TEXAS MONTHLY now has a barbecue editor!

From the NY Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/us/texas-monthly-hires-full-time-barbecue-editor.html?hpw

crankin’ away

and a scene I painted taken from a photo taken by a pal of mine, Mike Farmer. It’s at Kreuz Market in Lockhart, TX

Altercation at the counter

Bourdain on the Simpsons Nov 13, 2011

And something on waiters from Houston..

Foodies are Punks. (The Gourmand)

(From The Paris Review) ::

The term *foodie* is an infantilism.. it’s a diminutive;  the sort of term that a child would use, like doggie or duckie.  Or kiddie-winkie.

The Gourmand

Charlotta-Westergren: Victory from The Gourmand

 

At the corner of Proust & Powell:

I guess a flaneuse can’t be a foodie.

Supposedly Walt Disney's KC studio.

No gossip here. Feliz Navidad & Joyeux Noel & Frohe Wiehnachten

I have no head-splitting, gut binding gossip. Sorry.

Die, Foodie, die!

Being a “foodie” is so over. (snork)

feets don't fail me now!

from Jason Sheehan (a former chef, now a food writer in Seattle):

Patrick wrote a post, collecting his thoughts about Mexican food, quote-unquote traditional cuisine and foodies. In it, he decided that what was needed was a movement–a revolution, albeit a small one. He wrote:

“At the core, a strong belief in local ingredients, deconstructed classics, or authentic flavors scores a win for most restaurant-goers. It’s tempting to take the foodie philosophy and expand it to all restaurants and markets. As review sites like Yelp and Urbanspoon expand, diners have become more critical (myself included) and more resistant to eateries that go against the grain of New American, French styled, locally grown/caught/farmed cuisine…Traditional has become a euphemism for unchanging, which in the context of the foodie fight for authenticity, seems contradictory. Do foodies want locally produced goods or authentic spices found only in Mexico? Should a restaurant try a French technique on an Irish dish or only boil down vegetables into a stew? Should we deconstruct meatloaf?”

Preach it, brother. Bring it on home…

“Therefore, I put out a call to all open-minded eaters. Join me in the anti-foodie movement. Rather than project our vision of food onto the restaurants, take food on its own terms. We are in America-nothing we produce here can be completely of another place. Even the most “authentic” Mexican food in California is from California…Anti-foodie is not about hating on the foodies. We are all still foodies-this is a foodie post if there has ever been. I will still go to Chez Shea and love the carefully constructed courses. I will continue to marvel at Art of the Table’s ability to improvise based on the daily catch and kitchen leftovers. Of course I would still thoroughly enjoy an evening at Crush, sitting in modern chairs I would never have in my house, but are surprisingly comfortable and the perfect spot to enjoy a dish.

But that doesn’t mean stepping away from the Tex-Mex, Teriyakis, and fried chickens of the world. We live in Seattle, one of the best food cities in the country. The restaurants here have a history all their own and their unique styles provide the variety we crave (it’s the spice of life, right?). It might be a good time to step back and see the context in which we eat food.

Time to take food on its own terms. Become an anti-foodie.”

Ruhlman on Harvey Pekar.

Goodbye, Harvey.

Something “new” to do at a picnic..

Bury the remains.. from Retronaut

“Today, 27 years later, a group of French scientists have brought the artistic event back to life by exhuming the meal, this time with the serious aim of testing the latest archaeological techniques. Slowly, bits of tablecloth, bottles and cutlery are once again seeing the light of day as they are carefully brushed free of earth. A dozen laboratories are involved in the dig, which is opened to the public today on national archaeology day.

Mr Spoerri, now 80, and several of his original picnic guests were present this week to oversee the excavation of their gargantuan meal. He discovered that the bottles and plates were still intact but the tables had all but vanished. He also swore that they had not used plastic cups, but these re-surfaced almost as good as new. The artist intends to take a mould of the excavated picnic: It will then be reburied “for future generations”.”

WS Merwin (who knows food) named poet laureate

you gen-xers & millenials may not get this.. pity, that.

In Time

(from 1999)
by W. S. Merwin

The night the world was going to end

when we heard those explosions not far away

and the loudspeakers telling us

about the vast fires on the backwater

consuming undisclosed remnants

and warning us over and over

to stay indoors and make no signals

you stood at the open window

the light of one candle back in the room

we put on high boots to be ready

for wherever we might have to go

and we got out the oysters and sat

at the small table feeding them

to each other first with the fork

then from our mouths to each other

until there were none and we stood up

and started to dance without music

slowly we danced around and around

in circles and after a while we hummed

when the world was about to end

all those years all those nights ago

Gee Mrs. Cleaver, You Look So Nice..

I’m reading CLEAVING, by Julie Powell, the woman who did the Julia Child blog that became a book that became part of a much better movie.

It’s pretty tawdry. At least this is better writing than the blog/book was. The recipes seem to be good, though. And it’s hard to believe that she’s a Texan, too. Damn Gen-Xers.