So, the con itself started. Registration actually started 20 minutes early. I was pretty close to the front. You got some nice schwag just for showing up. A free copy of one of three Queen Games (I got Robber Knights, the least of the three) then you drew a ticket which either entered you in a drawing for some really great games, or guaranteed you a game from the free game room (full of a lot of good but not great games.) I got the free game, and wandered the room for 20 minutes trying to decide. I finally went with an expansion deck for my favorite party game Times Up. This time, all the cards are names of board games. Should be fun with my gamer friends. (Of course, part of the reason I chose it, was that it was among the smallest choices, and luggage space was at a premium.)

And so the con began in earnest.

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I like to cook new things. I even like to cook, and try, new things on holidays. My dear wife does not. My dear wife likes traditional home-cooked holiday meals. My dear wife has still not forgiven me for our first Thanksgiving together 14 years ago, when we ate at the Jonathan Club because that’s where my grandparents wanted to throw a dinner. (The fact that she was relentlessly interrogated by my female relatives may have something to do with it.) If an item of food is not visible in Freedom From Want, my dear wife wants no part of it.

I’m past my free will issues now and at peace with this. So I was somewhat surprised when my dear wife, inspired by an article in the Los Angeles Times, asked me to dry-brine the turkey this year.

I did it last night, using a mixture of kosher salt, diced fresh rosemary, and lemon zest. You clean the bird carefully first, dry it, then rub it vigorously with a generous sprinkling of this mixture.

Now, I really like salt. It’s amazing that my blood pressure doesn’t have more digits. But this seems like an awful lot of salt even to me. The experts swear that he salt will draw out all the juices and flavors without making the bird taste like the bottom of a pretzel bag. We’ll see. If it doesn’t work out, I will know who to blame.

Otherwise, I’m making it simpler this year. I’m passing up my mother’s yam casserole, and therefore recovering roughly two months of our lives that would be spent by consuming that dish of butter and sugar. I’m going with my favorite stuffing (mushroom and carmelized onion stuffing from the Williams-Sonoma cookbook), a cheddar and chive mashed potato casserole, homemade cranberry sauce, and an cider gravy. Someone else is doing green vegetables and desert. Only 13 people. It will be practically relaxing.

Zante Pizza is fusion in the best sense. It is a pizzeria that infuses it’s pies with the flavors and spices of Indian food. The smell of the place alone is heavenly. Credit where due, I was introduced to Zante by my friends Scott & Caren, who are vegan, and yet responsible for several of my favorite pizza experiences.

My parents were in town from Texas, and they always like to try new things when they are here, so we made an adventure of it, and got off BART at 16th Street, and walked the mile or so down Mission Street to Zante.

Mission Street (and the Mission in general) is one of my favorite neighborhoods in SF. It has (despite the pernicious influx of gentrification) maintained it’s combination of rich Latin American cultural flavor, bohemian SF hipsterism and delightfully shabby mom & pop stores & restaurants. There are very few chain stores or fast food restaurants here. But, there is a taqueria on just about every block (ranging from pretty good to transcendent. If you’re ever in SF, you owe it to yourself to make a pilgrimage to Taqueria Pancho Villa, with it’s long assembly line style burrito assembly. Of course, taquerias in the Mission are like churches, everyone accepts the choices of others, but secretly knows theirs is the best..)

Anyway, I took them down Mission Street where we stopped and looked at several random stores. The architecture along the street is great, even if the beautiful facade of the old Mission Theatre is now a .99 cent store.

Ah, but Zante. You actually smell it before you see it. I cannot describe the combination of  the delicious smell of pizza, mixed with the aromatic spices of India. It just works.

We ordered the Indian meat pizza which comes with a spinach curry sauce, cheese, a mountain of veggies, tandoori chicken, lamb and prawns. We went with an extra large, reasoning that there would be leftovers for the next day. There weren’t. The three of us polished off the entire thing.

One of the best things about Zante, is how light their pizza is. As I get older I find that cheese and I have a tempestuous relationship, and pizza is something I avoid. Zante is so light on the cheese that I never have a problem. I had 4 slices (matching my Dad slice for slice) and did not feel bad at all afterwards.

All in all, the combination of the cool multiculturalism of the Mission, the delicious synthesis of Zante and spending a lovely evening with my parents (who reminded me that despite my cynicism about Obama, he’s still better than John Cornyn) it was a great night.

If you find yourself in SF, go off the beaten path a little. I assure you the Mission isn’t in guidebooks, and there aren’t a lot of tours, but there is so much good food there, that it is a must visit when you come to the City.

