An egg a day
Posted: June 25, 2022 Filed under: business, food Leave a commentJoe Weisenthal Tracey Alloway interview their colleague Tim Culpan about FoxConn and founder Terry Guo.
And so one of the first things Terry Guo did was he said, okay, I want all of my workers to eat well. So every single one of them would get an egg a day, so they could get a bit of protein. That was kind of a bit of a way out idea at the time. This was, just to be clear, this was in the eighties, seventies and eighties, seventies and eighties. And so Terry Guo is not an electronics guy. Most people in the tech industry have a tech background, they have an electronics background, maybe electronic engineering, Terry Guo studied at a maritime college in Northern Taiwan. So he really studied shipping and logistics, and then he moved into plastics. So his kind of opening business was plastic injection molding. And if you think of Taiwan in the seventies and eighties, it was known, as you know, ‘Made in Taiwan,’ cheap plastic toys, Barbie dolls, and everything else was made in Taiwan.
That’s my bold.
Some of the history of the world:
Joe: (13:44)
How did Apple find Foxconn?Tim: (13:48)
Well when Steve Jobs came back, as we all know, the company was in trouble, they, Apple was actually making their computers — like physically making them in California, but over a period of time, many companies, you know, Michael Dell and Hewlett Packard, Compaq, and others were starting to outsource to Asia. And at some point during that period of time, Tim Cook, who was operating officer at the time, he’d not yet become CEO, would’ve discovered Foxconn and realize that, you know, these guys make the components. We should probably get to know them. And they really jumped into bed deeply when the iPod came out in the early 2000s.
amply gooey
Posted: June 13, 2022 Filed under: food, the California Condition Leave a comment
food writing is wild. That’s from a LA Times piece suggesting places to pick up a picnic before a concert at the Hollywood Bowl. You’re bringing a smashburger to see Dudamel? I guess I must respect it!
should we all have done same?
Posted: May 11, 2022 Filed under: food Leave a comment
from NYT piece on Gullah cook Emily Meggett.
Courteney Cox snack
Posted: February 22, 2022 Filed under: food Leave a comment
mark us down as intrigued. Via LAT.
Andes
Posted: February 16, 2022 Filed under: food Leave a comment
When I was a kid I loved Andes candies, which I feel like I sometimes got at like Italian or steakhouse type restaurants, and maybe sometimes on holidays. I dreamed they would make something like this, a full-sized candy bar Andes, and didn’t understand why they didn’t. Now, they do. And I have access to them whenever I want at Ralph’s. And I think I’ve bought them like once a year tops. That’s adulthood for you!
Did sugar ruin us?
Posted: January 26, 2022 Filed under: food, politics Leave a commentHere’s an excerpt from On The House, the memoir by former Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner:
Cheers to this tweet for calling my attention to this, via Marginal Revolution. I got Boehner’s book and read it, and found it very illuminating in many ways (his harshest words are for Ted Cruz).
This is from The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, by Edward E. Baptist:
The creation of the first slavery complex, with its “drug foods” – sugar, tobacco, tea, coffee, and chocolate – stimulated Western Europe’s desire to seek out and consume still more resources. The massive Atlantic slave trade required ships, trade commodities, and new structures of credit, and growth spilled over into sectors less directly linked to sugar. Many in Western Europe began to work longer hours in order to get new commodities, in what is sometimes called an eighteenth-century “Industrious Revolution.”
(boldface mine). Other scholars have written about the connection of sugar to capitalism, power, etc.
What if sugar has all of our balls in a vice, to use Boehner’s phrase?
“The brain is dependent on sugar as its main fuel,” says Vera Novak, MD, PhD, an HMS associate professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “It cannot be without it.” Although the brain needs glucose, too much of this energy source can be a bad thing.
so we learn over here from Harvard Medical School. My wise dentist called my attention to this as we were discussing why TV writers’ rooms are stocked with candy.
What if we’re trapped in a loop of feeding our brains sugar, and our brains getting bigger and trapping us in a sugar addiction loop? What if that’s what’s really driving capitalism, the whole mess we’re in?
