By this time tomorrow, with any luck at all, I'll be done with my latest batch of chili and onto finishing up the Chinese Food.

According to the little pamphlet that comes with the nicotine patches I should be enjoying food more now, which I very well may be. This is around the time, they say, when food begins tasting better, and if it weren't for the sheer quantity of it that I've been shoveling in, there's a good chance that I'd notice something like that. As it is, what I'm noticing is that this batch of chili isn't one I'm likely to mention ever again.

I screwed up with the tomatoes, which are pretty important. I used a can of whole tomatoes instead of crushed ones, or diced ones, and spent a good part of the simmering time trying to cut, slice, and halve the floating red eyes with the side of a wooden spoon, which was about as effective as you can imagine. I even tried mashing them, hoping to turn them into a thick paste, but the mushy red eggs stood up pretty good to that assault, too.

In the end, you could easily count the number of tomatoes that were in the can since each was a spoonful unto itself. The rest of the stuff in the chili wasn't bad and the pot didn't end up too hot or spicy, but I'll go to my grave before I learn anything about how salty or not it was. All the time I was cooking it -- hell, for the past month -- I've been supplementing my breathing with sunflower seeds, which may also explain why I may not be able to taste anything. Even the "lower sodium" variety, which I mix with the ranch, BBQ, or jalapeno flavored bags, is pretty salty judging by my sudden fondness for all things liquid, so I don't know if the chili is too salty, not salty enough, or just right.

I may not make chili during the rainstorm scheduled to begin tomorrow because I also splurged on some Chinese food. It's been about the only prepared food I've had in the past year or so, a bi-monthly delicacy woven with a handful of lunches, and I'm well enough known by the women at the Hunan Kitchen or whatever it's called, that they smile big and wave vigorously when I approach to order. I mangled out my best imitation of a white guy saying Happy New Year in Chinese this time around, but I don't trust my accent and they may have thought I was asking about their scarves or the color of the wall tiles.

Anyway, I don't know. Maybe I'll just give up making chili.

One thing that always surprises me about Christmas is how little mention is made of ham. In many homes and families, Christmas and Easter are celebrated not with turkey, but with ham, a meat which both tastes better than any bird and has the added benefit of excluding Jews and Muslims. Nothing says we're exclusive better than celebrating one's holidays with something specifically forbidden by your rivals.

My niece, who prepared this year's holiday feast for her family, prepared both a turkey and a ham, both of which were lost on one of my grand-nephews who is such a fussy eater that his plate consisted wholly of a couple rolls (which he had to be told were "bread") and some corn. Others among us were a bit more adventurous and enjoyed every part of the meal, including the two flavors of cranberry sauce.

My sister ended up bringing most of the ham home with her, and it serves as a wonderful accompaniment to the small ham that I received from the same cooking niece in a Hickory Farms assortment. I'm not sure what Dorothy Parker would say about one person with two hams, but in my defense neither one is a whole ham.

Last night I barely dented the leftovers with my ham and cheese omelet, and I'm hoping today's ham sandwich will do a better job. If I make it to the market and pick up some more vegetables, maybe I can branch out to include Denver Omelets, which I don't think I've ever made. I could, of course, eat nothing but omelets all day, every day, but until they stop going back and forth about whether eggs are healthy or not, my enjoyment of them is always tinged with guilt and concern.

In any case, I now as much ham as I could want, at least for the week.

No, really. How am I doing? I have no idea.

I ask this because, in honor of the holiday season and the daytime getting longer by something like four seconds a day, I'm drinking a cup of hot green tea. I know, I'm a wuss and am in danger of having my testicles revoked, but that's not the point. I mean, it's not like I've gone completely to the darkside and have started a love affair with cats.

This tea, which I bought because it was on sale and would, I figured, makes a completely tasteless ice tea, and also works pretty good as hot drink in cold weather (not that I'd know anything about that). It also makes me feel refined because if there's one thing I know about Joe Six-Pack, it's that he doesn't drink green tea.

Hot or cold.

In addition to warming up my body's core, according to what's written on the box, this tea also removes free radicals and helps as an anti-oxidant, although I think those are two ways of saying the same thing. I don't have a problem with that, but I'd like some numbers.

I don't ask for that to gauge the effectiveness of this particular tea over its competitors or against other products, it's only that I have absolutely no idea how many free radicals I have running around in my system. Or, how much anti-oxidizing I may need. I suspect it's a lot, but the thing is I don't know if this tea eliminates two free radicals, the limit for advertising the plural, or millions.

And, without having a good idea about how many I have, a trillion removed may either flush my body entirely (for the moment) or barely make a dent in their vast army.

