell suggests three main reasons (that encompass several chapters in the book): 1. The Law of the Few; 2. The Stickiness Factor; and 3. The Power of Context.

The first--"The Law of the Few"--describes three types of people: Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen. Connectors are people who know everyone. They're not social butterflies; they're social Mothras. And through their vast social network, Connectors have the ability to spread an idea across continents. The idea of "Six Degrees of Separation" relies heavily on Connectors: if it weren't for Connectors, you wouldn't be traceable to Kevin Bacon. So Connectors spread ideas through their vast social networks.

Mavens find ideas. These are the computer geeks, the technology nerds who obsess over every little gadget, ever minute detail of your Palm Pilot Version 8.902832. Mavens are useful for tracking the things we don't. And somewhere along the way, a coffee Maven sniffed himself a cappucino and found it a refreshing way to start the day. Maybe he even sampled the first ever Frappuchino in a warehouse in Anchorage. In any case, a Maven sniffs things out, passionately spreading the word to Connectors. The Connectors--using their vast social network--spread it far and wide.

That leaves the third group. Gladwell explains: "In a social epidemic, Mavens are data banks. They provide the message. Connectors are social glue: they spread it. But there is also a select group of people--Salesmen--with the skills to persuade us when we are unconvinced of what we are hearing, and they are as critical to the tipping of word-of-mouth epidmeics as the other two groups" (70).

Think about your first trek into Starbucks. What made you try it? Was it the green and white color scheme? The lusty mermaid on the graphic? Did you crave frothy milk in Tuscon?

Most likely, someone you know said: "You have to try this! It's called a frappuchino! It's delicious!"

I remember my brother and I doing that very thing to our mother not so long ago. "A frappawhatto?" she asked. But then she caught the vibe and was hooked. I'm sure it happened the same way for many others.

The second main factor--Stickiness--describes the content of the message. It's all well and good to have Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen but without a "sticky" message, it doesn't matter who's spreading it: it won't stay.

Gladwell writes: "The specific quality that a message needs to be successful is the quality of 'stickiness.' Is the message--or the food, or the movie, or the product--memorable? Is it so memorable, in fact, that it can create change, that it can spur someone to action?" (92).

Starbucks drinks are masterpieces of stickiness. First of all, they're addictive. Caffeine is a drug, and as people develop dependencies on their Starbucks drinks the better the chances they'll "stick" in their brains. Cigarettes work in a similar way. Secondly, though, the drinks are sweet enough to be decadent yet bitter enough to be subtle. It's not like drinking candy in the morning, but almost. So you crave the flavor, but also the effect: it's a double whammy. Starbucks drinks are sticky.

Thirdly (and finally), Gladwell discusses the power of context. This was the part of the book I found most fascinating. Here, Gladwell explores the gigantic drop in crime in NYC in the early nineties. While many attribute this to a giant "crack down" by the police, the truth is rather surprising. Instead of boldly sweeping hardcore criminals off the streets, the city government focused on the subway. At that time, subways were coated, floor to ceiling, with graffiti. And turnstyle jumpers--a familiar motif in many a New York City film--were rampant.

The crackdown entailed cleaning the subways so they sparkled, and rounding up turnstyle jumpers for arrest. The idea was that if you change the context of the subway--if you show that you care about the little things--the bigger things (robbery, rape, murder) won't happen. And sure enough it worked. The crime rate in New York plummeted.

According to Gladwell: "From a high in 1990, the crime rate went into a precipitous decline. Murders dropped by two-thirds. Felonies were cut in half. Other cities saw their crime drop in the same period. But in no place did the level of violence fall farther or faster. On the subways, by the end of the decade, there were 75 percent fewer felonies than there had been at the decade's start" (137).

Clearly, context matters. And if you want to apply the theory to Starbucks, you have to look at the economic boon that happened in the early 90s when Starbucks began its climb to mega-popularity. Before then--when the economy was recessed--it would seem absurd to spend $4.00 on a caramel macchiato.

Also, though, you might look at other social influences. Seattle grunge rock, by way of Nirvana, suddenly made coffee culture very cool. Television shows like "Friends" reflected this with characters congregating in Starbucks-like environments. Of course, I'm spinning this argument out of thin air--I haven't completely thought it through--but it seems to make sense.

And, surely, it applies to all the other food phenomena we've witnessed in our lifetimes. The rise of sushi. The death of carbs. The frightening popularity of Emeril Lagasse.

If any of this piques your interest, I can't recommend "The Tipping Point" enough. The way Gladwell structures his argument; the way he weaves in disparate elements like Paul Revere's ride and Nickelodeon's Blues Clues is inspiring. The book is a fascinating, incredibly quick read. Let me be your Maven-Salesman-Connector: go read it!

Tonight at the Whole Foods sushi counter, I collected my sushi as a bearded man approached.

"Excuse me," said the bearded man to the Asian man behind the counter. "Do. You. Have. Temp. Ura?"

"I can make some," said the Asian man. "Can you wait a few minutes?"

"Si," said the bearded man.

That made me laugh. Because he said "si" as if that were "yes" in Japanese. Isn't that funny?

Sincerely,
The Ha Department

Look at this pretty bird I saw in a tree today:

Its flavor was mild with a tangy undertaste. There was a whiff of blueberry. And the beak offered a delightful crunch. All in all, a hardy complement to my orange scone with personality.

Tonight I played Sommelier for Josh and Katy, who came over to watch my DVD of "Spellbound." (Not the fantastic Hitchcock movie, but the fantastic documentary about the National Spelling Bee. I love it!)

Josh and Katy sat on the couch with Lauren.

"Do you have anything to drink?" asked Katy.

"Oh, I'm fine," I said.

"I mean, for me?" she pressed.

"Oh," I said.

"There's beer and Smirnoff Ice," offered Lauren.

"Mmmhmm," said Katy, her body language gesturing towards the wine on our counter.

"And there's wine," I said.

"Perfect!" said Katy eagerly.

We selected a chilled bottle of Chardonnay from the fridge.

I know nothing about wine. This Chardonnay is Alamos. Is that good? Is that bad? I know nothing about wine.

I presented the wine to Greedy Wine-Drinker Katy:

I poured a drop into her glass.

She sipped expertly.

"Delicious!" she declared.

I poured everyone a glass:

We agreed that it was oaky. ("Why don't you write a book about it," says John Steinbeck.) I suggested that there was an apricot undertaste. Katy nodded. Did she agree?

"This wine is really good," she concluded.

"Yes," we agreed and watched the movie.

Trey Givens sent out the Amateur Gourmet Batsignal on his weblog, and of course I had to respond. The issue? Fried Candy Bars. My friends Alex, Travis and JC reported back to me on the fried candy bar phenomenon when they studied overseas at St. Andrews. Apparently, the British invented this concoction to please tourist Americans: thinking we like candy bars and we like things fried in fat, so let's combine the two and sell them. I'm not repulsed by the idea, but God I would feel so guiltly afterwards. Now if they fried a healthy Protein bar, we could talk.

In case I have yet to make this declaration on the site, it is time you are informed of my all-time, hands-down, no-doubt-about-it favorite author: Vladimir Nabokov. I know of no other author in the English language whose sentences zip and sting and gurgle like Nabokov's do. He is the most electric author I have ever read; I put down a Nabokov book and my hair stands up on end, smoky residue flitting around the room. The world takes on a pinkish/greenish hue and I've been Vladimized.

First, "Lolita" was my favorite book. I named my cat for it. (Lolita, by the way, is at the groomers getting shaved because her hair is all matted. Her Thursday Night Dinner Song--"Meow Mix"--will be recorded upon her return). People who haven't read Lolita assume it is a perverted book about a child molestor. Well, it is. But that's like saying Citizen Kane is a movie about a sled. Nabokov's language is so glorious, so alive and fizzy and--more than you can imagine--funny, you begin to love this child molestor. I mean, how can you not swoon at the opening sentence?

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."

Is there a better opening sentence in the English language?

And then there's "Pale Fire." I read "Pale Fire" a few summers ago on vacation witih my parents. There is no experience that compares with reading "Pale Fire." It is exhausting and exhilirating. The premise is so novel, the novel is so peculiar that your whole life changes. The sky is filled with assassins in dark suits flying with umbrellas. The opening pages are an epic poem. The rest of the book is a line-by-line commentary on the poem. And within that, worlds collide.

Now I am reading Nabokov's memoir, "Speak, Memory." This is actually a second attempt: I wanted to read the entire Nabokov canon after finishing "Pale Fire," but was so fried upon its completion I couldn't let it go. So "Speak, Memory" went on the shelf and came down two days ago after I finished "The Tipping Point." Again, of course, the prose glitters. I'm already swept off my feet, and I'm only three chapters in.

To lure you in as well, I will now quote heavily from the second chapter. Here, Nabokov recalls his mother and her love for mushrooms. I'll end with the Nabokov passage and encourage you to marinate your brain in genius: read Nabokov ASAP.

[From "Speak, Memory."]

One of her greatest pleasures in summer was the very Russian sport of hodit' po gribi (looking for mushrooms). Fried in butter and thickened with sour cream, her delicious finds appeared regularly on the dinner table. Not that the gustatory moment mattered much. Her main delight was in the quest, and this quest had its rules. Thus, no agarics were taken; all she picked were species belonging to the edible section of the genus Boletus (tawny edulis, brown scaber, red aurantiacus, and a few close allies), called "tube mushrooms" by some and coldly defined by mycologists as "terrestrial, fleshy, putrescent, centrally stipitate fungi." Their compact pilei--tight-fitting in infant plants, robust and appetizingly domed in ripe ones--have a smooth (not lamellate) undersurface and a neat, strong stem. In classical simplicity of form, boletes differ considerably from the "true mushroom," with its preposterous gills and effete stipal ring. It is, however, to the latter, to the lowly and ugly agarics, that nations with timorous taste buds limit their knowledge and appetite, so that to the Anglo-American lay mind the aristocratic boletes are, at best, reformed toadstools.

Near a white garden bench, on a round garden table of iron, she would lay out her boletes in concentric circles to count and sort them. Old ones, with spongy, dingy flesh, would be eliminated, leaving the young and the crisp. For a moment, before they were bundled away by a servant to a place she knew nothing about, to a doom that did not interest her, she would stand there admiring them, in a glow of quiet contentment. As often happened at the end of a rainy day, the sun might cast a lurid gleam just before setting, and there, on the damp round table, her mushrooms would lie, very colorful, some bearing traces of extraneous vegetation--a grass blade sticking to a viscid fawn cap, or moss still clothing the bulbous base of a dark-stippled stem. And a tiny looper catepillar would be there, too, measuring, like a child's finger and thumb, the rim of the table, and every now and then stretching upward to grope, in vain, for the shrub from which it had been dislodged."

For those who remember my You Will Make My Tomato Sauce entry, I concluded by saying: "Nothing would make me happier than to hear that a non-cook among you is going to try my pasta sauce recipe. As a reward, I will mention your pasta-sauce-making attempt on the mainpage and laud you and revere you for all to see. E-mail me directly if you do this. I will be so so happy."

This morning I woke up to the briiiiiing of an e-mail message from Tony Massarone who writes:

"In response to your article entitled 'You Will Make My Tomato Sauce,' my assistant Amy and I have indeed made your so-called "delicious" sauce under the direction of Master Chef Baby Owen. After extensive testing, we conclude that it does, in fact, bring all the boys to the yard. The video whose link appears below chronicles our adventure (I would right-click and save as it is 15.7MB). Please feel free to do with it as you wish, but we do ask that all applause and screams of "Sundance" be held until the end."

And here, of course is the link to the video:

Link!

Only problem: my stupid mac won't let me play it! Why can't I play .avi movies? I downloaded two .avi players and still can't play it. And Lauren's PC computer couldn't play it either, but that's not saying much. The little hamster on a wheel that makes her computer work has developed a severe case of hepatitis, dementia and carpel tunnel syndrome. The noises he makes are ghastly.

Anyway, my sincerest congrats to Tony Massarone! Anyone else who tries a recipe, e-mail me directly and you too will get mainpage props.

I had good excuses. My most recent one was this:

I was in the locker room, all ready to work out, ready to change into my workout clothes when I suddenly blanked on my locker combination. Figuring it would come back to me if I locked the lock, I locked the lock before locking it on the locker and proceeded to fumble through 80,000 combinations. None worked. I had no way to lock up my wallet, my cell phone and my pocket Moleskin notebook filled with brilliant ideas. It was a simple cost benefit analysis: true, working out is a health benefit, but the cost of losing my wallet, cell phone and especially my Moleskin notebook filled with brilliant ideas was too great. I threw my gym bag over my shoulder and promptly exited.

Tonight, though, I was driving to Kroger to buy a 10" glass pie pan for my Strawberry-Rhubarb Cobbler when I felt a sudden pang of guilt. "Adam," said guilt, "it's warm out! Swimsuit season is rapidly approaching! You MUST go to the gym!"

And miraculously, in that very moment, my locker combination suddenly came back to me: 7-0-33. (For some reason, I was convinced 33 was 22 last time around).

The fact that I go to a gym at all is a direct result of my friend Ricky and his stunning success on Body For Life. He went from Urkel to the Incredible Hulk almost overnight. (Physique-wise, that is; not race wise. He's not green. Nor was he black). I figured I could do the same.

This summer in LA, I began my Body for Life program to the vast amusement of my fellow interns at the law firm I worked at. What we found most amusing was Bill Phillips' instruction to chant "I AM BUILDING MY BODY FOR LIFE!" every time you lift a weight. We found this very funny.

But, all kidding aside, I like Body For Life. I like it because an unmotivated weakling like myself can do it without exhausting myself so greatly that I won't keep up with it. Well, that is until I come up with a really good excuse. Like winter. Winter was a good excuse. It's cold in winter!

And when I say I do Body For Life, I do the exercise not the diet (obviously!). The upside to this is that I don't have to eat 6 highly-proteinated meals a day. The downside is that I lose more weight than I should. I don't want to lose weight. I want to bulk up. UnUrkeling myself into Hulkdom.

In any case, tonight I climbed aboard a treadmill and committed to doing 20 very intense minutes. That commitment proved tremulous when I tumbled off the treadmill, panting, at the 16 minute mark. Ya, it's been a while since I've worked out. Time to get back in shape.

You tell me what chip you eat, I'll tell you who you are.

Sour Cream and Onion? You ate paste as a child. You wear lots of flannel.

BBQ? You drive an SUV and love the WWF.

Salt and Vinegar?

Well here we hit a wall. To me there was no one more exotic, no one more outside the norm than the person eating Salt and Vinegar potato chips. These were the kids in the schoolyard eating alone in dark corners with flies buzzing. Hence the Salt and Vinegar chapter in William Golding's "Lord of the Flies."

But, as you are well aware, there is no taste challenge too great for this gourmet to overcome. I purchased a bag of Salt & Vinegar chips a few weeks back and now--I'm afraid to admit--I'm addicted.

Specifically, Kettle Chips' Sea Salt and Vinegar chips at Whole Foods. I buy it when I buy sushi. They are so delicious and so addictive. They whisk one away to a tropical island, surrounded by boys in loincloths fighting over a conch shell. And now that I've eaten all these chips, they're calling me Piggy. Should I worry?

I have restrained myself thus far from revealing a family secret. But now the time has come, and here it is: my parents are celebrity hounds. Their affinity for a restaurant is based on the likelihood that they will see a celebrity there. Nevermind good food, give them:

Sarah Jessica Parker

Or, Billy Joel (with my brother)

Or, J. Lo and Puff Daddy

and they'll be satisfied.

How do they do this? Well, it's a combination of (1) good celebrity restaurant-charting; (2) fearlessness; and (3) opportunity. Thus if you can corner Billy Joel by the bathroom, as my mom did with my brother, that's a good opportunity. Approaching former James Bond Timothy Dalton at his table is not. He will say: "Madam, that's incredibly rude."

Now lest I suggest that I'm not part of this whole family obsession, let me present my most prized possession: a picture with Woody Allen taken after my friend Dana and I were informed by his doorman that Woody returns Monday nights at 10 pm if we'd like a picture. We did just that:

And, if you're as vastly amused by this as I imagine you might be, you can peruse our family's celebrity stalking website; though I'm not sure it can take all that traffic. Enjoy!

NYC Eats has taken the NYT Quick Guide List for NYC restaurants and added links to the reviews and videos. It's organized by stars; so you can get tours of NYC's top dining spots. My favorites were Alain Ducasse and Daniel. You can also tour two places my parents ate at on their anniversary trip, The River Cafe (for their anniversary dinner) and Town.

Why don't vegetarians eat mollusks? I thought of this question at dinner with Lisa several weeks ago. Lisa, who is a vegetarian, couldn't think of a good answer. I mean, there isn't much of a difference between a mollusk (clam, oyster, scallop) and a plant is there? Neither have brains, therefore they do not experience pain. Why don't more vegetarians eat mollusks?

Hello,

This is Richard Clark, counter-terrorism czar, and catalyst for what is now a full-blown scandal regarding President Bush, 9/11 and intelligence.

But that is not why I write to you today.

I write to you on a matter much more grave, much more serious. I write to you because you are being deceived, and someone has to do something about it. I write to you because The Amateur Gourmet's bread is a sham and I can prove it.

The Amateur Gourmet painted a rosy picture for you yesterday. He described his bread as his "greatest culinary achievement," "staggering" and "gorgeous." He even cried on camera during a pathetic and lousy piece of filmmaking. But there's a giant hole in his story. And I mean that literally, not figuratively:

This is the giant hole I speak of. Notice the charred, black bottom. "Gorgeous"? Notice the giant gaping wound that goes all the way in; creating a hole as unseemly as Courtney Love.

Now check this out: the Amateur Gourmet posted a thread on eGullet asking for advice regarind the giant holes in his bread. His "greatest culinary achievement"? Some achievement!

People, things are not what they seem. The Amateur Gourmet may seem like a perfectly nice, respectable citizen, pittering his way through recipes and sharing his experiences with you all. But the Amateur Gourmet is not nice. The Amateur Gourmet is not respectable. The Amateur Gourmet is KATHY LEE GIFFORD:

Sincerely,
Richard Clark

This is my gym:

This is what I pass on the way to my gym:

and

[It's a PhillyConnection.]

Additionally, there's a Starbucks where you can get gooey, creamy, fatty frappuchinos and the like; and Moe's Burritos where yes, you can possibly stay healthy, but good luck avoiding the fried Quesadillas and tortilla chips.

Is this marketing genius or sheer stupidity? Let's examine.

The stores have it good because all the doubtful exercise people (myself included) who drag themselves to the gym, can very easily be tempted by the wafting smells of unhealthy food. Ker-ching ker-ching for store people.

Inversely, all the mushy depressed unhealthy food people might see the sexy gym people and say: "Oh, I should probably get in shape." Ker-ching ker-ching for gym people.

This is some kind of bizzaro ecosystem. Quick, somebody get Jane Goodall.

I have done a great deal of soul-searching tonight. First I sat on the floor meditating. Then I sat in my car drinking Scotch Whiskey out of a brown paper bag. When a hobo knocked on my window and asked for his brown paper bag back, I knew my life had taken an ugly turn.

The Amateur Gourmet has ruined everything. Nary can I eat a meal without taking a picture. Do you know how weird that is? To take pictures of your food? People stare at me everywhere I go, and I have to tell them: "I'm documenting my eating habits for a bevy of internet readers!" And they undoubtedly respond: "A bevy? Who uses the word bevy?"

Worse than that, though, my social life has completely hit a wall. Friends no longer eat with me for fear I will write about their eating habits on the internet. People no longer tell me things. I ask people to tell me things and they say: "No! You'll put it on the internet!" So, for example, I had to find about my friend Scott Henderson's hemmoroids from a third party. Do you know how hurtful that is?

Mostly, though, I miss my time. The old me used his time very well. I would take ballet lessons, for example. Have you seen Billy Elliot? That's based on me.

And legos! The old me used to play with legos. Not any more. Now I have to eat my legos.

The time has come to reevaluate. And I have come to the following conclusion: at 9 pm tonight, right after Will and Grace and before The Apprentice, I will terminate this website. I do it because I want my sanity back. I do it because I want your sanity back. I do it because I want to go out on a high note, and three months of glory is all a man can expect in this fickle fickle world, on this fickle fickle net we call inter.

There is, of course, the possibility that--instead--I will covertly reveal that this entire message is part of a ruse. "A ruse?" you ask. "Yes," I say. "What sort of ruse," you press. "An April Fool's ruse," I conclude. "Bastard," you say.

Yes. Yes indeed. Happy A.F. Day!

My parents and brother are coming into town this weekend and we will be eating at (among other places) Fogo De Chao (a Brazilian place where they bring meat to your table) and Aria (a top-star Atlanta Italian restaurant). Pictures and stories to follow.

Tonight I decided that my hands-down, all-time favorite cookbook(s) are The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook and The Barefoot Contessa Parties.

These are the books that I would buy for anyone who was just starting out with cooking (and that may very well be you!) They are not terrific books for a pro-chef, but this site isn't about being a pro-chef. They are just books with absolutely terrific recipes that taste delicious and that you actually want to make again. Far and away, I have cooked more from the Contessa cookbooks than any other. And I actually repeat recipes with these books, something I rarely do with the others.

Apparently, a recipe in this month's issue of Southern Living Magazine could cause serious bodily injury and property damage. Check it out! [Via froststreet.net]

Since today's food consumption was categorically uninteresting, I will now plunge the depths of my pocket Moleskin notebook to share with you some entries regarding food. Surprisingly, there are many. I will just share some and do more on another uninteresting eating day.

Exploitive? Opportunistic? Incredibly handsome?

Yes, I am all those things. And come on, you'd do it too, wouldn't you? In any case, I now present--via Cafe Press--The Janet Jackson Cupcake Shirt:

Which you can purchase: Here.

All proceeds will go to the Amateur Gourmet Society for homeless children that love foie gras.

What's funny is, back in college, I would often suggest the mall food court to my group of friends as a place to eat dinner.

"There are so many choices!" I would say. "Think of the possibilities!"

My friends would grunt and roll their eyes. "We're not eating in a food court, Adam," they'd say, pulling up their noses.

Sometimes I would trick them--when asked to choose a movie--by choosing a movie that only played near a mall. With a food court.

"Problem Child II is only playing at the Phipps Mall," I would tell them, "so it's either eat in the food court or don't see the movie."

"Ok, ok," they'd sigh communally, "we'll eat in the food court."

I think the thrill of Food Court dining is analogous to the thrill my father experienced at the 1964 World's Fair. The endless array of tents, rides, and cultural tableaus. "My goodness," I picture my father saying, his Brooklyn accent substituted for a British one, "Look at this joyous scene from Mexico! What an enriching experience!"

Compare that to my experience today, studying the menu at Taco Bell.

Ok, ok. Food Courts have gone downhill. WAY down hill.

I remember a time when Taco Bell and Burger King were sub-food-court-fare. Now they feature prominently in the sad array available at the Lenox Mall.

I wasn't even going to the food court today. I am SO over food courts.

But at the Corner Bakery, the manager stood outside shooing customers away. "Buckhead's having water issues," he said, "they want us to boil our water, but we just decided to close up. Don't want to risk contamination."

Apparently, the food court had no qualms about the water. And since I was starving, and since it had been a while since I'd food courted, I said: "What the hey" and went to my favorite Food Court establislhment, back in the day.

I don't remember the name, but it's surely the most popular stall in the food court not only in Atlanta, but also in the Town Center Mall in Boca. It's the Japanese place where three men in red hats furiously grill chicken and vegetables.

Let's call it the poor man's Benihana's. Although, in many ways, Benihana's is the poor man's Benihana's. But I digress.

I stood in line pondering the risk involved if the water was indeed contaminated. Chicken isn't cooked in water right? And rice isn't---well it is, but it's boiled water, right? And I can get a bottled water. I should be ok.

I ordered what used to be my usual: the Chicken Teryaki.

The routine is rather amusing. The woman sticks toothpicks in your plate depending on what you order. The system is so complex, Dan Brown is following up his "Da Vinci Code" with an expose on toothpick communication at the Japanese Food Court place. I think one toothpick means white rice, two means fried rice, no toothpicks means no rice? Or maybe they mean nothing and they're just messing with me? Or maybe I know and I'm just messing with you? I do know this: Kevin Spacey IS Keyser Soze.

Here's what the end result looks like:

Does my site lose credibility when I post pictures of food court food? I think this is the food of the common man and it deserves to be studied. And with my highly active lifestyle (8 hours a day at the gym), I have limited access to new and exciting material.

In any case, this chicken tasted better in my memory than it did today. Not that it was bad. It's probably the best thing you can get in the food court. There are chickeny charred bits that give the whole thing a flavor umph, but not much. And beneath it all is a chemically undertaste--much like the one in Rosemary's chocolate "mouse" from "Rosemary's Baby"--that I seriously wonder if the devil might impregnate me tonight.

Come to think of it, there were six toothpicks on my plate.

When my mom was here last week, she gave me a stern warning:

"Adam," she said, sternly, "do not buy an ice cream maker." (I had mentioned the idea of buying an ice cream maker). "You are moving in two months. You do not need another thing to move. Do not buy an ice cream maker."

So when I was in the mall today, and when I was in Crate and Barrel, I did not take a picture of the ice cream makers on the shelf:

I did not note their reasonable price ($49); I did not ask the saleswoman about their utility ("They're great!" she said); and I did not ask her to ring one up for me right away.

And, of course, when I got home, I did not put it on the table and take a picture of the box.

Nor did I take it out of the box and study its contents:

Did I take out the bowl part and put it in the freezer for 24 hours of freezing, like the book says?

Surely not. I am a good, reliable, dependable, upstanding son who would never betray his mother by buying an ice cream maker. I resent any other implications.

Site reader Elise, in the comments for my first sorbet post, asks: "How do you maintain your girlish figure with all of this delcious food?"

A lot of people ask me this. It's the fourth most common question I'm asked, after "Why are you punching that muppet?"

The simple answer is: although I don't watch what I eat, I often don't eat what I watch.

That didn't make any sense.

Let me try again.

The secret is that I often don't finish my food. Portion control! That's what I always say. Seriously, though, I pick and I nibble but I rarely will scrape clean my entire plate. What's strange is that my brother feels that our parents made us finish our plates at the table, but I don't remember this. In fact, I have a very distinct memory of me NOT finishing my food.

Picture it: Sicily, 1947. Well: Oceanside, 1986. I'm sitting on a gray carpet in front of the TV in the den at my little yellow plastic table--where I take most of my meals--and my mother brings me a plate of steak. I chew a few bites and get bored.

"Finish it," says my mother, and she leaves the room.

Fast forward ten minutes: mother returns. The steak is gone.

Fast forward a week. Mother returns. She notices a funny smell. She lifts up the gray carpet and finds the steak, festering away.

Yes, it would seem, I have food ADD. The fact that I get bored quickly helps me maintain my girlish figure. That and a lot of vomiting.

Sunday is to Christians what Saturday is to Jews: the day of rest.

So what do Jews do on Sunday? At the risk of airing my culture's dirty laundry, let me tell you a little secret. Come closer. Closer. Mm...you smell wonderful...what is that? Old Spice?

Jews go to church on Sunday too.

"WHAT!?" you gasp.

"YES!" I respond.

"BUT HOW?!"

Let me explain.

The OED defines church as "a building for public Christian worship." But if you remove Christian, what are you left with? A building. And if you remove the building? Public worship.

And so my secret goes like this: Jews publicly worship on Sunday at the Church of St. Joseph the Bagel. Or, more specificially, St. Joseph the Bagel with Lox.

I once read a website where a Christian blogger wrote: "Can anyone tell me what locks is? My friend says we're going to eat it on Sunday."

Oi!

Here, for your edification, is a photograph of Jewish Church food:

This, unfortunately, is the mass marketed version at Einstein Bagels, but it will have to suffice.

Let's begin by exploring the bagel. Here we have an onion bagel. It should be known that Jews subscribe to the doctrine of "Breath Infallability" meaning: "feh, who cares if my breath stinks! Am I kissing anyone?"

Hence, the Jewish proclivity for all things onion. (My mother and grandmother are President and Vice-President of the Raw Onion society. They eat it like candy).

Next, observe the cream cheese. Because of the bagel's ascent into mainstream food culture, I hardly have to explain cream cheese. Suffice it to say, that a bagel and lox is almost always eaten with plain cream cheese. That's just the way it's done.

Moving on we have the raw onion ("Hurrah!" say mom and grandma) and tomato.

"Tomato?" asks a student. "Isn't that Italian, Amateur Gourmet?"

Good question!

No.

Next, notice the little green balls: these are capers. They're like little flavor bubbles that add salinity and excitement to the bagel and lox experience. Like Tapioca balls, way ahead of their time.

And finally, there's the lox.

"What is lox?" asks a 90s band. "Baby don't hurt me / Don't hurt me / No more."

Lox is Jewspeak for Nova Scotia Salmon, except saltier. Or, put another way: lox is cured salmon. How do they cure the salmon? That I don't know. But lox is basically a thin slice of salmon that is smoked. It has a smoky salty flavor. It's concentrated fishiness and it's pink.

And so, in conclusion, if you see a bunch of Jews on Sunday trailing behind you on your way to church: don't worry. They're not after your wives; they're after your onions.

[Ironic afterthought: here I am speaking from the pulpit of Judaism about eating lox and bagels on Sunday and--doh!--it's still Passover. So if you're really Jewish, you won't eat leavened bread for another couple of days.]

"I'll be taking my meal in the dining room, Jeeves," says Lolita.

"Yes ma'am, right away."

Yesterday, I went to Kroger and used the automated checkout. Do you have this in your city?

Basically, you scan your own items and put them in the bag. Everything goes smoothly unless you remove the bag prematurely and place the bag in your cart.

"Please place the item back in the bag," says the automated voice.

"Excuse me?" you say back.

The automated voice can't hear you. Instead, it repeats: "Please place the item back in the bag."

"But my item is in the bag!" I explain. "And the bag's in my cart."

A short Kroger woman came over and told me to put the bag back on the bag hook because it's weighted.

"But how am I supposed to start the next bag?" I pleaded.

"Please place the item back in the bag," said the automated voice.

"Argh!"

Then, tonight, at Whole Foods, I used human checkout. Do you have this in your city?

This woman was a little batty. She decided to tell me her life story, even though there was an antsy line waiting behind me. What do you do in that situation? Where the checkout woman is talking your ear off and stalling and you know that if you engage her the whole line will groan but if you don't she'll be offended?

Here's what you do. You say: "Please place the item back in the bag."

She'll say: "Excuse me?"

And just keep repeating yourself. She'll stop talking real fast.

For those unfamiliar with Nalgene bottles, they are plastic transluscent water jugs that athletes carry with them when they exercise. Here's a pic:

Here's my thing with Nalgene bottles: Lauren has a ton of them. She's always filling up and carrying around her Nalgene bottle. "Is this Nalgene bottle clean or dirty?" she'll say, holding up a Nalgene bottle above the dishwasher. "I don't know," I'll answer.

I admire her devotion to Nalgene and the Nalgene Corporation. My problem, though, is with the bottle itself: drinking from a Nalgene bottle is like drinking from a well flipped upside down. In other words: way too much water pours out. My mouth is not that big. Neither is my gullet. I borrowed a Nalgene bottle one day and took it on the treadmill and tried to drink as I ran and wound up wetter than a seal at a Seal concert.

And so, in conclusion, I rule that Nalgene bottles are pretty to look at, but not so pretty to use.

Back to you Sally.

I find beards disconcerting when it comes to people who handle food.

I was watching the Iron Chef yesterday, and the Iron Chef French (is that the write phrasing? It seems right since the others are "Iron Chef Japanese" and "Iron Chef Chinese") had a black stubbly beard. I kept picturing bits of food getting caught in it and falling on to people's plates. Isn't that gross?

Then again, the Frugal Gourmet--before he was arrested for child molestation--had a white fluffy beard. Others think that Julia Child was Jacques Pepin's beard. And let's not forget the founding father of American cookery: James Beard.

Maybe beards aren't so bad after all. Please disregard.

We here at The Amateur Gourmet pride ourselves on our journalistic integrity, our bravado, and our contacts at Starbucks. It was one such contact, today, that provided me with the keys to the kingdom of behind-the-scenes Starbucks knowledge that we, the average Starbucks consumer, can only dream about. I share with you now the things I learned on my journey--a journey into the dark underbelly of America's corporate coffee giant--my journey: BEHIND THE GREEN APRON.

[Cue theme music.]

My source immediately made it clear that Starbucks has a firm policy regarding disclosures to outside media sources. I assured her that my website is hardly a media source: my readers are all heavily medicated former alcoholics who live in a school bus on the outskirts of Maine. This seemed to win her over, and she allowed me to take a picture of her from the neck down to provide a graphic for the title of my expose: BEHIND THE GREEN APRON.

[Replay theme music.]

My source, who we will call HARPER, has worked at Starbucks for the last four years. And as much as I wanted her to be a disgruntled employee, eager to dish the dirt, she was surprisingly gruntled.

"It's actually a great place to work," she said, "you get great benefits: health insurance, dental insurance, life insurance. Plus stock and 401k."

401k? Was this some kind of designer jean?

"Sure," she responded.

Unfatigued by her enthusiasm, I attempted to chip away at her cheery facade.

"But surely you find the corporate structure disturbing," I pressed. "A huge coffee giant, stomping in and taking over the world?"

"See I don't agree," she said, "People try to compare this place to Walmart and I'm like: no, it's different from Walmart. Starbucks takes care of the people in the communities where they get their coffee. They're a really good company."

I began turning red with impatience.

("Look," I whispered, "Can't you sensationalize this a bit? See, my readership is flagging and I'd like to create another internet phenomenon, like my Janet Jackson cupcake shpiel. Can't you do it up a bit?" Harper nodded. "OK?" I asked. "Oh, sorry, were you talking to me? I was on my cell phone.")

One thing Harper did wax negative about was how empty and automatic her job had become. Formerly, Starbucks employees actually made the drinks from scratch: grinding the beans, brewing the espresso, heating the foam. Now it's all done by machine.

"I really thought they were going to fire us when they brought this thing in," she said. She was referring to the giant chrome automaton the workers stand behind throughout the day. Bringing great risk to her and her future career, I had Harper snap a photo of the machine--a big corporate no-no--which I will post for you now. Click to enlarge:

Basically, then, the system works like this:

You give your order, and the counterperson shouts the order over to the person behind the automaton.

If you order a White Chocolate Mocha, the procedure is simple: a squirt of white chocolate syrup, and then over to the machine where shots of espresso shoot down. You heat up the milk in the machine to the appropriate temperature and mix it all up. Top with whipped cream and you're done.

"The machine is so exact," said Harper, "that it knows when the milk is at the perfect temperature. It doesn't even let you make that decision!"

What is the perfect temperature, out of curiosity?

"Between 140 and 160 degrees."

Moving on, I next asked about the baked goods. This seemed an area potentially rife with grotesqueries. I imagined week-old crumbcake, saturated with mold, being sold to unsuspecting little old ladies.

"Not quite," explained Harper. "They bring the baked goods fresh every day from a local bakery. And at the end of the day they give it to a local charity."

Oh.

"But I will say," she continued, "that I do think the baked goods are one place where the company's lost its focus. They've spread themselves too thin with all the stuff they sell. They should have two cookies, two muffins and that's it."

What are some strange customer requests?

"Let's see," she said, "there's the guy who likes half soy and half organic milk. Or the people who want extra shots of vanilla in their white chocolate mocha. How can they take all that sugar?!"

I began snorting some sugar out of frustration. "Can't you dish me any dirt?"

"Ah!" she said. "Well, there is the story of our old assistant manager."

I rubbed my hands together with excitement.

"Our old assistant manager was on crack. LITERALLY. Like she would have these cups of tea and they'd be almost all empty and if someone threw them out she'd get really upset. And then we realized it was because she was putting her drugs in them. She'd say things like: 'This is the most expensive cup of tea you'll ever see in your life."

"Anyway," Harper continued, "she eventually quit and started working right across the way at the jewellery store where the ice cream place is now. And apparently she ran off with all these people's jewellery. We would have people coming in here asking for her and we'd tell them she's gone and they'd get really pissed."

That was pretty juicy! "Keep going," I encouraged.

"Hmm. Sometimes people have sex in the bathroom here."

Aha!

Oh wait. That was me.

"Sorry," I apologized.

Any other bad things she could say about Starbucks?

"Well," Harper pondered, "I think white males move up through the ranks quicker than anyone else. Not at this particular Starbucks, necessarily, but I think on a national level that's true."

Ok.

"And sometimes customers treat you like shit. They think that since you work at Starbucks you have to be an idiot, so that sucks."

Anything else?

"One time we were almost robbed. Well, at least I think we were. It was early Sunday morning and I was here at the registers and I saw this guy standing by the door eyeying the place up and down, counting the people. So I made a big show of getting my manager and my manager went and stood by the door. The guy ran away."

So you saved Starbucks?

"Basically."

And now you shall bring it down, enabling me and my poison pen!

"Whatever."

In conclusion, Starbucks is a greedy, seedy corporate monster, cruel to its employees and tolerant of sex in the bathroom. Leaving the kingdom of Starbucks awareness, one is staggered by the sheer mass of heathenism that goes on behind closed doors, behind velvet ropes, behind

"Aren't you being a little dramatic?"

THE GREEN APRON.

[Play theme music.]

END REEL

To those joining us late; In addition to my prowess with the video camera (see films) and the microphone (see songs), I have a small bit of prowess as a student: I'm in my third year of law school at Emory in Atlanta.

Many people ask me: "Adam, what did you think of law school? Are you glad you went?"

A small tear trickles down my face. Sad music begins to play. A tumbleweed drifts past in the distance.

NO.

Well.

Look: law school isn't something you do because it's fun. A law degree is like a merit badge in the Cub Scouts. Sure, you can have your mom sign off on everything in the book and get you all the badges without having to do anything, but I'm not George W. Bush. (Rimshot!) It's the rigor and the misery that make it all worthwhile. No pain, no gain. And boy was there a lot of pain.

Today, though, the pain came to a mild halt as I experienced the last day of law classes ever. Although finals go on for the next three weeks (I have my first one this Friday), I will never again sit in a law school classroom, the fear of God in my blood because I didn't make it all the way through the Civil Procedure reading and with the reading I DID make it through, I had no idea what it said and OH GOD is he going to call on me? Why is he looking at me? Why are my pants wet? NOOOOO!!!

Last night I suggested that Lauren bring the bottle of champagne that we received on our birthday to our last class ever.

"Oh my God," she said, "it's our last law school class ever!"

And today at 5:15, as Professor Levine concluded her thoughts on genetics and parenting, Lauren popped the cork on the champagne to loud applause.

For many, this will be their last class EVER. For me, it marks the end of a dark, crusty chapter and the beginning of a bright new one. Am I a better person for it? Well, I'm a stronger person. And sharper. I can tell you the elements of a tort, the requirements for a contract, and the meaning of mens rea and actus reus. Can I tell you why these things are important for me to know? Only time will tell.

My friend M made an interesting statement tonight.

"I have a theory about you and your website," he said.

"Oh?" I responded.

"Ya," he continued.

"Well what is it?" I pressed.

"I think," he said, "that you don't really care that much about food. That you just like writing about it, but that you don't really care about it."

*************************************

To properly answer M's charge, let's turn back to the genesis of this site. Believe it or not, this site is only four months old (its birthday is January 14th). How did this site come about? What was I thinking?

There were several factors at play.

One was a genuine interest in food. (This goes directly to M's charge.) Beginning my first year in law school, I developed a penchant for consuming mass quantities of FoodTV programming. I was addicted to Sarah Moulton, Molto Mario and Martha Stewart. Soon there was the Barefoot Contessa and Nigella Lawson (on the BBC), but it was Sarah Moulton--bright shining Sarah--who hypnotized me with her wiles every day after school.

Eventually, I made the transition from couch to kitchen and began attempting the recipes I saw on TV. Up to that point, my greatest culinary feats were Uncle Ben's rice bowls and Pillsbury cinnamon rolls in a tube. Now I was trying scary exciting things like penne a la vodka and roasting my own chicken.

And then this past summer, in LA, I discovered Chowhound, which led me on a wild goose chase of fascinating eating. I picked up Jonathan Gold's "Counter Intelligence" which provided a roadmap for underground Los Angeles dining; and I drove with my friend JC to obscure streets in obscure neighboors to sample chili burgers at a roadstand or chicken mole in an isolated shopping center. This was the true birthing process of my inner gourmet: before I was tentative, now I was certain. I cared about food.

The other factors, though, in the launch of the site were selfish. I really wanted to get my writing, composing and humor out there to a wider audience. My friend Josh was the one who suggested it: "You should start a blog." I had no idea how to do it.

Then, I got help at Metafilter.com, where its "Ask Metafilter" service provided me the roadmap I needed to purchase a domain name, secure a host, and begin blogging. My original question was: "How do I become an internet phenomenon?" Four weeks later I was on CNN!

I will confess my belief, however, that blogging is three parts narcissism to one part passion and one part talent. It takes a lot of nerve to think that people will care what I put in my piehole every day. Sometimes I post my posts and I think: "Why would anyone read this? Who cares?"

Apparently people do (that would be you) and I think the reason is that eating is universal. It doesn't matter if my passion for food is genuine or if its temporary or if its the product of Jedi mind control. Not all of us dance ballet, not all of us hunt geese, but all of us eat. Snooty critics and the food elite may trick you into thinking your palate is less worthy than theirs and they're wrong. It's not what we experience when we taste food, it's HOW we experience it. To care about food--to think about it and wonder about it and crave its many permutations--is to celebrate life. And so while I don't care enough about food to enroll in a cooking school or prepare a pinecone cake (who would do that?!), I do care enough to think about what I eat when I eat it. If that makes me a fraud, at least I'll be a well-fed one!

What's with this book?

Who thought of this? Is this a joke? "Wine for WOMEN"? That makes as much sense to me as "Spinach for Dwarves" or "Tofu for Jesuits."

It's amazing to me not only that this book was made but that it will sell. There are women out there that will see this book and say: "I'm a woman! I drink wine! This book is for meeee!"

How ridiculous! How exploitive! How unnecessary!

And my rant is now over.

Check out these chocolate covered bugs:

Saw them at the Junkman's Daughter (a funky store in Little Five Points) and, after reading the ingredients, I can tell you that they are indeed bugs: crickets (or other insect).

Did I buy them? Did I eat them? I won't lie. No, I didn't. My journalistic ambition only goes so far.

[Some of you may remember that several weeks ago I was admitted to the Tisch School of Dramatic Writing at NYU. I neglected to tell you that I had an application still pending at Juilliard because the odds of me getting in there are ridiculously insurmountable: they admit two people each year (who get to work directly with playwright gurus Christopher Durang and Marsha Norman). Well, turns out I survived the first cut and they want me to come up next week to interview. This is really exciting. Booked the flight for next Thursday---I'll have to scramble to get my finals done. And I'll definitely keep you posted on any developments!]

And now, fashionistas, our next item on the runway; the gorgeous white Hanes cupcake shirt made famous by none other than the model himself, The Amateur Gourmet:

Notice the elegance, the sophisticated charm. And now notice the back:

Perfect for summer, winter and everything in between. A glorious fusion of fabric, funny and genius. Available now in the upper right corner.

My mother frets over dinner plans like politicos fret over war. "Did I strategize well enough? Am I going to regret my decision? Should I request a table near the window?"

My mother's friends suffer at the mercy of her spasmodic whim. "Well maybe we SHOULDN'T go to X," she'll say, after three weeks of discussing dinner plans. "I hear Y has better food and that Robert DeNiro eats there."

My parents flew into New York today because they're attending some benefit this weekend for Katie Couric and her colon. Their dinner roster for the trip would make any foodie's eyes light up: Le Bernadain, David Burke & Donatella, lunch at The Four Seasons.

But the meal my mother worried most about was tonight. "I made reservations at 'Cesca," she told me, "but I think your father's going to hate it."

She read me some of the menu.

"Dad's going to hate it," I confirmed.

My dad's tastes are so sure, so stagnant that predicting his level of satisfaction at any place that doesn't serve Caesar salad, steak, and creamed spianch takes little effort. And yet tonight my cell phone rang during an intense bout of studying and watching "Will and Grace."

"Hi Adam," said my dad.

"Hey," I said. "How's it going?"

"Great! We're in this restaurant "Cesca," he began, "and I really didn't want to come. Your mother dragged me here."

"No I didn't," I hear her say in the background.

"But the food is terrific!" I've never heard my father so happy over food. "We just had an appetizer of mozarrella and roasted red peppers and it was one of the best things I've ever eaten!"

My dad? Ate mozarella and roasted peppers? What's going on here?

"And then we shared a pasta with capers and olives and lemon and it was delicious."

"Really," I said, a bit stunned.

"And now we're waiting for our entree. I ordered the swordfish. Here, let me give you your mother."

He passes the phone to my mom.

"Adam, this place is phenomenal," she said. "Can you believe your father loves it so much?"

"I love it!" my dad cheers in the background.

"Anyway," she continues, "I'm making you a reservation for next week."

"But mom," I said, like a spoiled brat, "I was going to go to the theater."

"Go during the day! You can't miss this place!"

She called me back an hour later telling me she got an "impossible to get" reservation for next Saturday at 'Cesca. Full report to follow. Hopefully as glowing as my dad's.

Friends and loyal site readers,

I regret to inform you that because I have a big fat final tomorrow morning at 9 am, I will not be able to share with you my food adventures from today. Anticipating this, I purposely had no food adventures. In fact, I didn't even eat. I'm starving. I care about you that much.
And because I couldn't compose a Thursday Night Dinner Song (two weeks in a row now, unfortunately) I will leave you with a completely non-food-related trifle I wrote last year called "The Taper." Please forgive me for my transgressions and pray that I survive the night.

With warm regards,
Your Amateur Gourmet

THE TAPER.

1. This burrito.

2. This raspberry bar.

3. This pizza.

Now you're all caught up!

I saw two adorable dogs today sitting outside of Starbucks. Lauren told me the breed, and now I forget. The first was slightly gamey with a hint of the field. The second was reminiscent of venison, though slightly tangier. All in all a lovely snack.

Many a Chinese food eater has wondered, as I wondered tonight: who is General Tso and why am I eating his chicken?

Luckily this Washington Post article is right on point: Who Was General Tso and Why Are We Eating His Chicken?

According to the article: "Tso was utterly ruthless. He smashed the Taiping rebels in four provinces, put down an unrelated revolt called the Nian Rebellion, then marched west and reconquered Chinese Turkestan from Muslim rebels."

Yes, and his chicken?

The article goes silent. Who was this chicken and how has one bird fed so many for so long?

Tonight I eschewed my studying and frolicked over to the Chinese-American Poultry library and picked up a book titled: "Bok Bok in a Wok: The Chicken That Made General Tso" by Lonny Horowitz.

In Horowitz's brilliant narrative, we see the life of General Tso through the eyes of his chicken, Bruce.

"How doth the General spite me today," begins Chapter Three, The Pecking Order, "My beak is parched and yet my bowl is empty. Who does a bird have to bok to get a drink around here?"

Chapter Eight offers this titillating insight: "When General Tso takes a lover, he pours sticky syrup over her and sprinkles her pulsating body with red peppers. Perhaps if I roll around in this mixture, he will treat me like the lover I know I am? Tomorrow I shall carry out my plan."

And the sad, powerful conclusion, where General Tso comes at Bruce with a glistening hatchet: "The end draws near. I feel death tapping at my skull. Tap! Tap! Tap! And yet I know I shall live on forever. I know I shall forever be. General. Tso's. Chicken."

Tonight, as I gnawed at Bruce's regenerated carcass, I felt his spirit enter me. "I am the ancient bird," he sang from inside. "Let us sing my song."

"CAW! CAW! CAW!" I sang out.

"Quiet," said Lauren, "The Sopranos is on."

Bruce, Lauren and I watched together as the mystery of General Tso and his chicken finally came to rest.

For a long time now I've been meaning to write about something that troubles me in the food community: namely, that sense of entitlement that goes along with fine dining.

I don't like the fact that when I go out to a nice restaurant and I look around the room everyone looks the same.

I don't like the fact that poor people in this country eat poorer food and that rich people eat richer food.

I don't like Rachel Ray. (But that has nothing to do with this essay).

When Jimmy Carter spoke at the law school several months ago, he asked and answered an interesting question. The question was: what about our society, 100 years from now, will seem as repugnant to Americans as slavery does to us today? And he answered: "I think it's the divide between rich and poor; how rich people keep getting richer while poor people keep getting poorer. It's a serious problem."

Nowhere is this more evident than in our food culture.

Think about where and what you eat every day and then think of some place worse. That's what more people eat every day. Now think of something better. That's what fewer people eat every day.

What is it that a four star restaurant puts on your plate that a crap restaurant doesn't?

1) Fresh ingredients;
2) Expertly prepared.

That's about it. Ambience aside, that's what you pay for.

So how come we can't get fresher ingredients to more Americans? That's half the battle. The expert preparation, that's a limited resource---only so many people are trained as chefs. But even the worst chef can make a fresh, juicy tomato delicious. Even the most ramshackle kitchen can do wonders with a freshly caught fish. It's freshness that's lacking in American cuisine: that's why the landscape---the McDonalds, the Dairy Queens, the Subways---are so depressing. Everything's processed, packaged and shipped from God knows where. And what the majority of us are putting in our bodies is a very subtle form of poison---it's the opposite of God's bounty. It's the anti-Eden. It's corporate America.

What bothers me, you see, is that rich people eat better: plain and simple. They eat better and therefore they live better. I think there's a connection between what you eat and how you live. Maybe the boon our economy needs is a reinvigoration of the National diet. Maybe I'll use my internet prowess to start a revolution!

But there's so much more I want to talk about and it's already 2:43 am. (I've been up all night writing--and finishing!--my 30 page paper). Luckily this is an 87 part series, so I'll have plenty more opportunity. Just some food for thought. Hopefully it's fresh.

Ok this is too funny not to share. My parents went to a charity event this past weekend in New York and met a bunch of celebs, but this one takes the cake. Here's my mom with the fab five (minus one):

Color me a hypocrite after my "entitlement" post, but I've schemed my way into a very good, very promising dining situation. You see, my NY friends--as lovely as they are--are all very busy this upcoming weekend. They are all swamped in a sea of finals, roommates with finals, and finals with roommates. I felt that my arrival--for my Juilliard interview--would be a bit of an imposition.

Which is how I convinced my parents, who just returned from NY yesterday, to repack their luggage and escort me on my trip. Let me explain: this required very little arm-twisting. My mother had hinted at the prospect from the very beginning: "Are you sure you don't want us to come?" And this way, now, I can have the luxury of a hotel room and--as the title suggests--the indulgence of many fine meals for you to enjoy vicariously.

People, I'm not doing this for myself. Do you think I want to eat these meals? If I had it my way, we'd be eating Raman noodles and microwavable pizza. But I answer to a higher calling. I have been chosen by Jehovah to serve as a food prophet here on Earth. If that means eating at some of New York's best restaurants, taking pictures, and writing about it--so be it. Who am I to question my mission?

Whether I'll be able to post from my hotel room is up in the air, but suffice it to say there will be some lip-smacking posts this weekend. Woohoo! (With sincere apologies to the nation's poor, for whom I still plan a revolution.)

Hey, here's my friend Alex to tell you all a story:

My friend Michael and I were eating after the March for Women's Lives in DC with a good friend from high school and her two roommates from college. I began speaking of the infamous Adam Roberts and the most recent phone call to the nice French restaurant (aka "Freedom" Restaurant) in NYC by Pancetta Williams, writer of "Cooking Light with Pancetta". My high school friend's friend said, "Who is Pancetta?" I said, "Pancetta is Adam, it's a character". She replied, "So why was he making reservations with the name Pancetta?" I said, "It's a joke." She said, "Does he know that "pancetta" is ham?" The story quickly died. Michael and I cracked up and were alienated from the rest of the group for the rest of the meal. Thanks a lot, Pancetta. Or should I say HAM.

PART ONE: BIRTHDAY BUSTED

For my birthday (in February) Alex sent me a lovely Cookie Press from amazon.com. It was so lovely, in fact, that I kept it in the box and never used it. When Alex called to ask how I liked it I said: "I love it!" And when she said: "Are you using it?" I said: "Of course I am! I'm using it right now."

Then Alex stayed over last night.

BUSTED! (It was still in the box when she got here).

PART TWO: GOURMET BUSTED

I run a website called The Amateur Gourmet. I cook things when I have a craving and extoll the wonders of fresh, culturally significant produce.

Then tonight I got hungry and found Entenmann's cookies in Lauren's pantry.

BUSTED! (I ate 6).

The end.

So my mom just sprung some exciting news on me.

As a graduation gift (keep in mind, folks, I'm graduating a week from Monday...wow...that was weird to type) Saturday night will see the Roberts family dining at one of the most difficult to get tables in all of New York: Per Se!

For those unfamiliar with it, Per Se is the east coast derivation of the world famous French Laundry, consistently voted the greatest restaurant in America (if not the world) by chefs and critics alike. Thomas Keller, its chef and raison d'etre (<--am I using that right? It's my first time), is a towering food figure and, presumably, will be cooking Saturday night since it's the first night opening since the fire that shut it down two months ago.

How my mom managed this is beyond me. Everything I read about Per Se says that people waited on the phone for 10 hours only to be rejected. Does my mom have superhuman powers? Is my mom Thomas Keller?

That would explain the sideburns.

In any case, stay tuned loyal site readers: I shall photograph and consume on your behalf, sharing Saturday's splendor with all of you.

Now I just have to pass my final tomorrow...

Check out this Morning News interview with Ari Weinzweig, author of "Zingermans Guide to Good Eating" (a recent purchase of mine).

I really like this quote: (when asked what cliched phrase/description he would drop from the troves of food writing): "Just one. The emphasis on the word 'quality' when it's used without any definition. On its own the word has no real meaning. That's the one that's on my mind right now."

On my flight this afternoon from Atlanta to NYC, I was the victim of a severe pretzel inequity.

The beverage cart on my side of the aisle had the same drinks as the one on the other side of the aisle, oh sure. But pretzels?

My pretzel distributor was distributing horrendous Fisher Pretzels; the other side was getting Cape Cod pretzels.

Fisher pretzels are gross, stale awkward lumps of cracker with a salty crust. Cape Cod pretzels are thin, delectable and shaped like lighthouses. Something had to be done!

So I flagged down a Cape Cod pretzel distributor and said: "Hey can I get some of those pretzels?"

She gave me a strange look and threw me a bag.

I ain't no pretzel chump.

This morning dad and I walked through Central Park. The weather here has been wonderful: a perfect 76 degrees.

We started on the south side where we encountered the Central Park carousel:

We continued upwards, passing a castle:

A shrine to John Lennon (at Strawberry Fields):

And the Audobon Society:

After which, we made our way over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

We saw Perseus with the head of Medusa:

ADAM!

Yes?

WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

I'm writing about my morning.

IS THIS A MORNING BLOG?

No.

WHAT KIND OF A BLOG IS IT?

A food blog.

SO STICK TO THE SUBJECT!

Fine!

So in the Met I saw this picture of food:

And this sculpture of a siren that looks remarkably like the Starbucks logo:

We now have reached the conclusion of the morning walk in the park with dad. Thank you for joining us.

This is Lincoln Center.

See the trees on the upper right? Follow the path around to the building with the revolving door, take the elevator four flights up, follow the hallway down and enter the second room on the right and watch me on the couch interviewing at Juilliard. How did I do? Who knows! The experience itself, though, was amazing and I'll be forever flattered that I got this far. I'll keep you posted with any developments. Oh, and don't let the door hit you on the way out!

So after Juilliard (you may want to read today's posts backwards, that way they'll be more chronological-like), I made my way down to Times Square to meet my friend Ricky for an evening of Assassins and burgers. Who should I encounter on my way?

Two zany prostitutes hawking their wares!

Just kidding. These are my friends Dana W. and Lisa. You may remember Lisa from that time I stayed with her. She's on the right. Dana's on the left. We had a lovely chat. You'll be seeing Lisa again tomorrow for lunch.

Then I made my way over to Studio 54 where Ricky and I went to see Assassins:

What follows is a brief review of the show which, because this is a food blog, requires a click for its non-conforming content.

So, as I am wont to do, I posted my Per Se review on eGullet the night I wrote it. I originally linked it on here, and then it was merged into the general Per Se review thread. So here's the link to that:

The Link To That.

If you click on page 4, you'll see two really cool things. One is a great post by someone named Robyn which offers a great critique of my seriousness. Here is a quote:

"By the way - when I look at all these pictures of food - I think about sex. Would anyone have fun with sex if they spent the whole time taking somewhat clinical pictures of it (as opposed to the pictures you'd never share in public )? You know - I bought a digital camera a while back - but - whenever I'm having a good time - even if I remember to bring the camera - I never remember to take pictures."

[She has a point... taking these pictures sometimes DOES detract from the meal!]

But then Fat Guy (the founder of eGullet) offers this rather exciting rejoinder:

"I have a different perspective on the matter. Anybody -- well, pretty much anybody -- can have sex pretty much anywhere. Whereas only 64 people a night can eat at Per Se, and they have to come to New York to do it.

I was just hearing today about a group of cooks at a restaurant in Quebec, all gathered 'round their computer screen looking at adrober's photos of the food at Per Se. There are people all over the world who are dying to see photos of and read everything they can about the food at Per Se, and this is where they're coming to do that. So I have to thank adrober, on behalf of the site, for increasing our relevance and providing this service to so many visually hungry people."

Wow! I've increased a site's relevance! Now if only I could bring more attention to Germanic raw food...

My favorite weekly columnist, hands down, is The Village Voice's Michael Musto who, I sincerely believe, is deserving of a Pulitzer Prize for what he does with words. Just because he's a gossip columnist doesn't mean he's not a genius! It brings to mind John Updike's quote on Nabokov: "He writes prose the only way it should be written; that is, ecstatically."

Take, for example, this skewering of the new Broadway show "Bombay Dreams." (And yes, this IS food related, people...)

"It's not hunky tandoori. It's utter naan-sense. It's dal as dishwater. It curries no favor. It's a potato ganesh with mustard. It's untouchable and unwatchable. But on opening night, I did enjoy the audience member bopping enthusiastically to the music—the show's producer ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER! He's a complete vindaloo-nie!"

See? He's a genius. Case closed.

This letter is to inform you that your Amateur Gourmet is in the process of completing his final final. This is a take home final in Jewish Law and requires great concentration and tsurris. What's tsurris? That's the fourth question on the test and I won't get caught cheating. Suffice it to say, the test is time-consuming but I'll be done tomorrow night. At that point I will consume great quantities of butter or alcohol, whichever's handy. Drunken buttery cooking posts? Stay tuned.

Here is my law school:

Here is me handing in my last law school final EVER:

[A woman standing nearby said: "Excuse me, I have to ask, what did you just take a picture of?" I responded: "I just handed in my last law school final ever. I had to have a picture." "Of course," she said and ran off nervously.]

Here is my brain tonight:

Here is my brain tomorrow morning:

Any questions?

This month's Martha Stewart Living (May 2004) features, as usual, a Letter From Martha. Unlike Martha's many other letters, this one actually keeps it real. No BS about gardening: Martha has made the brave (and committee-prodded, I'm sure) choice of addressing her legal woes. Let's look closer, shall we?

How can I thank you all--readers, advertisers, business partners, family, friends, staff--for the outpouring of affection and support that you have shown me recently, just as you have consistently done for nearly two years? It's comforting to know that you are sending so many good thoughts my way.

How revealing the ordering of Martha's list! In the world according to Martha, advertisers and business partners outrank FAMILY and FRIENDS. And of course, staff at the bottom. But c'mon, Martha, I'm looking at your advertisers and I assure you that the people from Bose stereo systems were not there at your trial like your daughter Alexis was. Remember Alexis? Or have you replaced her with Flonase?

Your encouragement and messages, as well as the steadfastness and companionship of my daughter, Alexis,

Ah, here we go...

of my mother, Martha Kostyra

Her mother is a former czar...

and of my sisters and brothers and friends, have meant everything to me, have literally kept me going. I want you to know that I am okay--sick to my heart, yes, but functioning, working, thinking and being productive.

Is this the most emotion Martha has betrayed in the history of her career? Seriously, when was the last time you heard Martha say she was "sick to [her] heart"? Probably when a staff member subbed Shiraz for Merlot. Kidding, I'm kidding! OR AM I.

I also want you to know that I am so sorry for the upset my personal legal troubles have caused for all of you who care for me and have welcomed me into your lives through our television program, magazines, books, and products for more than two decades now.

I like the addition of "products." It's a cunning way to remind readers that there ARE products. She's basically saying: "While mourning my impending prison sentence, why not buy a Martha Stewart toothbrush? Or my world famous shoulder pads!"

This is not an end to anything, but kind of a fresh start, I believe.

Oh come now Martha. That's pushing it, isn't it? Your company's stock is worth less than bupkiss now, I'd hardly call that a fresh start. That's like Lincoln popping up from the balcony with bleeding-head saying: "Don't worry, America! I'm still here!" [And then keeling over.]

In my new role as founding editorial director, I will continue to be as involved as I can be, and as is appropriate, in the work that we do here at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

She lost me with the Omnimedia. Sounds so corporate. Be a human, Martha, a human. None of us run around telling people we work at such-and-such Omnimedia. My dad's a dentist who uses drills, explorers and sucking tubes. Is he Dr. Roberts Omnimedia? And if you only use two mediums are you bimedia? "Are you omni?" "No, I'm bi." "Ohhh..."

This magazine, in particular, is such a great source of pride, and its readers such an extended family for me, that it, and all of you, will never be out of my thoughts--not for a moment.

I'm in Martha's thoughts! And I'm never out of them! What am I wearing, Martha? Ohhh Martha...you're baaaaad. Growwwwl.

I feel secure knowing that the magazine is in capable hands...

This paragraph is really boring. She names her staff.

Then she concludes:

I am so proud of what the expert team and I have built here, and want to assure you that the quality, originality, and usefulness--the inspirational how-to ideas you use in your lives every day--will continue without interruption. Continue to expect good things from all my dear colleagues here at Martha Stewart Living, and you will not be disappointed.

It's kind of sad, really, isn't it? She's basically saying: well I'm a failure, but I have good people who aren't failures so you can trust them. Me, I'll be behind bars, but that's ok--I have my crochet. Keep reading!

Oh, Martha. I miss you already.

Gather 'round boys and girls and behold a freak of nature! See the freakish Magneta--watch her skin go from its pinkish hue to blackish silver!

Behold her pristine finger:

An ordinary finger, yes? No camera tricks, no hand double.

Now watch as she grazes a fork across her fingular surface:

Parents: cover your children's eyes. For what you are about to see is so grotesque, so horrifying that Vincent Price would scream in terror. Alas, no more fanfare. Click below to behold the spectacle that is my mother's finger:

With the possible exception of a linguini with white clam sauce I made in 10th grade, my family--mom, dad, grandma, grandpa and Michael--have never eaten anything I've cooked. I only started cooking three years ago, so that keeps them safely off the hook. Yet, even when I come home the idea of my cooking remains an impossibility: dining out is so much more inviting.

Which is why, today, I forced mom and grandma--who came to inspect my apartment--to try my homemade caramel pecan milk chocolate ice cream.

"That is to DIE for!" raved my mother.

"Too good," said my grandmother, "delicious."

"One more spoonful," begged my mother. "With nuts in it."

"I love it," said grandma.

Vindication at last. My place is secure, now, on our family tree.

I will be up in 4 hours to shower, shave and leave for my law school graduation. Pictures, videos and tall tales shall follow. Let's all get some rest, now.

The last time I graduated I took with me a line on my forehead: the sun burnt an impression from my graduation cap on to my skin that lasted three weeks. This time I vowed I would leave graduation the same way I came in, and for the most part I kept my word. That is except for the macaroons. I left with macaroons.

We had our post-graduation lunch at the Ritz Carlton because it would be easiest and the least crowded. Lunch was a buffet---there was good stuff up there. Shrimp, lobster, lamb and risotto and that's just the tip of the iceberg. The Roberts family is funny with shrimp on a buffet: we head right for them. We stack our plates greedily and come back to the table, our faces hidden by pink mountains of shellfish. The Roberts family likes shrimp.

But the Ritz Carlton shrimp were forgettable. So was the lobster, lamb and risotto. What I took with me, both figuratively and literally were the macaroons. I asked for a box and and began sneaking macaroons off the buffet table. Grandma helped. I left with six, a good catch but not nearly enough.

These things are delicious. Lauren won't even taste one because, to quote her, "there's no chocolate in it." What a ridiculous reason not to eat something. She's missing what is, perhaps, my new favorite cookie concoction. The outside is strawberryish and the inside has this weird green jelly. My whole childhood I thought of a macaroon as a coconut cookie: who knew they could be so much more? I love these things. I'm going to go eat one right now.

I hadn't realized that people were posting to old questions on The Upper Left Corner. I just skimmed through them now and came across this post from S'kat under "Project Palate Expansion" (in which I urged readers to eat something new and write about it):

I know I'm a little late for this one, but what I ate last night was directly in answer to this thread. Had dinner at a little Korean place, and ordered the whole grilled fish. About halfway through the meal, I realized what needed to be done. The eyes. They needed to be eaten. Much to my husband's dismay, I yanked out the little eyeballs with my chopsticks, pausing to admire their blind gaze for just a moment, before popping it into my mouth. It tasted... salty. Real salty. Like every last vestige of salt that had been packed onto this fish, had ended up in the ocular region. The eyestalk itself was just a little chewy. I ate the other one, for good measure. Husband refused to kiss me until I had brushed my teeth.

All I can say is "Eww!" S'kat, you went too far. Shame on you. You brought disgrace upon The Amateur Gourmet and his readers. Yet, I admire your chutzpah and your gumption. Next time I eat a fish eyeball I'll think of you.

Sincerely,
TAG

Sorry for my bad posting today. I've been engaging in brutal Per Se discourse oneGullet.com. Very spicy stuff. Still stinging from this comment from the notorious Bux:

"Your naive self centered reports were not without interest, but they didn't suggest an understanding of the food or the genre to me. I'd like to suggest you didn't get it and in that case it's an odd position from which to propound it wasn't mystical. While there's a sort of perfection in Keller's work, I say it was better described as cold, calculated passion. Have you read Michael Ruhlman's writing on Keller. I think it's presumptuous for you to hold your opinion so highly without doing the leg work to understand that which you don't get. The problem with your style of journalism is that you come to your subject with little knowledge and assume so much. The world is not such an obvious place and self indulgence will not earn you a discriminating audience."

I think he just called you guys non-discriminating. Bastard!

The secret's out: I have a cold. Not only that, I gave it to Lauren. We are none too happy.

For lunch we souped at Bagel Palace. We were given a choice between traditional chicken noodle soup and just plain noodle soup. We never really asked what the difference was, so we went with traditional and received this:

It tasted fine, nothing special. I wouldn't be shocked to learn it came from a can.

We were then seen by the incomparable Dr. Brown of the Black Cherry family:

He prescribed plenty of bed rest and plenty of liquids. Luckily, Dr. Brown is also a liquid so I drank him right up. As an aside: how good is Dr. Brown's Black Cherry? The Celery's pretty good too, but I'm a Black Cherry man.

And tonight, of course, more soup from Doc Chey's. Here's a quandry: Doc Chey's is pick-up, not delivery. When I went to pick it up, I paid with a credit card and there was a line for "TIP." Why should I tip for a pick-up? No service was given, just a brown paper bag handed over a counter. Am I wrong? Am I right? Anyone?

The soup was good. Lauren and I watched "Triplets of Bellville" on DVD. We both still have our colds.

Here is how we play the ingredient game. I type out the ingredients for a food product and you have to guess the product. I will also give you two clues. The winner receives the love and respect of the Amateur Gourmet Community.

Two Clues:
1. This is a prepackaged product;
2. It is desserty in nature.

Ingredients: Sugar, Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable And/Or Animal Shortening (Contains One or More of: Soybean, Cottonseed, Canola, Palm, Palm Kernel, or Coconut Oil, Beef Fat), Enriched Bleached Wheat Flour [Flour, Ferrous Sulfate (Iron), "B" Vitamins (Niacin, Thiamine Mononitrate (B1), Riboflavin (B2), Folic Acid)], Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Cocoa Processed with Alkali, Corn Syrup. Contains 2% or Less of: Sweet Dairy Whey, Whole Eggs, Modified Corn Starch, Cellulose Gum, Mono and Diglycerides, Leavenings (Baking Soda, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Monocalcium Phosphate), Salt, Cornstarch, Soy Lecithin, Soy Protein Isolate, Polysorbate 60, Wheat Gluten, Natural and Artifical Flavors, Calcium and Sodium Caseinate, Calcium Sulfate, Sorbic Acid (to retain freshness).

It has just come to my attention that today (well, yesterday) is this site's four month anniversary. My first post was January 14th, 2004 and since today (well, yesterday) is May 14th, 2004, that makes it four months of Amateur Gourmet greatness. To mark the occassion, I just popped two drowsy Sudafeds and I plan to go through the archives for highlights until the drugs take over and I begin blogging incoherently.

In terms of most delicious things I made, I present (in no particular order):

1. Apple Cobbler

2. Barefoot Contessa Guacamole

AND (from the same post)

Barefoot Contessa Sundried Tomato Dip

3. Strawberries Dressed for the Oscar's

4. French Laundry Staff Lasagna

5. Of course, homemade Sourdough

6. Blood Orange Sorbet

7. Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

8. Pinecone Cake [This is my proudest achievement]

9. Barefoot Contessa Pecan Chocolate Ice Cream

10. Superbowl Cupcakes (not pictured due to overexposure).

Wow, I cooked a lot in these past four months. This Sudafed is starting to kick in. Dare I go on?

I shall.

Now for the most delicious things I ate while dining out. In no particular order except for the first one because it was the best:

1. Hands down the best thing I've eaten in the past four months is not even something I ordered: The Blue Crab Fritter at Bacchanalia.

What made it great was the citrus and vanilla. It really ruined all other crabcakes for me, it was that good.

2. The Foie Gras Milkshake and Mini-Hamburger at Blais

3. Duck at Babbo

[This was probably my favorite meal.]

4. Passionfruit Tart and Hot Chocolate at City Bakery

5.
Tuna Tartare at Aria

and, later, their Veal Chop

6. The Foie Gras at Per Se

7. Scallops at 'Cesca

8. Macaroons from the Ritz Carlton

And that's about it. My head is starting to tilt; I'm losing muscle control. To share your favorite Amateur Gourmet memories, check out the Upper Left Corner. And here's to another great four months!

