Recently in Cuisine Category

I think that New Seasons should get a little more web 2.0 and integrate some of the social networking aspects of sites like Netflix. So, for example, I could see what's on my friends shopping lists.

Then I could recommend things like the maple-rosemary trout (it sounds gross but it was incredibly tasty) -- and while they're at it, they could make it so you could rate food and have a machine recommend foods for you. I think what's happening is, with all the choices in the world, we need technical help to develop and keep track of our own tastes. At least, I do. Too many choices means creating technologies to help us sort them all out.

Continuing on with conversational icebreakers, a question that seems particularly relevent here in this season of consumption is What would your last meal be?

I've asked this question a bunch of times with no real background on the issue. For instance, we have wondered, you have to eat what's in the prison cafeteria? According to Wikipedia, in Texas, you do. It looks like most places don't go to a whole huge amount of trouble on your behalf, according to this account of cooking last meals in prison.

There have been a couple of books on the subject, including, recently, My Last Supper: 50 Great Chefs and Their Final Meals / Portraits, Interviews, and Recipes, Last Suppers: If the World Ended Tomorrow, What Would Be Your Last Meal? and Last Suppers: Famous Final Meals from Death Row.

The first two books illustrate that this is a topic of conversation people really enjoy. It's a little more finite and less personal than, "what would you do if you learned you only had 24 hours to live?" but just as compelling.

(I have to say, even though I'm no Titanic buff, but Last Dinner On the Titanic Menus and Recipes From the Great Liner: Menus and Recipes from the Great Liner sounds like an interesting basis for a theme party.)

So far, the best answer was cousin Shane's scheme, which was to cook his last meal himself a la the last meal in The Omnivore's Dilemma - one in which he prepared everything himself by hand, growing the veggies, killing the pig, etc.

My answer? I'd basically eat everything on the last page of the menu at Holmans -- deep friend mac 'n' cheese, jalapeno poppers, chicken strips, tater tots. This meal is perfect because after eating it, I'd feel like dying. My other choise would be antipasti and bruschetta and lasagne at Fratelli, but that might give me too much reason to live.

p.s. get ready for lots of blogging because I discovered the "scheduled" posting function in Moveable Type!

I don't think of myself as a timid eater, but I just tried eating something relatively benign after considering it for at least ten years (ever since Super Burrito came to St. Johns), and that is the torta.

Somehow, a sandwich with beans on it just didn't appeal to me, but you'd think that in those ten years, I would have at least tried one. But somehow I didn't. Then in Tucson, I had a Mexican hotdog, which had beans AND bacon on it. And a couple weeks ago, I was very intrigued by Tony's torta order. This finally led me to try one myself today.

The totra in question was a cubana, which includes (but is not limited to):

• ham
• hotdogs
• chorizo
• avacado
• mayonaise
• onions
• tomato
• a couple whisps of lettuce

Holy cow. Now that's a sandwich. I think I've found my new favorite food to fill me with self-loathing for having eaten it.

Someone should run a blog that reviews all Trader Joe's foods. Very often I go there and think: "Maybe that coconut fried shrimp is delicious, but maybe not -- and I'm not taking a chance." Sometimes I do, I guess, and it pays off, like the time I got the chocolate covered peanut butter pretzels - those were pretty good -- but more often I think of Carrie's claim that all Trader Joe's prepared foods come from a big machine that stamps the same substance into different shapes and breads them, and I end up sticking to the basics.

My brief search for Trader Joe's Food Review blogs turned up a few blogs that specialize in candy or wine, and others that just happen to review a bunch of Trader Joe's foods. And here's a Trader Joe's blog that looks retired.

But nothing that's just purely Trader Joe's.

If I were Trader Joe's, I'd start one as a kind of astroturf ad campaign. I'd offer to do it for them, but I don't think I can eat that much Trader Joe's food.

*Update*: A quick commenter sent in this link:

Trader Joe's Fan

I'm going to look around and see if I can find anything that gets fewer than 3 stars.

p.s. The picture doesn't have anything to do with a Trader Joe's Food Review Blog, as such -- it's just an Out of Order Donkey I saw in Tucson and I don't know when else I'm going to use this picture. Nat speculated that it was actually there to block the bathroom door it was in front of, but I noted that its tail was broken, too.

Don't we all have a great idea for a food to sell from a cart?

Mine is bacon. You can take a strip of crisp bacon and wrap the end in a little bit of foil or napkin and you don't even need a stick. It's the perfect "to go" food in these carb-phobic times. Plus, it's delicious. My bacon booth would have all kinds of bacon. Since August, I've been the lucky recipient of a Bacon of the Month club subscription, thanks to Dave, Melissa and Amy, so I have some sense of the range of bacon flavors out there. And I'd have some dipping sauces, too: maple syrup, ranch, ketchup. Tell me you're not drooling just thinking about it.

Justin and Erin and friends had the idea for an okonomiyaki or Japanese pancake cart. I think that would be delicious. Okonomiyaki combines some of my favorite foods like shrimp, bacon, mayonnaise, mustard, cabbage, and fry. I would drive halfway across town for that, even if I had to eat it in a Walgreen's parking lot.

In the past I've thought of: savory ice cream carts, dumpling carts (all kinds of dumplings, from pot stickers to apple), potato carts (just boiled potatoes -- but cheap!), and a raw-food cart that served cut up vegetables which would double as a produce cart. All of them, I'm convinced, could be money makers.

But that's what everyone who's ever conceived of a food cart thinks.

So, here is where the real money comes in: renting a food cart on a short-term basis for large sums to people who have a delusions about the amount of money they'd make with their own food cart.