I suppose I could take some level of solace in knowing that, after drinking the tea, I have fewer than when I started, or in the simple argument that any reduction at all is a good thing, but I need to know how good I should feel. If this delightful tea lives up to its claims and is capturing those wily free radicals even as I type, and I'm not doubting it does, I'd just like to know how many. If I knew that, I could figure out how much of this I need to drink to remove them all, or if that's just a pipe dream.

Any reduction may be better than none, but until I know just how much improvement this tea is giving me, I think I'd be a fool to act all happy about it.

It's a delightfully cold and wet day here in Los Angeles, the kind that makes me glad I have some of those warmer clothes. Although we really don't ever get anything in the way of weather here, since this is the movie capital of the world we get as dramatic as we can whenever it's anything other than seventy degrees with bright, blue skies.

So, the local news teams are all on storm watch and, to feed our need for drama, are showing us pictures of water running in gutters.

It's long been my practice to take advantage of days like this to stay inside, as warm as possible, and to cook up a big batch of chili. In a deviation from my normal practices, however, right now I've begun a big pot of chicken soup, which I normally only make when I'm feeling shitty. Right now I'm feeling excellent, though a tad sleepy, so I'm curious to see if this will keep me well or if it might, in confusion, bring on a flu or cold.

To keep the illness demons at bay, I'm not duplicating my get well soon recipe, which changes every time I make the soup, anyway. I'm leaving out my secret, crucial ingredient, the leeks, and using those yellow potatoes that dissolve. I may end up with more of chicken stew than a soup, but since I refuse even to acknowledge the concept of chicken stew, it will most likely be termed a thick soup.

Another thing I'm trying is using a chicken that comes from the butcher shop inside a small local market. It came wrapped up in several layers of plastic wrap and inside a plain plastic bag, so the environment benefits from the lack of ink. I would have been even more adventurous and seen what was inside a mysterious store that specializes in chickens, something I'm often tempted to do, but it was too far to ride on my bike. I think they even have live ones there, and some day I'll see if I have to slaughter my own.

If this summer is remembered for anything, it won't be for my having another birthday, although that happened. The trillion dollars or so that has been lost on the world's markets will soon be regained by those more capable than I, so that won't be an issue for me, either. No, with any luck, I'll remember this summer as one dedicated to French Onion Soup, which has become something of an obsession with me.

Like most things, it all started many years ago when I had it for the first time. My wife at the time and I went out to some nice French restaurant, just the two of us, and I think that was the first time I ever had it. That was the most memorable part of the meal for me, even though it was also my introduction to escargot.

Anyway, all though I've had it off and on in the intervening years, it's only been the past couple of months that I've craved French onion soup. I can't get enough of it, and that's the problem.

It used to be that I could find Progresso French Onion soup even when I wasn't looking for it. It was everywhere. Now, the markets I frequent don't carry that variety, and I've had to try some others. Campbells has one, but it tastes funny to me, metallic, and only works in a pinch. I tried looking up recipes to make my own, but Alton Brown's first step required purchasing a fifty dollar electric skillet, so that put me in a deep funk from which I've barely recovered.

If I had the money for fifty dollar electric skillets, I'd go out to eat.

This past weekend, on a whim, I thought I'd check out this Bristol Farms market, which I'd seen a few of around town. It's like a Gelson's, only, if this is possible, only more expensive. They carry a good selection of all many of the regular favorites, all at a hefty markup, and many other frightfully expensive goods as well. This Bristol Farms, I quickly concluded, is where rich folk go to get the good food that us masses can only ever hope to taste.

Still, I thought it might be worth it to check out their soup selection, if only to see if they had some of that soup I craved. They carry the Progressive brand, but not French Onion. They did, however, have some jar of French Onion soup with a cute calico cover and a health-inspiring name, but it looked to me more like gravy than soup. Not that there's anything wrong with gravy, not if you have a biscuit laying around, but if there's one thing I demand of French Onion soup it's that it contains, you know, onions.

Pieces of onion. Fibrousy pieces of onion. Pieces you can chew. Chew, taste, and swallow.

They had another store name variety, for about six bucks I might add, that also lacked any particulate onion, and I passed on both of them. Is it too much to ask for onions in my onion soup? I did get some dried package, I think (I'll have to check the cupboard, later), which I hope contains more than dried powdered onion dust.

The rich may very well eat better than you and I, but when it comes to French Onion Soup, it looks as if they may as well sip it through a straw.

For reasons of my own, I'm going to have a celebratory dinner tonight that borders on decadent. Although I have no plans on following this or any other diet, it may be called Atkins-like, especially if you ignore the corn and bread.

Tonight, for the first time in God knows how long, I'm going to have some baby back ribs, even though I have no idea what that really means. About a dozen of them. All by myself.

