food snobbery

[phygelus]

One, someone really needs to send out a memo that it's time to change the currently fashionable easy-to-drink red wine. I have been sick of merlot for about three or four years now and it hasn't happened yet. Maybe you genuinely like merlot. I do, well enough, and I will like it better someday when I'm sick of something else. In the meantime,

Comments

yes,.. and no.

[adiriel]

After a bit of time with a person who was a master of wine,.. I enjoy the entire palette, an merlot is pretty much the generic french roast. i agree about chianti, for a true bold red. however, in Pennsylvania, we can't be trusted to buy groceries and alchohol at the same time,.. or even tequila and beer. sigh.

but sherbert most often has dairy in it, and sorbet almost certainly doesn't. definitely an issue for the lactose intolerant or allergic.

Re: yes,.. and no.

[adiriel]

and polenta is not grits. go down to Lousiana and say that, and see how fast you have to run. grits = hominy. everyone south of the mason dixon knows that

Re: yes,.. and no.

[phygelus]

You are correct that polenta is corn grits, not hominy grits.

Re: yes,.. and no.

[hyla_regilla]

grits = hominy. everyone south of the mason dixon knows that

Californian = Northerner, alas! I knew that not.

in boot camp, we addressed the same heap-o-ground&soupy grain.
she said to me: "why you puttin' sugar on your grits?"
I replied: "why are you salt-n-peppering your Cream-O-Wheat?"

the next day, we reversed it.
Whether we were eating corn or wheat, they were good!

[phygelus]

Haven't been to Sushi Sho, but if they're not hitting you over the head with the fact that they went to the trouble of getting true wasabi, it's round-eye horeseradish with green food coloring. Apparently horseradish is so much hardier than the Jap stuff that this is true in Japan too, at least everywhere I went.

If you find Franzia Chianti here in the bay area, let me know. Yeah, I pick up the Bull's Blood of Eger at Trader Joe's too. I didn't know there was a story about it: http://www.wineintro.com/types/bullsblood.html

Stories about your food are, after all, important for the ambitious.

[phygelus]

I had lunch with the founder of Trader Joe's about 15 years ago. Affable guy. I recall him pretending to be puzzled Trader Joe's didn't have greater market penetration given the value a lot of his stuff presents at its price point, but at the same time he was opening a chain of stores that sold discounted overruns of canned foods and such nonperishables in more working-class parts of the country. (It's since run its course and shut down I think) He said something like "My biggest contribution to society has probably turned out to be raising the standard of living of schoolteachers in California

[amberite]

. . . actually, I know for a fact that sorbet is different than sherbet.

Most commercially sold sherbets have milk in them. Sorbets, as a rule, do not.

This is very important 'cause the male-bodied person in this picture cannot have milk products.

"Polenta" is, in fact, grits.

"Panini", in a decent place, means "we make our grilled cheese sandwich on good yummy hard bread."

The word "chai" does in fact mean tea in its original language. In America, it means "tea blended with a spice mixture and a lot of sugar syrup." You can get tea masalas from your local Indian grocery that will give you a taste of the fancy Indian preparation of tea which gave someone the bright idea to sell "chai" at coffeehouses. Pour a huge amount of sugar and some milk in, and the stuff tastes sorta similar

[salimondo]

"tapenade" = olive spread
"crudite" = vegetables

The various artisanal hams and sausages drive me into an impatient rage but I concede the point there. And a merlot with pizza sounds nasty -- I like merlot because it's so saturnine whereas pizza wants a lift, spaghetti even moreso. Chianti is the way.

[phygelus]

"tapas": appetizers

The problem with most "artisanal" sausages is they taste like ass. It's hard enough to find sausage that tastes the way it's supposed to.

Artisanal ham, I could live with that as a marketing term for prosciutto and Virginia country ham, if it means I get to eat those more often.

[salimondo]

I thought I was alone for hating artisanal sausage! Even health sausages taste better because they don't aspire to anything but tasting like ground pork plus (no fennel, even). Although that sounds dangerously close to a moral.

"creme brulee" = toasted pudding

[phygelus]

"Creatively" flavored creme brulee should be outlawed.

In a related vein, tiramisu has been devolving into pudding-with-cookies, but that's leading in to my next post already.

Cheap Wine

[gbryal]

I've been buying increasingly cheaper wine now that I am drinking a glass or two every night. I've found many inexpensive Texas wines that all seem to do the trick of washing down christmas cookies.

But thanks for giving me permission to go with the Franzia again, though I find it has a strange egg-like aftertaste. Sometimes it's just the thing. I'm going to keep it in my refrigerator, too. And put frickin' ice in it.

I was looking up Sherlock Holmes' pipe tobacco preferences as I had seemed to remember him smoking a special blend, but I was wrong... he smoked pretty much anything he could get his hands on, maybe a grade above the ship's that Watson choked down.

Anyway, there's no need to make our middle class plight worse by pretending (badly) that we are cultured n' rich.