Milling through the Grinder

Nothing like a vacation to get those RSS feeds all backed up like Idi's hydroelectrics. A few odds and sods from Grinder worthy of note, though the commentary there remains wildly uneven.

1)

The AP is reporting that Maryland legislators will consider a raw milk bill that would allow dairy farmers to sell the good stuff directly to consumers, if not in stores.
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In Maryland, where the dairy industry has been in trouble for a few years, some are looking toward raw milk as a way to salvage the family farm. Proponents believe raw milk is a more authentic product than the pure white gallons most of us tote home from the supermarket.

Good news, I imagine, but more importantly, it's been a while since Big Daddy Kane turned up here.

2) Evidently, pork is the new black. Glad the rest of the world is joining the Cod on this bandwagon. However, this snippet raised a question:

At the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Food Editor Hsiao-Ching Chou discusses how chefs love pork belly—the cut that gets cured into bacon. “If you want to get a chef all hot and bothered,” she writes, “whisper ‘pork belly’ in her ear.” Chou says a local meat wholesaler reports that its pork belly sales have doubled in the past three months alone.

Despite the best efforts of science, each pig has one belly. So where are the extra bellies coming from? Or, more to the point, what used to happen to the bellies? More generally, it would be interesting to know how changing fashions in food, viz the offalsance of the early Oughts, affect what happens to the rest of the beast.

3) Chow throws an NYT travel writer under the bus, in an item that blends the eyerolling of a petulant teen with the pompous self-regard of Ambrose Abercombie:

But Pergament writes about injera as though it had descended from the sky in a silvery picnic basket wreathed by moon-lilies:

And at the heart of every Ethiopian meal is injera. Basically a pancake — or more accurately, a really, really big pancake — injera is made from tef, a sour-wheat-like grain that is mixed with cool water and a pinch of yeast.
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This would be a little like traveling to Tijuana and writing:

And at the heart of every Mexican meal is a tortilla. Basically a pancake, tortillas are made from wheat or corn. But unlike a pancake, this form of bread isn’t spongy, isn’t covered in syrup, and isn’t made into McGriddles.

I frequently indulge in this sort of X is like Y approach, but  this seems unfair, in that it is reasonable to suppose that many readers of the Times will not be familiar with Ethiopian food, as many of them a) own mattresses and boxsprings and b) are not in grad school. It would seem more reasonable for  Mr. Norton to congratulate himself on his cosmopolitanism.

4) In the ever-changing world of foie (that whole thing in Iraq worked out, and we cured AIDS, right?) news that it may be possible to get foie, sans gavage. I'm sure I'm not the first to make this joke, but if someone would just design an adaptor so geese can get their tiny beaks into a Graffix, this problem would solve itself.

5) Not surprisingly, Stabucks wants to crush the rebels before the start of the rainy season:

Competitors of all kinds, small and large coffee companies, fast food operators, and mom and pops … position themselves in a way that creates awareness, trial and loyalty of people who previously have been Starbucks customers. This must be eradicated.

Jebus. Once again, life imitates the Onion. The post goes on to point out that  Starbucks will let you hang out all day long writing your dissertation/novel/40 page rejoinder to a dear John letter, though "extra living room" is pushing it, as my living room's comfortable chairs are rarely monopolized by vagrants, and there is almost never a line for the bathroom. As a reminder, if you enjoy the sociability of the coffeehouse, but prefer not to suckle at the teat of the mermaid, plug a zip into delocator.net, and it will give you the closest non-Starbuck coffee spots.