Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Cook Like a Chef — but Fast
catty1: Oh, yeah, do I ever miss Berkeley Bowl. I didn't even live in Berkeley, I envied all my friends who did, and when visiting them I'd often stop off on the way and stuff the trunk with an orgy of BB produce. (For that matter, my local supermarket in SF, a very small chain called Andronico's, was better than our Henry's, although not quite as cheap -- it was more like a cross between Ralph's and Whole Foods. Always lots of fun stuff in the veggie case to play with, including local-grown lion head mushrooms, celeriac, and one year around xmas, they even had scorzonera, Italian black salsify, which roasted up like a charm.) Sigh.— June 1, 2009 12:52 a.m.
Cook Like a Chef — but Fast
Ms. Erickson: It's your job to defend your employers' product, but the underlying problem with high fructose corn sugar is that it's cheaper than sugar due to government subsidies for the huge industrial agriculture companies growing corn (much of it genetically modified -- ooh boy, Roundup resistant!). (That's why American Coca Cola has HFCS, while Mexican Coke, made in a sugar-growing country, still uses sugar -- which actually tastes better and sells for a premium here.) I know very well that HFCS is no higher carb or cal than sugar -- BUT because it is so cheap, it is in absolutely EVERYTHING you buy from the supermarket -- whole-grain breads, canned and frozen veggies, fruit juices, flavored waters, frozen entrees (even for foods that a good home cook would never make with enough sugar that it would even be listed on a label, much less high on the label), etc. Most of these products don't need this amount of sweetening. (Example: I use 1/4 - 1/2 tsp. sugar for 1 gallon of spaghetti sauce, home-cooked. Most supermarket spaghetti sauces have HFCS listed fairly high on the label.) The result is that it's conditioned the American palate to develop a "sweet tooth," to expect a taste that's sweeter than the natural taste of the ingredients not just at dessert, but all the way through every meal. That is, it's become a panacea remedy for the loss of flavor in our industrially-grown foodstuffs. (I'm a gardener. Unbelieveable the difference between home-grown and supermarket products!) And you can look at me as one of those "nut cases" (or as a Wise Person, or even a Wise Guy) but I'm among the many serious food people who believe that this inescapable ubiquity of HFCS may be a contributory factor to the increasing epidemics of obesity and diabetes type 2 in the US, both of which started to "blossom" with the increasing use of HFCS. In any event, even if your product no worse than sugar, agave nectar is a better product, a sweetener with a lower glycemic index -- the way that whole grains (e.g. brown rice) have lower glycemic indexes than refined ones (e.g. white rice), hence better for people watching their carbs for whatever reason, whether weight problems (low-carb is easier long-term than low-cal) or high blood sugar. If not for lobbyists like your employers, perhaps the government would stop forcing us taxpayers to subsidize your product, which I do not think is a good product for our overall health. And, by the way, it sure tastes BLAH, not a lively, vegetal sweetness (like Mexico's azucar moreno, semi-refined light-brown sugar) but a sort of dull saccharinity -- that's why I prefer Mexican Coke!— June 1, 2009 12:41 a.m.
Pursuit of Happy Hours
To Neil Allen: (Letters, May 7) I was flattered that you named me (and several of my other favorites on the paper) among your favorites. I didn’t read the article that drew your ire (too busy scribbling to deal with those front-page monsters). But my Cousin The Shrink (Elan Golomb) wrote a respected book about narcissism. (Her dad, my Uncle Louis, was Exhibit A). There are three manifestations: First, there’s healthy,if wounded self-regard, that allows people to write for publication (which means sticking your neck out of the foxhole and letting unseen foes snipe at your ego.) You’re right about broken hearts – they must inspire this irrational need to communcate with strangers, maybe win/seduce some appreciatiation, and above all to create an alternative tribe (of readers) where the writers at last aren’t the tribal outcasts but respected scribes/story-tellers. Then there’s classical narcissism-- obsessive self-love and self-absorption, where all that is perceived is the self in the mirror – Others not allowed. Think models. Finally, clinical narcissism is the dangerous type. It’s not self-love but fierce self-hatred. To these types of narcissists, everyone who is at all accomplished is “superior” and wounding, and must be dragged down and destroyed. Clinical narcissists gravitate to positions of power, becoming the nightmare bosses who’ll publically humiliate their brightest, best-functioning employees. A lot of negative “isms” – racism, class-ism, sexism, size-ism, seem to be politically-manipulated manifestations of this dark impulse: “I may be trailer-trash but at least I’m not a Welfare Queen!” and all that. As I said, I didn’t read the article, but from the sound of it (unemployed, scornful of the employed) could be a Clinical Narcissist writing. Those hearts never break, they’re empty, hard, hungry shells. .— May 12, 2009 9:50 p.m.
