Bourbon and Barbecue: The Ultimate BFF Pair
January 8th, 2010 by Scott
There’s a television advertisement I remember from my youth: Two ranch hands are hanging out on the corral, snacking, when one of them, in an inept attempt to mount his steed, flips over the saddle and spills his treat. “My chocolate!” he laments, to which the other counters, “is in my peanut butter!” It’s not long before the two men realize that, as in the case of Newton’s apple, Archimedes’s bathtub, and Alexander Flemming’s famous mold, they’d landed in the lap of genius by way of pure serendipity. Yes: Chocolate! Peanut Butter! Gadzooks, why didn’t anyone think about combining these things before?!?!
In the land of meat and drink, there are pairings that seldom fail to please: A robust Cabernet with a thick NY strip; bacon and eggs with coffee; spicy Texas-style chili with cold beer; a glass of sweet Sauternes and seared fois gras. I love all of these, deeply and with gusto. However, for me the ultimate pairing of beast and beverage, without a doubt, is bourbon and barbecue…
The New Orleans Po-Boy Festival: A Rich Day for a Poor Boy
December 4th, 2009 by Scott
Over the years, I’ve been implored by a number of earnest do-gooders to become part of their organizations, to join hands, fight the good fight and help make the world a better place. Save Lake Pontchartrain. Save the Wales. Ban the Nukes. Nuke the Wales. Pave Lake Pontchartrain. And so on. But never before has a cause struck me so deeply, so frighteningly close to the bone, as the one I discovered last year, just before Thanksgiving:
Save Our Sandwich…
Happy Turkey (Stuffed With Duck, Stuffed With Chicken) Day!
November 23rd, 2009 by Scott
It probably wouldn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out that Thanksgiving is easily my favorite holiday of all holidays. It’s been that way for years. There are numerous reasons for this: First, there’s not having to wear a tie and drag oneself to religious services. In fact, there’s no religious obligation at all, unless you consider football a religion. It’s pretty difficult to find qualms with a holiday that’s centered around thankfulness, family, and gorging oneself on turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes (marshmallow topping is a vegetable, right?), and wine so fully that passing out on the carpet — the older gents in my family claim their sofa and easy chair birthrights — isn’t just accepted, it’s expected. Most holidays do have a culinary component, minus the ones where fasting is obligatory, in which cases the absence of food serves as a painful reminder of that day’s holiness and gravity. Not so Turkey Day, a glorious occasion during which full-on, no-holds-barred gluttony is the only way to show appreciation for life’s bounty. Beautiful.
In Which I Solve This Ground Beef E.Coli Problem for Good
October 23rd, 2009 by Scott
It started a couple of weeks ago, subtly, just before waking up on a rainy Saturday morning. I couldn’t tell what it was, exactly, but I didn’t feel quite right. My skin seemed to be a little sensitive to my bedsheets, and I felt a little flushed. Not long after, my joints and muscles started to ache. By the time I rose and put myself in the shower, I knew for certain that I was coming down with something. Little did I know that it was coming down on me. And hard…Continue reading at The Faster Times
Meat and Booze: The Recipe for Happiness?
October 9th, 2009 by Scott
A friend recently forwarded me the above infographic, a nifty little chart illustrating some of the larger and smaller meat consumers in the world, and exactly how much animal flesh we devour (or shy away from) per capita every year. According to the fine folks at GOOD:
An increase in the consumption of meat is directly correlated to an increase in a country’s economic development. As a country becomes richer, its citizens generally eat more meat, a much denser source of protein than is available in poorer countries. But the range of the amount of meat eaten in different countries around the world is truly astounding, from being barely enough for a few hamburgers to the weight of several people. This is a look at which countries are eating the most meat every year, on a per capita basis, and which are eating the least.
