Have you ever had a love/hate relationship with food? Ate only because you were tired, lonely, bored, anxious or frustrated? Celebrated a new love with a few of your favorite treats? Buried love spurned with yet more of those same treats? Refused an engagement because nothing you owned fit? Postponed clothes shopping because until you lost a pesky 10 pounds? Measured your love for someone or her love for you by your or her response to a favorite dish?
If so — and who among us can honestly answer no to every such question? — you should read, and will enjoy, Born Round: The Secret History of a Full Time Eater.
Frank Bruni ended his five year stint as restaurant critic for the New York Times with the publication of this memoir. He chronicles his love, hate, struggles and successes with food and eating from his earliest childhood and school years, through his early career in Detroit and his assignments with the Times in New York, the presidential campaign trail, Washington and Rome. He traces his relationships with family, friends and lovers through the meals (and more) shared with them. Finally, he applies what he has learned about himself to his duties as the most influential restaurant critic in America, if not the world.
His observations are personal and poignant, often amusing and sometimes downright scary, all handled with a deft touch I appreciated in his reviews.
Amazon link.
P.S. You can follow Bruni on Twitter @FrankBruni.
Each Monday when her restaurant is closed, Lillian conducts cooking classes in the restaurant kitchen. She doesn’t offer single classes; rather, a program block consists of weekly classes held over several months. Author Erica Bauermeister explores the lives of Lillian’s students attending one such program and the lessons they learn at Lillian’s hands.
You just may learn more about cooking from this slim novel than you have from the shelves of cookbooks that you own.
Amazon link here.
 
The cover story [edit: only certain covers; the mail subscriber version has an apple on the cover] in the October issue of Gourmet magazine features 126 American restaurants worth your money. The honorees range from ultra-expensive restaurants of international fame to places you have never heard of. The article is subdivided by region, the Midwest appearing last. Nine Midwest restaurants received recognition as being places worthy of your spending your own money to dine there, four in Chicago, two in Minneapolis, one in Wisconsin, one in South Dakota and one in Cincinnati.
Which Cincinnati restaurant, you ask? None other than my favorite daytime hangout — Tucker’s Restaurant located at 1637 Vine Street in the heart of Over the Rhine! [Article not yet online; link forthcoming when available.]
Other recipients included well known eateries Alinea (Chicago), Central Michel Richard and Komi (Washington, D.C), Bacchanalia (Atlanta), Grammercy Tavern (New York), and Cyrus (Sonoma County). Each of those restaurants receives international press almost weekly (and has a PR professional or five on retainer). Pretty heady company for our fairly unknown gem.
Congratulations to Joe and Carla Tucker! Please make it a point to stop by, enjoy a meal and congratulate the Tuckers in person.
Now the whole world knows what I have known for years; I wonder if I will still be able to get a seat at the counter?
 Vine Street, Over the Rhine
If you have any interest whatsoever in cooking, its history and its social context, you will want to read the recently released Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham. Wrangham is a professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University.
In Catching Fire, Wrangham presents and defends his thesis that the act of cooking drove the biological and sociological changes that made us human. Contrary to the popular view among anthropologists that humans have been cooking food for 250,000 to 400,000 years, Wrangham has our ancestors cooking much, much earlier. He makes a compelling case that cooking food is the only reasonable explanation for the physiological changes present in Homo Erectus when it emerged approximately 1.9 million (!) years ago. Wrangham also covers the sociological changes that cooking permitted, evidence of which changes are with us even today.
Catching Fire is a fascinating read; I couldn’t put it down. Too bad I didn’t get around to writing a bit about it until others started jumping on the bandwagon.
Link to page at Amazon.
 Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human
I announced today the closing of all business operations of Just Cured.† My decision to terminate operations was difficult; but in the end, I am convinced I have made the only correct decision.
Over the past year, I have learned that my business plan for Just Cured was aggressive, even in the best of times.† The present economy affected my start-up company even more severely than it did others.† I simply don’t see things getting better quickly enough to make a difference.
Thank you to all my friends, family, customers and everyone I met who supported me and Just Cured over the nineteen months since I embarked on this journey.† I appreciate your encouragement, kind words, enthusiasm and criticism more than I am able to express right now.† You helped make this venture exciting and rewarding, notwithstanding its commercial failure.
