THE GURGLING COD

What they said

The $175 hamburger.
Shufflin Dance brings the ruckus so I don't have to. Much obliged.

Red Blazer

To return from bitching about how America's paper of record covers gentrification like it was a miracle, and not cultural imperialism, not one, but two new cocktails to celebrate. Athens, GA's Manhattan Lounge has bolstered its familiar Blenheim and Maker's Mark  with another whiskey and regional soda concoction -- the Red Blazer. This is Cheerwine,* a dash of bitters, with Old Overholt Rye. As a fan of all three, it was a must-try. I will say that I will continue to enjoy the three separately -- the Cheerwine on drives through the Carolinas, the Overholt on the porch, and the bitters on a grapefruit, but this certainly would be a tasty way to drink a considerable quantity of rye without realizing it immediately. Better yet was the glass it came in -- not only one of the excellent old school NFL glasses they used to give away with a tank of gas, but also the right franchise.

As I contemplated the offerings at Five and Ten, I tried a different new cocktail -- the name escapes me (it is a person's  name), but it was Hendrick's gin, shaken with fresh grapefruit juice, in a salt-rimmed glass. I have formally petitioned to have the name officially changed to Gin 'n' Juice. This was very refreshing - if gin were good for you, and you were looking for new ways to get it into your diet, this would be a good one.
*The Cheerwine website is an unexpected joy, in that most regional soft drink brands do not have their homepage laid out like a fake Fox News/Colbert webpage, with an investigative report on Yankees hoarding Cheerwine. Well played.

How artists saved Paducah, Kentucky

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to naught.

Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go make them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers.

Not. One. Penny. Ever.

A shitty week in Codland took a turn for the worse when his undergraduate alma mater decided to drop an honorary Ph.D. on a toxic rape-denying dinosaur.  If you have any connection with Washington University, and are a woman, or have mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, or friends whose civil rights you think are important, join with me in pledging not to give any money to this institution.*

Who even knew she was still alive?
*If that cash that's not going to Wash U is burning a hole in your pocket, consider Planned Parenthood, or your favorite womens' college.

Shiny pretty things.

Adam Simha, of MKS Design, and the man behind the Big Red Chef, will be showing new work at the Javits Center. Not elective surgery, like so many Javits denizens, but design work, at the ICFF,  or the International Contemporary Furniture Fair for long. Not sure what will be on display, but do ask to see the badass trivets. Booth 1078 is the spot.

Ronald McDonald hates Jesus

As The Knife points out, McDonald's is gunning for  Chick-fil-a with its rollout of a "Southern Style Chicken Sandwich."

I have no business writing about it, but McDonald's is giving away Southern Style Chicken Sandwiches today (May 15),* free with purchase of a medium or large drink. They are doing this because they want to gouge the business model of a smaller, Atlanta-based fast-food franchise, Chick-fil-A.

And at least as far as Ronald is concerned, it is so effing on. For the uninitiated, Chick-fil-A is a chain with Southern roots and a chicken-based menu, that alone among fast food chains, closes on Sundays. The Cod has always been a bit ambivalent about this policy. On the one hand, it's nice to see a fast food chain with some possible evidence of a concern for the lives of their employees, but on the other hand you feel bad for the Lubavitcher Chick-fil-A employees who have to work on their Sabbath, and then not be able to work on the first day of the workweek. But Mickey D's is betting that for some fast food aficionados, having access to their preferred sandwich only 86 percent of the time is unjust, and so McDonald's is rolling out billboards guaranteeing that their Southern Style Chicken Sandwich is "available seven days a week, including Sundays." It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Do the Arches drive Chick-fil-A into the sea, or does the SSCS go the way of the McRib? In any case, I'd encourage McD's to consider "Southern Style Chicken Sandwiches: On Demand and Without Apology" as a slogan.
*Giving away your product seems to be the hot new business model.

Top Chef: That kind of party

Glad I do not watch top chef. But glad others do:

Also, if I knew that finishing close to the top of Top Chef season 2 meant coming back for a cameo wearing Abercrombie’s fall 2004 boy’s line wardrobe that was rejected by the Jonas Brothers as being too much of a suburban mall cliché, I’d have stuck my dick in the mashed potatoes* and called it a day, H.D.

*Actually Mantan Moreland, not Redd Foxx. Who knew?

Things Cooks Love

As the previous post suggests, it may be sour times for the publishing industry, what with built in bookcases being foreclosed on, and a tank of gas running as much as an artfully smutty coffee table book. The Gurgling Cod is about solutions, and to that end, the side content has been tweaked -- new food books that come in the mail, which I have not had time to review yet, will go in the helpfully descriptive list "New Books."

To start chipping away at the backlog, I'll start with one of the weirdest -- Things Cooks Love. The name Marie Simmons appears on the cover, but not as prominently as Sur La Table, which is the animating spirit behind this rather beefy tome.

The premise of Things Cooks Love is perverse. Most cookbooks operate on the premise that there is something you want to do -- make tasty Moroccan dishes at home, or baguettes that are not chewy and flaccid, or use all the tomatoes you grew. Most cookbooks will then indicate the ingredients, techniques, and equipment you need to reach these goals. Because Sur La Table is in the equipment business, the approach is backwards -- what can you do with that mandoline of yours? Thus there are sections with names like "mortar and pestle recipes," and "immersion blender recipes."

On a planet where one stands in the middle of the kitchen, mezzaluna in hand, and cries aloud "what is to be done?" TCL makes perfect sense. Come to think of it, there is such a world -- the world of the newlywed. If you know young lovers who have run hog wild on the registry at Sur La Table, or Williams-Sonoma, or a similar place, this book might help allay the guilt at having asked for a bunch of stuff they are not quite sure what to do with.The receipts themselves seem fine -- a little bit jazzy, in the manner of the big orange Bon Appetit cookbook that dropped a Christmas or two ago -- to sell a few more molcajetes and tagines, there are various ethnic subsections. A newly affianced friend of mine was fond of the expression "wedding-industrial complex," and TCL is the ultimate realization of a corrolary philosophy of the kitchen-as-Pentagon.

*It is bad luck, but maybe not undeserved, while this book was in press that Stuff White People Like became the most popular site on the internet not featuring pictures of ex-mousketeer vaginas. Certainly "stuff from Sur La Table" merits the SWPL seal.

We had a hedge back home in the suburbs

I can no longer shop happily. I am not sure if I should be more alarmed that the idea of "an educational walk through Whole Foods" in order to "demystify the shopping experience" ever crossed someone's mind, or that the the event is full.

In a sluggish economy....

Like the Circle Jerks say, "we just get by - however we can." I imagine this holds true  for  the publishing industry as well. I have no other explanation for the Severson's kids' cookbook piece in yesterday's DI/DO. More than most Style pieces even, it seemed to be a supply-side trend piece, in that it was not reporting what consumers were doing, but what industry was hoping consumers will do.