On allusion

"On Monday, Mr. Galliano sent out a provocative collection with allusions -- in the rough work boots and red-splattered white organza -- to the French Revolution and, not incidentally, to the recent riots in France."

First of all, I'd like someone to come up with anything French that doesn't "allude" to the Revolution. This is a fucking allusion; the Revolution is the necessary condition for the existence of symbolic discourse.

Second: some meaningful revolutionary tailoring allusions:

A little too much "drag of history"?

A sans-culotte you rogues? He is someone who always goes on foot, who has no millions as you would all like to have, no chateaux. No valets to serve him, and who lives simply with his wife and children, if he has any, on a fourth or fifth story.

He is useful, because he knows how to work in the field, to forge iron, to use a saw, to use a file, to roof a house, to make shoes, and to shed his last drop of blood for the safety of the Republic.

And because he works, you are sure not to meet his person in the Café de Chartres, or in the gaming house where others conspire and game, nor at the National theatre . . . nor in the literary clubs. . . .

In the evening he goes to his section, not powdered or perfumed, or smartly booted in the hope of catching the eye of the citizenesses in the galleries, but ready to support good proposals with all his might, and to crush those which come from the abominable faction of politicians.

So if that's a little too scary, you can always go with Sade:

So titillating! Épater &c... Now, please tell me more about Lagerfeld's Schlumberger.

As the USDA turns

At least the USDA is serving its constituency, right? I mean, it is a travesty that said constituency is meatpackers and not consumers, but they do know what side the bread's buttered on?

Well, no:

Japan's Agriculture Ministry has announced it will reinstate a ban on all U.S. beef imports following the discovery of parts of a vertebral column in a product shipment from the United States to Narita International Airport, near Tokyo.

Good job, guys. Further details from AP, including:

The tissue Japan found, spinal column from veal, is allowed in the American food supply because it comes from animals younger than 30 months of age. However, the agreement with Japan bars spinal column and other bone tissue.

Yesterday, the accidental hedonist conveniently reviewed all three weeks of the USDA's annus horribilis.

bad idea smackdown

Cheddar Dashi vs. lemon quinoa spaetzle.

Update: Madrid fusión, ground zero for this kind of bullshit, just ended. Via sw, Chow reports, culi decides:

Because in the name of wishful thinking, if I had to name one food trend that I would love to see spread like wildfire this year, it would be that the world's league of exemplary chefs exclusively associate their names and restaurants with the best artisanal and local producers, producers of sustainable products.

Il faut cultiver &c.

It's not you, it's my garden. So much more interesting than teh internets these days. Sorry. Here's the question:

Got a quart or so of duck fat left over from holiday festivities. What do I do with it?

Aside, of course from Freddie's Potatoes (another old book you should buy). Also, there's the famous duck fat toast trick. But that's a lot of duck fat people. Help me out.

Linkdump: too many cookbooks; Derrick on foie gras; Trevor Corson on lobster; Nina Plank on "organic"; Michael Miller on listeria; USDA on its own incompetence (fake stockyard inspections this time [OIG .pdf report]); Finger lady gets the finger (and 9 years of hard time).

No se puede

If you missed Miriam Pawel's depressing multipart story of the UFW's demise, at least read the first one. Somehow I doubt Andy Stern can help.

Further miscellany:

• Awesome picture of Englishmen trying to figure out how to eat corn on the cob [via, via].
• Judging from the entries in this "food" "blog" "meme", the world needs a stiff dose of the ongoing old books made new series. I'll see what I can do. In the meantime, just buy the fucking Olney and throw out every single book mentioned in that link.
• Speaking of books, Temple Grandin has a new one, which explains her sudden popularity: website and blog [ultimately via].
• Also see oldish compassionate conservatism for animals [via multiple sources].

New Books

If you have not been reading George Packer in the New Yorker, and you have any interest in the war in Iraq, you should probably pick up his new book. Decide for yourself: he acquitted himself well on The Daily Show last week, and more substantively on some npr show; print interviews with Birnbaum and the Chron; the book's intro.

