johnb

I've only eaten in 15 of them (16 if you count take-out from Calumet Fisheries), not too bad but not up to Joe H standards. Must try to add a few more. Will be in Miami for one night at the end of March; thought about Versailles which is on the list, but instead made a booking at The District, where chef Horacio Rivadera was selected as a James Beard semi-finalist for 2014 best chef South. We'll see. We've already tried another on the same list, Hari Pulapaka of Cress in DeLand, FL. Interesting guy -- in addition to running his restaurant he is a full tenured professor of mathematics and Comp Sci at Stetson University across the street. Makes an outstanding dish of escargot, while grading papers he said to me, only half-joking.

Thanks once again to the rssFeed, here is the latest on Chumley's and its hoped for re-opening: "Neighbors File Lawsuit To Prevent Chumley's From Reopening" by Hugh Merwin on grubstreet.com At least if the neighbors are concerned, that would suggest a re-opening is on the horizon

Trust me, salt air (McIlhenny uses salt in their curing process) can be extremely corrosive. Having recently purchased a house one block from the ocean in Florida, close enough that salt air reaches us, I have become painfully acquainted with that fact. Everything rusts very quickly. Metal items that aren't heavily coated are covered in rust within six months. I already had to replace the eight-year-old a/c system, which they tell me is typical. Such systems last at least 15 years in "normal" environments.

There is an excellent and engrossing book on the subject written by George Ordish called "The Great Wine Blight." It reads like a mystery novel. Phylloxera is no longer a threat, but nearly all vinifera vines must be and are grafted on to American rootstocks which are resistant to the pest. The only major exceptions are Chile, Washington State and parts of Australia which so far are free of the pest and can support ungrafted vinifera. This of course makes for an interesting comparison, namely whether grafted vines produce wine equal to to pre-phylloxera, ungrafted vinifera. Opinions run both ways and the subject has never been resolved.

I believe most of their fruit is grown in Honduras. They have a very wide product line these days, with sauces made of various peppers and with various flavors, ketchup, soy sauce, pickles, olives, and many other products. Unlike Rocks, I recently tried the green sauce and rather like it, but it's not a particularly hot sauce.

I agree Sriracha is overrated, at least the ubiquitous made in USA version. I find it too sweet-tasting. While a bit vinegary for my taste, Tabasco is a good product, and everyone should have some on hand; most people do -- I understand it is or at least was at one time found in more countries of the world than any other single product. My personal go-to sauce is unfancy Franks. Spicy yet smooth, good balance -- thank you giant international consumer goods company Renkitt Benckiser, a company almost nobody has ever heard of, but yet nearly everyone has at least two or three of their products in the house.

Linda: What do we know about the early use of organics as fertilizers (i.e. manure, guano, etc.)? Did the use of non-organic chemicals as fertilizers and insecticides/herbicides (e.g. mined nitrates?) begin in pre-industrial times?

Check out replies 6-8 above.

Years ago I bought some black anodized Cuisinart brand stock pots on 50% off clearance at Bloomingdales in White Flint (did I mention that this was years ago?). Such a deal! They quickly developed the same problem, though I can't say it was because they got washed in the DW since I don't remember whether I did that often. I just assumed that was some sort of cosmetic defect and was why they were sold off on clearance at 50% off. Yes they do look less than pristine, but they continue to work fine and I still use them. The exterior coating seems to have completely disappered in spots.

This inspires me to wonder how the fellow who discovered kopi luwak went about making his discovery. Brings new meaning to "following their lead."

Linda - fascinating discussion. Here's something I've always wondered about, which may be a bit tangental to the discussion so far, but I'll ask anyway. I've always wondered how early humans found and got focused on the things that turned out to be useful or desirable for food, drugs, whatever. Somewhere above I think you mentioned there have been perhaps 30,000 plants used as foods; yet there must be many times that which aren't useful to humans for food. So the good ones had to be sorted out from a lot of contenders. Obviously there must have been lots of trial and error, but how did they go about this trial and error process? How did the process unfold? How many things had to be tried to find the few that turned out to be useful, and how did ancient peoples measure which ones those were? Surely there was more to it than just random natural selection! In particular, how were things discovered where non-obvious processing is needed, like adding lime to corn, or fermentation of soybeans to make sauce (I know it happens naturally, but still....). I'm reminded of that old phrase about he being brave the first man to try an oyster.

If you want a taste of old Las Vegas, a stop at the Fireside Lounge at the Peppermill woud be a good choice.

Have the terms "Animal-style," "Double-Double," and so on actually been trademarked? In some cases it would seem to be a stretch. I hope he at least ordered his fries well-done!