I am a big nerd who reads Strunk and White's Elements of Style for pleasure. Not just pleasure: edification. According to the blurbs on the back it is a "nonpareil" (The New Yorker) "the best book of its kind we have" (St. Paul Dispatch) and "as timeless as a book can be in our age of volubility" (The New York Times). For those unfamiliar with it (and if you went to school in America, that's highly unlikely) The Elements of Style is the premier primer for English composition and the trustiest tool a writer has to make sure that his writing is not not good.

Today, then, I was reading through Chapter 5 "An Approach to Style." Here, the master himself (and author of "Charolette's Web") E.B. White addresses style in its broader meaning: "style in the sense of what is distinguished and distinguishing." He goes on to suggest that writer's write naturally, that they use a suitable design, that they write with nouns and verbs not adjectives and adverbs. These are all very good points.

And then one gets to Point #9. Here Mr. White is incredibly prescient; in his uncanny wisdom, he seems to be anticipating Blogs. And not just any blog, MY blog. I copy his words for you now:

"9. Do not affect a breezy manner.
The volume of writing is enormous, these days, and much of it has a sort of windiness about it, almost as though the author were in a state of euphoria. "Spontaneous me," sang Whitman, and, in his innocence, let loose the hordes of uninspired scribblers who would one day confuse spontaneity with genius.

This, although conventional, is compact, informative, unpretentious. The writer has dug up an item of news and presented it in a straightforward manner. What the first writer tried to accomplish by cutting rhetorical capers and by breeziness, the second writer managed to achieve by good reporting, by keeping a tight rein on his material, and by staying out of the act."

Phew.

That E.B. White could really slaughter 'em. Thank God Wilbur didn't affect a breezy manner or he'd be bacon.

But I take E.B.'s point. The internet has created a textual space where time is no longer precious; where waste is welcome. I know: I worked in a law firm last summer and spent 90% of my time reading the internet. It's fun. But it's unhealthy.

In my effort to entertain you as well as inform you, I sit on the fence between Spontaneous Me and Good Writer Me. Some have noted that I, perhaps, post too much. This is Spontaneous Me at work. This is the fat around the edges, the extra salt on your french fries. This is unhealthy.

Unless of course you come from the Jack Kerouac school in which case it's all healthy, man. I have little doubt that Jackie would've been a blogger. But to quote Truman Capote: "That's not writing, it's typing."

So, in conclusion, I will do my best to trim the fat around the edges; to keep things tight. After which you can pat me on the head and say: "That'll do, pig. That'll do."

I have a sneaky suspicion that my life is a TV show, a la "The Truman Show," except instead of Ed Harris as Kristoph lovingly overseeing my every move, there is Bob Saget--a la "America's Funniest Home Videos"--overdubbing my actions with obnoxious voices and irritating sound effects. Anyway, that's how I felt tonight trying to get a sheet of saran wrap off this tube:

I had a little piece going but it kept going round and round and so I couldn't catch up the other half. Then I took a knife and attempted to get the other half going and cut too deeply, tearing off all the remaining wrapping plastic. Fed up, I threw it all in the trash and slid my cobbler into a large piece of Tupperware.

"You're the red white and blue / the funny things you do / America, America, this is you."

Now I can't get that song out of my head.

How did we come to this?

Yesterday, I was pumping gas at the QT and in the little plastic picture frame above the gas meter was an ad: "We Now Offer Low Carb Lunches!" At the Atlanta Bread Company, where I went for lunch today, a large banner hung overhead: "Check out our low carb options!" On TV, just now, I saw an ad for an Atkins supplement bar: "To get you the vitamins and nutrients you need on your low carb diet!"

According to a February report from market researcher ACNielsen, more than 17% of those polled reported that someone in the household was on a low-carbohydrate diet.

America is choking down this anti-carbohydrate propoganda and the food community is in an uproar. At least this member is!

Look, I understand how hard it is to lose weight. I have a mother and grandmother who dieted my whole childhood--everything from weight watchers to Suzanne Summers to Oprah to Donahue and back--and I know that the process can be devastatingly slow and results can be slim. But I can't help but believe that this no-carb diet is a bad thing. Anything in excess is a bad thing. Cutting a food group completely out of your life is a bad thing.

Not only that, the impact is significant. Carbohydrate-based companies like Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and Panera Bread are losing money. Carb consumption is becoming taboo. Bread sits uneaten on the table. Pasta and pizza joints are firing waiters. Lauren and I went to Osteria tonight and the waiters outnumbered the customers.

I went to Osteria tonight, actually, to prove a point. The point is this: I want carbs. I like carbs. Carbs are good.

Here is the pasta I ordered:

Do you know what it's made of? Carbs. And do you know what it tasted like? Delicious.

People, we are in a Carb Crisis, and I want to do something about it. Together, we can make a difference. I even made this motivational video:

Download The SAVE THE CARBS Movie.

That's right, kids. Tonight we launch the SAVE THE CARBS! campaign. If I could make a button for the site I would do that but I don't know how. Do you? You should! And then give it to me! Only with eachother's help can we SAVE THE CARBS!

But here's an actual constructive idea that I would like to implement immediately. I am going to do so in bold.

I DECLARE THIS THURSDAY, MAY 20TH, NATIONAL CARB AWARENESS DAY.
That's right. Spread the word. This Thursday everyone--including you--will eat a gratuitous carbohydrate. No, not your daily dose of granola; we're talking a mega-cupcake, or a big black and white cookie. Thursday, we're going start a revolution and start it right. And if you have a website, please spread the word. The more people who know about it, the greater the impact we can make. Plus what else do you have to do? It's not like you have a vibrant social life. I'm just saying.

So, in conclusion, don't do it for your country. Don't do it for your God, or your mother, or your accountant. Do it for the organ that matters most. No, not that one. Do it for your stomach. Only you can save the carbs, America. Won't you?

The first round of The Ingredient Game was a raging success. Well, in any case, people seemed to like it.

Tonight's Food Item is slightly more tricky. Here are two clues to help:
1. This is not something you eat directly;
2. It contains 0 Fat, 0 Cholesterol, 0 Sodium, 0 Protein and 2 g of Carbohydrates.

And now for the ingredients:
Corn Syrup Solids, Partially Hydrogenated Canola Oil, Sugar, Sodium Caseinate, Dipotassium Phosphate, Maltodextrin, Titanium Dioxide, Mono- and Diglycerides, Sodium Aluminosilicate, Artificial Flavor, Carrageenan, Annatto Color.

Boy, just reading those ingredients makes you hungry, doesn't it? Good luck!

In case I seem a little blotchy this week that's because my brain is going through a perverse obstacle course known as the PMBR. For those late to my career/life narrative: I just graduated law school, and now I'm studying for the New York bar. After that I'm off to NYU for the Tisch School of Dramatic Writing (unless Juilliard turns out, but that's highly unlikely). Passing the bar is important because if I don't do that now, I certainly won't do it later: once the law knowledge evaporates from this brain, there's no getting it back. And a law degree is pretty useless without a license.

Anyway, the main way a law graduate studies for the bar--practically, the only way--is to take the BarBri course. BarBri is to the bar exam what Kaplan or Princeton is to the SAT. Except it's basically a monopoly. Almost anyone who wants to pass the bar takes BarBri.

PMBR is a pre-BarBri Multistate supplement course that revs you up for the fun BarBri courses that follow (starting next Wednesday). Except, unlike BarBri (which entails a 3 hour video in the morning and self-motivated study in the afternoon), PMBR is 6 days (starting yesterday) of intense full day courses on fun topics like TORTS, CONTRACTS, and PROPERTY. The morning starts out with a brisk two-hour test which everyone fails because they haven't studied this stuff since first year. Then, in the afternoon, a lecturer on a combination of speed and Red Bull FLIES through a semester's worth of material in 3.5 hours. Your brain begins to feel like Courtney Love on a BAD night. (Courtney Love on a good night is bad enough). Then you drive home in a daze and attempt to come up with material for your food website. Instead, you watch your "Freaks and Geeks" DVD box set. Then you write about carbs. Please, again, forgive my brain this week.

Walking back from Whole Foods tonight, I encountered a familiar site. This BBQ:

It seemed to beckon me.

"Come hither, young one," it said in a Yoda voice.

I obliged.

"You are the young gourmet they speak of?" he probed.

"I am," I replied.

"Then it is time you had your training," said the BBQ. Open me."

I did.

"Behold my innards," said the BBQ.

"I'm beholding," I said.

"Soon you will grill on them. Soon you will be a griller," he prophesized.

"Will I?"

"Now close me," snapped the BBQ. I snapped it shut.

The BBQ was silent. I walked away.

So does anyone know what kind of BBQ this is? Coal or gas or something? I have no idea. I am completely ignorant when it comes to BBQs. Would I need to buy coal? I have a BBQ book--"License To Grill"--so I'm not wanting for BBQ recipes, just BBQ knowledge. Please, help me face the master with confidence.

Oh my God. Cicada Cooking video via The Washington Post. You need RealTime to view it... and Valium.

Picture a cake.

Let's say a yellow cake with vanilla icing. The cheap kind that comes in a box; the kind you would sell at the Chess Club bake sale. Picture it strewn with rainbow sprinkles; the large rectangle carved into equitable squares.

Now taste it. Do you have the flavor in your mind? The cake with its chemical richness--you can almost taste the yellow; the icing overly sweet, glopped on way too generously. And the crunch of the rainbow sprinkles in your teeth. What do rainbow sprinkles taste like anyway? Mini-sugar apostrophes that get caught in the teeth...

Now stay with me here.

We are going to reform our cake. We are going to make our cake from scratch. It's still a "yellow" cake only now we're using flour, baking soda, a pinch of salt. And buttermilk for that tangy richness. Eggs. Sugar. The batter gloppy and aromatic. We pour it gently into a round 9-inch cake pan. Bake until a tester comes out clean. Can you see the tester? Can you smell the cake?

Only there are three cakes. Four cakes. Five cakes. All the same. Well, not all the same. In one we put orange zest. Another lemon zest. One has bananas in it. The fourth is chocolate. We are going to slice the cakes in half and make-mismatched sandwiches.

No. We're going to make a 5-layer yellow cake, our original plan. Let's make a whipped cream frosting. Pour the heavy cream into your mixer, and beat on high until peaks form--add sugar. Vanilla. Rum. No rum. Which is it?

And now let's layer our cake. Bottom layer. Whipped cream. Raspberries? Blackberries? Both? Another layer. More whipped cream. Strawberries? Blueberries? Kumquats?

Can you taste these things in your mind?

Let me cut you a slice. This is my half orange cake, half lemon cake mis-matched combo with a whipped cream raspberry interior and a whipped cream blackberry topping. Can you taste it? You can't? Good!

I have a point here, you know.

I am not delirious or on drugs. I am not a monkey jabbing randomly at the keys.

I am trying to explain to you why cooking is wonderful, why food is wonderful.

It is the journey from abstraction to reality.

This is a journey many take. I am taking it right now. This essay was a soapy bubble in my brain, now I'm puffing air into it watching it expand. Will it pop? Will it grow?

It is in that space between an idea--a recipe, for example--and the realization of that idea (the food) that the magic lies. At some point Melville said: "A book about a whale!" He said down in the ether and grabbed oars and fishhooks and blubber and spun these disparate elements into a classic work of literature. We all sit in that ether at times. In the morning, when we plan our day. We lay in bed. "I will go to breakfast then go drag racing." That's the idea. Then there's the reality. The breakfast you pictured doesn't taste like you thought it would. You pictured fluffy pancakes. These are mushy. And the syrup tastes funny.

I'm losing you.

My best point of evidence is chicken. The journey from a raw chicken, pasty pale and rubbery to a cooked chicken--golden, crisp, and perfuming the air with its rich chickeniness is the journey of which I speak. You can't know the magic I speak of until you roast a chicken. Stuff the cavity with thyme, garlic and lemon and feel the anticipation on your skin, in your mouth, in the pit of your stomach. Watch it in the oven as it browns and bubbles; the hot juices dripping down the roasting pan. Remove it in all its glory.

Writing instructors talk about the poloroid picture. When you start writing your story, everything is gray and misty and unclear. And slowly everything comes into focus. Soon you know what your story's about, who your character's are.

Food is like that. I frequently sit with my cookbooks flipping through them, picturing the recipes in my mind and in my mind's mouth. I can taste them, I think. And then I make them. Sometimes they disappoint (Chez Panisse saffron risotto, for example) and sometimes they fly far beyond my wildest expectations (Chez Panisse wild mushroom risotto). And almost always--almost every single time--the taste that I pictured in my mouth flipping through the books tastes nothing like what the end product tastes like. This is especially true of the recipes I've never tried. Hence my opening paragraphs: all those cake variations. My point is that you really can't anticipate what any of that will taste like. You have to take a leap. And it's in that space between not knowing and knowing that captures us at our most alive. It emulates the human condition: we are here on earth between not knowing and knowing. And it can be wonderful.

And this isn't even just a call to cook. Many people hate cooking, and that's fine. You can't make people love a process that involves great attention to detail and tiny maneuevers that might severely affect the outcome of a dish. I'm not asking you to do that.

I am asking you to take chances. Take chances with what you eat every day. Remember this quote: "Habit is the great deadener." That's the truest quote I've ever heard. If you eat the same sandwich every day, stop. If you eat with the same people, don't. Don't drive through the same drive-throughs in endless patterns of deathliness. I think Aimee Mann coined the term "deathly" on her Magnolia album. That's deathly living. That's not embracing life and all it's wonder.

Do me a favor this weekend. Go somewhere you've never been. Order something you've never ordered. Eat frog's legs. Eat liver wrapped in bacon. Make a souffle.

This website is not marginal. It is not just a diversion. I have a point with all of this madness. I'm trying to show you in every way I can that food is not nourishment, food is not sustinence---food is life. How you eat is how you live. And the greater your abstractions are; the farther you let your imagination roam the greater your realities will be.

I took a chance earlier tonight myself...

I said to myself: "These chocolate chip cookies are delicious. My caramel pecan milk chocolate ice cream is delicious too! I'll make an ice cream sandwich!"

I took the ice cream out of the fridge:

I put a cookie on a plate:

I scooped some ice cream on to the cookie:

[The ice cream melted very quickly...]

And topped with another cookie:

And you know what? It didn't taste as great as I thought it would. The ice cream was so runny, it basically lacked any presence. Its organs--the nuts and the milk chocolate--added a new element to the cookies; another layer of flavor. Texturally, it was a bit of a marvel: the ice cream soaked interior and the dry yet soft exterior. I wouldn't make this sandwich again, oh no. But the flavor in my head now is very different from the flavor I anticipated. And the process of it--the magic moment before I bit in--made it all worth while.

If you're still reading this, I would like to point out that no one entered my carbohydrate cooking contest. So I extend this offer to you. Eat adventurously this weekend. Do something daring, something zany. Bake a wedding cake. Drink absinthe. Throw a luau. And then e-mail me an account of what you did--pictures would be great, if possible. And at the bottom of your e-mail include the name of a cookbook you want, any cookbook (even the French Laundry cookbook). The entry with the most outrageous, most creative account will win. Go crazy! Have fun! Live life! [Send me your acccount by Sunday, 11 pm.] And you can thank me later...

I took charge today at our post-PMBR lunch at Tacqueria Del Sol. I said: "Lauren, let's celebrate being done with the PMBR. Let's order margaritas."

"Nah," said Lauren, "I have to work on some papers."

"Ok," I said.

The waiter came over. "What do you want to drink?" he asked.

"Two margaritas," I said, "frozen, salt."

Lauren laughed. "Ok," she said, "why not."

These were good margaritas! Went well with the tacos. And the freedom.

Getting ready to go out, for me, involves many a process. There's the plucking, the grooming, the showering, the shaving, the full body moisturizing compress. Selecting clothes takes several committees and seventeen models who strut past with different variations until I am completely satisfied. What going out does not involve, however, is ironing. I hate ironing. I never do it.

Lauren does it all the time:

"You might want to iron your shirt," she said tonight.

"Uh no," I said, "it's supposed to have a wrinkled look."

"Ok," she said, shaking her head and sparying her starch.

The only starch I need, I'll have you know, is a potato.

The perfect dining companion must be reliable, they must be engaging, and they must have the ability to traverse a wide variety of subject matter. My perfect companion, then, is constantly in my car, bound and gagged in the back seat, ready to go at a moment's notice. Not only that, my perfect companion is hilarious at times, instructive at times, and always willing to watch me dab cream cheese from my upper lip. My perfect companion, as you can see, is a magazine. That magazine is The New Yorker:

And there I was today, reading my New Yorker, enjoying its company as always. First there was a cartoon or two, the letters to the editor, then, of course, the "Table For Two" feature. I finished things off with Anthony Lane's review of "Van Helsing." I flipped the magazine over, contented, ready to rise and go when I cast my eyes down casually only to behold, horrified, the following:

My New Yorker--my beloved New Yorker--had gone the route of Fredo Corleone, not to mention Brutus. (Yes, they were both on Atkins). Oh why, David Remnick? (<--Editor of The New Yorker). How could you sell out to the Atkins people? It's a cold carb-hating slap in the face. I thought I could trust you! You watched me eat a thousand bagels! The hallowed pages of E.B. White, James Thurber, and Roz Chast are now tainted with the blood of countless carbohydrates. A pumpernickel pox on all your printing presses!

Blessed be my readers---three of you have generously participated in my generous "Adventurous Food Weekend" contest. All the entries are great so far. I'm still waiting for the pictures from one entrant, so I'll postpone the "judging" until tomorrow... but please know that I'm incredibly thrilled! If I could I would buy cookbooks for you all. Unfotunately, the losers must be shot. Company policy. Stay tuned!

So, just to reiterate, the other day (Friday, in fact) I proposed a contest to eat adventurously this weekend. "The entry with the most outrageous, most creative account will win," I said.

And so our three entrants are as follows: Caitlin and her fiddlehead ferns, Lisa (not the Lisa I know) and her triad of entries (Martha Stewart Souffle, Banana Nut Bread, and Maple Syrup Candy) [her commentary was sent via e-mail] and I'll share some of that here:

My friend Jesse has been talking about maple candy for a while now, so I told him
if he would buy me the syrup, I would be more than happy to try and make it for
him. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be. The first one burnt and
was a total failure, but not to be defeated, I tried again, and it turned out
wonderful. Actually, it turned out more like carmel than the maple candy I grew
up with, but its still really good.

Alas, our winner is the third entrant---and I think you'll all agree that despite the admirable ambition of our first two entrants, Shari's Hamster Tribute (El Dia de Los Hammies) is way deserving of a cookbook accolade:

I really enjoyed reading her account. Especially where she attempts to grind a clove on a grater:

Her final hamster arrangement is surely as much of a feast for the eye as it is for the mouth:

So congrats, Sheri! You're our first Amateur Gourmet contest winner! [Oh, and as per her request, her prize will be Diana Kennedy's "My Mexico." Enjoy!]

With my BarBri bar review class starting tomorrow (I better get to bed!) I need to prepare for a new chapter in my coffee shop patronage. Coffee shops and I have developed a symbiotic relationship these past few years: coffee shops provide me an escape from the dreaded internet (such a distraction!) and other perils of working at home and I provide them with money. Lots and lots of money.

In the winter months, my drinks vary from the mystical snap of Chai Tea to the creamy indulgent kick of a white chocolate mocha. Usually these drinks get me where I need to be got in order to get some work done. But in these summer months, something else must do.

Which is why I present to you my newest drink of choice: The Iced Caramel Macchiato.

Imagine it. Pungent espresso shots meet rich sticky caramel in a bath of cool, comforting milk. All the elements fuse together to create a small cup of deliciousness. My favorite part is the glops of caramel you suck up in the straw. And the whole thing lasts a while.

Iced Caramel Macchiato. It's the drink of champions!

[NOTE: THE AMATEUR GOURMET WAS NOT PAID A LUCRATIVE SUM TO ENDORSE THE ICED CARAMEL MACCHIATO. STARBUCKS AND THE AMATEUR GOURMET HAVE A PURELY PLATONIC RELATIONSHIP AND ANY ENDORSEMENTS THAT MAY ENSURE ARE SIMPLY THE RESULT OF GENUINE AFFECTION, NOT MONETARY REWARDS. AND SO WHAT IF STARBUCKS, SOMEDAY, MAYBE TUESDAY, SHOWS UP AT MY DOOR WITH A BRAND NEW BMW RACER? WHO CARES IF I AM FLOWN ROUND TRIP TO PARIS, ALL EXPENSES PAID? THIS DOES NOT COMPROMISE MY JOURNALISTIC INTEGRITY. IT IS SIMPLY THE PERKS OF A HEALTHY SOCIAL--I REPEAT SOCIAL--RELATIONSHIP. SO ALL YOU CONSPIRACY THEORISTS AND WHISTLE BLOWERS CAN TAKE A HIKE. THE AMATEUR GOURMET IS THE REAL DEAL FO SHIZZLE. AND HE LOVES STARBUCKS' NEW COMPILATION CD---"MUSIC FOR COFFEE DRINKERS." AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL STARBUCKS NOW!]

Today was a non-food day, I'm afraid. No, it's not Yom Kippur. It was the first day of the bar review and I'm a little zonked. And by zonked, of course, I mean tired. So forgive my failure to eat anything interesting.

However, I would like to share an epiphany I had. I was listening to Harry Nillson's "Coconut Song," you know the one. "You put the lime in the coconut / you drank it all up..." and I decided I wanted to make Lime Coconut Ice Cream (and/or sorbet).

I just searched it on Google. What do you think of this recipe? Maybe I'll make a video with me making it and the Harry Nillson song in the background? Should I wear a hula skirt?

Coconut Lime Sorbet

1 (15 ounce) can cream of coconut (Coco Lopez is excellent)
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup fresh lime juice (use the juice of fresh key limes if possible)
Optional: Chopped maraschino cherries or other sweet cherries, about 1/2 cup
Garnish: Fresh pineapple, cherries, mango slices, banana

In a bowl, whisk ingredients together. If you are adding cherries, do so now. Freeze the mixture in an ice cream maker, according the the manufacturer's instructions. Transfer sorbet to an airtight container and put in freezer to harden. Transfer to serving bowls and garnish with fresh fruit.

Makes about 1 pint.

This is a real e-mail I just received:

Dear Adam,

We offer you a TEN PERCENT commission on every order you refer to our
website. We offer Free Shipping on all orders over $59.00, so start
earning today...

Give the people what they want, that's what I always say. Apparently the people want me to drink wine, make borscht, and eat testes. Easy enough!

Actually, for those of you eager for me to become a vinophile, I photographed the four bottles of wine sitting on our counter for your analysis. Can you see them? Can you tell me about them? Which should I drink first? [If this bar review stuff stays status quo, I'll be drinking all four in one night...]

I am of the opinion that "Jackass" has merit. Great drama involves great tension: Will Hamlet kill his uncle? Will Godot ever arrive? Will Johnny Knoxville survive the fall when he pole vaults over a perilous ledge? Such is the magic of theater. (Or, in this case, television).

Tonight, flipping through the channels, I stumbled upon "Jackass: The Movie." Kismetically, the scene I encountered was food related. I have never seen "Jackass: The Movie" and I didn't really know what I was in for.

Johnny and his pals are at a sushi bar in Japan(?) and the title card reads: "Wasabi Snooters."

One of Johnny's friends gets a big bowl of wasabi and starts mixing it with soy sauce.

"Oh boy!" I laughed knowingly. "He's going to eat all that wasabi! That guy is going to eat an entire bowl of wasabi!"

Then, after stirring it together, he began layering the soy-soaked wasabi onto a metal tray.

"Why is he doing that, I wonder?" I wondered.

Much like Ray Liotta in Goodfellas, he scraped the wasabi into a line.

"What in heavens--?"

And then he snorted it.

"He WHAT?"

Snorted it.

"I don't believe you."

Dude, watch your TV.

"He----oh my word."

Apparently, snorting wasabi leads to rapid shaking of the head and vomiting. And for those of you requesting Amateur Gourmet feats of strength, the answer is NO.

One of the nice things about that contest I threw last week was that one of our losing contestants--(is "losing" too harsh a word? I'm sorry)--one of our miserable failures turned me on to a book I knew nothing about. It was the book she requested should she win the contest. She didn't win the contest. Still, I bought the book. For myself!

The book is (as the title of this post suggests): "Mes Confitures":

Apparently Clotilde of Chocolate and Zucchini loves this book, and I can see why. It's a book choc full of fantastic jam and jelly recipes. It's organized by season and the recipes are so bizarre you feel compelled to make them just to see what they taste like.

Cases in point:
- Spring Carrot with Cinnamon (pg. 11)
- Apple Jelly with Rose Petals (REAL ROSE PETALS!) (pg. 38)
- Zucchini and Peppers with Spices (pg. 71)
- Watermelon, Apples and Grapefruit (pg. 111)
- Spiced Beer Jelly (WITH REAL BEER) (pg. 144)
- Chestnut with Vanilla (pg. 145)
- Apple with Caramel (mmm) (pg. 195)
- Green Tomato and Pumpkin (ewww) (pg. 203)
- Prailine Milk Jam (pg. 234)

I'm so excited to start using this book but I don't want to make any jams if I can't eat them until after I move to New York. Does anyone know how long you have to let the jams sit for after you make them? Because I really want to make them. Although, waiting until after I get to NYC is a nice thought too: then I can make all these jams my first few weeks, put them away, and eat them in the winter when it's cold and nasty. Nothing like Spiced Beer Jelly on a cool winter's night...

Today I met my friend Brock for lunch at a place that shall remain nameless, and as I came through the door and saw him standing in line he looked disturbed.

"Look," he said, "there's a fight going on there."

I turned and saw a man with a baby on his back and a wife next to him getting yelled at by a red-faced manager.

"What happened?" I asked.

"Well," said Brock, "you're not supposed to get a table until you order your food, and this guy sat down because he had the baby and the manager came over and yelled at him. And the guy said: 'I'm sorry, but I have this baby on my back.' And the manager was a real dick about it."

I looked back up and I heard the manager saying: "I'm gonna call the cops if you don't get your ass out of here, you shmuck."

Now call me crazy, but this is not great "managing" on any level. All the customers standing in line were crazy freaked out. The man with the baby and his wife were surprisingly calm and they left in disbelief. The manager stormed off to the back.

Policies are important, I understand. And places with turnover as great as this place must make rules to keep everyone satisfied. But the place wasn't so crowded today. And the way the manager handled himself was just wrong. I give him a big thumbs down.

Now that I'm a big star, I'm starting to worry that my visage at restaurants is so recognizable that my ability to evaluate might be compromised. So today I went disguise shopping. I didn't buy any of these things, but I might...

A mustache, perhaps?

Redneck teeth?

Or, my personal favorite, a mullet?

A sound investment for a serious diner. Watch out Thomas Kellar, next time I do Per Se you totally won't see me coming!

Aha! Just as I suspected... The Billion Dollar Myth.

I would like to present for you now two competing theories of blogging in the face of an overwhelming workload (hence the title). The theories go like this:

Theory One: A heavy workload is so demanding that blogging becomes impossible. All the resources one might devote to his or her blog and his or her blog-reading audience are tapped by said workload. The blog festers and dies. This is a depressing theory of blogging in the face of an overwhelming workload.

Theory Two: A heavy workload is so demanding that the mind begins to splinter and crack, forging two planes of competing consciousness. One plane struggles to contain all the essential information one needs to handle their workload; this plane is the anal-nerdy plane. The Urkel plane, if you will. Will you? I hope you will. The other plane is spinning overhead, and it's a disco dance floor replete with bubbles and strobe lights. There, all the random thoughts that fizzle through the Urkel plane land and have a dance party. In times of heavy stress, the dance party is an all night affair. Weird things happen there. This can be very good for a blog. Posts are--much like this one--senseless yet strangely enjoyable.

What will studying for the bar do for The Amateur Gourmet? Will we shrivel and die? Or will we boogie the night away on the dance floor of splintered consciousness, forcing random and strangely enjoyable posts, like this one, on our readers? Will we constantly speak in the royal we? Stay tuned. The party's just beginning.

Didactic is one of those words that, when people use it, they sound incredibly smart and you feel stupid because even though you've looked it up in the dictionary a thousand times you still don't really know what it means. What does it mean? Let's look it up now. Didactic: "meant or meaning to instruct."

I would say didactic is usually used in the pejorative sense, but then you'll scratch your head and say "pejorative"--that's another one of those words that you feel stupid for constantly forgetting--so let's look that up too. Pejorative: "expressing disapproval."

Is defining pejorative too didactic?

Forgive me. That's my point here, you see. This site has become too didactic in the pejorative sense.

I have a lot of nerve telling you how to eat. You should eat whatever you want. Seriously. There was a great scene on one of my Freaks and Geeks DVDs where Lindsay's mom tries to spice up her marriage by cooking game hen instead of meatloaf. Lindsay's dad could not be more unhappy: "Where's my meatloaf?" he demands. What an insensitive brute! But then he gives a really great speech where he says that he wants meatloaf because he likes meatloaf and he knows he likes it. What's wrong with that?

Well nothing really. That's the loophole with all diversity campaigns: if we are going to accept diversity, we have to accept those who do not accept diversity too. Same with food. If we're going to encourage diversity in our eating, we have to acknowledge that some people just really don't want to try game hen. It's just who they are.

Let's call this group the Archie Bunkers. They are stuck in their ways and, in a way, that makes them endearing. They are very much who they are and they're not budging.

I have friends like this. My friend Lisa--who you've met several times--hates olives. (See The Great Olive Campaign). Honestly, no matter what you do, she will always hate olives. Lisa is a charming person but when it comes to eating she's an Archie Bunker. You won't change her.

My dad is an Archie Bunker eater. My brother too. My grandmother especially---she inspects her food with a microscope to make sure it is in conformity with her wishes. There will be no game hen for grandma.

Grandpa, on the other hand, is the complete opposite of an Archie Bunker eater. He's a--let's see, who's the opposite of an Archie Bunker? Heidi Fleiss! Grandpa is a Heidi Fleiss eater. He'll eat anything.

Grandma chastises grandpa all the time for what he orders. He'll order escargot or some weird stuffed pork dish or a cheesy eggplant parmesan and grandma will yell: "Roy! Stop being a Heidi Fleiss eater! You order the strangest food!"

I'm not quite a Heidi Fleiss eater yet. I'm getting there. I horrified my family on our annual Christmas cruise this year when I ordered frogs legs.

"Don't eat it Adam," they begged.

I took great pleasure when I, like the Triplets of Bellville, slurped a kicking frog leg down my gullet.

My grandma passed out.

Now then, the title of this post is "Let Yourself Go" and that's because I guestimate that the majority of you are somewhere in-between the Heidi Fleisses and the Archie Bunkers.

[Incidentally, here's my brother and I with Archie Bunker oh so many years ago:

Any my mom with Heidi Fleiss not so many months ago:

If you ask which one's my mom I'll punch you!

Though, interestingly, my mom's name is Heidi...]

Anyway, something is holding you back on your journey from food bigot to food whore. Without wanting to be didactic (in the pejorative sense) I would now like to list the elements that I--over several days--have decided are the most prevalent factors that block you on your way to food nirvana.

(1) Money. This one's hard to defeat. If you don't have the money to eat daringly, then you can't eat daringly. And especially when you're feeding a family of four or six or 5.3 (see Entitlement posts) buying game hen over meatloaf isn't practical.

For those not in the lowest economic bracket, however, there may be some disposable income. Did you know 90% of American's define themselves as middle class? That doesn't really make sense--only so many people can be in the middle--but maybe they do so because they have a little money to spare. If that's the case, money shouldn't block the way.

I'm no expert (see website name), but I can imagine there are many ways to eat bravely on a tight budget. I would point you to Eric Asimov's $25 and Under column in the NYT, but that's still a bit pricey even for the middle class.

Ethnic food is probably the best place to start. And Chowhound is probably your best resource. That leads to factor number two...

(2) Knowledge. Where do you go? Chowhound is like Willy Wonka opening the door to the chocolate room: "Come with me / and you'll be / in a world of real bad indigestion..." Basically wherever you live in the US (and maybe even the world) Chowhound will provide you with a message board where people post hole-in-the-wall little nooks you would never think to eat at and that often prove delicious. This past summer in LA, Chowhound turned me on to what became my favorite places: the Sugarplum Bakery, Zankou Chicken, Loteria. If you live in L.A. or New York, especially, you have no excuse not going on to Chowhound. Go on there and now and see if there are any interesting places near where you work or live. Split pea soup! I'm being didactic again! In the pejorative sense!

(3) Health. Another roadblock on the path to delicousness are those nasty little life-defeating maggots we call "health concerns." Of course, there are those of us with serious health concerns: like the diabetics or those with iritable bowel syndrome. To those of you, I grant you a free pass: you may eat as you like. The rest of you are facing a strict scrutiny standard.*** (OH NO! LAW TRIVIA IS INVADING MY BLOG! AHHHHH!)

Jeffrey Steingarten, for one, believes that lactose intolerance is a sham: "Overnight, everybody you meet has become lactose intolerant. It is the chic food fear of the moment. But the truth is that very, very few of us are so seriously afflicted that we cannot drink even a whole glass of milk a day without ill effects. I know several people who have given up cheese to avoid lactose. But fermented cheeses contain no lactose! Lactose is the sugar found in milk; 98 percent of it is drained off with the whey (cheese is made from the curds), and the other 2 percent is quickly consumed by lactic-acid bacteria in the act of fermentation."

And don't get Anthony Bourdain started on vegetarians: "Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food."

If you limit your diet because of health concerns, you may want to rethink that. Do you really want to limit the enjoyment of your fine dining years so you can extend the duration of your baby food years? Let's hope not.

(4)Time. "Oh but Adam," you say, "this all sounds quite lovely, but I don't have the time." Yes you do. You're being silly. If you've read this far, you have the time. Even Jeremy over at Frost Street who works thousand hour weeks at his law firm, has time to fry up a soft shell crab on his holiday weekend:

[image posted courtesy of and without the knowledge of Frost Street]

It looks delicious. That could be yours, so stop maing excuses.

And finally we come to the big daddy horse of Archie to Heidi barricades:

(5)Fear. This is the one that has most of us in its thrall. It's the one that keeps us from ordering something we've never had; it stops us from attempting to cook anything in our kitchens. It's what makes us wince at funny smells or makes us redden at the site of four hot peppers on the menu. And fear is what leads many of us to accept mundane forms of life: fear of leaving our jobs, fear of leaving our homes, fear of leaving our children tied to the sofa while we drive off to start a new life. Ok, maybe that's a good fear.

But, anyway, from personal experience I can definitely say that fear is what kept me from getting on the foodie gravy train the many years I lived a mundane culinary life. I was genuinely afraid to even touch the stove, let alone turn it on. I got over that. You can too.

I'll stop there because, yet again I'm being---you know. And I'm not telling you how to live your life. If you're an Archie Bunker, be proud of it. Eat what you like. But if you're on the fence, forgive me this one little nugget of advice: do as the title of this post suggests and let yourself go! Food whores have all the fun.

Got a trackback this morning from The Gothamist which linked my moderate defense of Amanda Hesser since today was Hesser's last review as the NYT's interim critic The review in question is of Masa and already Hesser's bold gesture--four question marks in lieu of stars (which she invites the incoming restaurant critic, Frank Bruni, to fill in)--has caused quite a stir.

