Where I'm going to be tomorrow

Everybody should come check this out. Lots of amazing people and incredible food. Be there!

A cool idea from a groovy lady

Food writer Monica Bhide has come up with a nifty idea for promoting her excellent new book, Modern Spice - a virtual potluck dinner! And I'm in charge of drinks, unsurprisingly.

I went with Monica's Pomegranate Delight. It's a simple, refreshing summer cocktail, the pomegranate cutting the sweetness of the grenadine and rum. Quite a success, I'd say!

Here's how it's done:

Pomegranate Delight

Serves 1

Ingredients:

1/4 ounce (1/2 tablespoon) grenadine

1/2 ounce (1 tablespoon) store bought pomegrate juice (see Note)

1/2 teaspoon sweetened lime juice such as Rose's

1 1/2 ounces (3 tablespoons) white rum

Ice as needed

4 ounces (1/2 cup) chilled club soda

Mix the grenadine, pomegranate juice, lime juice and rum in a tall glass. Add ice and the club soda and stir gently. Serve immediately.

Note: You can use plain POM pomegranate juice for this recipe, or try one of the mixed varieties such as Pomegranate-Blueberry for an exotic-tasting cocktail. You can use pomegranate liqueur too, if you like - add 1/4 ounce (1/2 tablespoon.)

I drank two of these yesterday, very, very happily, while my husband slaved away at a borscht. The sun even came out! I credit the Pomegranate Delight.

Visit Monica's blog this evening and see who else is cyber-cooking what else from her fantastic, pretty much failsafe new book, Modern Spice.

One day I'll get better at this.

Did a really fun interview today with Adam Roberts, The Amateur Gourmet, this afternoon, which you can listen to here.  I'm not the most expert of interviewees - I'm a little rusty - but I'm working on sexy bedroom voice.  Got any pointers?  Send 'em on over!

I'm a movie!

So, I didn't think this was getting released yet, but the J&J movie trailer has been leaked here.  I'm a Nora Ephron movie!  This should be slipping into theaters next month.

UPDATE: Since people have asked - J&J: The Movie! is scheduled for an August 7 release.  I suppose that could change - I know very little about how these things work - but it won't change by much....

Of Pigs and Shills

So - last Friday this prize of a guy wrote this Op-Ed for the New York Times.  I apologize if you can't open that last link - in case you can't I will state his basic argument.  Basically, his point is that buying pork from a local farmer who raises his animals humanely and doesn't pump them full of hormones and drugs WILL KILL YOU.  He quotes a study that says that the incidence of salmonella is higher in free-range pigs than in "confined" (i.e., factory-farmed) ones.  Now, the percentages he quotes are 54% vs. 36%, which seems like sort of a silly comparison to get all bent out of shape about.  I mean, I'm going to get freaked out about half, but not about a third?  And he reports in dread tones that 2 out of the 600 free-range pigs examined had trichinosis. TWO!!!  And that if you were to eat the meat from these animals without cooking it, you could DIE!!!!

Mr. McWilliams then goes on to explain that because of this report, "foodies" should rethink their naive notion that when they're buying free-range they're getting the meat of wild animals, that free-range pork is cultivated as well.  A point which I'm sure "foodies" everywhere are horrified to discover, because we all thought they were skipping around with unicorns in a primeval forest somewhere.  And he ends by saying, basically, eat the factory-farmed stuff or don't eat pork at all, because pork grown locally, humanely and transparently WILL KILL YOU.

Well, guess what?  This Editor's note has now been appended to the piece:

"An Op-Ed article last Friday, about pork, neglected to disclose the source of the financing for a study finding that free-range pigs were more likely than confined pigs to test positive for exposure to certain pathogens. The study was financed by the National Pork Board."

So fucking brilliant.  OF COURSE it was.  

Now, I understand the NYT's desire to get contrarian opinions into their paper.  They once hired me to write a piece dissing on green markets (and it brought me a galaxy of fun, I'm here to tell ya.)  But there's a difference.  I wrote about some of the underlying class issues involved in shopping at green markets, and about a certain brand of smugness certain foodies exude when extolling perfect peaches.  I did not quote a study by Del Monte saying that fresh locally grown fruit is POISON.  

McWilliams is a shill, sure, and possibly evil - though he did write this book on pest control and maybe just has Asperger's or something.  But The New York Times is who really deserves blame here.  To publish something so deeply riddled with errors (McWilliams talks about 500 pound pigs, which is about twice as large as the average mature Berkshire pig), so damaging to a movement dedicated to humane farming, healthful food, and environmental responsibility - a movement that deserves, if not uncritical support, at least careful and respectful consideration - and so unthinkingly supportive of corporate farming, is deeply irresponsible.

The editor's note don't cut it, NYT....

Why I hate television

I don't, in fact, hate television.  How can I hate the medium that brought us Bea Arthur, Joss Whedon, Mighty Mouse, Jason Bateman, Neil Patrick Harris, the (original) Muppets and Tony Soprano?  I cannot.  BUT.

This thing on NBC News at 11 last week reminded me about the asinine evil that is so much of TV production.  A feature on a wonderful photographer who appreciates and captures the individual beauty in women became, in the hands of hack producers, a condescending, vapid, and ultimately sort of semi-deliberately humiliating puff piece on "look how even fat girls can be made (sort of) hot!"  Which is NOT what Isis is about, and NOT how I particularly wanted to be depicted in every taxi in NYC.  But I should have known.  It is, after all, TV.  How many TV interviewers have asked me how much weight I gained during the J&J Project?  How many of them have I sat opposite from and seen clearly that they'd never even cracked the book open?

But it's not just vapidity and laziness.  It's a sort of built-in bent toward condescension and humiliation of women.  And the worst thing is, I think some women in the media are more guilty of this than anyone else.  Because of the risk of being run out of town on a rail, I'll not name a certain cabal of powerful, well-spoken women in print journalism who write so stylishly that their gleeful brand of neo-misogyny - or maybe it's just smugness - seems to float over people's heads.  But I get angry in the same way, reading them.  

I am so looking forward to the release of the J&J movie, and of "Cleaving" a few months after that.  It's very exciting.  What I'm not looking forward to is the next round of questions about my weight and what my VERY favorite recipe in MtAoFC is.

Also?  I'm aware that these are pretty nifty problems to have.

End of line.

I keep saying I'll be back and then I keep disappearing again.

Must be the excess testosterone.

Anyway, a couple of events:

1) The "Julie & Julia" trailer gets released tomorrow.  Once I know where it can be viewed online I'll let you know.  I've seen the movie, and the trailer.  It looks like a trailer for a Nora Ephron movie, whatever that means to you.

2) Also tomorrow - I'm going to be on the New York NBC News at 11 in all my zaftig, be-skivvied glory.  And after that?  In every taxi cab in New York.  Fun stuff.

UPDATE: Haven't found the trailer yet, but here's the excruciating spot on NBC.  I got tons of airtime, presumably because I'm fat.  Which I'm aware of.  Any commenters who wish to make merry with the vast white expanse of corseted me will be firebombed.  And I know how to make explosives with beef suet, so don't test me.

UPDATE II: I've been misinformed.  Trailer isn't coming out until May.  Sorry about that - for now only fat writers, no gorgeous accomplished actors.....