I love Thanksgiving turkey. It’s the only time in Los Angeles that you see natural breasts.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
November 25, 2010
Quote of the day: the Gouvernator
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November 17, 2010
The Andy Warhol Diet
These days it seems like everybody, no matter how unqualified, has a diet plan nowadays, but frankly, this Andy Warhol New York City diet sounds like a winner to me. You could always count on Andy to get to the heart of the American experience while simultaneously hovering outside of the mainstream.
…he explained in his 1975 book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol that he stayed thin by ordering things he disliked in restaurants — even fashionable and expensive ones such as La Grenouille. While his companions ate, he picked at his plate and then had the food wrapped up so he could leave it somewhere for a homeless person to find.
Nowadays, of course, he could just hand it to the two or three people sitting on the sidewalk directly outside the restaurant, or call FoodRunners or the NYC equivalent. Then Andy would go off to Chock Full O’ Nuts and order a cream cheese and nut sandwich on date-nut bread just like he always did, and which is, if you think about it, quite respectable and delicious as long as you steer clear of cheap Chinese walnuts. I’ll take mine with hazelnuts, please, to go.
“Progress is very important and exciting in everything except food.â€
Andy Warhol
November 10, 2010
This takes the cake
This is weirdly brilliant, in the way turducken is weirdly brilliant. It’s nice to see some respectful innovation around traditional holiday meals, while still putting a kooky, 21st-Century, I-wouldn’t-do-it-but-Reddit-will-go-apeshit-for-it slant on things.
This is nothing less than a Thanksgiving cake made out of ground turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and yams, and frosted with mashed potatoes. Here’s your recipe, don’t all click at once!
Before you laugh, remember the hottest item in the gourmet’s arsenal over the past few years has been flavoured foam. We are obviously cooking in the time of Surrealism, and this is a perfect, and not difficult, iteration of the meme. And think about it; this would be darn tasty. It’s basically just a vertical, poultry-based Shepherd’s Pie, and who doesn’t love Shepherd’s Pie?
via MercuryPDX, KindaFabulous, and Carlovely
October 24, 2010
March 12, 2010
Color Theory
When considering a balanced meal, Mrs. Henry thinks of complementary colors.
Composing a menu she employs a palate fully as pleasing to the eye as to the tongue. This is not a casual belief. She maintains firmly as an article of nutritional science that color and taste are linked. Good color matches make for good flavor matches and even for good digestion.
During the last snowstorm, when forced to prepare dinner from whatever happened to be in the fridge, Mr. Henry served his family chicken, mashed potatoes, and cauliflower, an all-white menu for which he still suffers recriminations.
When the Duchess and her family came to dinner last week, the meal became a feast not only because peers of the realm were seated at high table, but also because duck breast, potatoes au gratin, and green beans were enlivened by the vivid scarlet of red cabbage. (The astringent sweetness of the cabbage prepared with red wine vinegar and a touch of sugar cleansed the mouth, as well.)
For taste and for color Mr. Henry likes the marriage of duck and orange, but he didn’t think a classic duck à l’orange would pair well with red cabbage. Instead, for dessert he elected to serve sliced navel oranges (Moroccan style – topped with a touch of ground cinnamon) along with two ice creams from Grom – dark chocolate and stracciatella with candied orange, grapefruit, and pistachios.
February 9, 2010
Michael Pollan is your Bubbeh
After explaining how certain plants have co-evolved through human cultivation (The Botany of Desire), after explaining why fakockteh factory frankenfoods are ruining our bodies and our planet (The Omnivore’s Dilemma), and after laying out an eater’s manifesto for the age (In Defense of Food), now Michael Pollan is laying down the law about exactly what to eat (Food Rules).
This we need?
Taken as a whole, the book’s 64 prescriptions confirm something more: Michael Pollan is your grandmother. In pithy Talmudic aphorisms he’s trying to nudge the world into keeping a new kosher.
Rule #8 – Avoid food products that make health claims.
Rule #11 – Avoid foods you see advertised on television.
Rule #13 – Eat only foods that will eventually rot.
Rule #21 – It’s not food if it’s called by the same name in every language. (Think Big Mac, Cheetos, or  Pringles.)
Oy, gevalt! Listen up. Americans are potchkeying around with their natural bounty, making a mishmash of their lives and everyone else’s, too. What’s happening to them shouldn’t happen to a dog. Enough already. Keep eating this meshuggener Western diet and you’re going to plotz!
