Taste Buds

Monday, January 29, 2018

Whole Foods' prices have impressed me as much or more than their reputation for quality and variety.  So, even though their closest store is only a pleasant ten block walk from my home, I probably hadn't spent more than $20 there in the last decade.  The other day, however, I cruised their large underground space on Columbus Circle to see what has resulted from the takeover of Whole Foods by Amazon. 

Much seemed the same, at least as far as I could tell from previous forays when my hands remained buried in my pockets.  I did notice some attractive offerings, though, such as fresh salmon steaks or fillets just under $10 per pound and, while pricey at $9.99 per pint, packaged Ample Hills Creamery ice cream, nearly the best there is. 

I skipped these items, but made one purchase.  Not a cookie nor ice cream, not Chinese, one of my most favorite things to eat is a chocolate-covered pretzel, dark chocolate-covered pretzel, real dark chocolate-covered pretzel.  That's important.  What appears to be chocolate in many items, candies, cookies, ice cream and pastry is not.  The giveaway is the wording, typically "fudge" or "chocolatey" as the disguise for what is no more than brown Crisco.

Real chocolate must contain cocoa solids and cocoa butter, the result of processing the seeds of the cacao tree by fermenting, drying, cleaning, roasting, grinding, liquefying and cooling.  So-called white chocolate lacks cocoa solids.  Those fudge and chocolatey things replace cocoa butter with an alternate fat, usually a vegetable oil.  This cheapens the product in several senses.  Avoid.

If a list of ingredients is not immediately available, two of your body parts should help you detect the real thing.  Your tongue will greet the taste of real chocolate with joy, rejecting the waxy imitation.  Before even reaching your mouth, real chocolate will begin to melt on your fingers if held for more than a moment.  That's why M&Ms are coated, so that they melt in your mouth, not in your hand. 

Back to Whole Foods, which offered chocolate-covered pretzels, milk, dark and white, at $11.99 a pound.  Li-Lac Chocolates, a longtime Manhattan chocolatier, sells them for $34 a pound.  Asher's Chocolates, a reliable Pennsylvania-based company, sells them for $24 a pound at a number of local retail stores.  So, I bought half a dozen dark chocolate-covered pretzels from Whole Foods and enjoyed them over the next couple of days.

I could not rest easy, however.  How could Whole Foods be offering such a bargain?  When I returned today, I found the answer.  "Natural Chocolate Confectioners Coating (sugar, non-hydrogenated vegetable fat, cocoa powder, nonfat dry milk, whole milk powder, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, natural flavor, salt)" read the label that was missing on my prior visit.  Is it Natural Chocolate or is it Confectioners Coating (let's not worry about an  apostrophe)?  Is it akin to "Genuine Leatherette"?    

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Obituaries in the New York Times are usually well-written, brief biographies of interesting people.  Today, for instance, I read about Arno Motulsky, "a founder of medical genetics, recognizing the connection between genes and health long before mainstream medicine did," who died at age 94 in Seattle.  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/obituaries/arno-motulsky-dies-medical-genetics-founder.html?action=click&contentCollection=obituaries&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

Mr. Motulsky was notable not only for his scientific accomplishments, but for the fact that the American government literally turned him away from our shores, along with more than 900 other Jews, fleeing Naziism, on board the steamship St. Louis in 1939.  Great Britain took in almost one-third of them, others found their way to neutral countries.  However, "532 St. Louis passengers were trapped when Germany conquered Western Europe.  Just over half, 278 survived the Holocaust.  254 died: 84 who had been in Belgium; 84 who had found refuge in Holland, and 86 who had been admitted to France."    https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005267

Mr. Motulsky, 16 years old, born in Germany, was sent to Belgium when the ship returned to Europe, something that met the approval of our nationalists then, and would now, no doubt.  After all, the boy spoke no English, did not finish high school and had no marketable skills.  Definitely a candidate for extreme vetting.

Adjacent to staff-written obituaries in the paper are death notices, provided by and paid for by family and/or friends of the deceased.  I am not sure if any editorial control is exercised on these submissions.  In many instances, photographs accompany the text and that's what I want to address.  Some photographs show old people, probably taken in the last years of their lives.  Okay, but others show healthy folks, clear-eyed, well turned out.  Yet, according to the text, the subject may have lived into his/her 80s or 90s.

Head shots taken 50 years ago may be indistinguishable from those taken last week.  A picture of a man in a dark suit, wearing a white shirt and tie or a woman in a cardigan with a string of pearls might have been taken in any of a half dozen recent decades.  How do you want to make your last public appearance?  What should it be, now or then?  

Wednesday, January 31. 2018

Last night was the State of the Union address.  Along with the Oscars, the Miss America pageant, the All-Star Baseball Game and the Olympics, I stopped watching the televised live event years ago.  If anything important happens, it will be repeated over and over in a carefully edited segment.  It's not that my interest in politics or movies or good-looking women or sports has waned; I prefer to deal with these matters in the least hype-free setting available.  Of course, I fully realize that least hype-free nowhere approaches actual hype-free.

In fact, politics remains one of my central concerns and I have been thinking about making America great again, like back in the Kennedy years.  I remember my brother's good friend, Danny D., who was decidedly left wing, railing about our politics.  Congress, which I believe had Democratic majorities in both houses, was considering raising the minimum wage, then $1 per hour.  The Democrats proposed $1.25 while the Republicans urged $1.15.  Ten cents, Danny said, that's the difference in our politics?

Today, many Democrats propose a $15 per hour minimum wage while many Republicans, having had more than a half century to read and reread Ayn Rand, simply want to abolish it.
. . .

According to one source, we lefty/liberal/pinko/progressives should be hanging our heads, not because of the inferiority of our ideas, but because our appearance might scare people.  "Research Finds Attractive People More Likely to be Conservative."  https://www.susqu.edu/about-su/newsroom/research-finds-attractive-people-more-likely-to-be-conservative

The study suggests that, as good-looking people "are generally treated better, achieve higher social status and earn more money, influencing them to see the world as a just place," they may see less need for government intervention, a key component of left wing thought.

As an empiricist, I think that it comes down to choosing to snuggle with Mitch McConnell or Chuck Schumer.

Thursday, February 1, 2018

Rob Teicher and I, after dinner at Ben's Kosher Delicatessen, 209 West 38th Street, headed to Madison Square Garden for a hockey game.  However, the Rangers were seemingly replaced on the ice by the Strangers, a group of random skaters who, after standing in a straight line for the Canadian and American national anthems, went off in various directions with no common purpose.  Enough said.

Friday, February 2, 2018

The Upper West Side's Power Couple packed up and drove to Massachusetts for Boaz's tenth birthday celebration.  His birthday tomorrow is also the tenth anniversary of the New York Giants Super Bowl victory.  Even though he has lived for the last 7 years in the shadow of the New England Patriots, the loser on his birthdate, he had maintained his Giants pride throughout.  We will probably watch the Super Bowl together Sunday night, but I doubt that he will root for a massive power failure at and around the stadium as vigorously as Grandpa will.