Paul Soglin: Waxing America

Crumbling Dollar Lifts Wisconsin Blue Cheese

Another victim of the disastrous Bush economic polices and the war in Iraq is the absence of the finest European cheeses from swank east coast restaurants.  As the Village Voice reports, How Chefs Are Dealing With the Tanking Dollar: Getting creative with imported goods

Recently, I (reporter Sarah DiGregorio) realized that I could no longer afford my favorite stinky French cheese (not that I ever really could, technically)...

At Kellari Taverna...Greek feta, once crumbled over many dishes, is now only on the tomato salad..."It's killing us!" exclaims Gregory Zapantis, the Greek-born chef at Kellari Taverna. "A few years back, it was equal—one dollar to one euro. Now the euro is $1.60."

The concerned New York culinary reporter turned to an economist who specializes in wine economics to discover that, "... the government spends more than it has, putting us in hock to the Europeans, Japanese, and Chinese to pay for Bush's tax cuts and the war in Iraq."

But the inventive mid-town Manhattan chefs now turn to Bucky when times are tough, "Zapantis has fallen in love with the fish he gets from Long Island in the summertime. And he's happy to have discovered Wisconsin blue cheese as an unlikely alternative to feta."

Farmers' Markets Open Tomorrow

Even surer than the beginning of the baseball season, the opening of Madison's farmers' markets signals the real end of winter.  Last year, I cited some of the differences between the big Dane County Farmers' Market at the Square, and the Westside Community Market, on whose Board I serve as its only non-vendor:

I don't drink the stuff myself, but others enjoy the fact that the Westside Market offers free high-end coffee.  You can buy lattes and other fancy drinks from the many vendors across the street from the Dane County Market on city property.

Some foodies like the fact that the high-end produce is available later on the Westside, whereas at the Dane County Market, the restaurants often buy up the scarce and choicest stuff before 8 am.

The Dane County Market is an event, with musicians busking and crafts sold, both across the street on city property. It's the place to take your out-of-town visitors. The Westside Market is the place to meet your middle-aged friends from Middleton on their way to Borders.

The only thing I have to add is that at the Westside Community Market we allow people to walk in any direction they choose, rather than only counter-clockwise.

This year there's a great new tool to find your way around the Dane County Farmers' Market: The Wisconsin State Journal created a useful page that shows locations for all the area markets and an interactive map of the Square with vendors' locations and specifics. Congrats to WSJ editor Sandy Kallio and her team for showing us how newspapers can use the Web to create resources that supplement the dead trees rather than supplant them.

There's also the old standby for finding area farmers' markets and their farmers: the REAP Farm Fresh Atlas. The wonderful print version is available free at both the Westside and Dane County markets, and a whole lot of green and crunchy other locations around the area.

Either way, print or digital, you can't use the excuse that you don't know where to buy and eat local.

- Barry Orton

Wisconsin Curdles California In Cheese Contest

When I arrived in Madison as an undergraduate, among the urban, or should I say rural legends, was the claim that there were more cows in Wisconsin than people.

It may or may not have been true.

But I do recall with some certainty that in the late 1990's California passed us in terms of having the most cows and the most milk production.

Then, in 2006 the New York Times reported that,

Crown of Cheese Is Within California’s Reach :

As if California’s capture of the top milk production title more than a decade ago ...the  cheese crown is now at serious risk, too, perhaps changing hands as early as next year.

Foolish eastern snobs should know better. It is the quality that counts.

Just as a reminder, we should not overlook a critical story that emerged from last week's 2008 World Championship Cheese Contest held right here in Madison at Monona Terrace. Actually it was an editorial from the Sheboygan Press that said it best: Wisconsin cheese again among best in the world.

California may have more cows than Wisconsin and those cows may produce more milk than Wisconsin, but when it comes to making something out of milk, Wisconsin has no equal..

... Badger State cheese makers came took first place in 27 of the 77 categories — easily the best showing of any state — or nation. New York was second with five winners. California had one.

World Cheese Champions Crowned in Madison

For those of you who prefer to eat your cheese rather than wear it as a hat, Madison just hosted the 2008 World Championship Cheese Contest. Intrepid traveler, photographer, and foodie pigiste (look it up) Nina Camic gives us the word straight from the judges' mouths in her blog The Other Side of the Ocean:

Jean-Marie Humbert is here to judge from France. I am drawn to his table because he is…expressive. A gorgonzola is placed before him. He looks at it, takes one whiff and shudders. I ask him in French what’s wrong. I don’t want to eat this! He says emphatically. It may make me sick.