Old Books Made New 2

It is almost embarassing to have to recommend one of the two or three best books ever written about food, but I was reminded of Richard Olney's greatness while looking something up the other day. Simple French Food answers the question "what is a cookbook for?" both ways: learning and cooking. All patiently explained in inimitable prose:

But the crystalline consommé's world now increasingly belongs to the realm of Proustian recall, the tiny quenelles and royales, the cocks' combs, truffle julienne, and plovers' eggs that have garnished it, permitting it to assume a thousand denominations, having been relegated to gastronomic literature; and clarification is considered archaic in most professional kitchens (if cooking methods are respected, the bouillon will be sufficiently clear and of a warmer and deeper cast than a clarified consommé).

Read it and weep, hacks.

Further reason to buy old books, if any is needed: Simple French Food's statistically improbable phrases include "cooked apart" and "stewed gently".

Roots

Hey, the Secretary of Agriculture says that chicken is safe! One might be excused for taking such assurances with a grain of salt, considering the USDA's habitual vigilance in other areas:

biotechnology regulators did not always notice violations of their own rules, did not inspect planting sites when they should have and did not assure that the genetically engineered crops were destroyed when the field trial was done. In many cases, the report said, regulators did not even know the locations of field trials for which they granted permits. [story | OIG report (75 p. pdf)]

Meanwhile, even McDonald's has realized that the FDA's Mad Cow "plan" is a load of shit. They must have sent all the competent people to Iraq.

Not fair. Of course, there are plenty of good people working for the man, doing things like cataloging Kazak apples. We'd all be starving to death without these people, don't forget it.

As long as we're talking about regulators and plant breeders, this is a good explanation of why GM crops must be tested for toxicity more stringently than their conventional counterparts. Not that you care, but it is a common argument that this constitutes some kind of crippling over-regulation.

And as long as we're talking about douchebags, Google AdSense is onto me:

Just imagine what the NSA knows.

Hook 'em

I guess Vince Young's middle name is now Achilles.

Sorry. But anyone who doesn't hate the fucking Trojans isn't fully alive.

Bonus: By paying attention to college football for 12 hours, I learned the new best name ever: D'Brickashaw Ferguson.

linkage

For wine obsessives: Kermit Lynch on Grape Radio [direct link to .mp3]. Entertaining discussion of the horrors of new oak, Aussie "cough syrup," draconian French DUI laws, and other usual suspects.

For carnivores: human bondage in the meat plant. If this sounds like old news, it is.

Hey look, a new food blog... network.

Then I saw her face...

A New Year miracle! Just when I had completely stopped caring, what fish should swim into the 'lil NYTM barrel but Heidi fucking Julavits, in answer to the urgent question: What kind of douchebag goes to Kyoto for a year and thinks only about doughnuts?

My American relationship to sugar is always to want more of it; to encounter a sweet that doesn't court abuse in order to be enjoyed destabilizes my entire concept of craving-cruller-gluttony-happiness. I feel these moments of so-called contentment when I have no pointed desires -- not a petit four to follow the chocolates to follow the tarte Tatin, not even a salt-funky cheese course as counterbalance -- to be physically unbearable and thus, by quick extrapolation, existentially crippling. Does this mean that contentment is anathema to my person? That contentment is a punishing mind-bender (to be content is to be less content than when you weren't content)? That this period of postcollege limbo has been encapsulated, in all its dumb, stereotypical hand-wringing, by a bean cake?

Never before has someone struggled so hard to write about so interesting a topic only to produce such tepid narcissism. With, admittedly, the possible exception of certain geriatric American novelists and/or New Yorker contributors. At least they know the difference between a paella and a cataplana. Shit, even Douchebag McGee* knows that.

*

Blisfully uneventful holiday, thanks. No nose-picking trannies** or jello shots to disturb my repose.

*Sorry, can't remember his name. But he is a (minor) douche.

**That is what "almodovaresque" means, right?