Reno Rambling - Too.

Reno's Peppermill; a mile or so from what’s left of The Strip's glory years.  In the sixties the strip was a glittering string of casinos and hotels; Fitzgerald’s, The Sahara (which would become the Flamingo Hilton), Mapes, The Nevada Club, Cal Neva, Harold’s Club and a full deck of smaller players. The strip has since been stripped. 

Dinner at Mom's: 2nd Course - Fried Meat, Mushrooms, Politics and a Side Order of Fear

Don't you understand, what I'm trying to say?

Can't you see the fear that I'm feeling today?

If the button is pushed, there's no running away,

There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave,

take a look around you, boy, it's bound to scare you, boy,

but you tell me over and over and over again my friend,

ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction. 

~ Eve of Destruction written by P. F. Sloan, recorded by Barry McGuire.

October 1964; probably 3 or 4 times in a month mom put fried pork chops on the menu.  Chops carried more fat back then and so it followed that they carried a hell of a lot more flavor.  Mom would put the pan drippings to good use and make a batch of cream gravy.  Nothing quite like pork chops and mashed potatoes in a bath of cream gravy.  It was the meat and potatoes diet that was starting to undergo scrutiny.  The medicos waved a bony finger at America and warned that fatty red meat, cream, butter and all that frying was going to clog the arteries and bring about a national cardiac crisis.  We were faced with the fear that our diet was killing us.

As so as we cemented our arteries, we watched the dour TV newsmen report on the upcoming presidential election. The GOP had nominated the conservative Barry Goldwater to unseat Lyndon B. Johnson who took office after JFK was assassinated.  It was the dual of initials; LBJ versus AuH2O (the chemical symbols for Gold and Water).  Johnson teetered on the Vietnamese fence by positioning himself as a pillar of war restraint who could still be tough on Communism. It might have been a hard sell against anyone but Goldwater.  The Arizona Senator's tough posture on the Commies translated to acute "hoof in mouth" disease with some propositions that scared the shit out of the electorate. His notion on dealing with Chinese supply lines in Vietnam was to clear them out with "low yield nuclear weapons."  I still recall the GOP campaign slogan touting Goldwater's conservatism, "In your heart you know he's right," being turned by the Democrats to, "In your heart you know he might" (launch a nuke) and "In your guts you know he's nuts." And so as we sat at the dinner table that forkful of dessert hung suspended as we watched with unease and then gasped at Johnson’s campaign ad; a little girl, a daisy and a nuclear mushroom cloud.

Oh yeah, we knew all about mushroom clouds.  Hiroshima and Nagasaki were within my parents’ recent memories and as a kid I remember news footage of those boiling explosions. My grade school friends and I may have been too young to be concerned but we knew all about mega tonnage and we were in awe along with the rest of the world of the Soviet's gargantuan tests. I was 10 years old when Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro had their atomic pissing contest. It was the Eve of Destruction that Barry McGuire would sing about two years later.

As kids we carried A-bombs in the backs of our minds.  We wondered if the destructive force of a nuke dropped on downtown San Francisco would carry as far south as San Mateo.  My friends and I would ride our bikes around the nearby College of San Mateo, often passing by the stairs that led down to the fallout shelter.  I seem to recall some sense of relief that we had a shelter so close, although in retrospect had the bomb been dropped when class was in session the shelter would have filled up with college students leaving the rest of us to go through the radioactive baking cycle. We knew all about the Strategic Air Command B-52s that hovered round the clock on the outskirts of Soviet air space to deliver retaliation in the event of of a Soviet launch.  We knew that fighter pilots on alert slept in the cockpits of their jets on the tarmacs.  When the sixties began we went through the bomb drills not really knowing what we were doing as we got into a tuck position under our desks.  We giggled and made faces at each other.  By the mid-sixties we probably started to question what the hell good a student desk would do in the midst of a nuclear attack.  Finally, by the end of the sixties as we entered high school we darkly joked that the tuck position was invented to be able to conveniently and easily "kiss your ass goodbye."  And yet there was this perverse fascination, an attraction to the images of nuclear blasts.  The vivid colors and the seeming grace in which the big cloud formed carried a strange and awful beauty. And then of course there was the awesome, hard to imagine power. We were transfixed, but really, who would admit to it?

Practicing to kiss your ass goodbye?

When I look back on the cold war I pause for a moment at 9/11; I recall the general fear that gripped our nation in the hours, days and weeks that followed. It makes me wonder how much fear our parents felt when they knew that destruction and death from above were just a few minutes away.  A nuclear storm could strike Oklahoma City with more destruction than a tornado and about as little warning; or a bomb could topple San Francisco as suddenly as a 7.0 earthquake.  If we kids could sense the danger of nuclear holocaust how much fear dogged our parents?  In some cases it was enough for them to build bomb shelters under the house and then be prepared to lock out the desperate folks who used to be friends and neighbors before the sky started to fall.