- Barry Orton

Student Neighborhoods: Lessons For Milwaukee From Madison's Mifflin Street

As I read Michael Rosen's UWM breaks promises to east side neighborhoods, bemoaning the onslaught of students overrunning his Milwaukee east side neighborhood, thirty years of Madison housing issues rushed into my tiny snow-addled mind.

As a resident of Mifflin street for ten years and then spending the better part of the next twenty-five years dealing with the impact of students on three other Madison neighborhoods, I know of what he speaks: "For several years east side community residents have been meeting with top UWM officials in an effort to address the escalating student behavior problems associated with the University's rapid and uncontrolled growth."

Here is the quick and dirty, some of which Milwaukee may already have addressed:

• Students  have few housing choices once they leave the university dorms freshman year, since the state spends little to maintain them and less to replace them. The only long-term solution is finding sites for the private sector to build.
• Zone areas meant to be kept single family so that they cannot be converted into multi-tenant non-related housing. Madison has R-4A.
• Carefully monitor the acquisition of any homes that the parents purchase and put their child on the deed and continue to rent after the student leaves school.
• Enforce existing minimum code ordinances for everyone's safety.
• Be realistic about alcohol abuse. That means you want to close down the disrputive parties and send a message that if they are kept small and quiet, the kids will be left alone. Frankly, I would rather see the kids drink illegally in bars than at the parties. If there is going to be illegal alcohol consumption it ought to be supervised and not in a quiet residential neighborhood.
• Be realistic about UWM disciplining students for off campus behavior. In most instances, if illegal behavior leads to conviction and it is not campus related, UWM cannot do anything about it.
• Focus on the students, not the university to solve the problem. If it is the neighborhood and UWM against the students, the students will 'win.' Bring the students into the neighborhood association and make sure they do not feel it is a 'them and us' thing.
• The quickest way to bring the students over is to talk to them. I made many a trip to the site of rowdy parties 'the morning after' when we lived in University Heights. After some midnight pranksters ruined my kids pumpkins, the student who threw the party bought them new ones. We did not have problems the rest of the year. The following year we had to start over with the new tenants.
• Don't bicycle in the dark during snow storms.

A Wisconsin Locovore's Thanksgiving Turkey

For the second year in a row, our turkey is a locally-grown heritage bird, a "trendy"  Bourbon Red, from Jordandal Farm in Argyle, butchered Monday. I know Jordandal's Eric and Carrie Johnson pretty well from their participation in Madison's Westside Community Market - I serve on the Market's board.  Their meats are worshipped by Madison's locovore foodies, who sometimes turn them into the blogosphere's version of food porn.

Today, Eric and Carrie are the lead story in today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Truly Homegrown Meal." There is even video of Eric, Carrie, and their turkeys, cattle, sheep and beautiful farm.

The Johnsons start their turkey flock from scratch each year with day-old chicks purchased from a hatchery. The flock includes both common broad-breasted white turkeys and trendy Bourbon Red heritage turkeys, which are descendants of America's original domestic turkeys.

The chicks stay in a brooder house under heat lamps for three to four weeks until they grow feathers. Then they're let out to pasture to roam and forage for grass and insects, a diet supplemented by grain.

The birds have shelter from rain and wind, but the Bourbon Reds, which can fly, mostly use the shelter roof for nighttime roosting. "They could fly away if they wanted to," Carrie said of the heritage birds. "But they have food and water here, so they don't."

All 42 Bourbon Reds were spoken for more than a month before Thanksgiving, though they weren't processed and delivered to customers until two days ago. The couple also raised and sold 84 free-range, broad-breasted white turkeys, which cannot fly because they are bred to be top-heavy with larger breasts to provide more white meat.

...Unfortunately, all the Bourbon Reds were sold at market, so the Johnsons were left with a common broad-breasted white turkey for their own Thanksgiving dinner. They have yet to enjoy one of their heritage turkeys for the holiday.

Whether you're eating a heritage bird, a common broad-breasted white, a regular industrial-grade chemically-enhanced job complete with pop-up thermometer, one of those tofurkies, a Turduken, or Paul's choice, happy Thanksgiving from the Waxing America editorial staff. 

- Barry Orton

More Chicago Hot Dogs - The Pickle and Mushy Buns (Ugh)

The Chicago Hot Dog post raises the question of the pickle or 'cuke.'  The pickle that nestles alongside the hot dog is to be a 'new' pickle. One that has not been seasoned for a lengthy period of time. By definition that means it will crunch as the teeth penetrate.

