Since I am still in search of a good butcher in LA (alas, none to be found!) – I am finding myself delving further into the dissection of strange and exotic cuts of meat – at home. A recent purchase of a meat grinder (more on that soon!) has lead to a whole lot of chopping and cutting, slicing and dicing and a new search – for a superior place on which to cut.
American Meat Institute Advertising 1940s
Alice Waters (born 1944) is one of the unrivaled pioneers of California cuisine, owner of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, among the first US restaurants to promote locally grown, seasonally available, organically produced ingredients. While this now might seem a given, this philosophy was groundbreaking in 1971, when Waters first opened her restaurant.
Alice Waters at her Restaurant 1975
Dishtowels, with their no-nonsense pattern design (that blue/white or red/white check or plaid or stripe has endured for decades) and soft texture (the finest are usually 50 percent cotton/50 percent linen), are not only nostalgic (lay one over that apple pie while it cools!) but well… handy. You can clean up messes, dry things, spray your cleaner and wipe away stains.
50% Cotton-50% Linen Kitchen Towel
‘The good life is never stable, never secure, never easy and never ended. It is a series of steps or stages, one leading into the other and all, in their outcome, adding, not subtracting; augmenting, not diminishing; building, not destroying; creating, not annihilating.’ – Scott Nearing, 1965
Helen & Scott Nearing
Humans started making glass about 5000 years ago, which makes it one of the oldest manufactured materials in the world. However, major scientific breakthroughs in regards to glass didn’t come until the 19th century. In the 1880s, the German scientist Otto Schott (1851–1935) invented borosilicate glass, a new, much stronger variety of the material. He started selling it in 1893 under the name “Duran.” Schott still sells it under this name today. In the United States, borosilicate glass was first manufactured by Corning Glass Works in 1915, and sold under the name Pyrex.
Borosilicate Glass Beaker
Spawned from the unlikely mind of an expat German scientist — the Chemex coffeemaker is a brilliant melding of design and convenience, a thermal carafe drip-system consisting of lab grade borosilicate beaker glass and a filtration system using laboratory filter paper.
Peter J. Schlumbohm, Ph.D, moved to New York City in the mid-1930s and was desperately searching for a great cup of coffee amid the city’s stale automats and late night diners.
Peter Schlumbohm (Check Out his Cigarette Holder) / LIFE Magazine 1949
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Vinegar
First there was wine, beloved by the ancients. Then there was wine gone bad – a mishap of leaky casks or stashes gone past their prime that mutated into one of the most versatile products in the world. “Vin aigre” (which roughly translates to “sour wine”) is a combination of acetic acid (aka ethanoic acid) — an organic compound which is the result of the miracle of fermentation — chemical reactions activated by the slow decay of everything from grapes to beets, malts to grains.
Chemical Formula of Oxidative Fermentation: Making Acetic Acid
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