No Transfatties allowed

NYC Board of Health is setting a limit to the amount of transfats restaurant food is allowed to contain. I don't care for transfats, but I don't want someone to tell me what to do when it comes to eating. Then again, everything is complicated when it comes to food issues. For example, I'm conflicted about outlawing foie gras production. I've read that ducks and geese don't have gag reflexes, I've also heard that they do. Some of the birds (the free range ones obviously) waddle up to their feeders because they like overeating other birds are probably caged and prodded with dirty metal tubes until their livers explode with disease. I really don't know, but I'm not really into banning anything except maybe for littering and public masturbation. If I had to take a stand on the situation, I'd say that the industry has to be regulated, but at the end of the day, it's all about personal choice.
This weekend I was talking to my friend, Matt, the owner of Baked in Red Hook. I ordered the delicious Coke cake, but wanted to know what happened to their other famous chocolate cake. The one that made the head manager break out in sweats, the one that had out of this world flavor. Yes, the one made with lard. He said it had to go because people would order it, asking, "What's in this cake? It's so delicious!" When he told them, people stopped buying it. Oh well.
The Coke cake is terrific however and made with delicious European butter. The fat content is higher in European butter so it must be better! You can't taste the soda in the cake, I think it's more of a texture thing, maybe the bubbles give it a lighter texture? The icing is absolutely perfect-not too sweet, it's a deep chocolate ganache that should really be sold as a skin cream, it's so rich and delicious.
I'll post a picture of it later, until then, enjoy these delicious transfat free donuts from Donut Plant. They fry with 100 percent pure corn oil. No transfatties here, these are healthy doughnuts. The ingredients are organic and oh my god is that square coconut cream donut delicious.

Peace out, Ann

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Originally uploaded by i_eat_ny.

This is only somewhat food related, but I was sad to hear that Ann Richards passed away two weeks ago. When I worked at the Dobie Theater in Austin during college, Ann was one of our celebrity regulars. Because she was a celebrity, she didn't have to pay for admission, but she always did. And actually insisted that she pay, she was no better than anyone else. I remember she loved the John Sayles film, "The Secret of Roan Inish". She saw it twice and even took her grandkids to see it the second time. I wonder if she and Sayles were friends. We didn't play Sayles' follow up film, Lone Star, but I bet she saw it and enjoyed it. Ann and I had a little run in once after she saw one of my favorite food movies, "Big Night." After the show, Ann came out and said in her loud Southern Drawl, "I'D RATHER WATCH PAINT DRY ON A FENCE THAN WATCH THAT MOVIE AGAIN!!!"
I was shocked! "Big Night" was about family and food, the stuff of life and someone bigger than life like her didn't like it? She probably wasn't much of a cook, public service and all, but at least she sat through the whole thing. A couple of years later, I remember being annoyed that she did a Doritos commercial, or maybe it was Pizza Hutt, but I've made peace with that. Sometimes you just need to make a buck.

Jen and some dummies

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Originally uploaded by i_eat_ny.

So it's been a month since I've written; time flies when you're an American Gangster. Thursday morning was insane, so it was great to get to set after two hours of Long Island traffic. Luckily Jen was driving with Hakim in the back amusing himself with songs and impersonations. The location was the Nassau colliseum where the 1971 Madison Square Garden fight between Muhammed Ali and Joe Frasier was being recreated for the movie. We had rented 600 dummies and 300 extras to fill up the huge arena. Of course, I forgot my camera, but Hakim was nice enough to shoot these photos. It was a hoot to see the dummy handler pick up five dummies with one hand and throw them on the floor. Because the dummies were all men, our set decorator said being in the seats was like being in a gay men's club. These men reminded me of the Bionic woman doll my sisters had whose face came off to expose a head painted with wires and machinery. Some of the dummies' faces and wigs were falling off, but all this can be fixed in post. It will be interesting to see what the CGI people do as far as motion and filling in the gaps.
On a food note, we had just missed lunch, so we only saw the craft service table which was stuff from Costco. But we rode the freight elevator up with one of the TomKats catering guys, he looked absolutely exhausted. I asked him what time he had to wake up to make the donuts and he said 12. Twelve midnite to make the 7am call. Seriously, the catering department has the hardest job. They have to be the first ones at the location ready to work and they're always the last ones to leave. Hats off to them.

Hey buddy!

Hey buddy!
Originally uploaded by i_eat_ny.

Sorry I haven't written in a while. Things have been really hectic the last few weeks. It doesn't mean that I haven't had food adventures! I just haven't had the time to type any of them up. My days and part of the night have been spent working on American Gangster and dealing with the homestead. One of my projects at work was making some prop beer circa 1970. The Budweiser peeps finally responded to our requests and sent us some vintage beer labels. The actors can't get drunk while working, so I bought non alcoholic Kaliber by Guinness and Buckler Beer by Heineken. They both have brown bottles like Bud. However, my favorite version has been the bottles of Reed's Raspberry Ginger Beer. It's soda, but I love the graceful looking bottles. The necks seem longer than the fake beers. I painted the bottle caps with a silver paint pen to cover up the twist tops and learned in the process that the twist off cap was introduced in the late 1960s. Anheuser-Busch started testing the twist off in 1964, but didn't use it in mass quantities until around 1967. They must have been drunk, why would it take 3 years to test a bottle cap?!