The images that left us in awe

In October 1963, just weeks before the election, my parents brought me with them to Washington Square in San Francisco to listen to Johnson preach peace in a stump speech.  LBJ concluded his speech by saying, “For 11 months I have tried to help us have peace in the world, and if I can have your help, if I can have your hand, if I can have your heart, if I can have your prayers, if the good Lord is willing, I will continue to try to lead this Nation and this world to peace." Johnson won the election handily but in the end it didn't work out so well; for LBJ or for America - at least not on the foreign policy front.

America sat at the dinner table that election year and was fed a diet of fear. By Goldwater, the fear of the Red Menace; by Johnson the fear of Goldwater. Not much has really changed has it? Candidates still serve up the fear diet; just in a different flavor.  Soft on Communism has become naive about terrorism. I feel fortunate that as a boy I had a connection to a different time, as my dad would relate to me the calm that FDR tried to deliver to an anxious nation; "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Fear is now a permanent ingredient in the campaign recipe. We'll never go back will we? Sad.  

Stump speeches.  I look back at LBJ in Washington Square as irretrievable nostalgia.  Presidential candidates don’t make stump speeches anymore.  They rarely come to California anymore but when they do it's with a purpose irrelevant to the election itself; Republicans know they can’t win here and Democrats know it’s in the bag.  So why would you come to the most populous state in the Union? To meet the people you hope to lead?  To deliver to the electorate your vision of hope for the nation?  Hell no. It’s to appear at a gazillion dollar a plate fundraising dinner.  They go out of their way to appear in front of friendly crowds because protest signs make bad photo ops and heckling a poor sound bite.  Politicians have lied through their teeth for ages.  In the old days you got to see them do it in person - for free, in a big city park.  Now you have to whip out the AMEX, or mortgage the homestead so you can listen to a fellow mortgage his morals at a private dinner in a rich guy's mansion.

And ironically, some fifty years after we were being told that our diet was about as healthy as a glass of hemlock, the stigma has been removed from red meat, starches and heavy cream.  Meat and potatoes have been repackaged as the healthy, salutary paleo-diet.  I suppose that if the diet experts ever tire of analyzing what we eat they can turn to politics.  They seem to be pretty good at flip-flopping and scaring the shit out of the public.
"Wife, we need to get off those damned grains and legumes.  They're killing us.  Whip me up a chicken fried steak with a an order of cream gravy and do it on the double quick"

Dinner at Mom's

“The oldest form of theater is the dinner table. It's got five or six people, new show every night, same players. Good ensemble; the people have worked together a lot.”  ~ Michael J. Fox

San Mateo, circa 1960s.  Dinner was the required event at our house and in most American households.  In our home it was straight up six, every night right after mom and dad had drained their martinis.  About five, dad would shake up some gin with a whisper of vermouth in a gray metal cocktail shaker and the parents would savor a couple of cocktails until dinner time.  The gin was cheap stuff, probably Seagram’s.  I doubt the existence of snooty boutique gin in 1960 and mom and dad wouldn't have it if it did exist. It was after I’d moved back home after college that dad included me in the ritual and I developed a taste for martinis.  I still had the cocktail shaker and used it up until a few years ago when the doc took alcohol off my menu.  I recently gave it to my son in law for his home bar. In sixties America you didn't entertain the thought of skipping dinner for work or an “activity.”  Yeah, dinner was the activity; not soccer or dance class or karate.  And certainly not work.  You worked your 8 hour day and then came home.  Those leashes known as cell phones and laptops were fantasies in the minds of a few dreamers.  Dinnertime was sacred.

A Sunday Stew

For many here in the States, the best part of Sunday is football.  Not so for me.  I’m partial to Sunday supper.  Sunday supper has its origins in Britain and Ireland where a hearty meal of roasted meat was served with a bounty of sides after the Sunday church service.  It’s remained popular to some degree in the former colonies, including The United States. 

Christmas Potpourri; 2012 Edition

Christmas is a season for kindling the fire for hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.~ Washington Irving 

Its Christmas Eve morn and I’ve just braved the crowds at Andronico’s, one of the areas high end food stores.  Cora doesn’t see much use for such stores unless we need something that’s actually good to eat; fresh produce, quality meats, cuts that you don’t find at the local market and fish that wasn’t raised on a farm.  Today’s mission was to get some good bread, crusty pain au lavain from San Francisco’s Acme Bakery.  On my way to checkout I grabbed a boxed pandoro, a sweet Italian bread, dusted with powdered sugar to resemble the snow covered Alps. 

