First thing’s first: I’ve done a little bit of webpage house keeping. Apparently, Internet Explorer was rendering my webpage incorrectly again. It seems to do this once a year or so. So I’ve moved the link to my RSS atom feed to the top of the page. I figure that this might help people notice it, too. Which is to say, in case you’ve missed it, you can add my feed to your reader via the URL http://www.phoebeeating.com/atom.xml.

Now, on to more important stuff! Wieners!

This New Years the Etzel clan and I instituted a new tradition, one I’d like to call the Annual Jersey Cuisine New Years Etzelstravaganza, which is to say, we ate wieners. Lots of wieners. Three kinds, in fact!

It might seem strange that we’re so into cheap wieners, especially me. People are always mistaking me for a vegetarian. I’m not sure why, particularly as there’s a huge wiener at the top of my webpage.

I grew up down the road from a traditional Jersey wiener joint, the Red Tower II, which (I’ve learned via the appropriately named dad-in-law Frank) serves Plainfield style dogs, with a meat-based chili, onions, and yellow mustard. Some of my earliest, and best, memories take place there. I knew it was love with the hubby when he was excited about taking walks there with me to eat wieners early in our relationship. We also took road trips to places like White Manna. How could I not love him for that?

The union of two wiener-loving Jersey families is a fortuitous thing, a reason to celebrate. So this New Years, we celebrated, indeed!

Frank arrived on New Years Day we three types of dogs: Plainfield-style, from Manny’s Texas Wiener Weiner in Springfield; Paterson-style, from Teddy’s in . . . Paterson; and a wild-card wiener ripper from Rutt’s Hut in Clifton. And we washed it all down with icey cream from Guernsey Crest.

The difference between a Plainfield and a Paterson wiener lies in the chili. Paterson-style has a goopy, thin, sauce; Plainfield-style a drier, thicker, and spicier chili. Rutt’s Hut serves something different entirely, a veggie-based topping slop. Different, but nonetheless delicious.

The Etzel brothers, as native North Jerseyans, preferred either the Rutt’s ripper or the Paterson-style dog. (The Etzel brothers, having celiac disease also, sadly, had to forgo the buns).

Alas, I am my father’s daughter, and will always be a Plainfieldian at heart. I preferred Manny’s wieners. Crispy dog; dry, spicy chili. Perfection. On a bun.

Dessert wasn’t so bad, either. We had two flavors to choose from: mint chocolate chip, and the most amazing black raspberry ice cream that’s ever passed between my lips.

Now, let’s see if you’ve been listening. Can you name the wieners below?

Heh. Wieners.

Since this is phoebeeating.com, I feel it’s important to mention that we had our food catered by Bosphorus in Denville, NJ, an awesome Turkish restaurant. It was sticks-to-your-stomach good, a necessity, I think, when one is drinking lots of mead!

And here’s me, the bride, chowing down (picture courtesy the Dad-in-Law). I don’t think I got to eat much more than this on the Big Day!

Why We Eat What We Eat: How Columbus Changed the Way the World Eats by Raymond Sokolov

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Raymond Sokolov’s Why We Eat What We Eat is a fascinating account of the modern American diet. I’ve never read a book quite like it, and what immediately comes to mind isn’t more food writing but rather Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, a more general history of why certain cultures (rather than cuisines) came to be dominant. Sokolov’s book is, likewise, concerned with domination, though here it’s food rather than society that ultimately reigns supreme.

Unfortunately, Sokolov’s thesis is a bit hazy, and the organization of the book haphazard. Later chapters, especially, feel a bit like asides and could have easily been combined to create more balance overall.

Nevertheless, Sokolov’s prose and affection for the food in question, respectively, carry and unify this book. It’s food porn to the nth degree, lovingly researched and written. It made me hungry for all sorts of things I’ve never eaten–persimmons and old varieties of apples and extinct key limes–and some things I have. Even with its imperfections, this is a really worthwhile read for both foodies and history buffs. Like an old-fashioned, mottled apple, Why We Eat What We Eat is tasty, despite its flaws.

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In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was looking forward to reading Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, since his plain-spoken eating philosophy (in the unlikely event that you haven’t heard it, it’s “Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.”) is pretty close to my own. The first half of the book, which presented background information on our cultural eating habits, lived up to my expectations. Well-written and likewise well-researched, Pollan’s exploration into the Western diet should be sufficiently convincing to anyone who has thought critically about their eating habits.

The second section, in which Pollan sets down his “eater’s manifesto,” was surprisingly thin, though. Pollan implies several times that he prefers a vegetarian diet, but he never quite argues this sufficiently. Likewise, his admonishments to “eat food . . . not too much” seem somewhat divorced from our dieter’s culture and the strange, strained relationship that advertising and the media has with food. Having read the similarly themed, but meatier (hah!) The Obesity Myth several years ago, I couldn’t help but wish for a deeper exploration or at least acknowledgment of sociological factors that make eating food, and not too much of it, difficult for many people. Pollan simply says that it’s a “shame” that not everyone can afford or has access to pasture-fed beef and copious veggies; the reality is much worse than that, though it may be difficult for Pollan, unarguably a member of the upper-class intellectual elite, to see past his own cultural blinders to acknowledge it.

I think the biggest problem here is that Pollan can only be preaching to the choir: those who are similarly privileged (and I can’t deny that I am) will nod knowingly at his references to his CSA box; but those who could actually reap the most benefits from the changes he suggests will likely never encounter this book, and if they do, implementing the advice inside is likely to be, at best, impractical, and at worst impossible.

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