A promotional tie-in for 7 days, with 7 patties of beef to promote the introduction of Windows 7. Oh and the price is 777 something or other. blech.
for the Kramer family….
Last year the latest “oh you simply must try the….” trendy food among the food elite in New York was pork. Bacon. Pork Belly. Roasted pork. Pulled pork. Barbequed pork. Wild Pork. Domestic Pork. Pork. Pork. Pork.
Funny thing – whenever I spoke with acquaintances in the East – at least those who were into the ‘food scene’ – it seemed to me they were pontificating about pork, in all it’s forms, as if they had discovered something. The reality, of course, is they were last in line on the ‘pork love’ by – oh let’s be generous here and say – a hundred years or so. Pork in all it’s glorious forms has been a staple food for the rural and common folk in this country for years.
Recently the foodie world has embraced home and locally grown food. Food that is raised and consumed within 100 -150 miles of it’s origin. A worthy idea. Of course that means no more truffles from France, California, Washington or Oregon wines, hops for beer brewed in Boston, steaks from the mid-west, salmon from Alaska and certainly no more pork for those who live in NYC. I can’t imagine there are more than a dozen or so porcine available to butcher within a days drive of the city.
So that brings up a couple of questions in my mind. Do foodies REALLY know what’s going on or are they mostly wanna be’s who follow trends? And is the concept of Fresh & Local really a buzz phrase of “exclusive and expensive?” I mean – check out the backyards of middle America and they’ve been gardening, canning, hunting, fishing and buying direct from farmers for years. They just never thought to capture it in a phrase and market it – right?
When I read this post, and recommend it to you, in Serious Eats New York I clicked through to the source and found the assumptions and conclusions – interesting – to say the least. An excerpt is presented here for your convenience only – I encourage you to click through at the link to read the entire post at Serious Eats and then read the source materials written by James McWilliams – an historian at Texas State University and author of the new book Just Food.
Posted by Ed Levine, October 18, 2009 at 5:00 PM
[Photo: Kerry Saretsky]
In what is surely meant to provoke controversy, James McWilliams posits that very theory on a guest post on the Times‘ Freaknomics blog. It may be controversial on the face of it, but he’s saying nothing new or even particularly perceptive here.
Read the entire post – CLICK HERE