Today, I have disabled the commercial aspects of the Just Cured web site.† For the time being, this blog will be the only thing available on the site.† I hope to be able to add back some additional content, such as the recipes and some of the photographs that the site featured.
Thank you again for your interest in Just Cured, our products — and in me,
Michael
After a full year in my work neighbor of Over the Rhine, I have slowly become attuned to the music of the neighborhood. Most days, there is a cacophony of overlapping musical sounds coming from sources throughout the neighborhood. It took me a while to unravel the musical rope into individual threads.
On the weekends, I can fix my location on the Market area by triangulating the relative volume of the music. I know the older gentleman wearing a bowler and tie sings and plays the blues on his old guitar and portable amplifier at the east end of the Market House. There is the dreadlocked drummer playing his bongo on the north side of the Market near the center. With great frequency, there is a teenage saxophonist or violin player raising money for a trip or college tuition.
Daily, the little store on the south side of Elder Street plays R&B and 60’s Motown on a bookshelf stereo sitting in its doorway. I often walk past, then find myself singing or whistling the song that was playing. The owners occasionally fool me and play a selection of rap or hip-hop music, something I don’t recognize.
Young men walk along the streets, reciting rap lyrics from memory. Often, friends join in for an impromptu duo or trio.
Passing cars announce their presence with the rattle of license plates and sheet metal. The drivers play urban music at ear splitting volumes, the trunk mounted subwoofers shaking the cars apart. In moderate weather, open windows pour the booming bass and harsh lyrics over the streets at traffic lights.
I can divine Joe Tucker’s mood the second I push open the door at Tucker’s. Most days, the restaurant stereo is tuned to the classical music station. On days when he needs to pick up the pace at his grill, classic rock music fills the small space.
Early this morning I heard for the first time musical sounds that were new to me. As I walked around the corner onto Race Street, I perked my ears to soft sounds of classical music. I looked around for a car with open windows, but at that hour, there were no cars on the street. As I walked south on Race, the sounds became louder, eventually coalescing into Beethoven. At the corner of Green Street, the music was loud, very, very loud. I looked around for the source and saw only closed windows, then walked up and down the street, my eyes turned upward. Eventually, I identified an apartment above the little market and check cashing store as the source. When I walked past 40 or so minutes later, the resident was playing a Bach trumpet piece at a somewhat more moderate volume.
Had I missed hearing something that has been there all along, in this place a dozen or so feet from last week’s drive-by? Is there a new resident in this building?
I’ll be keeping my ears open.
For Immediate Release
Just Cured Announces iPhone Availability of Just Curedô Smoked Salmon.
Cincinnati, Ohio:† Just Cured, a Cincinnati-based producer of premium smoked and cured salmon announced today its development of an iPhone application offering a virtual taste of Just Cured European style smoked salmon.† The application will utilize the recently announced iScent API to be included as part of version 3.0 of the iPhone and iPod touch operating system.† The Just Cured application is expected to be available for download at the iTunes app store shortly after the summer release of the 3.0 operating system.
The application will permit an iPhone or iPod touch to emit a short burst of the actual aroma of Just Cured smoked salmon directly to the device user.† Just Cured believes the iScent API on which the application is based will revolutionize the food industry as well as the perfume and cologne industries for which the API was originally envisioned.† For the first time, shoppers and potential purchasers of food products will be able to experience the precise aroma of the product prior to making a purchasing decision.† Moreover, as the sense of smell provides up to 90% of what people actually taste, consumers will be able to buy almost the entire eating experience of a food product — without incurring the actual cost of the physical product, without the calories, and without the time and effort of cooking.
In an exclusive interview, Just Cured founder, Michael Brown, explained the genesis of the Just Cured iPhone app and virtual smoked salmon.
The Just Cured virtual smoked salmon application, made possible by the iScent API, takes Just Cured a dramatic step closer to our initial business model.† Our original plan did not involve an actual smoked salmon product.† Instead, we were working with a major investment bank to incorporate all of the attributes of ultrapremium smoked salmon into a security.† We intended to contribute those attributes to a trust and create an infinite number of custom securities reflecting various combinations of those attributes.† A buyer would be able to choose his or her precise preferred combination of smoked salmon attributes such as sex of the fish, harvest conditions, color, texture, slice geometry, weight, mouth feel, salt, sweet, smoke, salmon flavor, portion size, serving date and time, and accent flavor components. We identified 100 taste attributes that could be mixed and matched endlessly, all in a security that could be bought, sold and traded.
