Those who forget the pasta are doomed to reheat it.
In our household, both of us are pizza lovers. And pizza snobs. Once you have tasted good pizza, it's almost impossible to eat Domino's, Pizza Hut and other mass-produced, cardboard-crust tasting pizzas.We don't think a shipped pizza would be anything like the original.
An article in today's Washington Post reports:
The poor exchange rate hasn't made it any easier to shop for good, economical wines. Slate's Mike Steinberger went to one of those Total beverage mega-stores (this one was located in Delaware), and he looked for excellent wines that were selling below $15 a bottle.The French are not being beaten on price. They are being beaten on taste, and I now understand more than ever why that's the case. The Total store was filled with exuberantly fruity cabernets, Syrahs, and sauvignon blancs from Australia, Chile, South Africa, and other countries. Many of them are not to my liking — I prefer leaner, drier, more mineral-driven wines — but it's easy to see why they are so appealing, particularly relative to what was on offer from France.
There was no shortage of $15-and-under French wines, but the choices were uninspired. I liked the warm, spicy 2005 S.C.V. Castelmaure Corbières Col des Vents ($9.99), a red from a cooperative in the Languedoc, but the other French wines I tasted were decidedly limp.There was nothing interesting from the Loire, and the Beaujolais section appeared to be composed almost entirely of Georges Duboeuf bottlings.
It is not that France doesn't produce good cheap wines; the Loire is a QPR nirvana. Ditto Beaujolais, the Languedoc, Mâcon, and the Rhône Valley. But the better ones are generally made in small quantities, and while they are readily available in New York and other big cities, they were not on the shelves in Wilmington.
I spent four full days in Charleston, S.C., and I ate lunch or dinner at just about all the big names among the city's hallowed dining scene. It's a great city for foodies.
Robert Mondavi, the man whose winery and promotional activities helped California's wine industry capture the world's attention, died on Friday. He was 94 years old. According to the NY Times:Mr. Mondavi was a master of the grand gesture. He championed California but led his employees on grand tours of Europe to see how other fine wines were made. Guests at Mondavi lunches found themselves sampling up to two dozen of the rarest French wines, opened to show that they were no better than California’s best.
One of Italy's top wine regions, already grappling with allegations of fraud, is now in danger of losing its biggest export market. The U.S. government has asked Italian wine authorities to certify that any bottle of Brunello di Montalcino imported into the United States is made from 100 percent Sangiovese, beginning next month.
Without certification by laboratory analysis or a statement from the Italian government, the wines cannot be sold in the U.S.
. . . "This is a diplomatic problem and I am confident it will be sorted out at the diplomatic level," said Francesco Marone-Cinzano, the [Brunello Consorzio]'s president. But a block on U.S. imports would be a severe blow to Montalcino. The appellation produces 6.5 million bottles of Brunello a year, roughly 25 percent of which goes to America.
In a recent Slate column, Taylor Clark writes:Now, when I say that vegetarians are normal people with normal food cravings, many omnivores will hoist a lamb shank in triumph and point out that you can hardly call yourself normal if the aroma of, say, sizzling bacon doesn't fill you with deepest yearning.
To which I reply: We're not insane. We know meat tastes good; it's why there's a freezer case at your supermarket full of woefully inadequate meat substitutes.
Believe me, if obtaining bacon didn't require slaughtering a pig, I'd have a BLT in each hand right now with a bacon layer cake waiting in the fridge for dessert. But, that said, I can also tell you that with some time away from the butcher's section, many meat products start to seem gross.Ground beef in particular now strikes me as absolutely revolting; I have a vague memory that hamburgers taste good, but the idea of taking a cow's leg, mulching it into a fatty pulp, and forming it into a pancake makes me gag.
A recent issue of Newsweek took aim at wine snobs when it revealed that cheap wines outscored the high-priced ones in a blind tasting. For example, a $10 bottle of sparkling wine from Washington state outscored Dom Pérignon, which sells for well over $100 a bottle.. . . the results of the tastings are more nuanced than the Newsweek article let on . . . what appeals to novice wine drinkers is significantly different from what appeals to wine experts, which the book defines as those who have had some sort of training or professional experience with wine. The experts, by the way, preferred the Dom Pérignon.
. . . Yet the rating system has bred an attitude toward wine that ignores context, which is perhaps more important a consideration to the enjoyment of wine than anything else.
The proverbial little red wine, so delicious in a Tuscan village with your sweetie, never tastes the same back home in New Jersey. Meanwhile, the big California cabernet, which you enjoyed so much with your work buddies at a steakhouse, ties tucked between buttons, doesn’t have that triumphant lift with a bowl of spaghetti.
This is one problem with trying to judge wine in the sort of clinical vacuum sought by studies like the one in “The Wine Trials.” In the end, I don’t think you can ever eliminate context.
. . . Even in a blind tasting situation, wine is evaluated in the company of other wines, which is a different sort of context but a context nonetheless. Perhaps they’ve chosen the best wines to be sipped and spat out, but not the best wines for dinner.
In early April, more than two-thirds of the members of the teachers’ union approved a vote of no confidence against the president, Tim Ryan. They complained of shoddy equipment at the institute’s main campus in Hyde Park, N.Y., as well as slipping academic standards. They charged that the administration was more likely to retaliate against critics than listen to them.Frozen waffle fries? You have to be kidding.
Next, students began to organize at Facebook.com. Some hung “Fire Tim Ryan” signs in their dorm rooms. They added to the list of complaints, accusing the administration of becoming too close to the corporate food world, and even criticizing the food they are required to cook, which now includes more institutional fare like frozen waffle fries.
Then last week the administration prevented La Papillote, the campus newspaper, from printing articles about the unrest. Although the newspaper was not designed to be an independent publication, the editor, David Deegan, resigned in protest.
“Do not stand idle as the mouth of the people is gagged,” Mr. Deegan, who recently finished an internship in banquets at a Florida resort, told the student government at a meeting last week where he announced his decision.
In case you missed the news:
. . . take them out to lunch or dinner at a swank restaurant. That's the message from this executive placement agency, which suggests that execs might want to delay a promotion announcement until they watch how their junior associates chew their food and treat the wait staff. "The way you handle yourself at a meal is a snapshot of how you handle yourself in business," observes Ellen A. Kaye, a well-known leadership image and etiquette consultant . . .
Your place setting, she explains, is the equivalent of your desk. It reflects your level of professionalism, neatness and attention to detail. By the same token, the manner in which you deal with the restaurant staff reflects the manner in which you work with your clients, prospects and colleagues.
"When passing salt and pepper, always pass them together, as if they were a single entity, even if the person asked only for the salt."
"Taste, then season. Did you realize it is an insult to your host and your chef if you salt your food before tasting it?"