I was visiting a friend in Sacramento over the weekend. The town of Rocklin is like one large strip mall. Really pretty awful. However, we went to the generically quaint Waffle Barn for breakfast on Sunday, and they had a menu item I had never seen before.

If you really hated yourself, you could get a bacon waffle. A waffle with bacon baked (grilled? ironed?) right into it. I didn’t order it, but I was sort of tempted.

I’ve seen a lot of criticism of the Double Down Chicken Sandwich at KFC, which uses the chicken as bread, and is currently being test-marketed in Nebraska. I guess KFC assumes that nobody in Omaha cares if they get fryer grease all over their hands while eating. It is pretty heinous looking when you see the actual sandwich instead of the glossy advertising photo but I’m at a loss as to what the big story is.

It isn’t that I don’t get the problem. I’ve written about fast-food monstrosities before, and continue to think that there is a special circle of hell for Colonel Sanders, Ray Kroc and the King of Burgistan for what they have wrought. It just doesn’t strike me as anything new under the sun.

The chicken-as-bread is a gimmick. A gross gimmick, but a gimmick all the same. If the KFC PR guy is to be believed, it is a 590 calorie sandwich – high, but not out of line for fast food. If the combo meal were simply called the Two Patty Platter – or even if they surrounded the double-chicken with bread, increasing the calorie count – I don’t think anyone would have mentioned it at all.

In the end, under the guise of being horrified by the fattening of society by the evil fast food companies and their ever-more-devious ways of packing more calories into a meal, all of the critics have instead served as a gigantic, free marketing campaign for a fairly ordinary sandwich.

It isn’t that the fast food companies aren’t evil and ever-more-devious; they are. I only wish that people would do a better job of picking their battles.

Via a lot of places but mostly Chris

Sorry Chris, but this is going to be another “how cool is living in SF” post. The other day I was walking around and found a little trailer selling some incredible crepes. I talked with the folks there briefly, and they let me know that San Francisco has a great tradition of “street food” and that most of it is now coordinated by Twitter.

Turns out, you can get everything from curry to tamales to goat tacos, on the streets of San Francisco (sorry, I couldn’t resist..) in conveyances ranging from the classic taco truck to a guy on a bike. And, they use Twitter to tell you exactly where they are going to be. They also give you hints as to what’s on the menu.

Acting as a guiding force in this is an organization called La Cocina. They are helping street vendors deal with city ordinances and permits, acting as incubators for food ideas and even offering kitchen space for aspiring street vendors. Here’s a map they put together of some of the many choices around SF.

I’m not usually one for the Twitter/flashmob/social networking sort of thing, but (probably because I love food like I love oxygen..) this whole thing just seems very cool to me. It’s almost enough to make me sign up for Twitter and follow a bunch of these folks in hopes they make it to my neck of the woods. Especially those bacon wrapped hotdogs!

Kimberly Block’s ADA lawsuit against Squeeze Inn might have ended differently.

The Sacramento woman who sued the tiny Squeeze Inn hamburger restaurant over its lack of wheelchair access has dropped her lawsuit.

Kimberly Block, 41, filed a civil rights complaint July 6 against the Squeeze Inn under the Americans with Disabilities Act. In the lawsuit, Block claimed she suffered “embarrassment and humiliation” when she tried to eat there last November.

For reasons set forth in our previous post and comments on the topic, Block’s suit seemed a classic shakedown, the sort of abuse of a well-meant law which gives a bad odor to anyone who attempts to use it for legitimate purposes.  While I support the idea behind the Americans With Disabilities Act, abusive or ill-founded suits like those filed by Block (her fourth this year) and individuals like Thomas Mundy give me, and many others, pause about the law.

Still, the internet does get the word out.  When the ADA was enacted, the internet was limited to people who could afford dollars a minute for access, or university systems.   A suit like that filed by Block and her attorney, Jason Singleton of Eureka California, would have proceeded in silence with barely a voice raised in protest.  And months later, people in and out of Sacramento would wonder whatever happened to the cramped cheeseburger joint on Fruitridge Road?

I survived all you can eat seats at the ballpark. I definitely got my moneys worth, but I also didn’t leave feeling like I was going to die (of course, that may say more about me than it does any sense of moderation..)

The seats (the only upper deck seats not tarped off by the almost minor league at this point A’s) were nice enough, and it was a gorgeous day for baseball. The usher told us to sit where ever we wanted, so we grabbed great seats behind home plate.

There was one concession stand that featured 7 items, all of which were free: hotlinks, hotdogs, nachos, popcorn, peanuts, sodas and ice cream. There was also beer, but mercifully for all of us, it was not free. The hot links were quite good, but the regular hot dogs didn’t look great. The nachos were gross (although, some people like the fake cheese, I guess..) The popcorn was surprisingly good and you can’t really mess up an ice cream sandwich, can you?