You'd want to have a good, busy corner or maybe at the Saturday Market. And then for a day at a time, you'd rent it out for maybe $300 a day or something to poor suckers who thought they really had something. And, honestly, $300 isn't that much to spend to have a dream crushed. Indeed, it's a bargain! That way, they could get it out of their system without having to make a huge investment.

And every once in awhile you'd have a success -- like savory waffles -- that would demonstrate that the whole thing was worth while. It would kind of be like a reality show, only much, much slower.

And for the customers, it would be great -- you'd never know what you'd get. Some days it would be terrible, some days awesome, but it would always be different.

There are some health code issues to be resolved, but those are technical details.

Ever since I saw that episode of "Six Feet Under" where the woman living all alone chokes to death on her TV dinner and no one finds her until she's kind of rotten and covered with ants, I've been paranoid that it might happen to me. Not that I'd have much of a chance to rot -- I think Pica would dig in before that -- but I do see choking to death as one of the hazards of living alone.

There are products for single people afraid of slip and fall accidents, intruders and the like, but you can choke to death in a matter of seconds -- far too fast for anyone to come and save you. So the solution needs to be preventative.

I think some manufacturer should therefore market a line of soups addressing this concern. I don't think most men really like soup all that much, so we should focus on selling soup to women. (Maybe you could have He-Man Hashes, where all the food was chopped up really small?)

"Spinster Safety Soups" would feature soups with only really really small chunks (if any), so that nothing could get caught in your throat. You'd find some quack doctor to testify that the chunks were scientifically designed to be safe.

The ads would have to be really scary -- e.g.,

Shot of woman choking at her dinner table ... grasping for the phone ... slowly falling out of frame ...

Voice: "DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU!!! ... Play it safe ... with Spinster Soups."

Maybe the serving suggestion would be a really shallow bowl so that you didn't accidentally pass out and drown in it like in Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

I finally had a chance to go to the new vegan pirate restaurant on St. Helen's road.

How was it?

Well, it was sincere, and interesting, and the beer came in really big mugs. And there were games. And the "chicken" patty was fairly convincing.

I'm personally impressed with anyone who has an idea that sounds like a "great idea" (TM) and actually follows through with capital and effort. (Impressed, but also a little bit concerned.)

I do love theme restaurants. There just aren't enough of them in Portland. I was trying to think of how you can distinguish between a theme restaurant and super cuisine-specific places like the Rheinlander. It's subtle. They both might feature costumed wait staff with real or fake accents, and heavily narrated menus and extravagant decor. Tikki bars and Medieval Times? Clearly theme, not cuisine. Hooters? I vote theme. (I think maybe if a restaurant features lots of music on its website, it might a sign of theme, not cuisine.) But maybe I'm just ignorant about the gastronomic aspirations of coconut shrimp and mead.

Here's a definition of theme restaurants from wikipedia along with a link to this interesting article on the business end of theme restaurants.

Well, in any case, a restaurant that picks a theme with no clear relation to cuisine is clearly theme not cuisine oriented.

My idea for a theme restaurant is one with menus based on personality types.

You could choose from different personality typification systems: Myers-Briggs, astrology, Chinese astrology, etc.

Dave P. suggested it would be a good idea to have personality tests available at the restaurant or even within an online reservations system that you could do at home that would tell you your personality type, in case you didn't know, and then develop an order for you based on your response and the stars and the tide and stuff like that. That way, you wouldn't even have to make a decision, which would be great for personalities like mine.

So, since I'm a EN-- (sometimes an ENFP, sometimes an ENTP, and sometimes an ENFJ -- but always an EN), Goat and Leo, I'd get something like goat cheese fondue, since it's social and goatee and fiery.

You'd have a team of crackpots develop the actual menus.

It would be good entertainment and possibly even a learning experience. Taking the personality tests over cocktails would be great for people who were flirting, and discussing the results over dinner could be productive for families in trouble.

It would be kind of like the Blood Type Diet only it would be the personality type diet and it would be a theme restaurant.

p.s. The photo is from the Superfund site -- not really related to the post, but oh, well. I still haven't heard anything about my camera.

How on earth did people manage Thanksgiving before the internet? We're holding it at my house this year, and here's what I've done so far:

First, I used the Butterball turkey calculator, which is unfortunately buried under piles of flash, but their site has other tempting things, like the turkey podcast, so I'll link them anyway.

I won't be buying a Butterball turkey -- poor, miserable, oppressed turkeys that they are (were). Nor did we convince my mother to raise her own this year, since none of us said we'd step up to slaughter it. Instead, I'll reserve my turkey -- plus rolls -- at New Seasons. I'm assuming those turkeys were able to participate in the Farm Animal Make-A-Wish Program, which gives each a chance to live out his or her fondest dream before being slaughtered. (Wait, that doesn't exist? Someone get busy! Don't tell me you're too busy sending goats to the needy to buy iPods for turkeys?)

The sides at New Seasons also look tempting, but since cooking is a large part of the fun, I'll do most of it myself. If I enjoyed cooking less, I'd be very tempted by New Season's complete dinners (another flash site, I think, so click around). $70 for dinner for 4-6, from soup to nuts, is a very good price -- I know I'll be spending more than that, even if you don't count my labor -- and I'm sure it will be tasty.

There's a lot of talk currently about how terrible it is that none of us cook anymore, but I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with it -- it's just that the food we tend to buy is so bad for us, particularly the cheap stuff, but most of us don't have the huevos to add the amounts of butter and salt that make things really tasty. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Betsy/mom was telling us the other night how when she was in a political study group in the '60s/'70s, they thought that it was a great thing the way people in China would get take out on the way home from work, so they didn't have to go home and cook. (We won't go into the pros and cons of Maoist China here, okay? And no, they didn't think people were eating "takeout" like sweet and sour pork every night.) The point is, there is something genuinely compelling and sensible in the utopian vision of applying economies of scale to the household.

A character in Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward talks about how, back in the day, "A very important cause of former poverty was the vast waste of labor and materials which resulted from domestic washing and cooking, and the performing separately of innumerable other tasks to which we apply the cooperative plan." They had communal dining halls as the answer.

I'm not going to get into Marx and Engels on women's work and the family (not least because I don't know that much about it) -- but the point is, it's undeniable that the work of cooking is endless and a large part of it (washing up, for instance) is pure drudgery, and this is what modern conveniences aim to be sparing us.

But in some ways, we've gone the opposite direction from economies of scale: many of us live in smaller households, so instead of cooking for an extended family, you're cooking for one or two or maybe three at a time (and, believe me, cooking for one is a pain in the ass -- a sad, lonely, miserable pain in the ass). Where we have adopted economies of scale, instead of collective kitchens creating wonderful foods based on the best health science and gourmet practices, for most of us, it means McDonald's or Taco Bell. Or maybe Trader Joe's, if you want to get fancy about it. But it's more like soylent green than manna.

This tension between the inefficient pleasures of individual craftsmanship, and alienating economies of scale is something I think about a lot and tend to blah blah blah about too much, but it's one of those concepts, like the mapmakers paradox, that I find compelling and applicable to many situations. It sometimes seems like we have the worst of both worlds now, at least in the food and cooking department.

But then, Thanksgiving, when practiced in its modern traditional form, is itself practicing economies of scale by bringing large groups of people together, and a return to individual craftsmanship by encouraging us to cook for each other. And so: Happy Thanksgiving, or, as it will now be known in my household, Celebrating Individual Craftsmanship and Small Scale Economies of Scale Day!!

Remember Bread Delivery by Bike? I emailed New Seasons about the idea and they sent me back a really nice email saying they liked the idea, but pointing out some obstacles they saw (they thought someone would need to be home to accept delivery, the bread might get wet in the rain, and they wanted employees with benefits, not hobos, to do the delivery). When I responded with solutions to some of the obstacles (locked breadboxes, tarps, universal health care), they told me that this was in the works -- home delivery by biodiesel van! And lo and behold, they have made it so!

This is great news for people going without a car, people who don't want to make an extra trip to the grocery store, the agoraphobic, and the just-plain-lazy. For my part, I will save the $9.95 delivery fee simply by not going into the store and impulse-buying a teapot shaped like an elephant or something. And it's nice that you can't tip, I think, because tipping always stresses me out. You can also do pick up for $4.95, where you place your order and then drive and pick it up on the parking lot.

This will probably increase the overall number of times a month I go shopping. I used WebVan a couple of times before it went under, and I loved it. I hope they have a thing where the website remembers you and what you like to buy frequently. And I think it would be great if you could have "friends" set up like in Netflix, so your friends could recommend foods! Maybe they could link up a dating service, too -- you know, like, "you're obviously shopping single, and you like whole seed mustard, maybe you'd like this person"? or something like that?!

The service isn't cheap enough to use it to keep you in fresh bread (unless you're some kind of a millionaire or something) so bread-by-bike delivery would still be useful! Someone should hop to it!

But I'm very happy to see this great idea put into practice and come mid-October, I'll be buying mine online!

This idea from Daniel --

"seeing as how our country seems infatuated with the fake extreme of "american cheese" and how prominently it is used at fast food restaurants and barbecue-y things, i thought that we should take shit to the next level and introduce to the public, in cylindrical form: AMERICAN KETCHUP and AMERICAN MUSTARD!!!!! think about it! we could pack all three of these things in the same little doo-hickey and then sandwiches could be made simple and easy. not sure of the logistics yet, but everyone who hears about this idea has something to throw in there. do you think it has merit? do you at least think that it is funny to think about? thats all i really want anyway, that and to market this in japan where they will go BONKERS over it. heck yea!"

The idea of sandwich fillings that come pre-formed into sandwich (or bagel) shape already exists, and the MoHDI guys have a butter pusher in development. But I don't see much in the strict condiment field, so I think Daniel's got something.

This patent might help -- using it, you could put the ketchup and mustard in a sealed envelop of American cheese, sort of like a savory Uncrustable.

The other thing I love about this idea is its name: AMERICAN condiments. We've sort of missed the crest of the "Freedom Fries" wave, but I still think there's plenty of space for a line of condiments specifically marketed as American. I'm sure I'm not the first to notice the irony that the most American of mustards is called "French's". And although it's apparently untrue that they issued a statement denying they were French, they do go out of their way to say that "there's nothing more American than French's mustard."

But why have a name that begs the question? Why is the flag waving on the French's bottle red?, not red, white and blue? What, are they communists or something?

Our line of American condiments might include:

American Ketchup: May seem redundant, but with American patriotism, there's no such thing as overkill.

American Mayonnaise: I don't know that the product itself needs to be redesigned, or that there are big differences in mayonnaises (although Melissa, with her preference for mayonnaise that comes in a tube -- a toothpaste style tube, not a Kewpie tube might disagree), but clearly, this product renaming at the very least -- I can hardly spell it, it's so foreign! I say we rebrand it as "American White Sauce." (Although "American Sandwich Lube" has a catchy a ring to it, too).

American Mustard: Package the yellow sauce in a bottle of red, white and blue at the very least. Or maybe we find a way to dye the mustard blue, then we package all three in a tube as Daniel suggests, so you'd have a layered stack of red, white and blue condiments. You might sell them in strips, too, for hot dogs.

