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If we are what we eat, then it’s definitely worth watching this movie to figure out what we’re becoming.
Two of the main contributors are Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser, both bestselling authors whose recent works have helped cast light on the greasy innards of our food supply machine.
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For every one of you who hated the show of security that is the TSA line in airports - I am sure you thought of doing this a few times.
Is that secure enough for you Mr. President?
To his credit, the President joked that he saw the man’s sole.
I’m preaching to the choir, of course, but there’s some good info here even for the initiated.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/05/travel
Cheers!
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My cow chewing, seal clubbing friends are going to club me for this and it is very likely that my dear wife may throw me out of the house for this one, but here are some things to note from this very fascinating piece titled “Are Cows Worse than Cars”
So the provocative title of this post is worth considering i.e.
If Al is downing as much meat as he appears to be, does that make him any more of an environmentalist than Sarah Palin - with her renowned Moose Chilli and her assertion that global warming is not man-made.
Curry leaves are essential ingredients for me when cooking South Indian (especially Kerala) food. Last week, I was distressed to find out from a local Indian grocery store that they are now banned (at least) in California. Apparently they found some pests in the shipments (interestingly these come to California from Hawaii) and are temporarily banned until they figure out what’s going on. See here for more info.
While it’s possible to use curry leaf powder as a substitute, it’s just not the same. Curry leaves are normally added in the beginning when cooking a veggie, chicken, or seafood dish. The splatter when they hit the oil, the crackling sound, and the aroma they release within a few seconds adds so much to the flavor and pleasure of cooking. I am going to miss them dearly.
People either drink tap water or they don’t. There’s no middle ground here. 
Some of us are brave enough to drink the local tap water in countries as exotic as Burundi and some of us won’t drink tap water certified to be germ free by the local government. Some of us drink only bottled water with fancy names such as Evian or Pellegrino. I have been brave (or foolhardy) in trying out tap water in most places I have traveled to. But when one is depending on the Lonely Planets and the Rough Guides for guidance to countries one doesn’t know much about, eventually one succumbs to the marketing hype and plow down for the bottled variety of the essential liquid.
Today, at a bar here in Colorado, I overheard the bartenders discussing how the French named Evian, the famous bottled water company, as such: spelled backwards it’s N-A-I-V-E. Yikes!
Though this is not entirely true, it does give one pause.
Living close to one of the world’s great wine producing regions, going to wine tasting events is unavoidable. Years ago, a few friends and I started a drinking club called Oinos, the purpose of which was to get together to taste expensive liquor including fine wine. We used to pitch in money to buy and taste spirits and wine that were often beyond the scope of individual purchases. A few of the participants in this developed a good taste for wine and became, for lack of a better phrase, wine snobs. Some actually can distinguish between different varietals and regions of origin but others are merely pretentious fudgers like me. After years of trying very hard to act sophisticated when tasting wine and spouting off adjectives from the aroma wheel, I am giving up and have decided to settle on a simple system of tasting wine. If the wine snobs among my friends don’t like my new system, I don’t care.
My system involves only two ratings: good or bad (1 or 0). I either like the wine or I don’t. If that means an occasional white zinfandel or rose wine will slip through and be rated 1, so be it. Whether or not you like a wine is highly subjective (like all food). The critics might have their favorites among the expensive wines but for mere mortals (especially people like me who have damaged taste buds from years of eating spicy food), a simple system is better than trying to come up with which berry the wine tastes like or whether there is a whiff of tobacco in the air after swirling the liquid about in your latest Riedel purchase. I wish everyone would just shut up and drink.
Quite a few of my friends have Visa Signature credit cards. So, I thought it’d be good to publicize a good benefit from them for those planning to visit the wineries of Sonoma Valley. Visa is now having a promotion that allows Signature card holders to get complimentary tastings at some prominent wineries in Sonoma. See here for the full list. I was up in Sonoma last Saturday and enjoyed this benefit as well as up to 20% discount on wines purchased. Enjoy.
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