Text 16419, 88 rader
Skriven 2007-06-07 09:25:00 av JIM WELLER (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av DAVE DRUM
Ärende: Re: Adoption
====================
-=> Quoting Dave Drum to Jim Weller <=-

 JW> we still accept applications from individual deserving refugees.

 DD> I dunno about deserving. Desperate is more like. If the
 DD> Congresscritters  would move on universal health insurance - using the
 DD> Canadian model.  Well, I'll stop is right here lest we devolve into
 DD> politics. 

It sux to be an invalid in your country.

Another NY times article that caught me eye. This one is a hoot.

Dinner at the Foodies: Purslane and Anxiety By KATHERINE WHEELOCK

RICHARD FAULK still recalls, with a twinge of shame, the day he and
his girlfriend, Jeanine Villalobos, served store-bought tortillas to
guests. Some home cooks' self-worth is tied up in how well they make
dishes like individual souffles. "We were mortified that we hadn't
made our own," he said.

The two, who live in Park Slope, Brooklyn, make most of the elements
of the meals they serve from scratch, and spend whole days going to
farmers' markets, cheese shops and specialty stores. They would no
sooner dress a salad with a store-bought vinaigrette than serve a
suspicious-smelling piece of fish. "We're a little self-conscious
about being the foodie couple," said Mr. Faulk, who teaches at
Berkeley College in Midtown Manhattan. "But we don't make
everything. I haven't started curing my own olives or making my own
cheese."

Dinner parties have been fraught with performance anxiety.
Especially in New York, where there are fewer status indicators
(like cars and landscaped lawns), adjectives like local, organic and
free range are signifiers of taste. "Entertaining and cooking have
become an integral part of how certain people demonstrate their
cultural cachet," said Joshua Schreier, a history professor at
Vassar College who lives in Harlem and says he is a victim, and a
propagator, of culinary anxiety. "There is a specific cachet that
only a fiddlehead fern can convey. Saying, 'I got this olive oil
from this specific region in Greece,' is like talking about what
kind of car you have. And people don't want to be associated with
the wrong kind of olive oil. It becomes less about having people
over and more about showing off your foodie credentials."

"It's become very important to be all Alice Waters," said Serena
Bass, the Manhattan caterer. "Everyone wants to know where the poor
pig you're serving came from." Ms. Bass also pointed out that the
new strain of entertaining anxiety extended well beyond food. "You
can't just serve purslane," she said. "You have to serve purslane on
Limoges you found in a Connecticut consignment shop with a fork that
has a carved ivory handle you found in a flea market somewhere."

Andy Birsh, owner of a letterpress print shop in Brooklyn, would
rather make a mad, stressful dash to Brighton Beach for smoked
sturgeon an hour before guests arrive for dinner than serve the kind
he can buy from a market around the corner. And for him, serving a
dish that is on the menu at several good restaurants in the city
right now, a fava bean salad with shaved pecorino for instance,
would be like being caught reading "The Lovely Bones" right after
Oprah Winfrey endorsed it. "As soon as something becomes
overpopularized, I don't want to serve it anymore," Mr. Birsh said.
"I wouldn't want anyone to be able to identify something I made as
being from a book or a restaurant. I don't want anyone to be able to
say, oh, I see where he got this idea to put microgreens on top of
his fish fillets."

For hosts in this intensely food-cognizant dinner party circuit home
entertaining can become the white whale. It turns docile cooks into
aggressive obsessives, the way an engagement can turn a well-meaning
woman into bridezilla or how fatherhood can make a laid-back guy an
apoplectic soccer dad. "My ex got caught up in it," said a Brooklyn
woman who is going through a divorce and asked that her name not be
used. "For a while, it was great. Until it wasn't. We had a birthday
party for our 1-year-old son and I ordered pizza. He spent another
$1,000 on food. There were plates and plates of cheese and cured
meats from this gourmet place. For a 1-year-old."



Cheers

YK Jim


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