Cooking through your family history

This is not a new project I am taking on.  The one I am currently winding down after more than two years was exhausting enough!  But if you want to sort through old family recipes - and I admit, I want to do this on my own time, just for fun - you might look into this recent article from BlogHer blogger "amnethero".  Not that it's difficult or revolutionary to use old handwritten recipe cards and cookbooks (like my Aunt Florence's hand-scrawled cookbook from around the 50's), but sometimes people need a little prodding to do so when there are so many recipes right there for us in cyberspace.

Guy's All American Mess

Since I've been on hiatus, I didn't get to comment on Pete Wells' wonderfully awesome takedown of Rachael-Ray-on-crack-with-a-beard's Guy Fieri's new Manhattan restaurant, Guy's American Kitchen.  But if you have not read it before, you have to read it.  Favorite section:

Why is one of the few things on your menu that can be eaten without fear or regret — a lunch-only sandwich of chopped soy-glazed pork with coleslaw and cucumbers — called a Roasted Pork Bahn Mi, when it resembles that item about as much as you resemble Emily Dickinson? 

When you have a second, Mr. Fieri, would you see what happened to the black bean and roasted squash soup we ordered? 

Hey, did you try that blue drink, the one that glows like nuclear waste? The watermelon margarita? Any idea why it tastes like some combination of radiator fluid and formaldehyde? [Wells 2012]

Makes me want to stand by the window to watch, and then go somewhere much better to eat.  Assuming NYC is no longer underwater.

Onions do NOT take 5 minutes to caramelize.

Forty-five minutes.  That's how long it takes.  Thank you, Tom Scocca of Slate, for pointing this out - and calling so many chefs to the carpet for perpetuating this big fib!

This gives new meaning to the phrase "Old tub o' lard"

Ew:

Retired chemist Hans Feldmeier, 87, told AFP [Agence-France Presse?] he had received the pig fat as a student in 1948... [He] said he had been given the tub [of lard] together with two tins of noodles and some milk.  "I just didn't want to throw it away," he explained.  Finally, after 64 years, he took it to food safety agents and was astonished at their appraisal.  [9 News Australia 2012]

Feldmeier said it was gritty, lacked taste or smell, and "looked old" but in all was still edible. And he can have it too, right next to the big jar of Vegemite that I'm also not going near.

One thing I can say: at least he didn't also hold on to the milk for 64 years.

UPDATE - Apparently I missed that the gentleman was from Germany (focused on the fact that an Australian news agency was reporting this).  Still: Ew.

Tidbits: Early June Edition

A few items that have been waiting:

* While I wrote the other week about my food truck experience in LA, I never got around to my experience the week before in DC with their food trucks (I did send out Twitter posts about them though). I was specifically seeking the fabled Red Hook Lobster Truck (Twitter: @lobstertruckdc), parked that Wednesday at L'Enfant Plaza metro along with several other food trucks. It sells - what else - lobster rolls. Okay, it also has shrimp rolls, but they're known for the lobster. $15 for a lobster roll but this is absolutely worth it. They have two kinds: the Maine-style lobster roll, which is mayo-based, and the Connecticut-style roll, which is butter-based. I went with the Connecticut-style, and it was just wonderful. I could not stop little pieces of lobster from falling out of the roll, so I just ate those with my fingers - forgetting the obligatory fork, of course. They also have whoopie pies and New England lines of craft soft drinks.

Of course, I had to try the others, but how to do so with only $5 left? Get some small bites! The Fojol Bros (of Merlindia) (Twitter: @fojolbros) serve Indian plates, usually $7 or $8. Don't have that? Get one of their $2 "dingo bites" - sort of like a shot of one dish with rice. I got their silky butter chicken. After a free sample of jerk chicken from Goode's Mobile Kitchen (Twitter: @mobilekitchen), I got a massive side order of chickpeas for only $2 at the Tasty Kabob truck (Twitter: @tastykabob). I'm not kidding about the "massive" part either. This was easily as big as two lobster rolls, and as filling as two dozen of those dingo bites. If you have just two bucks, go to the Tasty Kabob truck, and you will get filled up.

* Heads up: both Baltimore and Washingtonian Magazines have similar themes this month: where to get the cool groceries, find the best butchers, peruse the nicest cheeses and sample the hoppiest beers. Read them for yourself to find out where to get the foods and shopping experiences you've been craving in the Baltimore-Washington area.

* Watching a soccer game at Sláinte Pub soon? Like, maybe, during the CONCACAF Gold Cup 2011 matches this month? (USA 2 - 0 Canada, yippee!) But you want to save some of that food money for beer or dessert? Why not sample the Sloppy Jim? For $10 (on special - it might be more at its regular price), you get a Sloppy Joe-style sandwich on an onion brioche bun, with cheese. And the Sloppy Jim isn't ground beef - it's bison sausage. Mmmm.

* Did you catch the Midday with Dan Rodricks show last week, with the big fried chicken smackdown between Gertrude's John Shields and the Baltimore City Paper's Henry Hong? No??? Check it out on the WYPR website here.

ADDENDUM: Speaking of food on the radio: today's Kojo Nnamdi Show featured a large segment on military food. Watch below as Kojo samples a delicious MRE:

* The last of my bacon-pancetta wot that I made for last year's Great Grapes bacon cook-off (info about this year's Great Grapes festival is here) has been sitting in my freezer - in a freezer ziploc bag - for almost exactly a year. Now? Still good.

In & Out vs Five Guys?

The taste test is coming up soon, as I fly across the continent just to try In & Out side by side with Five Guys!'

Okay no, that isn't why I'm going to Cali at all. I am visiting friends. But since Five Guys is finally on the West Coast, a taste test is in order. I was just telling a Twitter friend that I find Five Guys "overrated" and way too expensive for what you get. I also replied that message to Serious Eats, who did the ultimate taste test: In & Out vs Five Guys vs New York's wonderful Shake Shack. They did this totally scientifically: since they had to bring the In & Out burger home on a plane, they also inflicted the same handicap on the other burgers, buying them approximately the same time as the In & Out burger was purchased, and eating them all at the same time.

Their humble opinion: Shake Shack is best (I prefer In & Out over Shake Shack, but just barely). We are both in agreement on Five Guys:

As for Five Guys? Well, despite their legions of followers and rapid (perhaps too rapid?) expansion, we're mostly left just scratching our heads. It's not a bad burger per se, but the flavor of its beef is nowhere near in line with its proportions. [SeriousEats.com 2011]

As for Shake Shack being the winner: despite what they say, I still think it has everything to do with it being the hometown burger for these New York foodies.

Quinoa is Kosher for Passover, right?

According to The Atlantic's Uri Friedman, not necessarily. If you want to be absolutely sure, check with the Chicago Rabinnical Council, who say you can use quinoa. As long as it's from Bolivia, where quinoa production is chametz-free. And even then it's a pain in the tuchus:

...[The Chicago Rabbinical Council] recommends inspecting quinoa before Passover by spreading "one layer of quinoa at a time on a board or plate" and checking to be sure that there are no other grains or foreign matter mixed in with the quinoa"--a time-consuming exercise that Jews rushing to prepare seders are unlikely to embrace. [Friedman 2011]

And here I was struggling to find creative ways to avoid meat on Fridays. Silly me.

Microbrews taste - HORRIBLE!?

If you're a friend of the people who make Coors, of course you're going to bash beers that are actually, you know, tasty. The Atlantic's Uri Friedman points out why Coors family friend-slash-nimrod Rick Ball thinks that microbrews are icky: they are supposed to quench your thirst, not be sipped and savored like a wine. He continues:

A good beer cannot be sickly sweet, and it also can't be overwhelmingly bitter. That's what I have against a lot of microbrews. You can't gulp them down all at once. Frankly, I think microbrewed ales have been promoted and become popular mainly because they are easier to make. Ale yeasts also are more finicky--they don't digest all of the sugars, so they leave all these sugary notes hanging around in the final product. The flavor of an ale tends to be very complicated, while a lager is cleaner and more dry. It's easy to get bedazzled by the spectacle of a busy, full flavor. There's a lot going on. But there is greater virtue in simplicity. You can make a mediocre ale and no one will notice; with a lager, there is nowhere to hide. [Ball, as quoted in Friedman]

It's that second sentence that gets me. You can't gulp them down all at once? If I wanted to do that I'd get a shot of tequila, or a glass of water if I'm really thirsty. There is no reason why I have to quench my thirst with something that tastes like pee.

