There's a "formula" us writer types sometimes use when we have a lot of smaller items to discuss that might not be grist for our own columns but are still worthy of mention. Some folks like to call it a three-dot column (on account of the three dots following every observation), others a "Larry King" column. Some like to call it lazy journalism. (Eff those people.)
• Is it just me, or is that Curtis Stone of the Discovery Home Channel's Take Home Chef one of the more interesting cooks on TV? (These might be funnier -- hopefully -- if read in a Larry King accent: "Los Angeles! You're on with Tim Davis.") Anyways, if you haven't seen the show, ol' Curt meets up with women -- always women, usually hot women -- in what seems to be the same high-end grocery store in what looks to be California. A striking, blonde-haired Aussie, he tells the women he'd like to cook them "an amazing meal" (always "an amazing meal"), flirts with them shamelessly, gets them half drunk and then pulls cookerus interruptus whenever the cookee's husband or significant other gets home. See a sample at www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5tFKHXrz2g ... Along those lines, check out that channel's Kylie Kwong and Cookin' in Brooklyn too. They won't change your life, but they're far less self-aggrandizing than 95 percent of The Food Network's offerings.
• Is the insult "donkey" really used a lot across the pond? Either way, Gordon Ramsay wears it well ... Speaking of Gordon Ramsay, anyone shocked about the recent allegations of "fixing" endings and the like on the upcoming American version of Kitchen Nightmares? And there seems to be a lot of said folks -- someone needs to wiki the whole concept of "reality television." ... Ramsay acolytes or profanity advocates might also check out the Ramsay retrospective (www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QFRmxgtYi8) a little weekly program wherein two teenaged girls dish dirt on all things Hell's Kitchen, including a recap of the previous week's episode. It's either genius or a damnable waste of eight minutes. (Likely the latter.) ... The brilliant humorist/foodie Roy Blount Jr., writing about the new Molly O'Neill-edited American Food Writing: An Anthology With Classic Recipes in the New York Times, pulls this representative (read: probably overwritten) blurb by Ruth Reichl, the former Times food critic and current Gourmet editor-in-chief: "The abalone was ... more like some exotic mushroom than something from the ocean, with a slightly musky flavor that made me think of ferns. Beside it the geoduck was pure ocean -- crisp and briny and incredibly clean. Next to the pure austerity of these two, the Japanese clam seemed lush and almost baroque in its sensuality." Translation: The abalone was gamey; the geoduck (a gargantuan, phallic-looking burrowing clam pronounced "gooey duck," incidentally) tasted of the sea. The Japanese clam ... (OK, I give up. I have no idea what she's going for.)
• Rock Hillians and Fort Millians, rejoice. South Carolina recently started two Web sites, SavorSC.com and CertifiedSCgrown.com, to help the average working stiff buy local, and furthermore to provide a place where folks can chat about favorite eats, chefs and the like. With both, you can even link to farmers directly. Many other states (N.C.: ncagr.com; Tenn.: picktnproducts.org; Ala.: growalabama.com; Ga.: gfb.org; Miss.: mdac.state.ms.us) have similar sites. They're all an interesting resource for folks traveling out of state or for folks in a given state who might want to deal with local farmers directly.
• Lastly, I have to mention something that's been getting my goat recently, what with daily e-mail reminders from PETA and other animal rights/pro-vegetarian organizations. Listen up, you! (said like Gordon Ramsay.)
It'd be a whole lot easier for people to "go veg" if the food wasn't so damned expensive. I realize, lacking huge facilities in some cases, truly meat-free food's going to cost more. That said, there's some 15,000,000-plus vegetarians in this country, if not more, so that excuse ain't gonna hold for long. But right now, those people pushing the lifestyle, especially on poor folks with bad eating habits, need to realize that they themselves are in a privileged position due in part to their relative proximity to grocery stores, ready access to transportation, use of nutritional supplements, money to buy from small scale, organic-type farms, the availability of meat substitutes in fancified grocery stores and, above all, the undeniable luxury of being able to set aside a reasonable amount of "free time" in which to plan and prepare such meals. In other words, "giving back to Mother Earth" means a lot more than saving some cows and forgoing pesticides in the process -- it also means giving back to its less-fortunate inhabitants.
Timothy C. Davis is an associate editor with Gravy, the official newsletter of the Southern Foodways Alliance. His food writing has appeared in Gastronomica, Saveur, The Christian Science Monitor, and the food Web site www.egullet.com, among other publications.