I dunno. I think some people take these things too seriously. I kind of like that this spunky little woman--who resembles, in her jacket photo, something like a pixie--created such a whirlwind of discontent with her idiosyncratic style. The artist in me says: good for her! Way to shake things up! The lawyer in me says: Yes, but Adam, she soiled a sacred institution. The Mexican in me says: Ehxuse me senor, donde esta la playa?

Anyway, bon voyage Amanda. I, for one, shall miss you.

Screw religion, I've got reality TV to teach me values. "Survivor" teaches me that only I matter and that toilet paper is a luxury many can't afford. I've taken to palm fronds, now. "The Real World" teaches me that every house should have an Asian, an African-American and a homosexual. I have several, now, bound and gagged in my pantry. I love those guys! And, of course, "The Apprentice" teaches me that bad hair is acceptable if you wear it with confidence. I'm totally getting a perm tomorrow!

But the reality show that really takes the cake is "The Swan." This show teaches me that beauty is attainable not by enlightened thinking or kindness but, instead, by lots and lots and lots of plastic surgery. I'm totally getting a nose job tomorrow! (Actually, after my AJC pic, maybe I should...) "The Swan" is a primer for those who believe that someone will love them for what's on the inside. Wrong! Do Fashion magazines take pictures of your insides? I don't think so. "The Swan" is so right.

Anyway, this got me thinking about pastry swans. I think it's irresponsible of pastry chefs to make pastry swans with cream on the inside because this creates the false illusion that what's on the inside matters. That's so messed up! So to remedy this I've devised a little contest I like to call "The Pastry Swan." I've selected a pastry swan at random for you guys to make over using Photoshop. Here's our brave subject now:

I think we can all agree that this pastry swan is SO the before picture. Who would ever want to date a limp pastry in a pool of chocolate sauce? I rest my case.

So noble readers, muster up your inner Isaac Mizrahis and get to work. This pastry swan could totally be pastry princess with the proper guidance and gutting. Now's your chance! Please submit photos by e-mail or by pasting a link to the picture in the comments. Winner will receive a pat on the back and the knowledge that your loving hand helped save a pastry swan from dessert oblivion.

Our Swan Pastry Contest winner--Anthony of Spiceblog--may have been our only entrant, but one can't help but laugh and admire his work:

If Tchaikovsky and Wolfgang Puck had a love child this would be it!

So congratulations Anthony on a job well done. You've proven that no matter WHAT your body type, good legs will always win you the man of your dreams.

My high school friend Amy and I got back in touch recently (via this website, really) and among our many e-mail exchanges was a request by her:

"How about an entry on cheap, easy, & portable [lunch] alternatives for all us corporate-readers stuck at our desks for lunch every day?"

Ok, Amy, you're on!

I declare this Wednesday "Bring Your Gourmet To Work Day." What does that mean? It means that you should kidnap a chef and bring him to work. Just kidding. Or am I?

[Feminist Response: "Even if you are kidding, you're making gender assumptions when you use the masculine pronoun to refer to chefs. Some chefs are women, doofus."]

Anyway.

This Wednesday, let's all bring something delicious to work. Tomorrow night I'll make my all time favorite easily-transportable good-for-work summer recipe: "Pasta, Pesto and Peas" [From--where else?--the Barefoot Contessa Cookbook] and you can use that on Tuesday to prepare for Wednesday.

But let's not stop there. What if some people don't LIKE pasta, pesto or peas? All you Amateur Gourmet readers, let's unite together and come up with ideas for this incredibly important day. Post a brilliant idea for Wednesday's transportable gourmet lunch and help enliven for millions an otherwise humdrum work day. Get to it!

Have you ever been pumping gas when a confused looking Asian woman with a cell phone walks over to you, hands you the phone, and points to a piece of paper that says 1415 Piedmont? No? Then you clearly haven't lived!

Today just such a thing happened to me. I was pumping gas. A confused looking Asian woman approached me. It's hard to remember the sequence. All I remember, at first, was her handing me her cell phone and pointing to a piece of paper.

I looked at the piece of paper. It was a receipt. At the top it said WINGNUTS.

I know Wingnuts. I live across the street from it. For you non-Atlantans, Wingnuts is what college students order when they're craving boneless chicken wings. (It's really chicken breast chopped up and sauced like a wing).

"Oh ok," I said, "Wingnuts is back near Emory..."

"No, no, no," she said. "I work for them. I deliver."

Ohhhh. So this was the receipt that was telling her where to deliver the Wingnuts. The receipt said 1415 (or some other such number) Piedmont.

"1415 Piedmont," I said. "This is Piedmont," I said, pointing.

"Yes yes, I know," she said, "But where 1415? This 1411? You call."

She hit send and handed me the phone. I realized I was calling the place where she was delivering to.

"Hello, how can I help you?" asked a friendly voice.

"Hi," I said, "Where are you located?"

"We're in the Ansley Mall," the voice said.

"Oh, ok," I said. That was easy. The Ansley Mall was over my shoulder. But what place was this?

"What kind of store are you?" I asked sheepishly.

"We sell baskets," said the voice. Why would you be calling us if you didn't know what we did? I assumed he was thinking.

"Ok thank you," I said.

I directed the woman over my shoulder.

"In the mall there," I said.

"The mall?" she asked, confused.

"Yes," I said, "right over there."

I watched her shift her way over there, still looking as confused as ever. I looked up at Heaven and winked at the Big Guy: "You owe me one, Chief."

For those who remember the contest I threw a few weeks ago, it was won by Shari and her glorious hamsters. Her prize was Diane Kennedy's "My Mexico" and I am glad to hear that today she and the hamsters received it. Hope you enjoy, Shari! (And Mazrim, pictured below...)

So after reading my plea for help below, you may be eager to help this Gourmet in need. Here's your first project. It's called: WHAT'S IN YOUR FRIDGE? (<--the all caps add dramatic heft).

The mission is simple. Photograph and/or describe in words the interior of your fridge and e-mail it to me. Tell us all about what you keep in there, what's old, what's new, and what's unidentifiable. I'll do the same right now to get you started!

* * * * * * * * * * *

My fridge stock is quite abnormal. The only normal things in there are Lauren's. Let's take a look, shall we? [You can click to make larger, but it's quite large, I warn you...]

Beginning at the bottom shelf and reading from left-to-right (my fridge is not a Hebrew text), you will see Lauren's orange juice and Lauren's Lactaid milk. I lied when I said the only normal things are Lauren's. Lactaid milk is so not normal! Lauren is a lactard.

Next you'll see mayonaisse that I purchased (even though I hate maynoaisse) to make Pasta, Petso, Peas. (Hit it CHER!) Those are Lauren's blueberries resting on (one more time CHER!) the Pasta Pesto Peas that has already fed both of us twice, with still more left over.

The Sprite and Coronas are left over from the party we had for our joint birthday.

Ha, I just noticed that way in the back (back on the left) behind the orange juice is soup that I literally ordered a month ago from Doc Chey's. That's nasty! I better throw that out.

On the second shelf you'll see old rotted cream that's left over from ice cream or Condoleezza pudding. That's Lauren's hummus or peanut butter, it's hard to tell. And those are genetically modified eggs that Lauren bought nervously for fear I would criticize them. Her fears were founded: just buy the organic ones from Whole Foods!

The top shelf looks like a fridge from "The Day After Tomorrow," except with better acting.

Let's see, there's tonic water--still left from our last party. Some kind of packaged turkey that Lauren eats. Land-o-lakes Margarine that I bought in bulk and never used because I'm a butter man and I don't know what I was thinking. There's grated Parm up front from the Pasta, Pesto, Peas (go ahead, Cher); prepackaged garlic for those times I don't feel like chopping; leftover Thyme from the pickles; Lauren's hot sauce, my capers and up front, wrapped in paper towels, dehydrated celery leftover from the pickles as well. I thought I'd use it to make tuna. I was wrong.

Ok, moving on to the side door:

Our side door is depressing. The only encouraging thing is the jar of pickles on the top shelf. I ate some tonight. Very tasty!

Otherwise, the rest are condiments, mostly Lauren's. That Land-o-Lakes butter is, again, an ill-gotten purchase by me. The Baking Soda is standard, who knows who bought it. It may have been there before we got there, and yet I still use it in my baking. The rest---salad dressing, ketchup, mustard--is too mundane to mention. What is not mundane is the buttermilk on the left side of the bottom shelf. That must be decades old. My fridge is disgusting.

Perhaps we should escape to the freezer?

The freezer, at leasts, holds some proud achievements. The top shelf features chocolate ice cream, Thyme lemon sorbet and burnt caramel all Tuppered away. The lower shelf features God knows what. Those peas are from the last time I made Pasta Pesto...(shut up, Cher). And I have no idea what that soccer ball is.

Now that I've bared my fridge to you, I hope you'll do the same! Send 'em in folks. And throw out your bad buttermilk.

Ok, so today's the day! I hope each and every one of you worked hard to prepare something special for work. If not Pasta, Pesto and Peas, then something... And if you forgot, it's not too late! Just go somewhere different, somewhere interesting. Today's the day to treat your stomach to something special. Doesn't she deserve it? I think she does. And, of course, report all goings-on here. I want to hear how YOU celebrate your Bring Your Gourmet To Work Day! (I've really GOT to stop using exclamation marks...)

Check out the new food site from site reader Andrew: The Gentleman Gourmand
It's like my site except more badass!

When I track how people are coming to my site (something I do way too often), I'm constantly amazed by the Google searches people do that lead them here. What follows is a brief list of terms that, when typed into Google, will lead you to this very site. Clicking the terms below will take you to the Google search results:

Corn Wear

Kirsten Dunst Porn Movie

Gross Cheese

Black Mom's

**Explicit Search, Click with Caution**

Pastrami

Sushi Bar

Starbucks Corporate Structure

Girlish Figure

And, of course:

Janet Jackson

Cupcake

I, for one, am amused.

Actually, this is a good time to point out that many of you e-mail me with suggestions like "Adam, you should try Tacqueria Del Sol!" or "Adam, you should plant your own cherry tree!" when in fact I already have. (Except for the cherry tree, that is). So my suggestion is that you use Google to see if I've already done the thing you're suggesting. Just type in "(thing that you are suggesting)" and "Amateur Gourmet" and see if it comes up. You never know. Now off to attend to my girlish figure. Is anyone else amused that my site is the first thing to come up when you type "girlish figure" into Google?

This is a sweet-looking recipe kindly offered up by site-reader Raspberry Sundae (that is her name, it seems). Thanks Ras!

it is with great trepidation that i offer this recipe for your consideration. (i feel as though i'm kneeling in the face of greatness)

i don't have any pictures.. i have no digital camera (she hangs her head in shame)... but i hope you give it a shot and enjoy it :)

In 1954, Alice B. Toklas--lifelong companion to literary icon Gertrude Stein--published her cookbook, the aptly named "Alice B. Toklas Cookbook." Its quirky recipes and charming anecodotes make it a must-have for any lover of food and literature. Of course, I'm being a little deceitful: I'm making it sound like I've read it all the way through. I haven't. I have, though, read the introduction by M.F.K. Fisher and am familiar with the text enough to know that it suits our subject well.

For on page 259, Ms. Toklas offers up a recipe for Haschich Fudge "(which anyone could whip up on a rainy day)". According to Fisher, the American version cut the recipe out--"regretfully omitted in 1954 but reprinted in paperback in 1960" because it calls for "a bunch of cannibus sativa, pulverized." Fisher tells us that that she has never eaten a "Toklas fudge brownie" but that she has been told "they taste slightly bitter, depending on how much pot is put into them, and that (1) they are absolutely without effect and (2) they are potentially lethal."

Looking at the recipe now, it seems more meritorious for its language than its content. "This," writes Toklas, "is the food of Paradise--of Baudelaire's Artificial Paradises: it might provide an entertaining refreshment for a Ladies' Bridge Club or a chapter meeting of the DAR."

(I don't know what the DAR is, but I love the image of bridge club ladies eating pot brownies.)

"In Morocco," continues Toklas, "it is thought to be good for warding off the common cold in damp winter weather and is, indeed, more effective if taken with large quantities of hot mint tea. Euphoria and brilliant storms of laughter; ecstatic reveries and extensions of one's personality on several simultaneous planes are to be complacently expected. Almost anything Saint Theresa did, you can do better if you can bear to be ravished by 'un evanouissement reveille.'"

The idea for this post came to me tonight while reading the current issue of the New Yorker. There is a piece in there about Ken Kesey (author of "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest") who I briefly idolized my senior year of high school when I took a trip on the technicolor school bus of Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test."

I was a literary stoner. Meaning, I never smoked pot--wouldn't touch it--but read all about it. I always told myself that one day, after I had accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish, I would take "experimental drugs" and traverse the vistas in my brain. Today that seems rather silly. I don't need drugs to traverse my vistas, I have "Hair" on DVD.

In a way, I felt vindicated in my no-pot stance: because of the sheer abundance of pot-smoking that went on around me (and the large majority of kids growing up in America today) I felt like a rebel for NOT smoking pot. My anti-drug was reading, writing, and watching movies. Plus I masturbated a lot.

College brought similar dynamics. I was the non-pot-smoker and consequently the "non-conformist." My neuroses became the backbone of my humor and while the majority coped with cannibus, I coped with comedy. Planets shifted; "not cool" became "cool" and now I'm the poster child for a drug-free America. I made cupcakes with sock bunnies on my hands.

What fascinates me, though, about pot in terms of cooking is that marijuana is a perfeclty natural substance. The same way that we can relish a radish, we should be able to go gaga over ganja.

Yet pot is taboo. Pot is not sold in Publix. Pot is illegal.

I'm not here, necessarily, to advocate the legalization of marijuana. I'm simply here to point out that many of your associations regarding pot are informed by an agenda that involves politics, economics and many other big words. In fact, pot is something that grows in the ground just like lettuce or children. To regard it any differently is to recite repressive rhetoric.

If you believe in God and His bounty, or Buddha and his quicker-picker-upper, it would be inconsitent to view any of their earthly creations as intrinsically sinful. That's silly.

Remember the mantra we've been tossing around? All things in moderation.

Here I'm merely addressing the idea of cooking with pot. I'm open to it! Apparently, Jeremiah Tower and Alice Waters used pot on a regular basis in the early days of Chez Panisse. Their Beavis and Butthead salad was apparently to-die-for.

And for those that are interested, here's the rest of Toklas's recipe. Keep in mind Fisher's warning---it's lethal and bitter. Enjoy!

Take 1 teaspoon black peppercorns, 1 whole nutmeg, 4 average sticks of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon coriander. These should all be pulverised in a mortar. About a handful each of stoned dates

[Haha, couldn't resist: "stoned dates"!!]

dried figs, shelled almonds and peanuts: chop these and mix them together. A bunch of canibus sativa can be pulverised. This along with the spices should be dusted over the mixed fruit and nuts, kneaded together. About a cup of sugar dissolved in a big pat of butter. Rolled into a cake and cut into pieces or made into balls about the size of a walnut, it should be eaten with care. Two pieces are quite sufficient.

Obtaining the canibus may present certain difficulties, but the variety known as canibus sativa grows as a common weed, often unrecognised, everywhere in Europe, Asia and parts of Africa; besides being cultivated as a crop for the manufacture of rope. In the Americas, while often discouraged, its cousin, called canibus indica, has been observed even in city window boxes. It should be picked and dried as soon as it has gone to seed and while the plant is still green.

Today I returned to Kool Korners for a second go at their Cuban sandwich.

Precedeing my arrival, heaven lost its bladder control and released its liquid fury upon us. Literally buckets upon buckets. After it cleared up, I stepped out of my car into a puddle. Then there was a Working Girl moment: a truck drove by and sprayed water up all over my clothes. I sang Carly Simon's "Let The River Run" and I was ok.

But this is all besides the point.

The point is this. I purchased my "classic cuban" and returned to my car where people eat their Cubans when they go to Kool Korners. I took a bite and it really hit the spot.

"This really hits the spot!" I said to the radio.

"Do you know the way to San Jose?" it responded.

A few more bites in and I felt like a retraction was in order. My first time there I asked: "Is this really a classic Cuban?" I said that because of the condiments: the mustard and mayo, the lettuce, tomato and onion. Really, I was comparing it to the cuban sandwiches I ate all summer in L.A.

But that's not really fair to the Kool Korner's Cuban. The Kool Korner's Cuban should be judged on its own terms. And here, sitting in my rain-soaked car noshing away, I was ready to admit the Kool Korner's Cuban into the fold of my favorite Atlanta bites.

And then thunder struck.

No not weather-related thunder. This was thunder in my mouth.

Now the Kool Korners Cuban has jalapenos chopped up and spread throughout the sandwich. Somehow, in the journey over from sandwich shop to car, the jalapenos must have shifted. The first half of the sandwich had equally distributed jalapenos. The second half, though, was conspicuously jalapenoless until the bite that will send my mouth into therapy for years.

How to describe it?

I think interpretive dance works best.

Imagine me on a stage in a tutu. Imagine soft blue light and strains of Tchaicovsky in the background. Then imagine my head exploding and the rest of my body erupting in flame. The curtains catch fire, as does the audience, and the smell of burning hair and flesh fills the air.

That is what happened in my car today. A graphic lit up on the dashboard of a tongue in flames. I desperately grabbed for anything to chew to kill the pain. I sucked down some iced tea. Didn't do it. I tore bread off from the top of the sandwich. Didn't do it. I licked the car seat. Didn't do it. Plus it made my mouth fluffy in addition to the excruciating heat.

Have you ever been hit in the nose? You know that strange sensation you get in your sinus cavities? That's what this was like. And it was awful.

Yet, in a way---and I know this sounds strange---it was rather invigorating. Like jumping into the ocean in the middle of winter or making out with Estelle Getty. Sure it's painful and tedious when you're going through it, but when you come out the other end you feel refreshed.

"I feel refreshed!" I told the radio.

"Oh Mandy," it replied, "Well you came and you gave without takin'"

Indeed, Mandy. Indeed.

Wow, I just stumbled across a really terrific eGullet post where a guy eats and photographs a ton of meals in Atlanta. Kind of reminded me of why taking pictures of your food and posting them on the net is a worthwhile endeavor. I definitely have to check out the $36 Sunday brunch at the Four Season...looks tasty!

My apologies but I have nothing to offer you this evening. I was at "Screen on the Green" where they played "The Sound of Music" in Piedmont Park. May I recommend that you check out Food Porn Watch for a list of the most recently updated food blogs? Now on to more pressing matters like how to solve a problem like Maria?

Regardless of your gourmet clout--whether you're Thomas Kellar or Suzy Homemaker--we all go to the market. Some of us go to farmer's markets while others (the majority) frequent corporate groceries. There are organic markets (Whole Foods) ethnic markets (Chinese, Indian, and Jewish groceries) and designer markets (Dean & Deluca). Me? I shop at Best Buy and Borders.

No, Best Buy doesn't sell food. Neither does Borders. I go to Best Buy for CDs and DVDs and Borders for books. Occassionally I'll go to used book stores too. What's my point here?

Today I took three gigantic cups of change that I'd been collecting these past few months and cashed them in at a CoinStar machine yielding $108 of "unearned" income. I promptly jumped in my car and sped off to Best Buy where I purchased $108 of CDs and one DVD. This is my version of retail therapy.

The point of this post is that very few of us function equally well in all market situations. Take a stoner to a hemp shop and he'll choose you the phattest bong; drop him in a Sports Authority and he'll come out doubly dazed and confused. It's the same thing with food shopping. Most corporate groceries put the focus on value and many of us are taught to comparison shop to save money and, if we're good at that, we consider ourselves "good shoppers."

Food culture, however, is not a culture of economics. It's a culture of freshness, of ripeness, of sniffing and squezing, of digging and licking. Oh wait, maybe that's porn culture?

When I go grocery shopping I am SO not in my element. I'm a terrible grocery shopper. One day I would love to follow a chef through the market, to watch him or her study a squash or pinch a peach. These are the skills that separate the men from the boys, the eggs from the yolks, the Dion from the Belmonts.

Instead, I'm a wonderful shopper of CDs, DVDs, and books. My knowledge is expansive: I know exactly which CD, DVD or book purchase will round out my library, will provide perfect background music for a fondue party or provide visual stimualation for a deranged serial killer should one come over to watch a movie. Book-wise, my collection is exquisite. My bookshelf is arranged obsessively, much like John Cusack in "High Fidelity" which, I have yet to purchase in book or DVD form, despite the fact that I own the CD. My reasons are complex and incredibly rational.

Incidentally, my CD purhcaes today include:
Liz Phair's "Whip-Smart" (because I love "Whitechocolatespacegg" and "Exile in Guyville")
PJ Harvey's "Uh Huh Her" (because sometimes you just want to hear someone scream like a banshee)
Ryan Adams "Rock N Roll" (I love Ryan Adams now. Everyone thinks I mean Bryan Adams, but no. Ryan Adams is awesome)
The White STripes "Whie Blood Cells"
Lyle Lovett "MY Baby Don't Tolerate"
and
Paul Westerberg's "Stereo."

The DVD?

Now don't laugh. I bought a DVD of David Copperfield's greatest tricks. It was on sale. It features Claudia Schiffer.

Still laughing?

Silly mortal. I'm telling you, I'm an exquisite shopper and your incredulousness says more about you than it does about me. Me? I can see the Statue of Liberty disappear any time I want to. If only I could pick a perfect plum.

Remember how I told you yesterday that using all cream in your mix instead of a milk/cream combo would make the ice cream stay soft in your fridge?

Apparently I was wrong:

My glorious peach ice cream is now more like peach-pit ice cream because it's hard. Like a pit.

Here's my theory: the juices from the cooked peaches comingled with the creamy base and created a new liquid substance that decided it would not stay soft in the fridge.

"Stay soft in the fridge? Not me," said the ice cream in a candid interview. "Peaches are always getting s**t for being mushy and delicate. Everyone's always petting my downy skin and I'm like: Yo! Hands off woman! You don't know my life! I just wanna be cool and tough, ya know? Like my boy, da nectarine."

Da nectarine was unavailable for comment.

My dad taught me many things in my youth. He taught me that the shortest distance between any two points is a straight line. He taught me that "abre la boca" means "open your mouth" in Spanish. (My dad's a dentist). He taught me never to flash money on the subway, never to flash mother in the hallway, and--most relevant, here--never to put off for later something that you can accomplish now.

I can think of no better advice regarding kitchen clean-up. It's a terrible chore, but you have to do it. And if you don't do it when you should do it (that is, right after you've made the mess) dishes will sit in the sink until they begin to smell. Your kitchen will look like this:

The longer you wait, the greater the task will seem. Sort of like procrastinating with Cate Blanchett when you should be wallowing through Mordor. They didn't call him J.R.R. Tolk-clean for nothing!

The rot infesting my kitchen tonight was primarily sourced at the paper canister of cream I left out two days ago when I began my ice cream. Here's a quick-kitchen-tip: Don't leave cream on the counter for two days! It will clump up and smell like a dead fish rotting in a gym locker. Which, incidentally, was how I spent PE class in high school.

How you clean your kitchen says a great deal about who you are as a person. In a NYT Magazine Section inverview with Christopher Walken (this was two weeks ago) he talked about going to a therapist whose kitchen was a wreck and how he though to himself: "If she can't even clean her kitchen, how's she going to help me?"

It's for precisely that reason that I'm no longer a practicing therapist. [Sorry, Lonny, you better jump now.] My kitchen is frequently a wreck. Especially when life is stressful as it is now.

Usually, though, I do make a concerted effort to clean immediately after I cook. I suggest you do the same. People actually write me e-mails and ask me how I clean-up after cooking so much. That's the answer: I do it right away.

And tonight, with the festering cream and the sink-full-o'-dishes, I cranked up some music, rocked out like Tom Cruise a la Risky Business and got to scrubbing. Not too much scrubbing, though, because I am blessed enough to have a dishwasher. A dishwasher is a God-send. My apartment in LA last summer had no dishwasher and after one attempt at cooking in that cramped space and then cleaning up after myself in that tiny sink, I decided that the summer of 2003 would be the summer of eating out.

As for the summer of 2004, specifically tonight, the scrubbing and cleaning didn't take that long. Time goes fast if you get yourself into a meditative state, withholding thoughts like "I am scrubbing dishes and wasting valuable time" and, instead, entertaining loftier considerations like "Why has J. Lo been married so much?" and "I wonder if I'd look good in linen pants?"

The proof is in the pudding:

My spotless kitchen restored and my soul refreshed in the process. Why pay for a yoga class? Just muss up your kitchen and get to scrubbing. Try it with your legs over your head!

Ok here's the deal, it's 12:10 am and I am exhausted and I really really want to go to bed. But I want you to have something to read tomorrow. Aren't I generous?

So I have avowed to blog for only 15 minutes. There are pictures, cakes, and curries involved so I better hurry. Clock stops at 12:25! So please forgive any tipe-os!

I am so jealous of Clotilde! Her favorite sandwich place named a sandwich after her! Maybe when I'm in New York the Carnegie Deli will name a sandwich after me?! This begs to be an Upper Left Corner question and I better hurry, only 4 minutes left!

Yo check it! Everything posted below (well everything that was posted tonight) including the Upper Left Corner question was posted in the last 15 minutes. That must be some kind of miracle, don't you think? Should I get a trophy? Or be absolved of my sins? Who knows, but one thing I know for sure: I'm going to bed!

Negligence and duty of care are not matters that should concern the average reader of a food blog. After all, we're here to talk about food right? At least we pretend to. Although, I'll concede, bunny sock puppets making cupcakes adds little to the discourse.

But I digress.

Today, during our BarBri Torts lecture, the professor---a very funny guy who everyone loved---used a phrase to describe the average duty of care owed to the average person. He said (and I quote) (hence the quotation marks): "He is owed the plain old vanilla prudent person standard of care."

The law itself does not concern us: please drop your textbooks. What does concern us, though, is this hateful use of the word "vanilla." When did vanilla become a pejorative? Or at least a minimizer? Why does "'vanilla" automatically mean "plain"?

For anyone who has experienced the pleasure of a vanilla bean, you are well aware that vanilla is anything but plain. Its flavor is intense and comforting and yet broader, too; timeless---to quote the Bangles, an "eternal flame."

This picture may not seem like much...

...but to me it represents one of the greatest smells that's ever perfumed my kitchen. It comes from my homemade vanilla bean ice cream, so much more delicious than the chocolate gunk I made to appease Lauren's sophomoric tastes:

Oh you chocolate people are probably scratching your screens right now hoping for a whiff. How pathetic you are!

Vanilla people are a closeted bunch, ashamed of their apparently "conventional" "plain" and "ordinary" tastes. I contend that vanilla people are nothing near ordinary. We are a select breed, more finely attuned to the subleties in life. We spot ALL the differences in the back of Highlights magazine. We're that sharp.

But there's no need for binaries when it comes to chocolate and vanilla. They both have their merits. Chocolate is good to lure children into your oven and to hide razors in at Halloween. Vanilla can accomplish that too, but vanilla is sexier, vanilla is sultrier, vanilla is Laura Linney and chocolate is Catherine Zeta Jones. Sure, CZJ was in "Chicago" but at least Laura Linney doesn't do cell phone commercials. [Although Laura Linney DID do "The Mothman Prophecies."]

Vanilla is always a pleasant surprise, even in savory dishes. I'll never forget the vanilla that accompanied the crab cake I stole from my mom at Bacchanalia. Or check out this line from Frank Bruni's Bouley review: "I had black sea bass that had been slow-roasted to moist perfection and served in a bouillabaisse that was seasoned, surprisingly and deliciously, with vanilla." See that? Vanilla can be surprising and delicious. Suck on that, chocolate.

In conclusion, recall the tag-line of the 199? Oscar-winning-scared-my-grandparents-movie, "American Beauty": "Look closer."

Sure, from a distance vanilla seems plain Jane, but up close it has more pizazz than Esther on a party night. To think otherwise is foodie negligence.

The biscuits at the Silver Skillet are the best in Atlanta. They are flaky and perfect and light as a feather. They are, in fact, among my favorite things to eat.

While I was there today, then, I decided to ask for the recipe. I thought i would use my site's cache to earn credibility. I approached the counterman cautiously.

"Sir," I said, "hi, my name's Arnold Freedenblocker and I run a website called Chocolate and Zucchini. I was wondering if I could have the recipe for your biscuits?"

He gave me a look like I just asked him to take his pants off. In fact, he did take his pants off.

"I'd rather take my pants off then give away our recipe!" he said, exposing his polka-dotted boxers to the biscuit-eating public.

"Oh," I replied.

"Our biscuits are what we are known for," he explained, pulling his pants back up. "Can't give that away, sorry."

Curses! Oh well, it won't end there. Where there's a will, there's a way...

For those of you with iTunes you can now download the official Amateur Gourmet iMix. (Clicking should load up the mix in your iTunes player).

For those of you without iTunes, allow me to share the tracklist. I have assembled 15 songs, all of which I love, some of which concern food. Here they are:

1. Domingo No Parque by Gilberto Gil. Don't ask me how I discovered this song, or why I listen to it fifteen times a day. I just love it. It's a great picker upper--or amuse bouche, if you will.

2. All U Can Eat by Ben Folds. Going for the obvious, but still this is a perfect anthem for our "Food and Entitlement" series and just an all around great song. As a piano player, Ben is totally one of my heros.

3. What Went Wrong (In Your Head) by Supergrass. Here we have an anthem for first-time readers.

4. Happy To Keep His Dinner Warm. Another forced food song (and a show tune) but this one sung by Will and Grace's own Karen, Megan Mullaly. For those not in the know, she used to be a big Broadway star and she has a terrific voice.

5. The Call of the Wild by David Byrne. "Rei Momo" is now in my pantheon of favorite albums. I bought it on a whim and I have listened to it 8000 times. I love it.

6. Soap Star Joe by Liz Phair. "He's just a hero in a long line of heros..." Describes me perfectly.

7. Election Day by Lyle Lovett. This song has no relevance except I just discovered it and think it rocks. It has a great groove and Lyle Lovett is one of my favorites.

8. (There's) Always Something There To Remind Me performed by All Saints.

Actually, I think we'll skip the little commentary and just finish up the track listing...

9. Rockin' the Suburbs by Ben Folds.

10. The Internet is for Porn from Avenue Q.

11. The Scientist by Coldplay.

12. Marching Through the Wilderness by David Byrne.

15. Shiver Me Timbers by Tom Waits.

Enjoy!

We are swiftly approaching July which marks my final month in Atlanta. I have lived here for seven years and I think the world of it. You've got city, you've got country, you've got trees and parks and Ted Turner. When my mom and I first visited seven years ago, she peered out the plane window as we landed and said in her thick New York accent: "Look how LUSH it is Adam! Atlanta is so lush."

Very true, and I will miss it. But God help me if someone doesn't get me to New York STAT.

I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am about New York. It feels like I've always meant to move there but something's gotten in the way. College. Law School. Ted Turner.

And now that I'm headed there, I can't stop thinking about it. When I'm trapped in the flourescent BarBri nightmare each morning, my mind whisks me away to the busy city streets with life sprawling all around. I can barely contain my excitement.

But the purpose of this post is to get YOU excited. Look, I'll confess, this blog has sucked a lot these past few weeks and will continue to suck until the bar is over. I'm scrounging for material here. For crying out loud, last night I wrote about POOP. Do you see how low I've sunk?

Come August, however, there will be so much fodder for this blog I won't even know where to begin. Aren't you excited to have me in New York? You should be. Endless exploring and so many new characters--it should be a marvelous adventure. So let's suffer a few more weeks of non-relevance and grow more and more excited about the blogging ahead. Take it away, Ethel:

Now's your inning. Stand the world on it's ear!
Set it spinning! That'll be just the beginning!
Curtain up! Light the lights!
You got nothing to hit but the heights!
You'll be swell. You'll be great.
I can tell. Just you wait.
That lucky star I talk about is due!
Honey, everything's coming up roses for me and for you!

I've been thinking a lot about my poop post lately. Part of me does indeed regret it ("Don't s**t where you eat or where you blog about eating"), but the other part of me--the mad scientist part of me--keeps rubbing its hands together and declaring: "We may be on to something here."

I pushed and pushed and pushed until I came up with it: poop IS an appropriate area of discussion on a food blog because it pinpoints what is often missed by the overly cerebral food critics---the fact that food is VISCERAL.

Watching Alton Brown last night, I became distracted by the overmiked sounds of food preparation: the sloshy sounds of batter being stirred or the almost sexual loading up of the pastry bag. As he rolled back the layer of plastic, the noises bothered me. It was almost condomesque. I felt a certain repugnance: this is a Food Network show, these sounds are supposed to be wiped out!

But, of course, when we cook there is no sound mixer to mute the sounds of the bacon sizzling or the sauce gurgling. In your own kitchen, that's pleasurable. Those sounds are, in a way, an extension of yourself: like the pride you may take in the echo of a mighty burp.

What I am setting up here is a dichotomy: the private self cooking at home, comfortable with the noises and the sloshing and the dripping and the tasting, and the public self who wants to view food as "clean" and "pure"---which is why William Grimes rarely mentioned his bowel movements.

In her book "Romantic Outlaws, Beloved Prisons," one of my favorite law school professors--Martha Duncan--writes:

"Human infants enjoy playing with feces, while older children exhibit a special fascination with mud pies, fingerpaints, and other slimy, smeary things. Currently, there is a toy on the market that consists of a green gelatinous ooze; it is called, simply, Slime.

As children grow older, their attraction to slime is overlaid with a veneer of repugnance, and mental conflict results. This conflict has been acknowledged in an amusing way by the creators of another contemporary toy, Icky-Poo. On the back cover of the Official Icky-Poo Book, which accompanies a container of sticky slime, the editors declare, 'You'll be disgusted with yourself for loving it.' Conscious mental conflict is painful; therefore, children develop defense mechanisms to avoid awareness of their attraction to dirt." (137)

I think fear of cooking is a function of this repugnance. Hence the illusion, when you dine out at a fine restaurant, that everything is clean, everything is pure. The tablecloths are white. The drinking glasses sparkle. The silverware is practically ready for surgery.

The idea of the "open kitchen" feeds into this frenzy. An "open kitchen," at most restaurants, entails a performance by the chefs who are probably coached not to scratch their faces or sweat too profusely. When I recall my time as a waiter, the image I have of the chefs flying around is of them constantly mopping their sweaty brows. Yes, even at a high quality restaurant the chefs sweat. They're human.

Sweat, poop, slime---these are terms we don't want to think about when we think about food. But it is when we think about them that we begin to realize that food, unlike any other medium of expression, is intimately linked to our bodies and that unlike writing a book or composing a symphony, the end result of our labor becomes physically part of us.

It is that visceral quality about food which explains why I and many other lawyers turned to food in law school as a means of escape.

In his eGullet Q&A famed food writer and lawyer Jeffrey Steingarten answers the question: why do so so many lawyers become food writers?

Among his many theories, is this one: "In the Freudian sense, lawyers are orally fixated. They talk a lot. Of course, they don't do badly at the other end, either. They obsess a lot."

Anal fixation ties directly back into Martha Duncan's theory: "When the polarities of filth and cleanliness, mess and order, are central to a person's mental life, we speak of obsessive-compulsive neurosis. This neurosis derives from an unusually strong attachment to the anal zone...."

For me it's easy to see how the dry, antiseptic drone of the law school led me to the rich, fragrant world of the kitchen. When Rick, my favorite college professor, asked me why I turned to cooking in law school I answered: "Because it's visceral." He laughed because, he said, his partner--Chuck--who also got into cooking in law school uses the exact same word to explain it.

The reason, I think, that this website seems so personal despite the fact that I write exclusively (well, for the most part) about food is that food is intimate. Every time you see a picture of an item of food hovering near my mouth, you are sharing in a very private bodily act. In essence, you are watching me poop.

I'm a smoker---and no, I don't smoke cigarettes. I smoke gum. Two packs a day. Well, no; but about four pieces a day. And ok, so maybe I don't smoke: I chew. But I chew hard. And it's getting tiresome.

What will it take to get me to quit? TMJ? An invervention? How did all of this begin?

I know how all of this began. A certain high school friend who reads this site got me on the habit. Her whole family chews gum. The idea is that it keeps your mouth minty fresh after every meal; no offensive odors to sabotage your job interview or ruin that date. Gum makes you ready to face the world.

My gum of choice, these days, is Orbitz. Opening a pack of Orbitz is very much like opening a pack of cigarettes. You have to peel off the plastic. Then you flip a lid to reveal two parallel rows of perfectly set sticks---in one case cancer sticks, in the other chew sticks.

But maybe the chew sticks ARE cancer sticks. That's part of my worry.

Looking at the label, it reads: "Made of: Sorbitol, Gum Base, Glycerol, Mannitol, Natural and Artificial Flavors..."

I always think that's funny when the side of a box says "natural and artificial flavors" as if distinguishing the two matters in a product as unnatural as gum. "Oh thank God!" wails an imaginary customer, "This gum has NATURAL flavors too!"

Continuing on: "...Xylitol, Aspartame, Acesulfame K, Lecithin, Blue 1 Lake, BHT (to maintain freshness), Color Added."

Then, beneath: "Phenylketonurics: contains phenylalanine."

I'm a firm believer in only consuming products that you can pronounce. True, I don't consume gum, but at the level I chew it there's an awful lot of Xylitol and Acesulfame K going into my body...not to mention the phenylketonurics! Thank God for the natural flavors or I'd be really screwed.

But seriously, I have to quit.

Check out this Slate piece which asks the question: "Which hot dogs are the tastiest?" before we gorge ourselves on July 4th. What are YOU eating this Independence Day?

Dear AG Community,
How've you been? Gosh, I miss you. Gosh, I hate the word gosh. Are Josh and Katy treating you well? You know your mother and I will be home a week from Thursday (the 29th) so just sit tight. In the meantime, why don't you make a prank call from Hillary Duff? (Thanks Casey). Oh and let's have a moment of silence for Martha please. But five months isn't as bad as 7 to 12? Let's all bake her cookies with nail files. My next big stunt? Stay tuned and be well.
Maternally yours,
Adam, TAG

People are trading me on a fake blogger stock exchange. I am worth $13,751.50! Now when do I get my check?

The good news: I am back from Albany and the bar exam is over!

The bad news: I am exhausted beyond belief and can barely muster the energy to type this sent

My impressions of Albany are entirely negative. This may have nothing to do with Albany and everything to do with the bar exam. Here's a list of impressions and you be the judge.

1) Walking out of the Albany airport, I followed the signs for "Taxis" and found a line of people. When this happens in NY or even Atlanta, there lines of taxis waiting to grab the next sucker...I mean customer. Here, there were no taxis. There was just a man who asked people where they were going and stood awkwardly waiting for cabs to show up. I stood there for a long time.

2) Eventually, a cab came and this Swedish girl who also lives in Texas shared it with me. She was slightly abrasive and when we got to the hotel there was a huge cluster of people outside. "Wow, look at all the law people here already," I said. "They're not law people, they're black," she said matter-of-factly. I stared at her, mouth agape. "Sorry, I'm European---we're not PC." I jumped out of the cab, still moving.

3) When the driver caught up he said: "16 dollars." "Each?" I asked. "Yes," he said. The ride was like 10 minutes. That was slightly ridiculous. But I'll grant Albany this---it's the same thing in every city.

4) The hotel was decent. I went down to the local Starbucks to study some. The funny thing about that Starbucks is that the people working there looked like they'd never seen customers before. I got the impression that Albany comes to life twice a year--July and February--when the law people come to take the bar exam. When they leave, all goes quiet. At least that's the impression I had. And my drink came out ok.

5) The first morning, (the day before the bar: Monday), I went to Bruegger's Bagels for breakfast. I'd never been to a Bruegger's bagels. I figured since I was in New York the bagels would be better. Sadly, no. These were about as bad as bagels could be. Well, they were edible. People were friendly.

6) For lunch that Monday, my friend Andrew and I went to a local deli. They had corned beef there and I figured since I was in New York the corned beef would be better. It wasn't...it was dry and awful. It made me sick.

7) Albany, it seems, does not represent New York in any way, particularly its food. Unless I missed something.

8) Monday night--the night before the bar--Andrew and I went to an Italian restaurant across the street from the Pepsi arena, where I took my test. We ordered spaghetti and meatballs and salad. The bill came to $22 each. No, the meatballs were not made of gold. Albany meatballs are pricey. And not very good.

9) The day of the test I went back to Brueggers. Then I went to Subway to get a sandwich to go for lunch. All sandwiches had to go in a bar-approved plastic bag so they could see what you were bringing in. For example, an Answer Sandwich is strictly prohibited.

10) The bar itself was very hard. And the Pepsi arena was crazy cold. Literally, I lost three toes to frostbite. The girl across the aisle from me was wearing HORSE BLINDERS. People are crazy about not being distracted during the bar. There were many ear plugs. And did I mention the horse blinders?

11) That night, feeling much relieved (beacuse the first day was the ultra-hard essay day as opposed to the ultra-hard multiple choice day where you can at least guess), Andrew and I sprung for a fancy dinner at a fancy restaurant. Well, I didn't realize it was a fancy restaurant until we got there. We had asked the front desk for restaurant recommendations and they scratched their heads and gave us faces that suggested this was the first time they had ever been asked for restaurant recommendations. "Ummm," they said, "there's ***." "Ok," we said. We walked there and the menu was ultra pricey and strangely varied. Foie gras, ravioli, lobster, steak, lamb, all kinds of fish. Where were they getting their ingredients from? And the place was nearly empty, something was up. I bravely ordered the duck. Bravely, I say, because my mom always warns me not to get duck in a strange place because she once got violently ill from it. But I like duck. I'm brave. And it was---ummm--decent tasting. Actually, it tasted like it sat in a freezer for months and then they burnt it beyond recognition so as to hide its aged flaws, but the sauce--orange sauce--covered it fairly. Luckily, I didn't die.

12) A happy point, however, from that meal. The salad was great. It was called Jerusalem Salad and it had tomatoes and cucumbers, olive oil, lemon, olives and goat cheese. I really loved the goat cheese. This was a new revelation and I spent a strange part of the next day (taking the multistate) craving goat cheese. So, to reward myself, I bought a goat. Her name is Terri and she's a true companion. She bleats hello to you all.

13) After the bar was completely over (Wednesday) night, I crawled back to my room and passed out watching the Democratic National Convention. John Edwards gave a great speech and I recalled meeting him last summer because his California headquarters were in the firm I worked at. I remember he came through shaking hands and afterwards I was like "Who was that?" and everyone said "John Edwards" and I said "Oh." Now I feel the fool.

14) Leaving yesterday, I heard the hotel had a free shuttle to the airport. I sat outside waiting for the shuttle to arrive. A cab pulled up. "Where you going?" he said. "The airport," I answered. "Ok, get in," he said. "How much? I inquired. "Twenty bucks." "No way!" I said, "I can wait and go for free." Another cab pulled up and overheard that and the driver said: "Yo, I'll take you for fourteen." That sounded better and this shuttle was taking its sweet time. "Ok," I said, and got in. "Hey!" said the first driver. "OK ok, I'll do $14." "Sorry," I said. I hate when cabbies fight over me.

Now that I am back I feel like the guy in the Green Mile who sucks all the evil out of everyone and then spits out that giant explosion of black flies; except I still have the evil in me and I'm waiting for the flies to come out. I thought the feeling of release would be worth the 2.5 months of misery but the release hasn't sunk in yet. And now I have to get packing because the movers come Monday! I arrive for my new life in the Big Apple one week from today. That gets me totally excited. Until then, your fly-fillled host bids you adieu.

Congrats to Jeremy of Frost Street and the fine folks at Gothamist on their new project: Gothamist Food. The site looks great, can't wait to see what's in store.

This part of Ebert's review of "Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle" made me laugh and since it's food related, thought I'd share:

""Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle," on the other hand, is about two very specific roommates who want to smoke pot, meet chicks and eat sliders in the middle of the night. Because this column is read in Turkey, Botswana, Japan and California, I should explain that "sliders" are what fans of the White Castle chain call their hamburgers, which are small and cheap and slide right down. We buy 'em by the bag.

Is a slider worth the trouble leaving home and journeying through two states? If you're stoned and have the munchies, as Harold and Kumar are, and if you're in the grip of a White Castle obsession, the answer is clearly yes. The only hamburger worth that much trouble when you're clean and sober is at Steak 'n Shake. Californians believe the burgers at In 'n Out are better, but that is because they do not appreciate the secret of Steak 'n Shake, expressed in its profound credo, "In Sight, It Must Be Right." (Many people believe the names of In 'n Out and Steak 'n Shake perfectly describe the contrast in bedroom techniques between the coast and the heartland.)"

Picture it. You're moving to New York on Friday. The moving company is coming Tuesday. You spend all weekend packing, sorting, organizing. Then Monday (today) you get a phonecall.

"Hi, Adam? This is East Coast Moving Systems. I'm afraid we're having technical problems and we're not going to be able to move you from Atlanta to New York after all. We're sorry."

This is exactly what happened to me today and I'm still reeling from it. Never before have I been so pissed off at a company. And apparently, I'm not the first. I just did a Google search on them and all these hits come up with titles like "moving scam and crooks. I wish I'd done that search sooner.

Having just studied for the bar, I know that we had a contract (we gave a $$ deposit) and that they breached it and that my damages are whatever it costs to find a replacement. However, finding a replacement on such short notice is a killer proposition. Summer is peak moving season, and August is the peak of that peak. Luckily--by some miracle--I was able to find what seems like a reliable company, Atlanta Shipping, and the guy seems like a swell guy. They're coming Wednesday for my stuff and it will be up there next week.

Meanwhile, I spoke to my friend Andrew tonight who also used East Coast Moving Systems and he got screwed in his own unique way. They picked up his stuff last week and told him it would get there the next week. Then they called him a few days ago and said the stuff would arrive Sunday. Andrew wasn't scheduled to get to New York until Monday. So he changed his ticket and flew up on Sunday morning and when Sunday afternoon came around, they never showed. He called the driver and he was in South Carolina, not anywhere near New York. Suffice it to say, Andrew was really pissed off. Plus, now they called today to tell him they lost his cashier's check and he needs to cancel it and write another one when they deliver. This company is ultra-sketchy.

I know this is a food blog, and moving companies are very much off topic. But perhaps this warning will justify the post: never EVER under any circumstances use East Coast Moving Systems or you'll find yourself in a rotten moldy pickle.

Moving is a beyond stressful experience. Sure, my stress was amplified by the villainy of East Coast Moving Systems (which, if you missed that post, cancelled on me the day before they were supposed to move me); but just the process of going through every drawer, every cabinet and every pantry can be excruciating. Even worse, when I reached the third shelf of my side of the pantry I noticed that everything was sticky; then I noticed a giant pool of honey on the ground. Yes, honey had exploded in my pantry. Moving sucks.

Anyway, when I finally finished the kitchen yesterday I was left with a mountain of perishables I couldn't take with me. What would I do with these perishables? Josh and Katy to the rescue...

Look at all the free stuff they got: fountains of flour, oodles of oils, three bottles of chili powder. Yes, one of the things I noticed cleaning out my pantry was how frequently I re-bought things I already had. That's what happens when you bury things so deeply, like repressed memories: they come back to haunt you.

When Josh and Katy left, all that remained was my table of kitchen equipment:

It's amazing how much kitchen equipment I've accumulated in the past few years. Did you know I had an indoor grill from William Sonoma? Neither did I! And of course the KitchenAid Mixer, the food processor, the ice cream maker. My movers were thrilled with the abundance of items to be packaged and boxed; it was quite the show. Let's hope everything gets there in one piece.

Aight, peeps, yo' homeboy freshstuff gourmet kicking it up to ya live here from da big appilio, NYC style fo' realz.

But seriously.

Hello! I am here typing to you from the Starbucks on 27th and 6th because my apartment is still internetless. This Starbucks wireless costs $6 an hour, not a terrible price, but not cheap either so let's make this fast. My move went smoothly, there was nary a peep from Lolita on the plane. My apartment is beautiful: I hadn't seen it because my parents picked it out, so I opened the door with some trepidation. Alas, it's a great space with a great view. There's even a cafe next door where I had a kickin' chocolate croissant the other day for breakfast. And the Subway is only three blocks away.

I am loving it here. The energy is infectious and I find myself wandering gleefully all over town: I walked yesterday from Chelsea to Union Square to NYU to SoHo to Greenwich Village and then hopped a train uptown and grabbed a student rush ticket ($26, 6th row orchestra) for "Caroline, Or Change" which was truly wonderful. Last night for dinner, Lisa and I ate in the Village and Michael Musto (one of my heroes) was three tables over. [Our waitress was comically inept: she took forever getting our food out, and when we finally asked for the check she gave us a blank stare and asked, "What did you guys have?"]

Today, Dana and I ate at Bubby's in TriBeCa (which, I learned, means Triangle Below Canal) and we each had a goat cheese omelette. I've been fighting something of a weird throat ailment with contraband antibiotics and today I'm starting to feel better. Internet should arrive in my apartment Wednesday between 2 and 5. Furniture should arrive Friday (God-willing). And the family arrives Thursday night for a weekend of gluttony, which you'll hear all about. So get ready kids... your favorite Gourmet is getting New-Yorkified. Fo' realz! [More Wednesday.]

Dear Amateur Gourmet Readers,

Sincerely,
Lolita

Finally, some quick pics from today...

(1) I did a quick perusal through the Union Square Greenmarket. It's awesome! When I get my pots and pans and other cooking equipment (like the large vibrating egg slicer), I'll make my way back here and buy fresh produce to cook with for you all:

(2) Then I made it over to the Strand, a historic giant reduced-price book store with a killer cookbook section. Check it, yo:

I purchased Ruth Reichl's "Tender At The Bone" for $7 and started reading it today while I did laundry.

(3) New York's best kept secret? Probably not, because lots of people know that you can get sandwiches at Balthazar for like $7. I did that today with an egg salad sandwich which was, I must confess, pretty standard; but the bread was great.

The pastries, I should add, however, looked mind-bogglingly good. Next time I'll skip the sandwich.

It's true. And while I never had a chance to really watch her show or work my way through her books, I know how important and influential she was in the world of cooking. I know she will be missed.

Finally, my dishes, kitchen equipment and all other worldy possessions have arrived and my living room is floor to ceiling with big heavy boxes. As a result, no food blogging tonight but before you know it, I'll be cooking again! Meanwhile, how about that Romanian gymanstics team? That's what I call vaulting.

No, I didn't cook for you tonight, I'm afraid. Instead, though, I built a desk. Look:

Today involved much walking. First a walk to Bed, Bath and Beyond (where I saw Kyan from Queer Eye; shouldn't he be shopping for hair products?), then The Container Store, Staples and The Door Store all on a quest for desk. No dice.

Luckily, I came back and used the wonderful resource that is the internet and found A.I. Friedman, only 9 blocks away. There I found a glass-topped desk that could be delivered within hours. Perfect!

So instead of souffle, I present to you my new base of operations:

Smashing, no? Smashable too. Please don't smash my desk, it's glass. Unless you want to get married. I am Jewish, after all.

After the Thai food was consumed tonight, I began to do what I always do which is, basically, dump it all in the sink and turn on the garbage disposal. Only: where's the switch? On that note, where's the disposal?

What's that you say? No disposal?

NO GARBAGE DISPOSAL!

How am I supposed to dispose of my garbage! What kind of city is THIS!

Madness I tell you madness!

Today I went for the first time to the Chelsea Whole Foods. It completely blew me away. It was gigantic and everything was so plentiful. Rows upon rows of fruits and veggies and a salad bar way more diverse than anything I've seen in the other Whole Foods I've visited. I'll be there a lot.

Upon leaving, a woman handed me a pink flyer. Usually I ignore flyers, regardless of whether or not they're pink, but the woman was forceful. Anyway, the flyer was relevant to the subject at hand. The title says: "The Whole Truth...At Whole Foods..."

I will reproduce some of its content here:

"Worker's Wages and Benefits Don't Climb As Fast as Company Profits

[Blah blah blah....]

Union Seeks Response From Whole Foods to Put Up or Shut Up, Customers Asked to get involved!

Eh. I'm not terribly moved. So the crux is they get no raises? Why not go work for Gristede's then? The employees I dealt with inside seemed pretty happy. Also "put up or shut up" doesn't really make sense: why would Whole Foods shut up? They're not saying anything.

Not food related, but wasn't the view out my window tonight delicious? I heart New York.

Step up, step up ladies and gentlemen. Prepare to behold the most beguiling foodstuffs known to man. Mothers, cover your children's eyes--the uncorrupted should not be exposed to such brutality at such a tender age. If you have a heart condition, please be warned. For what you are about to see are freakish anomolies, the bearded ladies of the food world. ADMISSION IS THE PRICE OF YOUR SOUL.

Now that that's out of the way, on to our first STRANGE and EXOTIC food.

We all know our friend the watermelon---green on the outside, red on the inside. A staple at family BBQs and PTA-club meetings, watermelon watermelon see how it drips up and down my elbows spit out the pits. Well now prepare thyself and meet its freakish cousin...

THE GHASTLY YELLOW WATERMELON

Have you ever seen a sight so sinister? The red juices of life displaced by the corrosive color of decay. Or something like that.

Moving on!

We all know the carrot as the phallic root-vegetable we use to taunt deaf school-children. But no more! For now our orange-bodied friend has morphed, into a sight so dastardly I couldn't even photograph it well...

THE ODIOUS ORANGE, PESTILENT PURPLE AND YUCKY YELLOW CARROT

How vile is our mother nature for playing such a trick! One hasn't cursed the universe so since the advent of Paul Schaffer. Who ever thought it was a good idea to mike his laughter during Dave's monologue anyway?

Finally, we come to a table of horrors so freakish and terrible my heart bleeds to post it here. Yet post it I must. For that bastion of summer eating--the lovely, elegant tomato--has been warped beyond recognition. Like a school bus filled with children dipped into a toxic lake, this table evokes the horrors of the modern age... presenting

THE TORTURED TABLE OF HIDEOUS HEIRLOOM TOMATOES

Has your stomach ever churned so unexpectedly? Maybe you're pregnant. For now I leave you to recover yourselves; regain your footing. Drop your money in the hat and please come again. I have kids to support.

Let's just say I stumbled across a site that linked to me with the quote: "Really good food blog, terrible photography." Let's just say that that's true. Actually, I know it is. I know nothing about photography. How can I improve? I'm using a PowerShot S200. Do I need a new camera? Your advice is much appreciated.

Orientation at Tisch is one week from today, and I'm incredibly excited. Before that is the Republican National Convention and as you can see, New York is already getting ready:

My mom had been pleading for me to come home before school starts and so, in the spirit of avoiding the convention and visiting my family, I decided to book a ticket to Boca Raton. I leave tomorrow and come back Sunday.

Stupidly, the convention actually starts Sunday so I didn't do a very good job of avoiding the convention. But at least I'll get to be home for a bit. It's been a while since I've been back. And I'm sure New York will do a great job of making the Republicans feel welcome:

(Click to enlarge):

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go. Not taking my computer this trip (too much of a hassle) so no blogging til Sunday... In the meantime, keep apprised of our Survivor contestants who, already, have posted a hilarious array of pics in the comments section for the first round. Keep up the good work, gang, and we'll talk again Sunday. Ciao!

Mom always asks, "Do you want anything? From the store?" when I'm en route to the airport. Some families have pantries that are well-stocked and plentiful; refrigerators bursting with tupperware containers of homemade sauces and soups and salads. Some people have Jacques Pepin for a father. I, on the other hand, have my mom for a mother and my mom doesn't cook.

I'm not complaining: having a non-cook for a mother meant we ate out all the time. And that she bought special treats from the bakery. My favorite special treat from the bakery may or may not be Jewish in origin (I could only find it in the Kosher section of my Atlanta supermarket): the rainbow cookie.

The rainbow cookie is my favorite cookie. I've been eating rainbow cookies my entire life. They consist of three spongy layers--red, yellow and green (Bob Marley t-shirt colors?)--between which rests a delicious raspberry jam spread. The outsides are coated with chocolate and Christened (or, in this case, Mosesed) delicious. Rainbow cookies are not very good for you.

In my time away from home (and by home I mean Boca Raton, Florida) I've never really found that elusive, perfect rainbow cookie. They never quite taste right. Maybe because the ones I find not in Boca aren't homemade. Don't get me wrong, the ones in Boca aren't homemade either. But knowing my mother took the trouble to buy them for me; that mom knows they're my favorite cookie, makes them that much more delicious. And maybe that's why the rainbow cookie is my favorite cookie. They're made (read: bought) with a mother's love.

Did you know there's a gigantic archive of Julia Child's Master Class series on the PBS website? If I had watched these videos of Nancy Silverton making bread before I attempted her recipe for sourdough, life would have been so much easier. As it happens, I plan to be spending many an hour sifting through all these videos...

I had my Tisch orientation yesterday and another function tonight and I loved every minute of it. This is going to be a phenomenal program. However, I must tell you that our instructors have made it very clear that the program is rigorous, that we must invest ourselves fully in our concentration, and that our focus must be entirely on the craft of playwriting (not the craft of foodblogging). As of right now, I plan to keep things going--albeit at a much slower pace. So the daily posts will probably cease, as will the free mints on your pillow. If, as the semester progresses, I see that I can do both playwriting and foodblogging effectively without the latter hurting the former, then posts shall grow more plentiful. We'll have to feel it out these next few weeks, but if things seem quiet I wanted you to know why. And, in other news, Hurricane Frances has knocked my parents back up the coast to New York where they will, once again, feed me until I explode. More on that as the weekend progresses.

Seriously.

This post has no merit except to say that there were lobsters on 23rd street tonight, being loaded from a truck into a restaurant. Some of them were quite big. Have a look:

Can anyone guess what Subway stop it was near?

Crustacean station.

Sorry, I'm tired. Please kick me.

I walk past the Body Shop every day on my way to school. I have a question for you, ladies. Why do you want to smell like fruit?

That's what the Body Shop smells like to me. Hot fruit. Noxious, acidic fruit that clouds the air near NYU worse than the fog of Mary Kate and Ashley after a night of bulemia and Coke.

It's not that it smells bad on people, necessary. I've yet to rub Mango Body Butter (an actual product) on a willing volunteer to see what they smell like 10 feet off. But it's like The Body Shop pumps acid fruit fog into the air near its stores to lure people in. For me it has the complete opposite reaction: I scramble down the street, desperate to get away from than brutal fruital smell.

Weird how corporate American can pervert something as sacred and ancient and Biblical (ha) as fruit. The forbidden fruit shouldn't have been an apple. It should've been Body Shop Watermelon body spray.

Yom Kippur is fast approaching (begins tomorrow night at sundown) and by fast approaching I mean Jews gots-ta be fasting. Saw a play tonight called "Last Easter" and there was a joke in it that I'd like to share with you now on that very topic.

You see Ghandi, before he died, never wore shoes and never ate meat. As a consequence, his feet were bruised, he had no energy and he suffered from bad breath. He was a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

Thank you and good night Vegas!

I hate this article that just came out in the LA Tmes about food blogs. Granted, I probably hate it because it doesn't mention me, but that aside I hate what it says about food blogs and how limited they are. First of all, though I should put my anger on pause and congratulate my food-blogging cohorts on their mentions in the article. Clotilde's in there, as is The Food Section and I'm glad this article gave them the exposure they deserve. But that said, I hate this paragraph:

"When a good writer chronicles his life, it is art. When an amateur feels the need to chronicle his life by listing what he made or ate for dinner each night, often the best that can be said is that it's touching. In the world of food blogs, you may be touched and find some great recipes in the bargain."

I just so disagree with that. That's what I call limited vision. I'd like to quote Nabokov for you now: (after this colon was typed, I proceded to flip through "Speak, Memory" for 10 minutes trying to find the quote I want to quote and failed miserably so I will now make the quite up from my own memory): "Art makes big things small and small things big."

Food is small. Writing about food makes it big. If a good writer writes about food, that's art. If a good writer chronicles his life, that's a journal.

Thank you.

I wish there were a clue out there; something to cast light on the mystery....

Off-topic, yes; but exciting, nonetheless.

This weekend I attended The New Yorker Festival--or, more precisely, a New Yorker Festival event. I was at my computer several weeks ago when the tickets went on sale. The most sought-after tickets were for Calvin Trillin's walking tour of Chinatown. How perfect that would be for this website...

But before I could click enter after typing "ticketmaster" into my web browser, that event was all sold out. So I honored my inner-playwright/theater person and bought two tickets for "The Method"---a Saturday event moderated by one of my all-time favorite writers, John Lahr (the New Yorker's theater critic) featuring Cynthia Nixon, Edward Norton, Stanley Tucci and Stockard Channing.

I arrived at the Director's Guilt Theater on 57th on Saturday at 3 (the event started at 4):

My friend Ricky was meeting me but he was running late. I stood in line reading "King Lear" for class. Others read too. (This was a brainy crowd). Across the street, an ambulance arrived. A man was splayed out on the sidewalk. The New Yorker intellectuals gawked intellectually. I think the man was ok.

Once inside, I secured two seats in the last row of the main level. (There was an upper level too.) The crowd looked suspiciously accomplished. Who lurked among us? I thought Tom Shales was sitting across the aisle from me. My only evidence was that someone went up to him and said, "Hi Tom." Otherwise, I have no idea what Tom Shales looks like.

Ricky arrived. The panel began. Stockard Channing was swapped for Philip Seymour Hoffman. (I love Philip Seymour Hoffman, so I was happy.) Here's a horrible picture of the panel (click to enlarge):

The format was pretty great. John Lahr joked, "I'm not going to ask what your favorite curse word is."

Instead, he had each of the participants bring two clips: one where they think they acted well, one where they think they acted poorly.

Cynthia Nixon showed the clip of her marrying Steve on "Sex and the City" as an example of her bad acting. "When I encounter a scene marked IMPORTANT SCENE, I tense up and I don't let anything exciting happen," she explained. For an example of her good acting, she showed a great clip of her in a TV movie with Scott Bakula where she played an Appalachian woman with TB whose husband builds a glass house for her to keep her away from her deaf daughter who she thinks deserves to go off to school. Trust me, this clip alone was worth the price of admission.

Ed Norton didn't have time to prepare two clips. So he brought a clip of a moment he a considers a profound learning experience---the courtroom scene in "The People vs. Larry Flynt."

Stanley Tucci (who was the crowd favorite--truly a funny guy) brought a guffaw-inducing clip of his bad acting. I have no idea what the movie was; but he was the villain on a space ship that was about to explode. "I'm awful!" he exclaimed over the audiences laughter. For his good clip he showed a scene from one of my all-time favorite movies, "Big Night." If you haven't seen it, run out and rent it.

Finally, Philip Seymour Hoffman showed, for his bad clip, a scene from "Along Came Polly." Hearing PSH talk about why this is bad acting on his part was a revelation. I'd paraphrase, but I won't do it justice. It was truly refreshing to hear an actor intelligently slam his own work---as opposed to the group masturbation that occurs on "Inside The Actor's Studio." For his good clip, PSH showed a clip from "Happiness."

Anyway, once outside the theater...

John Lahr stood near the entrance. I came prepared with a copy of "Prick Up Your Ears" (the book that inspired me to apply to grad school in playwriting) and a magic marker. I asked him if he'd autograph my book. He was truly charming. He graciously listened to me yap about NYU, Joe Orton, Tennessee Williams, and the current state of theater. The inscription mysteriously reads: "To Adam--The words are obscure, but the pictures will keep you from harm. - John Lahr."

At the end of our exchange, a scruffy-faced man with glasses came over to talk to John. "John," he said, "I'm George Saunders, just wanted to say hi before I go."

George Saunders! Hello, I have all his books. If you haven't read him, you're truly missing out. Check out "Pastoralia" and "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline." There is no one else in the English language who writes the way he does. He's a true original.

When he disengaged from John Lahr, I rather bravely went up to him, shook his hand and told him I was a huge fan. "Thanks," he said sheepishly. Guess it's not often anyone recognizes George Saunders on the street.

I'm sharing this with you guys because this was a crowning New York moment for me. I spent the last seven years at Dunkin' Donuts in Atlanta reading New Yorkers fervently, dreaming of the day I would meet these people. Who knows, maybe one day I'll moderate a New Yorker event on food, theater and law only to have a young Atlanta sap come with a print-out from my former food-blogging days and ask me to autograph it. Maybe I'll use my power to coerce sex. No matter what, it was a terrific weekend.

Thanks to site reader Tim H. for this terrific link: Carb Couture. Who wants to buy me a t-shirt?

Go us!

"Be always drunken. Nothing else matters: that is the only question. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth, be drunken continually.

And if sometimes, on the stairs of a palace, or on the green side of a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you should awaken and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from you, ask of the wind, or of the wave, or of the star, or of the bird, or of the clock, or whatever flies, or sighs, or rocks, or sings, or speaks, ask what hour it is; and the wind, wave, star, bird, clock, will answer you: 'It is the hour to be drunken! Be drunken, if you would not be martyred slaves of Time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.'"

- Baudelaire as quoted in Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night"

Nick, Michelle, Andrea,

This is the challenge I've been waiting for, the secret challenge I've kept stashed in my pocket for a special moment. That moment has come.

I want each of you to prepare something that can be shipped through the mail. (A baked good would seem the likeliest option). And then, quite simply enough, I'd like you to ship it to me. Please don't spend significant money on the shipping. All I ask is that it gets to me by Wednesday the 20th. What it is you make for me is entirely up to you. If you want to appeal to my tastes, you have an incredible resource on the right side of the screen---nine months of archives to sift through!

Basically, I will judge your cooking effort with a letter grade. I may invite friends to judge it with me. Then the reading audience can use that judgment to influence who they will give final immunity to.

I ask that you not send an insane amount of stuff. You should prepare one "submission" and if that submission is something like "cookies" you can send, at most, a dozen. In other words, don't bribe your way with quantity---I'll have to throw too much of it out!

Also, I kindly ask that you not poison me.

I will be sending each of you an e-mail with my address shortly. I can't wait to taste your efforts. And a hardy congratulations on getting this far in the game!

See, even my tastebuds are liberal: Teresa Heinz Kerry's Pumpkin Spice Cookies appeal to me more than Laura Bush's Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk cookies in
The 2004 Family Circle Cookie Cook Off.

Great NYT Magazine piece (registration required) (and, ok, I admit--I only skimmed it) that discusses the difference between French and American eating. I'll admit, I come from the guilt camp (how can I not, I'm Jewish!), but it's nice to have a cultural context for it.

I particularly like this passage:

"But how we eat, and even how we feel about eating, may in the end be just as important as what we eat. The French eat all sorts of 'unhealthy' foods, but they do it according to a strict and stable set of rules: they eat small portions and don't go back for seconds; they don't snack; they seldom eat alone, and communal meals are long, leisurely affairs. A well-developed culture of eating, such as you find in France or Italy, mediates the eater's relationship to food, moderating consumption even as it prolongs and deepens the pleasure of eating."

Hey loyal readers---my friend Nate would like you to take this Zoomerang survey. It's mostly about your TV viewing habits and your opinions of the Food Network. Please take it if you have a moment.

Flew home this weekend (well, Thursday through Saturday) to celebrate my grandmother's 75th birthday. Interesting fact: I'm 25, mom's teetering on 50 and grandma's 75. Numerologists would have a field day with us. We're all divisible by 5 which, as we all know, means one of us will be attacked by quintuplets. But which one?

We celebrated grandma's 75th with dinner at my parent's favorite haunt, New York Prime. My Uncle Mark came in and all of us toasted to grandma's good health. Then there was a giant slice of chocolate cake and we all sang "happy birthday." I'd like to re-echo the sentiment: Happy Birthday, grandma!

From this week's New Yorker:

"It's nicer to have good wine than nasty wine, it's nicer to have good food than nasty food, but everyone gets carried away by their enthusiasms."
- Michael Frayn (playwright; "Copenhagen" and "Democracy")

Today was a gorgeous day in New York. "Indian Summer," according to a man I overheard in the store. "You mean Native American Summer," I said. He punched me in the mouth.

After working for hours and hours and hours completing my 10-page paper on "tragedy" I decided to run out into the world and shop shop shop.

I really need clothes. I mean, ok, compared to the impoverished and famished people of the world, I'm in pretty good shape. But I'm a man known for my crisp, elegant style. And all my clothes are looking a bit frumpy. Plus, like, they were totally having a sale at Urban Outfitters.

Actually, I didn't buy any clothes. Instead I bought books and kitchen gadgets. (One notable book in particular...)

So in the upper left, you'll see my Strand purchase: Patricia Wells' Provence Cookbook which I got because it's Heidi's favorite cookbook on one of my secret favorite food sites, 101 Cookbooks. (Actually, looking at it now I see that it's Patricia Wells' Trattoria that's her favorite. D'oh!)

But forget all that Wellsian crap. Check out the big mama in the center. My heart nearly dropped to my feet when I saw it in the store. Could it be? Yes it could! Something's coming, something good--the new Barefoot Contessa Cookbook! AHHHH!!

I scooped it up and bought it without even cracking a page. I was that eager. Flipping through it tonight, I'm so excited to cook from it. Some great recipes. And actually some great info---she talks about wine and cookware. Oh Ina, you outdid yourself.

In the photo above you'll also see some MOMA purchases. There's a MOMA store in SOHO (look at all these acronyms) and they have two really cool kitchen products.

At 3 o'clock, is a cutting board that folds. So you cut on it and then can effectively dump everything you cut into a pot or bowl. Genius!

At 12 o'clock, is stainless steel soap. Gets the garlic and onion smell off your hands. Learnt that trick from Martha Stewart. Only now, I guess, she rubs the bars of her jail cell... (Rimshot).

To quote Ina on Episode #21 of The Barefoot Contessa: "Nothing like a little retail therapy."

I told Raife on the phone, before he came, that Lisa, Ricky and I made a pumpkin cake with cream-cheese frosting. "I don't eat sweets, Adam," he said matter-of-factly. I took him at his word. Apparently he was kidding.

Raife ate the entire Pumpkin Cake. I kid you not. Ok, maybe I had a few slices here and there. Maybe Brian did too. But Raife consumed that thing like it was a human soul and he was the Grim Reaper. The whole cake is gone now. All that's left to show for it is a satisfied houseguest sleeping on the couch.

Are you a Republican? Do you like cookies? I have a proposition for you.

Sure, sure, this is a big election. Much at stake. Lives on the line. Grand epic consequences.

But think about cookies. Aren't they delicious? Don't you like them? Aren't cookies good?

Let's make a deal. You vote for Kerry and I'll send you cookies.

Prove to me that you're a Republican. Prove to me that you voted for Kerry. I will send you cookies.

