I love to eat. I love cooking. I spend as much time perusing the aisles of the grocery store as I do the hardware store. It’s one of my favorite things to do. I like experimenting with new fruits and vegetables and exotic meats. I enjoy updating old recipes with new cooking methods. I subscribe to several cooking magazines and DVR a few cooking shows (mostly on PBS). I bring my lunch to work almost every day, not only because it’s cheaper than eating out, but because my food is better than most of the meals I can get in downtown Greenville in the middle of the day. To people that don’t really know me well, and even to some people that do, all of these attributes make me look like a food snob.
Opinion
14
May 10
May 10
Why I Started Food Blogging
Lately, lots of people have been asking me why I spend time taking pictures of food and posting them on the internet. Anyone who’s ever had a cast on their arm knows that there’s nothing more irritating than answering the same question over and over again (except maybe when you get an itch on your arm and you can’t scratch it because of the cast; that’s probably more irritating). I thought I’d put the explanation in one place so I can email it to people instead of constantly repeating myself.
29
Apr 10
Apr 10
Bob Dylan’s Best Music: A Cheat Sheet
It happens to everyone at some point; you hear a Dylan song (or another band’s cover of a Dylan song) and your interest is piqued. You want to explore more of his music, but you don’t know where to start. He has dozens of albums and hundreds of songs, so it’s a little overwhelming.
I started my Dylan obsession with Blonde On Blonde and then moved on to his Greatest Hits, Volumes 1, 2 & 3. From there I moved to other albums I found in used CD stores, progressing with no respect to context or chronology. Chronology is important for Dylan’s albums. His sound has changed more frequently than the plot of a daytime soap and it can be hard to follow.
Another thing to remember is that Dylan’s songs, like most songs from the pre-internet days, were not meant to be cherry-picked. If you don’t listen to the album tracks in order, you’re not getting the full experience. That being said, I can’t deny that it’s cheaper and easier to just buy the songs that have stood the test of time.
Continue reading →
27
Apr 10
Apr 10
Magic Dish Towel
You’re not going to believe this. This dish towel has the power to magically transform your nice, white bathroom towels into cheap, greenish-yellow shop towels. It’s like magic!
If there are any alchemists out there, I can personally attest to this cloth’s transmutative powers. If you toss it in the wash with a bar of *lead, you might open it later and find a bar of gold. I’ll sell it to the highest bidder.
4
Mar 10
Mar 10
77 Good Movies You Might Not Have Heard About
I was discussing films with my wife’s cousin at a wedding a few weeks ago, and we promised to trade suggestions for good movies that aren’t commonly discussed. In order to compile my list, I pulled up my Netflix history and started copying and pasting titles. As the list grew longer, I decided to blog it. Friends are always asking me for movie advice anyway, so it’s nice to put a list on paper, so to speak.
This is not a list of “under the radar” movies or “indie” films that lived up to the hype. Nor is this a list of all the great movies since Hollywood went talkie. It’s merely a subjective list of films I’ve enjoyed that might not be very well known to casual movie fans in their 30s or younger. Some are new, some are old, some are blockbusters, and some are independent productions. I’ve tried to skip over the more ubiquitous titles and provide a diverse compilation for people who are running out of new releases for their Netflix queues.
18
Feb 10
Feb 10
My Letter in The Greenville News
I recently wrote another guest editorial for The Greenville News. This time, instead of printing it just as I wrote it, they butchered it down and ran it as a letter to to the editor. As is all too common, their selective editing removed the larger context of the piece.
Here’s their version: Letter: Downtown wants you for 120 minutes
The full piece is here:
27
Jan 10
Jan 10
Eastern Market Loses Its Charm
I lived on Capitol Hill for five years, splitting my time between the Lincoln Park area of SE and the Union Station area of NE. I only moved away a few years ago, but the change in the local culture has been extraordinary. Maybe I just didn’t notice it before, but there’s an off-putting aura of pretense and pomposity that permeates the air, especially around Eastern Market. It’s like all the fashion-chasing trendsters who were too poor to buy a place in Dupont or Adams Morgan suddenly decided to migrate their herd to the Hill. I asked my friends who still live in the region if they noticed a change and they all agreed that the community was becoming a monochromatic melange of like-mindedness.
20
Nov 09
Nov 09
On Culinary And Cultural Condescension
I very rarely blog about political or cultural issues, but this commentary was so dead-on accurate that I just had to comment on it:
In a recent episode of Top Chef, the American cooking show I appear on, I complained about the other judges’ insistence on pronouncing ‘paella’ as ‘py-ay-a’. ‘You don’t say “Bar-the-lona” or “Me-hi-co”,’ I pointed out. ‘So why say ‘py-ay-a’?’ I thought this was fairly uncontroversial, but it was as if I had just produced a white hood and a burning cross. [...] the only people who take offence if you Anglicise foreign words are upper-middle-class Caucasian Americans. They imagine that other, less fortunate people will be insulted by your ‘imperialist’ attitude and they get offended on their behalf. In fact, to imagine that non-English-speakers are a poor, victimised group, requiring the protection of the American elite, is far more condescending than mispronouncing non-English words.
I don’t know why, but this is a huge pet peeve of mine. I’ve even had a similar conversation.
30
Jul 09
Jul 09
Organic Foods Have No Health Benefits
True believers will no doubt find it difficult to accept that they’ve been paying a premium for Food A over Food B even though the only difference between the two is the label:
Organic food has no nutritional or health benefits over ordinary food, according to a major study published Wednesday. [...] A systematic review of 162 scientific papers published in the scientific literature over the last 50 years, however, found there was no significant difference. [...] “Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority.”
As with any myth that is debunked, many believers will either discount the scientific research that invalidates their superstitions or they’ll reshuffle their supposed motivations.