Thanksgiving Leftovers

Sitting amongst the wreckage of Thanksgiving at the kitchen table – some dinner rolls in a zip lock, a cranberry cake (deliciously baked by my daughter I might add), some cornbread and God knows what’s in the fridge.  I’m almost afraid to open the door for fear of being buried by an avalanche of leftover feast.

Black Thanksgiving: A Real Turkey - 2012 Edition

“CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.” ~ Ambrose Bierce.

“The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.” ~ Confucius

“There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.”  ~ O Henry

Inching through Berkeley in rush hour traffic (Why in the hell do they call it rush hour when it takes that hour to go 5 miles? Where exactly is the rush part?) NPR brought the impending holiday season into stark blinding reality.  It reported that this year Wal-Mart will be kicking off the holiday shopping season by opening its doors at 8 PM on Thanksgiving night. 

Last year, in this very space I published a post titled Black Thanksgiving: A Real Turkey in which I criticized the marginalizing of our great American holiday, Thanksgiving, in favor of a new ritual; that of bundling up and leaving the holiday festivities for a round of bargain hunting hysteria.  I protested, vehemently I might add, the decision by Wal-Mart to open at 10 PM on Thanksgiving night.  In its audacity, Wal-Mart not only didn’t take my beef with them seriously, it upped the ante and decided to open its doors two hours earlier than last year.  The very effrontery of it all.  Obviously Walmart doesn’t know who it’s dealing with.  No, really, they don’t.  They don’t have the foggiest idea who I am and even if they did they wouldn’t care.  I’m that gnat on the ass of an elephant (or more properly the ass of an ass). Nonetheless I feel compelled to play David to Sam’s Goliath. 

The Designer Burger (or How to Turn Ground Beef into a Cash Cow)

“A hamburger by any other name costs twice as much. “   Evan Esar (American humorist)

The hamburger, that simple, basic, culinary symbol of American egalitarianism has in recent years gone through a makeover.  What started as a simple ground beef patty resting greasily in a bun has gone designer.  It’s like the kid who goes to Hollywood gets famous, lets success go to his head and then forgets where he came from.  Like that kid who’s traded his Wranglers for a Gucci suit and scorns his old friends, big time chefs are trying to turn the hamburger into an uppity snob.

When I was a kid a hamburger was something that was featured at diners and drive-ins.  People who claimed even a fragment of taste never went to a fine restaurant with the intent of ordering a burger.   If it was even on the menu it was on the kids menu or buried at the bottom of the dinner menu to satisfy the occasional riff-raff who darkened the establishment’s doorstep.  Sometimes it was disguised as something called a diet plate which usually consisted of a burger patty sans bun with some cottage cheese and a couple of canned peach wedges on the side. 

Some years back a restaurant in San Francisco paid homage to the ground beef patty. Hippopotamus Hamburgers on Van Ness Avenue featured an array of burgers on a menu that was creative if sometimes a little misguided (the Sundae Burger with ice cream, hot fudge and a pickle comes to mind).  My parents took me there on a few occasions.  As I recall I usually ordered the Island Burger or the Chili Burger which as the menu described came “covered with chili and beans (it’s a gas).”  The menu even presented a little social commentary.  For example, for 110.69 you could get the Liberationburger described as a “Whole male chauvinist pig – sliced thin – and laid on a water bed by a California girl – presented with bunches of wild organics.”  What I would like to know these many years later; was there some sort of prurient double entedre in that 69 cents or is my dirty little mind working overtime?  I suppose we’ll never know since The Hippo closed in 1987.  But the Hippo Burgers with all the extras from beans to chocolate sauce were still at their core, basic burgers. (For an interesting look at The Hippopotamus Menu follow the link).

Which brings us to today’s top shelf designer burgers.  A few weeks back we found ourselves at a place called Burger Bar.  Located inside downtown San Francisco’s Macy’s, Burger Bar is a big deal apparently for the fact that it’s run by renowned chef Hubert Keller, of Fleur de Lys, one of the haughtier “dining experiences” in San Francisco.  Burger Bar calls itself “the ultimate burger experience.”

Here’s where I have to digress.  When exactly did going out to dinner become a “dining experience?”   Yeah I know, restaurants are trying to couch a meal at their place as being something extraordinary and unforgettable.  If that’s the case we have those at home on a regular basis when my two year old grandson Jackson chows down.  Jackson’s act usually includes smushing food into his face and tossing food overboard from the highchair when he doesn’t like it or is done eating.  Finished with milk?  The sippy cup gets a toss over the shoulder.  The dogs love it.  Like canine groupies they gather around Jackson knowing that sooner or later food magically falls from the sky.  But a restaurant dining experience?  Meh.