One naive reviewer, a Minnesotan (that speaks volumes), actually criticized the hot dog's pickle for having too much crunch. Sorry. Wrong. This is not open to debate.

From the Badger Herald: Chicago ‘Dog’ arrives tame in Madison

The pickle spear, traditionally the crowning accoutrement of a Chicago dog, was simply too firm for either one of us to enjoy. The frank was otherwise fine: The sweetness of the relish, the piquancy of the mustard and peppers and the fresh, grassy note of the celery salt balanced one another perfectly. Nevertheless, the pickle’s durability was a glaring interruption to this harmony.

The author arrives at this conclusion relying on someone name Jason, a Chicagoan who says:

“A Chicago dog should be mushy goodness,” he said. “You should always be able to get consistent bites, and the pickle should not be firm.”

As we noted in the original review, the bun should be properly steamed. But never mushy. Jason was undoubtedly raised in the suburbs.

The combniation of not understanding the nature of the pickle and this 'mushy' silliness is enough to make a grown man weep.

Meantime someone at Isthmus is in a snit. Here is how the good-humored heretics at Madison's weekly linked to our review:

A persnickety pompous look at the wieners from Mad Dog's Chicago-Style Eatery Paul Soglin

Obviously some people do not take well to criticism.

If Mad Dog's Chicago Style Eatery is to survive, they know who to heed.

Update: 10/12 10:20 am:

Here is a link to a website that identifies and that shows pictures of over 50 different Chicago Hot Dogs from Chicago. Notice, in virtually every instance where you can see the pickle, that it is a new pickle that clearly will crunch.

GreaseFreak.com

some samples:

Note on the next to the last one that the fries are served in the wrapper with the hot dog.

A Chicago Hot Dog Review for Madison Worth Your Time

I sat down to work, but paused to read a food review in Isthmus by Linda Falkenstein of Mad Dog's Chicago Style Eatery. We had finished dinner an hour ago, but this was too good to pass up.

I headed over to State and Henry and marched in with a chip on my shoulder. These guys were in serious trouble.

I am an expert on Chicago hot dogs. I could claim to be the expert but prefer to avoid a confrontation with my siblings and cousins, all less experienced but who claim to be bon vivants.

I know my hot dogs; I have eaten them for almost sixty years. I ate them on the south side, west side, and north sides of Chicago. I ate them in the suburbs and in the ball parks. (No Chicago ball park ever served a real Chicago hot dog.) I ate them at Fluky's, Stash's, Big Herm's (he had only one good arm), Little Herm's (two good arms), a dozen places on Dempster or off of Western, more on Damen*, and all over Stoney Island. (The best was next to the Avalon Theater.) And I have a heart by-pass to prove it.

If you are over the age of ten, there are only two ways to order a Chicago Hot Dog - with "everything" (also "the works") or "everything but peppers." There are guys sleeping with the fishes in Lake Michigan who uttered the word catsup.

I watched the young woman take out the bun and carefully build my hot dog. Immediately I suspected there was something wrong. Missing was the the grizzled knuckles, hairy arms, the sweat dripping off her just as hairy brow, topped by a paper hat that looked like it been used to clean her shoes. How novel; a Chicago hot dog prepared by someone who could get by the health inspector.

She wrapped my dream and I headed out the door.

I bit in, prepared for mustard to ooze from the side of my lips and a few pieces of relish and onions to fall on to my shirt. It did. They did.

The bun: too few poppy seeds but nicely steamed. Not too moist, not too dry.

The hot dog. A tasty Vienna Beef that needed to be a bit warmer. Certainly superior to the imitations.

Onions - properly sliced and chopped, flavorful but still leaving me kissable.

Tomatoes - ripe and fitting neatly in the package.

Pickle spear - and that is what it was. It crunched very nicely but was not the classic new pickle or 'cuke.'

Celery salt - dashed appropriate for size of the hot dog and bun.

Day-glow green relish - proper color, stayed in its place and did not overwhelm the hot dog.

Hot peppers - I passed. After all, this was my second dinner.

My concern that a well kempt woman could not properly prepare the hot dog was not warranted; it was more than acceptable. 

I give it a grade of B-. Now that is a hot dog worth eating, considering that 90% of the spindly wieners served as a Chicago Hot Dog would get a C or lower.

As for Falkenstein's review, she should be banned from sampling any important culinary delight. Her lead is, "It's hard to get too persnickety about a food that's usually sold out of stainless steel street carts or hawked from boxes at ballgames.."

