I posted a version of this on Facebook earlier and then deleted it when it annoyed someone over there, but it’s stuck in my head, so here it is.
Food is a major topic in my reading and teevee watching. We watch a lot of cooking shows, and I read a lot of books about food, going beyond cookbooks. Reading about food is often a great backdoor way to learn about other cultures, about history, about people, and more. Everybody eats, right?
But I do have one big pet-peeve that annoys me every time I see it in food writing or in food commentary. That peeve is use of the word inedible to mean “I don’t like this food.”
The most recent example of this, which I saw online earlier, is a chef/restaurateur named David Chang, who is apparently the guy behind the Momofuku chain of restaurants. I’ve heard of Momofuku, and I’ve likely seen Chef Chang at some point on teevee–he has to have shown up on the Food Network or as a guest judge on MasterChef, I would assume. Aside from that, I know nothing about the man, but I saw a link on Facebook to an article where he apparently voiced his negative opinion of the rotisserie chickens at Costco.
Now, I do not have a specific dog in that fight. As admitted, I know nothing about Chef Chang, and I have never tasted a Costco chicken. (As of this writing the Buffalo area still doesn’t even have a Costco, and while one is coming, it will be in the terrible stretch of Niagara Falls Blvd. in Amherst to which we never go.) I have no idea if the chickens are great or not. That’s not the point.
What bugged me is that apparently Chef Chang couldn’t just talk about them being not to his liking, or why he thinks their preparation is lacking, or what errors he thinks Costco makes with the seasoning. Apparently he had to refer to the chickens as inedible.
I have to be honest here: I find that use of inedible really lazy and annoying. There is nothing about those chickens that is “inedible”, unless Chef Chang has some allergy. Whenever a “foodie” uses the word inedible in this way, what I hear is, “My personal palate is so advanced that I cannot bring myself to even swallow this food, and if you can, there is something wrong with you.”
This use of inedible reminds me of an old schtick from the early seasons of Hell’s Kitchen. We still watch this show, even as it’s become really repetitive to the point of being paint-by-numbers. Each season begins with the contestants all being tasked with cooking their “signature dish” for Gordon Ramsay to taste, and he goes through the batch judging each dish and assigning points to the two teams. He’ll say something like “That filet is very well-done, good seasoning, nice job”, or, on the flip side, “The fish is well-cooked, but the puree is bland, too bad.”
Back when the show started, though, Ramsay would have, shall we say, much more dramatic reaction if he didn’t like the dish: He’d take a bite, chew it, then he’d fake gagging, grab a trash can, and do a dramatic rendition of someone vomiting. It was always pretty obvious that he wasn’t actually sickened by the food, and this act has vanished from the show.
That, to me, is the equivalent what calling food inedible just because you don’t like it.
Pizza Hut Pan Pizza is inedible to The Wife, because she’s celiac and it would make her sick. Hemlock is inedible to me and chocolate is inedible to Carla, because those things are poisonous to humans and dogs, respectively. But as much as I hate the stuff, broccoli is not inedible to me.
So, foodies of the world, stop referring to food you dislike as inedible. There are lots of words you can use instead. Yes, maybe this annoys me more than it should, but that’s what a pet-peeve is, right?
All right, who left all these tabs open? Somebody’s gotta clean this shit up!
Yeah, it was me. I left the tabs open. Time to clean house!
:: Is Byron Brown the worst mayor in America?
This piece, in a local site for investigative journalism, came out in the wake of the recent blizzard during which 40 people died and also during which Mayor Brown was pretty much a nonfactor, if not directly MIA.
Problem is, if Brown is the worst mayor in America, whose fault is that?
As Jim Wright often says: If you want a better nation, start by being a better citizen.
:: Cook For Iran: Making Khoresht-e Bademjoon When I’m Homesick
Sarah Gailey is running a feature in which people wrote in with personal stories connected to the recipes to which they return again and again, and this was the first installment. If this is how the series starts, it’s going to be something special to watch unfold.
:: Hubble observes a star being devoured by a black hole.
:: Pizza boxes suck.
Having spent four years in the 90s putting pizzas in boxes, I can attest that indeed, the pizza box isn’t the best thing in the world. However, a big problem is in the pizza itself; unless you’re the person who never eats more than a single slice, the texture of the pizza is already changing from the time it comes out of the oven. If the texture you encounter in the first slice within minutes of emerging from the hot box is your Platonic ideal, you’d best stop eating after that first slice, because with the second slice, things are cooling and congealing and the crust is absorbing moisture again. The best the box can do is vent steam through those little vent slots, but if you got delivery and the box got shoved into that thermal bag? Fuhgeddaboudit!
I’m not sure what the solution is here, but maybe a part of it lies in Americans getting beyond crispy being the texture they desire in so many foods. (Oh, and the best way to reheat leftover pizza is not in the microwave or the oven. It’s in a pan on the stove. That way you can, yes, crisp up the crust again, and slap a lid on it during the last minute of reheating it to get things good and melty again.)
:: A Brazilian art collector claims that a Van Gogh painting on display in Detroit belongs to him.
The art world is wild, innit? This is a fascinating story and I’ll be interested to see how it plays out:
Hat tip to Nerdishly, who actually saw the painting in question before this story broke.
:: Should I divorce my husband after the insane stunt he pulled at our wedding?
The stunt? This:
The advice columnist advises:
And maybe this is surprising coming from a fan of the pie-in-the-face, but I couldn’t agree more. What this guy did was shitty and disrespectful, and it was aggressively so, right in front of everyone. There is nothing lovable about violating someone’s wishes in so brazen and humiliating a way.
(If anyone’s wondering, no, The Wife and I did not do that cake-smashing bullshit at our wedding. I honestly think it’s stupid and tacky and I’ve hated it at every wedding I’ve seen it happen at.)
OK, that’s all my open tabs! Yay! Time to open more tabs!