Fresh bread is great and, I think, a great basis for a simple diet -- just add some cheese and fruit and you're all set (the fruit is optional as far as I'm concerned). I really don't agree with what some Farrakhan followers say about avoiding fresh bread. Unfortunately, baguettes are really only good for one day -- maybe two, if you like stale baguette as untoasted toast for breakfast -- and other good breads also have a short shelf life. But alas, I, like many others, don't live within walking or practical every-day biking distance of a good bread, never mind a baguette. The Peninsula isn't exactly Paris, you know. They do have good bread at good old New Seasons, but because of the distance, it is for me, at most, a once a week thing, more often less since I'm really trying to cut out extra, unnecessary driving these days.

So, my idea is for bread delivery by bike. It's more practical than milk delivery because: 1) a half gallon of milk lasts me a week or so; 2) bread weighs a lot less than milk, and doesn't need to be refrigerated. You could fit a fair number of loaves in a bike cart, as those bike moves demonstrate. 3) A lot of people don't even drink milk anymore and although it's true that some people are still following the low carb diets, many more, I think (maybe I'm wrong?) eat bread than drink milk.

And I would gladly pay a dollar or two -- well, maybe a dollar -- extra per loaf to avoid the lines and transportation and general hassle of buying bread at the grocery store.

But even with economies of scale, we're not talking about a huge income. How many houses do you think someone could deliver to by bike? Maybe 50? So, maybe $50 a day? that's okay, but not exactly a living wage.

So who would provide this invaluable service for relatively low pay? My first thought was bike hippies, but then, my impression is that a lot of those folks are actually gainfully employed. (I'll bet they'd buy bread by bike, though, on those days when they didn't have time to go to the store themselves.)

So, that leaves hobos. I'm not sure if "hobo" is a polite term or not. It certainly seems to have gained recent currency. Well, it's better than bum (although that does give you more illiteration), we'll go with hobo for now. I'm thinking of the folks who regularly patrol the neighborhood by bike already, often pulling a shopping cart behind them, looking for bottles. What if, at the same time as they picked up bottles, they dropped off loaves of bread? Maybe they'd have two carts, for reasons of sanitation -- one for bottles, and one for bread. They're ready doing all that work riding around, this way, they could make more money.

New Seasons is a grocery store that positions itself as having a social and environmental conscience (and I have no reason to think they don't), and being locally based, they could work with local bikers by letting them have loaves at cost, or near cost. They could give them the bread in sealed bags, so you wouldn't have to worry about someone's dog having slobbered on it or whatever. New Seasons could insist that all its bread bike delivery people wore helmets and reflective tape, so that the overall safety of was increased. Maybe they'd give away New Season's bike helmets?

At first, before economies of scale kicked in, New Seasons might have to subsidize the delivery, like the Oregonian subsidizes delivery of the paper. (I'm assuming that the cost of paper delivery is underwritten by the advertising in the paper.) So, maybe you'd get some New Season's advertising with your bread. Or maybe they'd just use it to show how they are working to offset the amount of carbon emissions they help foster by selling delicious things that encourage us to drive to get there. We'd still have to go there for our icecream and stuff. Until the bike delivery service really took off, and then maybe we could get anything that way.

Some people would subscribe to bread and get a little discount. You could get bread every day, every other day, twice a week, or whatever. Maybe you'd get a baguette every time, or maybe you'd alternate with some other kinds of bread. And the bread delivery people would also carry some extra loaves that you could buy off them for a little more. Maybe they'd ride through the neighborhood singing, "bread for sale! fresh bread for sale!"

You'd tip your bread delivery person.

It might be like day labor, where you showed up with your bike and got assigned a route, or some people could have regular routes. It might be like the berry bus, where kids and immigrant workers do it sometimes, too. I only did the berry bus a couple of times when I was a teenager and, man, it really sucked. Bread delivery would be a lot more fun, I think. (But the traffic danger might mean that kids really couldn't do it.)

So, that's my idea. Justin had a related idea which I'll blog shortly.

Between us, Nat and I had:

• Three corn dogs
• One elephant ear
• One asparagus tamale (not deep fried, but extra tasty)
• One funnel cake
• Several liters of lime/lemon-aide (also not deep fried)

Once, about ten years ago, I told Shane that something was really good by saying it was, "like pussy on a stick!" a phrase that, at the time, I thought I'd invented, but of course the internet has outpaced me. I see at least once nice alternate meaning. It looks like (google it yourself) the another popular meaning has to do with transexuals or drag queens.

I asked the vendors "what's a pork chop on a stick look like?" and they showed me. Just what it sounds like, as it turns out. Yummmy?

More stick food!! And fast service, too!

Cheese Club met yesterday (purely by coincidence, on the eve of the meeting of the American Cheese Society's 23rd Annual Conference, held here in Portland!). We decided to focus on French cheese and we ended up with 9 cheeses to taste:

• Laguiole
• Camembert
• Cambozola Blue (note: not a French cheese, and came from Trader Joes, but extra super delicious)
• Fromage D'Affinois
• Bucheron
• Pont l'Eveque(I think this was the extra stinky one that the flies loved so much)
• Pyrenees Peppercorn
• Chaumes (which looks like and is apparently related to Munster
• Fourme d'Ambort

First we had some French 75s. Justin and Erin produced some nice rating sheets (an iTunes screen). We ate a lot of cheese.

Two of our highest rated cheeses (another one being the Fromage D'Affinois). The Cambozola Blue was described by one taster as, "so good, smooth and I want to spread it all over my body!"

Reviewer comments include: "Yum, yum, yum!" "Strong and sharp, like Encylopedia Brown on steroids." "Crunchy, awkward, balanced." "Dry, sharp." "Flint, nutty, strong, acid."

I haven't averaged its stars out yet.