Too persnickety? Too persnickety? I'll show you persnickety.

The woman has screwed up priorities. Send her to the french cafes, the brat festivals, the pricey coffee houses, quiche and wine parties, and the upscale 'chop' houses. She has no respect for quality food and she has no business eating hot dogs, let alone reviewing them.

*opps. Thanks Steve.

Culturally Deprived Bill O'Reilly: Clearly Missing the Fried Chicken and Watermelon

Bill O'Reilly provided the most racist restaurant review in modern times.  O'Reilly is surprised "there was no difference" between Harlem restaurants and other New York restaurants:

There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, 'M-Fer, I want more iced tea.' You know, I mean, everybody was -- it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn't any kind of craziness at all."

The only thing missing was his take on the fried chicken and watermelon.

The beauty of the review was that it was heart-felt and unsolicited. O'Reilly did not understand the stereotype his innate bigotry provided last week.

In the spirit of furthering stereotypes about the dinning conditions in white restaurants I provide the following:

• Mobsters gunning down enemies in Brooklyn Italian restaurants as portrayed by Michael Corleone in The Godfather. A murder or two never hurts sales and food never suffers unless the chef is shot.
• Hunny Bunny and Pumpkin holding up the patrons in every Denny's or Perkins in Los Angeles. Pulp Fiction proving once again that poor white trash have no table manners.
• Young white women with their sexual displays and no regard for the feelings of adjacent diners in When Harry Met Sally.
• Never think that dining in the City by the Bay is tranquil and serene if some rogue Irish cop in Sudden Impact finds that it is time to "Make my day."
• And we won't even go into Alice's Restaurant, least the health officials shut it down.

O'Reilly is close to sixty years old. The average age of his viewers and listeners is seventy-one. What is so stunning is that a man his age with his experience could go so far in life and be so ignorant. He is a fool. 

It is refreshing to see the man naked and honest. I am sad for him.

I am more saddened for a nation that welcomes his ignorance into its homes. Capable of such profound stupidity on the nature of black culinary habits, one must realize how he comes to his preposterous conclusions on matters of war, public education, global warming, and violence.

Update: 10:33am. Charlie Sykes in a full court defense on behalf of O'Reilly. He is challenging critics that they have not heard the entire statement and it was taken out of context. MediaMatters has it all.

Sykes, like O'Reilly does not get it. There is no question that O'Reilly was trying, in his own way, to pay a compliment and make the point that all people aspire to the same high standards. Fine.

But it was done in a condescending, race-based manner. In context, what he might as well have said was, "When blacks want to, they can dine in a civilized polite manner like white people. And some do and I commend them for it"

Update 2:45 pm Shark and Shepard weighs in:

Locally, Paul Soglin and Eugene Kane repeated the point.

I doubt that either of our local friends actually listened to the segment, It was apparently part of an extended commentary on racial stereotypes and the way in which people respond to the legacy of racial expression.

Rick, I did listen to the entire discussion and provided a link to it earlier this morning when Charlie Sykes also accused the critics of taking the matter out of context.

The point is that Bill O'Reilly tragically falls into a stereotype himself..old white man who claim not to have a prejudice bone in their body or thought in their head, but because of their own limited experiences, usually self-imposed, do not understand, that when comparing characteristics or behavior by race, it is implicitly racist to commend one race for meeting a standard of another race:

• He is as honest as a white man
• He is as fast as a black.
• She is as smart at accumulating money as a Jew.
• He is doing so well with those Stop and Go's that you would think he was an Arab.
• She dresses like a.................. you fill in the blank.

Badger Fans: Pasty and Pudgy

Wisconsin football fans take a lot of abuse. While you can take the Badger faithful out of Wisconsin, you can't take Wisconsin out of the Badgers.

Still, host committees all over the country look forward to the arrival of Bucky's minions with their bravado and wallets. When they roam, they bring a large part of Wisconsin with them...like the cheese, the brats, the grills, the beer, the red,  chants, and their girth.

Now to add insult to injury, Carson Daly slings a cowpie at the Bucky faithful in anticipation of the rout in Las Vegas.

Joining a cadre of former MTV personalities including Jenny McCarthy, Martha Quinn, and Downtown Julie Brown, selecting winners this weekend in college football,  Daly has this to say :

Only thing uglier than this game will be seeing pasty, pudgy Badger fans poolside at resorts all over Vegas.

So?

Anyway, they won't be poolside. They will be in nightspots, the parking lots, and peeing in the bushes.

Go Bucky.