Now if I get 800 responses, I can't send you cookies. I will then enter you into a raffle to win cookies.

Unjust? Maybe. But they say the way to man's vote is through his stomach. And right now I want to use all the pull I have. Maybe my liberal readers can bake cookies for Kerry too. Whose with me, gang? Whose unafraid to use cheap marketing tricks to get the better man elected?

Cookies for Kerry. Take a bite out of politics.

[THIS MESSAGE WAS NOT APPROVED BY JOHN KERRY. IT WAS, HOWEVER, APPROVED BY THE COOKIE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA. AND BRISTOL-MEYERS SQUIBB. Just cause that's fun to type.]

After reading many of your comments, it has come to my attention that I may get arrested for my great cookie plan. My family's already been hassled by Republican thugs and this morning I woke up with a dead fish on my head. We're playing with fire here.

Here's how I'd like to do this. All Republican Kerry-voters, e-mail me your address. Maybe you will get cookies! This isn't a bribe because of the "maybe." Maybe, instead of cookies, you will get avocados. Then what will the authorities say? Also, I probably won't do a follow-up on this. And those who volunteered to make cookies may hear from me too. So basically, if you prove that you're a Republican who voted for Kerry you will most likely get cookies. But not definitely. Except probably definitely. But not in a sense that would suggest a bribe. [Oh, and if Kerry loses, no one gets SQUAT!]

Thank you. And don't forget to vote!

Hello possums. Had the best time Friday night seeing Dame Edna. We bought student tickets and were seated in the back row. Well, moments before curtain, an usher told us we were being moved to the very front row... and that we were! Seeing Dame Edna is a mandatory cultural experience for anyone living in New York (and even those who don't). What does this have to do with food? Well you must go and learn the recipe for Dame Edna's Crusted Loin of Hare. (Her joke, not mine). Every moment is hilarious and, basically, improvised. She is, according to New Yorker theater critic John Lahr (in the preface to his book about her which I just started reading, "Dame Edna Everage and the Rise of Western Civilisation") "the goods." Check her out while she's here!

I've always been a big fan of the desserty Starbucks drinks. My usual hot drink--the White Chocolate Mocha--has kept my insides warm and cozy for the past couple of years. The effect on my wallet has been sharp but not devastating.

In New York, it is devastating. Tall White Chocolate Mochas now cost (including tax) $4.15. That means for a small cup of milk with a hit of espresso and a few pushes of syrup you must pay almost $5. That is outrageous.

Now this may not just be a New York thing--I know there was a Starbucks price hike recently. If that's the case, then the Starbucks Corporation has no other corpororate purpose than to MAKE MONEY off its now sweet-drink addicted consumer. What's that you say? DUH? Well DUH yourself--I miss my White Chocolate Mocha.

My new drink is the Vanilla Latte. Tall. It costs $3ish. If you judge sophistication based on the lack of overpowering sweetness, then this drink is more sophisticated than my former drink. And cheaper. My wallet hurts a bit less. But the child in me (I eat children) just wants his White Chocolate Mocha and doesn't want to pay a small fortune for it. (Inversely, the Jenny Craig in me says, "Adam, the Vanilla Latte is less fatty than the White Chocolate Mocha--no whipped cream.")

So if I get skinny, beautiful and rich, I think I'll have Starbucks to thank.

I know many of you are often thinking, "Gee, the Amateur Gourmet's pictures suck, I should buy him a fancy $1000 camera, but I won't because that may wound the Amateur Gourmet's pride." I now grant you permission to buy me the Camera of the Year 2004. You have nothing to be ashamed of, honestly. Please, free yourself, and buy buy buy. Then send send send. Thank you.

Just made some belated additions to the "Favorite Food Sites" list on the lower left side on this page. Since I have nothing to offer you today, why don't you check them out?

Chez Pim
Gothamist: Food
Bourrez Votre Visage
101 Cookbooks
tastingmenu.com
AndreaStrong
Holy Shitake
Walker New York: Eats
A La Carte

Plus, NYCEats' new identity: A Full Belly.

I completely just stole this picture so if someone feels robbed let me know and I'll take it down:

For the record, it's stolen from here found by visiting here.

Anyway, this post isn't about that picture. It's about McDonalds.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Julia Child was a fan of McDonald's french fries. She and Jacques Pepin said McDonalds fries (back when they fried them in beef fat) were comparable to some of the best in gay Paree. Even now, I must admit, the fries are pretty tasty.

Last week I broke a several year long McDonalds hiatus (with the exception of a lunch in an airport) since there's a McDonalds across from my school and I was hungry and in a rush. I got the McChicken sandwich extra value meal. It came with fries and a Coke. It tasted good.

Let's not be snobs here, people. "Super Size Me" (which I haven't seen yet) apparently argues that McDonalds isn't healthy. Well, duh. I know it's not healthy. Neither is half the stuff I bake with 8 sticks of butter. Neither is the saucy venison the rich folks are eating at Daniel. Rich unhealthy food is a luxury. And McDonalds is the working man's luxury food.

And as luxury food, I think it's enjoyable. The fries are enjoyable. (They were better before the veggies revolted.) The sandwich was crisp and flavorful. The Coke went down smooth.

Folks I know who hate McDonalds hate it because it's a big corporation, the same way Starbucks is a big corporation--and they avoid it for political reasons. I think that's a very slippery slope. Your grocery store is a corporation. The computer you're reading this on comes from a corporation. Your significant other is a corporation.

I haven't researched this at all (I'm not that kind of blogger) but I would argue that McDonalds probably does more for the world on a humanitarian level than the fanciest and most-acclaimed restaurants. Check out this article linked on kottke today. It argues that big famous celebrity chef owned restaurants are big frauds:

So who does the cooking? Mostly guys like Ernesto. Hardworking faceless guys from places like Guatemala, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Mexico. You were expecting a bunch of Italians singing opera flinging pasta? Wrong. You hear mariachi music and guys cursing in Spanish.

So sorry. It's a Mexican guy earning a paycheck, watching the clock praying for his shift to end as he sweats in front of a blast furnace cooking your food. In every restaurant in this great land of ours, whether it's French, Thai, Chinese, or even Indian, it's Se Habla Espanol.

I have a hunch this is probably true. Anthony Bourdain makes the same point in an interview about why he doesn't go to the James Beard awards:

"The reason I don't go to the [Beard] awards--and haven't gone for some time--is this entire business is built on the backs of Mexican and Central American labor. The Beard House has done nothing, that I can see, for them. So I don't mind seeing them fall on their face. In fact, I'm enjoying it."

Because it's a big corporation, McDonalds sponsors many a program and a charity to keep its good name. We're all familiar with Ronald McDonald Homes---I volunteered at one once in college. I remember a bunch of well-cared for kids dressed in Hamburglar costumes and forced to memorize that old McDonald's jingle---do you remember it? "Big Mac McDLT A quarter pounder with some cheese filet of fish a happy meal..."

Ok, just kidding about the kids--not the volunteering. But now I'm stuck on remembering that song. I remember our elementary school had a contest--whichever class memorized that song the best won a free class trip to McDonalds. How creepy that McDonalds had its hands in my elementary school's pockets!

That's really messed up!

You people should really stop eating there!

Now who remembers the song? "Big Mac McDLT a quarter pounder with some cheese filet o'fish a cheeseburger a happy meal......."

So as you can see from the post below, I've figured out how to blog from my mobile phone. It's called moblogging and perhaps I can be NYC's first food moblogger. (I don't see anyone else doing this?) I'll be a mofoblogger (mobile food blogger). Mofoblogging shall commence tomorrow!

Lisa's birthday is on Wednesday (the 24th) and she doesn't want celebration.

"I don't want celebration!" she's repeatedly said.

This self-effacement doesn't suit me well. Birthdays are times for revelry and much much self-promotion. (See my birthweek 2004 category). I found Lisa's non-birthday birthday stance to be quite infuriating.

The twist of it is that we'll all by gone Wednesday for Thanksgiving. Our only real opportunity to celebrate was last night. So we gathered up Ricky and decided to walk towards Union Square (where we were going to see Sideways) and find a place on the way. It started pouring. POURING. And no place could be found that was reasonable. Finally, we settled on Lemongrass which served fairly decent considerably fast Thai food. (My ginger chicken sucked, but everyone else liked theirs).

After this, we had 30 minutes 'til the movie started so we went across the street to Dean & Deluca to have some celebration birthday cake. Lisa and Ricky examined the glass case thoroughly:

The decision was staggeringly difficult. Part of the problem was figuring out what was inside some of the heavily iced cakes. "WHAT'S INSIDE?" whispered Lisa and Ricky like old British people in a horror movie. From the perspective of the cakes, it must have been thoroughly frightening:

Finally we settled on a chocolate purse and a chocolate chip cheesecake bar:

The cheesecake bar was ok, the chocolate purse was really delicious. We made sure not to sing happy birthday. Instead we discussed vegetarianism. Lisa's been a vegetarian for 15 YEARS. We debated whether if she ate a ham sandwich tomorrow and then stopped eating meat again if she could still call herself a vegetarian. It was a fascinating debate.

Soon, we were back in the rain heading for the movies. I thought I saw a twinkle in Lisa's eye. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LISA---HAPPY BIRTHDAY. Don't fight it.

A few weeks ago I received an e-mail from Fox Searchlight Pictures asking if I would promote "Sideways" on my site. All my integrity as a foodblogger was called into question. Would I really become a shill for the studio system, compromising everything I hold near and dear? Would I take another fat check like the one I took from McDonald's earlier this week?

Sure I would!

After all, I'm an enormous fan of Alexander Payne (the co-writer/director). His "Election" is one of my all-time favorite movies. So here's one of the pictures the studio sent me for you to be promoted by. I kind of like it because it has a behind-the-scenes sort of edge. Unless this was only for me to see and not to post in which case the picture you are looking at is ILLEGAL:

Now, as for the movie, it was really great. I don't lie when it comes to art (it is what I am most passionate about) so I would tell you if I thought it was crap. It's far from it. It's a very careful, very throughtful character study and tour through the Napa Valley. For us Amateur Oenophiles, the movie offers many insights into how to drink and enjoy wine. Miles (the protagonist) has a passion for it that mirrors the passions that lead many of us to blog about food. It's a dangerous passion because it invests a great deal of energy and emotion into something that is disposable. Makes me think of lines from "Sunday in the Park with George":

George: I care about many things.

Dot: Things. Not people.

[Sorry for the pretentious block-quoting.] I'm probably over seriousizing the movie. "Sideways" is also a lot of fun. There are great comic sequences that I won't spoil. And though the movie moves slowly, I was never bored. It takes its time. And the characters are richly drawn and charming, despite some of their flaws. I am so glad they cast Paul Giamatti in this part---he plays a great, honest leading man. Thomas Haden Church reminds me of many people I know--the lovable sociopath. Virginia Madsen is luminous; Sandra Oh has a great energy and presence. I wish they hadn't spoiled her blow-up scene in the previews.

The best thing about "Sideways" is that when it's over you have a wonderful excuse to drink wine. When we got out at 12:30, Lisa, Kirk and I (Ricky had gone to work) roamed the city looking for a wine bar. Instead, we found a Restaurant, Bar, Lounge in Chelsea. We sat down in cozy chairs and tried to order a bottle of Pinot like Miles in the movie.

"Ahhh," said the wiater, "we're all out of pinot tonight."

So we settled on Sauvignon Blanc---2003, Old Hollow---and appropriately from California. Honestly, we had no idea what we were doing (ordering wine) but we had fun doing it. Here's our bottle:

We went through all the requisite wine-movements as dictated from the movie (the swirling, the holding to the light, the sniffing) and then finally drank. I found the wine a little too fruity---it has hints of apple in it.

"Are you kidding?" asked Kirk, before tasting his. But after tasting his he agreed, "There are hints of apple in it."

Two glasses later, I had that tingling wine feeling. You know the feeling? It's like a heater in your body slowly being turned on. It felt nice. We walked home merrily and roughed up some homeless people. Soon, we parted ways and reflected on our happy evening of movie-seeing and wine-drinking. I recommend you do the same! (And not just because I'm being paid off...)

For those not in the know, this Thursday is Thanksgiving. It's a day where we awkwardly sit around and wait to eat lots and lots of food. Then we eat lots and lots of food. Some people watch football. Then we go home. Maybe "Home for the Holidays" will be on TV. We go to sleep in our tiny childhood beds and ponder the vast emptiness of the universe.

Sometimes there will be fighting. No, scratch the "sometimes"--there will definitely be fighting. X will comment that Y is drinking too much; Y will comment that Z had a little too much turkey; Z will accuse Y of not really being a vowel. People will chew. People will go home. Such is Thanksgiving.

But Thanksgiving is a feast---and when we think of a feast we think of celebration; of revelry. The god of Thanksgiving is Dionysus, not Dr. Phil. The original Thanksgiving was Pilgrims partying with Indians. There weren't any parents, any aunts, uncles, brothers or sisters. No one to tell you that you've gained weight, that you're a miserable failure, that you'll never amount to anything.

Pilgrim and Indians had a lot to talk about. "What's it like living in a tee-pee?" "What's it like sailing across the Atlantic?" "Did you think Dances With Wolves offered a sensitive portrayal?"

Families have nothing to talk about. "Did you take the garbage out?" "YES, SHUT THE HELL UP, YOU DON'T OWN MY LIFE." "Sorry grandma."

My point is that it's impossible to have a true feast--a bawdy, wild, spirited orgy of food and drink--when the majority of the bones being picked are your own. Thanksgiving has morphed into an impossibility: a soggy attempt to wed family and fun. It can't happen. It doesn't happen. Everyone's miserable.

But then again, Thanksgiving has its perks. There's turkey. More importantly, there's cranberry sauce. I love me some cranberry sauce. There's also sweet potatoes--sometimes with marshmallows on them. Yes, I know that's tacky, but I'll eat it. Maybe there's brown sugar and cinnamon in there too. Maybe for dessert there's pumpkin pie. I really like pumpkin pie. I'll confess, it's not my favorite but I'll eat it.

The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is something to watch dreamily, glad you're not with the throngs in the street getting trampled on. Burly, manly men like me ignore the baton twirling and high school bands--we focus mainly on the show tunes. Katy Couric, Matt Lauer, and Al Roker add a certain debauched charm to the proceedings. We watch until the family decides to do something together like go to the mall. Then we have to miss the pre-recorded production numbers from "Wicked" and "Fiddler on the Roof." We grow furious.

Dinner on Thanksgiving starts early. Like at 5. That's really early. My family, this year, will go to a buffet which I will take pictures of for you. The last time my mom cooked a Thanksgiving turkey. Ha. That sentence was a trick. My mom's never cooked a Thanksgiving turkey (at least I don't think she has). I offered to, but my family is still suspicious of my ability to cook. Besides, going out is easier. Less dishes, less stains on the rug and, more importantly, a bevy of Pilgrims and Indians to interact with to make the feasting more feastable.

Perhaps not cooking a turkey at home and going out instead captures the spirit of the original Thanksgiving, where two cultures so unalike sat down at the equivalent of an Olive Garden and gorged on bottomless salad and all you can eat breadsticks. Of course, eventually, the Pilgrims would rape and kill all the Indians. And actually, they weren't Indians--they were Native Americans. Indians live in India. Then there was that war in Iraq and the country went to shit.

Ok, on second thought, stay home--be with your family. They're all you have.

It's approximately 2:44PM right now, so for those of you getting a late start, here's some pointers on how to kill your turkey:

(1)  Never use a paintball gun to kill your turkey.  Paintballs rarely penetrate the skin and when they do they make the meat taste painty.

(2)  If you are killing a Kosher turkey, give the turkey a drop of Manishevitz to ease the pain.  In your best Yiddish accent say, "So, what are ya gonna do?  You're a toikey" then slice its head off.

(3)  Should the turkey resist your efforts, fall over and play dead.  When the turkey comes over to administer CPR, bite its head off.

(4)  Should the turkey spray you with an odorous substance after you kill it, you didn't kill a turkey.  You killed a skunk.

(5)  Should you kill a skunk, sautee it with olive oil, garlic and freshly chopped tomatoes.  Serve on a bed of fetuccini and garnish with skunk teeth.

(6)  Should you be a vegetarian, don't kill your turkey.  Just stare at it and say, "You and I are one."  Then eat a radish.

(7)  Should your turkey squirm and beg for its life and, after you kill it, you notice it didn't have feathers and that its skin is pasty, you didn't kill a turkey.  You killed an albino.

(8)  Feeding your turkey soap before you kill it will save you time in the kitchen.  This is what is known as a "self-cleaning" turkey.

(9)  Dancing with your turkey before it dies is cruel.  It may fall in love with you and no one wants to die at the hand of a loved one.  Especially a turkey.

(10)  Killing a turkey is a brutal act, but eating it is not.  Invite the turkey's family to dinner and apologize profusely.  Pass the cranberry sauce.  Drink heartily.  And, most importantly, have a Happy Thankgiving!

I saw this at Urban Outfitters last week. (No, I don't really buy clothes there--but if I did, I wouldn't be ashamed of it.) These wine glasses each hold an ENTIRE BOTTLE of wine. Genius? You decide:

I may be generalizing here, but many of the Jews that I know (especially the ones in my immediately family) love to eat raw onions. They don't eat them plain--they usually cut them into their salads or chicken dishes, but if gum hadn't ever been invented I'd probably keep a distance of at least 15 feet from my mother and grandmother.

Here, as piece-of-evidence number one, is a giant bowl of raw onions featured prominently at the buffet at my grandmother's retirement community. (For a more thorough tour, check out the funny food film "What Retired Folks Eat"):

The majority of folks at my grandmother's retirement community are Jewish. This bowl is featured prominently and is filled with raw onions. Coincidence? We think not.

Here are some hypotheses:

(1) Jews spent the large bulk of their history as nomads. Onions, perhaps, are easily plantable and grow quick? I'm not a farmer so I may very well be wrong.

(2) Jews have suffered bitterly at the hands of history but maintain a sturdy disposition. Onions are bitter but also slightly sweet and almost always sturdy.

(3) Back to the nomad thing: onions are protected with layers and layers of skin, good, maybe, for throwing into your satchel as you flee Crusaders and Inquisitioners, among others.

And that, my friends, ends my theory about raw onions and Jews.

We will now examine my Thanksgiving plate, consumed this past Thursday night not at home, but at a restaurant as is the custom with my family. I would have posted about it sooner but Michael (my brother) was sleeping in my room where the internet is, I was sleeping downstairs where the internet is not. I am now back in New York where the internet is. Let us explore:

We were at a Thanksgiving buffet so I had the opportunity to portion the contents of my Thanksgiving plate myself. In the northern center you will see slices of turkey and at 1 o'clock, a turkey leg with skin. Perhaps no pairing is greater than that of turkey with cranberry sauce (to be seen at 11 o'clock). This cranberry sauce wasn't fantastic, but it got the job done. Speaking of fantastic cranberry sauces, on the plane back (I flew Song) I watched the Food Network and Emeril (who I normally despise) made what looked like the greatest cranberry sauce ever. (I just tried to find the recipe for you, but I couldn't. What makes it special is he dices actual orange slices and throws them in, skin and all. Bam indeed!)

At 3 o'clock you will see some green vegetables which are necessary to appease your conscience which is worrying over the mashed molasses sweet potatoes at 6 o'clock and the cornbread/sausage dressing at 8 o'clock, both of which were the best parts of the entire meal. Have you noticed my weakness as an eater? I have a clawing sweet tooth that insists on being appeased at every turn. Maybe that's why I love Thanksgiving so much---lots of sweetness on the plate. Cornbread dressing (or is it stuffing? Survey says?) was surely the highlight---sweet, crumbly, spicy, savory: it had a lot going on. If I had the time, I'd make a post-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving feast to explore some of my discoveries at Thanksgiving dinner. Maybe I'll convert to Christianity and cook a Christmas dinner? Anyone want to send me a goose? But then I'd miss out on all the raw onions...

Grandma got the hiccups at Thanksgiving and then proceeded to pour sugar on to a spoon and then lick it.

"Grandma! What are you doing!" we shouted.

"It's my hiccup cure," she explained. "Take a picture and share it with your internet audience!"

Incredulous, I did...

...and sure enough, her hiccups went away. Just something to think about next time you hiccup at the table. The key, apparently, is to put the sugar on the tip of your tongue. Make sure to thank my grandma next time you see her.

When I think about Boca Raton, Florida, where I aged from 11 to 18--where I became the man that I am today--I don't really think about food. I think about fancy cars, old ladies, and pink shopping centers; I think about humidity and palm trees and guard gated communities. If you forced me to think about food, I would think about oranges (particularly from Blood's Groves, where we buy orange juice) and coconuts which we don't buy or eat but which grow profusely on coconut trees.

When I am in Boca Raton and I am asked where I would like to eat lunch, one of my favorite answers is: "Max's Grille." It's located in Mizner Park, a pink shopping center that was all the rage when it first opened but which is now shadowed by the cooler Muvico movie theater and Barnes and Noble shopping center across from FAU. I remember when Mizner first opened, there was deep controversy because the KKK was going to march. Now they've built an ampitheater and megastars like HEART come to play for geriatrics who sing along to "Barracuda." But I digress...

Max's Grille is an old war horse of Boca Raton restaurants. It still maintains quasi-popularity and still has better-than-average Boca food. Once, I saw Harold Ramis there. His wife spilled something and my mom gave him a napkin. Another time, I had the best salad of my life there. There was seafood in it and watermelon and it's very hard to recall but I loved it and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't curse myself for not asking for the recipe... I wake up kicking in the night... but I digress.

My favorite stalwart at the old war horse is a pasta called Radiatore with Roasted Chicken. It has sun-dried tomatoes and pine nuts and broccoli and a scoop of goat cheese on top. It's delicious. Take a look:

I love it because the sauce is chickeny and tomatoey---I think they use the bits from the roasted chicken that are left over. It tastes great. I've been eating it for years. And I mean that LITERALLY--one bowl lasts years.

I am not sure how to end this post so let's pass the buck to Heart, who will sing of the sadness I experience when recalling the salad I'll never eat again: "These GREENS go on when I close my eyes...every second of the night...I take another bite!"

When I got back from Florida last night and I was cranky and tired and hungry for something sweet, I defrosted the shortbread dough that I froze a few weeks back. I've never defrosted dough before: it's a tricky process. I basically stuck it in the microwave and nuked it for 15 seconds, felt it, nuked it some more, then took it out, refrigerated it, rolled it out and cut it with a makeshift cookie cutter (a water glass).

That's not what I'm here to tell you about, though. I'm here to tell you about my genius in the kitchen. Here's what I did. I made 8 cookie cut-outs. I sprinkled them all with sugar. Then I decided to go CRAZY. Consider the following:

Moving from left to right in vertical lines, we have:
- 2 cookies sprinkled with cinnamon;
- 2 cookies sprinkled with walnuts;
- 2 cookies sprinkled with ginger with a piece of candied ginger in the middle;
- 2 cookies sprinkled with nutmeg.

How did they taste? Good!

THE END.

Check out the new feature on the upper left corner. I made this for those of you that e-mail me asking for help only to have me either (a) ignore you, or (b) write you back with my proverbial hands in the air. Now the Amateur Gourmet community can help YOU with your kitchen needs. It's called "Kitchen Queries" and it shall provide you with hours of edifying entertainment. Query away!

I have made it a point this past week to go not once but twice to the Union Square Farmer's Market for fresh apple cider:

This is the year of the apple, apparently. I have heard from various sources that apples have never been better. The proof is in the cider--and the cider at the Union Square Farmer's Market is excellent.

Caveat: the GOOD cider at the Union Square Farmer's Market is excellent. The bad cider isn't so excellent. How can you tell the difference?

The good cider I had my first time out--it was served from the silver contraption you see above. It tasted fresh and appley. The bad cider happened today from an uncovered kettle thingie and it tasted less good. No, it wasn't really that bad. It was still cidery and yummy. But I'll choose my cider in the future from a covered kettle.

Pretty soon I'll make us all some cider at home using the Barefoot Contessa's non-revolutionary suggestion of adding cloves, cinnamon sticks, orange peel and maybe even rum. But til then, hit the Farmer's Market. It's comfort in a cup.

Do yourself a favor and follow this link to Feeding Dexygus Seconds's recipe post featuring Chez Panisse Gingersnaps (featured a few days ago on kottke.org.) I made them for school yesterday and EVERYONE loved them. Two camps developed, however. One batch came out chewier than the other batch. According to the link, the cookies should come out crisp and brown around the edges. Hence the chewy batch was the failure batch, but not according to some. "The chewier batch is superior," said these some. I disagreed. "The crispy batch is the superior cookie!" But the chewys did the crispys all a favor by getting rid of the bad stuff. The good stuff that remained was da bomb.

[Note: the superior batch was made, as pictured above, on the Silpat sheet. The inferior batch was made on parchment. And make sure to follow the direction to cook until brown around the edges--that really pays off. And don't skimp on the pepper--it gives the cookies a freaky edge that everyone loves.]

Kirk, Diana and I went tonight to see the new Neil Labute play, "Fat Pig":

Before I get into the play itself and the issues it raises, I must share something exciting that happened. While waiting to go in, Neil Labute himself came into the lobby. Diana and I pushed Kirk to introduce himself because Kirk, like Neil, went to BYU and then to our Tisch program. So Kirk did and Neil was incredibly receptive. We also spotted Neil in his theater seat taking notes after the play, and he gave us a wave. So basically Neil Labute, Kirk, Diana and I are all best friends.

Now for the play: this is a tough play. The premise is that Jeremy Piven falls for a fat girl; his best friend (Andrew McCarthy) disapproves and his ex (Keri Russell, from Felicity) is disgusted. The play takes a brutal look not at obesity in America but at how we perceive obesity in America. And the point seems to be that our society's obsession with weight and nutrition and health is rooted in something ugly and merciless in all of us.

I think the play is incredibly successful in showing how weight functions in power dynamics at the work place, in the bedroom, and out in the world. Many mistake Labute as a sadist who hates his characters; I think he's a moralist who uses his characters to expose emotional truths. But that's playtalk, and this is a food site.

I won't lie and say that I skip merrily from bakery to bakery, from cupcake to cupcake, without some thought as to how it affects my body; as to how my body is perceived and how what I put into it affects how others perceive me. If I wanted to, I suppose, I could eat nothing but health food, spend all day at the gym and look something like Sylvester Stallone by way of Woody Allen. But that's not in me to do that. Instead, I think there's a happy medium between gluttony and savage self-denial. Sometimes the balance teeters in one direction, but mostly I try to even things out by eating a salad on a day after eating a big fat steak with bacon. (Ok, I've never eaten a steak with bacon but I feel like it drives the point home).

Women, however, worry me. I am worried for women. I do not envy women in America's weight culture. When Kirstie Alley is on the cover of several major magazines because she blew up and people are buying this and reading it fervently, I worry about our values. More importantly, I worry about our children. I have known many girls (in high school, college, and beyond) with eating disorders. It is not baffling to me how this comes to be. What is baffling is that no one seems to really think it's a problem. Maybe there's a sense of "this is the way of the world--the way nature intended it, for women to lure men in with sleek, slender bodies; to set their procreation bells buzzing." But my response to that is simple. Nature did not, I assure you, intend Lara Flynn Boyle.

Anyway, I'm sure there are a million things to talk about when it comes to weight in America. This post is murky because it's not quite a play review, not quite a thesis, not quite an anything. So I'll conclude with two thoughts: (1) If you live in New York, check out "Fat Pig"; and (2) If you're Lara Flynn Boyle, go eat something.

Please forgive the now-deleted self-indulgent post from last night. That was one of those posts that you post and then wake up, scratch your head and ask, "Did I really post that?" I feel especially bad because Josh at The Food Section wrote me and reminded me that I only e-mailed him once a long long time ago to tell him about it, but never asked him to include me in his links. This is true. But he's graciously added me to his Metro section which means a great deal to me because The Food Section is one of my hands-down favorite food sites. [Maybe the squeaky blogger does get the grease.] Anyway, stay tuned for info regarding a get-together and thanks for all the praise regarding my new playwriterly glasses.

Blogging is a tricky business. Too much self-revelation--"I fear bugs!" "I smoke crack!" "I punch babies!"--gets tiresome. Not enough, and you begin to alienate your audience.

In my last educational experience (law school), I shared much of my everyday experience with (to use a Southern catchphrase) y'all. "Today I took a test," "Today I didn't take a test," "Today I almost took a test." It was a fascinating exploration into the mind of a foodie law student.

Now that I'm a foodie student of Dramatic Writing (at NYU), I've been more reticent to share my goings-on since (a) they don't really tie in with food and (b) I'm more consumed by them (in a very good way) and in a way I like to keep my writing life separate from my food blogging.

But this week marks the end of my first semester. Within the next few days I'll be handing in a full one act play, the beat sheet and first act of a screenplay, and the final revision of one of my drama lab pieces. With this sudden freedom, I plan to do much more comprehensive food blogging. And if you're curious about what it is I've been writing, click below and I'll tell you all about my projects. Thanks for being patient with me semester--it's been tough starting a new school in a new city and maintaining this site. But I'm glad I have--it's been well worth it!

Andrea and Michelle, first and second place winners of Gourmet Survivor, have started their own website: Link: Oranges and Lemons. Check it out!

Click here to watch a fascinating video of Fergus Henderson and Anthony Bourdain making crispy pig's tails. Even more fascinating, Fergus (who is known for cooking all parts of the animal) is living with Parkinsons disease--it's amazing to watch him at work, both sad and inspiring at the same time. [Via Saute Wednesday].

I am home in Florida but I forgot my camera wire. So this week will be very texty.

Which, I suppose, is good for a writer. Real writers don't need no pictures.

I am home for Christmas Break and currently sitting in my parents room while my mom watches "Desperate Housewives."

"Mom," I say, "I am going to interview you about food for my website."

"Shhh," she says, "I'm trying to watch my show."

And so the interview begins:

AG (Amateur Gourmet): What was the first thing you ever cooked?

Mom: Cooked cooked? Spaghetti and meatballs. Oh, wait. Chicken. And dad told me it's not supposed to be pink inside--it was raw. I didn't know but I'd never cooked a chicken before: I was 18.

AG: What was the first fancy dinner dad took you to?

Mom: How about the first dinner?

AG: Ok.

Mom: Steve's--that was our first date. Dad said, "You're not thirsty right? You don't want a Coke." It was a luncheonette by the dental school. [NOTE: My dad's a dentist.]

AG: But what about your first really fancy dinner?

Mom: BRAAAD! WHERE WAS OUR VERY FIRST FANCY DINNER WE EVER ATE!

Dad (from the other room): What do you want to know?

Mom: WHAT WAS THE FIRST FANCY DINNER WE EVER ATE?

Dad: Why do you want to know that?

Mom: We have to think about.

Dad: Lincoln Inn?

Mom: Shhh, I have to watch my show.

[Pause while the show continues. Lynette sees the babysitter gets along better with her own kids than she does. "I told Zach he could trust you and you turned him in." - Julie to Teri Hatcher.]

[The interview continues.]

AG: What is your favorite vegetable?

Mom: (She snorts) Hmmm... I hate vegetables. I don't know, what do I like? String beans.

AG: You don't hate vegetables.

Mom: I do. How about Caesar Salad.

[Pause.]

AG: What was your most successful diet? (Mom's been on many diets.)

Mom: I guess Diet Center after I had Michael.

AG: How come?

Mom: Because I gained 75 pounds when I was pregannt with him.

AG: How was it successful?

Mom: I don't know--you really want to know?

AG: Yes.

Mom: Ok--it was eggs in the morning with wassa bread

AG: Wassa bread can you spell that?

Mom: W-A-S-S-A- B-R-E-A-D

AG: Ok.

Mom: Then it was 3 oz of protein with either a salad or a cooked vegetable and whatever you didn't have for lunch you would have for dinner---you couldn't have a cooked vegetable and a salad together. Two fruits a day. They dot their "I" with the apple symbol, one of them being an apple. That's about it. And water.

AG: Who was the best cook in our family?

Mom: Nobody. Well, grandma Elsie. Dad's mother. This is my interview? She never cooked for me.

AG: So no one in your family.

Mom: My mother and grandmother maybe? Nobody really excelled. My mother, I guess. [Show turns back on.] Ok, bye.

[Another pause.]

AG: What is your favorite food city?

Mom: New York City.

AG: What is your favorite restaurant in New York?

Mom: I don't know, it's a good question. I forget, what do I like?

AG: Jean-Georges? Daniel?

Mom: Oh, Jean-Georges--that was the best meal. BRAD, WHAT'S MY FAVORITE RESTAURANT IN NEW YORK CITY?

Dad: I'd say the River Cafe.

Mom: Yes, The River Cafe. I really can't remember things.

Me: What is your daily breakfast routine?

Mom: Lately, the last few weeks, I have coffee, then I have low-carb Special K. A half a cup. With green milk.

Me: Green milk?

Mom: I forget the name of the milk but it's in a green container. It's low-carb milk.

Me: Blech.

(Pause.)

Me: Who is your favorite TV Chef?

Mom: I don't have any.

Me: Make one up.

Mom: Emeril Lagasse--bam bam bam.

Me: Ugh.

Mom: Oh, I know, the people who own Fresco on the Morning Show. The Scotto Family?

Me: Yes.

Mom: Shhh, the show's back.

Lady on TV: You should know that Rex still loves you. Very much.

Redhead: He said that?

[Pause.]

AG: Any other comments you'd like to make?

Mom: BRAD BOSTON LEGAL'S STARTING YOU WANT TO WATCH IT? MICHAEL, YOU WANT TO WATCH IT?

AG: Any final thoughts?

Mom: About WHAT? WHAT'S THE SUBJECT?

AG: Food.

Mom: I think food is very overrated. Don't write that.

Dad: What's he writing?

Mom: I don't want that going out on the internet. Look at what he's writing, Brad.

Dad: I can't I have to pee.

Thanks to those who nominated me for the Accidental Hedonist's 2004 Food Blog Awards. We made it into two final categories: Best Food Blog Humor and the big kahuna, Best Overall Food Blog. So stay tuned and if I'll make sure to mention each and every one of you in my acceptance speech!

Ok, it's 1:16 AM and I am in my living room watching a cheesecake cool.

You see tonight I made dessert for tomorrow night. I am planning ahead. Sarah Moulton would be so proud.

I made a cheesecake from a Wolfgang Puck book I skimmed through today at the bookstore. The cheesecake is called "Cookies and Cream Cheesecake" and it looks phenomenal. Well except for the whole "I didn't use a water bath because mom doesn't have a roasting pan and now the top is all cracked and puffy and scary looking" factor. But, again, the ingredients are scrumptious so how can it taste bad? Report to follow.

Otherwise, I have my soup planned: Butternut Squash and Apple Soup with Bacon.

Now I'm just trying to figure out the main course and the sides. Thank you all for your kind suggestions. But I think I need to do this on my own. It's a growing up kind of thing. Time I became a man--a man who makes butternut squash soup.

I wish I'd brought my camera wires, I could show you my cheesecake. As it stands, I'll use dad's camera tomorrow to take pictures of the dinner and then write all about it before I go to bed. Unless my family stones me because the food tastes so bad. Wish me luck!

Last week I had to have a meeting with one of my drama teachers before the semester ended. He gave me an evaluation--told me how I was doing as a student and as a person in the program. As I left, he said: "Enjoy your vacation--have your mom cook you a home cooked meal."