When I took that trip to Russia and Ghana by way of Amsterdam a few years back the cultural constants were the Peruvian pan flute bands, Abba, those woven plaid pastic shopping bags, and Irish Pubs. There are Irish pubs all over the world, apparently disseminated in part or in whole by the Irish Pub Company. Some Baffler guy wrote about this phenomenon in an essay that was reprinted in The Boob Jubilee. I don't have it in front of me, but from what I remember the essay talks about how Guinness is behind the proliferation of Irish Pubs around the world as a way to increase its markets. I personally think Guinness is kind of nasty, hot or cold.

The Irish pub franchise comes complete with Irish pub furniture
and fully branded bric-a-brac. The obvious thing is how ironic it is to try to franchise authenticity. (On the other hand, that thought reminds me of this review essay that Sallie Tilsdale wrote years ago -- can't find the cite, it ran in Harpers -- on travel books and tourism, that made the point that if tourism is what a town is selling, experiencing their tourist trap or whatever IS an authentic experience of that place. Jordan and I loved that essay so much we sent her a fan letter. She wrote back with her grandmother's recipe for artichoke dip.)

Anyhoo, point is, I think Pabst Blue Ribbon should develop a bar franchise based on Pacific Northwest dive bars for exporting around the world. Given the generally shitty economy here in the Pacific NW, they could set up their own employment agencies, just like the Irish only instead of Irish people, they'd pimp out hipsters.

You'd partner with indie click somehow. You'd sell hipster merchandize.

And, if you played your cards right, hipsters themselves would take it under their wing -- you know, ironically -- and you'd get their business, too.

This idea goes out to anyone who has been the subject of ridicule or contempt for bringing Two Buck Chuck to a dinner party. You may be too cheap or poor to go out for dinner, but you can't be too cheap or poor to be a good dinner party guest. Granted, most people (myself included) would rather receive some exciting fancy pretty bottle of wine than Two Buck Chuck, but the truth is, I'm not sure I can tell the difference in taste or, in any case, that I actually prefer the fancier wines.

We conducted an interesting experiment at a dinner party where we had a taste test between the Charles Shaw and other wines -- different grapes for the most part (this test was by no means scientific); we started with the question "can you tell which is which is which" which was kind of humiliating, but then we switched to "which do you prefer" and that was really interesting and less judgemental. I strongly recommend tast tests as a fun party game. So far I've only done fancy sparkling water in addition to the kind of sloppy wine tasting, but we're doing a cheese one on Saturday.

In any case, what I do prefer without question is the fancier wine labels, but I like to save my money for cheese. So here's a couple ideas.

First, Trader Joe's should sell vintage wine labels (sticky ones) in the check out line for you to slap on a bottle before taking it out in public.

My other idea is DIY wine labels, which isn't really a new idea, but mine is a little more down-home, because the whole point is to be cheap.

So, first you take your supplies: a piece of paper and some pens (I like Sharpies, although I'm feeling a little manipulated by them lately).

Then, you fold the paper in half and wrap it around the wine bottle and mark how much room you'll have to write.

This one is for a romantic occassion, where you don't your date thinking you're cheap, you want him or her to think you are sweet and sentimental for making something by hand!

Here's an example for when you just want to be friends.

I tried to create a flickr group so that other people could upload their great wine labels. I know that Pete has made some awesome homemade beer labels for his homebrew, and I see a flickr group on homebrew beer labels) but I don't know if I did it successfully with handmade wine labels -- I don't really understand flickr all that well.

I really need a better title for this, and will welcome any suggestions, but here is my theory: Foods that have a flat line on the "Time Between Anticipation and Regret" scale are better for you. It's kind of like that Victorian idea that you don't want to overstimulate yourself or you'll go crazy. As you can see in this chart, in the case of donuts, there is a very steep curve going from perhaps not even thinking about a donut to "I really want a donut!!!" and from there to "O! why did I eat that donut?"

With carrots, on the other hand, it's a pretty flat line. Most of us are neither all that psyched about eating a carrot nor sad we did so. If anything, maybe there should be a little uptick at the end because we are pleased with ourselves for having eaten the carrot (and I should change the high end scale from "Anticipatory" to "Anticipatory/Satisfied"). I'm not really much of a chart person, and it's a work on progress, but I'll bet I could sell a few diet books based on this concept.

Maybe you could use this to chart your feelings about different foods, and thereby coach yourself into having more appropriate feelings for more appropriate foods. Especially if you had fetishes or disorders.

But for now, I join Spine in saluting the carrot!.

Chris suggested this idea last night: Breakfast in a form you can eat in the shower. Good old Halfbakery has plenty of entries on the subject of breakfast, and even one on the subject of waterproof toast, but nothing on something that would meet your complete nutritional needs.

I'm envisioning a nutrition bar wrapped in fruit leather. It would be a little bit sticky when it got wet, but since you would be in the shower anyway, it wouldn't really matter. You could also sell a commuter mug that could hang from a suction hook on the wall of the shower (that wouldn't take any particular inventing, just a bit of marketing).

Come to think of it, you could just eat an apple or a whole sausage. Those are intrinsically waterproof. But where's the profit in that?

I had a pumpkin spice latte the other day. It's not all that often that I buy things like that (I'm a timid consumer) and when I do, I feel decadent, i.e, rich. It was Tim who taught me to appreciate flavors in my lattes -- indeed, who got me into the habit of buying lattes at all in my early 30s. Before that I would have said that I couldn't tell the difference between a latte and a coffee with plenty of cream in a blind taste test -- and truthfully, I probably still couldn't -- but the appeal of buying lattes comes from the emotional sense of well being it gives me: luxery, devil-may-care,"let myself eat cake!" So, when I saw the chalk board sign for a pumpkin spice latte I thought, "yuck -- who would waste their money on that?" And as soon as I thought it, I wanted one. So I plunked down my $3.25 for 16 ounces of non-fat, extra hot, half decaf, pumpkin spice latte.

What did it taste like? Well, it tasted like lipstick, as so many things do to a lipstick wearer.