But back to burgers.  The starting price for a burger at Burger Bar is $9.75; which gets you the burger, the bun, lettuce, tomatoes, onion and a (one) pickle.  The scam, err, I mean allure is that you get to “build your own burger.”  And like any construction project, building your burger here is fraught with cost overruns.  The menu is divided into sections to allow you to select the various components for your “burger construction experience.”  There is the “dairy” which lists the cheeses, the “garden” with various veggies, the “grill” for grilled add-on, the “pantry” for condiments and the “Hubert Keller retirement fund vault” where you leave your hard earned money (okay this last is a cynical lie). 

Cheese runs about 75 cents unless you opt for blue cheese which is 95 cents as is pepper jack.  Huh?  That’s 20 cents extra for a few slivers of habanero in a 75 cent slice of jack which in the final analysis is just too much jack for some jack.  Bacon runs $1.15.  Okay so except for the jack cheese these add-ons aren’t too terribly outrageous (although $9.75 for the bare bones, so to speak, still seems just wrong).  But then you come to a (one) fried egg which runs $1.95.  A random scientific survey of shoppers -- well, I asked my wife -- revealed that a dozen eggs costs about two bucks or just about 17 cents per egg.  Items from Hubert’s pantry run from .45 for Dijon mustard to two bucks for guacamole.  I bought some avocados at the local super yesterday at 5 for a couple bucks; just sayin’.  Salsa is .95 which is bottomless at any Mexican joint and doesn’t cost one centavo extra.  But where Hubert is really raking in the green is, appropriately enough, in the garden.  Sprouts are .55, baby spinach .80 and sliced cucumber .75. 

If architecture isn’t your game you can get one of the pre-fab burgers, like the American Classic which is as close to the everyman burger as you can get there.  There’s the Surf and Turf Burger; the ruination of two stand-alone classics, hamburger and lobster, accomplished by putting them together under one bun.  If you have deep pockets, for 60 dollars you can get the Rossini which comes with foie gras and shaved truffles.

But Hubert isn’t the only chef to shove a silver spoon in the hamburger’s ass.  And the burger is no longer buried in the bottom of the menu.  Why would it be when a chef can command 15 to 20 dollars or more for ground beef by throwing in some highfalutin add ons and a fancy name?  In San Francisco for instance there are:

                The Zuni Café which offers a 6 ½ ounce burger for 15 dollars.  Would you like fries with that?  That will be 6 dollars sir, and that means your burger meal costs more than a double sawbuck.  Zuni’s burger isn’t offered on the regular dinner menu.  It’s available only after 10 PM which caters to the post -performance crowd from the local opera house.  You have to ask yourself just how good can this burger be if you can eat it while dressed in your going to the opera duds?  Any self-respecting burger has to carry the veiled threat that it will deposit an unhealthy splotch of grease on that tux. 

                Serpentine has a 12.50 burger described in a review as being just a thin patty of beef on a buttered, griddled bun.  The review goes on to say “you could make a burger like this at home if you wanted but eating one at Serpentine’s bar makes you feel like a real local.”  Seriously?  If I want that local feeling in The City I’ll just go to a dive bar and get an Old Crow on the rocks for 3 bucks.

                Absinthe’s 12.50 burger includes additions of “fatty trim.”  Whadyamean additions of fatty trim?  Fatty trim is supposed to be part of a burger’s genetic code.  Does their chocolate cake come with “additions of chocolate?”  Along with “fatty trim,” the Absinthe burger comes with onion, lettuce and a (one) pickle.  For 1.50 each you can get mushrooms, cheese, caramelized onions, heirloom tomatoes and a fried egg (Absinthe is leaving some money on the table.  Keller is getting a buck ninety-five for his eggs).  The fries are hand cut and run 6 bucks.  That kind of money for a burger and fries might just compel me to get a triple shot of the restaurant’s namesake.    

You may have noticed a common thread here that those kinds of prices would me drive me to drink.  Is it because I’m a tightfisted old bastard?   Well sure that goes without saying but I have a hard time swallowing an overpriced Hamburg steak without some alcoholic pain relief.  But beyond that I can get a much better burger in nearby Pinole for the price of Absinthe’s hoity-toity hand cut fries at a little hole in the wall called The Red Onion.  

