• Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
I can’t imagine anyone who enjoys a cup of coffee likes the swill you can get at so many places – I’m looking at you cruise lines. When given the choice most of us would like to have a great bean with robust and deep flavor. Personally I don’t care where my coffee comes from, but if you’re one of those big fans of Ethiopian beans you might want to stop at your local purveyor to pick up a bag because the Ethiopian coffee you know and love could likely become homogenized. more…
If you’ve been to a grocery store in New York anytime recently you may have come across some people looking for you to sign a petition. The idea represented by the Vote Wine 2009 coalition was to allow grocery stores to sell wine. A notion I don’t find all that abhorrent really. But I also don’t see a need when I’ve got access to 2 or 3 liquor shops that are decent, and one fantastic one that’s only a 10 minute drive away. 
So I’ve been alerted to the appearance of ramps, which are just wild leeks. Now it should be noted that I’m supposed to gush all over these little oniony items with a strong hint of garlic. After all it’s the cool thing for food bloggers to do. But I’m pretty “meh” on ramps. I’ll use them, of course. I’ll use just about anything that is edible in my cooking. Heck, that ramp aioli mentioned at
Have you ever been walking around with a bottle of liquor and didn’t want to seem uncouth by swigging straight from the bottle? For whatever reason there are no glasses around, and you just have to enjoy a couple of gentlemanly sips. The ShotCarver is the elegant solution to your problems. Just take the device and carve yourself a little cup out of any produce you can think of. 
I came into some lobster ravioli recently, and after making a mock-carbonara for them Thursday evening my wife indicated her interest in having them for dinner the next night. Her being Catholic makes meat a no-no for some reason on Friday’s during Lent. She seemed genuinely interested in having them, plus they were conveniently not frozen like the fish we have on hand in the chest freezer. Before dropping her off at work she wondered about a sauce. “Can I just eat them plain?” 
I can’t personally attest to the quality of a Hardee’s burger, even the Western Bacon Thickburger. What I do know is that while she is the host of Top Chef, Padma Lakshmi does have a pretty defined palette. She will often be the one that tells a cheftestant the food they made was just wrong, and then prove it by spitting it back up in a napkin. I can’t remember the last time Tom Colicchio did anything similar. 
All this time I was believing the hype that happy cows come from California. After all they were playing sports and getting into hijinx all the time, and that appeared to be a fun time. But I was wrong. Happy cows are the ones being brushed with a huge yellow robotic brush. Just watch the video below and you’ll see what I mean. 
The two parts of a date that used to cause me trepidation were the ordering of wine, and the final moments when I dropped a girl off. I never went for the swirling around and slurping of wine situation, simply because I felt it looked pretentious. Not that I’m ignorant to the reasons, I just didn’t want to look like an idiot. So I check for sediment, give it a quick whirl, sniff and taste to ensure it’s OK and call it good. 
Looking around it’s come to my attention that the whole eat local, eat fresh mantra of the foodie is a fad. Grass fed beef from a local farm is a quaint idea in today’s world, and an expensive one. I’ve discovered first hand the difficulty of trying to make such a change work. And it often reminds me of the times in the past when I vowed to exercise more, or just generally eat healthy. Now there’s this simple concept that it’s not how much you eat, or your caloric intake, but what you’re eating that matters. 
