Love This! Fast Food IS MORE EXPENSIVE Than Homemade

Via Grist via the New York Times.

Saxelby Cheese

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

As anyone who reads this blog with any regularity will know I have been a big fan and good customer of Saxelby Cheese almost since they opened and talk about them here when ever I mention cheese!

The picture of Anne peering out from the mountain of cheese above is from the New York Times who did a wonderful article on her, Saxelby Cheese and on the winning of the Neighborhood Achievement Award as Manhattan's Small Business of the year!

You gotta read it.  I am so proud of Anne and Benoit (her business partner).  In five years they have changed the way people think about local cheese, and introduced so many of us to small unique farmstead cheese makers who without Saxelby Cheese we would never have had exposure to.

I am just a little worried that now I'll have to wait in a longer line to get my Cheese Fix! 
Something tells me her and Benoit might have to expand.

Food For Thought

The New York Times is always a good source of information and inspiration about food.  Recently Mark Bittman who'd written about cooking has been promoted to the opinions department, where he writes pieces without recipes with a more political bent, but still very rooted in food.  Yesterday's piece Why We're Fasting  particularly interesting to me as it looks at the draconian Republican proposed budget cuts for people who need help to feed themselves and their families.  Mr Bittman is fasting, along with 4000 others to protest a Congressional budget proposals that would make huge cuts in programs for the poor and hungry.


Mr. Bittman touches on the rising cost of food and the issues around food distribution and criminality of cutting life or death assistance to this countries most needy:

...the House budget bill, H.R. 1. The budget proposes cuts in the WIC program (which supports women, infants and children), in international food and health aid (18 million people would be immediately cut off from a much-needed food stream, and 4 million would lose access to malaria medicine) and in programs that aid farmers in underdeveloped countries. Food stamps are also being attacked, in the twisted “Welfare Reform 2011” bill. (There are other egregious maneuvers in H.R. 1, but I’m sticking to those related to food.)


These supposedly deficit-reducing cuts — they’d barely make a dent — will quite literally cause more people to starve to death, go to bed hungry or live more miserably than are doing so now. And: The bill would increase defense spending.

This is an important piece and will give great insight to anyone wanting to know more about what Republican priorities are in the current budget battle in Washington.

Also in the NYT yesterday was a touching and informative piece about a Japanese restaurateur, Ben Yagi who has almost single-handedly made the East Village into New York's little Japan. 

The article hit many personal notes for me, Hasaki has always been one of my favorite sushi restaurants and in the late '80s and early 90's would go there when every there was a special occasion or we wanted to splurge. 

Down the street from Hasaki is my favorite Japanese snack Shack Otafuku.  Which is just a few doors down from one of the only places I know of where you can go and have a formal tea ceremony, Cha An, a place I always tell visitors to go to because it is such a wonderful ritual so unique this ancient ceremony isn't something you'd expect to find, especially not on a side street in the East Village.  All these restaurants are Mr. Yagis, he owns 11 in total. 

One of the things I was surprised to learn in this article was that many of these restaurants got fish from the famed Tokyo fish market and had it flown in.  Concerns over radiation have stopped this practice for the time being.  The devastation from the earthquake, Tsunami and ongoing reactor meltdown are at the heart of this article. 

Mr Yagi was instrumental in organizing Dine Out for Japan Relief.

What most surprised me was that his first restaurant, which was not a Japanese restaurant, but rather a late night diner: 103 Second, which he opened in the '80s and is now occupied by the trendy new Vandaag.  103 Second is one of those nostalgic restaurants from my early days in New York when I would stay out late at the Saint and go for breakfast or very late night snacks there.  I always loved how bohemian and cool I felt going there, I was finally living the life of an arty denzien of downtown like I had dreamed of for so many years.

Two articles, that may on the face of it seem very different, yet in many ways are, to me, about the same things.  The importance of food, compassion and charity to support life and to offer a helping hand even in hard times.

Hand Pulled Noodles

The first time I went to Hong Kong we were taken to a restaurant where a chef come out and demonstrated how to make hand pulled noodles. It still looks like a magic trick to me, how out of this blob of dough comes these amazing, stretchy, perfect noodles. I have never heard of Hung Ry but after this video I can't wait to go!

When a Hamburger is no Longer Benign

I was reading this article this morning in the New York Times and I had to take a break because it was so freaky and upsetting. It reads like a horror story. The heading of the article: Trail of E. Coli Shows Flaws in Inspection of Ground Beef. Then it goes on to tell the story of this poor 22 year old dance instructor who becomes paralyzed from the waste down after a 9 week coma which all started because she ate a burger that her mother grilled for her.

The movie Food Inc. follows Barbara Kowalcyk who has become a "food activist" since her 2 1/2 year old child Kevin dies from E. Coli he got from a hamburger bought from a Jack in The Box. She now is fighting to give the USDA the power to shut down plants that repeatedly produce contaminated meats.

Here's the most spin chilling, yet somehow not surprising paragraph from the article:

Unwritten agreements between some companies appear to stand in the way of ingredient testing. Many big slaughterhouses will sell only to grinders who agree not to test their shipments for E. coli, according to officials at two large grinding companies. Slaughterhouses fear that one grinder’s discovery of E. coli will set off a recall of ingredients they sold to others.

The fact that the government lets this happen, that the government who is aware of these practices is so unwilling or unable to regulate and properly over see basic food safety is beyond shameful it's criminal.

I could go into a big political diatribe, but instead I'd just say that if you are going to buy ground beef or really any meat you should get it from a very good source, meaning specifically a butcher who you know and trust and hamburger should be ground sirloin, one piece of meat that is then ground. It should not be hundreds of pieces of random cow spit from a huge machine in a factory, ground altogether and finally shit out onto little styrofoam squares ready to be covered with plastic and sent to your local fast food chain or grocery store.

In New York City I'd recommend Marlow and Daughters.

No ones life should be destroyed or ended because they ate a hamburger. I mean this is something that happens in poor countries right? This can't happen here? The patties that this poor 22 year's mom made that nearly killed her, were produced and marketed by the giant food corporation Cargill and packaged as: American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties