BeigeJournal

While driving home I saw in the distance something on the road. I slowed down, and when I saw that they were large rocks scattered across the road I stopped, pulled over, and got out to clear the road. The motorist behind me also stopped and helped clear the road. As we did so, several people passed by at high speed in the oncoming-traffic lane. They managed to avoid hitting anything. So, you’re driving at night. Two cars ahead of you have stopped. Do you stop too, assuming that something, some hazard, caused those motorists to stop, or do you pass at high speed, certain that they stopped solely to annoy you, that it is inconceivable that the road could be blocked?

Last Chance to Eat: The Fate of Taste in a Fast Food World, by Gina Mallet. McClelland & Stewart, 2004.

This is a wonderful book about food by Toronto-based journalist and food critic Gina Mallet. She grew up in post-war England, which gave her experience with bad food, certainly, but her family’s efforts, at home and while traveling, to eat well also brought her into contact with much better food, at a time before corporate farming, health scares, and government regulation.

Her experiences as a youth are quite interesting to me, as I’m not too familiar with life in the UK at that time. Things have changed in Europe, certainly. She writes quite a bit about the history of French cuisine, and a great deal about how attitudes toward and the production of eggs, meat, cheese, and fruit have changed. She writes extensively about how cheeses have been strongly effected by regulations, in the EU as well as the USA, restricting the use of raw milk.

The book contains some recipes here and there, and is written with a positively inspirational tone of joy of food. After reading the egg chapter I was inspired to make my first omelet. I’ve started exploring the cheese section of my favorite store for interesting cheeses (Drunken Goat Cheese, anyone?). I highly recommend the book.

My mother lives in Green Valley, Arizona, and while I was visiting during the summer we ate twice at the Longhorn Grill.

This place was recently remodeled, adding a quite nice dining room to the original small bar. There is a screened outdoor area, though in southern Arizona summer is not the outdoor dining season. The building has a distinctive appearance:

I had a quite nice steak on our first visit there. As you can imagine, steaks are a big portion of the menu there. The second visit was for the all-you-can-eat pizza night. Though it is all-you-can-eat, the initial serving is plenty for someone my size who plans to remain my size. It was pretty generic thin-crust pizza, but the Green Valley area doesn’t offer much in the pizza department, or for that matter pretty much any other department, so it is serviceable. You can’t deny that the building is unusual.

I stopped in at Pizzeria Piccola in Wauwatosa for dinner on Tuesday before the Barb’s Basement concert. It’s one of those charming locations, with a wood-burning brick oven on the first floor and somewhat rusticated tables on the second. They operate on the order and pay at the counter, then take your drink and sit down to wait for your food to be brought to you system.

The pizzas are thin crust, sized for one person. I tried the shrimp and pesto. It was quite good, though I’d say just a bit bland and also a bit oily. The berry gelato was excellent. In the pizza-for-one market this place is far better than the usual suspects.