Rant Alert! You are strongly advised to stop reading now. I continue to fail to understand why it is so popular to dump on commercial orange juice. Really. Why it it so bad, and what do the dumpers meaningfully propose as an alternative for most people including me, and truthfully, most of the time, for them too? Of course fresh-squeezed at home is better. So what. What does one do for most of the year when one wants a glass of OJ in the morning. You can't get juice oranges most of the year. Even when you can, squeezing them at home, for all the brave talk, is something that almost nobody is going to do, because (1) it's expensive, (2) it's a job, and (3) the cleanup is a bigger job. Let's get serious. Just about everybody, including self-styled foodies and natural food junkies, is no more going to routinely buy and squeeze fresh oranges than they are going to kill and clean their own chickens. Real people are going to reach in the fridge for a carton and pour themselves a nice glassfull. End of story. How many people are going to cut up a Valencia orange every morning and eat it. Damn few. For 99.9% of us, it's at most a few-times-a-year treat, and that's all. And how many are going to stop by their neighborhood juice bar? After all, everybody has a fricking juice bar right across the street. Sure they do. Why, here in Flagler Beach where I now am there are at least six juice bars, one on every goddam corner, open every day at 6am. Give me a break. Furthermore, not only does nearly everybody want to have juice right at home whenever they want year-round, they want (insist that) it always taste the same, that it has their preferred amount of pulp, they don't have to pay more than $3 or so for a 59 oz. half-gallon carton (that's a rant for another day), and they can keep it in the fridge for a long while and just pour some when they want it and then go on to the next thing. There is NO WAY to achieve those consumer demands except by the methods used by Coke and Pepsi and the others. The juice must be squeezed when it is harvested and be stored in gigantic chill tanks with oxygen removed so it's available year-round. The taste must be adjusted using blends of juices and other orange components (oils etc.) to achieve a uniform flavor over time. They do pretty well by accomplishing all this using only substances derived from actual oranges, and selling it as cheap as they do. A miracle of modern technology for chris' sake! Oh, I forgot; anything involving technology is automatically bad. Nearly all of us, every day, eat foods that are a lot less healthy for us than OJ straight out of the carton. In fact, I would hazard a guess that in some places there are many people who go through the whole day without consuming one thing that is more healthful than commercial orange juice. So why has it become such a big deal to demonize it? There are many many foods higher on the bad food radar screen than this one could ever be. If you want to squeeze your own, or trek to the nearest juice bar, etc. etc., fine go ahead. That's great. If you don't want to drink Tropicana, fine, don't. But most people, who have lots of things to do to get through the day, have figured out that commercial orange juice, while certainly not perfect, is a pretty damn good compromise. End of rant. I now return to my normal milquetoast self.

Thank you both for your comments about Oceana. I had homed in on it as a good bet for ourselves, and have even been looking seriously at a Panama Canal trip with them later this year, so it's good to hear the positive comments. Like Celebrity and a couple of others (Paul Gauguin, Windstar), they seem to occupy the quality niche just below the super-lux six-star lines like Crystal, Seabourn, etc., but at much more palatable prices. Based on my research, dressing up formal for dinner seems to be on the way out everywhere. There are of course still those who like to do it, but it is a rare ship these days that doesn't provide a viable option for those who don't. For example, on our recent Celebrity cruise, there were two formal nights in the main dining room, but never in the specialty restaurants or in Blu, the dedicated restaurant for Aqua class. From what I heard, even on those nights it isn't mandatory throughout the dining room, and as long as you show up wearing some sort of jacket you'd be fine, and even then the maitre'd has discretion. On the whole, it's understandable that the cruise lines want to uphold some standards in the tablecloth restaurants, however minimal. But the definition of casual elegant appears to have gotten pretty elastic.

Full disclosure: I'm not suggesting anyone else should absolutely put this on his bucket list, because getting to its remote location is no mean task, and once there you can't easily grasp the enormity of the thing anyway. That said, at or near the top of my own list is Lake Baikal in Siberia. Lake Baikal is perhaps the most fascinating body of water on the planet. By itself it contains over 20% of the fresh water on earth (unfrozen), and as one might imagine is thus by far the world's largest lake by volume, though only 7th by surface area. It is a rift lake, meaning it is in a depression formed by a fault, so it is deep. In fact, at over a mile, it is the deepest lake on earth. It is also likely the oldest and purest sizable lake (although once threatened by a paper mill, that is now, happily, closed for good). It is possible to see much further in the clear water than just about anyplace else, and it is of course pure to drink. There are many unique species. It's most easily reached by flying (or taking the trans-Siberian) to Irkutsk, known as the "capital" of Siberia. Maybe I'll combine a visit there with my journey to Angkor Wat.

People typically think of our "debt" to China as being like one's relationship with the bank that holds one's mortgage. Nothing could be further from the truth. At this level, it just doesn't work that way. Basically, we have them by the short hairs. They sent us real stuff -- we sent them blips in return. Now they have to convert the blips into something that's actually useful. Easier said than done.

In matters of international trade, dear Rocks, it is more often the debtor who is in the driver's seat than the creditor. Particularly when said debt is in the currency of the debtor.

