Dueling supermercados on Lancaster

La Tapatia recently opened with a full meat counter, deli, & bakery.  The chain also has stores  in PDX & Gresham. It’s on the west side of Lancaster in the old Book Bin. Across the way, on the east side of Lancaster, El Torito has taken over the Panaderia Oaxaquena (a bakery)  and has moved its tortilla machines and its taqueria over there and opened as EL TORO. They have great tacos with handmade tortillas de maiz. El Torito has been there since at least 2006 and I like the people there..

EL TORO has tacos de sesos (brains) & tacos de tripas (tripe) for the adventurous. We got al pastor, carnitas, & carne asada for a take home lunch one day this week. Generous servings for the fillings, unlike some places.

EL TORITO SUPERMARKET is now open on Lancaster, just south of Center on the east side in the old PET SMART.

Bourdain** slags Paula Deen.

So what. He’s already slagged Alice Waters.

Paula & Alice are equally obnoxious but in very different ways.

Would Big Al take Paula Deen 3 out of 5 falls?

**I corrected the spelling: Boudain is a francophone/cajun sausage. Silly me.

Back from KCMO (again) & ASK A MEXICAN.

OK, folks, I was pleasantly surprised to find that one can get a go-cup of menudo at panaderias (Mexican bakeries) in Kansas City. And the panaderias don’t use that foul tasting excuse for shortening that the folks at Sabrosita use. (Was it aviation lubricant from the days of the Contra incursion? It really tastes synthetic. Ikk.)

Here’s a photo from Bonito Michoacan, a Mexican grocery, meat market, & eatery in Kansas City, KS.

buena comida aqui!

You guys crack me up. Arguing about big-boxing the Fan. I’m sure very few of you have cruised down Jeff Davis and gone to Big Apple Market (a ‘hispanic” market run by Koreans). I’ve suggested this but some of you think you need to hire Blackwater operatives to go to the non-bolillo (non-whitebread) parts of this burg.

I can’t wait until ASK A MEXICAN shows up in STYLE WEAKLY. But I’ll have crossed the Mississippi by then.

Honoring Consumerism in Tiny Bird Bites.

Friday was the birthday of the sociologist and economist, Thorstein Veblen.

(from wikipedia)

Besides his technical work he was a popular and witty critic of capitalism, as shown by his best known book The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899).

Uff da! Old Thorstein! Pass the lefse & lutefisk.

He combined sociology with economics in his masterpiece, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), arguing there was a basic distinction between the productiveness of “industry,” run by engineers, which manufactures goods, and the parasitism of “business,” which exists only to make profits for a leisure class. The chief activity of the leisure class was “conspicuous consumption“, and their economic contribution is “waste,” activity that contributes nothing to productivity. The American economy was therefore made inefficient and corrupt by the businessmen, though he never made that claim explicit. Veblen believed that technological advances were the driving force behind cultural change, but, unlike many contemporaries, he refused to connect change with progress.

In spite of difficulties of sometimes archaic language, caused in large part by Veblen’s struggles with the terminology of unilinear evolution and of biological determination of social variation that still dominated social thought when he began to write, Veblen’s work remains relevant, and not simply for the phrase “conspicuous consumption.” His evolutionary approach to the study of economic systems is once again in vogue and his model of recurring conflict between the existing order and new ways can be of great value in understanding the new global economy.

Historic marker in Wisconsin.

A musing on barbecue:

From EATING OUR WORDS, a Houston Foodblog collective:

Growing up, we never ate barbecue in a restaurant. The entire idea was anathema ……. You made barbecue at home. It took all day. You invited the family over when it was ready. You ate. Going out for barbecue was like asking someone other than your mother to make you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich as a kid: It just wasn’t going to be as good.

Frankie Laine & Judas Priest/Doris Day (or “How Lovely Cooks the Meat”)

Here’s a bit of music from a different time and place. It’s got a lot of feeling, don’t you think? Maybe Bobby Flay and Paula Deen could use this as a theme song; or Bourdain & Sandra Lee.

Virginia Looks Like a Pork Chop

Jason, old son. Hitler was a vegetarian. Being veg is hardly left-wing.  Rodale Press’s (Organic Gardening, Prevention, etc) founder was nearly a Bircher.

Looks Like a Pork Chop

A widget for a Food Atlas from USDA

I’m not going to regale you with how much Oona & I spent on dinner but this may prove interesting to those of you who are into food beyond Norman O. Brown and the “fall from grace”  mentioned in his works.

usda foodatlas

A tip of the sombrero to Meg, the literary maven, for pointing me at this.

From The Oxford American: The Food Issue

This is from an essay by Warwick Sabin:

“It used to be that keeping a few free-range chickens, tending some grain-fed hogs, and raising a small vegetable garden was how people simply survived. Now these are often vanity projects for young hipsters and retired hedge-fund executives who have discovered the forgotten pleasures of “heirloom” tomatoes and artisanal sausage. Incredibly, we’ve reached a point in our society where things that humans have done for thousands of years—grow a vegetable, smoke or cure a piece of meat—now provide the grounds for smug satisfaction. (Think of Marie Antoinette at Versailles, playing shepherdess and milking the cows.)”

Read more here.