Amazing what salvage archaeology will unearth

Chinese archaeologists have found what they believe to be bone soup, as reported by the BBC:

Tests are being carried out to identify the ingredients. An odourless liquid, believed to be wine, was also found.

The pots were discovered in a tomb being excavated to make way for an extension to the local airport.

"It's the first discovery of bone soup in Chinese archaeological history," the newspaper quoted Liu Daiyun of the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology as saying.

"The discovery will play an important role in studying the eating habits and culture of the Warring States Period (475-221BC)."

This would be the world's oldest soup ever unearthed. Eagerly waiting for the archaeologists to discover the chemical composition of the liquid so they can figure out what exactly went into it.

But is it gravy?

My youngest sister Samantha seems to live off the powdered "gravy" that you get in a packet. I rarely will touch it. It just doesn't taste very good. It's also extremely salty.

Now Alexis Madrigal at the Atlantic addresses the questions of what food engineers have changed gravy from drippings and flour to smooth, sleek and industrial - and lump-free:

You see, the problem with all gravies is that when you add starch to a watery, fatty admixture, the starch has a tendency to clump together. The flour inside the lumps becomes isolated from the mixture. Because the water can't reach it, it never dissolves. Home cooks can prevent this by simply stirring the mixture, but that required "considerable skill," as General Mills' Harold Keller put it in a 1958 patent application.

Madrigal continues to lay out the story of the de-lumpification of gravy. It's quite fascinating.But I still say powder gravy is nasty.

James and the Giant-Priced Peach

James McWilliams discusses the notion of expensive farmers' market, organic food and whether junk food is actually cheaper than non-junk food - in a sense, "fair-price" (for the growers, anyway) in the food section today's Atlantic Magazine website. Michael Pollan and Alice Waters have spoken passionately about expensive food that you just don't buy as much of, like a $3.90 peach or an $8 dozen of eggs. Famous and not-so-famous food writers (Can I still call them foodies? Ooooh please let me call them foodies!) have taken them to the woodshed. I mean, really called for their heads. From McWilliams' article:

Anthony Bourdain, who dedicates a full chapter of his latest book, Medium Raw, to attacking Waters's airy idealism, scoffs at the idea that people should be willing to spend more on food: "She annoys the living shit out of me. We're all in the middle of a recession, like we're all going to start buying expensive organic food and running to the green market." Jason Sheehan, author of Cooking Dirty, is even less restrained in his assessment of Pollan. Admitting that Pollan is "damnably right about a lot of things," he can't quite stomach that pricy peach. "When you've been too broke to buy soup," he writes, "some iconoclastic dickhead trying to tell you that paying $4 for a peach is a good idea because it is a really good peach can be the kind of thing that makes you want to buy a rifle and a map to the homes of famous food writers." (Dude, it's just a peach ...)

So, yeah, folks are angry.

That rifle thing is just disturbing.

Granted, a Bourdain rant is a lot more common than that $4 peach, just as juicy, and a bit more tiring. But McWilliams actually speaks up for Pollan and Waters. Mind you, he disagrees with much of what they say. But here he suggests they have a point: namely that cheap crap food is lamentable and yet seen all too often. But McWilliams points out something even more surprising: it isn't just crap food that has gotten cheaper over the past 30 years - it's also the healthy stuff. But people are still choosing the Tastykakes over the apples. Hmmm...

Check out the comments. Those are particularly interesting.

Life After People: the McDonald's Edition

Hat tip to the GOOD Blog via the Daily Dish (neither is a food site), another reason to heed Morgan Spurlock and Super Size Me: a McDonald's Happy Meal looks (though perhaps doesn't taste) pretty much the same after 4 1/2 months. Manitoba-born New York City artist Sally Davies found out as much and the Refinery 29 website chronicles a sample of her work.

This is a typical Happy Meal after 137 days:


My guess is the ice, at least, would have melted.

AAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!

I haven't read the Cathy comic strip for years. It got tedious. And yet, I'm a little wistful that Cathy Guisewite is shutting it down in October. No more of this...

So, when are they shutting down Garfield (yes, please)?

