Eat up!

My wife’s office is near an incredible farmers’ market. She likes to go and mooch around on her lunch hour, and often brings home goodies she found irresistible, fresh fruit and vegetables, odd cuts of meat, fish I’ve never seen before, and hand them over to me to deal with. This usually leads to a lot of frantic hunts through the indexes of my cookbooks, or, if it’s really exotic stuff, on-line searches. It’s sometimes exasperating, but it keeps me on my toes (that’s what she says, anyway). Now, though, I’ve got a new kitchen tool that puts me ahead of the game—Eat Your Books.

Eat Your Books is not a website of recipes, but rather a tool for finding

News: Watch those unwanted pounds fall away!

For Weight Watchers chapters, the weigh-in is the dramatic high point of the week. In Sweden recently, a group gathered round the scales to measure their progress, and were treated to more drama than usual when the floor gave way beneath them. No one was injured, and the assessment was re-convened in a nearby undamaged hallway, where the floor was firmer. Swedish newspapers didn’t report whether the accident was caused by a weak floor or a rogue fridge-raider.

Cheers!

I hope we all have a happy new year, and definitely a more prosperous one, with good food and wine. New Year’s Eve, I’ll fillet out a wild sea bass, pin-bone the fillets, salt and pepper them, place them skin-side down in a little hot olive oil in my cast-iron skillet, scatter a tablespoon of mixed chopped chives and parsley over them, followed by a short squeeze of lemon, turn them over and finish the other side, serve on a bed of pilaf-style rice (steamed in light chicken stock and tossed with toasted pine nuts), with some baby peas and caramelized mushrooms. Simple, quick, lovely. The wine will be white Burgundy, Louis Jadot’s Macon-Azé, inexpensive, very nice, just right for the occasion and the food. (Much earlier, the kid will get his favorite food and beverage, sausages and French fries with lots of ketchup, and a rare Diet Coke.) We’ll all be in bed early and happy, and wish for the same for you.

Dept. of Clear Thinking

“Now that the scientists have acknowledged what we have known for over a decade, that the biggest contributor to global warming is animals, everyone must act quickly and seriously reduce, or even better eliminate, meat and dairy from their diets. With all the excellent faux meats and cheeses and the variety of alternative milks, there really is no excuse to continue to ruin our planet. . ."
                --Heather Mills, founder of the V-Bites Vegetarian Café, former wife of Paul McCartney

Noted.

Food Memories: Berlin

The Berlin Wall came down 20 years ago today, one of the most potent symbols of repression gone in a day, literally torn down by a joyous mob. A few years before, as a young journalist, I went to East Berlin:

Food and Foodies on Film

A friend who just signed up to Netflix wrote to ask about movies featuring food as a main theme. At first, it seems like a fairly long list, but then if you eliminate the mediocre remakes and overly sentimental goop, it’s manageable and fun. Here are the best, in my view: Babette’s Feast (reverential but sumptuous and sincere); Ratatouille (makes haute cuisine fun); The Big Night (good acting and story, great food);Tampopo (Japanese noodle nuttiness); 

Cooking in the Comfort Zone

What’s your idea of comfort food? I’d have thought there'd be a wide range, enveloping our variety of childhoods, but it seems not. Recently, psychologists at the University of Sussex conducted experiments to create what they called a “Comfort Index,” wiring up volunteers with electrodes and then feeding them various foods while scanning their responses. The top contenders for comfort were beans on toast, sausages and mashed potatoes, tomato soup, chicken and mushroom pie, and macaroni and cheese. How about you? I loved tomato soup as a kid, but clam chowder was my all-time favorite. Chicken pie, yes, but mushrooms are out for my boy (every time he asks, “What’s this?” it’s a prelude to rejection of whatever “this” is, and they’re near the head of his list). Beans on toast? Not even in my top ten. Macaroni and cheese, of course, is a hardy perennial. It’s been in the news lately, too. More to come next week. . .

Smooth talk as beanz make newz!

Heinz, whose slogan is “Beanz Meanz Heinz,” introduced their canned beans in Germany and Austria earlier this year--“Gebackene Bohnen in Tomaten Sauce.” A newspaper in Vienna, The Austrian Times, decided to do a comparison with the original version, and discovered that the German one has less beans, less tomato sauce, and more water, sugar, and salt. The company’s smooth response was an understatement, to say the least: “Our subtle blend of sauces varies in different countries.”

Cloudy, with a chance of movies

September was a treat: Meryl Streep's portrayal of Julia Child in Julie and Julia enhanced the amiable-but-serious dual stories of the joys of cooking, and then Cloudy, With a Chance of Meatballs gently satirized junk food and over-consumption, the first witty kids’ movie of the year, and one I enjoyed as much as my son and his pals, who are still laughing about Leftover Mountain and the Spaghetti Tornado. Highly recommended!

Adios, Gourmet magazine

I’m still getting over the shock of the abrupt closing of Gourmet magazine. Founded in 1940, it always seemed to be part of the national fabric, reassuring, inspirational, and essential. I remember peeking into my mother’s copy of the massive, elegant “best of Gourmet” cookbook (edited by Vincent Price!) and imagining cooking and eating the food it described. Now it’s gone, just like that, another victim of the recession. But then I realized that the last time I bought a copy was five or maybe even six years ago, and I never finished reading it. . . perhaps a victim of something more than the recession?