A Slight Delay

You know the little warning stickers on pill bottles about taking the medication only on a full stomach? That goes double for Man Eat Food. Entry after entry will leave you either salivating, or listening to your growling stomach (or both). What I like about the blog is its catholic quality. This is clearly someone who loves to eat–no arguments from these quarters, certainly–and who, though he loves good food, isn’t a snob about it. It’s a nice antidote to some blogs I’ve seen written by self-proclaimed “foodies,” where the simple pleasure of a good meal gets lost amid the stuff calculated to impress the other foodies. Hold onto your napkins…

I’m suspicious of anything I see advertised on television. So I’d been skeptical for a while about the George Foreman Grill, in any of its guises; if television advertising is cause for suspicion, then a celebrity’s name attached to a product is the kiss of death.

On the other hand, when you live in an apartment with no balcony, no patio, and not quite enough room to swing a cat, it’s not like you can set up a gas grill in the living room. So we caved in and bought the G5, the latest incarnation of the George Foreman Grill. (more…)

Not too many people get all poetic over potato chips. But then, Augusten Burroughs isn’t most people. In Possible Side Effects, there was a passage on crispy spuds that left my mouth watering:

Slow Roasted Lamb and Mint Potato Crisps.
It can’t be, I thought.
But then, it was. And there were other flavors, too. Char-Grilled Steak and Peppercorn Sauce, Oven Roasted Chicken and Thyme.
My God, why aren’t these in America? Why did we ever split with Britain in the first place?

Well, I’ve found Augusten Burroughs’ potato chips, or something pretty darned close, in the Montclair-based London Food Company. They’re made by Walkers, and come in flavors such as Roast Chicken, Beef and Onion (both of which I tried, and both of which tasted true to their names), Prawn Cocktail, and Smoky Bacon. They’re addictive, and they won’t cost you airfare to Heathrow or Gatwick.

Mike Doughty, Golden Delicious. ATO Records.

Anyone that’s been in “the business” long enough, whether it’s music, art, literature, or anything else creative, gets it sooner or later: someone’s going to tell them, either face to face or in print, that they liked them better when they [fill in the blank].  By that measure, Mike Doughty has arrived.

Golden Delicious doesn’t immediately sound like Soul Coughing, nor does it sound entirely like any of the singer’s previous solo efforts, Skittish/Rockity Roll, or even his “proper” ATO debut, Haughty Melodic. And for that, he’s taken a bit of a beating. Some of the critics, it seems, liked him better when he’d slipped his moorings/was still addicted to drugs/still sounded like the bastard stepchild of Roni Size and Billy Strayhorn.

Tough.

Yes, on the surface, this is a much sunnier album. It doesn’t have the drum n’ bass flourishes and bent atmospherics that characterized Soul Coughing, and it’s certainly more polished than his earlier solo offerings. And that, to my ears anyway, ain’t necessarily a bad thing. (more…)