"Ha," I responded, "My mom doesn't cook."

He gave me a look of deep concern and said, "How do you feel about that, Adam?"

The frame wobbles. A flashback.

*************************************

A young boy runs through a field--his blonde hair waving in the wind like a retarded sailor at a picnic. Off in the distance he sees his mother beckoning him.

"Come!" sings her voice. "Come, my child! Come to your mother, through the field, and let us sup together!"

The boy runs faster. His hair grows more eager, more retarded. Finally, he's face to face with the force that gave him life.

"Mother!" says the boy in an affected British accent. "I am ever so excited for supper! Whatever did you cook?"

The mother regards the boy cooly and then says with a stern tone, "I didn't cook anything, my son. I am an emancipated woman--freed from the confines of the kitchen. I am a woman who orders in, who dines out, who never lifts a pot or a pan. I," she says triumphantly, "am your non-cooking mother. Deal with it."

The little boy's face wells up with tears. "But mama!" he screams. "I'm hungry."

She smacks him roughly. He topples over killing a squirrel. He sobs until the crows begin to peck at his coccyx.

That little boy was me.

******************************

This morning mom woke me up and said, "Rise and shine--time to start your day."

Our day began with a quick lunch at Alexander's--near Whole Foods and Bed, Bath and Beyond. My brother joined us and while they were paying the check, I made my way to BBB and bought some last minute necessary kitchen equipment: baking sheets, measuring spoons (my mom thought a teaspoon was an actual metal spoon you used to stir tea), a microplane grater. Then I went over to Whole Foods (I know, I know--it's crazy expensive, why do you shop there? But it's convenient and I know it and I think their produce is worth the extra few dollars for a special occassion) and bought onions, fennel, and all the other stuff I would need for dinner.

Then I tried to buy a 10-lb whole salmon but they only had 14-lb salmon. That would not do.

So mom suggested we go to King's---a Gourmet farmer's market type place with a good fish department. We went there. We asked for a 10-lb salmon. They had a 12-lb salmon. The Barefoot Contessa wants a 10-lb salmon, head and tail cut off, butterflied, and deboned leaving 7lbs of fish. We decided to go with the 12-pounder and the man cut its head off, cut its tail off, shaved off the scales, butterflied it and deboned it. (It was really a treat to watch him.) When he finished, the salmon weighed 9 lbs.

"Oh no!" I shrieked. "9 lbs! But the Barefoot Contessa says it has to be 7 lbs at this point! And it has to cook for 30 minutes in a 500 degree over EXACTLY--and if it weighs 2 more lbs, it will throw off the whole cooking time!"

My mother smacked me roughly. (Just kidding. My mom doesn't hit me. Her assistant does.)

"Adam," she said, "Why don't I have the man cut off 2 lbs and put it in a separate container and I'll freeze it and use it next week."

"You mean you'll cook the leftovers?"

"Yes," she said tenderly. "I will."

A stroke of genius. The man cut off the 2 lbs and we were left with the requisite 7. Here's what it looks like on the platter before the preparations:

That is a lot of salmon. That salmon could feed a village in Alaska. Instead, it would feed 6 Jews in Boca Raton, Florida.

******************************

Here's how it went down. I started with the soup. Butternut Squash soup. I got the recipe at Epicurious, and it wasn't the one I linked to in a previous post: I went with something simpler. I cut up the squash, cut up an onion, cooked the onion with butter and nutmeg, added the squash, and an apple cut up and apple juice and vegetable broth and simmered for 30 minutes until tender, and then blended it so it looked like this:

It tasted great.

When it came time to serve it, I ladeled 2 ladelfulls into every bowl, added a dollup of sour cream and some chives and isn't this picture pretty?

Here's the recipe, for those that are interested.

Next, then, we had the salmon.

How do you deal with a salmon that big?

Well the Barefoot Contessa has you chop up 3 lbs of onions and 3 lbs of fennel and saute it with olive oil until tender; then you add thyme, orange zest, orange juice and fennel fronds. Here's me saute-ing while my brother cuts potatoes for the side dish:

Actually, I had a bit of a sauteing crisis. I tried to use my mom's Le Crueset pot (yes, my mom has a Le Crueset she was given 25 years ago at her wedding) but it couldn't hold all the onions. So I grabbed some wide-rimmed cooking vessel that was hidden away in a drawer and that worked fine. Mom said--upon entering the room--"That's not for cooking, that's for serving." But I think she was wrong. It really did cook everything.

So then, you lay the fish skin side down and sprinkle with salt and pepper. You fill it with the filling and then tie it up and bake it at 500 degrees for 30 minutes.

"That will never cook through in 30 minutes, no way," said my mom.

She proved wrong but later explained her strong assertion.

"Well if it wasn't butterflied," she explained, "it would never cook that fast. I think it's because it's butterflied that it cooks faster."

Here's what it looks like when it comes out:

It's surrounded by leftover onions and fennel. It came out smelling and tasting great.

Oh, I forgot to mention, my mom made her usual salad of iceberg lettuce, cucumbers, and tomatoes with our family favorite Red Seas red wine vinaigrette:

Michael, my brother, helped me with the carrots and potatoes--the standard Barefoot Contessa recipes I used for Passover last year. They came out great too. Thus, our entree plate looked like this:

"Delicious!" said everyone. Everyone really liked it. There was no faking about it. Plates were scraped clean. There was SO much salmon for everyone. 7 lbs of salmon i way too much even for the hungriest of families. (Thus, I will not recommend that you make this dish unless you are inviting an army over for salmon and hopscotch.)

Here's the happy family enjoying the food:

Oh, I forgot to mention that we kept the potatoes warm in my mom's high-tech warming drawer:

(For someone who doesn't cook, my mom has a way too advanced awesome easy to use kitchen. Oh well. I'm still not moving home!)

Now then we did the soup. We did the salad. We did the entree and the sidedishes.

What's left?

The best part.

Last night, when everyone went to bed, I got to work on Wolfgang Puck's Cookies and Cream Cheesecake. When I took it out of the oven at 12:30 am, they top was overinflated, pieces were falling off, the smell of burning cookie crums emanated from the oven. Trouble seemed to be brewing. I waited until late into the night for it to cool, then I covered with aluminum foil and put it into the fridge--hoping for the best.

When I took it out and uncovered it, it looked like this:

Which is to say it looked pretty good.

Then I cut around the outside with a warmed wettened knife and lifted off the outer ring. It looked splendid.

Grandma helped me slice the pieces up:

They were quickly served. Everyone ooed and aahed.

"Oh my God, Adam," said my mother from the other room as I kept cutting more cake, "this is too good. It's SICK, she said. It's SICK, it's so good."

This picture came out terrible, but perhaps it will suggest to you this cake's heavenly glow:

I'm too tired to do it now, but if you beg me I'll type out the recipe for it in the comments.

Meanwhile, the phone rang and mom's friend Jaimie called and asked how the dinner was going. "Jaimie," said my mom, "come over and try this cake."

So she did and brought her husband and son. They oohed and ahhed and posed for another group photo:

Then we lounged around the table drinking decaf coffee contemplating the meal we'd just enjoyed. Well that most of us had just enjoyed. Some of us--us being them--were last minute arrivals who only ate cheesecake. Yet, there was no arguing that the meal was a huge success.

A huge success except for the salmon which was pretty wasteful. But, fear not: there is no waste when grandma's around.

The tupperware drawer flew open and grandma stuffed at least 3 lbs of salmon into one large piece of tupperware.

"I'll freeze this," she said, "and well eat for a year!"

*******************

Two women are running through a field. Two women, their husbands, and a young man who goes by the name of "brother."

They all run freely and gaily. They are running like geese from a hunter; like mimes from a mine; like Porgy from Bess. (Ok, I'm making no sense--this is post-feasting delirium.)

Anyway, the point is they're running. And off on a hill they see an Amateur Gourmet in glasses, with a laptop and a dream and they are saying, "We're hungry" and he beckons them and feeds them. He is gratified and glorified and fond of alliteration.

That Amateur Gourmet is me. (Dramatic music. Curtain. Wild applause.)

My fellow food blog readers, ask not what the food blog community can do for you, ask how you can vote for me. How can you vote for me? Go to Accidental Hedonist and run through the votes in the upper right hand corner. I'm up for Best Food Blog--Humor and Best Overall Blog. Thanks for your support. And Happy Holidays!

2004 is come to an end. Less important media outlets cover things like "The Year in News" or "The Year in Movies." This media outlet encourages you to stick your fingers in a socket as we take a quick look at: THE YEAR IN FOOD: (aka, Food's Greatest Moments, 2004)

[Warning: This list is composed entirely off the top of my head moments before I leave for a New Year's party.]

1. Martha went to jail.

2. Butter became the new olive oil.

3. Lard became the new butter.

4. I made this tart.

5. Clotilde killed Pim with jam.

6. Pim came back to life and killed Jeremy. (And judging from his post frequency, this may actually be true.)

7. Rachel Ray got a new show and the world was thrown into chaos.

8. I made this cake.

9. I cut a slice.

10. I moved to New York and completed one full year of food blogging! Happy New Year!

And now from my classmate, peer and contemporary James Felder---proprietor of the snazzy photoblog Snapshot Artifact---comes an entry about velvet cake. Red velvet cake? No no. This velvet cake is black. Enjoy!

After a somewhat lackluster attempt at making a Red Velvet cake in early December from a decent, but outdated, recipe in the James Beard Cookbook, I decided to try baking the cake again from a different recipe. I got this Red Velvet recipe out of the More From Magnolia cookbook. I usually like to bring to parties vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting that I make from a recipe in the first Magnolia book. It’s a real winner. Easy to make, foolproof recipe, happy partygoers with sticky fingers (hehe).

The second problem I won’t go into detail here. Let me just say though, when you consume an evening’s worth of various delicacies that have been dyed black, the aftereffect of it hours later is a bright mossy green. Enough said.

I am rarely at the forefront of New York foodie gossip. Perhaps, this is common knowledge, but I was excited to see this on the third floor of the Time Warner Center yesterday:

So if this is breaking news, let me be the one to break it: Bouchon Bakery is opening up in New York!

Actually, I don't think it's breaking news---I remember that was mentioned when Thomas Keller first opened Per Se. But it'll be nice to have a much more reasonably priced Keller restaurant only a few subway stops away. And maybe there'll be an actual bakery counter? How cool!

Ok, the breaking news has now concluded.

"From the pasta we make
To the bread that we bake
we're wishing you an Olive Garden birthday.
We hope you will remember
this joyous day forever
we're wishing you an Olive Garden birthday."
- old Olive Garden birthday song, as remembered from my childhood.

Despite the order of the title, we begin with childhood. A large bulk of my childhood was spent at The Olive Garden. Beginning in the year 1990, the year my family moved to Florida from New York, we dined almost weekly at The Olive Garden. We lived first with my great-grandmother in Sunrise Lakes and ate at the Olive Garden there. We found this to be a great discovery. Endless breadsticks and salad! Pasta! Sauce! Dessert! What more could you want in a restaurant?

Then we moved north to Boca Raton--renting a house in Boca Point---and eating just down the road at the Boca Raton Olive Garden. The same bread and salad! The same pasta! Sauce! And as for dessert we made a discovery: tell them it's your birthday and get a free cake. Each week we'd have another birthday and another cake. Our refrigerator was filled with Olive Garden birthday cakes. (Hence my memorization of the Olive Garden birthday song at the top of this post).

My earliest Olive Garden memories are with my grandmother. Before we moved to New York, I flew alone to meet my grandmother and great-grandmother in Florida. That was the first time we ever ate at an Olive Garden. We loved it. It fit nicely into my grandmother's idiom of eating-out establishments: The Ponderosa, Sizzler. Places that gave you bang for your buck. And Olive Garden did just that: it's all about value.

Fast forward 14 years or so and you'll reach the same conclusion: it's still all about value. My friends love The Olive Garden for just that reason. It's so much food for so little. Well not so little anymore: my meal cost $16. But we'll get to that in a moment.

On Thursday night Alex, Lisa, Liz and I were looking for a pre-movie dining establishment near where we would go see "The Life Aquatic" (the most disappointing movie I've seen all year--that year being 2004). The Olive Garden was mentioned and everyone grew excited. Everyone, that is, except for me: my mind was in conflict. How could I, a self-professed amateur gourmet, grow excited about The Olive Garden? Was this not a huge step backwards? I put a smile on my face and nodded my head and followed the group. Meanwhile, my brain attempted to sort things out.

What's wrong with eating at The Olive Garden? Let's put aside all that political crap: I'm not interested in Olive Garden's corporate policy or its bread stick methodology. Instead, I'm interested in Epicurian values. What makes The Olive Garden less than worthy?

Here's the argument that makes the most sense to me: good dining (which doesn't necessarily mean fine dining) has two major components: (1) fresh, excellent ingredients (2) prepared with expertise and/or flair. I think this definition embraces both a 4-star meal at Jean-Georges and a carefully rendered dumpling in Chinatown. It's about freshness and skill.

Olive Garden has neither though their website begs to differ. Check it out---under "Our Passion" and "Italian Essentials" we learn that "No matter where you are in Italy, simple, fresh ingredients from the land are the most important part of the recipe. The same is true at Olive Garden." It goes on to say that:

"All of our soups, including Pasta e Fagioli, Minestrone and Zuppa Tuscana, are prepared from scratch every morning.

All of our Lasagnas are prepared daily and served with freshly grated cheese."

All of this under the heading "Freshness."

Wait a second. Preparing everything from scratch isn't an argument that your ingredients are fresh--it's an argument that you prepare everything from scratch. I think it's funny that they use the phrase "fresh ingredients from the land." I think that hits the nail on the head regarding the point I'm trying to make: how many steps is the journey from the land to your plate at The Olive Garden? My guess is many many steps. And that the source isn't anywhere you'd want to go near. Factory farming comes to mind, though I have no evidence to back that up.

As for preparation, I'm not sure what Olive Garden chefs do in an Olive Garden kitchen. I have a feeling there are instructions on the wall. I have a feeling that an Olive Garden chef, if handed a bag of flour, eggs and a pasta maker, might wet their pants. I have a feeling that an Olive Garden chef isn't much of a chef at all--the same way that someone who makes a mix tape isn't really a musician.

But maybe I'm being a snob.

"You're being a snob," Lisa would say regarding the above. Lisa, Liz and Alex love The Olive Garden. They don't think about it--they just do. Look how happy they are with their bottomless salad and breadsticks:

I sat there with them and ate gladly. The breadsticks tasted fine and so did the salad. They tasted familiar in a very comforting way. And familiarity is a virtue when it comes to Italian cooking. Even Marcella Hazan says so in the introduction to her book (purchased for me by Brian W.)--she calls familiarity "that essential attribute of the civilized life." I also think of Alice Walker's book title: "The Temple of My Familiar."

And it is perhaps the virtue of familiarity that trumps the freshness and skill touted above. Familiarity is a powerful weapon: it's what keeps the majority of people who eat the same foods for the entirety of their lives from trying anything new. But it's also what made this chicken parmesan so yummy:

It tasted like my childhood. Every bite tasted the way I anticipated it would---there was a nexus between desire and fulfillment. I got exactly what I wanted. How can you beat that?

Well there's food that challenges and surprises. Olive Garden doesn't do that. Also, even though it seems like a value getting all that food, it still ended up costing me around $22. For that much I could go 10 blocks south to Babbo and have something extraordinary. True it wouldn't be as much--maybe just a bowl of pasta--but what's more valuable: a bowl of earth-shattering pasta or pounds and pounds of crap that merely hits the spot? (Cue Woody Allen: "The food here is terrible...and such small portions!")

Thinking too much about food can be harmful. There is a place in our collective palates for The Olive Garden. Clearly that's the case: there was a 45 minute wait for our table. People love The Olive Garden. I loved The Olive Garden in my childhood. My friends love it now. And maybe I love it a little too. Just don't tell anyone, ok?

Accidental Hedonist v2.1 - 2004 Best Food Blog - Humor. I'd like to thank all the little people, especially my sous chef, Consuela. I couldn't done this without you, Consuela! I'm sorry I sold your children!

Just when you had your fill of New York binge eating, I'm headed to DC to visit Lauren--my old roommate, confidante and stomach donor. We will be having many food adventures, so stay tuned. (Not sure if I'll blog when I'm there or when I get back... but probably when I'm there. But not definitely. So don't hold your breath. Ok, maybe a little.) I'm excited!

Dear Waiter,

How are you? I am fine. I really enjoyed your service last night at the Dosa Hut. Lisa did too. We admired your knowledge of the menu. For example, when I said: "Which bread is most like naan?" you quickly pointed us in the right direction. You refilled our water glasses with impressive regularity. You brought the check in a timely manner. You did a very nice job in all these departments.

Here's the thing. When you took our order, you stared at us nervously. I said, "I'll have #51." (I forget the name of it--I think it was chickpeas and spinach. In fact I know it was.) Lisa said, "I'll have #50." (And hers was eggplant and onions and tomatoes and such.) I ordered a mango lassi. We also ordered bread. You began to sweat. You tried to repeat it back to us. You got it wrong. We corrected you. You scampered off and miraculously got our order right.

But now a question. Why did you do this? Why didn't you write it down? Seriously: why didn't you write it down?

I'm not mad. I'm genuinely curious. I mean, paper isn't expensive, is it? Pencils cost a penny, right? A few pennies, fine. But certainly there are pencils lying around.

Is it a pride thing? Are you trying to expand your brain by memorizing people's orders? Might you not do this in another way? Perhaps a game of Simon?

If it was to win our favor, I don't think memorizing orders wins anyone's favor. I think most people are at the point now where the novelty isn't so much a novelty as it is an irritant. It means, there's a good chance you won't get our order right. There have been times when memorizing waiters haven't gotten our orders right. This drives us crazy and perhaps we're taking our anger out on you. If that's the case, we apologize. But not whole-heartedly.

In the future, then, please, just write it down. No one gets hurt. You have it on the paper, we'll feel better, you'll feel better and the order will come out right. Food won't be wasted. Chefs won't yell at you. If you are sued later, you'll have a document of what we ate. If you keep a journal, you can write all about what your customers had for dinner. The possibilities are endless. Writing orders down is fun.

Ok, waiter? I hope this letter wasn't rude or belittling or obnoxious. Again, we really admired your work. Just write it down in the future, ok? Ok?

Thanks, waiter. You're the best.

Sincerely,
The Amateur Gourmet

I purchased The Saveur 100 yesterday---the yearly masterlist of all things vital in the culinary world. Of course, any list like this is arbitrary (see, for example, People's Sexiest Man Alive issue---if it weren't arbitrary, I'd surely be in there along with Don Knotts), and so one must take it with a grain of salt. At its best, The Saveur 100 can turn you on to things that you might not have been turned on to. For example, a past issue of the Saveur 100 turned me on to...ummm...something, I'm sure. Now I don't remember what it is. But I'm sure I still love it.

This year's list has some eye-rollers. For example, why is the #6 most important thing in food this year a website that features Shakespeare food quotes? This is it. Actually, it's kind of cool. I take back my criticism. In fact, I'll use this Shakespearean ginger quote as my segue:

Twelfth Night, II, 3:
CLOWN: Yes, by Saint Anne, and ginger shall be hot i' the mouth too.

The #85 most important thing in food is this:

Ginger Altoids. Sayeth Saveur: "These little things don't just improve your breath; they take your breath away. Ginger Altoids pack a spicy wallop--and each one leaves you eager for another one."

To test this theory I sampled two Ginger Altoids. The following is what went on in my brain while sucking said Altoids.

Ginger Altoid #1: Hmm, ok, feels chalky in my mouth. Small. Moving it around. Suddenly, some flavor--it's sweet and gingery. Tates like gingerbread without the bread. But not so powerful, yet. Just very mild. Easy. Nice. Ahhh. Wait. Hmmm. This is getting spicier. What's happening? My mouth is growing numb. This ginger is hot hot hot. Ouch. I am not enjoying this. Chew chew chew!

(Altoid chewed and ingested. Time passes. Another Altoid sampled.)

Ginger Altoid #2: I don't know why I'm trying this again. I didn't really enjoy the first one. Here we go again. Ok, ok, so far so good. Bland again. Powdery. Ginger. Sweet. Mmm. Nice. Wait. Here it comes. Heat heat heat. Wow, that is spicy. Ouch. Cough. Hack. ACK ACK ACK

death.

Exactly one year ago tonight I made my first post here at The Amateur Gourmet. The post was titled: The Birth of an Amateur Icon. I wrote:

"I'm The Amateur Gourmet: a completely untrained, unaccomplished culinary lout with absolutely no expertise in anything having to do with food. I have an immature palate, an understocked pantry and a penchant for purchasing food that's already been prepared. In my defense, I watch Martha Stewart religiously."

365 days later and my palate is still a bit bratty, my pantry mostly understocked (although the ingredients are stranger: vanilla bean? Cardamom? Propeesha?) and for dinner tonight I bought pre-made food at Whole Foods. However, it must be said that Martha Stewart is in prison.

This site has proved to be so much fun. I love doing it. I love that you read it. I love loving that you read it. All in all, these have been the best 365 days ever. Here's to at least 360 more! And please know how grateful I am for all of you wonderful people out there, in the dark. I couldn't do this without you. All right, Mr. Del Monte, I'm ready for my close up.

Happy Anniversary!

I make it a point never to assign myself stories for this site. What keeps everything so fresh and alive is that it's all spontaneous---if one day I make a lemon tart the next day I may kill a coyote. You never know what you're going to get.

So that's the first reason I resisted Iron Chef: America. I didn't want to make a task of watching it.

The second reason, though, is more substantial. The first incarnation of Iron Chef America sucked. In fact, it sucked so hard I can barely remember it. There was a first incarnation of Iron Chef America, right?

But tonight was a completely different story. Tonight I was grabbed by what ultimately proved to be great television---Iron Chef America: Flay vs. Bayless.

Let's break down what made this episode so great:

(1) The competitors. This was a good match. I've eaten at Flay's Mesa Grill and loved it and I know Rick Bayless has an impeccable reputation as a champion of Mexican cuisine. (Although his impeccability was pecked a bit by Anthony Bourdain when Bayless endorsed the Burger King Southwestern Sandwich. "In one stroke, he's negated everything he's ever said, everything he ever claimed to stand for," wrote Bourdain.) But, anyway, it was a good match up.

(2) The commentator's Alton Brown. Perhaps he was the commentator in the show's first incarnation, but I didn't really know his work then. Now I make it a point to watch "Good Eats" whenever I have the opportunity. Some of his gimmicks and humor is hoaky (like the vampire garlic episode I watched tonight) but he's incredibly smart and these gimmicks serve to drive his points home. And he's the furthest thing from pretentious I can imagine. I like Alton Brown.

(3) One of the judges was Jeffrey Steingarten. Hello! Jeffrey Steingarten! On Iron Chef: America. What's he doing there? This show MUST be worth watching.

So it pulled me in. And for the most part I was not disappointed. In fact, I was mostly thrilled and captivated. Flay and Bayless both took their cooking very seriously. Flay was a work horse--flying around the kitchen like a deranged demon, stirring pots, blending sauces, and yelling at workers over messed up mango chutney. He was an intense player and for much of the time I found his intensity unappealing, but by the time his dishes were served up they positively glowed with accomplishment. So perhaps intensity is worthwhile.

Bayless, on the other hand, was charming. He reminded me a bit of Stephen King. (Not that I know Stephen King, but I've seen him speak.) He has a gentility and an intelligence and a patience that made him equally captivating. Why wasn't he stressing out more? Even Flay commented on it. "He's driving me crazy, he's so calm"* (This is quoted from memory, so it's probably not right.)

My favorite part of the show was the first 40 minutes---the cooking. It was great to watch these guys at work, to see how they commanded their kitchens, how they interacted with their staff. There's no doubt that Bayless's staff looked happier and more fond of their boss; Flay's workers had the beaten-down quality of indentured servants. When his sous chef left the mango chutney on the stove, Flay said: "It's dead now. You ruined it."

But boy did it make great theater. It's a great study in the creation of art---how some attack their material (Flay) and others finesse their material (Bayless) to create results of almost identical quality. (The final pointage was 24 to 25. I won't tell you who won.)

Here's where I got angry at the producers---and this is a personal taste thing---but the only meritorious member of that judging panel was Mr. Steingarten. In terms of status and intelligence and honesty and cleverness he was yards above the CBS morning show Kathy Lee Gifford clone and the Zagat guy. Why was the Zagat guy on the panel? That's like having a phone book editor on a panel with a sociologist. Zagats is just an assemblage of information--nothing more. I really didn't get that.

But what REALLY pissed me off is that most of the reactions they showed were the CBS lady's and the Zagat guy's. Steingarten barely got any quips in. When he did, he came across as pompous and condescending--when I have a feeling he only wanted to shake things up. On the original Iron Chef, there was always that food critic lady and she was often that show's saving grace. Every show needs its Simon Callow---he's the salt that keeps everything from being bland. And Jeffrey Steingarten was certainly primed to salt things up, but the editors barely worked him in. For shame!

However, I must say that this Iron Chef America episode was so good that I'm going to say something outrageous: I liked it better than the original Iron Chef. Here's why: the original Iron Chef (at least from an American's perspective) was all about camp. High theatrics; big exaggerated stakes; colorful characters---all very entertaining, but somehow existing in the land of make believe. What Iron Chef America does is replace those campy elements with real genuine passion and zeal---these are people who have all devoted their lives to food (the commentator included) and who really want to prove themselves to each other. The stakes don't need to be pretend (like being banished from kitchen stadium, etc) because the real stakes are more compelling: in many ways, this is the culmination of long accomplished careers. For example, when again will Rick Bayless be cooking in front of so many people on TV? Sure, he may one day achieve the perfect mole(accent on the e), but who will be there to taste it? Not Jeffrey Steingarten. So it makes for fantastic television. Check it out.

ALLEZ CUISINE!

A sore throat, a runny nose, even a repetetive sneeze will spray me south two stops on the NR and then two Avenues east, past the trendy people in the East Village, to that bastion of restorative medicine: The 2nd Ave. Deli, home of the city's most mystically curative chicken soup.

I've lived here since August. In that time, I've gone to the 2nd Ave. Deli three times for three separate bowls of chicken noodle soup which means I've had three colds since I moved here. Maybe it's the germs on the subway or all the people I make out with. In any case, The 2nd Ave. Deli always succeeds in making me feel better (although it costs a pretty penny). Today I decided to be economical and order soup and half a sandwich (as opposed to a whole sandwich).

Which brings us to the title of this post. This post isn't about soup. It's about my sandwich. What was on my sandwich? The Jewish foie gras: Chopped Liver.

When I told the waiter what I wanted on my sandwich he smiled. In that smile we communed for a moment. "Ah, chopped liver," he projected, "You're a real Jew, aren't you? Who else would order that? I'm impressed. Shalom! Long live Israel!" (He was a long-winded projector.)

There are some Jewish foods I've seen my non-Jewish friends eat. Matzoh ball soup, for example. Bagels, of course. Lox even. Maybe a hamentaschen here and there. But never, never ever ever have I seen a non-Jewish friend eat Chopped Liver. I imagine that given the prospect most of them would go: "Blech!"

Are you going "blech" right now? Why are you grossed out? Is it because it's liver? Is it because it's chopped? ARE YOU AN ANTI-SEMITE?

Chopped liver was a simple standard of my childhood. It'd be mounded (as it is in the above picture) at family functions and Bar Mitzvahs and weddings, usually with chopped hard-boiled eggs and raw onions. We'd eat it when we'd go to the deli or the bagel store. That is until my grandmother interceded and told us: "DON'T ORDER CHOPPED LIVER. IT'S AN ORGAN MEAT!"

That's one of the trigger responses chopped liver has for me now. You say "chopped liver," I hear my grandmother say: "It's an organ meat!" Meaning, it's horrible for you. Don't eat it.

And I haven't really eaten it in the latter half of my life. It's been a while. Until today. Today I ordered chopped liver with my soup. The waiter smiled. Jews nodded in approval.

Then it was brought and I bit in and---blech? Not quite. It just took some getting used to. The chopped liver I remember from my childhood had a sweetness to it, perhaps from carmelized onions that get chopped up with it. Maybe this was low on the onions? The texture here was also unpleasant: it was dense and sludgy. Perhaps it was sophisticated. Perhaps this is what real Jews ate when they came over from Russia or Hungary or wherever it is they came from when they brought chopped liver across the ocean. Shall we defer to Joan Nathan's "Jewish Cooking in America"?

Joan Nathan offers little. She talks about chopped liver sculptures at Jewish weddings. Can you imagine being paid to sculpt chopped liver? There's also a recipe for vegetarian chopped liver, which my grandmother buys religiously from Whole Foods in Boca, and which I made once for a Passover seder (it involves plenty of onions and then green beans and walnuts to act as "liver"). But as to the history of chopped liver, little is written.

Although it's not that hard to figure out. When you are poor, what do you do? Use every part of the animal. So as not to waste precious chickens, I'm sure converting the liver into something edible and even enjoyable was a necessity. (Much like the pork uterus that we laugh at in my Chinatown video may have been first cooked out of necessity). Necessity is the mother of invention, no? Such is the way with food.

On the way out of the 2nd Ave. Deli, an old Jewish woman stopped me. "It's a regular slip joint they're running here," she said.

I gave her a look that said: "Hmmm?"

"A rip-off," she continued, "I go in there and ask for half a pound of turkey, some chopped liver, and pastrami and do you know what they want to charge me? $26!"

I shook my head.

"Look," she said, "These are my people. I'm happy to shop here. But c'mon!"

I gave her a look that said: "What are you gonna do?"

She shrugged and said: "I'll go to Katz's."

Tradition keeps Jews on roofs and compels us to pay exorbitant prices to eat foods our ancestors ate out of necessity. It's a nurture thing. Cultural comfort food. Could we afford to eat chopped liver every day? Of course not. And besides...it's an organ meat!

Not sure if you watch news or look out your window, but in case no one's told you: there's a blizzard right now in New York.

As far as blizzards go, this is my first. I am enjoying it thoroughly. Mostly, I've stayed indoors---but at one point I walked to Whole Foods and there was a LINE OUTSIDE in the freaking snow, because they didn't want to let too many people in. Crazy! But they let us in pretty quickly.

Anyway, snowy blizzard weather is excellent cooking weather. And yesterday morning I woke up and felt the need to cook myself breakfast. So I took three eggs and beat them with a whisk, put butter in the frying pan and then added the eggs.

I recalled the Martha Stewart episode where she made omelletes. She said: "Pour it into the pan and then wait a bit for it to harden underneath and then flip it."

I recalled what Mario Batali said about flipping: "It's all about confidence. You just have to know it's going to go over and it will." I recalled Julia child suggesting that we practice with beans.

Finally, the time came. I shoved my wrist forward. The eggs slid forward. This was not a flip.

I lifted the pan rapidly in the air. The eggs hopped up and back down. But no flip.

I pushed and I lifted and they spilled a bit over the edge. I pushed them back.

Then inspiring music began to play and in slow motion I thrusted the pan forward and up in an arch and WHOOOSH---the eggs flipped! It was a miracle!

I added cheese and folded it up. I made Quaker Oats (using the slow method) and this was my expert genius breakfast:

Blizzards bring out the egg-flippers in all of us.

Do you spy her?

She spies you! (But honestly, isn't that cute how she hides there?)

I just tried to draw a picture of the mean lady at Pongsri on Microsoft Word but then I couldn't figure out how to save it as an image and gave up, so suffice it to say she was old and mean and had long gray hair and glasses and a dowdy husband. She was sitting by the window and we were six and sitting two over. They put us at a big long table so we had to yell to hear each other. She didn't like that. She shot us vicious glares. Then she made eye contact with me and mouthed: "KEEP IT DOWN." I told everyone to keep it down. But inevitably we got louder. And she fumed and shook her head and rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. She was really mean.

This is a great list of places to eat for under $10 in New York. I plan to use it frequently. Thanks Gothamist Food!

All praise Pim, creator of A Menu For Hope: a foodblogging fundraiser for tsunami victims. It's such a great idea. I'm so proud to be a part of it.

Because I am the Amateur Gourmet and not, say, the Hardcore Gourmet I needed some help with a recipe. Pim was incredibly generous. She provided me with the recipe for Tom Kha Gai, Coconut Chicken Soup. This recipe is perfect because it represents one of the many regions devastated by the tsunami: Thailand.

Thai food is delicious. We all know that. And this soup is delicious. I know that. (Because I've been eating it for the past three days. (I cooked ahead)). Cooking Tom Kha Gai is a lovely way to pay tribute to the victims of the tsunami. But paying tribute isn't enough. Before we proceed, we must pay money to tsunami victims so they can have clothes, food and shelter. It's a small gesture for a wonderful recipe. Click below, donate to UNICEF, and then enjoy my soup.

Have you donated? Have you really? Julia Child's watching you on high with her rolling pin.

Now then, Tom Kha Gai. According to my research, "Tom" means boil, "Kha" means galangal or galanga (which we will get to in a moment), and "Gai" means chicken. Thus Tom Kha Gai is boiled galangal chicken. It tastes better than it translates.

Here's Pim's recipe, interspersed with my comments and pictures.

Tom Kha Gai
(Chicken in coconut soup)
serves 4

14 oz can of coconut milk
4 cups of chicken stock (cut into bite size pieces)
1 pound chicken
1 cup mushroom (sliced into thin pieces)
4 stalks lemongrass (Use only the bottom part of the
lemon grass, up until about 6 inches from the root,
cut into 2 inch pieces and smash them a bit to release
the oil.)
1 handful of lime leaves
5 limes
1 galangal root (peeled and sliced into 0.5 cm rounds)
3 heaping tablespoon Thai Roasted Chili Paste
(optional)
fish sauce to taste
thai birdeye chilies to taste

Ok, so I couldn't get hold of galangal (I bought ginger instead) or lime leaves, but otherwise I did pretty well:

I loved buying fish sauce and Thai roasted chili paste because it seemed so exotic. "That's so exotic," said the check out person at Whole Foods. (Actually, she asked me about the lemongrass. "What do you use that for?" she asked. I told her I was using it for a soup. I promised to tell her how it tastes. If you're reading this: IT TASTES GOOD.)

Now then, in the above preparations, you have to cut the lemongrass into 2 inch pieces. Stupidly, I turned my dishwasher on before I began so I was left with only two knives:

These are not the knives you want to use to cut lemongrass, but I made do.

I also peeled the ginger and felt guilty because Pim wrote me the following, when I asked her what galangal was: "Galangal is sometimes called white ginger--but unfortunately you can't substitute ginger, they are quite different in taste." Hehe, well sorry Pim--Whole Foods was all out of galangal! And the ginger tasted good, I swear.

1. Cut the chicken into bite size pieces, then
marinade them in 4 tablespoon of fish sauce while you
do the stock.

then let simmer gently until the chicken
is nearly done, add the reserved lemongrass and
galangal, and let the chicken continue to cook until
done.

And now we play a game. It's called: HOW DO YOU KNOW IF THE CHICKEN'S DONE?

Luckily, I found another recipe that said it takes about 12 minutes. I tasted it and didn't die so I think that recipe was right. Plus, when I cut into the pieces they were cooked through. That's a good sign that they're cooked through.

You may notice mushrooms above. I added them with the chicken 12 minutes earlier and that worked out fine. I recommend you do the same.

4. Add the rest of the lime leaves and season the
soup, begin with the juice of 2 limes and add more
lime juice or fish sauce as needed.

