food museum blog

O Carts Sublime!

 

Recently returned from a lengthy Foodie tour of the UK,  I am delighted to report on the fine state of grocery carts, both there and in Belgium. Carts across the Pond are fluid, graceful dancers, not only  able to  move swiftly forward and back, but also to glide from left to right.    Once I discovered the magnificent engineering of these  carts in a market outside Brussels, I twirled  mine repeatedly, the Loretta Young of cart Dervishes--excellent turn ratio--and did some playful 360's right in front of the veggie bins stacked high with geographically-enticing produce  labeled from Kenya, Israel,  Spain,  Greece,  Morocco and elsewhere.
   The US is clearly a Third World country when it comes to carts--ours plod reluctantly forward and back,  their wheels often entwined with baggies and grocery detritus--many pull hard to the left or right, others shudder, and mine usually grabs hard on the lino underneath. 
    Is the graceless USA cart emblematic of something , some apt comparison that stirs at the back of my mind?  Hmmmm.

(Cart pic from www.turbosquid.com)

Dirtying the Clean Air Act?

According to the Organic Consumers Association, based in Minnesota,  "the day after the Inauguration, January 21, the Bush Administration signed an agreement that allows factory farms to freely violate any and all clean air standards for the next two years, and forgives these same companies from paying  fines for past air pollution  violations."  The report goes on to note that "one of the companies that will benefit the most from this arrangement...is Tyson Foods, who also happened to be one of the largest donors to the Bush Inaugural festivities."   Once just a chicken giant, Tyson's is now the nation's largest processor and marketer  of chicken, beef and pork products.

NB--We seem to recall that President Bill Clinton's administration and Arkansas-based Tyson's were extremely cozy as well.

The OCA defines itself this way on their website:
          The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) The OCA is a grassroots non-profit           public interest organization which deals with crucial issues of food           safety, industrial agriculture, genetic engineering, corporate accountability,           and environmental sustainability. We are the only organization in the           US focused exclusively on representing the views and interests of the           nation's estimated ten million organic consumers.

Holy Bucatini

Alert Foodies, we need your help. Karen writes to ask "How do they get the hole in bucatini?"
Any ideas?  Please respond, all you pasta experts out there,  so we can notify Karen that well-informed FOOD Museum bloggers have come through with the answer. Grazie.

Grand Guignol foodie film....

The blurb on the DVD case tossed together the words "food," two women, thriller and so on....a Korean film named "301/302," by Chul-Soo Park. We perused the blurb, noted the grim faces of the stars, and decided that this could well be a foodie thriller, and therefore worth having a look at.
Well. The moody shots of high tech, high end Korean apartment interiors were elegant, the flashbacks a bit daunting but acceptable, and when ringing phones ignored by one main character began to feature, hey--is this a French film? All it needed was a car scene in the rain with a tight and very lengthy shot of the windshield wipers.
But no,back to the food--it was gorgeously Korean--brightly colored, made from squeakingly fresh ingredients--the "loach" or what looked like eels, had just emerged from the water until our heroine, the crazed cook, tosses them into a bowl and adds a handful of salt.  The other main character is her neighbor, across the hall, an anorexic with a painful past.
Suffice it to say that the crazed cook, newly divorced and struggling with her weight, attempts to entice her standoffish loach-thin neighbor with dishes. Big trouble ensues.
A detective comes around when the anorexic disappears......
Look for long shot of dead canines in a market.......( duh... foreshadowing) Adorable Fluffy the dog plays a pivotal role in the film.
Remember the musical, "Sweeny Todd?"
Yes, this is a foodie thriller indeed. Bon appetit.

Tell us about any other foodie films you know of in this category, please.

Inaugural Eats

Calvin Coolidge, with whom our family has a direct and delightful connection, (don't believe all you hear about so-called Silent Cal)  had pickles at breakfast on his Inaugural Day in 1923, according to a Washington Post piece by Ken Ringle.  Bill Clinton rescinded the G.H.W.Bush ban on broccoli at an Inaugural luncheon, and Lyndon B. Johnson, sworn in on Air Force One in Dallas, was served vegetable soup and crackers. 

President Bush's taste for TexMex, hot chiles, and ribs does not seem to feature on the Inaugural Ball food lineup---lobster medallions with orange and grapefruit sections lead off the menu.