This uncaring display of consumption, I admit, lowers the hog or pig population by one, and I'm none too happy about that, but I take solace in realizing that if not for my dinner, this innocent pig would have met a cruel and unfortunate demise in this planet ruled by fang and claw by some tiger or would have been carried off in the talons of some, less considerate, falcon or other. I have a hunch most of these scavengers don't live a full life, retire to a soothing pasture, and live out their lives regaling their grandpigs on live as they knew it.

In fact, in spite of our continual whining, hardly any animal has anywhere near the stress-free life we humans seem to consider our birthright.

Tonight's mound of rib bones, which I don't think are good for dogs, will be a testament to something or other, if only to my hunger. I also expect them to be lip-smacking good.

I can't explain it, but I seem to have a knack for attracting various food martyrs.

It wasn't worthy of being called an epiphany or anything like that, but the other day it struck me that, throughout my life, people who refuse to eat meat seem to gravitate toward me. I have no idea if this is actually true, but I read or heard something the other week that at some World Championship of Barbecuing or other there were over 100,000 people in attendance, a number that dwarfed some similar Vegetarian Convention that drew, maybe, 1,500. If ten percent of the population is vegetarian, a number that sounds reasonable, I'm getting more than my fair share.

It may be because I enjoy them. Not only am I fascinated by the whole concept of living a life of deprivation, but it's also fun to find out about them. Most, of course, do it for political reasons, and those can range from sincerity to hip parroting of bromides generated by peer pressure. A large number of them refuse to eat some meat or other for religious reasons, a notion I must confess to finding quaint. It was a challenge, when I worked with both a practicing Jew and a Hindu, to find pizza toppings acceptable to both.

The huge majority of these people in my life, at least those who stick around for longer than a week or so, do so without preaching to me about the horrors of my diet. Oh, sure, they make their points known in subtle or not-so-subtle ways and often find excuses to bring up how much better they are than I am, but I try my best to be agreeable. I don't propose the wholesale slaughtering of anything, but I have to admit it's hard to get as worked up for a pasta bean salad as it is for, say, a ham and cheese omelette. I don't think we'd be having so many of these problems if meat didn't, fundamentally, taste better than just about everything else on the planet.

Anyway, what struck me the other day is I may not be as bad as these people think I am. Sure I enjoy eating meat and I have no plans to stop, but a few times a week I'm a vegetarian. Some say this doesn't count, but I think it has to be taken into the mix (or the masala). While some mistakenly call me a carnivore, I can't remember my last meal the consisted entirely of meat.

In fact, as I thought about it, I shouldn't be feeling guilt at all. Out of the hundreds of animals on the planet earth, I regularly only eat about three or four of them. That's a very low percentage, and I believe I should be given a great deal of credit for my consideration. In fact, I don't think I've eaten more than a dozen animals in my entire life, many of them only once or twice.

Instead of picturing me as a ravaging, blood-soaked madman intent on murder, I'm actually quite moderate. Chickens and pigs can no doubt fear me, but giraffes can continue to graze in peace. Out of the entire bird population, only chickens and turkeys have any reason to look around with trepidation, and I'm not even sure I've ever eaten one of them that wasn't specifically grown for the purpose of ending up on a dinner plate or between two slices of bread.

Eating just four animals regularly isn't bad at all, especially when you consider the number of plants I consume.

The other day I was looking over some web page detailing the ten worst things to eat and was not surprised to see that I'd eaten all of them at one time or other. The list included all the usual suspects, everything from sodium nitrate to trans fats, so it was pretty boring.

They did mention MSG, which no doubt thrilled the Accent people, and mentioned that if you wanted a little more taste to add salt. Which they also mentioned as a bad thing to ingest, further down the list. Sugar was on there, too, in a number of forms, but the list was mostly all those man made things added to preserve freshness, synthetic sweeteners, and Olestra, that fat-reducing thing that causes anal leakage.

I got so upset with my diet after reading that article that I decided to have a simple, healthful dinner.



My intentions were good, but even after eating six carrots, I can't say that I was satisfied. Yes, they were grown by my sister so were probably organic and as fresh as could be, but, somehow, I wanted more not very long at all after devouring them.

Yes, it's more than most people on the planet ate today and I'm sure it did my eyes a world of good, but even with all that going for it, I felt something was lacking. I considered munching the greens, which I'd discarded, but I've never heard of anyone doing that and wasn't about to experiment. I guess it's fine in a salad or something, but I was feeling more hungry than adventurous and ended up throwing a chicken breast on the grill. And, fixing a side order of mashed potatoes with olive oil and garlic.

No one kissed me, but my tummy was happy.

I’m feeling a tad under the weather, by which I mean I have a sore throat, headache, and sniffles.

From what some people tell me, it’s all because of my diet, and I’m in no position to argue.

According to people who know about these things, the foods I eat are often loaded with chemicals. These chemicals, the thinking goes, then hang around in my body and get in the way of it properly performing or actually cause it harm. People who eat right, who only eat food as nature provides it, don’t suffer all these illnesses.