The Red Onion is just an old fashioned little burger joint that offers burger joint food at burger joint prices.  I suppose Johnny Yee doesn’t extort his customers because not only does he serve an honest burger, he’s just a greasy spoon owner who doesn’t have his name on the Food Network marquee and his location, literally in the shadow of the Pinole Valley High School stadium light standards, is a gold mine in itself.  Let’s consider his bacon cheeseburger; a 1/3 pound patty with a quarter pound of bacon, lettuce, grilled onions, tomato and their house dressing.  It costs a mere 9 cents more than those hand cut fries from Absinthe.  You get it to take out and by the time you’re home the grease is oozing through the side of the bag and if that sounds revolting then you don’t understand that the secret of a good burger is fat.  Without it all you have is a disc of sawdust.  Ah but do you want the dining experience (there’s that term again) of feeling like a local?  Then eat at the counter.  No it won’t be the same as eating the stuck-up-burger at a pretentious bar with a banker on your left and some trendy douchebag in a suit on your right, but it will be a dining experience (there’s that term yet again) that harkens back to when a burger was a damn burger.  You can’t have a martini but a nice thick chocolate malt isn’t a bad substitute.  And what better atmosphere to savor a good burger than sitting at the counter of a little joint, watching the fry cooks work their flattop magic and  listening to the sizzle of several patties and pounds of bacon while the crew, a few old timers and kids from PVHS share some banter.   

And so today I went out to The Red Onion and ordered a double cheeseburger with a side of onion rings.  Mind you this was strictly in the interest of honest reportage.  My wife asked me to pick her up a regular hamburger.  By the time I drove home I was literally slavering from that smell of beef, onions and grease.  I removed the soaked wrapping to find the burger as it’s supposed to be, two patties of medium rare beef on a plain bun oozing orange American cheese with grilled onions spilling from the edges.  It was big and messy and unpretentiously American and it was simply called a double cheeseburger.  And it was better than The Chef Ima Bigshot Bombast Burger with ridiculous extras like Sonoma blue cheese, French goose liver, olive tapenade, poached quail eggs and fried froufrou.  And did I mention that my two burgers with onion rings came to total of 12.50? 

You might ask if I've ever had a designer burger and  I’m glad you asked me that question.  Yes I have and on more than a few occasions.  They were good but they weren’t memorable.  They aren’t the kind of burger that you just gotta have when you need a burger fix.  They don’t inspire a pilgrimage.

I doubt that the trendiness of the designer hamburger is going away.  Americans are too hooked on the notion that if it has pretention and it costs more than it should it must be good.  But that’s alright.  This is America and in America choice is, well, the American way.  And I’m confident that since the good old fashioned burger has been around since the turn of the 20^th century it will be around long enough for me to keep getting it the way it was meant to be until the day my arteries are as solid as concrete. 

Scapegoating a Clown

“RESPONSIBILITY, n.

A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one's neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star.”  ~ Ambrose Bierce

A notorious criminal lost a court appeal this week.  U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney turned down this unrepentant malefactor’s bid to have his case heard in Federal Court, ruling that the desperado would have to be tried in State Court.  The felon is none other than Ronald McDonald.  It seems that there is a proposed class action lawsuit against this clown for using toys to lure children into his restaurants in order to make them fat.  Sound all very lurid doesn’t it?  Sounds all very ridiculous too.

The suit was brought by Monet Parham and its aim is to force McDonald’s to stop using toys as a marketing tool.  Parham complains that her daughter asks to go to McDonald’s to get toys that are in the Happy Meals.  She goes on to say that the toy monopolizes the attention of the daughter and the food almost seems beside the point.  Huh?  So what’s the problem?  When the kid says, “I want to go to McDonalds,” just make a turkey sandwich, grab some carrot sticks go get the Happy Meal and when she starts playing with the toy and ignoring the food, swap out the burger and fries for the sandwich and carrots.  Problem solved.  Yeah I understand it isn't that simple since the child is already smart enough to work mom.

“I am concerned about the health of my children and feel that McDonald’s should be a very limited part of their diet and their childhood experience,” Parham said. “But as other busy, working moms and dads know, we have to say ‘no’ to our young children so many times, and McDonald’s makes that so much harder to do. I object to the fact that McDonald’s is getting into my kids’ heads without my permission and actually changing what my kids want to eat.”  Oh I get it now. You can’t say no to your kids so you need the government do it for you.  Simple.

I have an idea for Ms. Parham.  Maybe she should move to San Francisco.  In San Francisco you can get a ***** Meal.  It used to be a Happy Meal but that was before Supervisor Eric Mar went into action and sponsored an ordinance that requires any kid’s meal which offers a toy must not contain more than 600 calories (food and drink combined).  The ordinance also requires the restaurant to provide fruits and vegetables with any meal offering a toy. This must make the restaurant owners long for the days when another Ronald, Reagan, in a clownish move of his own deemed ketchup to be a vegetable.  The reasoning behind the ordinance is of course the epidemic of obesity among our nation’s youth; fat kids who in most cases grow up to be fat adults with all of the health and cost baggage that obesity carries.  At least that’s what Eric Mar would have us believe.  It turns out that Mr. Mar has the same problem that Ms. Parham has, in that he can’t say the “N” word….No!  In an interview on a local talk show Supervisor Mar complained that he had trouble saying no to his kids when they wanted a Happy Meal.  And so he did what anyone else would do in his position of power; he got a law passed so even those responsible parents who control the domestic circle and can say no most of the time, but say yes on occasion have to leave town to do so.  I'm curious what these parents are going to say if the little nipper wants to have a pull from that bottle of Stolichnaya in the liquor cabinet.

To further add to Ronald McDonald’s woes, earlier this year a group called Corporate Accountability International called for McDonalds to retire him.  Like Parham and Mar the group claims that Ronald is enticing children to eat junk food and promoting childhood obesity.  It’s not been a good year if you’re a spokesclown.

Mar got his ordinance passed and Parham might win her lawsuit and all it will amount to is those folks being able to sleep better at night thinking that they’re winning the obesity war.  The problem is Mar’s ordinance is just firing blanks and as for Ronald retiring, the clown could get hit by a train and it won’t curb childhood obesity one whit.

Let me clarify a few things here. First of all I’m not here to defend McDonalds. I don’t like McDonalds or most other fast food restaurants, and not for any other reason than they serve bad food; food as plastic as the toys that come in the kid’s meals (unless you live in SF).  I do like a good greasy burger and an unhealthy helping of onion rings now and then but I usually get my gut bombs at the local independent burger joint (tastes better and I can usually get a real malt to go with it).  I’ve also been a runner and cyclist for a good many of my 57 years and am in excellent shape.  Finally, while I don’t deny that there is indeed a crisis when it comes to generations of obese children I don’t agree that legislating menus and firing mascots makes a difference.

So if we don’t take the toys from Happy Meals and we don’t have Ronald committed to the old clowns home then what can be done?  The collective we can do nothing.  This is largely a personal matter that demands better parenting.

I’m wondering if the McDonald’s bashers are walking around with the notion in their minds that children eating junky food is some new phenomenon; as if kids in the ante-obese years never gorged on Halloween candy, never fed off the ice cream truck and never inhaled the contents of the Christmas stocking.  Are they suggesting that the family diet was healthier in generations past?

When I was growing up, candy, ice cream, donuts and a variety of other crap were the childhood staples.  When it came to the dinner table, it usually groaned under the weight of a meat and potatoes diet, loaded with fat, butter, whole milk and saturated fats.  There was nowhere near the dietary awareness that we have today, mom didn’t know about the food pyramid, calories weren’t counted, there were no food exchanges, and there was no Center for Science in the Public Interest or any other culinary cops that I know of. 

And so while a fat laden, sugar coated diet isn’t a new innovation something has changed since my childhood; activity.  Physical activity is becoming extinct.  When parents aren’t allowing their children to grow roots into the couch playing video games they’re treating them like porcelain dolls, yelling at them not to run because the little darlings might fall and get a boo-boo.  The parents of my childhood banned couchpotatoism.  We got an hour or so of afternoon lounging before an angry, “Turn off that damn TV and go play,” came shrieking from the kitchen.  And play we did. We played sports, tag, hide and seek, army (yeah I know, not PC), cowboys and Indians (not PC either), climbed trees and explored the fields behind the neighborhoods and we did so for hours on end.  Our society has pulled the budget plug on physical activity.  We’ve decided that we can no longer afford to fund PE in school.  Local park and recreation departments haven’t the money to maintain playgrounds, sports fields and activity programs. 

It’s something of a national pastime in this country to shift responsibility to someone or something else.  That’s why our court system is jammed with lawsuits like Monet Parham’s.  That’s why Eric Mar wrote an ordinance when he lacked the testicular fortitude to say no to his little angels.  Mar and Parham had better learn to make NO a part of the lexicons before the cherubs become defiant teens, or the inmates will be running their asylums.  But isn't that happening already?

There is a generational disconnect that is taking place if it hasn’t already. My generation recalls physical education programs, sports, hours of childhood play and parents who knew how to say no.  All of that has become anecdotal as physical education has gone the way of the rotary telephone, hours of video gaming are becoming accepted behavior and worst of all parental spines have become so much jelly.  It’s time to accept personal responsibility and stop feeling comfy and self-righteous for roughing up a clown.

