Raw Menus

I’d not heard of them (raw menus) before this week, but it just goes to show that if you stay to the margins of the restaurant scene for too long, you wont notice when it’ll have turned the corner. Charlie Trotter (the guy with the super innovative, super refined restaurant in Chicago) has paired up with Roxanne Klein (from California, where else) to create the perfect raw menu (it’s all laid out for you in the “Wine Spectator,” but it’s not yet online, so no link). The idea is to dice the food, soak it, freeze it, marinate it, dehydrate it –anything but cook it.

Well now, I’m sure this works well for vegetarians living in warm climates. But I don’t know about those of us living up north who like our pork sizzled and crisp (I’m not talking about me: I can’t remember the last time I ate sizzled and crisped pork). You take your great love out to dinner on a cold January night (tonight would qualify) and you say – “here, try this thinly sliced bleeding-heart radish accompanied by air-dried tomatoes”? Sounds very un-Atkins. And cold.

But maybe I’m being rigid and parochial. Trotter (who, BTW, is a home grown boy, having graduated in Poli Sci from UW) says that he gets at least 2 requests for a raw menu each night. So maybe we’re going to see this more and more? Dinner guests who will tell you: “I only eat raw.” Oh, I can’t wait. Cooking for others has become so much fun!

Apart from tastes, textures, and the usual pandering to the bored and restless palates of the privileged, the raw menu apparently has the added virtue that it is healthy. The morning after, you wake up feeling – healthy. Oh, did I mention that Roxanne Klein's cooking, excuse me, un-cooking of food excludes meat, poultry, fish, dairy products, and foods derived from wheat? I’m not even going to comment on that.

Uncrowded urban spaces

When I was a kid, I went to the UN International School in New York. There are many unique and interesting things about that school, but to me, what stood out then was the fact that we were the only school in the entire city that closed on October 24th (in observance of UN Day). This opened up a world of choices. Usually I would take my skates and go to Rockefeller Center. It was both sinful and heavenly to be skating in the middle of the day in a near-empty rink.

Super Bowl Sunday offers a similar chance to mull over this one: what to do when the world is busy doing the Super Bowl thing and you’re not? Hmmmm.. I could:
- go and finally see LOTR in an empty theater and then blog about how the movie is losing its appeal;
- take a party of like-minded friends to a bar and ask them to turn down the TV because the noise is interfering with our conversation;
- go ice-fishing on an empty lake Mendota [no pain, no gain];
- jay-walk on a red light at the intersection of Mineral Point and Gammon;
- go to New York and skate…
By the way, I like spectator sports alright. But in Poland there’s only one "football" (=soccer) and people don’t kill each other trying to get it. They kill each other AFTER the game, if they lost. Or won. Much more civilized.

A little weird?

I asked my Family Law class what policy reasons might there be to prohibit marriage between a woman and her adoptive dad (she was 15 when she was adopted, but 21 when she started a relationship with him, leading actually to her being pregnant by him when she was 22). Except for two or three, most thought such a marriage should be permitted (though through a legal maneuver of first vacating the adoption). Interestingly, they believed that parenting stops at 18 [really??] and therefore he was no longer fulfilling his parental duties.
I reminded them that when Woody Allen wanted to marry Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter (Woody and Mia had been in a pretty stable relationship for years), there was almost complete public condemnation. Someone said “hey, that’s a little weird,” but I wasn’t sure whether they were referring to Woody’s choice of bride or the public condemnation.

Saddled with reviewing best-sellers

Who would even want to be an NYT book critic (see post below) if it means having to slog through this list (from the article today entitled “Best Sellers, on a Scale of Good Read to Good Grief”):

The books reviewed in Janet Maslin's Critic's Notebook article:
"THE LAST JUROR," by John Grisham. Doubleday. $27.95.
"THE PRESENT," by Spencer Johnson. Doubleday. $19.95.
"THE AUTOMATIC MILLIONAIRE," by David Bach. Broadway Books. $19.95.
"THE PROPER CARE AND FEEDING OF HUSBANDS," by Dr. Laura Schlessinger. HarperCollins. $24.95.
"EMMA'S SECRET," by Barbara Taylor Bradford. St. Martin's. $24.95.
"PS, I LOVE YOU," by Cecelia Ahern. Hyperion Press. $21.95.
"DIVIDED IN DEATH," by J. D Robb. G.P. Putnam's Sons. $21.95.
"FOR US, THE LIVING," by Robert A. Heinlein. Scribner. $25.
"MR. PARADISE," by Elmore Leonard. William Morrow. $25.95.
"THE SECRET SYMBOLS OF THE DOLLAR BILL," by David Ovason. HarperCollins. $18.95.

It appears the self-help books continue to bulldoze their way into the mass market. Advice-giving is cheap and easy, and we seem to enjoy getting it by the truckload. In the article, we read about the newest best seller written by Spencer Johnson:

In the wake of that land-office success [the author is referring to “Who Moved My Cheese,” about which she says: “written for readers who would find a "Fun With Dick and Jane" primer too demanding”] Mr. Johnson would barely have had to write anything to market more advice. So he hasn't quite written anything in cooking up "The Present." That title is a pun about how the ability to live in the moment is a gift. Present-related wisdom is such that the book's advice can be summed up on a one-page card. This is conveniently included.
Although Mr. Johnson's new book does not particularly acknowledge it, he published something very similar back in the early 1980's, his prepopular days. But that book was called "The Precious Present." Both begin with a sage old man telling a boy that the Present — capital P — is the best thing he can ever receive.
From "The Precious Present":
" `Wow!' the little boy exclaimed. `I hope someone gives me the precious present. Maybe I'll get it for Christmas.' "
From the labor-intensive rewrite:
" `Wow!' the little boy exclaimed, although not fully understanding. `I hope someone gives me The Present someday. Maybe I'll get it for my birthday.' "

Maybe we all just have one idea in us and we recycle it again and again, but I'm going to hope our packaging of it is a little less shabby.

Getting your review published in the NYT…

…You’d think this would be near impossible. I mean, to publish a movie or a restaurant review there, you’d need a list of credentials a mile long, plus at least five personal connections with the top brass in the industry and the paper, correct? Wrong! It turns out you don’t even need to have anything clever to say. Consider this week’s reader review of LOTR:

ONE FILM TO RULE THEM ALL:MAGNIFICENT, January 28, 2004
The final installment of "The Lord of the Rings" is the BEST!!!! It is magnificent!The visual/special effects are unbelievable, the acting wonderful, the content magnificient!!!!You have to watch this movie, and it is soooooo good, you will want to see it 1,000 times over.This movie won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Orginal Score, and Best Original Song in The Golden Globes, and is now the most nominated motion picture of the year:with 11 Academy Award nominations, and probobly 11 Academy Award wins. SEE THIS MOVIE!!! You wont regret it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It seems that three out of four readers found this review “helpful.”