Me? I don’t know. There’s certainly something in their argument, but my mind is in no condition to do any heavy thinking right now. I’ve always been of the belief that what I put in stomach most often gets tossed aside if my body can’t figure out what the hell it is, but maybe my digestive tract is more like a pack rat and holds all this crap just in case it needs it some day. In that sense, it would be a lot like me.

I’m not sure how sick I am because I don’t have a very good frame of reference. I have no idea how you, or anyone else, feels when they’re sick, but that bothers me. I’m not sure if I’m suffering as bad a headache as anyone has ever experienced or if this is one that most people would just shrug off. I feel like a weenie when I hold my head and moan, however quietly, but — dammit — I feel like shit.

Of course, I made some chicken soup. With noodles. And, with a once-happy free range organic chicken and organic carrots. Yeah, it’s incredibly expensive, but the rest of the ingredients were those everyone else gets to eat. I even made it with tap water.

With chicken, noodles, leeks, carrots, celery, sugar snap peas, and parsley, it looks like a very good soup. It tastes, however, only like salt. I’m not sure if that’s because I added too much salt or if that’s because salt is about the only thing I can taste. It didn’t hurt my throat, and I’m not thirsty, so I think I got the salt just right.

If I did, that would be one thing.

In spite of my many accomplishments and adventures, it's not true that I've done everything. Not only have I failed to attempt most of the current crop of extreme activities, but I've also missed many far more normal rights of human passage.

For example, I've never really been on a diet.

Part of the reason for that, of course, is that I'm a guy, and we're eternally attractive and don't have to worry about our looks at all, much less losing them. I spend as little time looking at myself in a mirror as I do working on New Year's resolutions, and I've never owned a bathroom scale in my life.

One thing I may have in common with dieters, however, is sudden cravings and obsessions with food. The times when I've been hungry I find myself thinking about food, although in my everyday life I think about food going in only slightly more often than I do about it coming out, which is to say, rarely at best.

The past couple of nights, though, I've found myself thinking about particular foods. I'm not sure why, I'm not particularly hungry, but it intrigues me nonetheless. Maybe it's some primal, physical response, a way of my body alerting me to needing something. That would be pretty cool, if my body did that.

That would require my body to be able to take inventory, something I'm not sure it's capable of. It would also require my body to have some manner of cross-reference, and that's a step that would floor me. Why my body needs a particular mineral or something isn't much of a mystery, but why it thinks that craving can best be fixed by a pastrami sandwich is.

But that was the other day. Right now I'm thinking about, of all things, cheddar cheese. I think I used to like cheddar cheese, but that was before I gave much thought at all to any food, before I was thirty. I always thought of cheddar cheese as something routinely layered on hamburgers, shredded over a taco, or melted between two slices of bread in a pan, but pretty much took it for granted.

Then, I got married and my wife made some comment about orange cheese, and I quickly wised up. We ate lots of cheese when I was married, fine Italian ones, and I soon learned to appreciate just how tasty and good a truly fine cheese could be.

Which is why it's so surprising to me, now, to want a slice of cheddar.

Maybe it's a comfort food thing, or a retreat, or maybe my body knows something I do not.

The FDA, I hear, has decided that cloned beef, pork, and goat is fit for human consumption and can be sold without any special labels. This has gotten some people quite upset, and I'm not quite sure why. Maybe there's chemicals involved, or something like that.

Now, I admit there's something of an "eww" factor, but there has to be more to it than that. We've been cloning plants for years, eons even, and I've never heard so much of a peep about that. My grandmother, a saintly woman if ever I knew one, would regularly go on walks around the neighborhood, collecting "slips" from plants she wanted to grown. Once she got them back here, in a few months we'd have a genetically identical plant growing in our own yard.

Okay, maybe the neighbors could complain about that, but they never did. They never caught her, either, which may have something to do with it.

As to these cloned animals, I should admit that I'm no rancher. Nor am I a biologist or dietitian. I have, however, seen my fair share of ads, movies, and TV shows where they show those fast-talking auctioneers, the kind they have at cattle and sheep auctions. I once spent an afternoon in a sheep tent at a county fair where I learned that the 4-H kids use Woolite to wash their sheep, but I'm not sure that's relevant here.

These cloned cattle, for instance, go for around five to ten thousand a pop, which I don't think is cheap. There's no reason to believe, now, anyway, that anyone is going to be buying any cloned steer and slaughtering it, not for that initial cost. I have no idea what a calf usually goes for, but I doubt it's this kind of serious money.

What I'm suspecting is that the animals chosen for cloning are especially good at producing milk, impregnating, or something like that. Or, they could have especially supple hides. What I'm guessing the market for these cloned animals is, is to have them in the herd. I expect they cost about as much to raise as a normally produced calf, so there's no reason for any rancher to buy one at, say, ten times the cost of a normal calf just to slaughter it.

