Robert David Sullivan 2

If your dinner is shorter than two hours, it should be at the bar

A civilized custom in Italy is described by Trish Hall in the New York Times's Bitten blog. Like many Milanese, I've found that a few small plates with a cocktail makes for a fine dinner if you plan to walk about afterward. Or go to a movie or play. Or do just about anything other than spend the entire evening at the dinner table, which is the only way you can eat and digest a large meal at a healthy pace:

With our drinks came an invitation to help ourselves to stuzzichini. You’d think that would mean a few puff pastry things filled with cheese and maybe a pretzel or two, but this was on an entirely different qualitative and quantitative level. There were slices of spinach frittata; seafood salad, rice salad and other composed salads; vinegar-glazed onions; two different kinds of stuffed eggplant; other roasted vegetables; cheese; canapés and little sandwiches of many kinds -- all manner of salamis and hams, for instance; something like garlic bread; mini pizzas; olives; bread. And, yes, a few puff pastry things filled with cheese. But no pretzels.

The backlash against locally produced food proceeds apace

Next on the agenda: Spread rumors about rats in bake-sale items.

Stop telling me to cook at home!

The New York Times Magazine has another scolding of people (like me) who eat mostly take-out and pre-prepared food, this time in a profile of Jamie Oliver:

...this British celebrity chef has made it his mission in recent years to break people’s dependence on fast food, believing that if they can learn to cook just a handful of dishes, they’ll get hooked on eating healthfully. The joy of a home-cooked meal, rudimentary as it sounds, has been at the core of his career from the start, and as he has matured, it has turned into a platform.

At a trip to the supermarket, Oliver also disparages convenience items:

...how about those packages of cut-up fresh fruit? He shrugged. “I don’t understand why people can’t cut it up themselves. Don’t they own knives?”

I do own knives, but I buy cut-up carrots, and one of my favorite treats in New York is already-cut fresh pineapple at bodegas. If I feel any guilt, it's because of the plastic these items come in, not because I'm depriving myself of character-building kitchen work.

In my case, a major deterrent to cooking is that I live alone, so time spent preparing a meal (and the equal amount of time spent cleaning up afterward) goes into my solitary, anti-social part of the day, which is long enough as it is. Even if I save only 15 minutes by buying a burrito instead of making something from scratch, that's 15 minutes more I could spend with a friend getting a drink after work, or just walking around the city people-watching. (Yes, I could invite friends over and make them dinner, but that's not easy with a small apartment that's missing a dining-room table and is on one of the T's less inviting subway stops.) 

So stop nagging me, New York Times Magazine, unless you want me to stop buying you and spend Sunday afternoon soaking beans instead of doing your crossword.

Matthew Ygelsias also objects, on behalf of working women and people busily downloading MP3s.

UPDATE: Uh-oh. Apparently, my usual breakfast not only lacks the joy of home-cooking, it's also jail food.

Local foods mean local smells

Tewksbury residents went to Beacon Hill yesterday to argue about the regulation of odorous hog farms. The State House News Service's Jim O'Sullivan reported (via Wicked Local Tewksbury) that the local Krochmal Farm -- which can house more than 1000 pigs and store more than 500,000 gallons of waste -- has yielded complaints about its "stench":

“There is no place to escape,” Tewksbury resident Michelle Walsh told the Municipalities Committee. “Who wants to live like this?”

But agriculture advocates say that the state's farmers shouldn't be run out of business by new homeowners piggybacking on suburban sprawl:

“It’s the smell of a piggery today,” [state Rep. Denis Guyer, from Berkshire County] told colleagues. “Tomorrow, it’ll be a cow operation. Then, it’ll be a chicken farm.”

Trouble ahead for the local locavore movement?

Grist for a higher meals tax?

It's axiomatic that people eat out less often during a recession, but restaurant meals may not be such a bad value in Boston. According to the latest Consumer Price Index, the cost of "food at home" increased at almost twice the rate as "food away from home" in the Boston area from March 2007 to March 2008 -- even as the two categories showed almost identical cost increases nationally.

In metro Boston, household groceries went up by 6.0 percent (versus 4.3 percent nationally), while restaurant and take-out meals went up by only 3.5 percent (versus 4.6 percent nationally). The overall Consumer Price Index dropped by 0.4 percent during the same period, both nationally and in Boston, thanks to declines in transportation and energy costs.

There has been a moderation of menu prices lately in Boston -- or is it more accurate to say there's a sense of desperation brought on by a glut of high-end eateries? ("Restaurant Week," like the Christmas season, seems to be getting longer every year.) Whatever the reason, does it mean that there's some breathing room for a hike in the meals tax, as Gov. Patrick is proposing? Restaurant owners, not surprisingly, say no.

The way they save barstools in South Boston?

Someone from my hometown wants to make it easier for bar patrons to take unlimited smoking breaks while keeping claim to their seats. From the Malden Observer:

Once a business purchases [the] cards, the idea is that they will be stacked on the bar, like cocktail napkins, for patrons to pick up and use when leaving beverages unattended to alert other patrons and staff that the owner of the drink intends on returning.

This reminds me of the South Boston tradition of putting out a lawn chair to claim a shoveled-out parking spot, even after almost all the snow has melted.

I have had the delightful experience of finding a seat at a drinking establishment, not noticing the glass with about a quarter-inch of beer parked on the bar, then chatting with friends for about 20 minutes before some guy with nicotine breath orders me off my perch. I don't think he's protecting his beverage; I think he likes being able to stroll around and chat up people without sacrificing his seat.

If these "out smoking" cards become legit, may I suggest some others to level the playing field? How about "outside until Billy Joel song is over"? Or "taking a break because I've heard my friend's story 500 times already"?

City Council bans bait-and-switch muffins

What if the legislative process were always this speedy? All muffins baked in a certain unnamed city must now have at least 18 percent "non-dough content," ensuring that each customer's blueberry muffin is as juicy as the one in the display case. And it all happened because of "one bad catered brunch meeting" at City Hall:

Reports from various Council members are conflicting about the precise quality of the muffins at the meeting, but one Member claimed to have eaten a chocolate chip muffin with “one single [expletive] chip.” The Council scheduled an unprecedented lunchtime session afterward, where the muffin law was written, briefly discussed, and passed in less than twenty minutes. “It was a hasty, angry process,” concludes [Edward Swarthmore, head of a local bakers’ assiociation].

Check out The City Desk for more top-notch coverage of fictitious municipal government.

If you ever think of a joke, don't say it

Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is in trouble for dissing an industry she might not have known was in her state, as the AP reported:

She was in Washington state Tuesday for a fund raiser for a fellow Democratic governor, Chris Gregoire, who made a point of praising her state's wines.

A Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist later reported Sebelius' reply, meant as a jest.

"You should be thankful we don't make wine in Kansas," Sebelius said. "If you ever see Kansas wine, don't drink it."

But Sebelius is now drinking the Kool-Aid from her state's vineyards:

"She ... made a poor attempt at humor but says she won't do that again," [spokeswoman Nicole] Corcoran said.

Gov. Patrick had better think twice before making any jokes about seemingly inconceivable Massachusetts products. (Is there caviar from Cape Cod? Does the town of Florida really grow oranges?) Surely he's already familiar with our blueberry and cranberry wines. And our vineyards don't have corny puns in their names.

 

Red steak vs. blue sushi

Via Andrew Sullivan, here is a report on the blog Urbanspoon that finds a correlation between sushi restaurants and Democratic votes in big cities. Of course, cities that have more sushi than steak (Iike Boston) tend to be ocean ports, so proximity to major bodies of water could still be more important than food preferences in determining partisan leanings.