The Atlantic Magazine takes on Egyptian street food

I have never heard of this uniquely Egyptian fast food, kushari, the pasta-rice-garbanzo-lentil with tomato and crispy onion dish. Now I have to figure out a way to make this. As Maggie Schmitt noted about it for The Atlantic Magazine's website, this street food is now becoming posher, as more sit-down restaurants are popping up to sell the stuff:

Instead of disappearing before the onslaught of hamburgers and fried chicken, local street foods are updating their image and presentation, and competing with international fast food on its own terms, targeting a middle class with increasingly urbane tastes. While in the older neighborhoods kushari is still ladled out from wooden street carts and in tiny hole-in-the-wall eateries, in the swankier parts of town you can get your fix at a gleaming new kushari restaurant franchise with formica banquette seating and waiters in uniforms with baseball caps.

Hopefully it'll show the McFalafel who's boss. There are also glorious photos of kushari and some places that serve it with the article. I just ate and it's making me hungry again.

Camden Yards has to find SOME way to draw fans back...

Apparently, there is some new "all you can eat" section at the ball park. And it's not just here. This from Brett LoGiurato at the Sports Illustrated website.

The left-field sections at Camden Yards are part of the growing trend of all-you-can-eat style options in major league ballparks. At a cost of $40 per ticket in the section, fans are entitled to a buffet-style choice that includes all the above-mentioned foods and even salad -- you know, in case you are feeling guilty.

"It's a great deal, especially for the teams that aren't selling out every game," [interviewee Matthew] Cavalier said. "The Phillies, Yankees and all them are always going to be fine. They don't need to do this. But for fans of, say, this team, it's a good plan."

The Orioles aren't the only franchise attempting to boost attendance in slacking sections with the promotion. Nineteen of the 30 major league teams offer the all-you-can-eat seats at some games in 2010, up from 13 two years ago and six in 2007.

The last time I went to Camden Yards (that was about four years ago), I shuddered at having to pay $4 for a hot dog. $40!? Dude!

Because it's (the end of) Soft Shell Week

I have been busy lately, planning a bacon recipe for next week's bacon cookoff with Kit (Mango & ginger) and Kathy (Minx Eats) at Great Grapes (will be posting about that soon), as well as prepping a class to teach this week and, well, recovering from my vacation. But I forgot to mention that this week is SOFT SHELL CRAB WEEK here in Baltimore, hons! This article from the Huffington Post's Max Watman talks about his favorite way to grill softs.

Wait - GRILL!? Yes, he grilled them. He had a dozen softs, and separated them into three groups. From the article (his bullets):

• I left the biggest and best crabs almost plain, with only a generous sprinkling of kosher salt.
• Another four were soaked in a mix of 1/2 teaspoon of crushed ginger, 1/4 teaspoon Sriracha, 1/4 teaspoon fish sauce, and 2 tablespoons of seasoned sushi vinegar.
• The last four were soaked in a more classic mix of the juice of half a lemon, a few dashes of worcestershire sauce, and 2 teaspoons of Old Bay.

His favorite was the simple crab with salt.

I dunno, dude. I still stick by the method my grandmother (God rest her soul) chose to fry up softs, and it isn't that messy: just clean the crab, dredge it in flour or fish fry (I always like to add some Old Bay) and fry it in butter. Put it between two slices of bread (preferably white) that has a little mayo or salad dressing on it.

The Benefits of Virtual... FARMING!?

I frustrate my sister and our mutual friends by my stubborn refusal to join Facebook - though I hear they have a separate section where you can create non-personal Facebook pages for blogs.

I'm still not joining "the Facebook," but I admit that I'm missing out on the latest farming craze. Virtual farming.

Huh?!?!?

Atlantic food writer Dave Thier blogs about Farmville, the most popular game on Facebook and the engine through which Facebookers test the waters (er, mulch?) of the strange new trend of virtual farming. He also discusses how different Facebookers express themselves through both the designs and contents of their gardens - that is, how their gardens are arranged and what they plant in them. Thier, unlike myself, is a steadfast New England Yankee farmer, having been a part of the Yale Sustainable Food Project, so he knows a few things about farming. So he must have a pretty unique insight into virtual farming trends, and how closely it parallels real farming. For one, you have to pay real - or virtual - money if you want to go far with it. Sounds a wee bit like SecondLife. From the article:

When you log into the game, Farmville shows you a random picture of one idyllic farm or another--a bountiful field of pineapples, flowers, and wheat next to a little cottage, maybe, or perhaps an autumn scene of maple syrup and bright red trees. The reality, however, is that in order to afford such decorations you must either pay US dollars or plant endless fields of cash crops. Maybe I'm thinking about this too much, but for a simplistic videogame, Farmville offers a curious model for juxtaposing pastoral fantasy with the industrial realities of modern farming.