This gave me my idea:

Gourmet lipstick.

This would appeal to foodies who wanted to look and taste fabulous.

Think about it: You go out for a fancy pants meal, and you want to look great, but you don't want your meal tasting like chemical fruits and waxy eau d'bourgeoisie.

So, voila: gourmet lipstick (this idea seems very French to me). Maybe you'd package it in courses: aperatif, soup, salad, meat, cheese? (with a tasty cheese lipstick, you'd have your beautiful woman with both eyes!). Then the beautiful woman would excuse herself between courses to freshen up and change lipsticks. (Honestly, btw, I think restaurants are missing out on a lot of drink sales by not having nicer bathrooms. Because if they did, ladies would be more inspired to go to the bathroom more to freshen up or whatever, leaving their dates with nothing to do but order more drinks. Then again, most of the time when I go out now it's with at least three other people, so maybe I'm wrong about this. And no one drinks like they used to. But seriously: nicer bathrooms would be good.)

I don't think this would take a whole lot to catch on -- there's plenty of low-brow precident in those nasty soda-flavored lip glosses that girls of a certain generation -- my generation, approximately -- used to swap around when they were 8-12 years old. I never did.

For flavors, I'm mostly thinking herbs, like thyme, marjorem, stuff like that. Maybe cinnamin, vanilla for dessert. Parmesean? Gorgenzola? Not chicken. But maybe something smokey, like bacon. A dark red, bacon-maple lipstick would definitely get you kissed. Which brings up the other potential market: foodie's girlfriends.

I could buy my own lip gloss maker and add some merlot, I guess.

I'll just add that it's Interesting that the second page of google results for "gourmet lipstick" brings me so many of the same page for engagement rings -- personally, I would be touched if someone got me an engagement ring at swollenballs.com -- nice to know they're putting that swell URL to good use.

Bleh. I'm sick. I just woke up after hours of fitful sleep -- the kind where you can still hear the radio but can't make your limbs move or be sure that you're actually yelling at the dog out loud as opposed to dreaming it.

Anyway, while in Montana we discussed the idea of splicing genes together to create a plum that would have an almond in the middle instead of a pit, or a peach with a walnut pit, or a bannana with a core of delicious peanut butter. You get the idea. Tasty and handy. Like an all-natural applet or cotlet, which I love, btw. If we don't have the technology now, it's just a matter of time.

On other matters, I'm fascinated by the story of the alligator-eating python. A year ago they were hopeful that the reverse would happen, and that the alligators would help control the python invasion. Too bad. Makes me think, though: if you had an alligator inside a python and cooked it, that could be tasty like a pestducken.

So then just now I had another idea, which is for a sick delivery service. It would be a service you could call if you were sick. They could bring you:

• hot soup
• aspirin
• magazines
• ice cream
• applets and cotlets
• a thermometer
• videos
• flowers

It would be very handy for people like me who are sick and all alone in the world -- or anyway, sick and hungry while everyone they know is at work. They would also walk your dog.

I was reading in the New York Times (which I won't bother with since by now it's probably pay-per-view only) an article in the dining section about how more restaurants are offering "drink pairings" -- that is, non-alcoholic alternatives to wine pairings with courses, and it described a bunch of the crazy drinks that the chefs had come up with so they didn't lose any money to tee-totaling pregnant women and recovering alcoholics and any other people who might not want wine with dinner. I can't remember if they had savory drinks, but I'm sure that they did, and this seems to me to be a concept worth popularizing to a wider audience through a line of drinks, like Gatorade, or Snapple, or Tazo (those beverage companies have some pretty slick websites, don't they?).

This line of Mary's Savory Waters (wow -- that sounds kind of disgusting, doesn't it?) would offer a variety of still and sparkling waters infused with flavor such as:

• basil
• bay leaf
• hot pepper
• green pepper
• smoked something (maybe just smoke? call it gunpowder)
• cheddar/parmesean
• soy
• ranch

I'm deliberately leaving off the meat flavors because that would just be cold bullion.

I had this idea a couple of Thanksgivings ago when there was a rat in me kitchen. It first made its home in between the dishwasher and the kitchen sink and Chris was the first to hear it (he said it was quite loud and he thought maybe there was a human intruder in the house). It then secretly migrated to the kitchen stove, where it proceeded to pee upon and rip up the insulation, and generally fuck things up. I didn't realize it had made a home in the stove as well as the sink area for awhile, and continued cooking on the stove well after I'd killed and disposed of the rat. I kept wondering why I smelt rat pee when I cooked (I thought it might be my cooking, actually) and only realized what was going on Thanksgiving morning as I preheated the oven, smelt rat pee yet again, and started poking around and saw the torn up insulation. Ugh! I believe that was the same Thanksgiving we all got what I thought at the time was the Norwalk Virus, but now that I read up on the details I'm not so sure -- I promise there is no way I got stools on the food. Anyway, we were all really sick -- pukey sick -- in the day's after I served dinner.

Killing the rat was a source of some anxiety for me -- I am a serious pussy when it comes to killing things and I did, after all, once have a pet rat named Ratty. (Actually, at first Ratty's name was Claudia and she belonged to my friend Tim Moore. My mom changed her name to Ratty after we all went to Alaska and left Claudia/Ratty behind. Tim was planning to smuggle her on the plane in his jacket at first but then thought better of it -- man, those were the days. Can you imagine trying to smuggle a rat aboard a plane these days? My mom also had a cat named Catty. Ratty had a ton of personality, and after I came back from Alaska she became my pet for awhile. We used to play this game called "Ratapult" with her where she would be on the bed and we'd kind of toss her around with our feet under the covers. She loved it!) At first I considered using a live trap, but then, I thought, where would I release it? where would a Norwegean rat be welcome? Not even in Norway, I think, and certainly not in any part of North Portland. I also thought about using glue traps, but then I read someone's story about setting out a glue trap only to find little gluey rat footprints all over their carpet in the morning. While I was considering the catch-live-and-then-kill method I asked Denise for a good method of killing the rat once I caught it and she suggested putting it in a pillow case and then spinning the case around and around as fast as I could and then thumping it hard on concrete. A regular rat trap started to look more and more attractive.

