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Douche/Counter-Douche: Ultimately, the writer of this article decides that Guy Fieri is mostly harmless, a sanitized TV version of The Douchebag, and I mostly agree. As a host for a game show of bar stunts or for a national travelogue of greasy-spoons, he’s perfectly fine. His “cooking” show isn’t worth a bucket of spit, but very few of the shows on Food Network that still involve actual cooking are any better. Here’s an older article from The Daily Beast that’s a little more critical of him at a point where his career was really starting to take off. A couple of years later and now he’s just another TV douchebag, so I don’t think the fate of Western Cuisine hangs in the balance.
Over at Neatorama, the lovely and charming Miss Cellania explains why everything “tastes like chicken”.
“Augmented shopping” is a buzzword-y concept that basically means using your smartphone to help you make more informed purchasing decisions, typically through price comparisons. Now there’s an iPhone app called “Fooducate” that lets you scan the barcodes on packages in the supermarket, assess the nutritional information of that product and, if you wish, choose healthier alternatives. Fooducate also has a blog that talks about food labelling issues, nutrition, healthy eating choices, and other related topics. Sadly, my iPod Touch is an older model without a camera, so the app isn’t terribly useful to me right now, but the blog seems worth keeping up with.
Most traditional English cooking is a bit heavy and dull, and the humble Cornish pasty really is no exception. However, it has earned itself a protected geographical status not unlike the appellation systems used for regional food products in France, Italy and other European countries. Any product calling itself a “Cornish pasty” has to be made somewhere in Cornwall (the southwestern “leg” of England). Anything else is just a meat pie.
This NYT Food Section story about pepperoni from earlier this month had me drooling all over my laptop. To me, the true test of whether or not a pizza place is any good stands on the quality of their pepperoni pizza. And that means, essentially, the pepperoni itself. I say this without reservation, having lived in this part of the Boston metro area for fifteen years now: the pepperoni used by the pizza places around here SUCKS. It is next to impossible to get a GOOD pepperoni pizza ANYWHERE around here because to a one they all use the same shitty pepperoni. And that includes the so-called “legendary” pizzerias like Regina and Santarpio. I don’t know which brand they’re using, but it’s terrible, and they all use it. Makes a grown man weep.
