John Gushue . . . Dot Dot Dot

Picking the right turkey

As Thanksgiving approaches (in Canada, that is; for readers in other countries, it's this weekend), a carnivore's mind turns to turkey. My wife sent this to me. I laughed. Hope you will too.

A thought on running to the store

"The odds of going to the store for a loaf of bread and coming back with only a loaf of bread are three billion to one."
- Erma Bombeck

Ruth Reichl, the closure of Gourmet magazine, and two tweeted moods

Today's closure of Gourmet magazine came as a shock. Yes, the publishing industry is in a brutal state and everyone is feeling the squeeze ... but Gourmet? It survived wars and cultural revolutions and every media phenemenon since radio. I don't read it regularly, but I always try to record the spinoff show, Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie, which airs Saturday afternoons on PBS (and plays on our television whenever we have a few minutes to enjoy its gastronomic tourism style of journalism).

I checked editor Ruth Reichl's Twitter feed just now to see what she had to say. I found the contrast between today's note and a completely different one from Saturday almost heartbreaking.

A T-shirt about romance and Timbits

Awww. As seen here. For more of my virtual T-shirt collection, click on the link below.

Embracing carrots

Harvest time is here; imagine pulling something like this out of the ground. It's one of the pics of unusual and recrafted vegetables in this collection.

Wicked Scoff goes to Mexico

One of the newer blogs with a local, um, flavour is A Wicked Scoff, which is published from New England (hence the "wicked" part - they use the term more fervently there than here) by an expat from Newfoundland (hence the scoff). Check it out, particularly this latest post with recipes for a salsa, guacomole, and grilled chicken with a lime rub. Yummy, indeed.

A thought on fancy mushrooms

"Life is too short to stuff a mushroom."
- Storm Jameson

Julia on Julie: Child couldn't take Powell seriously

This weekend coming, Julia & Julie opens, providing grown-ups with something they might want to see amid the special effects, explosions and noise. Martha read Julie Powell's book a while back and is hankering to see it. I'm curious to see what Meryl Streep does with Julia Child.

Some dots I had not connected was that Powell started her now-famous blog (on Salon) in 2002, before Child's death ... meaning that Child would have been aware of Powell's recipe-a-day project before she died. (Powell's book appeared in 2005.)

And did Child have an opinion of the homage, not to mention Powell's skills?

Oh, yes. And it was devastating, according to Judith Jones, Child's biographer. In an interview with Publisher's Weekly leading up to the movie's release, she lays it on the line:

Jones says Child did not approve of Powell’s cook-every-recipe-in-one-year project. The editor and author read Powell’s blog together (Julie and Julia was published a year after Child’s 2004 death). “Julia said, ‘I don’t think she’s a serious cook.’ ” Jones thinks there was a generational difference between Powell and Child. “Flinging around four-letter words when cooking isn’t attractive, to me or Julia. She didn’t want to endorse it. What came through on the blog was somebody who was doing it almost for the sake of a stunt. She would never really describe the end results, how delicious it was, and what she learned. Julia didn’t like what she called ‘the flimsies.’ She didn’t suffer fools, if you know what I mean.”

Ouch. Especially given that the film, at least, is being marketed by highlighting the parallels in the two women's lives.

Julie Powell, meanwhile, is still blogging. You can catch up with her evidently unedited prose here.

Pesto: The slideshow

Martha made a batch of pesto earlier this month, and was good enough to document it. And it's every bit as good as it looks.

Ruth Reichl gives the Four Seasons the Kiss-off

Ruth Reichl has for years been one of the best-known food writers in the world ... and that's even before most people knew what she looked like. For years, including a prominent stint at the New York Times in the 1990s, Reichl reviewed restaurants while deploying elaborate getups and costumes. She's now the editor-in-chief at Gourmet, and appears on the PBS program the magazine sponsors, Diary of a Foodie, which is really enjoyable.

This video plays on Reichl returning to the reviewing racket; it's kind of amusing, even though the decidedly non-actorly people in it are as wooden as restaurant tables. Give Reichl points for trying.

In the meantime, you may like to follow her Twitter feed.