So I wuz like "Meow"....

May 7

Tue, 08 May 2012 05:21:20 -0400

May 7

Diner Hunter

Mon, 07 May 2012 01:11:08 -0400

Diner Hunter

Mitla Cafe - The Taco Bell Story

Mon, 07 May 2012 01:10:07 -0400

E-mail from Dad dated May 3, 2012

The corner of North Sixth and Mount Vernon Streets in San Bernardino is the cradle of the fast-food taco, reports Julia Moskin in the New York Times (5/2/12). There sits the Mitla Cafe, which opened in 1937 and still serves “tacos dorados con carne molida, ‘golden’ tortillas fried to order and folded around a spicy compressed wedge of ground beef, blanketed with iceberg lettuce, chopped tomatoes and shredded Cheddar.” This taco has been on Mitla’s menu as long as anyone can remember and it “very closely resembles the taco served to more than 36 million customers every week at 5,600 Taco Bell locations in the United States.”

This, according to Gustavo Arellano, author of Taco USA, is no coincidence. Back in 1950, a fellow named Glen Bell opened a hamburger stand “across the street from Mitla.” Glen apparently was jealous of the success of the McDonald brothers, who opened “the first McDonald’s drive-up hamburger stand” in the same neighborhood ten years earlier. Glen “ate often at Mitla and watched long lines form at its walk-up window.” He persuaded Mitla’s owners “to show him how the tacos were made” and “experimented after hours with a tool that would streamline the process of frying the tortillas.”

Glen started serving tacos at his own restaurant, which he re-named Taco Tia, El Taco, and then utlimately, Taco Bell. The Taco Bell website claims that Glen invented the “fast food crunchy taco,” a claim that Gustavo, “perhaps the greatest (and only) living scholar of Mexican-American fast food, disputes.” His book features other stories of white Americans “who managed to capitalize on Mexican food,” as well as at least one Mexican, Mariano Martinez, inventor of the frozen margarita machine. Overall, Taco USA tells the story of “how a few foods (salsa, tacos, chili, tequila) from the complicated and enormous cuisine of Mexico managed to slip into the mainstream of American taste.”

Victory Season: Part 3

Sun, 06 May 2012 23:45:40 -0400

Victory Season: Part 3

May 5

Sun, 06 May 2012 01:20:02 -0400

May 5

Bacon Cheeseburger at Verdetto’s

Tue, 01 May 2012 20:26:57 -0400

Bacon Cheeseburger at Verdetto’s

Victory Season: Part 2

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 05:02:45 -0400

Victory Season: Part 2

Gallery Crawl in the Cultural District

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 03:37:47 -0400

Gallery Crawl in the Cultural District

Wait, where can I get wings? Oh, everywhere.

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 03:36:16 -0400

Wait, where can I get wings? Oh, everywhere.

Draai Laag Brewing Company

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 03:32:18 -0400

Draai Laag Brewing Company

Boring Pittsburgh

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 03:31:22 -0400

Boring Pittsburgh

Alumnae Blogs and Websites

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 03:29:36 -0400

Alumnae Blogs and Websites

Bucco Nation - Raising The Jolly Roger All Year Round

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 05:04:57 -0400

Bucco Nation - Raising The Jolly Roger All Year Round

Victory Season: Part 1

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 05:02:19 -0400

Victory Season: Part 1

Smith College Archives

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 04:55:49 -0400

Smith College Archives:

Always interesting…

Ballpark Savvy

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 04:54:20 -0400

Ballpark Savvy:

I’m finding this useful website a good resource as I plan my baseball trips.

Gypsy Bus

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 04:45:35 -0400

E-mail from Dad dated April 17, 2012

Sam Kopper is bringing back the Rock of Boston from an “electric green school bus” parked outside his home, reports Elizabeth Jensen in the New York Times (4/16/12). It’s a safe distance from Sam’s heyday as program director and on-air personality at free-form rock radio station WBCN-FM, a favorite of college students, among others, from 1968 until the late ’80s. Sam, himself, left the station in 1991, disillusioned as the radio business “became more corporate and consolidated.” CBS acquired BCN in 1996, and killed it “in 2009 in a complicated switch to make room for a sports station.” Now, CBS wants to revive the format on HD radio and has enlisted Sam and his “biodiesel-burning bus.”

HD is a digital radio format, introduced in 2006 to compete against “the static-free signals of satellite radio.” It is set up so that existing FM radio stations can “broadcast their original analog station on HD1, with additional space for differently formatted substations, known as HD2 and HD3.” The challenge has been that listeners need to invest in “expensive new radios” to access HD, although the cost of the radios has come down and “most automakers” now offer them. “It’s the frontier-land of our industry right now,” says Mark Hannon, svp of CBS Radio Boston. He’s betting that good programming will “drive the new technology, just as the 1968 WBCN prompted students to buy FM receivers.

The new BCN has some “1,500 songs as various as classic rock, reggae and country in rotation and 4,5000 in its library, far more than most commercial competitors.” Sam Kopper says the station “is not a nostalgia trip,” calling the approach “radio theater, the human voice put together with every other element that you can use for sound” — not only the music but “ambient street sound.” He says that “radio is all about the human connection.” He’s mostly promoting the station on Facebook he’s not entirely alone: Former BCN deejay Carolyn Fox has invested $10,000 in equipment so she can broadcast from her Manhattan apartment, picking up on a career she left behind ten years ago. “I saw some possibility to connect with the listener,” she says.

Hold The Relish

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 04:44:33 -0400

E-mail from Dad, dated April 11, 2012:

RELISH THAT

Sweet pickle relish is kind of like “the Pittsburgh Pirates of condiments,” writes Steven Kurutz in the New York Times (4/4/12). What he means is that, unlike ketchup and mustard, “relish is like a small-market team that is overlooked and always out of contention.” An executive of B&G , a big condiment maker in New York is perhaps even less charitable, calling relish “‘the Rodney Dangerfield of condiments because it is a byproduct, made from cucumbers that are too misshapen or otherwise blemished to be chosen to become pickles.” He says pickle relish is “a low-margin item” that “doesn’t really get marketed.”

In fact, relish isn’t even an option at McDonald’s, Burger King or Wendy’s. Apparently, it’s “the chunky consistency that’s to blame: “Unlike ketchup and mustard, relish can’t be easily pumped or squeezed from sealed dispensers at a table or condiment station.” It doesn’t lend itself to plastic packets and can be messy and possibly unsanitary if served in an open pot. Friendly’s, however, will put some relish on your burger or dog in the kitchen if you’d like, as will Shake Shack, which “crowns its Shackcago Dog with a sweet, locally made relish.”

Shake Shack isn’t alone in upgrading the pickle-relish experience with “higher-quality ingredients that stand apart in taste and texture from the neon-green, gelatinous relish that has long been the standard.” McClure’s Pickles makes a relish that owner Bob McClure compares to “a freshly chopped, vinegary salad.” Stonewall Kitchen “makes green, red, corn and cranberry relish.” Then there’s Jim Brown’s Original Relish, “a tomato-based concoction of onion, cabbage cauliflower, celery, tomato and bell peppers.” Jim Brown says his relish is “in a league of its own” and “goes on everything,” adding: “If you like this kind of product. Now, not everybody likes a relish.”

April 25

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 04:45:18 -0400

April 25

April 24

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 06:38:47 -0400

April 24