blog

Fans of the original Japanese Iron Chef (ryouri no tetsujin 料理の鉄人) in the U.S. have cause for celebration, because the series is back on the air starting tonight at 11pm Eastern on the Fine Living channel. I think it's been off the air on the Food Network for a while now. In my opinion, while the American version is fine, there's nothing to match the sheer craziness and fun of the original.

The food prices poll has just concluded, and the results show that 43% of the people who votes are 'very concerned' and 45% are 'a little concerned' about rising food prices. That is quite a lot indeed.

I've been thinking of ways in which our household food budget can go on a diet. Given that we are rather passionate about good food around here, there are compromises we are not willing to make. But there are lots we can do without feeling like we are depriving ourselves too.

Someone alerted me to this entry on the Health.com blog which quotes me. (Health.com is a Time Inc. property.) I just wanted to set some things straight, because a couple of the statements there are just not right.

I spent the last couple of weeks surrounded by chocolate bars. Oh, the temptation.

Today is Green Day, and we're being bombarded with Green Day Sales, reminders as to how Green this company or the other is, and so on. It's a big topic nowadays.

I feel that the things that we can do as individuals is getting increasingly muddy. For a while it seemed like biofuels were a solution, but now the huge demand for plant-based fuels may be causing serious food shortages. Food miles and locavorism may not be as clear cut a solution either. Michael Pollan says we should start growing our own vegetables, but that's not possible for a lot of people, for space or time reasons.

Is there something relatively easy we can do? Sort of.

(Skip the rambling and go directly to the poll)

The news is quite disturbing these days. Soaring food prices, food riots in Haiti, rice hoarding by some exporters of rice. Do you worry about rising food prices?

We eat a lot of rice at our house as you might expect, so news like rice prices hitting an all-time high today are a bit disturbing. We've already seen bread getting more expensive.

Oh no, two YouTube posts in a row! Well on Saturday we went to an Indian restaurant in town, and invariably our favorite restaurant related video was brought up. Goodness Gracious Me (Wikipedia entry) was a half hour comedy sketch show that ran on BBC One and Two from 1998 to 2001. In case you have never heard of it and you're in the U.S., it was a little bit like the '90s comedy show In Living Color, except that the cast in GGM was almost all Asian (as in South Asian, or Indian), who also wrote all the sketches. It poked fun at many British and British-Asian things. One of the best routines was one that made fun of a typical outing to an Indian restaurant. This sketch is called Going Out for an English. I don't think you have to be Asian (as in South Asian) or British to find it funny...it's how a lot of people still behave, at any 'ethnic' restaurant!

"What is the Blandest Thing you have on the menu?"

Browsing around YouTube instead of working, as you do, today I found this little gem. It's a commercial for Ajinomoto Mayonnaise, by Juzo Itami, the late, great director of the best food movie ever, Tampopo:

The actor (not sure if it's Itami himself) is talking on the phone to a friend, when he gets hungry. Still remaining on the phone (and inexplicably on his back), he scoots over to the kitchen to get white bread, mayo and chirimenjako, little semi-dried fish. He tops it off with a fresh shiso leaf, and is in heaven. The dialogue is just like the dense, obsessive dialogue in Tampopo. I'll have to give that sandwich a try one day...it is odd enough that it has to appeal only to a really curious food person.

(The second commercial is cute yet odd, like many of the best Japanese commercials.)

Incidentally, I plan to do a lot more vegetable-oriented/lighter cooking, so you'll most likely see the results of that on Just Hungry and Just Bento. This means I'm going to give the yohshoku series a rest for awhile (breaded and deep fried hamburgers tend to stick to the waistline and all.) Besides, we're finally starting to see reasonably locally grown vegetables that aren't cabbage or broccoli! This kind of thing over on Just Bento is what I'll be eating more of. I lost a bunch of weight when I couldn't eat after my surgery, but almost all of it has come right back since my appetite returned! Must. Stem. Belly rebound.

Today, you will be encountering many lame (and perhaps a handful of not-lame) April Fools' Day jokes. But there really is none better, than the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest.

I know I keep bringing it up every year on this day, but it really is that good.

Here's a fairly acceptable YouTube version: