This Just In ...

Culinary no-no #120

Posted by Kevin Fischer on July 5, 2009 | 0 comments

Culinary no-no's

If you’re as old as I am, you remember the old A & P grocery stores.

Late in the 70’s and early in my broadcast career at WUWM, I was dispatched to an east side location to do a Q and A with customers about the upcoming closing of the A & P stores.

I think I developed an instant hate for this kind of story that day. This isn’t riveting, compelling, hard-hitting journalism. Do you know how many yutz’s you have to interview before you can get a reasonable sample of sound bites that is broadcast quality?

After getting permission from store management to comb the aisles, I recall shoppers either knew about the demise of A & P and were just plain sad, or were totally taken aback by the news and were shocked.

One of the stunned parties was an antique of a woman, frail and feeble. Should I approach her? Will she be frightened, intimidated, and just tell me to take a hike?

Why not? I could get one of two answers.

The elderly gem was a sweetheart, my best interview of the day.

For her, the closing of the A & P was more than just a business shutting down. This posed a dramatic and serious change to her lifestyle.

In a shaky and very old-sounding voice (remember, this was radio), the woman expressed deep sorrow and near pain.

How am I going to live, she asked directly into my microphone.

And then she referred to a specific product.

To her, an amazing elixir.

A life-saving liquid.
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And then, the magical quote, the one that when your interviewee utters it, in the back of your mind, you’re going,




YES!




In a voice that was impossible not to sympathize with, the woman implored:

“I love my Eight O’Clock coffee. I need my Eight O’Clock coffee.”

When that sound bite was broadcast, how many listeners could empathize.

That was 1978.

Fast forward to now.

The state Capitol.

Madison, Wisconsin, USA.

The economy is in the toilet.

Consumers, if not government, are tightening their belts.

Gasoline at one time was over $4 a gallon.

And yet, where I work, you could set your watch to them.

Just like me, lowly state employees.

Each and every day.

Right about the same time.

And they’re off.

They high tail it out of the Capitol to that oasis just across the street.

Like the ancient woman I questioned 31 years ago, they suffer the same angst.

Gotta have it

Gotta have it.

Just gotta have…
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This goes on two, three, four times a day. At $4 a crack, we’re talking $16/day.

HELLO!!!

Don’t be moanin’ about the price of petrol folks.

Yes, the lure of the bean is addicting. Surveys indicate coffee drinkers would give up the beverage, but it had better be for something of incredible value, like lottery ticket winnings for a decade.

So I ask, how important is coffee to you?

Could you live without it?

Or are you completely hooked, like that octogenarian I met in 1978?

Is coffee that essential that in order to get your hands on it, you’d even drink Kopi Luwak?

Kopi Luwak? What the hell is that?

Allow me to explain.

You take coffee beans and you feed them to some wild animal. The animal digests, and you wait, and wait, and wait, and wait until……

THERE SHE BLOWS!

The coveted droppings.

Then the poo is made into brew.

An absolute luxury in Europe, terribly hard to find, don’t you know.

But when you do…..$700 for 2 lbs.

Have we lost our minds?????????!!!!!!!!!!!!

For heaven’s sake, what’s wrong with….







As Stan Lee used to say in Marvel Comics, "Nuff said."

More details here.

Cue the Fonz: 

YUCKIMUNDO!


CULINARY NO-NO BONUS

I really like Carol Deptolla's restaurant reviews in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Deptolla has incredibly hard shoes to fill, those of my late friend, Dennis Getto.

Deptolla had a very good piece in Friday's paper about great burgers in town.

OK, Kev, where's the but?

Deptolla includes in her mouth-watering burger review, Sonic.

Sonic?

Sonic?

Hey, Carol...you left out Burger King. Hardee's. A & W. McDonald's.

That's like, in the middle of a review about Lake Park Bistro, Sanford's and Eddie Martini's, a paragraph or two about George Webb's.

HUHHHHH????

Oh, Carol, McDonald's certainly deserves equal time.