Consider the Biblical tale of the garden of Eden. Adam and Eve are chilling happily there, and God asks them but one thing: don’t eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. What if, instead of being a metaphor, this was meant literally? God was telling the first people don’t eat too much sugar, or your brains will get too big and you’ll ruin everything?
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
This is where it all went wrong. Recall that as punishment for this, Adam is cursed to work:
Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
And as for Eve:
I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Human labor is indeed very painful, and why? Because our heads/ brains are so big! Compare with a horse or goat, who can drop a baby and then scamper off, nbd.
Maybe humans never should’ve fucked with sugar, and Genesis actually contains a pretty straightforward origin story for the mistake that led to our predicament. Is it possible to observe the very mistake happening in chimps?
from Tao Lin’s blog:
Maybe our whole deal stems from being trapped in a species-wide sugar addiction.
Now that we’re stuck, we should at least get the good stuff!
Down with the brioche bun!
Posted: November 21, 2021 Filed under: food Leave a commentLongtime readers will know I don’t like to get political on this site, but sometimes you’ve just got to speak up: I’ve HAD it with the brioche buns every upscale restaurant is using for their burgers! I’m eating a freakin’ cheeseburger, I don’t need it served between two pieces of cake! Just give me like a chill old regular bun, such as any successful fast food franchise might use.
Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to go on an angry rant here. But it’s an aspect of society’s decadence where I must take a stand. I expect to get quite a few letters on this – you know where to find me!
From brioche Wikipedia:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his autobiography Confessions, relates that “a great princess” is said to have advised, with regard to peasants who had no bread, “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche“, commonly translated as “Let them eat cake”. This saying is commonly misattributed to Queen Marie-Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI.
One meal a day
Posted: October 21, 2021 Filed under: food Leave a commentCOWEN: To close, two questions about you. You’re famous for eating only one meal a day. Do you still do that?
MCCHRYSTAL: I do.
COWEN: Okay. The question is, what’s the meal?
MCCHRYSTAL: It’s dinner.
COWEN: What do you prefer to eat for the one meal, if you have your way?
MCCHRYSTAL: I’m not a foodie; I’m basic. I like salad, but I like a very basic dinner. I like a lot of chicken. If you take me to a fancy restaurant and you try to serve me fancy food, I’ll eat it because it’s my one meal a day, but the reality is, it’s completely lost on me. I just don’t get any satisfaction. It’s very basic food in significant quantities at night.
intrigued by this diet described by Stanley McChrystal to Tyler Cowen. I believe I heard elsewhere that McChrystal supplements this with dry pretzels.
Food scene in Honolulu
Posted: March 19, 2021 Filed under: America, food Leave a comment
Our post about the food scene in Papeete, Tahiti was one of the most popular posts ever on this site. The obvious conclusion: I should become a South Pacific food critic. You may think I’m not qualified, because I’ve spent no more than 25 days or so in the South Pacific, and that’s generously assuming we count New Zealand and Australia. You may think a South Pacific food critic should be a big jolly rotund character who loves food, not a picky eater with a skinny frame. But, we must follow where called, so here is our latest dispatch, on the food scene in Honolulu.
Above are the dumplings of the day (a spiced beef, on this particular day) at Koko Head Cafe, Lee Ann Wong’s (of Top Chef) brunch spot in the cool, chill Kaimuki neighborhood. Fantastic for post-hike feasts.
The Don Buri Chen is no joke, and the fish eggs are serious as well.
Shave ice, of course, this is at Kokonuts:
Obama’s flavors are said to be Lemon Lime and Cherry, went with Lemon Lime and cocoanut, maybe because they were toasting cocoanut inside which aromated the strip mall joint in a most pleasing way.
Musubi, Japanese seaweed and rice-wrapped pyramid sandwiches, very solid. I’m not into the classic spam musubi, ground beef and tuna both solid and satisfying:
That’s from Mana Musubi, which was sold out by Friday around 11 am. What a packable food!