I called Multnomah County Vector Control (this is one of those government services that even the most die-hard libertarian must admit is a great return on the tax dollar) and they told me how to set a rat trap safely -- safely for me, that is. (Poisons were out of the question because Lita was still in the picture -- just too old a feeble to kill a rat -- and because Vector Control warned me the rat might eat some poison and go somewhere inaccessible but smellable to die.) [I just looked around for a website which demonstrated the technique they recommended and didn't find one so maybe I'll have to add some pictures here.] Anyway, setting a rat trap is really easy if you use the foot control technique. You just put on some good boots or shoes and hold the trap open with your feet while you set the trip wire and then release the trap slowly with your feet while your little fingers are well out of the way. Words fail me here -- I'll take some pictures. Anyway, it really relieves the reasonable fear that you will break your fingers in setting it. And then I tried setting it with different things -- cheese was a no-go -- it just ignored it -- so were hot dogs, which it took and ate without setting off the trap. Same with little piles of peanut butter. Finally I took some peanut butter and smeared it all over some gauze which I then attached to the trip wire. This worked because the rat had to gnaw at it, I guess, which set off the trip wire.

I found it with its little neck broken one morning. Actually, the neck wasn't near little enough for my taste -- it was a lot bigger than Ratty's, that's for sure -- well, before the tumor took hold of Ratty. Did you know that rats are particularly vulnerable to cancer? I'm not sure if that's why they use them in so many studies, but it make sense. We didn't subject Ratty to anything more toxic than the rest of us experienced, but nonetheless poor little Ratty got a huge growth on her neck which grew and grew until my mother finally had to put her down. She's as much of a softie as me, so she actually took Ratty into the vet to have them do it. My sister's father Javier, who grew up on a farm in rural Mexico, was incredulous that Betsy would actually spend good money to kill a rat that was well within striking distance. He offered to do it for her, but she took it to the vet, anway. Javier and Denise should really meet sometime, if they haven't already.

So anyway, back to that sad, rat-pissy Thanksgiving morning. While I was thinking about Vector Control and all the animals that plague us -- rats, squirrels, possums, racoons, mice, lice, etc. -- I thought: what if you could combine them all into one roastable treat, like a turducken? A pestducken! Or a raterrelcoon? A pocoonice? A mouse inside rat inside a squirrel inside a possum -- inside a racoon. After all, if you can stuff a camel, why not a racoon?

My unwillingness to actually eat something like this points out my discomfort with myself as a hypocritical meat eater. I feel bad that I don't like killing things and yet love eating them. I'm still working on that. But I stopped myself from buying turkey dogs last night as Safeway with thoughts of rats as well as turkeys.

I was ranting about this so much for awhile there I bored myself and I think forgot to blog about it -- but Melissa's comments on the food chain reminded me of one of my favorite food-based theories, which is that we should adopt a diet based on gallentry and we should eat *higher* rather than lower on the foodchain -- basically, we shouldn't eat anything that, given a chance, wouldn't try to eat us, first. This means, no more chickens and cows, let alone vegetables and grains -- and more polar bears, sharks and yes, pigs! Because pigs WILL eat people, if they are hungry enough and if you are drunk enough. Seriously, my grandfather was almost killed by a sow when he was a little kid, and then there's that scene in one of the "Silence of the Lambs" movies. Pig is the only readily available form fo meat that would eat us. In an fair world, we would only eat other predators, and we would have to hunt them down and kill them with our bare hands, drunk (to make up for our superior intelligence).

Anyway, if I had a little more time I'm sure I could find a lot of man eating pig stories that are not pure fantasy. Maybe this weekend.

Rachel also offers this (I think someone is feeling hungry for protein)...:

It's a widely accepted scientific fact, based on archeological evidence,
that pre-agricultural humans were stronger, bigger, and generally healthier
than their agriculturalist descendents. Some attribute this to the
comparatively huge variety of foods in the hunter-gatherer diet, while
others cite its higher protein to carbohydrate ratio. In either case, there
is a very important element of the paleolithic diet that no one seems to
want to talk about: insects, and partularly grubs. The answer? 21st century
grub farming! Highly nutritious and protein rich, easy and cheap to produce
(I'm guessing based on my limited but memorable experience with
grub-growing), grubs, properly maketed, could be the answer to our world
food crisis woes. Grubs could be ground up and processed into a tofu-like
substance and formed into all kinds of food products, like grubdogs and
gruburkeys. Most vegetarians wouldn't be offended, since insects aren't
normally considered animal friends or even fully sentient beings. Imagine
vast underground grub farms, turning our delicious, high-quality protein to
feed the world! Grubward Ho!

Rachel offers this:

Now that the dietary fashion pendulum is swinging from vegetarianism to
low-carb, how about a cookbook along the lines of "Meat Cookery for New
Carnivores"? It would explain how to buy, store, cook, and generally deal
with meat for (probably sqeamish) recent ex-vegetarians, with a long,
preachy yet readable intro about why meat is good for you both physically
and spiritually, how you ought to buy free-range & organic, health problems
associated with excess soy, meat politics etc. It could be the the Laurel's
Kitchen of the 2000s!

This is Chris's idea.