Even if they were, I'm not sure I should care. Last I knew, cloning wasn't some sort of Frankenstein process. It's more of an in vitro fertilization type thing, with DNA pushed into some cell that's later implanted in some womb.

The one thing it isn't is Soylent Green, but a lot of people are acting as if it were.

About a month ago a new gas grill popped into my life, the first one I've ever used. It's not hooked up to the gas main or anything, but after years and years of charcoal, lighter fluid, and hickory wood chips, it's remarkably easy to use.

Turn the spigot on the big, fat can of gas, turn a burner, press an igniter button, and next thing you know there are flames, over which you can grill.

The old way of cooking, with the briquets, I still call barbecuing. I've heard there's some difference between the two terms (barbecuing uses lower temperatures), but the biggest difference for me is the ease. This grill is as easy to use as a stove top, but it's outside.

Over the past month I've cooked a couple pounds of ranchera or flap meat, two or three chicken breasts, some sausages, and, tonight, some Thai-spiced rib meat stuff that I've never heard of before. The only thing I've been able to cook well, however, is tomatoes, and I chalk that up to them being edible before they ever touch the grill.

I even looked at the instruction book, and not just to assemble the beast. In it there was some talk of what seemed to me an astronomical number of BTUs, but I have to admit I don't understand that scale one bit. In that sense, they're a lot like decibels. I know what they measure, sort of, but I don't have the same feel for them that I do for temperature.

If you tell me that it will ten degrees, I have a pretty good idea what to expect, whether you're talking Farenheit or Centigrade. I have no such base for either BTUs or decibels, but I'm not so dumb as to not know that more is better.

That means that I have no idea if the thousands, or hundreds, or tens of thousands of BTUs that this thing kicks out are a lot, although they are a marketing point. What I do know is that it doesn't cook as quickly as my old charcoal barbecues, but I guess the selling point is more control than speed with these things.

It doesn't help at all, I don't think, that most of this grilling I'm doing now is done in the dark. Oh, sure, I've got an outside light, but it's directly behind me, so when I cook I cast a shadow on the only thing I'm interested in lighting up. I haven't failed to the point of making chicken jerkey (yet), and I'm sure I'll get better over time.

As thrilling as it may be to be in step with tools and techniques of modern cookery, I miss my old barbecue. It may not miss me much, but I still feel sort of like a traitor.

I'm not sure how far this can be extended, but I may try to push this three thing into another area of everyday life: eating.

And, by eating, I mean mine. As in, dinner. And by pushing, I mean "let's see what happens when I divide the food I eat into the same three categories."

I'm not sure I've ever actually said it, but according to early TV sitcoms a very common question is "What's for dinner?" Borrowing from before, we can divide dinner into three categories (again, in handy bulleted format):

• What I will eat for dinner


• What I should eat for dinner


• What I want to eat for dinner

I'm not what you'd call a good grocery shopper even though I do it a lot. I shop not only when I should be doing something else, but often when I don't need to do it at all. I think part of that is because I know how to successfully maneuver my way around stores filled with food. It's far less intimidating for me to buy something I know about, so perhaps it's just as a way of getting a feeling of accomplishment that I'll head to the grocery store and pick up some pineapple tamales or a bag of frozen corn.

I know, down deep inside, that I can do that task pretty much without failure.

The problem stems from the fact that I never can buy just the one thing I need. I invariably wander the aisles, picking up things that I can envision myself preparing or eating, and then forgetting all about most of them once I get them home and safely into a cupboard or the refrigerator.

Which brings me to one of the main determinates in answering ""What's for dinner?"

As often as I can remember, I base my dinner on what I expect to be on the verge of spoiling. I don't like to waste food on principle and can't really afford to do so, so as often as not what I have for dinner is what I don't think can wait another day. One of the problems with this scheme is that what's about to turn inedible is often something stupid, like a tomato. While I've got entrees waiting to be enjoyed, I end up whipping up something just to use a tomato or two.

In any case, "what I should eat" ends up being populated not so much with what would be a good thing to eat as what I can't put off eating any longer. I know most people would consider the answer to "what should I eat" to be some intellectual exercise involving amino acids, the nearness of the farm, and maybe even political ideologies, but I guess I'm not that evolved.

What I want to eat is, at the moment, pie. What I had for dinner was leftover Dinah's chicken (the Little Miss Sunshine meal of choice) that my sister bought, thinking she could stomach it, and some frozen vegetables. I'm sure I failed the amino acid test, didn't score many points on the "eat local" front, and failed, miserably, to pass anyone's political litmus test.

But I'm full. And I don't have to throw out any chicken.

