Sampler Platter: bacon popcorn, useless kitchen appliances, Pabst brewery for sale

Want to see more useless kitchen appliances than you can find in SkyMall? Or badly named Chinese knockoff brands? Or squash blossom quesadillas? You've come to the right place.

--You think they've put bacon in everything, then you discover bacon popcorn! Uncrate
--20 of the world's most useless kitchen appliances. Restyle Your Kitchen
--Gather your pennies, hipsters. Pabst Brewing Co. is for sale. New York Post
--Husband leaves his wife after she forces him to eat cake for every meal. Metro
--40 chefs under 40, only one from L.A.: Matt Molina (#38), Mozza executive chef. MNN
--Kiss My Bundt needs to sell 5,000 mini-bundt cakes in the next few weeks to stay open.
--The wackiest Chinese knockoffs. "Nalencia" oranges? Yum. Business Insider
--A photographic ode to the po'boy. New York Times
--Costco bans Coca-Cola due to pricing dispute. Consumerist
--Wine DJ iPhone app, which helps you pair music with vino, launches.
--Berkeley cracks down on Cupkates truck. California Taco Trucks
--First it's pumpkins, now an Eggo shortage. Signs of the end times? Google
--Food Court LA becoming Spacecraft-designed gastropub? Blackburn + Sweetzer
--Squash blossom quesadillas on the Gold Line. 99 Cent Chef
--MillerCoors contributes $500,000 to water education. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
--"Eating Animals," Jonathan Safran Foer's new pro-vegetarian book, gets a mostly positive review from the Los Angeles Times and a meh one from the New York Times.

--Elina Shatkin

Photo: Rochon Armwood of Mother's in New Orleans stands firmly behind the restaurant's po' boys. Credit: Alex Brandon / For The Times.

Crooner and restaurateur Andy Williams talks about what Alpo tastes like

When the late Ronald Reagan was president, he proclaimed that singer Andy Williams was a “national treasure.” That's a strong a description, but Williams certainly has been treasured by audiences around the world for more than 60 years, first as member of the Williams Brothers quartet and then as a solo act.

Williams, now 81, has recorded 18 gold and three platinum certified albums. Among his memorable hits are “Canadian Sunset,” “Moon River” and “Days of Wine and Roses." The Iowa native also hosted a musical-variety series on NBC from 1962-71 and has been a staple at the Branson, Missouri resort since 1991 when he opened his Moon River Theatre. Two years ago, he opened the Moon River Grill adjacent to the theater. Williams recently published his autobiography, “Moon River and Me”, and Sony Music has also released the CD “Moon River: The Very Best of Andy Williams.”

But that is not the only reason Williams has been in the news of late.

Despite his strong friendship with the late Bobby Kennedy, Williams is a longtime Republican who accused President Obama last month in the Daily Telegraph in England of “following Marxist theory” and “wanting the country to fail.” But on a recent afternoon, Williams was more in the mood to talk about the comfort food found at his restaurant than politics.

Q: In your memoir you say that you ended up eating dog food when you first went solo in the 1950s because your career was struggling.

'EAT: Los Angeles 2010' hits the shelves soon

Finding not just good food but the right food for the moment in this sprawling multicultural city can be enough work to make me stay home and eat oatmeal for dinner. Or go to the same spot over and over. So I, for one, am happy that "EAT:Los Angeles 2010" is scheduled to hit stores Dec. 1.

The second edition of the guide has more than 1,200 listings, from food trucks to fancy restaurants, all over the city, with 250 new listings. "I really was surprised that we had more new places than had closed," says editor Colleen Dunn Bates.

The 2010 guide also has a new section of a dozen tours of top food-loving neighborhoods such as Little India, Abbott Kinney Boulevard and Boyle Heights. The book was written by a group of food writers, including Linda Burum, an expert on international foods who writes for The Times; Amelia Saltsman, author of the "Santa Monica Farmers Market Cookbook"; and Pat Saperstein of Eating L.A.

Bates says there's been an increase in neighborhood gourmet markets such as the Larchmont Larder and the Oaks in Hollywood. She also took note of the food trucks trolling the city, found via blogs and tweets. While "EAT: Los Angeles" includes some of them, she says they're not so easy to keep track of.

-- Mary MacVean

Book review: 'Save the Deli' by David Sax

The wandering of the Jews is frozen in the marble of the corned beef on rye. The fall of the Temple, the exile, life in the ghetto, reliance on the cheapest meat and the ensuing need to tenderize and smoke and spice, the crossing to the New World -- it all culminates in the towering sandwich you find at the Carnegie in New York, Junior's in L.A., Manny's in Chicago. Every deli is a synagogue. What remained when the kingdom was smashed and the faithful sent a-wandering.

In his deeply satisfying new book "Save the Deli: In Search of Perfect Pastrami, Crusty Rye, and the Heart of Jewish Delicatessen," David Sax sets out to tell this story one city, one deli, one tradition at a time, traveling from New York to San Francisco to Los Angeles, speaking to deli men, eating smoked meat, working as a cutter at Katz's on Houston Street ("Like snowflakes, no two pastramis are exactly alike, sometimes the flesh would be buttery soft, with very few sinews to impede my carving, but often I'd cut through a maze of tissue"), tasting and kvetching and chronicling the state of the cuisine, all this activity set against a dread premonition -- that the deli is going away, and the long run is over. "Across North America ... Jewish delicatessens are disappearing faster than chicken fingers at a bar mitzvah buffet," he writes. Read the rest of the review here:

Book review: 'Eating Animals' by Jonathan Safran Foer

Looking forward to your turkey dinner?