Our first target market was the top restaurants of the world, and the chefs of those restaurants were giddy with excitement for the securities.† For several years, they had been experimenting with scented “airs” and flavor infused “papers” to showcase their talents and particular taste attributes.† Our product would have permitted them to serve an actual piece of paper representing each chef’s personal interpretation of perfect smoked salmon for his or her restaurant and locale.
Once the great chefs were on board, the investment bankers were convinced we had a blockbuster.† Gourmets and gourmands would clamor for the Just Cured smoked salmon securities; then down market consumers; finally, investors, pension funds and insurance companies.† The market was endless — as was our capacity to generate securities.† We were not limited by supplies of fish, air freight capacity, production facilities, packaging or distribution requirements.† Our only costs were to be investment banking, legal, and trustee fees.† Although those fees were staggeringly large, our margins would be equally eye-popping.
Then, we had a fantastic development.† An overseas group proposed to us a companion security, an insurance policy if will for buyers of the smoked salmon securities.† This group would offer securities buyers the opportunity, for a small additional price, to guarantee that the taste attributes of the securities they bought met a specified benchmark.† We called this insurance “component default protection.”† Hedge funds had an immense appetite to bear the risk of this insurance.† They viewed the premiums they would receive as virtually risk free — all we had to do was craft a benchmark that the securities could easily meet.
For that benchmark, and for the first time, we needed an actual product to benchmark.† The overseas group was hot to get to market and wanted us to borrow a competitor’s product to develop the standard.† My bankers insisted that we needed our own superpremium smoked salmon in order to market the securities and insurance.† Thus was the genesis of the product our present customers are familiar with.† The time it took to develop the smoked salmon was disastrous in one way and a blessing in another.
While we worked on the smoked salmon, the investment banking world ceased to exist as we knew it.† There was no longer any market for the derivative securities we proposed to sell.† And the default protection market literally ceased to exist.† There were no buyers, sellers or counterparties.† The Just Cured business model was a complete failure.
Fortunately, we had a terrific smoked salmon to fall back on.† Just Cured emerged from the wreckage of the financial markets as a traditional specialty food producer, but was a shadow of the blockbuster financial products company that we envisioned.
For the past several months, I have been exploring how to virtualize Just Cured smoked salmon utilizing not the financial markets of the investment bankers, but the Web 2.0 world of social media and similar tools.† That market is in its infancy; and I was convinced that huge volumes and margins wold be available if I could simply harness the power of Web 2.0.
Enter the Apple iScent API.† With iScent, Just Cured will virtualize the aroma and flavor components of our premium smoked salmon and deliver it effortlessly, for us and consumers, through the iTunes store and iPhones and iPod touches.† The virtual smoked salmon application will drive traditional sales as well as open virtual salmon markets previously unavailable to us.† I am excited that the market for virtual smoked salmon could be even larger than we expected for the salmon securities.
Just Cured will announce additional product details, such as pricing, as the application release date approaches.
For further information, contact Michael Brown at Just Cured.
I have had several requests recently for duck confit.† To meet this demand, I have worked out an arrangement with Luken’s Poultry Fish & Seafood at Findlay Market to produce duck confit for them.
The duck confit will be available exclusively at the Luken’s stand in the main Market House.† The confit comes packaged two legs and thighs in a vacuum sealed pouch.† The price is $15 per pack. serevent online arava
Stop by Luken’s, pick up some Just Cured duck confit and let me know what you think of the product.
Virtually everyone is familiar with “Parkinson’s Law” that
Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
Fewer know about C. Northcote Parkinson’s background or his body of work.† Parkinson studied, and became an expert of renown in, the field of public administration, as the Brits call it.† We Americans refer to this arena most often as “government bureaucracies.”† Parkinson’s studies lead to his publication of many Laws, including the one for which he is most famous.† One of the lesser-known Laws is Parkinson’s Law of Triviality that provides:
The time spent on any item of the agenda of a public body will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.