Piggy Smalls, offshoot of The Pig and the Lady, is making incredible new Vietnamese food in a former burger joint location:
Failed to photograph the Burmese Tea Salad before devouring. We intended to visit the legendary shrimp trucks of the North Shore, but were stopped by torrential downpour, luckily this hit us just as we rolled up on Aloha Shrimp Truck in Hauula. (Remember when pronouncing Hawaiian words: there are no silent letters).
Simple? Yes. Excellent? Yes.
A beloved Oahu institution is Zippy’s fast food, which has a pretty extensive menu and some baked goods as well. Had to try the Zap Pak and the Surf Pak.
Look, is it delicious? Kind of. Is it convenient? Also kind of.
Fête in downtown Honolulu rules:
Ridiculous Italian food with local Hawaiian-raised meats and ingredients.
The queen of Oahu foodstuffs however must be the poke you can buy by the pound at the counter in the back of Tamara’s liquor store, there are several locations:
You eat that on a cracker and you’re having a great time. This is the classic tuna in Tamara’s sauce. I became a poke convert.
For some Hawaiian food/plate lunch classics, Highway Inn, several locations.
A good poi introduction.
The Oahu institution we failed to try was Leonard’s for malasadas, but Pipeline, around the corner from Koko Head, seemed excellent.
For freshness, invention, and wild array of influences, Honolulu gotta be in the conversation as a food destination. The cuisine skews a bit fatty and decadent, I must say, a salad seems harder to come by than a mai tai, but if you’re cutting loose on vacay and pairing with some outdoor adventures, it’s pretty grand.
Maximum mahalo to friend and local guide Kim H. for knowing all the spots!
Hawaii has kept low Covid #s in part by taking great care in letting people in, you must produce a negative Covid test taken within 72 hours of departure. And not just any Covid test, a Hawaii-approved test. Don’t be like this knucklehead and take the wrong kind of test!
Look, once you get the original Hawaii 5-0 theme in your head, it’s hard to get out, but man, is that the best TV opening ever?
Carlyle and Alcott have breakfast
Posted: February 2, 2021 Filed under: food, New England 2 CommentsThis is Amos Alcott, Louisa May’s father, fictionalized as Bob Odenkirk in the latest Little Women film:
from The Flowering of New England by Van Wyck Brooks, a vivid read. Imagine this man chowing down on strawberry potatoes:
BJ and Ursula
Posted: December 10, 2020 Filed under: food, politics Leave a comment
Struck by how much the visuals of these two, Boris Johnson and EU president Ursula von der Leyen, look like a Black Mirror version of Trump and Hillary.
The group dined on a starter of pumpkin soup with scallops; a main of steamed turbot, mashed potatoes with wasabi and vegetables; and a desert of pavlova with exotic fruit and coconut sorbet. It was fitting that fish featured on the menu, given arrangements for fisheries is one of three outstanding sticking points in the trade talks, and particularly scallops, which were the subject of clashes between British and French fishermen in 2018.
source. Love the idea of pointedly serving someone fish.
Ursula von der Leyen is interesting. She has seven children? And maybe plagarized her doctoral thesis?
Von der Leyen’s father’s grandparents were the cotton merchant Carl Albrecht (1875–1952) and Mary Ladson Robertson (1883–1960), an American who belonged to a plantation owning family of the southern aristocracy from Charleston, South Carolina. Her American ancestors played a significant role in the British colonization of the Americas, and she descends from many of the first English settlers of Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Barbados, and from numerous colonial-era governors. Among her ancestors were Carolina governors John Yeamans, James Moore, Robert Gibbes, Thomas Smith and Joseph Blake, Pennsylvania deputy governor Samuel Carpenter, and the American revolutionary and lieutenant governor of South Carolina James Ladson. The Ladson family were large plantation owners and her ancestor James H. Ladson owned over 200 slaves by the time slavery in the United States was abolished; her relatives and ancestors were among the wealthiest in British North America in the 18th century, and she descends from one of the largest British slave traders of the era, Joseph Wragg.
