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?