The political conversation this week is dominated by blustering, outrage, opinion and advice concerning AIG’s agreements to pay retention bonuses of up to $165 million to employees of the AIG Financial Products Group, the unregulated investment arm within AIG that is the cause of all of AIG’s problems.† Goodness help the poor soul who gets between a politician and a microphone this week.† Every politician has had or will have his or her say on the subject of the bonuses, from “bow deeply, apologize and commit suicide” (Senator Grassley) to “investigate all options to recoup” (President Obama) and everything in between.
The bonuses are, however, but a convenient target and a prime example of the operation of the Law of Triviality.† It’s hard to conceive of $165 million as trivial, yet it is in the context of the AIG mess.† AIG had a $2.2 trillion portfolio of custom derivative contracts and related trades and positions.† The size of the portfolio is almost beyond comprehension and that size is dwarfed by the complexity of the financial instruments comprising it.† The Law posits that officials will not talk about sums and concepts that are beyond their comprehension. studies zelnorm
And that is precisely what has happened with AIG.† On three occasions, two different administrations chose to use Federal Reserve and taxpayer funds to support AIG and its Financial Products Group — to the tune of $170 billion.† They decided the best course of dealing with AIG is to honor those derivative contracts rather than to break those contracts in a bankruptcy.† The government commitment and expenditures were made with little outcry and essentially no outrage from the politician class.
Yet put a very large, yet comprehensible number on a tiny piece of the AIG problem, one with faces of actual villains, and the outcry is both pervasive and deafening.
The politicians should think about several things before they continue wailing. The contracts were entered into more than a year ago, in a world where Wall Street-ish talent was valued much differently than today and long before any government intervention at AIG.† The payments causing outrage are the second round of payments under these contracts.† The amount involved with these contracts is minuscule in relation to the overall exposure at AIG.† $165 million represents only 0.0075% of AIG’s $2.2 trillion derivative portfolio — or $75 out of every $1,000,000.† The derivative contracts hemorrhage taxpayer dollars and will continue to do so.† There is no outcry to break individual derivative contracts or to tax the recipients of payments under them at prohibitive rates — nor should there be, as such a tactic runs contrary to the strategy of supporting the financial markets.
Our government elected to save a massively leaking ship.† Now we are surprised to find many more tiny leaks?† In the words of Captain Renault in Casablanca, “I am shocked, shocked.”
I recall attending meetings when I was in my 20s and early 30s with the men (and they were always men in those days) of a certain age who ran corporate data centers and other “big iron” computing installations.† My contemporaries and I waxed enthusiastically about first our personal computers and later our networks of personal computers.† The men of big iron looked at us with a mixture of amusement and disdain.
First, they would invariably view these new technologies as toys, asking what application they have in the business world.† I could generally answer that question.† In the case of the original PC running the breakthrough application Lotus 1-2-3, I could show a detailed, flexible financial model of a complex transaction — a tool that was virtually unavailable in the big iron only world.† In the case of early networks, I could point to a 100 node PC network for law firm document processing having a cost equal to a dozen or so terminal minicomputer based solution.
Then, the objections turned to the lack of standards, security, control, audit trails, training and management oversight implicit in the new technologies.† If I heard “garbage-in, garbage-out” once, I heard it several hundred times.† Those arguments made sense to me; I understand the “thousand flowers bloom” concept, but never was a huge advocate of it.† Eventually, vendors of all kinds developed the tools that permit innovation and protect valuable corporate assets.
Over the past two days, I have spent several hours each day with enthusiastic men and women in their 20s and early 30s discussing social media tools and their application to businesses large and small.† After leaving those meetings, I realized that I am now one of the men of a certain age looking at those others with amusement (but I am pleased to say with no disdain whatsoever).
All the talk of Facebook and Twitter and the tools related to them being released daily made my head spin.† I admit to using these applications and finding them immensely interesting and enjoyable — a bit addictive, even.† I also see that they have great prospects as business communication, development and marketing tools.† I, like many others, am stuck when it comes to developing both strategies and tactics† for Just Cured to take advantage of these tools that are consistent with Just Cured’s overall strategy and brand identity.
In other words, I am beyond the “cool toy” stage, but haven’t progress in my thinking to the stage of viewing these social media applications as tools integral to the operation of Just Cured’s business.† Like others, I will be trying out some things using social media tools in the upcoming weeks and months.† If you want to go along for the ride, visit, follow or friend me at:
My Facebook page
Just Cured’s Facebook page
Follow Just Cured at Twitter
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