When I'm sick I often make a big pot of chicken soup. Not only does it take my mind off my sniffles, but it's also a good way of getting rid of that crisper full of deteriorating vegetables.The first thing you need to do is buy or slay a chicken. I don't raise them, so I go to the store and get one in a convenient plastic bag. I put a big pot on the stove and pull the chicken out of the bag, making sure to toss out the healthy, good pieces that they stick inside the bird. Yes, I know that those goodies are the equivalent of the wheat germ and kernel and are prized by those who are concerned about their health and well-being, but I don't eat innards. To me, animals are prized for their muscles.

Into the pot I drop the washed chicken, sometimes including the neck, and add as much water as the pot will hold. Then, I go do something else for an hour or so and looking at naked ladies on the Internet makes the time pass quickly.

After an hour or so, I skim off the foam and pull the chicken from the pot and set it on a carving board. If I threw the neck in, I throw it away or remove the bones and treat my dog. Then I go do something else until the chicken is cool enough to handle and, once again, this step doesn't necessarily include marvelling over the female body.

When the chicken's cooled, I peel off the skin and give it to the dogs, who, by now, consider me godlike, and strip off all the meat and put it back in the pot. I then add salt, pepper, and whatever spices I can find in the cupboard. Last week when I did this, this meant basil, paprika, sage, rosemary, thyme, and celery seeds. There are traditional spices, which I'm sure you're all aware of, but if you don't add too much of something, you can toss in anything just to get rid of it.

I then raid the refrigerator for vegetables. Pretty much anything not slimy or limp can be added, and anything that doesn't go in the pot goes in the trash. So, not only do I get a big pot of soup, I clean the refrigerator! Carrots are a must, but last week all I had was one small bag of baby carrots so they had to carry a weight far beyond their tiny mass. Celery is another given, and as often as not I'll chop it on an angle just to be different. When I don't do that, I try to slice the stalks lengthwise to see how poor my hand-eye coordination is or how far I can make it down the stalk before leaving the middle and venturing off to the side.

This secret ingredient that makes this recipe mine is leeks. I'm never sure which part to use, but I always use just the green part. Those are cut into one inch squares, and I'm convinced they add something to the mix, if only a slight green tint. Last week I also added a green bell pepper and, a half hour or so before the soup was done, fresh parsley and green onions. And a potato because I'd added too much salt, skins and all.

I let the soup cook for another hour or so and, since it had too much green and not enough other colors, I added a red bell pepper, which honestly could have rattled around in the drawer for another week or so. To make the soup noodly I usually add flat egg noodles, but I didn't have any so I tossed in a healthy portion of bowtie pasta along with those last roughage adding ingredients.

When the pasta was done, about as long as it took me to watch some news, I put a portion in a big bowl and ate it with bread heels, getting rid of those, too. Not only was the soup salty, but it was soft enough that my recently stitched gums stayed stitched!

No,my soup isn't anywhere near as consistent as Progresso's or Campbell's, and, perhaps, not as good, but that just adds to my enjoyment. Since I usually only eat this when I'm stuffed up, I never know how it tastes, but going through the steps of creating it takes my mind off my troubles.

Usually.

The extent of my experience with raising cattle for food isn't limited to just buying some in a market or ordering it in a restaurant. I once drove by a slaughterhouse in Oklahoma City, which should count for something.

According to the news, some 3500 cattle have perished in Colorado and Kansas because of the recent storms. I have, as noted above, no idea how many cattle are killed every day to give us prime ribs and flank steaks, so I don't know how great a tragedy this is. On the news they showed some cattle standing in snow and receiving airlifts of hay (in cubes, not rolls), but I guess they aren't all getting it.

Those must have been the lucky ones.

Last year I began hearing about "grass fed" cattle, and the implication was that's the best kind. It's also more humane, or bovine. The livestock stuck in the snow weren't eating grass, and I guess that's the problem. Drawing on my wealth of cow-related knowledge, mentioned above, as well as the fact that whenever I drive cross country I always see herds of cows  mucking about,  I'm guessing there must be ten thousand cows trapped in dilapidated  housing for every one I see grazing. If not, there wouldn't be such a premium placed on this grass fed idea.

This week, at least, I'm not sure the corralled livestock wasn't faring better. Still, cows that eat grass are no doubt better off than the ones eating other cows' spinal columns, but I don't think that's as big a threat any more. From what I've seen there are plenty of cows eating grass and, besides, as has been pointed out, cows are merely digestive systems with legs.

Whether or not there's a God, and whether or not we're supposed to eat meat aside, nature could hardly have come up with a better source than cows. They're slow, they don't have much in the way of defenses, and they're square. If I were to design something to eat I could hardly do better. Other than legs and a head, they're all food.

At the moment cold food, but that just makes their milk taste better.

