Mouthing Off

Gotta love the governor of Kansas, Kathleen Sebelius, who was quoted as having said, at a fundraiser for fellow governor Chris Gregoire of Washington State, "You should be thankful we don't make wine in Kansas. If you ever see Kansas wine, don't drink it."

The Kansas City Star reports the story here. 

I would suggest Gov. Sibelius visit the Wines of Kansas site—since of course there are wineries in Kansas—jot down some addresses, and start visiting.  

For years I was happy enough to believe, thanks to 2nd grade science class and John Lennon, that “we are all water.” Then folks like Michael Pollan and Eric Shlosser showed us that “we are all corn.” (I have another theory that involves water, corn and fermentation, called “I am all bourbon,” but I’ll explain that one another day.)

If we are all corn, then Curt Ellis, one of the brains behind the new documentary King Corn, is in for one hell of a month. Last Thursday he announced that he will not eat foods made with corn for a month. He makes only one exception: fresh corn-on-the-cob.

“That means no corn-fed hamburgers,” Ellis writes. “No corn-sweetened juice. No corn-oiled salad dressings. Not even my beloved mono- and diglycerides! Frankly, I’m not sure if I can do it.”

I’m not sure either, but not because I think Ellis lacks the willpower. I just think corn will find a way in. It always does.

"Red wine headache" syndrome, as it's often called, affects a surprising number of people. But the culprit isn't sulfites, contrary to popular belief. Sulfite allergies, which are relatively uncommon, can result in wheezing, dizziness, accelerated heartbeat, hives, and, in very rare cases, both of one's arms falling off abruptly, crawling by the fingers across the floor, and trying to throttle one's dog.

OK, the last symptom was a lie. But one thing that is true about sulfites is that your average package of dried apricots contains radically more sulfites than a bottle of wine (about 2000 ppm vs. a legal maximum of 350 ppm; most wines have less). So if you really want to see if you're sulfite-allergic, eat a few dried apricots and check out what happens. Just make sure your dog is parked safely outside.

Regarding those headaches, though. The likely culprit seems actually to be a group of chemicals known as biogenic amines, which include tyramine, histamine and others (though this is not   conclusively proven). Nevertheless, because the juggernaut of science stoppeth for nothing, researchers at UC Berkeley have developed a suitcase-sized gadget that will detect amine levels in a drop of red wine, as described in this interesting article in today's Press Democrat. Haul it with you to a restaurant, and you may just find yourself saying "no thank you" to that bottle of 1961 Château Lafleur after all. 

Or you may just want to switch to wine made from cherries. Which apparently, according to Dr. Vasantha Rupasinghe, the Tree Fruit Bio-Product Research Chair at Nova Scotia College, has practically no detectable histamines at all. 

The news just broke that Meryl Streep will play Julia Child in the movie version of Julie and Julia, Julie Powell's blog-memoir about cooking her way through Child's epic, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The movie sounds like it could be a lot of fun, with Nora Ephron in the director's chair. But can Meryl carry off the role of our Patron Saint? We discussed it in-house, and the consensus seems to be - perhaps. Our features editor, Michelle Shih, always apt to notice the details, remembered a scene in The Hours in which Streep deftly separated egg whites from egg yolks by letting the whites run through her fingers. "It was the sort of trick that gave me the idea she's cooked before," Michelle said. What can we do - we're a little protective of Our Lady of Deliciousness and Dropped Turkeys.

Low-glycemic diets—rich in whole grains, fish, lean meats and plenty of fruits and vegetables—have received a lot of fanfare lately, a bunch of it over Dr. Nicholas Perricone's anti-wrinkle diet (key words there: wild salmon and greens). But according to an article in the November issue of W magazine, there's another (superficial) benefit to eating foods on the low-glycemic scale: clear skin. While two studies in the 1960s and 1970s seemed to debunk the connection between diet and acne—one absolved chocolate, the other, peanuts, milk and soda—a more recent one, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in July, found that subjects who followed a low-glycemic diet for 12 weeks had over 50% fewer pimples. That's all great news—just one more boon to add to the numerous health benefits of eating well.

Mommy's Time Out Pinot Grigio. I mean, what can you say? Other than what my friend and colleague Emily Kaiser did when I mentioned this irritatingly named wine to her, which was, "Pinot Grigio? That's such a letdown—I was hoping for Mommy's Time Out Child Restraints or something."

Some stories, you know, you just read them and wander away thinking, wow. What a perfectly weird place the world is. Former Australian barrister chucked into prison for embezzlement and robbery, claims addictions to alcohol and gambling made him do it, gets out, writes best-selling memoir, uses proceeds to purchase (after prison closes) his old jail cell—which is going to be converted, along with the rest of the prison, to a rare-wine storage facility. I don't know what thrills me most—the image of some guy in a white wig (no idea if Aussie barristers wear wigs, but whatever) holding a sawed-off shotgun (true) as he tries to rob a bank? The idea that the guy then has a wildly successful career as a motivational speaker? The fact that the man bought his own freakin' jail cell? And that he plans to store other people's rare wine in it? 

Uh, yeah, sign me up. If I've got anything wildly valuable, I'm definitely hiring an alcoholic/gambling addict formerly-bank-robbing now-motivationally-speaking barrister to store it for me. 

The BBC will tell you all about it right here. 

The other day, my amazing colleague and Top Chef judge Gail Simmons turned me onto Udi's Granola, a fresh-tasting mix of super crunchy oats, banana chips and toasted whole nuts. But what I loved best was its mellow honey flavor—not too assertive, and definitely not cloying. After a little digging, I found out that Udi gets its honey from the Colorado Honey Company, owned and operated by fourth-generation beekeepers. While the honey itself is only sold retail through Denver's Cherry Creek Farmer's market, the granola can fortunately be bought online.

If you're interested in that whole green-sustainable-carbon footprint-etc. nexus of issues as it concerns wine, stop by Dr. Vino and check out his post today on wine's carbon footprint. It's a pithy distillation of a paper (pdf download) he wrote with Pablo Päster for the American Association of Wine Economists. 

I can't think of a single downside to the Manhattan debut of the fab Japanese superstore Muji—except that the three upcoming local branches (the first is slated to open at 455 Broadway in Soho in mid-November, and the second in the New York Times building in early 2008) won't include the big café that makes the flagship in Tokyo's Marunouchi neighborhood so much fun to visit. Yes, the stateside stores will be stocked with plenty of Muji's seductive, stripped-down housewares, stationery and knicknacks—just not the store's fat, fluffy (and plausibly healthy) matcha-green-tea scones.

So I'm happy to find that the brand-new Amai Tea and Bake House has rows of fetchingly green—and green-tea-spiked—baked goods that are just as irresistible as Muji's. So far I'm loving Amai's moist but non-greasy green-tea muffins and the small, shamelessly dainty but addictive green-tea and white-tea cookies (my favorite: the sesame-genmaicha ones). And since Amai is so close to Union Square, the staff sometimes raids the Greenmarket for ingredients to use in confections like today's flaky, crisp, sweet-potato filled pastries. As for the sweets I'm betting will sell the fastest: the extremely chocolatey, gooey-centered Botanical Brownies (not that kind), filled with fruit like quince or lychee or cherries, and way too rich for Muji's austere taste.