Category: Tidbits

"Pork, lamb and poultry all have their impacts, but beef is undoubtedly the Hummer of the dinner plate."

"Which brings us back to the 'why bother [going green]' question and how we might better answer it. The reasons not to bother are many and compelling, at least to the cheap-energy mind. But let me offer a few admittedly tentative reasons that we might put on the other side of the scale:

If you do bother, you will set an example for other people. If enough other people bother, each one influencing yet another in a chain reaction of behavioral change, markets for all manner of green products and alternative technologies will prosper and expand. (Just look at the market for hybrid cars.) Consciousness will be raised, perhaps even changed: new moral imperatives and new taboos might take root in the culture. Driving an S.U.V. or eating a 24-ounce steak or illuminating your McMansion like an airport runway at night might come to be regarded as outrages to human conscience. Not having things might become cooler than having them. And those who did change the way they live would acquire the moral standing to demand changes in behavior from others -- from other people, other corporations, even other countries."

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Over Meet the Press this morning, La Doug and I were discussing the awful but not impossible scenario where McCain wins the White House over a fractured Democratic party. 

LA DOUG: I talked to Mark, who was in D.C. when we went from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration.  It went from a sushi town to a steakhouse town overnight.

Next time you visit a friend with a baby, ask them to save you some baby food jars. They're the perfect size for taking homemade vinaigrette to work. Just toss your ingredients in and shake them up when you're ready for lunch. The twist top means no spills. Best of all, smells don't carry over in glass, so I can make basil ginger soy dressing today (pictured here) and mix up a lime mint honey vinaigrette tomorrow.

If I had to use two words to describe the tasting menu we had at Aquavit, they'd be "fruity fish".

Not exactly my cup of glogg, but I wouldn't mind downing another dram of the pear vanilla black pepper aquavit.

Salma at Food & Wine shouts me out on the Food & Wine blog! I had the privilege of ordering at Sripraphai for a table of lady writer/editors on Monday, most of whom I'd never met before, all of whom could throw down at the dinner table. I love New York women.

• BBC reports that Bronx council member Joel Rivera wants to limit the number of fast food restaurants within close proximity of each other. Which is totally going to make those fat kids in fast food infested neighborhoods like Sunset Park lose weight because they'll have to walk an extra 10 paces every time they want to wash down their KFC 12-piece with a 7-Layer Burrito and a Coolatta.

• More reason to get to know your local poultry farmer—frozen Chinese chickens, ducks, and pigeons, entrails and all, were being illegally smuggled in through NY and NJ. I'm sure they're TOTALLY sending the happiest, healthiest, least suspicious chickens they have off to the U.S. in crates labeled "tilapia".

• The Times' reports that today's average actual pasta serving is 480% the recommended one cup serving size; cookies are up to 700% larger than recommended serving size. So if I'm not yet 700% larger than my ideal body weight, does that mean I can keep eating 4 cups of pasta for dinner?

  

• An Amish farmer in Ohio loses his dairy license for taking $2 from an undercover agent for a gallon of raw milk. Isn't there anything better to do in Ohio than entrapping Amish farmers over $2 gallons of milk? Don't they have meth labs to take down or something?

• Best thing I've seen all week -- Sunday, 11:00 a.m. dim sum at World Tong in Bensonhurst, two fuzzy-eyed old Chinese ladies dressed in floral polyester practically wrestling each other to the ground over the check, $100 bill in hand. For those of you not well-versed in the martial art of check-fighting, fight clean, but remember, elder trumps younger, grasshopper.
• Seen at Sunrise Mart in Soho -- a handwritten sign for special konnyaku that says, "GOOD FOR ASSIMILATION".
• Strict parents produce overweight kids. Is there anything that ISN'T yo mama's fault?
• Speaking of mamas, tell yo baby mama -- just two drinks a week can lower an unborn child's IQ. Test subjects also being sought for study on possible adverse effects of dropping a baby on its head more than once a week.
• We're still talkin bout yo mama -- pregnant ladies shouldn't eat tuna. Young children should eat no more than 1/2 a can chunk-light tuna per week. Women of child-bearing age should eat no more than 3 cans of chunk-light tuna per week. Tuna chart does not mention how much tuna single women of child-bearing age who could only get pregnant by immaculate conception should eat. Please advise.