Finish the soup
with optional chili paste and/or birdeye chili.

(I think the chili paste is vital to the soup. It gives it that necessary kick. And if you don't like spicy, don't worry. Up to a certain point, adding this won't make you choke. Just keep tasting as you add.)

Rememer to remind your guest not to eat the
lemongrass, galangal, or lime leaves, they are there
only as aromatic garnish and not to be eaten!

My guest (read: myself) didn't have to worry because there was no galangal and no lime leaves. I added all the lemongrass at the beginning and strained it out so there was no choking risk posed. As for the finished product?

Delicious. Honestly. I keep eating it. I can't stop. Think about the flavors involved: coconut, lime, (that's like a drink you'd have on the beach), fish sauce (it's better than it sounds), chicken, mushrooms, and chili paste. Each wages battle for your attention as you slurp and it makes you glad to be a battleground.

That's the worst metaphor I've ever written.

Now donate to UNICEF and check out all the other lovely entries on the Menu For Hope! (You can click in the image below to go to each individual site. It's really cool! I swear!) Thanks again, Pim. This was a great idea.

I like the conversations we have here at The Amateur Gourmet. I feel like I've built something of a community. You guys are my global cooking village. Can I borrow some milk?

So I was thinking today, as I often do, about nothing in particular and thoughts flowed in and out of my head. One of those thoughts involved drugs the other involved food. They merged and had children. These questions are their children:

(1) How much does the average American pot smoker spends on pot? I don't smoke pot, so I don't know. (I'm not just saying that because my mom reads this. Hi mom!) If they put that money towards one fancy meal each month, what level restaurant could they eat at? Do you see where I'm going with this? Say No To Drugs, Say Yes To Fine Dining.

(2) So then I was thinking about 'shrooms. Not mushrooms, 'shrooms---mushrooms withou the mush. I don't do 'shrooms, and I'm not just saying that because my drug counselor is reading this. Hi Ted! But that led to a thought about food: so 'shrooms like mushrooms grow in the ground and have hallucinogenic qualities. Do you think average ordinary every day vegetables have an undetectable impact on our perception? Like eating a bunch of carrots makes you see the glass half empty and eating a bunch of turnips makes you horny? We know oysters actually do make you horny. I'm talking about the things we don't know that food does. WHAT DOES FOOD DO TO YOUR HEAD?

(I swear I'm writing this sober---if you want to apply my own theories to this post, tonight I ate duck and chocolate chip cookies. Ok, and I had a martini.)

Since the inception of this site (and for three years before it) I carried a battered silver Canon Pureshot in my pocket for the purposes of taking spontaneous pictures--mostly of food. I purchased the camera with money I raised as a waiter at Murphy's Restaurant in Atlanta. I took it with me everywhere and the camera itself often inspired much of this site's content. For example, if I saw something peculiar I'd snap a picture of it and when I got home I would remember to write about it. (I almost did that today or yesterday with something in some food store and now I forget what it was!)

Tonight I went to dump the pictures from my camera on to my computer. I turned the camera on. It was in "take picture mode." I tried to slide the slider to "look at picture mode." This is the mode it needs to be in for it to dump pictures on to my computer. Only the slider slid too easily. It wasn't grabbing on to whatever made the camera shift modes. I grew frustrated. I pushed harder. No sliding. I pulled the slider off and saw metal slots.

This is where tragedy stems from stupidity. I stuck a pencil in to try to move it. Pencil bits broke off inside. Then I tried to use a pen. Then scissors. Then (most stupidly) a knife. This mutilated the internal slider bits. They're all bent crazy and I still never got to "look at picture mode"--and now my camera is filled with pictures you'll never see!

However, perhaps this is serendipitious. After all, it's two weeks to my birthday---have the fates alligned in my favor? We all know that camera campaigning on this site was never greeted with much favor. Perhaps I can pester my family and other loved ones to chip in for a camera? If I do, what kind of camera should I get? I liked the pocket convenience of my Canon pureshot, but perhaps I should upgrade to something fancier--something that will yield splendiferous pics for my readers. Your input is much appreciated---the quicker the better. This site feels naked when it's pictureless! Stop staring at its privates and help us out!

Fortuitous that Cathy of My Little Kitchen tapped me tonight to play Music in My Kitchen on the eve of my camera's death. I had great entries planned for you tonight (I made Caesar salad! I bought a Galia Melon!)--(and maybe I'll still post about them sans pictures)--but in the meantime, let me answer these music questions.

What is the total amount of music files on your computer?
18.39 GB. And I just deleted a bunch because I wanted to copy all my music on to my iPod. I am constantly listening to music. I am listening to music right now. "Burn Down The Mission" came on my random rotation. "Tumbleweed Connection" is one of my favorite Elton John CDs. I saw Elton on David Letterman the other night and the song he played was so depressingly banal--so elevator-ready--that I wanted to shake Elton by his wig and yell: "Why don't you write music like you used to! Music that matters! Music that's interesting!" Someone should burn down his new mission--to write crappy music.

The CD you last bought?
CD? As in singular? Please! I did an interesting thing, though, recently that I am SO glad I did. I tore out the New Yorker's year-end CD round-up and bought a bunch of CDs by artists I never heard of. I ended up falling in love with Tift Merrit's CD "Tambourine." I am addicted to this CD. I implore you to buy it and when you pop it in to skip to track 10---"I Am Your Tambourine." This is the most rollicking, exciting track I've heard in a mighty long time. If you told me I had to get up at 5 am tomorrow to milk cows, I would go to sleep bitter; but if you played this as my wake-up call, I would be so giddy those cows would be milking me! And then the next song is so beautiful: "Laid A Highway." But in addition to Tift, I also bought Van Hunt's self-titled CD ("Van Hunt" for those who don't know what self-titled means) and I love the songs "Dust" and "Hello, Goodbye." The rest are slowly growing on me. (This is my first R&B CD. I feel so with-it.) Then Gretchen Wilson's "Here For The Party," Tom Waits "Real Gone," The Hives "Tyrannosaurus Hives." My friend Jason gave me Eileen Farrell's "I Got A Right To Sing The Blues" (I queried Jason: "Does she really?" (Opera singers don't get the blues, do they?)) and Lena Horne's "The Lady and Her Music." This CD is hilarious. Lena's version of "I Got A Name" is shockingly new. You know that song---it's the song that goes "Rolling on down the highway / Rolling on down the highway." She ends it in this spirited declaration: "I...I intend to keep moving ahead...oh yes I do...because I'm not gonna let life...I'm talking about good old sweet, hard life...I'm never gonna let it pass me by!" That's rivaled only by her "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself A Letter" where she brays: "And I'm gonna out-act Diana Ross...I'm gonna outact Ruby Dee...I'm gonna outact Gloria Foster Farah Foster Major Bo Dereck Cheryl Teegs Cher and all them soap opera queens you ain't ever seen, honey!"

What was the last song you listened to before reading this message?
Before writing this message? I don't know, it's on random rotation, sister. According to my iTunes Most Played list (and this will tell us what was most likely played) my top played song is Liz Phair's "Glory"--which I don't really believe, because although I like that song, I can't imagine I clicked it 34 times. #2 is Wilco's "Hummingbird" from their new CD "A Ghost Is Born." I like that song. My favorites from my most popuar are: "Chelsea Hotel No. 2" by Leonard Cohen (because of the lyric, "Giving me head on the big double bed"); "Take Me With U" by Prince; "Turkey Lurkey Time" from Camp (by way of "Promises, Promises" which I also have); "English Girls Approximately" by Ryan Adams (this song makes me so happy when it comes on---it's really simple but lovely); "There's Always Something There To Remind Me" as performed by All Saints at the Burt Bacharach Tribute concert (from the CD "One Amazing Night"); "Train In Vain" as performed by The Clash (I love this version). I've also lately become obsessed with Donovan---particularly "Catch The Wind" and "Lalena." (That came by way of Bill Murray's apperance on Conan O'Brien; they played "Atlantis" on his entrance and I asked my dad who sang "Atlantis" and he told me Donovan and that led to this CD.) I've also been addicted to The Magnetic Fields' newest CD "I." It's soft and smart and sad and it gets better the more you listen to it.

Write down 5 songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you.

1. "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered." First it was the song dad played on the piano when I was growing up. Then it was the song in Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters." Then it was the song from the "Pal Joey" CD with Patty Lupone. Then it was Ella Fitzgerald's version, Rosemary Clooney's, and now Lena Horne's. It's one of the most perfect songs ever written. It's one of my favorites to play on the piano.

2. "Ragtime" by Randy Newman. This IS my favorite song to play on the piano. Learning it in E flat major made all the difference. It's the first quiet song I really mastered---Jewish piano playing (especially for families) often involves shmaltzy loud banging. This one wows them and doesn't require a piano tuner afterwards.

3. "Mr. Me" by They Might Be Giants. All I can remember is driving around L.A., miserably working for a big law firm, and singing--at the top of my lungs--"He ended up sad! He ended up sad! He ended up really really really sad!"

4. "The Dangling Conversation" by Simon & Garfunkel. Ok, so this list is SO old-mannish but listen to this song and tell me it's not gorgeous. Lyrically, compositionally, performatively--it's just so lush and rich and resonant. This and "So Long Frank Lloyd Wright." Nothing beats early Paul Simon---his later stuff is great, but his early stuff is so pure and innocent and honest. I love it.

5. "Independence Day" by David Byrne. Rei Momo (the CD this is from) clicks a switch in my brain and instantly takes me back to the moment I realized law was a mistake and that I needed to go to writing school. I remember listening to this driving from my creative writing advisor's house (she wrote my letter of recommendation for NYU) with the sky all pink and knowing that I was doing the right thing. Then, when I sat down to write the play that would eventually get me in, I listened to this CD on repeat on my ipod. We were on a cruise ship, so its tropical rhythms take me back to that weird fusion of activity---sitting on the deck of a ship with my grandparents, looking at green fuzzy tropical islands with my laptop on my lap writing a play about Jewish summer camp. The spirit of "Independence Day" kind of informed the play as it echoed what was going on in my real life. It may not be a great song (I think it is) but it carries so much meaning for me.

(6. "Your Redneck Past" by Bend Folds Five. I listen to this and think of Atlanta. And I mean that in a good way.)

(7. "The Mess We're In" by PJ Harvey. I was obsessed with this CD right before and immedaitely after September 11th. And I remember thinking, truly, that these lyrics were prescient. "Can you hear them? The helicopters...are in New York...no need for words now...we sit in silence." (This was written BEFORE September 11th.))

(8. "A Shot In The Arm" by Wilco. Great memories of belting this song at the top of my lungs driving home from the gym in Atlanta.)

(9. "Is That All There Is?" by Peggy Lee. It's an existential dramatic monologue set to music. If you haven't heard it, do so now.)

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
No one! We're food bloggers...we're supposed to write about food!
[Followup: After being yelled at by Santos I pass this to... Santos (squeaky blogger gets the meme?), Pim and Clotilde (although I'm not sure Clotilde will participate since she keeps her site so focused!). Enjoy!]

I promised to post pictures of anyone who made my Janet Jackson breast cupcakes for this year's superbowl. So far I've only heard from two people--I know there are more of you out there! Come flash your carnal copycat creations to the world! These folks did...

Like Brad of Brad and Neil.com:

And Karen and Aaron Freeman had their version too:

Karen writes: "I had started to adorn them all with her body jewelry, but thinking it looked more like white spiders than the silvery star, I opted to leave the rest naked."

Yes, those nipple shields do look a spidery. Hope everyone had a great Superbowl! (I only caught the halftime show---perhaps I should make a Paul McCartney scrotum cake?) (WHAT! You didn't see it! He totally flashed his scrotum during "Hey Jude!" I'm not kidding! Gives new meaning to the lyric: "The movement you need is on your scrotum")

Camera status is status quo. Forces are alligning, though, to remedy the situation. Soon--perhaps this weekend--pictures will grow crisper and more accomplished. Thanks to SLOLindsay for the link to this LA Times story on food photography. Great tips are in there. I'm basically down to deciding between an SLR (which is the big clunky camera with the big lens) and a nicer version of the point-and-click I already have. Actually, I think my mind's pretty made up: for my purposes, the latter makes the most sense. It's just a matter of choosing the right latter---so I don't later yell "Chute!" (Who got that joke? Genius, I tell you, genius!)

Now then, I'm going to go all Andrea Strong on yo' ass and keep things texty but in a fun no-need-for-pictures way. (Andrea Strong is my hero in the world of pictureless food blogging). So here we go, then, some points of interest from the past two days:

* Baked another batch of the gingersnaps last night. This time I left them in too long and they're a bit burnt. I have bad gingersnap karma. But I realized the underbaked ones are really delicious---maybe I was being a snob about the snap. Not all gingersnaps need to snap. West Side Story cast members, however, DO need to snap. How else will they intimidate each other?

* So I mentioned in my last post, I think, that I purchased Robert Sietsema's new Ethnic Eating guide and today Patty, Molly and I tore it open after our directing class and looked for a place in the West Village to eat lunch. Patty's eyes lit up when she saw 'Ino: "My friend said it's great! She loves it!" So we went there and it was great! We loved it!

Seriously, 'ino is an adorable, cozy (read: tightly packed) Italian sandwich type place in the West Village. I say Italian sandwich type place because the menu consisted mostly of pannini and foccaccia. We went with the pannini. Actually, we did better than that: we went with the quattro panini. Each of us chose this option: it consists of 4 segments of 4 different paninis. We let the waitress pick for us---(our waitress was awesome; we loved her) and she made great choices. I don't remember the specifics, but my personal favorite was proscuiotto and caramelized onions. Mmm. Or as ABBA would say: "Mamma Mia!"

Molly and Patty were equally enthused with theirs. We shared half a bottle of wine between us (for $11) and it was a nice compliment** to the panninis.

**I just realized that I, once again, typed "compliment" when I meant "complement." Let's explore this. Obviously, "compliment" and "complement" are homonyms. But, there's something about "compliment" that seems slightly appropriate when you mean "complement." Like I understand it means something different, but there's some similarity betweeen the meanings that I think renders the mistake defensible. Members of the jury? GUILTY!!!

* Afterwards, Molly went off to write and Patty walked with me to Amy's Bread which just opened up next to Murray's Cheese on Bleeker so we could share a cashew bar. Patty ate hers with enthusiasm: "This is perfect," she said. "Because I don't like things too sweet and this is salty too." It's true---that's why I love Amy's Bread's cashew bar. It's salty AND sweet. If you're on Bleeker, why not try one? WHY, I BEG, WHY?

* Tonight I watched an awesome Iron Chef America: it was double team---Batali and Sakai vs. Flay and Morimoto. The final score will SHOCK you. I thought it was a fun show---interesting to watch the cultures meld. I left this episode with lots of respect for Bobby Flay. He's not necessarily a charmer in the kitchen, but boy does he throw himself into his food. His presentations are so dense and accomplished---he's really an artist. Mario is precise and knowledgeable and a hard worker; but there's something about Flay's dishes (at least on TV) that seems more exciting and innovative. Batali's gift, really, is an encyclopedic knowledge of Italian cooking---he can transport you through space (all over Italy's many regions) and time (cooking dishes that have historical significance). He does this with passion and gusto (and tonight, I'm afraid, with a bit of hubris). Flay is equally reverant when it comes to Southwestern cooking but he's also daring and brave and a master of the unexpected. Check out his scallops on the half shell when you watch this episode, or his dipping sauces to match Morimoto's grilled shellfish---truly inspired.

* I also wanted to mention my newfound love for Lidia Bastianich. Whenever I catch her on PBS, I drop everything, kick back and zone in. She's very knowledgable and very smart, but she's also full of heart and shows how food and family and culture all cook together with beautiful results. (And I've never been so big on family values--at least in the Laura Bush sense.) Lidia's family values are refreshing because they're honest. She doesn't coddle her grandchildren. (She's playful, but she also makes sure they understand what they're doing when they help her make gnocchi, for example). When her son Joey was on (and I think it's Joey who co-owns Babbo and Lupa and other places) she bossed him around the kitchen with true authority. And you can sense his embarassment or irritation with her, but you also sense the love beneath it. Plus the food looks really good.

* I am toying with the idea of taking French lessons. Oui! Oui!

OK I'm signing out for the night. Let's hold hands and get through these pictureless days together---united we stand, divided we fall, and anything in between is an orgy. Let's keep that in mind for our first photography session with the new camera. Ciao!

My mom told me yesterday to go down in the morning (meaning this morning) to check for a package. She was sending me something, she said, and it was perishable.

So of course, this morning, I ran downstairs with gusto (and, in actuality, I DID run downstairs with gusto--all 23 flights--because for my playwriting class I had to break a ritual, and I decided to break the ritual of riding the elevator). Anyway, I got downstairs and there were two packages. One from my mom and one from Amazon.com.

I took them back upstairs and opened the box from my mom first. A huge tin of Godiva chocolates for Valentine's Day! She did this last year too and I have to say, I don't care what Dr. Freud says--my mom's my favorite Valentine ever.

Then I explored the msyerious Amazon box. I opened it and found inside Amanda Hesser's "The Cook and The Gardener." I wanted this book! Who bought me this book?

Then I saw the name on the slip--Beth Rang. Who is Beth Rang? Then I put it together: she bought it from my secret Amazon Wishlist, buried deeply and practically invisbly on the site. She even wrote a note: "Thank you for the fun! The best to you with school."

Awww. This is the best thing ever. Thank you so much, Beth. It made me so giddy to get this book. I took it with me all day and I've been flipping through it and I'm loving it. I'll be cooking from it in the near future and just think---for every bite I take, I'll be thinking of you...and I don't even know you! But seriously, thanks again. You made my day.

In playwriting class then, today (as referenced in the post below), we were discussing rituals. Our teacher, Martin Epstein, says: "Theater begins when a ritual is broken." For example, in King Lear, we witness the ritual of a parent dividing up the land for his daughters in exchange for his daughters' declarations of love. If Cordelia were to gush like Regan and Gonreil, there would be no play. But instead she breaks the ritual--"Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave my heart into my mouth: I love your majesty according to my bond; not more nor less"--and we have a masterpiece.

Which brings us to breakfast. Our class decided that when it comes to food, we behave most ritualistically with breakfast. We have our breakfast rituals. We always make coffee and read the paper; or we toast Ego waffles and eat them with jelly. We all have our breakfast rituals.

Except for me. I don't eat breakfast. I stay up really late at night and then sleep really late. I start with lunch. If I have an early class, I buy a donut and a water from the donut cart--that's the extent of it. But I'm sure that's not true for you. I'm sure you, my better-behaved, gourmet audience have breakfast rituals. What is your breakfast ritual? Tell us all about it. And then, at some later point (maybe Monday?), try to break your breakfast ritual and report back on how it affected your day. Good luck!

Exciting news: I got my birthday camera today! Hurrah! Hurrah!

But before we celebrate the joys of my new PowerShot S70, let's take a moment to pay loving tribute to my old, eviscerated Powershot S200. Yes, it was in the final days of my S200 that these pictures were taken. Its final words, as I jabbed at it with a knife, were: "Don't let these pictures die with me...carry them forth...remove my memory chip and plant them in your new camera...so my children...one day...can remember their...grandcamera."

And so, children, we gather now to study the S200's final food moments. First, a moment of silence. Turn your flashes off, please.

**********

It was a week ago Friday (the 4th) that the S200 joined me at lunch with my classmate Diana. We went somewhere that I am not going to disclose for a reason that will soon be apparent.

Diana ordered a quiche which I declared to be WASPy food. She said, "Well I am WASPy" and modelled her quiche.

I, in turn, ordered a salad with asparagus. Looks normal, doesn't it?

Yet the late great S200 picked something up that you may not have noticed at first glance. Look at the tomato, 3 o'clock. See that black cylindrical object? I saw it too. I wondered: "What is this? Is it a vegetable? A fruit? A meat product?" I bit into it. It was wood!

I showed the waitress and she was horrified. She told the owner and they paid for BOTH OUR MEALS. So it was really nice of them. That's why I'm not going to destroy their business by revealing their identity. And the wood, by the way, was part of a utensil. It must have broke off during the tossing.

*****

Next up, we have Newman's Own Lemonade. I talked about this last week---how I really like it. How it's really special lemonade. Well now you can see it. The S200 didn't shy away from Paul Newman or his pink lemonade.

*****

Did you know I made a Caesar salad last week? The S200 did. It was there with me. I made Amanda Hesser's Caesar salad from "Cooking With Mr. Latte." To be honest, it was a huge disappointment.

See, to me what makes Caesar great is the marriage of anchovy and garlic. When that gets blended together you have a pungent mixture to be rivaled by few others. But Amanda doesn't incorporate the anchovies until way later. So first you boil the eggs on a spoon for 45 seconds:

Then you toast the croutons using day old bread: (I used day of bread, but don't tell anyone):

Now for the sucky part: the dressing. You just whisk together garlic, olive oil and then the egg stuff. I think it was one egg and one egg yolk. Where's the anchovy? Not yet, according to Amanda.

When it's time for anchovy, you rinse them off and dry them out:

You chop them up and put them in the bowl with the romaine lettuce. Add parmesan cheese:

Then the dressing. And you toss.

It looks good, I know, but it doesn't taste like Caesar because the anchovies aren't incorporated in the dressing. That's the whole point! The best Caesar salads I've made involve a food processor in which you blend garlic, anchovies and olive oil and you get deliciousness. Amanda's salad was like a deconstructed Caesar which I suppose is sophisticated, but made me and my S200 crave the lowbrow version.

*******

Then there was this Galia melon. Remember, I talked about it?

Well we cut it open:

And it looked like a cucumber and tasted like a mild honeydew. Not my favorite--unless it wasn't ripe yet, in which case I chose a poor Galia melon.

*****

Now for the S200's final memory. My lunch at 'ino with Patty and Molly:

This lunch was awesome and proved a worthy last meal for the S200. I ordered the Quattro panini as did Molly and Patty and we all raved. The S200 was there to photograph it:

****

And that's it, friends. The S200's final image. In a way, the arrangement of paninis looks like a Christian grave marker. Let's hope the S200 wasn't Jewish. If it was, Shalom S200--you served me well!

So today Lisa came with me to J&R near City Hall to pick out my new camera---a birthday gift from my parents that I was to gift myself because it was easier that way (and nicer, because I got to pick my own camera). Of course, Lisa and I got lost on the subway and ended up deep in Brooklyn (when going to J&R and from Chelsea, make sure not to take the N train--take the R or the W!) Anyway, my friend James Felder (who is a photographer and has his own category on this site, as well as his own photo website) recommended I get the S70 after a long discussion in which I said, "If you were given unlimited money and had to buy me a camera based on my needs and what you think would be best for me what would you buy me?" And he said the S70---so that was enough for me.

And so far I love it. I love how you have so much control over your image. There are all these settings like "portrait," "landscape," "night," etc etc that do all these cool things I barely understand. Lisa and I had cashew bars at Amy's Bread for dessert tonight (after a really good dinner at an Italian place on Bleeker) and I snapped this photo of Lisa on a setting I barely remember, but which came out great---look at those sexy cashew bars! I Photoshopped it---adjusted levels, colors and contrast--and this is the result: (you really need to click it to notice any major difference from this and the old pictures...)

So a new age has begun! The age of the S70! Can I get a wut wut?

When I made my Beef Bourguignon video a few months ago (weeks ago?) my mom said: "There was enough there to feed an army!"

She was right. Unfortunately, my army left me after I instituted a mandatory manicure policy, and that stew went to waste. Well tonight I encountered a similar situation: I had a ton of leftover Kadjemoula (I ate more of it for dinner, and it was even more delicious than it was yesterday. It aged extraordinarily well.) I know I can't eat it tomorrow or the next day (late classes, etc.) so I decided to freeze it. I have no idea if this is a good idea.

Is this a good idea? Is this safe? How long will it freeze for? Answers to these questions will be most appreciated and may help me avoid getting dysentary. Much obliged!

In the below post on Le Quinze, I mention that our waitress told us something interesting about coffee vs. espresso after dinner.

So Lauren was debating a coffee vs. a cappucino. "I don't want to be up all night, though," she said, leaning towards the coffee.

"Well," the waitress explained, "you have to understand" (she had a French accent) "caffeine dissolves in water---so the less water there is, the less caffeinated something is. So coffee is actually more caffeinated than espresso and therefore cappucino. Because there's more water in coffee for the caffeine to dissolve in."

We were all startled and thrilled by this revelation. We all ordered cappucinos. We felt that we were not as caffeinated as we would have been with cofffee. How do you feel about this, dear readers? Does this theory make sense? Or are the French dirty freedom/caffeine-hating bastards?

I made a special trip today to see The Gates in Central Park. Many people find The Gates suspect, they scream out "waste!" "pretension!" "orange!" but I just took it for what it was and found myself thoroughly seduced. I liked these gates. Here I am appreciating the gates. My facial expression seems to say: "Hmm, I mean, they're big and orange and billowy, but I can still like them, right?"

And here's a big gate in case you want to see one up close:

What I liked about the Gates most was the sense of being swallowed up in some surreal happening. There were Gates tourbuses, Gates tourguides, Gates t-shirts. There were tourists and locals, picture-takers and wanderers. In my biggest flight of fancy, I imagined we were in some enchanted kingdom that really liked the color orange. I left The Gates and went to the Time Warner Center so I could buy olive oil at Williams Sonoma. (See this is food related.) I attempted to pay the cashier in orange fabric. She smacked me. And my flight of fancy was over.

I must tell you this story about brunch the other day. Near where I go to school is a diner. We go to this diner often. Many of us are sick of it, but we still go there because it's convenient and they have many many things on the menu that we can eat. That's one of the nice things about diners---something for everyone.

So, as per usual, I ordered an omelette. It came to the table and looked nice and omeletty. I took a bite and decided it needed salt. I sprinkled salt on it. I took a few more bites. Tasted better. Then on my 4th or 5th bite I suddenly felt something very sharp in my mouth.

"Ow!" I said. "I feel something very sharp in my mouth!"

I reached in and pulled out a large piece of eggshell. This wasn't a forgivable tiny piece of eggshell, but a large wall of shell that looked like a shiv a bird might carve in prison. As I pulled it out, I felt that there was a big part of it caught in my mouth.

"What's going on, Adam?" asked my dining companions.

"Mrrwahyahaha," I replied, as I dug around my mouth. I don't mean to be graphic, but there was some blood on my finger.

Eventually it was determined that there was eggshell lodged in the gum behind one of my front teeth. We told the waiter. I showed him the blood, I showed him the shell.

"Well," he shrugged, "it's an omelette---it happens--eggshell in the omelette."

We asked to talk to the manager. He came over. He shrugged. "It's an omelette, what you expect?" He reached into his pocket and removed a toothpick. "Here," he said, "Go to the bathroom, dig it out."

Molly gave me her pocket mirror. I went to the bathroom. I tried to dig it out. I bled more. It wasn't pretty.

Eventually, I decided to leave it alone and brush it out when I got home. The check came. The omelette was on the check. We found this ridiculous.

(Please note, here, that I come from a family of restaurant complainers---my mother or grandmother can get the entire table comped if they find an eyelash on their plate. I've always shyed away from gratuitous complaining, but here I felt justified. We'll leave the parentheses now.)

We said to the waiter, "This is ridiculous! We shouldn't pay for this!"

He shrugged and said, "We'll make you a new omelette."

"No thanks," I said, growing bitter. "I'll pay for it--fine--but I'll never come back here again."

There was a dramatic pause.

"Ok, one sec," he said, and waltzed away. He came back looking stern: "We take it off. We take it off the check, fine."

He acted like it was a big sacrifice when I was almost killed with eggshell. I left feeling minorly victorious, all the while touching the shell with my tongue on the way home.

When I got home, I brushed and swished and brushed and swished and brushed and swished and nothing happened. Something tiny fell out but I still felt the shell with my tongue.

Then I realized: maybe the back of my tooth is deformed, and what I thought was eggshell is actually enamel?

That is where I currently stand. You may think me a bad person, but let's not forget that there was indeed a giant sharp shell in my omelette. What have we learned from this? Next time: order a burger.

When rounding up my food-related birthday gifts, I forgot to include two fine gifts given to me by two fine people. So Johnny K (or Just John), thank you for "Eat Your Way to Happiness." This book is very cute. The premise is that you really can "eat your way to happiness!" I plan to do it soon, after I work my way through "Cook Your Way To Misery" (last year's birthday cookbook). So thanks John! And let's not forget Ben who bought me coasters with Rosie the Riveter on them. Coasters aren't a cookbook, but coasters are food related because you put drinks on them. So thanks Ben!

And that concludes (for real) my birthday gift round up.

What a day! What a story I have to tell you! And how difficult to tell it since my spacebar is broken! (Don't worry, I'm working extra hard to put the spaces in for you---the story's that good.)

One of the classes I take in my second semester of Tisch's MFA program is Modern Drama. This week our teacher (who I love) had us read four plays by Edward Albee. We read "Virginia Woolf" last semester, and amongst the 20 or 30 plays we read (from Oedipus to Lear) it was among my top three favorites. For today it was "The American Dream," "A Delicate Balance," "The Play About The Baby," and "The Goat."

We were to stay after class, then, for a segue into next week's subject, Tennessee Williams. A famous NY actor, Jeremy Lawrence, was coming to do his one-man Tennessee Williams show and Dan, one of my classmates who helped organize, asked me to cook something for the reception afterwards. So last night, after roasting the chicken, I made pecan bars from The Gourmet Cookbook. They came out fantastic, look:

Normally the knock-dead pecan bar recipe is The Barefoot Contessa's, but Gourmet's were way easier and required less pecans. However, I did incorporate one Contessa trick: I grated half an orange and half a lemon into the pecan mixture. It gave it some zing.

But back to the main story at hand. I came to school today and there was a big sign up: "JEREMY LAWRENCE CANCELLED BECAUSE OF SNOW STORM."

I'd made the pecan bars for nothing! But no worries---I'm always happy to cook sweets and to feed them to my classmates. My classmates are always happy to eat them.

So we loitered for a bit in the lounge area waiting for class to start. We discussed things like the Oscars, the blizzard, the feasability of nuclear disarmament in North Korea. Then our teacher came and gathered us up. I was slow gathering my things, so I was the last one to follow. On my way to class I saw a conspicuous elderly gentleman walking in a different direction. He looked like Edward Albee. I thought I heard someone say: "Hey Edward," but then I thought I hallucinated.

I ran into my classroomm. "I think I just saw Edward Albee in the hall," I said, rather dazed. My class looked at me incredulously. My teacher shook her head and blushed: "Oh Adam," she said, "Don't be silly."

But as we were talking I saw that same man go into the bathroom. "He just went into the bathroom!" I yelped. "I swear, go look!"

So Darren, one of my classmates, went into the bathroom and came back grinning. "It's him, it's definitely him."

Our teacher's smile grew broader. Suddenly a face appeared at the door--Edward Albee!

Now I realize to the non-theatrical among you this might not mean much, but surely I'm not overstating when I say that Albee may be one of the greatest (if not THE greatest) living American playwrights. He has three Pulitzers to his name and constant productions of his work all around the world. A new version of "Virginia Woolf" is opening soon on Broadway with Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin. The man is a genius.

He sat with us for well over an hour and answered all of our questions. I had a ton of them. He was really gracious, but really forthright. Here are some things that I wrote down:

- "You can't act what the play means. Only act the moment to moment reality in the play. That's all you can direct too."

- "I have never written a role for an actor ever."

- "Most of the plays that survive aren't cheerful. Look at King Lear having problems with his daughters. The Macbeths weren't a nice family."

- "Tragedy has lost its meaning. A word that's totally overused."

- "You (writers) have to come to the battlefield completely informed--know what everyone's written--good stuff and bad stuff--know everything and write the first play that everybody's ever written."

- "You have to know classical music. Nothing is closer to a string quartet than a play... A playwright should be as precise as a composer."

***
Now the question arises----did I feed Edward Albee one of my pecan bars? Were my pecans consumed by America's greatest living playwright? Well, unfortunately, no. Edward's diabetic. I did, however, snap this photo on my cell phone camera as Edward was leaving. It's not great, but it gives you an idea. You can see my teacher glowing in the background:

Intead of tying up this post of an enchanted day with a pretty bow (and it was an enchanted day, I'll never forget it!), I'll instead quote Mr. Albee himself from "Virginia Woolf." Here's a small smattering that crackles and pops and is ever so slightly food related:

(From Act One)

George: In my mind, Martha, you are buried in cement, right up to your neck. (Martha giggles.) No...right up to your nose...that's much quieter.

George: Martha eats them...for breakfast...she sprinkles them on her cereal.

I overheard a girl on her cellphone today walking down the street. She asked her conversation partner: "What kind of food do you feel like?"

I thought it would be funny if we took this question literally. So readers, tell us: what kind of food do YOU feel like?

[Edited to say: Sorry if this wasn't clear. I mean: "what kind of food do you feel like emotionally?" not "what kind of food are you in the mood for?" That's why I thought it was funny in the first place.]

I'll go first. I feel like beets.

Beets at the store, before you roast them, are kind of dirty looking and sad. That's me: dirty looking and sad. But wrap me in aluminum foil, sprinkle me with olive oil, stick me in an oven and I come out glittering and ready to rock.

Beets are pungent. Beets are messy. Beets have a flavor that's ancient yet new---they're not entirely sweet, they're not entirely not-sweet. Beets are smart. Beets are versatile. Beets work well with others.

What kind of food do I feel like? I feel like beets. YOUR TURN! (beet that...heh heh)

I've been keeping an eye on my hits and statistics lately because we've been creeping towards a million hits. And then this morning it happened:

Total number of hits: 1,000,085.

That's after 14 months of blogging--not so bad! Makes us feel like a fat cat for the day:

Here's to several million more!

My brother would like me to tell you that in this post where I say that Michael doesn't really like American food, that it's a lie. He does like American food.

Thank you.

It occurred to me the other day: do my peers in the foodblogging world exercise also? How do they eat such rich foods without exploding? I decided to e-mail a few of them to ask that very question. Here are their responses:

Bruce Cole of Saute Wednesday writes: "San Francisco is just one hilly street another. I run the ones with an ocean view at the top...."

Josh Friedland of The Food Section writes: "I really need to exercise more. The winter has killed my motivation to do anything, and I pretty much hate going to the gym. However, I did recently start taking some tennis lessons in one of those bubbled over courts and going to the gym twice a week (treadmill)

As soon as it warms up, I love to go bicycling and occasionally force myself to go running. I also will regularly take the subway a few stops farther than my workplace and walk through Central Park to work (a 40 minute walk) to get some exercise.

Pim Techamuanvivit of Chez Pim writes: "Exercise? What exercise? I am too busy eating!"

And, finally, we hear from Hillel Cooperman of TastingMenu who writes: "In a seated position extend your right hand 90 degrees in front of you. Lift the silver object. Place a weight on the object. Flex your arm at the elbow another 90 degrees. Move your head forward. Open your mouth. Insert the item on the silver object into your mouth. Close your mouth. Remove the silver object. Chew. Swallow.

Repeat."

My friend John already has an adoring fan base here at The Amateur Gourmet. Now you get to read an exclusive account of his food adventures in Iceland. Yes, ICELAND. John went to Iceland for his Spring Break! Read all about it below... And thanks, John, for sharing this with us!

Ah Spring Break. While MTV is in Cancun, I decided to go somewhere a bit more my speed: Reykjavik, Iceland.