So, the final tally was a minor sunburn, 2 hot links, 4 sodas, 1 bag of popcorn and 3 ice cream sandwiches. It was fun, and if a real team had been playing, it would have been even better. Oh, and if that guy behind me hadn’t screamed everytime the opposing pitcher threw a pitch. Did he think he was going to throw off the batter?

Saturday, I will be attending an Oakland A’s game. Now, the A’s are terrible, play in the hated AL, have a rotten stadium and use the DH. So, why would I go? Well, I just have to try out some very special seats…

I don’t see this going well at all. Check back Sunday or Monday for the full report.

At least that’s Kimberly Block’s interpretation.

The Squeeze Inn, known for huge mounds of melted cheese on its burgers, violates the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, [a] lawsuit alleges.

Kimberly Block, who says she has severly [sic] limited use of her legs, argues she suffered “embarrassment and humiliation” and that her civil rights were violated because of inadequate access inside the Fruitridge Road restaurant.

In addition to its cheeseburgers, the Squeeze Inn of Sacramento California is also noted for its cramped spaces and limited seating.  Get it?  “Squeeze in.”  The restaurant is famous, having been featured on Food Network and in a number of other media.

The charm is evidently lost on Kimberly Block, who is suing the Squeeze Inn and its owner, Travis Hausauer, for alleged violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act, a well-intended law that has produced an unusually high litigation burden for small restaurants and businesses.  But one wonders whether Ms. Block visited the Squeeze Inn last November to order one of its famous cheeseburgers, or to just to get a settlement check, hold the onions.

Why?  Well according to a search on Justia, this isn’t the first time Ms. Block has suffered embarrassment and humiliation so severe she felt compelled to sue a restaurant.  It’s the third time this year. While Ms. Block hasn’t yet filed enough suits to place her in the company of famous serial ADA litigants like Thomas Mundy, her lawyer Jason Singleton, like Mundy’s lawyers at Morse Mehrban, has made an industry out of the act. No doubt Block will get there in time.

Of course if Block’s suit is litigated rather than settled or defaulted, there’s room for a defense attorney to move here.  According to its owner, Squeeze Inn had already altered its patio dining area to accommodate the disabled, making the outdoor area less “squeezy.”  Did Block ask for a patio seat?  Did she order to go?

According to Block’s suit, she’s a longtime resident of Sacramento who routinely travels into the restaurant’s neighborhood for business and pleasure.  So the question arises: what did Kimberly Block know about Squeeze Inn, and when did she know it?  Hadn’t she heard of the diner famous for its packed seating and cramped aisles before she visited?

Or did she visit the restaurant not for a cheeseburger, but for the express purpose of suing it?

Unfortunately those questions may have to remain between Ms. Block and her consience, rather than a jury.  The owner says he can’t afford the renovations Ms. Block demands (renovations which would, not coincidentally, remove much of the Inn’s weird appeal), and insurance typically doesn’t cover or defend ADA suits, for which defense costs are high.

So while cheeseburger fans and lovers of whatever funky local character remains in Sacramento may be out of luck, their loss will be Jason Singleton’s gain.  They’ll always have McDonalds.

Update: See comments for more on Jason Singleton, and see this profile of the attorney from 2001.

Great news:

Health experts have long warned of the risk of obesity, but a new Japanese study warns that being very skinny is even more dangerous, and that slightly chubby people live longer.

People who are a little overweight at age 40 live six to seven years longer than very thin people, whose average life expectancy was shorter by some five years than that of obese people, the study found.

Via.

Considering that, oh I dunno, everyone in Outer Mongolia has seen Star Wars and its sequels, is it really wise for Pizza Hut to rebrand itself simply as “The Hut”?

Thanks to the wonderful Nancy Friedman for the tip.

Unlike many libertarians, and for that matter many smokers, I do not consider the passage of a law allowing the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco to be a major affront to my freedom.

Or, for that matter, my smoking habit.

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As Ron Coleman points out, the key test to determine whether a trademark infringement claim is valid is whether an offending advertisement creates a “likelihood of confusion” with a prior issued trademark.  That a trademark has some value may be presumed, until the court is required to determine damages, at which time its actual value is determined.

Here’s a case where that presumption might not be valid.

Miami-based Burger King Corp. alleges … Steak n Shake’s name for slider-style hamburgers, Steakburger Shots, is “confusingly similar” to trademarked Burger King names. They include BK Burger Shots, BK Breakfast Shots and BK Chicken Shots.