Boris Johnson for his part has been getting away with stuff his whole life. As with the naughty schoolboys of my youth, I have a desire both to see him “caught” and punished and also to see him get away with it. He seems to thrive in the space where, like, a Dec 31 deadline looms, and there’s lots of technical details to work out, and he’s barely started.
Meat – Plants – Stuffing
Posted: July 25, 2020 Filed under: food 1 Comment
Rainer Z illustrated “lettuce” for Wikipedia with this photo
I’ve created a new taxonomy of food, I believe it is correct.
There are three types of food:
- meat
- plant
- stuffing
All foods can be fit into these categories.
Questions:
Yes, what is bread?
Bread is stuffing, obviously.
Potatoes are a plant, aren’t–
Let me stop you right there, potatoes are stuffing. Fries are stuffing, chips are stuffing, mashed potatoes are stuffing. Potatoes in all forms are stuffing, you know this.
And corn?
All corn is stuffing. Most American stuffing comes in the form of compressed corn.
What are carrots?
Carrots are plant. Boiled, mushy carrots approach stuffing, this is because you’ve beaten out of them their plant nature. The highest forms of cooking retain the true nature of the meat or plant. The cooking and preparations of stuffing take wider forms.
What is cheese?
All dairy is stuffing, again, you know this in your heart.
What about ice cream? Ice cream is its own thing.
I’m willing to accept those who create a mental category called “ice,” “ices,” or “ice cream” which includes Popsicles, sherbets, etc. I think you’re being dishonest with yourself though if you don’t accept that ice cream is a form of stuffing, however joyful and harmless.
What about fish?
Hmm ok I guess we were including fish with meat but I will allow fish as its own category. There are four types of food,
- meat
- plant
- fish
- stuffing.
What is soup?
Vegetable soup? Plant. If there’s a potato in there, that’s stuffing. Corn of any kind is stuffing.
OK what is miso soup?
That is a liquid.
Wait a —
There is a category called “spice,” if you insist miso soup could be a spice, along with salt, bbq sauce, gravy etc, things we eat that are not in the three food categories.
What is a tomato?
Some call it spice, and we respect that, but it is plant.
What about the cheese on a pizza?
Stuffing, as is the crust. Pizza is a stuffing food, even if it contains some plant (tomato, if you believe tomato to be a plant not a spice).
Evan Amos photographed “Chicken McNuggets“
What is a McDonald’s Chicken Nugget*?
Great question, let’s say the answer together on three, one, two, three, stuffing, you said stuffing didn’t you? Because it is stuffing.
For that matter, some low-quality burgers are in fact not meat but stuffing. I’d suggest even a 100% beef burger, if made from corn-fed, lot-processed beef, is stuffing. And the cheese is stuffing, and the bun is stuffing. That’s why it’s so important to get lettuce on there, so at least you get plant.
In what proportion should I eat these foods?
Look, that’s up to you, I’m not here to dictate diets which I think are VERY personal and person-specific. But we do feel that being honest about this taxonomy, saying to yourself “this is stuffing, I’m eating stuffing,” keeping track of how much of each category you eat, may be helpful towards establishing nourishing and sustaining and sustainable food habits.
What’s an apple?
Plant.
Apple pie?
Stuffing. The vanilla ice cream scoop is possibly “ice cream,” its at the very least a different kind of stuffing, but we don’t let ourselves get sidetracked into subcategories. Short answer, stuffing.
(I’ve got him now, watch this:) Excuse me, what about apple pie?
Stuffing, please leave.
What about my beloved bivalves, oysters and clams?
Those are meat, or if you insist, fish. Lobster is stuffing, as is any crab whose carapace is larger than a quarter.
What about like a chip, but it’s made out of lettuce? Some kind of Veggie Crisp?
Plant covered in stuffing.
I don’t think I have any more questions, thank you.
You’re welcome, please enjoy these categories and spread them widely.
UPDATES:
The comments roll in:
Fish is meat and lobster is fish.