A fun game, created by the people who brought us The Sims 1, 2 and 3, but with a price? At least it teaches a little about the ins and outs of farming, including cash cropping.

Meatless Mondays - one less type of inedible crap in City Schools

Eliza Barclay writes for The Atlantic Magazine website's Food Channel about the recent decision by Baltimore City Public Schools to go meatless on Mondays. That's right - 80,000 schoolchildren in Baltimore City Public Schools will only be eating dried-out hamburgers, little hot dog-shaped pillars of salt or "chicken" "nuggets" Tuesday through Friday. Instead, they get to eat messy meatless pizza, dry and spongy mozzarella dippers and gummy gooey eggplant parmesan. Absolutely yummzh!

It's not the lunch ladies or the principals to blame for all the crap in school cafeterias: if you're given crap, you have to do what you can with it, but it's still crap. I myself don't think it's such a bad idea, though I don't know how effective it'll be. I mean, meat isn't the only problem in the American diet, despite what some will have you believe. But it's not helping, and cutting down a little on something fried or dried isn't going to hurt. For what it's worth, I don't think it's a bad idea.

Believe it or not, the controversy is not so much about "forcing an alternative lifestyle" - vegetarianism - on America's schoolchildren (I'm surprised nobody's complained about that yet). The meat companies that deliver meat products to the school system are the ones complaining. I don't know if they're suffering all that much during this recession, since one of the few things we Americans are loathe to give up is our meat. God knows I love meat! But the meat industry is going about complaining all wrong. They say Baltimore City schools are short-changing students of important nutrients, such as proteins - which, by the way, they get in an inedible format (I've eaten school food recently. Yuck). They still get these proteins in bean and cheese format - again, inedibly. Who says vegetarian food has to be edible?

Instead, they should be upfront about the real reason they're complaining: their bottom line. Who honestly thinks that the "American Meat Institute, ...the Animal Agriculture Alliance, the Missouri Beef Council, and the editors of Pork Magazine" (H/T to Ms. Barclay) are concerned about kids' health? Anyone with at least half a brain cell knows they are concerned about their bottom line. Perhaps that's part of Baltimore City schools' motivation, too: to save a little money on meat?

Also just an observation: why is a Midwestern beef council concerned about what we're feeding kids in the Chesapeake Bay region?

Wait - there's a Pork Magazine?

On the lack of food blogger "credentials"

Are we worth reading? Of course we are. And yet, this is the question that seems to have risen in my mind after reading an article by renowned food critic Corby Kummer. Kummer discusses in his article "The Food Critic In the Internet Age" (I swore it had a different title last night) what direction paid food critics are going in this new age of food bloggers and Yelp.com commenters. He comes right out at the beginning to mention that "Of course, paid critics are more reliable!" He then goes on, inadvertently or not, to dismiss anyone who is not a paid food critic - who does not have "credentials" as his friends Tim & Nina Zagat later pointed out to him.

This got into my craw. It is nonsensical to dismiss an entire segment of the online world because we are not "credentialed." And to paint everyone from bloggers such as Adam Roberts and Julie Powell to public food review site commentators such as "Anonymuss" and "FoodGirl1" with the same brush because none of have those ever-elusive "credentials" belies the complexity and, to some extent, self-policing, of the online foodie world.

I urge you to read Kummer's article. It is interesting, but if you are a non-professional, I-work-for-myself-for-free food blogger you may be annoyed by it. Or you may not - perhaps I misinterpreted something.

I am going to post here the two comments I left in response. I thought them out for a while and the first one is pretty long. These are my words, though maybe they are technically the property of The Atlantic Magazine, so they are in quotes. I don't want to plagiarize myself. I did correct one left-out word from my first comment.