Like any red-blooded American, I enjoy a good hamburger, and find Burger King’s hamburgers, if not its french fries, better than those of its fast food competition.  But I find the entire concept of a “slider burger,” not to mention “Burger shots,” “Chicken shots,” or for that matter a “Steakburger shot” uncomfortably, well … digestive in nature.  In fact, I’m unlikely to eat anything described as a “meat shot,” no matter how tasty it may look, and assume the same is true for others.  Perhaps Steak ‘n’ Shake should pursue this promising defense as the litigation unfolds.

At the same time, I am quite aware of the BK Burger Shot, for reasons that have nothing to do with its name or quality as a hamburger:

Expect Steak ‘n’ Shake to argue that since Burger King cannot trademark cleavage, the claim has no merit.

You, you sniveling worms, with your relentless insistence on safety, absence of risk, and your belief that if the government only had more power, over everything, somehow you would not die.

Well you are going to die, and you deserve it, because you elected a government that drafts bills like the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, or as Radley Balko called it via twitter, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of Food.

Currently before the House Committees on Agriculture, and Energy and Commerce, the FSMA is drafted with the noble goal of seeing to it that Americans do not die of salmonella poisoning as a result of the ghastly diet that most Americans consume: things like processed peanuts rendered down into a flavorless paste and slapped between crackers at industrial food processing plants, or Mexican jalapeno peppers stewed into the unappetizing gel that most Americans think of as salsa.  That’s the intent anyway.  The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, on which we’ve written but which Walter Olson and others have covered much more effectively, was drafted with the intention that no American children die of lead poisoning.  The havoc it’s wreaking on thrift stores, handmade toy makers, and smallscale clothing producers is merely an unintended byproduct of all the good that the CPSIA does.

Well, when the CPSIA was passed, no one was minding the store.  Only Ron Paul and a few other cranks raised a complaint.  Apparently on this bill, only a few blogging cranks are minding the store.  I’ll barely add to the number of cranks, but the FSMA has not yet passed, so there’s time to prevent the damage.  The Food Safety Modernization Act, as currently drafted, will ruin most of the farmer’s markets in America.

Without going into a detailed textual analysis (click the link above), the FSMA requires all “food establishments,” which means anyone selling or storing food of any type for transmission to third parties via the act of commerce, to register with a new Food Safety Administration, to keep copious records of sales and shipment by lot and label, to subject themselves to at least annual inspections by FSA inspectors, and to provide detailed handling instructions for safe processing of food.  That may work for Nabisco and the people who supply McDonald’s, but it’s probably not going to work at, for instance, the farmer’s market I visit without fail every weekend beginning in late March.  The place is infested with hippies and rustic sorts who couldn’t fill out a spreadsheet and can’t afford legal advice on how to farm, but know a thing or two about growing good peppers.

Nor will the more detailed recordkeeping and lab testing requirements, and the monthly inspections, to be required of farmers’ markets which offer delicacies such as bacon or cheese, both of  which I purchase at my own farmers’ market because I trust the farmers involved, and because I won’t give up absolutely fresh tomatoes even if I’m not assured they were audited by the government.

It’s also unlikely to work for importers of certain delicacy foods which aren’t made in America (the bill requires food makers overseas to adhere to bacterial testing standards equal to those mandated by the FSA) such as mortadella ham and certain cheeses.  Those may no longer be imported.

As the CPSIA illustrates, the problem with “one size fits all” regulation of business activity at the federal level is that one size, in fact, doesn’t fit all.  Lead paint testing requirements, which are just a cost to be passed on to millions of customers by a Mattel or GAPKids who see little increase in price per unit because they test in bulk, simply kill small, artisan toymakers or small-lot clothing producers.  The mandates of the FSMA likewise will cause little trouble to Hormel, but may be onerous indeed to the smallscale family farmer in Louisburg North Carolina from whom I buy sausage on saturday mornings.  Even though the small farmer’s operation is cleaner than a factory slaughterhouse, and even though his pigs live in far healthier conditions than those from a factory farm.  (I know because I’ve visited them.)

This bill can be fixed, and it should be.  We’re currently undergoing a media frenzy on contaminated food, just as in 2007 we did with stories of lead paint, but farmers, even small farmers, are much better connected and have broader support than thrift stores or small crafts businesses.   If you enjoy fresh food from farmers’ markets, and don’t want to eat processed glop from Big Food at every meal, contact your congressman, particularly if you live in an agricultural district, and ask about this bill.  Encourage lawmakers to consider the effect this will have on family farms and farmers’ markets, and to ask themselves whether we need yet another federal food agency.

Do it for the tomatoes.