Thanksgiving is a day for being with family, giving thanks, and—ohmygod, you burned the freaking turkey, didn't you. DIDN'T YOU! Please step away from the canned cranberry sauce and let Anthony Bourdain be your Thanksgiving guide.
Yesterday we learned that our national diet is shifting towards cheap, simple meals like tomato soup and Kool-Aid because of the national economic meltdown. But that doesn't mean your tomato-Kool-Aid soup must be boring and plain! Publishers are flooding the market with a new crop of food magazines, just in time for our collective shift from a nation of gourmet snobs to a nation of bony, coupon-clipping scavengers. 2008 saw the publication of 336 food magazines, up by a third from only five years ago. That's probably way more than necessary! Bad move? Here's a market summary: Interest is up. News stand sales and web traffic are both up. But! Ad pages are down. Several big food magazines have already seen double-digit drops in ad pages. And outside industries like travel and home furnishings that advertise in some food magazines are also hurting, and buying fewer ads. So what are publishers doing? Tying new magazines to celebrity chefs, or to the Food Network. Paula Deen! Sandra Lee! Rachael Ray! All big successes, or predicted to be! Other, more mundane cooking titles will surely fall by the wayside over the next year. The future of American food publishing: "Rachael Ray Tells You How To Use Lard To Re-Fry Your McDonalds Burgers To Raise Your Family's Caloric Intake Above Minimal Survival Levels." Mmmm! [WSJ]
I love that asshole Gordon Ramsay. He combines all the best qualities we seek in television chefs: cooking skills, abusive language, a foreign accent. As well as the occasional tender moment! Kitchen Nightmares, the show where Ramsay travels to nice, homely restaurants in the New York area and berates their owners to distraction before showering them with thousands of dollars worth of new kitchen equipment, is coming back to Fox tomorrow night. And not a moment too soon—with the Republican convention wrapping up, where else will America turn for our televised dose of a blond man with an ill-concealed temper demanding that foreigners accept his help or be destroyed? See the parallels there, zing? Yes. Watch the trailer after the jump; the cockroaches represent Islamofascism:
Most Americans are coarse oafs whose idea of fine dining is a grilled cheese sandwich with Grey Poupon on the side. So we all tend to like shouty British TV chef Gordon Ramsay, who screams cuss words at people on reality shows, which is behavior we all relate to. But other British chefs are not fans! Last week one Ramsay protege called him a "sad bastard" and said he hopes to never speak to him again. And today, famous chef Herbert Berger said celebrity cooks like Ramsay are "petulant," "spoilt divas," and act like "children." Berger, you donkey! You can't possibly hope to win this battle. Though I'm sure it's not fun to work for Gordon Ramsay, it is certainly fun to watch Gordon Ramsay exhibiting his forthright management skills when dealing with his inferiors in the kitchen, as he does in this helpfully uncensored clip from his show Kitchen Nightmares:
McDonald's has pulled all tomatoes out of its stores because of a DEADLY POISON salmonella scare! Winn-Dixie, Ralphs, Vons, and Albertsons supermarkets are pulling some tomatoes from their shelves! Taco Bell, Chipotle, and (a tipster says) Subway: pulling tomatoes! For your safety. Again: THE RAW RED TOMATOES IN YOUR REFRIGERATOR MAY HARBOR DEADLY MICROBES PREPARED TO ROT YOU FROM THE INSIDE. In a servicey attempt to keep all of you in good health, we are pasting this weekend's FDA warning after the jump:
Celebrity Food Network chef Robert Irvine, revealed to be a big fat liar recently by a St. Petersburg Times investigation, has been let go by the network. He spent his last day as host of "Dinner: Impossible" in Washington, DC, cooking Japanese food for a party of 250. Maybe he can go back into the Army, they always need fast cooks like that. [TMZ]
Every once in a while the heavens bestow on us a beautiful shining gift. Something so awesome, so fantabulous, that we can't help but share it with everyone we know. Never in our wildest dreams did we imagine that gift would include Coolio. But oh, does it ever. Here's a program that puts to shame everything currently on the Food Network and the Travel Channel combined. Take that, Bobby Flay. Look into the eyes of greatness and tremble, Paula Deen. Cookin' With Coolio is here and there's no turning back.
First, we had no idea kugel was changing. Second, we had no idea Brooklyn is the kugel capital of the United States. (Why has Marty Markowitz not told us this?) And, third, we really had no idea there were 1,200 words to be written on the topic.
