an abomination

aren't dangerous things adapted, naturally, to give off warnings? poisonous fruits and animals in red, toxic substances that smell or taste bad?

last week I had a delicious french cocoa with milk that claimed to be two weeks past its date but tasted and smelled fine. today I went to open up the quart of milk that was waiting in the fridge as its replacement, and was at its pull date. smelled fine. looked fine. smelled it again. fine. poured some in a glass to test- super vile and gag-inducing.

now, doesn't milk usually smell bad first? I am frightened with the state of our food production system if one week, we can be drinking month+ old milk, and then have odorless, repulsive spoilage with barely-past dairy the next week.

where is our food coming from, and what is being done to it? does my milk even come from a cow, or a mammal for that matter? I have less and less faith in our food system, especially since moving to the east coast and further from good fresh food- I find myself more and more meatless with time, but one begins to wonder... first concern over corn and potatoes (Pollan), now milk.... oh bother.

damn toxic milk... should I be sticking to european cheese and yogurt, unsustainable as that may be? bah.

crème brulée saved me

or, how i'm too tired to form words

as of the end of the day wednesday I have 45 hours on my timesheet. I just got home a half hour ago so I can go to bed and do it all over again tomorrow. Luckily it's pretty much over and the work was good... I've been asked to help write a proposal to do interpretive and landscape design for a playground here in New York city, using a decommissioned aerial tram in the construction of the play equipment. Pretty rad.

Not rad is the fact that I had to lead a big meeting Tuesday, and have two other deadlines this week, so I'm essentially working two workweeks in one after all this last minute proposal-writing.

But I will say that when I got off the subway at Astor Place last night and saw the Dessert Truck after working 15 hours yesterday- getting up early to rent a car, driving over an hour each way, leading a community meeting on Staten Island, and then coming back to the office lugging laptop, projector, and working until midnight- I was excited to finally indulge myself and buy something from the pastry chefs who sell fabulous desserts out of a truck like one would buy a pile of noodles in a developing country.

The crème brulée I had out of a foil cup with a plastic spoon walking past scruffy homeless people on third avenue was possibly one of the best ever.

start your tastebuds

At a time of the year defined by awards, and full of Cups and Bowls... I should like to get in on this action, the ultimate exercise of servingware, the Bocuse d'Or... and definitely the World Pastry Cup. Go Team USA!

Nibble Nibble.

s.o.s. from the zinc bar

The French institution of the café is in distress, reports the New York Times from Paris. The economic crunch and Anglo-/Americanization of the French lifestyle is eating away at this historical cornerstone of culture. It's an interesting/alarming cue into the changing identity of people and culture today. A clue that "globalization," or whatever you're going to call it, is affecting some of our most sacred and long-standing cultural and social institutions.

God, no! Give me a job, Paris, and I will come over there and try to help make things right on account of the Anglos with dining and alcoholic merriment. I may not bring back the chain-smoking, but it's a start.

holy summer, batman

It has arrived!

It's eighty degrees here today, and is supposed to be almost ninety this weekend. This is the Seattle Payoff. The sky is so blue and clear and lovely, I just want to drink it up. Though I certainly am not relishing all this time at my desk, looking at the lovely day from behind sealed windows in an over-air-conditioned office. I can see that the Olympics are conspicuously less snowy (between viaduct columns)... and I like it.


Counting the hours until I head out for dinner and drinks at Agua Verde... yum. Could be a near-perfect evening.

For now, I'm going to escape from my desk into the warm concrete jungle for my lunch break. Maybe Elliot Bay Books. Maybe falafel. The world is my oyster. A warm oyster. Mmm.

croutons

This Op-Ed article in the NYT yesterday reminds me of home, and my family.

My mom and I stash this plastic doll leg we found in her house (where I grew up) for eachother to find. Under pillows, in luggage, under the fabric dinner napkin- hilarious and creepy every time. Best when you see the foot slyly peeking out. My grandmother and she, and now I, have been exchanging a plastic cauliflower (like the kind that goes along with Playskool kitchens) for thirty years at christmas, elaborately wrapped to deceive its identity until you unwrap it.

But my mom also has lots of random, small containers of old croutons and condiments that she guards when I start trying to streamline her kitchen.