With all the hooha these past few days about the appetite of a certain New York governor for youthful yet costly flesh apparently not available locally, I couldn't help but recall the jaunty response of Paul Newman years back when asked if he had ever been unfaithful to wife Joanne Woodward.
"Why go out for hamburger when you have steak at home?" Such a romantic, that Paul!
Now-- we gals do not overtly welcome comparison to cuts of beef, but still, for a food blog, useful.
Scanning the offerings at Netflix the other day, I fell victim to this title: Oranges: Revenge of the Eggplant. Huh?
Well. I began watching, and knew I had stumbled into a bizarre world of doodled on fruits, playhouse sets, and awkward voice overs. Plus, violence prevailed. Toy tanks! Death squads! ( This orange, like, exploded?) Bananas in burka-like coverings...
I hopped forward through the entire affair, with Dr. Sunkist and the Evil Eggplant et al. I suppose this animated flick has a cult following---it's not the only one with the Oranges. The first, apparently, was created for a high school art class.
Rent it, readers. See for yourselves. ( Perfect date flick.) Orange yuh gonna?
Continuing pet food saga The alleged Chinese supplier of melamine-laced wheat gluten denies and denies any wrong-doing, even though records indicate the company, Xuzhou Anying , was reportedly buying up as much melamine as it could find, even after the beginning of the pet food recall. According to the NYTimes, an executive of the company has been arrested by Chinese authorities.
2007 
Asian Excellence Award for Chef Nobu Japanese-born Nobu Matsuhisa, owner of multiple restaurants in beautiful-people cities, (well, also Las Vegas, ) will receive the Pioneer award on AZN tv, May 28, honoring his influential cooking style. Apparently he specializes in a combo South American and Asian cookery, so maybe it's known as SoAs food, who knows? Memo to pr lady: As we will be in NYC in June, perhaps lunch at Nobu's, pls? Thank you. ( At left, Nobu New York.)
Taking Note Belatedly of 2006 Sexiest Man's Food Habits/ Thoughts Once again, an elderly People Magazine perused at the gym from a bike informs me that Celebrity Food Eater (Gorgeous )George Clooney adores tacos, and does a helluva Thanksgiving dinner spread. Also he lives in Italy for the best of reasons: "...( Italians have) learned to celebrate dinner and lunch, whereas we sort of eat as quickly as we can to get through it."
Apparently actor Hugh Grant attacked a paparazzi with a "tub" of baked beans. No word as to whether or not his missile was filled with the egregiously horrendous British Heinz product, or with actual home-baked navy beans made with molasses, brown sugar, pork, dry mustard and so on.
"Beans on toast" has long been a Brit comfort food--I well recall years ago the time I ordered it at a motorway joint that clearly had no veggie food available. It arrived, the pale, reddish beans sliding across the white toast--on top? An ordinary household thumbtack.
Reader, I sent it back. Beans can indeed be dangerous.
Finally saw the Academy Award winner in the Short Live Action Film category, West Bank Story--I blogged about this battle of the falafel joints on February 27--and it's a gem. Full of wit, lively music, un PC jokes, and sight gags, as well as bits stolen from West Side Story, the flick portrays the ( absurd) battle between the Kosher King Jewish deli and its rival Hummus Hut, both on the West Bank. ( Duh.) And the expected love affair between Fatima, the Palestinian cashier, and David, the Israeli soldier.
Watch the trailer here.
At one point in Barbara Sonneborn's 1998 documentary film, Regret to Inform, a Vietnamese woman recounts the day more than 20 years before when she lost nine members of her family, all killed by American troops. She was stoic until she recalled " they hadn't even had breakfast." At that moment she broke down, I broke down, and thus endeth my viewing of the film.
Earlier that evening I had watched the silent parade of recently killed American soldiers posted at the end of PBS's News Hour. So perhaps I was primed to be especially touched. Whether they had had breakfast before they departed the scene I do not know.
(The documentary is Sonneborn's first film and it records her visit to Vietnam, 20 years after her husband was killed there by a mortar. She includes the tales of many widows and survivors, both American and Vietnamese.)
So maybe T. rex really was an ancestral chicken, and, quite possibly, did taste like, well, chicken. Who knew! This amazing gustatory conjecture comes to us in an extremely ancillary way, courtesy of a band of researchers who collaborated on research into the genetic makeup of the mighty dino.
Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University extracted soft tissue from a T. rex bone found in Montana in 2003. Said tissue's proteins were then analyzed by scientists at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center who found collagen--connective material-- that closely resembled that found in chickens.
According to today's AP story, "Most people believe that birds evolved from dinosaurs, but that's all based on the architecture of the bones," said (research team leader John M. )Asara. "This allows you to get the chance to say, 'Wait, they really are related because their sequences are related."
As for the taste thing, who might have eaten a T. rex anyway? Wasn't it at the top of the food chain? Maybe those little insignificant mammals nibbled on deceased elderly T. rexes.
The full story on this dino breakthrough appears tomorrow in Science, http://www.sciencemag.org
( Thanks to Stephen Greb, copyright 2000, for the T.rex portrait.)
BTW Thanks to Google, I just came across a film called Top of the Food Chain, a 1999 sci fi spoof movie whose lurid poster subtitle reads "...but We Taste Like Chicken." I hope Netflix has it.
Dueling falafel joints on the West Bank, a concept that seized me by the tastebuds. A short documentary by Ari Sandel titled West Bank Story , (cute,) won an Oscar Sunday night in the Best Short Documentary category. Of course I'm dying to see it--falafel is a stellar vegetarian food, right, and, extra points, this film is a musical.
Here's what oscar.com says: "A musical comedy set in the fast-paced, fast-food world of competing falafel stands on the West Bank."
Now I did see The Queen and don't recall QEII eating anything....maybe the corgis chowed down. And The Departed did feature a scene in a greasy spoon but the characters were so riven with violence I don't recall much eating. Loved Little Miss Sunshine a film wherein the Mom plops pizza and a bag of salad on the table, right?
But for real food, I think WBS is the foodie winner! Now how in hell can I get to see it????
Finally, at maybe the 1 hour 30 minute mark in the new flick, Casino Royale, James Bond declares he's hungry---mind you, we have watched him run full tilt for at least 20 minutes, scaling walls, mechanical cranes, leaping through buildings, and then playing poker, quite sedately. But soon he's off again, nailing people hand to hand in a stairwell , and more and more--well finally, he's hungry, but all I saw heading into his mouth was some caviar on a cracker.
Go figure.
Incidentally, it's a terrific Bond film, reinvented and reinvigorated, and the humor is sly. But don't expect any foodie moments.
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