Years ago I undertook a challenge and spent the better part of a week trying to make pancakes. While I'd always enjoyed pancakes, I'd never thought much about making them, but after Stefania decided that the key to her happiness would be to have a world not so filled with Russells I found myself exiled to a small apartment near a supermarket I'd never before visited.

It was a Hughes Market, sort of a chain, and I always called it the Huge Market because I thought that was either funny or cute. They had everything supermarkets do, but I remember most was that they'd sharpen my kitchen knives for free and they carried a pancake mix that I loved, even though I only used it for waffles.

After dropping off some knives to sharpen, I bought some of this pancake mix that came in a simple brown paper bag. It required eggs, oil, and milk to be turned into batter, and I think it was some sort of whole wheat mix, which was new to me.

My mom occasionally made serviceable pancakes, but mostly I remembered all the ones from the pancake breakfasts that Little League, DeMolay, and the Indian Guides held. One of the kid's fathers would always spend the morning grilling pancakes while others worked sausages or hash browns, and the pancakes were always as perfect as a marketing photo.

My own attempts were quite a bit less succesful, and I was determined to do better.

At the time I had two sets of cookware: Le Crueset cookware and regular cast iron. The Le Crueset was blue, not that that matters, and the cast iron was as black and shiny as obsidian. After a week of struggles and failures and more than one bottle of maple syrup, I was able to produce very good pancakes and pretty much retired.

I thought of that earlier today when I tried, again, to make pancakes. Not only can't I find a mix I like, I've forgotten how to make pancakes. I needed something soft to eat because of my tooth, number 26, which is seriously loose and causing me much distress, but I hadn't realized that, unlike bike riding, it's entirely possible to forget how to make pancakes.

The first one refused to stay in one piece when I flipped it, and the second one did the same. I ended up with a pile of fried pancake batter that looked not unlike my early attempts at omelettes, but it served both important requirements:

1) It was filling

2) It was edible

The fact that it looked like shit hardly matters at all, but I think I'd best return to using the cookware on which I had my earlier successes. It can only be that, and not that I've forgotten how to make pancakes!

I suspect most people eating better than I do, by which I mean their meals aren't quite so random.

I typically come up with my meal by using one of three effective and well-practiced means. First, I often getting a craving or yen for some particular meal, and that's what I eat. I have this theory, see, that when my body needs whatever the hell it is that brocolli supplies that I'll want brocolli. So, for that reason, I take these cravings seriously.

Also, they seem to be fairly diverse, so that goes along with that moderation thing.

Unfortunately as I've gotten older my tastes have become somewhat more complex. About half the time, in spite of my cravings, I don't have the necessary ingredients to make the meal I most want. Yes, chicken soup would be good, but I don't have the requisite heel of bread to go with it. I've learned the best way to eat a big bowl of soup or stew is with a heel of bread to soak up much of the liquid and give me something to do while the meal cools down, and without the bread I can't proceed with eating.

Which brings up the next meal determiner: availability. Although I don't get yelled as often for it any more, one good way for me to choose my meal is to open the cupboards and refrigerator and stare inside, looking at what's on hand. This way has the advantage of insuring that I won't want a tasty omelette when, in fact, I have no eggs, but it doesn't always work. In fact, more often than not, I stare and either forget why I'm looking, or end up grabbing something completely unsuited for a healthy dinner, such as a jar of pickles.

That also explains all that earlier yelling.

The method I use as often as any, and the one I'm forced to use tonight, is the expiration method. No matter what I want, I have food that absolutely must be eaten today or else it will go bad. I hate throwing food away and can ill afford to do so, so tonights's dinner will have to incorporate the rest of those cute pearl tomatoes. Of course, this also brings up the "ingredients on hand" problem, since I need to come up with something that will permit me to use up the last of those tomatoes, and right now I have no idea what that will be.

Also, under the expiration method, is the sub priority of the above-mentioned cost. A ham that's threatening to become as green as my neighbor's lawn is more critical to eat than, say, those tomatoes. I'd prefer to lose the two dollar vegetables over the ten dollar ham, so I'm supposed forced to eat the most expensive thing that's going bad.

Sure, it's a system, but I'm not sure it's a good one.

Something's happened when I was paying attention to other matters, and I'm not sure who's responsible. It could be marketing geniuses, or it might be those white lab coat guys.

The other day I was out shopping and bought a small container of very healthy looking tiny tomatoes. I like those things, they're fun to throw on salads and especially good for tossing in my favorite pasta sauce, the one that starts with olive oil, garlic, and hot dry peppers.

The thing that surprised me was about these tomatoes is that they're named pearl tomatoes, well, that and they don't look to me like pearls at all.
There was a time, when I was growing up, that tomatoes were either plum, cherry, or just plain tomatoes. Those days were easy. Then I started seeing vine-ripened tomatoes all over the place, and those were much tastier than the plain old ones and, also, had a bit of twig on them. That made them look natural and, no doubt, increased sales by a factor of ten.