It’s a slick graphic, not necessarily political, but one of those images that pops up on the Internet to get your gears turning upstairs. I particularly enjoyed the way the authors gave us a frame of reference by listing the average weight of everyday objects, then totaling them up for us (apparently, I ate a pig, twenty-five chickens and a hot dog last year)…
The KFC Double Down: This Is Why The Terrorists Hate Our Freedom
September 25th, 2009 by Scott
Some weeks ago, I was startled by a surging news item that I thought couldn’t possibly be real. There was this video — a YouTube video, in fact, and we all know how reliable those tend to be — that someone took of a television advertisement. It’s grainy and the sound is high-pitched and tinny, but still, there it was: If this ad was to be believed, Kentucky Fried Chicken was now going to sell a bacon and cheese sandwich that featured two thick slabs of fried chicken instead of bread. They call it the “Double Down.” I assumed the name to be a playful take on what happens to your lifespan after eating one of these monstrosities. It was outrageous. It was hilarious. It couldn’t honestly be real…could it? I was dubious, but then again, this is KFC we’re talking about here. This is the same restaurant chain that comic Patton Oswalt scathingly lampooned, likening their most popular dish — a tub filled with seemingly every KFC menu item covered in cheese and gravy — to a “failure pile in a sadness bowl.” But a bowl of food I can understand, if not order for myself. A mountainous double fistful of fried chicken, bacon, cheese and sauce, on the other hand, seemed so egregious as to defy human comprehension…
Playing With Your Meat: The Lamb Merguez Cupcake
September 3rd, 2009 by Scott
Every summer since I was a toddler, my family has spent a week at the beach. Though the location has changed over the years — Destin and Perdido Key, Florida; Gulf Shores, Alabama — it’s always been on the beautiful Gulf Coast, with sand as white and fine as confectioner’s sugar, brown pelicans skimming over the water looking for a meal, and seafood and produce so fresh it was either caught or pulled from the ground the same day we eat it. Yes, the beach is great, even for a frog-belly-white gentleman such as myself, but it’s always the food I’ll remember, and rightfully so. To say that my family cares about food is kind of like saying the Manning family cares about football. Serious understatement. In fact, this past year we managed to fill two cars to the brim for our one week vacation, and it wasn’t until we’d arrived at our destination that I discovered we’d packed significantly more refrigerator and pantry provisions than actual luggage. Hey — we can wear the same swimsuit day in, day out, but we’re not going to eat the same meal twice, not if we can help it…
Hot Dog Day Afternoon
August 21st, 2009 by Scott
There must be something in the air. Or maybe the water. Whatever it is, we here at The Faster Times food section seem to have gone a little hot dog crazy lately. Take, for instance, Street Foods correspondent Sarah Karnasiewicz’s recent post about the Yankee Hot Dog Trail, in which she muses, “Looking back on the summer, I realize I’ve already devoted an unequal percentage of this real estate to the subject of hot dogs. And here I go again! Whats behind my obsession? Maybe I still have the tastes of a 10 year old.”
I’m pretty sure I know what’s behind your obsession, Sarah, and I don’t think it has anything to do with an immature palate (you enjoyed calf’s spleen with me, remember?). There are larger factors at work here, without question. First, I don’t know if everyone’s noticed, but it’s summertime. And a summer without hot dogs is like…well, not much like summer at all…
How Green Is Your Meat?
August 20th, 2009 by Scott
Of all the boogeymen at the root of the massive global climate change problem, none is more troubling in the hearts of the meat-loving masses than agriculture. The animals we so dearly love to feast upon (and you know I do) are spewing more methane into the atmosphere than ever before, and with the global rise in meat consumption as more rural parts of the world become industrialized and have increased access to affordable beef, pork and lamb (meat consumption in developing countries shot up almost 200% from 1962-2003, according to a report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization), those levels look they’re only going to keep going up. So, as much as I hate to admit it, it’s absolutely true: steaks and pork chops and lamb legs, delicious as they may be, might very well usher in the apocalypse. Hence, the current dilemma on the minds of mindful carnivores: do I have to become a vegetarian now, or is there any way I can keep the world from meeting a hot, smelly end without having to give up my flesh-indulging ways?Continue reading at The Faster Times
How Green Is Your Meat?
August 20th, 2009 by Scott
Of all the boogeymen at the root of the massive global climate change problem, none is more troubling in the hearts of the meat-loving masses than agriculture. The animals we so dearly love to feast upon (and you know I do) are spewing more methane into the atmosphere than ever before, and with the global rise in meat consumption as more rural parts of the world become industrialized and have increased access to affordable beef, pork and lamb (meat consumption in developing countries shot up almost 200% from 1962-2003, according to a report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization), those levels look they’re only going to keep going up. So, as much as I hate to admit it, it’s absolutely true: steaks and pork chops and lamb legs, delicious as they may be, might very well usher in the apocalypse. Hence, the current dilemma on the minds of mindful carnivores: do I have to become a vegetarian now, or is there any way I can keep the world from meeting a hot, smelly end without having to give up my flesh-indulging ways?Continue reading at The Faster Times
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