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Category: Food

Crap-Ass Weather

Cold, raw and blustery today.

And to top it all off, I discovered the source of a peculiar odor in my apartment — somehow, a can of tomatillos had leaked and emptied out on the top shelf.

Oh, well. At least I can turn on my oven and have something rich and hot and hearty. I’m making Black-Eyed Pea and Quinoa Croquettes with Mushroom Sauce from Vegan With a Vengeance.

The Gendered Menu

In comments to this post at Feministing showing a menu with different prices listed for men and women, Sailorman mentioned this Diner’s Journal entry at the New York Times about the not-quite-complete disappearance of menus without prices:

Do expensive restaurants still keep many of these menus on hand? Get many requests for them?

I called around and learned that of course restaurants have them: if there’s a possible and predictable customer desire that’s easy enough to fulfill, a restaurant stands ready to do it. It’s the nature of the business, after all.

But sure enough, restaurants get fewer requests for menus without prices, and one reason appears, from the interviews I did, to be changes in the dynamics between men and women.

Apparently one of the most common circumstances in which menus without prices were presented was a man taking a woman to dinner. Like holding open the door for her or helping her with her coat, giving her a menu that didn’t show how much the lobster cost was considered a laudable act of chivalry.

Not anymore.

“When women’s liberation started in this country, it was, ‘What do you mean?’,” said Julian Niccolini, a partner at the Four Seasons restaurant. “And that basically stopped it: women’s liberation. It was nothing else. Which was fine with me.”

The menus haven’t disappeared entirely, though they’re most often used — at least at fancy restaurants in New York — at the request of a customer who’s entertaining for business or wants to make the guest feel comfortable. But the practice of automatically providing priceless menus to women hasn’t fallen off the face of the earth.

Yannis Stanisiere, the manager at Alain Ducasse, told me that when he worked at Mr. Ducasse’s flagship restaurant in Paris in the late 1990’s, it was a matter of course that men were given menus with prices, while women got menus without them. He said he wasn’t sure if that is still the case.

But when Mr. Ducasse opened his restaurant in Manhattan in 2000, that practice of different menus for different sexes was not implemented, Mr. Stanisiere said.

The priceless menu is mostly a function of expensive restaurants, not cheap places. But the idea that the man pays and/or orders is still pretty entrenched — I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of sitting at a restaurant where the server directed all questions to the man and/or delivered the check to him. And if there’s more than one man, the oldest one gets the check.

But the really enlightening thing here is the comment thread to this entry — there are several people who wish that this “charming” custom would make a comeback, and then the inevitable Nice Guy™/MRA type who says, “I wish that more women would be sensible on dates and help split the check. Double standards still apply in most cases.”

The Things You Don’t Think About When You Can Afford To Feed Yourself

Lo these 20 years ago, when I was in high school, I worked as a cashier in a grocery store (it was the stone age, when scanners were just coming into wide use; I had to ring things up by hand).

One of the things I had to learn was how to ring up customers who used WIC checks to pay (I lived in an affluent suburb and we didn’t get too many of those, but we had some). There were only certain items that were covered by the WIC checks; I definitely remember that milk, juice, baby formula and certain other rather limited items were covered by the checks. But since I left the grocery business in 1988 or so, I haven’t really thought about WIC checks in any kind of detail — after all, I haven’t needed them.

So I was a little surprised to realize that they hadn’t, until now, covered fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

WASHINGTON – The grocery shopping list for the far-reaching Women, Infants and Children program is getting its first significant update since the 1970s. Fruits, vegetables and whole grains are being added to the program, which helps feed more than half the babies born in the U.S. To cover the cost, WIC will pay for less of the juice, eggs, cheese and milk that have been staples of the program.

The changes to the low-income nutrition program were proposed Friday and will be finalized next year. Anti-hunger groups are enthusiastic about the additions.

“Overall, we’re really happy about this food package. We think, for WIC clients, this is going to make a huge difference,” said Geri Henchy, director of early childhood nutrition at the Food Research and Action Center.

“We like the idea that there are choices, that clients go to the grocery store and can pick the fruits and vegetables they want,” she said.

One thing you hear people sniffing about when they see poor fat people is, well, why don’t they eat more fruits and vegetables? Well, aside from the fact that they’re often not available in the shops in the neighborhoods where the poor fat people live, they have not been covered by programs like this.

Kudos for the change. Anything that will help get better nutrition into the hands of those who struggle to make ends meet is a step in the right direction.

Dutch Oven Gathering

The Scene: The Chef and I are parked in front of the computer watching the last of the Cooking Up a Story videos. We wait for this one to load.

Chef: You know, I would really like to have a dutch oven.

Lauren: I can give you one if you’re really interested.

(laughs hysterically for the next ten minutes, continues to laugh at every mention of dutch ovens, blows snot bubble)

Chef: (unamused) You’re a fucking dork.

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Related Reading: Le Pétomane

Hot Day, Cold Beverage

It’s brutally hot here today (though Amanda, who will be visiting us soon, has already sneered at our wussy temperatures). And when it’s hot, I want something cold to drink.

Since you all provided such great responses for my request for tuna salad recipies, I figured I’d ask you to tell us what cold drink you like to have on a hot day. Alcohol optional.

I’ll start: seltzer with lemon, seltzer with pomegranate/blueberry juice, or cucumber/lemon water (slice a cuke thin, put in a pitcher, add a few lemon slices and water, and chill).

So have at.

Food Post!

It’s been a while since I’ve done any sort of food posting. And now I’m doing it for selfish reasons.

See, I’ve got a bunch of cans of tuna at home, and it’s going to be really damn hot for the next few days. Tuna salad seems like just the right thing for the weather. Problem is, I find mayo-based tuna salad a bit oogy, since I tolerate mayonnaise only insofar as it acts as a binder. Besides, it’s boring. I like a little bite in my cold summer salads, a bit of brightness and crispness on the tongue.

So, I throw the question out to you: what’s your favorite way to make tuna salad?

Terrible Genius

A new product has David Segal of the Washington Post a little nervous.

It’s chocolate that is specially formulated to help women alleviate the symptoms of PMS.

Would you like a moment to process that?

It’s a hunk of chocolate, designed specifically to alleviate the effects of premenstrual syndrome. (More than, say, a Snickers bar already does.) The irritability, the anxiety, the moodiness — all of it is allegedly soothed by the Wonder Bar, at $3.69 a pop. As it says on the wrapper, “Take sweet revenge on PMS, menopause & everyday cravings with this delicious Swiss chocolate, rose oil, herbs and soy.”

Sounds good to me.

Your first reaction to the Wonder Bar is probably something like, “Now, that is a great idea.” Among women, that might be the second and third reaction, too. But fellas, mull this one for a moment. Think about the concept of craving. Now consider a rather different concept: impunity.

Are you starting to see the terrible genius here?

You will after we call Adrienna Kramer, Ecco Bella’s general manager. Let’s get straight to the point, shall we?

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