Woman Eats Six-Pound Hamburger

From Yahoo News and Associated Press comes this report:

CLEARFIELD, Pa. - Kate Stelnick may weigh only 100 pounds, but her appetite is remarkable. The college student from Princeton, N.J., is the first to meet a restaurant's challenge by downing its six-pound hamburger — and five pounds of fixins' — within three hours.

Stelnick didn't eat for two days to prepare for the challenge. "I felt very full, but I was too excited that I actually ate it to notice," Stelnick said.

Stelnick, 19, made the five-hour drive to Denny's Beer Barrel Pub with two friends from The College of New Jersey on Wednesday, after they saw pictures of the monster burger, dubbed the Ye Old 96er.

Denny Leigey Jr., the owner of the bar 35 miles northwest of State College, had offered a two-pound burger for years and conceived of the six-pounder after his daughter went to college and phoned him about a bar that sold a four-pounder.

But nobody had finished the big burger in the three-hour time limit since it was introduced on Super Bowl Sunday 1998. In addition to the meat, contestants much eat one large onion, two whole tomatoes, one half head of lettuce, 1 1/4 pounds of cheese, two buns, and a cup each of mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, relish, banana peppers and some pickles.

Stelnick did it all in two hours, 54 minutes.

Leigey said he was pretty sure somebody would meet his burger challenge, though he didn't have a petite woman in mind.

"I wouldn't have made it if I didn't think it was possible," Leigey said.

Turkey Dines Out on Its Slice of Luck

The Guardian ran this story December 10, 2004.  We are just getting around to mentioning it.   Seems that two vegetarians , Ray and Maura Stroud, from Somerset, UK won a church charity raffle's mystery prize which turned out to be a 7 kg. turkey.  The couple couldn't house the bird in their modest garden, so "Bert" now lives happily on a farm in Chepstow sponsored by "Viva" the animal rights campaign group. 

Ten million turkeys were slaughtered to meet demand for the UK Christmas feast. 

By the way, prices for a ten pound turkey cost on average over $40 in Britain and less than $15 in the USA.  We have been traveling in the UK and are finding prices for food and everything else just staggering.  The recent fall in the dollar which is worth about half a pound is a factor.  But food prices in the USA are really a bargain.

Delia Smith

Here's the UK's  Daily Express headline on veteran TV cooking host Delia Smith's retirement:  "Delia quits cookery game with a 7.5 million pounds recipe for retirement." 

Smith, 63, announced her retirement as a TV food personality and sold her magazine publishing company for the amount mentioned above.  She was one of the original tv cooks beginning in 1973, inspiring millions to be more adventurous in the kitchen.

"Such was her influence, that if she recommended a particular cooking item then it generally sold out in supermarkets the next day. 

Not everyone was so enamored.  A Daily Express food columnist described her as the "Volvo of cookery teachers" because she was reliable but dull. 

Smith and her husband plan to devote much of their time to their one remaining business and passion....Norwich City Football Club.

Incidentally, our son is studying in Norwich this year at the University of East Anglia. As a football (soccer in US) fan he was ecstatic to learn that Norwich had earned the right to participate in the premiership (major league) this year.  But his hopes for seeing all the legendary teams were dashed when he realized tickets were long claimed and the few ever available, costly.  ( He did manage to queue at length for a ticket to a match featuring Norwich.)

He reports that two of the best restaurants in Norwich are connected to the football stadium and run by, who else?  Delia has also made and implemented nutrition suggestions to the team.

Have you any experiences with tv cooks, and/or do you own any of Delia's books? 

Aids: Still World's Worst Disaster

No, not the Asian tsumani, as bad as it is, and the reports keep coming in...the world's worst disaster continues to be the Aids pandemic.    The Guardian recently reported on a Unicef study that found:  one in six children severely hungry; one in seven with no health care; one in five with no safe water and one in three with no toilet facilities at home.

That's 640 million children living in mud floor dwellings and severly overcrowded.    The tsumani which affected children in greater proportions than other age groups has worsened an already horrendous situation for many of the world's youth.

NY's Oak Room Restaurant

Did you ever eat at the Oak Room in NY's Plaza Hotel?  This landmark eatery, opened in 1907, is closing.  It's a victim of tough competition from new and old restaurants all over the city.  It was originally a men's only bar, which was closed during prohibition and later opened as a restaurant.   It featured prime rib, Caesar salad and cheesecake served amidst Edwardian paneling and large murals.  Waiters wore  formal attire.   

Do recall a favorite eatery that is no more?  HoJo's on a different scale comes to mind.