The US hasn't been slipping so much as everybody else has gotten their acts together and have developed. That was unavoidable, nor should it have been avoided. The US is still a competitive manufacturer of things, but not simple things. Complex things. There is a lot of misunderstanding about that. I recall back in the 70's how everyone thought Japan was taking over "high tech" because they had taken over manufacturing of VCR's. The truth was that VCR's were simple devices. The Japanese could do that cheap and fine. Few people were aware of the truly high tech stuff the US was doing and doing well, partly because much of it was in the black world, e.g. places like the instrument bays of F-15's, and even then in buildings out at Ft. Meade. We all now know that Japan's predominance in electronics manufacturing didn't really do them much good in the end. Manufacturing cheap stuff is not where the money is. The other side of the coin is that, while the US has a tough time competing with low wage countries for mass produced consumer-grade goods, it has significant strengths in other areas. Look at the iPhone. Apple sells it for $600. People think of it as being a Chinese-made item. Actually, IIUC the Chinese value-added in an iPhone is around $10, limited to the assembly. About $180 is parts that came from other countries, some of it the US. But the lion's share goes to Apple, for the soft stuff, the services, the intellectual content, that is wrapped up in it -- design, development, software, management, selling expense, and profit. Apple makes still more from its ecology of apps and all the rest that goes with it, much of which is exported -- none of that gain goes to China. Sometimes you have to look behind the numbers and see what's actually going on. The US is a service exporter, not a manufacturers exporter. Nobody can compete with the US for production of entertainment, and entertainment is a huge export area. We do well with legal services, accounting/consulting, education, medical services and products, and a host of others. Actually, in spite of all the manufacturers we import, were not for net energy imports the US trade balance would be doing fairly well. One more thing. All that money that we have been sending to China is dollars. They are sitting with those dollars. But in the end, they can't eat them -- to get something back for all they have sent to us, they have to eventually spend them, and that means they will have to buy things from the only place that can actually absorb net dollars, which is us. Chinese businessmen can act superior all they want, but in the end that's what they have to do, unless they choose to effectively gift us all the stuff they have already sent over. I recall a money and banking professor I had as an undergraduate economics major, who commented that nobody should worry about a balance of payment deficit, because if they are getting the gold, that means we are getting the goodies. And that was in the gold days -- nowadays, they don't even get gold, just electronic blips. I'm fine with sending them all the electronic blips they want. They can keep them.

Actually, they're coming back, but it's all machines, hardly any people. So that raises its own concerns. I suppose.

Allow me a small apology/clarification. In my previous post, when I posited "you" being a liberal in my hypothetical, I meant you in the everyman sense, not Barbara herself. I should have used "one", not "you," which would have been a better expression of what I was trying to say. BTAIM, the discussion has been thought-provoking. Here is a little personal foray into this dilemma. I trade around my IRA in the stock market and have been in and out of Las Vegas Sands quite a bit over the years. LVS is a casino operator mostly owned by Sheldon Adelson, a man whose politics I despise (big big Republican donor, sole supporter of Newt's white house bid in the last election cycle, mostly due to his hyper support for right wing Israeli political policies). At the same time, Adelson wants very much to be the richest man in the world and is doing a pretty good job of it, so I figure, why not go along for the ride and get something for yours truly?. He has made me some serious money for sure. Of course, LVS's profits come mostly from super-rich Chinese guys who have made their money from poorly paid workers toiling in sweatshops to send stuff to Walmart and other US retailers. So what should I think about all that?

Many feel as you do. But at the same time, mixing up economic/business decisions with political and social values and beliefs sometimes involves its own slippery slope. Here's a hypothetical. Suppose you, a liberal, have a choice in an election for your congressperson. One is a progressive Democrat who will support your viewpoint in the legislature, but it's pretty clear the fellow is a womanizer, drinks a lot, and has had some personal bankruptcies and a trail of unpaid debts. The other is a Tea Party Republican, who has been an exemplary father and family man, and always pays his bills. For whom do you vote? Why is it OK to cut some slack for Bruner-Yang based on youth and alcohol, but not to do the same for Donna who grew up in Italy, a place with a well-known culture of tax avoidance and even perhaps spotty employee-employer relations? And where is the fairness in saying one would patronize Donna after he pays off his debts, when the only way he can generate the resources to do that is if people patronize him in the first place? These are not matters that lend themselves to easy responses.

No need to delve into science fiction to find the idea of owning the air. Carl Barks gave that idea to Donald Duck in July of 1952, in a story called "The Golden Helmet." Barks is nearly unknown, since he was never credited for his work at the time, but was a genius and a true national treasure. He often penned Donald Duck stories, but more importantly created and singlehandedly wrote and drew the Uncle Scrooge series of comic book stories from the late 40's the the early 60's. Unlike 99% of comic books, the Uncle Scrooge series represented something akin to true literature, with complex, well-thought-out, and meaningful stories that gave life lessons in the guise of entertainment. His work influenced many.

Being of a certain age myself (my 50th HS reunion was a couple of years ago), I remember Geno's, and one of my favorite coupon stories happened in a Geno's, near old Exit 4 of the NJ Turnpike I believe. My ex and I used to stop there while on the way to visit her folks in NYC. On one occasion, around Christmas, they were doing a gift book of coupons at a discount. We ordered, and while waiting I was reading their little sign for the deal, and realized I could buy the coupon book, use it on the spot, and save on our order. So that's what I did. The kid behind the counter was happy to sell the book to me, but completely flummoxed when he gave me the bill for the order and, instead of cash, I handed him the book back. The look on his face was, as they say, priceless.