- - - - -

As a food blogger, I initially took great umbrage to Mr. Kummer's article. As I read the article over once or twice, I could not move far beyond the words (paraphrased here) "Of course paid critics are more reliable than food bloggers!" I don't believe this is the gist of Mr. Kummer's article, or of the food critiquing philosophy of his friends Nina & Tim Zagat. Still, despite his claim that he is being facetious in saying this, I still feel a need as a food blogger to call bullshit.

I have to defend the food blogger against the Zagats' (and likely Mr. Kummer's) assertions that a food blogger can never really, truly capture the essence of the full-on dining experience. Of course, not all blog posts do this, and for those of us who write for free (that would be most of us), we may be looking to discuss different things. Nevertheless, bloggers still can and do often write thoughtful critiques of restaurants visited.

I confess that it's mildly amusing and mildly annoying to see the assumption (if I interpret his words correctly) that we bloggers are perhaps unreliable due to our peccadilloes about what meal we got for free or which staff member of the local restaurant just broke up with us. I urge Mr. Kummer not to paint us with such a broad brush. Whether the author realizes it or not, his attitude is characteristic of the flippant attitude that many in the print media have demonstrated time and again to those in media that are more strictly online.

One part of the author's discussion that puzzles me - and here he is painting with a broad brush - is how he lumps food bloggers into the same category as posters at sites such as, for example, Yelp.com. I intend no offense to the many posters at that site, but their modus operandi is a bit different than that of a food blogger. For a site such as this, a poster can write a detailed review of his or her experience at "Joe's Burger Barn" that intimately informs the reader as to the experience he or she can expect. Or instead, such a reviewer may be logging on just to leave a short, ten word blurb about how the manager at "Joe's" gave him extra French fries, or how the place has roaches (and he misspelled "roaches"), or something quick and effective like that. A poster may have a history of posting about area restaurants, but his or her body of work is going to be limited.

A blog post is, usually, very different. I don't know about the bloggers Mr. Kummer or the Zagats have run into, but I and my compatriots take a bit more care and invest a bit more effort in what we write than the occasional poster on Yelp.com. More than just writing about our sorry experience at "Joe's Burger Barn," we are investing months, maybe years, in writing about the food, the restaurants and - by extension - the food culture and history of an area. Most of us are not paid, save for an ad on our blog that makes pennies a year. We also have the luxury of abandoning our blog when we feel the desire. But we invest a passion for our subject that a paid reviewer is probably going to show as well, and we do it for free.

Or perhaps I am just as guilty as Mr. Kummer of thumbing my nose at what I perceive to be a lesser art form - his holding up paid critiques over blogs, my holding up blogs over comment boards?

My occasional vocation is not perfect, nor are those of us who have chosen it. Yes, there are bloggers who cannot string a sentence together, much less an entire blog post. Additionally, the lack of pay for most food bloggers turns the food blog into a hobby for some, a passion for others - and both for many. For only a handful of us does it turn into an opportunity to be offered free food. I certainly don't get those offers (and if I did I probably would not get around to following through on them). And the few people I know who do get them are creating their own recipes, not reviewing restaurants.

In fairness, I admit that I have not addressed Mr. Kummer's assertion of the alleged reliability of the paid reviewer over the blogger. To be honest, I can't say that I have considered whether or not a paid critic is necessarily more trustworthy than a food blogger. Where do I go for a trustworthy critique of a restaurant? I do search blogs to see if they have said something positive, negative or otherwise. I sometimes explore the restaurant review section of my local paper or magazine, but only as a second resort because many of the paid reviews I have read are of restaurants I am unable to afford. A site such as Yelp.com is a reference of last resort - many posters there have valid opinions, but again you must weed out the fans and haters from those genuinely trying to give advice on where to eat.

One question that I have for Mr. Kummer: how beholden to some editorial bottom line is the typical paid critic? Does someone such as Corby Kummer have the freedom to eat where he pleases and then write about it? Or is there more pressure from above to choose specific spots to critique? I imagine there is more pressure in choice of restaurant than I have heard. One advantage that the food blogger has over the paid reviewer is that he or she can choose whichever location he or she likes, so long as it is accessible and affordable. I do not assert that this is a guarantee of complete and total reliability, or of any proof that the blogger will only choose the places he or she likes. I myself try to remain truthful about my experiences, including ambiance and service as well as the food itself. Most bloggers that I have encountered seem to be doing the same. As to what Frank Bruni recently called "more exacting standards": perhaps a paid reviewer has to meet said standards. I admit food bloggers do not have to hold ourselves up to a higher standard for something we do merely for the joy of it, but many of us try to hold ourselves up to some standard. I hold myself up to a fairly high standard of personal honesty in what I write. Again, I certainly hope that others in my position do as well.