Agree that fish is meat. Lobster is stuffing. A lobster eats meat (fish) or stuffing (waste, carrion, etc) and turns it into more stuffing. It does not magically turn stuffing into fish. Unfortunately, by the way, would be great if it did!
(Getting some pushback on this. Maybe lobster is meat)
What is a chickpea?
Stuffing! Look, there’s nothing wrong with many stuffings, especially natural stuffings. They have an important place in any diet! My favorite food is spaghetti, a stuffing! (with tomato sauce, a spice/plant).
Hello! Some questions from @ccheever and me: what about eggs (hard boiled or sunny-side up no stuffing/frills)? What about tofu (also by itself), which could fit any of the 3 categories?
Hi Helen! Eggs are… meat! Once it becomes an omelette, an egg is stuffing. Tofu is stuffing!
What about nuts?
Nuts are stuffing.
Ok one more: cauliflower. Seems like the stuffing of vegetables.
Plant.
What about mushrooms?
This is a tricky one. Fungi is special. But I will say 90% of mushrooms are served as stuffing.
* Bourdain had many funny takes on the McNugget, here’s one from a 2014 interview with Kam Williams, Baltimore Black:
AB: I think it’s very hard to make an argument that a Chicken McNugget is either chicken or a nugget? If you’re eating unwholesome, street food in a country where they have to make do with whatever scraps are left to them, at least you know what it is, and generally have some sense of where it came from. Whereas a McNugget, to my way of thinking, is a Frankenfood whose name doesn’t necessarily reflect what it is. I’m still not sure what it is. Listen, Kam, when drunk, I will eat a McNugget. It’s not the worst tasting thing in the world, but it’s one of the things I’m least likely to eat, because I choose not to.
Still can’t believe they did this to us
Posted: May 25, 2020 Filed under: food Leave a comment
is the Food Pyramid the greatest conspiracy of all time?
This was EVERYWHERE when I was a kid, firmer and more common than the Ten Commandments.
I’m sure there’s a podcast about it, or a Slate piece.
Maybe my new thing will be “mild conspiracy theories” (the conspiracies themselves will be mild, not the theories. The theories will be wild).
Does anybody else get this ad?
Posted: April 7, 2020 Filed under: food Leave a comment
It’s always for James Suckling! Literally the last thing I need a class in is appreciating wine more. I’m already at a high level of appreciating, I appreciate it a ton, probably too much.
Imagine being like “hmm I hate wine, maybe I’ll pay $80 to learn how to like it from the computer!”
Although Suckling is a noted supporter of Bordeaux wine, as illustrated by his blog response to a Bordeaux-critical article by Eric Asimov,[27][28] he also has affinity for Italian wines, having stated that he feels Italian grape varieties such as Sangiovese, Aglianico, and Nebbiolo are thoroughly unique.[26] Conversely he has on occasion spoken dismissively of New World wines, applying the term “jam juice”.[13]
Get outta here with that, Suckling!
How Will You Measure Your Life?
Posted: January 27, 2020 Filed under: business, food Leave a comment
Some books give value just with their title. I’d say I think about the title of Clayton Christensen’s book about once every two weeks or so. Most of what’s in the book can be found in Christensen’s 2010 speech on that theme.
This theory addresses the third question I discuss with my students—how to live a life of integrity (stay out of jail). Unconsciously, we often employ the marginal cost doctrine in our personal lives when we choose between right and wrong. A voice in our head says, “Look, I know that as a general rule, most people shouldn’t do this. But in this particular extenuating circumstance, just this once, it’s OK.” The marginal cost of doing something wrong “just this once” always seems alluringly low. It suckers you in, and you don’t ever look at where that path ultimately is headed and at the full costs that the choice entails. Justification for infidelity and dishonesty in all their manifestations lies in the marginal cost economics of “just this once.”