Once on a camping trip near the Colorado River a whole group of us were out of our minds and began craving something to eat, something refreshing that would soothe our palates and counter-act the oppressive, tortuous sun. We came up with salad as what we wanted, and I began joking about a field of cherry tomatoes that lay just over the nearby hills. I almost convinced someone to go get some, but it was mostly a running joke for the duration of the trip.

Cherry tomatoes, we knew without doubt, would save us.

I haven't seen cherry tomatoes in years, but many of their cousins populate the food stores I go to. There's the above-mentioned pearl tomatoes, but I've also seen grape tomatoes, and I'm damned if I can tell the difference. Cherry tomatoes were round, but these later small fruits (vegetables?) have the plum shape. Plum, or Roma, tomatoes are usually available, and I'm grateful for their continued presence since they're excellent with fresh Mozarella, basil, a drizzling of oil, and salt and pepper. That's a summertime treat that looks like the Italian flag if you don't look too closely.

I have no idea when this tomato madness will end, what other "varieties" they'll invent, but for my money we've done enough.

In a recent entry on Cybele's Candyblog there's a comment (which I wrote) that got me to thinking...

I'm sure it's been around for awhile and I'm just learning about it, but evidently "single plantation" chocolate is now the choice of connoisseurs. The idea, obviously, is that like vintage wines, chocolate from one source can have more distinctive properties than "varietals," or combinations of chocolates from many places. The old arguments remain, mostly about consistency, but I strongly encourage this advance.

I just wonder ... what's next?

I've never thought very much about vinegar, but not that many years ago it developed a following and the market was flooded with all kinds. There arose a group of vinegar afficianados and whether or not they actually looked down their noses at us, the world of vinegar was never the same.

If I had to guess what commodity would next get this treatment, my money would be on soy sauce. Like vinegar, it's in everyday use and there are differences, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if designer and high-end soy sauces were the next big thing.

Of course, I could be completely wrong and it's likely that true soy sauce lovers already have an devoted underground. I wouldn't know. But, if not soy sauce, logically there isn't a reason for just about every staple to develop a cultish following.

Peanut butter wouldn't be exempt from this, nor would beets. I can well imagine that in the next hundred years all sorts of things, from almonds to wheat, could become exlusive. Sure, there's still be the old varietals for the hoi polloi, but those with a discriminating palatte could enjoy limited editions. Yes, the 2067 crop of Mountain's Breeze brocolli may be a bit to acidic for many, but that's the chance you take.

But my money's on soy sauce.

The American Public is a fickle lot, and I say that because I picture them as being several hundred of me.

Over the past couple years two big trends have surfaced. One was the arrival of the Atkins and South Beach diets, which tore a hole in the consumption of carbohydrates, and the other has been the explosive growth in organic, natural foods.

Whether or not such foods are healthier or tastier isn't my point. What has happened is Whole Foods and similar markets are taking the marketplace by storm, and this has not gone unnoticed by Wall Street.

Somewhere, in some pitiable cubicle, many people are slaving away checking numbers, and they've discovered this stuff sells. Not only does it sell, but it sells almost exclusively to the higher class of consumers, the ones not very affected by the rising price of gas.

About a year ago, when gasoline prices first hit $3.00, the first markets to notice a slowdown were places like those dollar stores and WalMart. Nordstroms, Tiffany, Gelsons, Coach didn't notice a thing. People who can afford the higher-priced goods may very well complain about gas prices, but it doesn't much matter to their pocketbook. An extra twenty or thirty dollars a week for gas isn't much felt when you can drop $100 - $200 shoes on a whim.

When not  outfitting themselves with nice looking things, many of these people have caught onto better, pricier groceries. And, if they're willing to spend the money, one after another of the large corporations are more than happy to grab a slice of that pie.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong, I guess, with corporations making money, but it bothers me no end that that is all they do. While they're now going after the health-conscious consumer, they could just as easily have gone after those who developed a sudden fad for, say, purple foodstuffs. If that had been the case, the corporations and the market would have reacted precisely the same, with tons of purple goods all over the place and marketed up the whazoo.

What corporations are doing for food is the same as the auto manufacturers are doing with the hybrid car. Now, I love the Prius as an auto, both theoretically and in practice, but I don't understand its cult status. Toyota isn't making them because they're good for the environment, they're making them because there's a market for them. If Toyota made only hybrid cars I could honor the company,  but for them it's merely another cash line. They'd be as quick to jump on any other possible source of income and market the hell out of it, and they've done that in the past.

Same for Honda, GM, and the rest. They're not so much innovating and hoping to change the world as they are hoping to wrest every cent they can from what the public wants.

Or, can be convinced is desirable.