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We're going to take a bit of a respite this morning from Trump and politics, and instead head over to Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. And if you missed it, the Main Story was about chocolate. Which is far easier to digest. That said, it's a serious story and takes a U-turn when it delves into cocoa bean farming. It's very interesting and problematic, though given the general subject, there's a lot of room -- a lot -- for humor.
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On this week's Naked Lunch podcast, hosts Phil Rosenthal and David Wild have a pure food conversation, though understandably beginning more sedate than usual, and start the conversation off by putting it in perspective, as they write, "With the heartbreaking and horrific backdrop of the recent terrorist attacks on Israel, Phil & David have a heartfelt, warm and funny yet timely and emotional conversation about Judaism, food, identity and life with Jake Cohen, the New York Times bestselling cookbook author of Jew-ish: Reinvented Recipes From A Modern Mensch and his latest delicious tome, I Could Nosh: Classic Jewish Recipes Revamped for Every Day" Jake shares his remarkable rise to being a food celebrity and Instagram favorite, with a notable assist from Britney Spears, among others.
While this is a minor food item, it's an extremely tasty one -- and has a limited availability, so I thought I should chime in while it's still on the shelves. If you don't have a Trader Joe's near you, you can skip past all this. But if you do -- Last week, I got a new (and limited seasonal) product at Trader Joe’s that I’d seen when browsing the store, and had read about, so I thought I should mention it, in case it was something anyone here might like. It’s called “Teeny Tiny Apple Pies." As I said, I saw them in the store a few weeks ago, considered getting them -- I love apples, and like apple pie a lot, but it was pumpkin season for me, and I dearly love pumpkin, and had enough of that and other desert products at the time -- so I passed them by. Since then, though, I read several articles on my news feed about how people have fallen in love with the Teeny Tiny Apple Pies, and the seasonal period for them is limited. So, I got a box. They’re small, individual “apple pies.” Four in a box, each a little smaller than a coaster. You heat them up for about five minutes (though I suppose you don’t have to, they’re fully cooked). And it was delicious. I told a friend about them who I thought would be up his alley. He wrote me back with a laugh. "We bought them on Monday. They were gone by Thursday." If it interests you, they’re in the bakery section (of course). For a limited time. And the clock on that started about 3-4 weeks ago. You can read more about them here.  If you missed Last Week Tonight with John Oliver last night, the Main Story was about Food. More specifically food safety, with a look at the FDA and USDA. It's a story that lends itself to a lot of fun, but ultimately has a very serious side and is quite interesting. My one quibble is that when mentioned funding problems the two services have for trying to do their jobs properly, it leaves out the specifics, that the "funding problems" aren't just generic government red tape issues, but stem from Republicans in Congress long being opposed to government regulation. I haven't had a "50 People Try to…" video from Epicurious for a while, so let's correct that. These are the videos were Epicurious magazine sets a pretty basic cooking task and brings 50 people into their kitchen to see if they can accomplish it. And since none of the people tend to be accomplished with cooking, the results tend to be entertaining. Then, at the end, an Epicurious chef comes in to show how it's done. This time, they try to slice an avocado. Compared to most episodes, a few people actually get it right, or pretty close. Though most...well, don't. The other day, I wrote about the song “Time after Time,” which I dearly love, written by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne, from the 1947 movie It Happened in Brooklyn. It became a standard and has had several dozen recordings made over the decades. I thought I’d post one of my favorites. Not just for the specific recording – which is wonderful, performed by Margaret Whiting – but mostly for how masterfully and emotionally it’s used at the very end of the 2009 movie, Julie and Julia. In fact, this is such a cleverly-constructed scene, it's one of my favorite "last scenes" in a movie. A young woman, Julie Powell (played by Amy Adams) has gone to a Smithsonian Institution exhibit re-creating Julia Child's kitchen to honor her hero (who was played by Meryl Streep), after having painstakingly spent a year preparing - and blogging about - every single recipe in the classic cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking that Child struggled for a great many years to co-write and then finally get published. |
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting.    
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