Finally, it would be nice if legislators would park their issues at the workplace door.  We don't need the teetotaler assemblyman sponsoring dry laws, vegan senators legislating against pork (the eating kind) and congressmen trying to regulate the Bowl Championship Series when their favorite team doesn't get into the National Championship Game.  And we don't need a supervisor outlawing a rubber super hero out of a kid's meal because he can't control his children. 

Waste not...

     The Travel Channel has a new show called, Man Versus Food Nation. It’s a spin off of Man Versus Food in which a fellow named Adam Richman would tour the country taking on “food challenges.” Richman’s challenges included eating gargantuan plates of food or dishes so spicy they cause tears, profuse sweating, a seared palate, and the delayed vengeance of “what goes in must come out”, proving beyond all doubt that foolish behavior carries its own rewards.

      In the original, Richman took on the challenges himself. In the new version he recruits his fans to….well, I simply couldn’t do justice to the show by describing it myself, so from the program’s website; After 3 years of eating his way across America, Adam’s heard the Man v. Food Nation …they want a piece of the action. Now, Adam is recruiting local talent to take on their beloved hometown challenges. As Adam samples the local flavor of every location he visits, he'll look for fans to walk in his shoes. Richman has apparently retired his fork and hung up the bib to become coach, mentor and cheerleader.  So the basic premise of the show is that Coach Richman travels the country to instruct other culinary jocks in the nuances of eating anything from a 5 pound Stromboli to a 12 pound hamburger. This is truly bringing sport to the masses; something akin to Tom Brady teaching a Southie to throw a tight spiral or Tim Lincecum schooling a bleacher bum on the finer points of the cut fastball. 

     And why would someone want to try to eat a pizza the size of a dining table? The Man Versus Food Nation website poses just that kind of insightful question; “Is it for the glory? Is it for the honor?  It’s for neither, the website says; Adam and his Man v. Food Nation are doing it for the love of the game, as they work together to defeat these edible "beasts" and celebrate the community that created them.”  I suppose this is proof that alcohol, vanity and the hunger (no pun intended) for that 15 minutes of fame have absolutely nothing to do with it. This is not only a celebration of sport and community; it’s democracy in action showing the world that in this great land of opportunity, just as anyone can be President of the United States, even the little guy can achieve gluttonous greatness. Why this is enough to stir the soul, bring a tear to the eye and make you want to salute the flag. It’s as American as baseball and mom’s apple pie (a 10 pound pie that you have to finish it in 45 minutes and you can’t get up from the table during the challenge).
     In a recent episode this guru of gorging visited Albuquerque, New Mexico to mentor three “warriors” named Travis in the fine art of eating a dish called Travis on a Silver Platter; an 8 pound burrito hidden under a mountain of French fries. No, no, no; they didn’t team up to eat one Travis. Each Travis got a Travis of his own, which he had to finish in an hour or less.  The Travises battle bravely but in the end they sat before their platters of leftover beans, tortilla, fixins and fries in stuffed, subdued defeat. One Travis finished about three pounds of burrito, another about 4 pounds and the third Travis had barely scratched the surface of fries. All told about 15 pounds of spuds and burrito looked to be destined for the dumpster.