Fast food restaurants should offer a dog menu for drive through customers with dogs. Then instead of feeding your dog french fries or whatever (which we don't do anyway -- we never eat fast food, of course), you could buy a doggie treat which was healthy for your dog. The point wouldn't really be animal health; the point would be to make money, so don't bother telling me that fast food is unhealthy.

Kathy writes:

"OK, so you know how places are always selling soup in a bread bowl? Well, I thought maybe it would be a nice switch to sell soup in a sausage bowl/basket. You could either do link or patty style: the links could be coiled around like a basket, or the patties could be molded into bowl shape. Then Dave or Melissa, I think Dave, had the idea that you could take a canned ham and hollow it out and serve pea soup in it. Then it could be the edible bowl that would adhere to the low-carb atkins diet!"

I think that's a great idea! My addition is that you could have meat baskets too -- so instead of getting a basket of fresh hot bread or bread sticks and butter, you'd get a bunch of nice thick slices of ham or some hot dogs. You'd still get the butter, of course.

Yummy!

Many many thanks to Bridget and Carrie who presented us with the amazing fondue pot which inspired this game. I hope they come visit us soon and play Fondutionary with us. This is based on my friends' version of the game Dictionary: TV Guidetionary (and if we're lucky maybe they'll tell us more about that). Both Fondutionary and TV Guidetionary are versions of the game Dictionary, which many seem to consider safe family fun or, worse, educational . Some of us like to theorize our games and then use a dictionary to talk about them. Actually -- I just found that site by accident, but enjoyed playing the prisoner's dillemna online, although I was soundly trounced. Anyway, the thing that makes you an effective player of any of these games is how well you can mimic the format of the original source.

The way you play Fondutionary is: first you start by reading a fondue recipe aloud so everyone gets the formula. We just played using titles and ingredients (not directions) so, using "The Gold Medal Fondue Cookbook" by Marie Roberson Hamm (Greenwich, Conn.: Fauwcett Publications, Inc., 1970) we all heard about:

Clam Dip Fondue

2 loaves French bread
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 (7-ounce) cans minced clams, undrained
8 slices bacon, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 cup tomato puree
1/2 teaspoon basil, crushed
dash salt and pepper

Then, one person (Katy, in this round) picked another real fondue recipe from the book and the rest of us made up our own recipes -- all of us writing them down on similar-looking paper. Then the same person who picked the real recipe read all the recipes to us and we voted for which one we thought was real.

Here are the recipes to chose from (answers below):

A) Yam Yam Fondue
3 large baked yams, diced
1/2 cup cream cheese
2 tbl cornstarch
1/2 cup frozen peas
1/4 cup sweet vermouth
3 strips diced bacon
salt and pepper to taste

B) Rise and Shine Fondue
1/4 cup orange juice
2 tbs. bran flakes
1/2 cup montery jack cheese
2 cups piping hot coffee
1 tbs. cornstarch
dash of salt
2 shots burbon

C) Breakfast Party Fondue
1 egg, beaten
1 cup light cream or milk
3 tablespoons sugar
1/4 teaxpoon salt
4 slices sandwich bread
1 cup graham cracker crumbs
1 (8-ounce) package precooked pork sausage
1 (13 1/4 ounce) can pineapple chunks
Teriyaki Sauce
Chutney Sauce
2 cups salad oil

D) Lard 'n Eggs
1 loaf bread
4 ounces Montery chedder cheese
2 ounces butter
3 ounces lard
5 raw eggs
salt and pepper
hot sauce to taste

E) Gouda Sunrise
6 oz. Gouda cheese
1 T. flour
1/3 c red wine
1 clove minced garlic
1 t basil
1/4 c minced sundried tomatoes
2/3 c water

F) Cheese 'n Chunks Fondue
2 16 oz. bags large elbow macaroni
2 cups soft cheese
1/2 cup Spam, cubed
1/2 cub Swiss cheese
1/4 cup milk

Answers below!!

Next on the list: cold war recipes-tionary, Appetizer-tionary, Dissertation-Abstract-Tionary (!!), Chilton's Guide-tionary, jellotionary.

Okay. As soon as I saw that you're getting a readership that includes true entrepreneur-types, I decided I better get my great idea in for FAD DIET FAST FOOD FRANCHISES. The idea would be to have a nationwide chain of South Beath outlets, Weightwatchers, Atkins etc., and everything on the menu would be per the diet, and even per the stage of diet (e.g., at the Atkins outlet you could get an "induction" meal, etc.). You could get hamburgers without the buns, or with low carb buns, etc. Every item would be "legal", even the desserts. Takes the stress, mess and special orders out of lunch.

Posted by Erika Hamerquist at September 29, 2003 03:25 PM

AKA: the Wok Crock, the Wokdue set.

Combination wok, crock pot and fondue pot. All the most popular, under-utilized wedding gifts in one appliance. Sell as a big space-saver. Venues: Sears, Sharper Image, Nieman Marcus.

It would be a band or 'Zine name: "Uncomfortably Full" for a socially-aware group with a message pointing out the discrepancy between first and third world living and how our own first-world gluttony leads to social, cultural and environmental "gas" and other "digestive disorders." Songs for a band could be along those lines.

An alternative would be using it as the name for the official publication of "Chefs Without Borders", a group dedicated to helping impoverished peoples make the most delicious meals possible out of what little they have. The magazine would include a recipe every month using grubs and stuff. First Worlders would have to make a trek to their local specialty food store to recreate the recipes in an authentic manner. There would be a line of "authentically hungry people foods," the sale of which would go to benefit genuinely hungry people. So, you could buy a sack of genuine UN rice for three times what it usually costs to make your recipe out of "Uncomfortably Full," and the profit would go to subsidize actually really hungry people getting another two bags of rice. It could also be a diet fad.

This idea is so old the cocktail revival thing is pretty tired, but I think people are still drinking ...