Better you should eat what grandma ate, says Michael. It can’t hurt.
January 17, 2010
Sour grass
Death, divorce, and debt – the glorious three “d’s†of Sotheby’s and Christies – currently bedevil the extended Henry family, though fortunately not the immediate household. Mrs. Henry believes in keeping up routines and 
does not countenance such prodigality.
Christmas holidays likewise bring forth a perpetual wellspring of objects seeking new ownership – apple corers, nutcrackers, scented candles in matched sets, cherry red windbreakers and frightful neckties.
Holidays also bear gifts of depression, indigestion, intestinal cramp, bloat and a throbbing gall bladder. Each year Mr. Henry swears he will leave for the holidays because too many around him take leave of their senses, and because despite his renowned self-control at the table, during holidays he abandons all sense of moderation and proportion.
Christmas tradition revives bad food habits from the storied Middle Ages, blithe era of famine, contagion, and dogma. Eggnog (vanilla nutmeg ice cream in a glass!), triple cream cheeses, bon bons wrapped in sparkly foil, preserved fruit, mincemeat, liqueurs, layer cakes, assorted chocolates with cream filling, and nuts roasted in peanut oil, palm oil, or coconut oil. Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, fat was a good thing.
Today these caloric gut-bombs serve as anti-depression medications self-prescribed to remedy seasonal affective disorder, better known as the blues and the blahs, horse latitudes of the soul.
What brings out the holiday nuts? After four scotches nutty Uncle Jack dressed in plaid jim-jams slips on the patio black ice and cracks his humerus. Ha! Not so funny now, Uncle Jack’s funny bone.
Brother Clifford treats his seasonal disorders with sour green juice of fresh barley grass mixed with V-8. It puckers the gums mightily, but also promotes good digestion and cures bad breath.
Clifford subscribes to the philosophy of a ph-balanced diet, that is, eating foods that promote an alkaline environment in the blood. Contrary to expectations, preachers of the ph-balanced way do not necessarily extol foods that are themselves alkaline. Lemons and limes are recommended, for example. Wine and vinegar are forbidden, as is coffee. Leafy vegetables are encouraged. Meat is discouraged. It’s hard to keep up. You’d better buy the ph bible.
Clifford claims it cured his incipient diabetes, chronic headache, chronic backache, and fatigue. If you add hoarseness, cottonmouth, snoring, dropsy, flatulence, hip pain and plantar fasciitis, you’ve got old age pretty much covered.
December 20, 2009
Don’t play with your food
Whoever thought vegetables would become the subject of such impassioned debate?
Arguing her points well, ChaChaHeels sent a long and very eloquent post about vegetarianism. For those who wish to eat responsibly, ethically, and nutritiously, it is not enough simply to avoid meat. Genetically modified organisms (GMO) lurk everywhere, sometimes even in organic crops. Seed DNA may have migrated (by accident? perhaps by design!), and if Monanto detects even a trace of their DNA in your seed, they’ll sue.
Mr. Henry appreciated the efforts of local farmers to raise meat using sustainable methods of farming, and he tries his best to buy those products even when it means paying more. 
The essence of the attack on meat is not really about sustainability, organic vs. local, or any the more intellectual arguments. When the vegetarian diet becomes more widely adopted, it will be because its proponents convince us that eating flesh is dirty. The cultural construct of clean versus dirty is perhaps the deepest of all taboos and most salient of culture markers. In Korea, China, and Vietnam, for example, it is perfectly acceptable to eat roast puppy.
Here Mr. Henry would like to assure his readers that he considers himself to be a man of open spirit and liberal imagination, tolerant and accepting of foreign traditions. After all, he is a seasoned traveler, well-lettered and well-read. He does not lightly vilify the manners and customs of other people.
If when breakfasting in Bangkok you elect to try the roast grubs, a local delicacy, Mr. Henry applauds your adventuresome spirit. There is nothing so beneficial as a hearty breakfast. But tucking into a savory slice of man’s best friend is a custom Mr. Henry has trouble accepting. Barbaric is a word that comes to mind. Puppies, after all, brim with playful love. The many virtues of the grub notwithstanding, surely puppies bring a greater measure of joy into the world.
Perhaps it comes down to this: Mr. Henry does not believe in playing with his food.