     Of course gastronomic excess has always been available to the masses. Mere mortals have only to go to the local strip mall and visit the all you can eat buffet, where for the price of a double sawbuck you can take multiple trips to the warming table and load your plate with heaps of soggy fried chicken, leathery beef, squishy fish sticks, Salisbury steak in brown goo and various kinds of mass produced starches. Posted signs admonish patrons to take only what they can eat but invariably the eyes become bigger than the stomach and those five buttermilk biscuits in sausage gravy that looked so manageable and yummy at the warming station suddenly start to look a bit overwhelming after the half dozen chicken legs and the mound of grayish, green bean casserole have settled into the belly. A sigh of satisfaction, lay down the napkin, lean back and let the busboy scrape a plate of barely touched food into the trash.
     And so because every story, good or bad deserves a moral, equally good or bad, we come to one here. It’s a moral that has nothing to do with clogged arteries, adipose tissue or consuming calories that reach into the 5 digit range. Hey if you can eat that 48 ounce porterhouse with a stuffed potato, order up. Back in the day, when my metabolism raged out of control many was the Friday evening when I sat in front of an extra-large pizza and a pitcher of beer, shared nary a solitary slice or a single drop and left a clean platter and an empty vessel.  And it isn’t a moral about badly cooked food or food so drenched in hot sauce that it’s just this side of toxic. Not everyone is impressed by cassoulet or a Michelin star. That’s why Papa John sells lots of pies and Applebee’s has lines out the door.
     This moral is about a patent disrespect for a basic necessity of life; food.  And it isn’t just disrespect for that necessity but disrespect for those who lack that necessity.
     When you face off against the 12 egg omelet and three pounds of hash browns challenge the odds are that a half a dozen of those eggs and a fair amount of taters will end up in the trash while you find yourself huddled in a corner of the bathroom vanquished by breakfast, hurling your meal and dreaming of that photo on the tavern wall that could have been. I wonder how much food winds up in the dumpster or down the toilet all to satisfy some misguided quest for entertainment. Oh I know, there are those who’ll dredge up that wise guy response we all made to our mothers at one time or another when she told us of the “starving kids in India.” “Well box it up and send it to them COD.” But doesn’t this go beyond just the wasted food?
     There was a time when overeating was something people did at a wedding reception or in a moment of weakness to “cure” a bout of depression. Gluttony has somehow managed to become not only an entertainment fad but a distorted sporting event. Don’t believe me? Just tune in ESPN on July 4^th to catch the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest. That’s right, ESPN the self-proclaimed worldwide leader in sports will feature Joey Chestnut going down on a bunch of wieners (and to think I once considered log rolling contests on Wide World of Sports to be phony sport). Through the medium of television, binging has gained popularity, acceptance and a sort of whacked out culinary cult following which undoubtedly has encouraged restaurant owners everywhere to invent their own contests; challenging all comers to eat some gut busting or tongue scorching meal. And why not? Someone has to be a bit of a fool to choke down a dozen nuclear wings and we all know the old saying about what happens to a fool and his money. And the fool usually brings along an entourage of fellow fools to watch. And so, while Mr. Restaurateur might be on the hook for a free meal on those rare occasions when someone actually beats the challenge, he’s already made a bank roll on the posse’s bar bill. When it comes down to a choice between the morality of wasting food or having a few more bucks in the till at the end of the night, money, to  borrow from Bob Dylan, “doesn’t talk, it swears.”
     Sure some of you are taking me to task right now, for being a spoilsport, a stodgy old fogy, pooping the eating party. Why should I get my moral back up you ask? Well because this is my blog and I can, but the more important reason is because of the way I was raised. I’m one generation removed from folks who at some time in their lives found food hard to come by. My father lived through the Great Depression and while his family managed to put food on the table it was a valuable commodity, its scarcity was frightening and it wasn’t wasted. My mother lived in Italy during World War II, a place and time in which bread was worth its weight in gold. My parents never forgot how precious food could be and so when I was a child at the dinner table what we put on our plates ended up in our bellies. The “clean your plate” lecture I got didn’t come with a story of some faceless hungry waif in a land I'd never heard of. It came with real life stories from parents who lived with the real possibility of going hungry. And so I dutifully cleaned my plate every night. Leftovers were served the next day for lunch or combined to make a stew. That little fistful of pasta at the bottom of the bowl became part of a delicious frittata the next morning. I recall a visit to my family in Italy. We had just finished a steak dinner and as I pushed away my plate I was scolded for wasting food. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what was waste until I noticed a few scraps of meat on the bone. Chastened, I retrieved my plate and cleaned the bone. Extreme? Maybe, but these were people who had learned the value of food the hard way. The lessons have remained with me. You know that heel at the end of a loaf of bread that usually ends up in the trash or as food for the pigeons? It’s perfectly good toasted and served with a layer of Nutella. I'm not too proud to pick up that chop bone and gnaw off the last threads of meat. When I have to throw away food that’s gone bad I do so with a measure of shame.
     America truly is a country of plenty and we plenty take it all for granted. We are a nation of shameless wasters. In 2008, The New York Times reported that Americans threw away 27 percent of the food available for consumption. That waste amounted to 30 million tons per year or 12 percent of the total waste stream. It’s only gotten worse as the total waste in 2011 as reported by the EPA was 34 million tons, or 14 percent of the total waste stream.
     The question is often asked, “Why do they hate us?” When we say they; “they” usually refers to folks from other, often impoverished, countries. The jingoistic, often angry and defensive response to the question is that they are jealous.  Maybe they aren’t jealous but angry and insulted that we take our riches for granted; because they have to work many hard, back breaking, spirit crushing hours to put scraps on the family table. They live with the sword of hunger dangling over their heads. Often what they have for a pantry is a dumpster or the local landfill which we cavalierly fill with mountains of wasted food. What they live in constant, nagging fear of not having enough of, we use as an entertainment prop or as equipment for a phony sport.
     My maternal grandmother who lived through two world wars and knew intimately the want of food used to always say, “It’s a sin to waste God’s food.” I’m not sure if the greater sin is actually wasting the food or having such a cavalier attitude towards something that people die, even in our own country, for the want of.