I also find myself often thinking of an anecdote about milkshake purchases Christensen describes in the book:
The company then enlisted the help of one of Christensen’s fellow researchers, who approached the situation by trying to deduce the “job” that customers were “hiring” a milkshake to do. First, he spent a full day in one of the chain’s restaurants, carefully documenting who was buying milkshakes, when they bought them, and whether they drank them on the premises. He discovered that 40 percent of the milkshakes were purchased first thing in the morning, by commuters who ordered them to go.
The next morning, he returned to the restaurant and interviewed customers who left with milkshake in hand, asking them what job they had hired the milkshake to do. Christensen details the findings in a recent teaching note, “Integrating Around the Job to be Done.”
“Most of them, it turned out, bought [the milkshake] to do a similar job,” he writes. “They faced a long, boring commute and needed something to keep that extra hand busy and to make the commute more interesting. They weren’t yet hungry, but knew that they’d be hungry by 10 a.m.; they wanted to consume something now that would stave off hunger until noon. And they faced constraints: They were in a hurry, they were wearing work clothes, and they had (at most) one free hand.”
The milkshake was hired in lieu of a bagel or doughnut because it was relatively tidy and appetite-quenching, and because trying to suck a thick liquid through a thin straw gave customers something to do with their boring commute.
Something illuminating about food as something to do.
Understanding the job to be done, the company could then respond by creating a morning milkshake that was even thicker (to last through a long commute) and more interesting (with chunks of fruit) than its predecessor. The chain could also respond to a separate job that customers needed milkshakes to do: serve as a special treat for young children—without making the parents wait a half hour as the children tried to work the milkshake through a straw. In that case, a different, thinner milkshake was in order.
In the book, Christensen also goes on about how parents have to say no very often, and a milkshake is a relatively easy “yes.”
Pasta, Zen
Posted: December 4, 2019 Filed under: food Leave a comment
Going through some photos on my phone. Some delicious pasta I had downtown.
How about a Zen story?
from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones.
Maine and Texas
Posted: September 17, 2019 Filed under: America Since 1945, food, New England, Texas Leave a comment
This one came up on Succession, a fave show. (Had to look it up because I wondered if they were doing a double joke where the guy was attributing Emerson to Thoreau)
Usually I’ll approach with tentative openness the pastoralist, simpler times, “trad” adjacent arguments of weirdbeards but Thoreau here WAY off. Maine and Texas had TONS to communicate! Who isn’t happy Maine and Texas can check in? (Saying this as a Maine fan whose wife is from Texas, fond of both states and happy for their commerce and exchange). Plus, if Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough, I WANT to hear that, that’s interesting goss!
The “broad flapping American ear” there — a snooty New England/aristocrat attitude we haven’t heard the last of. These guys are the original elites. There’s really two classes in America: Americans, and The People Who Think They’re Better Than Americans. Though they’re a tiny minority the second group wields outside power and influence over the first group. I’m a proud member of the first group though I admit I have second group tendencies due to my youthful indoctrination in the headquarters of these Concord Extremist Radicals, in fact at their head madrassa.
When you hear America assessed by Better Thans / eggheads, wait for the feint toward fatshaming. It’s always in there somewhere. American Better Thans adopted this from Europeans, whom they slavishly ape. It’s a twisted attitude, designed to take blame away from the Better Thans and their friends in the ownership.
As if it’s Americans fault that they’ve been raised associating corn-based treats with love and goodness! Or that corn-fatted meat is the easiest accessed protein on offer! You think that’s more the Americans fault, or the fault of the Better Thans, who manipulate our food system with their only goal creating shareholder value?
Is it the fault of the American that a cold soda is the best cheap pleasure in the hot and dusty interior where they don’t all have Walden Pond as a personal spa?
Thoreau. Guy makes me sick.
In researching this article I learn about Maine-ly Sandwiches, of Houston.
Menyosi the glutton
Posted: August 8, 2019 Filed under: Africa, food Leave a commentThe King [Dingaan, of the Zulus] loved display. He surrounded himself with plump women, jesters and dwarfs. He liked to show off his famous glutton Menyosi, who could eat a whole goat in a single meal
from
which I’m finding highly entertaining and informative. Jan Morris, what a boss.
Helytimes 