What's your favorite type of drink?
I think Vagabond in South Park has Pisco Sours.— April 29, 2009 12:31 a.m.
Food Stamp Fight!
First, illegal aliens can't get on ANY welfare program, including Food Stamps. Second, the reason the Food Steap program falls under the aegis of the US Dept. of Agriculture (not Health & Welfare) is that it was designed to be primarily a welfare program for American farmers -- to allow Americans to buy US-grown foodstuffs. (As if Big Ag doesn't already get huge subsidies, bringing us fab goodies like high-fructose corn syrup and Roundup resistant soybeans.) What makes you think it's Mexicans or other (god forbid) non-native Californians using Food Stamps? Huge numbers of every ethnicity have lost jobs. Malnourishment affects kids'intelligence & learning ability-- you want lots of brain-damaged adults coming out of this recession in 10 years? You love the thought of starving children? SD administers Food Stamps like it's a "get into jail free" program, with fingerprinting and paranoia worthy of a family visit to San Quentin. Doesn't stop hunger, just makes it deeply humiliating to try and feed the kids.— April 28, 2009 11:55 p.m.
At Last, True Thai
Okay, Fred: Try my home email: [email protected]. The rest of you -- like looking at the legendary Gorgon, you went blind when you saw this. Only way to get your eyesight back is to forget this post immediately. (Meaning, those Nigerians are already sending me 10 spams a day! Some of them even pretend to come from England and Australia. And let's not forget all the emails telling me how to extend my, uh, male member.)— March 27, 2009 9:49 p.m.
Cheap Steak Serenade
WTF makes you think I had anything negative to say about tattooed waitresses? They're tattooed: Observation. Fact. Neutral. No judgment. You defensive or something? Everybody in La Mesa is so tetchy, can't take minor teasing? Boy, if that's La Mesa there must be lynch mobs waiting for me and Bill in El Cajon, out the other side of the "Here Be Monsters" sign! Why don't you all go take your pitchforks and torches and burn a bank or two? And yes, like Ahnold, I'll be back. To La Mesa, anyway. (I think I'll leave El Cajon to stout-hearted Bill.)— March 26, 2009 11:16 p.m.
Ota, Too
To: People who posted on the Sab-E-Lee review. Thanks for your interesting, exciting, nasty, nice, glowing, gloating (etc.) posts. I've had a hectic few weeks but have finally found a few minutes to answer several of you (Fred who went to Laos, hotstuff from Laos, justpeachey). Please go back to that review's commentary to read the messages. And keep communicating, y'all. (I'm not actually from the south, for all my trips to NOLA, but English really needs a plural second person term and "y'all" is the best we've got. "You guys" is a little, uh, pub grubbish for my taste.) We create a community when the talk goes both ways. Thanks so much.— March 26, 2009 10:36 p.m.
At Last, True Thai
To justpeachey and everybody else who encountered huge crowds at the restaurant: In the high-gamble restaurant industry, most restaurants close within their first year unless they get positive media coverage. Naturally I wanted to keep this amazing little restaurant alive but the problem with reviewing a small restaurant is that everybody pours in there all at once, the week of the review, and a small restaurant just can't handle this sort of influx -- even the dishwashers (human or electric) have nervous breakdowns. I wish I could have given orders like Big Nurse: If your name starts with A - E, go this week. F through J, next week, etc. I did warn it was small and would be packed. Please give it another try in about two months -- that's typically how long it takes until the "media glow" wears off and the restaurant is just a little more crowded, routinely, with new fans added to the neighborhood eaters, than it was before the review came out. Sorry you had a bad time.— March 26, 2009 10:24 p.m.
At Last, True Thai
To Fred Williams: Thanks for your fascinating post. I have indeed eaten a water rodent -- Trinidadian manicou, a critter resembling nutria, when my friends down in Sando (San Fernando, about 2 hours south of Port of Spain) threw a "wild meat barbecue." (Later, I ate it again at a post-Carnival fair in POS.) Manicou is typically served curried because it's gamy-greasy. My BBQ friends wanted to serve agouti as well, an arboreal rodent resembling a squirrel, said to be really tasty, but the agoutis were faster than the guys hunting them, this time. Fred, we have to stop meeting like this. To use the most frightening words known to males, we need to talk. Please continue the conversation by emailing me at [email protected].— March 26, 2009 10:13 p.m.