Teach your children well

Another example of how the Europeans get it right and we don’t. If you teach children to appreciate good food and nutrition, they grow up to be adults who appreciate good food and nutrition.

Jamie Oliver (the Naked Chef) managed to get the British schools to change their school food policy and is trying to get American schools to do the same. It is sad that someone from another country has to rescue us from our chicken-finger-eating ways. More here.

Three birds, one post

I have long wanted to join this blogger in the Random Tuesday Thoughts posts that this blogger put together. And this blogger has started a fun Fill In The Blanks series. And I have a half-dozen half-started blog posts (including one that somehow includes both Michael Crichton’s art collection and the Times Square bomber. I know, right?). So in the interest of posting something new, here are my Random Tuesday Thoughts via Fill In The Blank:

1. My guiltiest pleasure is really trashy chick-lit novels. Also gossip mags at the hairdresser (where I’m headed tomorrow night to get the roots done).
2. I can't wait to watch both Glee and Lost tonight (nerd alert)
3. The last song I listened to was something by Mountain that my boss was playing a little too loudly in his office. I curse the day I introduced him to Pandora. Not because of Mountain, but because of the constant onslaught of music I didn’t pick. I don’t know how he gets anything done.
4. You really can't beat a good book. No relation to #1 above.
5. My least favorite sound is the cats trying to break into the bedroom (plaintive meowing and standing on hind legs to rattle the doorknob. Obnoxious) at 5 am looking for their breakfast when it is clearly not breakfast time. Also see #3 above. I love the sound of the Italian language. Too bad I don’t understand a word of it (except the ones related to food and wine).

Ciao, bellas. More Random Tuesday fun at the UnMom.

Corn: It's What's For Dinner

I both cannot wait -- yet am scared to death -- to see this documentary.



From the movie, quoted in Roger Ebert's review: "Corn, in fact, is an ingredient in 80 percent of supermarket products, including batteries and Splenda. Processing concentrates it. You couldn't eat enough corn kernels in a day to equal the number of calories in a bag of corn chips."

This is what America is all about right? Little business grows into big business. Bigger, faster, cheaper, better. But at what cost? In a nation that idolizes the thin yet is overrun with obesity, why do we make it so hard for the average family to buy good, healthy food without going broke?

More of Ebert's review here, and Ann Hornaday's review here. I don't think I'll be getting popcorn at this movie.

I'll have the filet, medium, hold the Creedence

{NYC Felix, originally uploaded by tbone_bill. See note below**}

There is nothing like a nice dinner out. In Downtown Hartford, and the surrounding towns, there are a lot of great places to eat. I am fortunate in that The BF also appreciates good restaurants, and most Saturday nights find us enjoying a cold martini followed by a lovely meal and some great wine. We like the whole experience that a good restaurant offers: a little chit-chat with the bartender while he shakes up the vodka or gin and tries to remember which of us ordered the olives (me) or the lemon twist (The BF). Debating staying at the bar so we can sit cozily side-by-side vs moving to a table. Sharing an appetizer, weighing the merits of various entrees, picking a wine, having a three-hour conversation about everything and nothing. We appreciate the whole experience that has been created for us - the food, the service, the decor, the ambiance. But not necessarily the music. The music befuddles. When I think marble bar/white tablecloth/martini/wine/etc, I think jazz, standards, accoustic, maybe somethig electronic, but all in the name of background music. Aural wallpaper to complement the Scalamandre grasscloth and alabaster chandeliers, to sparkle behind the patrons' dialogue, to bookend the beginnings and ends of conversations. I don't think Creedence. Or Jimi Hendrix. Or Cat Stevens.

I was in three different fine dining establishments this past weekend: two with The BF on Saturday night (one for a drink and a different one for dinner) and one with my family for Easter. In all three instances, the artfully-designed decor, first-class service* and excellent food was curiously set against an backdrop of '70s rock: CCR, Led Zep, Fleetwood Mac, Queen. Great stuff, in a grammar-school-flashback kind of way. Or a beer-and-burgers-on-the-beach kind of way. Or a hanging-out-at-home kind of way. I don't get it. Why would a restauranteur spend a million dollars on opening a restaurant, creating a menu, designing a space, praying for a good review and a crowd that keeps coming despite the ups and downs of the economy, and then leave the Muzak station on Seventies Rock? You've taken a wonderful little experience and tainted it. It's not ironic, or charming, or clever, it's kind of obnoxious, in an ambiance-be-damned-this-is-what-I/the-staff-likes kind of way. And if that is who you are catering to, I am afraid for your business.

*Okay, the service at the place we went to on Easter was more grandmotherly than first-class, but still...

**The BF took this picture, on a hot summer Saturday night in NYC, at Restaurant Felix. The food is amazing, and the music is a mix of French jazz/electonic lounge/music hall (think Pink Martini). A delicious end to a wonderful day. If you go, be sure to sit in the window so you can watch the street theater that is West Broadway. We watched one couple on a blind date, another couple breaking up, and a Vespa-riding cross-dresser wearing a fur coat and a wig (in August). Oh, and did I mention the food was fantastic?