Perhaps we food bloggers are more reliable than a paid reviewer who may or may not have to eat where his bosses tell him (if that happens)? Perhaps not, since we won't get fired for not meeting a higher standard? That is not a question I am equipped to answer. All I can say is that a food blog is not to be easily dismissed as lacking in standards, trustworthiness or impartiality altogether. Those of us who write blogs in our spare time do have something important to say, and our words certainly can be trusted, more often than Mr. Kummer or the Zagats might realize!

- - - - -

One commenter had a response to me, basically that the difference between persons such as Mr. Kummer and persons such as myself is, in a word, "CREDENTIALS." He or she did assert that our lack of credentials gave no promise that we knew what we were talking about - just as if he or she decided to give out free medical advice on a blog, even though he or she has no medical training.

I'm sorry, it isn't the same thing, as I posted in a second comment. As of right now it is still pending approval. But I saved a copy and will re-post it here. Again, adding a word or two that was left out during proofreading.

- - - - -

In other words, by your estimation what I and what every other food blogger says is, by its very nature, untrustworthy. You could go to the logical extreme of that argument and assume that food bloggers must never be read, because none of them have any credentials and therefore must be talking nonsense. I don't think you are saying that, though it certainly is implied. You are making a seemingly sound though still illogical assumption.

A similarly illogical assumption could go in the opposite direction, questioning even the value of credentials (which you did not have to scream, I might add). How do I know that a paid food critic is not being forced to give a favorable or unfavorable review for such-and-such a restaurant by his or her employer? A blogger, who does not have to even write the review, does not have the threat of losing his or her job by writing a review that is more critical or more praiseworthy - or even more "average" - than the credentialed food critic. Standing among peers, yes, but not his or her livelihood. Therefore, the food critic must obviously be a corporate shill whose words - and credentials - cannot be trusted, since I can not ever know how much influence his or her employer has over that review.

But I am not foolish enough to make that equally illogical assumption. Certainly, there are food critics whose credentials should be questioned. Before you make another assumption, I am not meaning Mr. Kummer or the Zagats, the latter being among the most respected and trusted credentialed persons in the food critiquing business (and yes, it is a business). And certainly there are bloggers who write nonsense. But to dismiss us all because we have no, ahem, CREDENTIALS, is to somewhat arrogantly dismiss an entire medium on account of the those of us who really shouldn't be typing on a keyboard at all.

My advice for figuring out which bloggers are the most trustworthy is to read through different blogs and comments, and to see which bloggers are most respected among their peers. If they are writing nonsense then you can bet that they are being called to the carpet for it. If they are not, chances are they will be talked up by fellow bloggers and perhaps even some of those same credentialed food critics. This is perhaps the closest thing unpaid bloggers such as myself have to "credentials."

I admit we don't always have the "credentials" that paid food critics have. That doesn't mean we are not worth reading. You may not have meant it that way, but you certainly implied it.

I'm not intending to speak up my own blog, so I won't add a link to it. But to keep from being completely anonymous I will note that I write the "Baltimore Snacker" blog in, of course, Baltimore.

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So what do you think? Are non-paid bloggers as a rule less trustworthy than any paid food critic? Can food critics be trusted not to shill for "the man"? My answers, of course, are "no" and "yes" respectively. But I've talked too much about this. Y'all: it's your turn.

Young & Hungry in the D of C

I was half-listening to WAMU's Metro Connection today, until this segment came on showcasing Washington City Paper's 50 Best Restaurants feature this week. As the WCP's Tim Carman noted, this list is a little different than others because they dispense with the usual suspects - the Citronelles and what not - because everybody already knows that they're worth eating at. This list focuses on the less well-known ones. Present, a Falls Church Vietnamese place (one of five Vietnamese places on the list, and not all of them are phở houses) sounds like it is particularly worth going to. Apparently, they make up nine different types of fish sauce. Nine.