Think twice.

It's time, argues Jonathan Safran Foer, to stop lying to ourselves.

Chocolate chip cookies from 'Ad Hoc at Home'

It may take up to three days to make Thomas Keller's Catalan beef stew, a recipe from his newly published cookbook "Ad Hoc at Home: Family-Style Recipes," written with Ad Hoc chef de cuisine Dave Cruz. But not all recipes require a five-hour confit of onions and tomatoes.

Some are in fact really easy. There are a few that I've already made more than once, such as the chocolate chip cookies (see below for the recipe).

This cookie is slightly thicker than my Platonic ideal of a chocolate chip cookie (crisp and thin with a still-chewy center, made partly with whole-grain flour and lots of really dark chocolate, and at the outer edge it should have wrinkles that form what sort of look like concentric circles ... ), but I digress. Let's just say this one grew on me.

I think part of the reason is that these are perfect cookies for ice cream sandwiches. That's how I've been eating them, inspired by photos of ice cream sandwiches in the dessert chapter of the book. They're crisp on the outside, and chewy and slightly dense on the inside so that they don't crumble or collapse when you bite into the ice cream sandwich. 

An old favorite from 'The Vegetarian Epicure'

A reader who says "The Vegetarian Epicure" recipe for herb-onion bread remains a favorite asks if Anna Thomas plans any Bay Area signings for her new book, called "Love Soup."

She does. She'll be at Mrs. Dalloway's, 2904 College Ave., Berkeley, at 4 p.m. on Oct. 11.

And at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 13, she will be in San Francisco at Books Inc., 2251 Chestnut St.

-- Mary MacVean

Photo: Cookbook writer Anna Thomas (right) preparing hors d'oeuvres for dinner guests (left to right) Bruce and Marie Botnick before dinner at her home in Ojai. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times

Author Anna Thomas makes soup, signs books

 
Anna Thomas, whose book "The Vegetarian Epicure" introduced many cooks to interesting vegetarian dishes more than three decades ago, has a new book out focusing on soups. She'll be signing books and offering a tasting of food from "Love Soup" at a few spots in the area.

On Saturday at 2 p.m., she will appear at Treasure Beach and Cafe in Ojai, where she lives -- and where one of her sons is cooking. Treasure Beach is at 928 E. Ojai Ave.

On Sunday, readers can meet Thomas at 3 p.m. at Diesel Books in the Brentwood Country Mart on 26th Street in Santa Monica.
 
And on Tuesday at 7 p.m., she will be at Chaucer's Bookstore, 3321 State St. in Santa Barbara.

-- Mary MacVean

Photo: Anna Thomas cooks in her Ojai kitchen. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times

 

Eat fish, get into Long Beach aquarium free

Eat the environmentally correct fish, get a free ticket to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach.

A group of local seafood restaurants has teamed with the aquarium on a program that encourages people to pick fish and seafood entrees that don't threaten the world's already depleted fisheries.

Click here for more information.

Photo: A 4-foot zebra shark -- called that despite its spots -- cruises the Shark Lagoon exhibit at the Aquarium of the Pacific. Credit: Allen J. Schaben  / Los Angeles Times

Food may be cheap, but is it a bargain?

There’s been a lot of talk lately about how cheap our food is, what with “value meals” and discounts galore. I recently spotted a 5-pound container of peeled garlic from China for $7.99; at a farmers market a few days later, garlic was $1 a bulb -- and I had to peel it myself!

Similarly, almonds were about $8 a pound from the farmers market, $3.49 at Super King Markets.

If you’ve got teenagers at home, you might be spending a small country’s GNP on food, but even considering last year’s food price increases, Americans spend less of their disposable income on food, about 6%, than the citizens of other countries. Considered another way, we spent 18% less on food in 2007 than in the 1970s, Ellen Ruppel Shell writes in her new book, “Cheap,” which looks at the cost of consumer goods.

But is cheap food the bargain it seems? Naturally, it's a complicated question.

For all too many of us, all that cheap food is making us fat -- and obesity is no bargain. Estimates are that obesity and its attendant diseases will cost more than $100 billion a year.

But many people have come to consider high-quality fruits and vegetables fancy, elite products available at Whole Foods or farmers markets at high prices, Shell said. “What’s gotten lost” is nutritious food at affordable prices.

Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, noted that over the last quarter-century, fast-food prices have decreased while produce prices have increased -- at comparable levels. “There’s no question that they are relatively more expensive,” and so people with less money buy food that’s less nutritious, she said.

And if Americans are growing increasingly uncomfortable in their jeans, some people are as uncomfortable with the state of our food affairs.

“Food is too cheap. But it depends. If you are a poor guy in a Bombay slum, it’s too expensive,” said Hans Herren, president of the Arlington, Va.-based Millennium Institute, which promotes sustainability and issued a report this year on the state of agriculture.

Cheap food has a “huge environmental cost that everyone has to pay for,” including polluted wells and dead rivers, Herren said in a telephone interview from Northern California, where he was vacationing.