Crumbs From the Week - Includes Whining About Greed and Smoking! Read On!

I've been having a rather hectic week this week - working every day, helping a friend launch his catering career (shameless plug: e-mail me if you need any catering this holiday season and I'll put you in touch.  The chef is the one responsible for my better-than-the-French-Laundry-Pork-Belly from this time last year, it's the really, really bad picture, at the end; bonus - if you read the post, you can relive one of the most humiliating nights of my dining life!  Laugh at me, please!)  And, if you visit my Flickr page, you can see some of the pictures from our event.

I did have a little free time to attend a Scotch tasting, which you will hear more about later; it was very educational, and I'm here to impart my newfound wisdom upon you.  Aren't you lucky?

At the Farmer's Market this week, I bought some of this intensely smoky, rich jowl bacon, complete with hairy skin.  Similar to guanciale, the dry-cured jowl product from Italy, this jowl bacon was produced locally by those crazy kids over at the Wayward Seed Farm (you might remember them from such products as radish pods and salsify).  I wasted no time cutting in and browning some up for some spaghetti and greens.  I have a very special and unusual plan for the precious rendered fat which will certainly be revealed to you in good time.

And now, folks, I'd like to get serious.  First up, something political.  I promise, this is the only time you will hear me get political.  Unless you know me and have the misfortune to encounter me after a bourbon, but that's rare.  Midterm elections are coming up on November 7th, and the city of Columbus and all of Ohio is being purposefully misled about one of our ballot measures, Issue 4.  This is not a smoking ban at all, as it is being touted in adverts, but a constitutional amendment - backed by tobacco companies - which will reverse many of the codes installed after the 2004 election, when the city of Columbus voted to go largely smoke-free in restaurants, bars, etc.  If, like me, you are a non-smoking (or even if you're a smoker who would like to control their own decay) restaurant or bar industry worker with absolutely no company-provided health care, I am sure you would also like to keep the air in your establishment as clean as it has been for the past 2 years.  For more information on this issue, click here to go to the SmokeFree website.  There are numerous other resources to research this online, simply Google "issues 4 & 5."  Voting yes on issue 4 will override issue 5, which is the state-wide smoke-free law, which will bring the rest of the state inline with Columbus and many other cities Ohio cities.  So, just for the record, it's NO on 4, and YES on 5, if you'd like to keep things smoke-free.  Whew.  I can't even believe I wrote the words "ballot measure."  I promise to never again be political. 

Lastly, I'd like to talk about greed.  I know that you, my dear readers, are all loving, kind people who would never cut me in line or race me to a table, or stomp your feet like 5-year-olds in the bakery line, but for the rest of you, I'd like to propose a day where we all think about someone else before ourselves.  Instead of saying me first, how about we remember we live in a country of abundance.  How about this Saturday, while you are standing in line at Omega waiting for your giant cinnamon roll which could feed a family of 4 in some parts of the world, and the person in front of you buys the last one, you blame yourself for sleeping in so late, instead of whining vocally that you've been waiting 10 minutes and you can't believe they would sell the last roll to the person in front of you, who clearly doesn't deserve it.  That goes for you, too, fennel lady from last week's market.  How about this Saturday, try to be a little bit nice.  I promise it won't kill you.  Let someone ahead of you in line.  Don't stake out your seat for brunch at Northstar before you've ordered, ignoring the sign telling you not to do that, wasting a table for an hour while everyone else stands around, egg sandwich and coffee in hand, waiting for a table.  I'm tired of it.  And as soon as I muster the courage to call you out on it, I will.  Just one day.  No cuts, no foot-stomping, no laborious, world-on-my-shoulder sighs, just everyone acting like a grown up who might occasionally hold the door open for a little old lady.  Anyone else in?

Comments

[lucette]

I'm in, especially with the old ladies, although I reserve the right to say bad things about people who cut me off in traffic.