Links for the Weekend

• Wolfgang Puck is no longer offering foie gras at any of his fine restaurants. But can I still get an order of Hepatitis A, that's what I want to know?
• The L.A. Times recommends you make your own stock. I agree. Boudrain's been pushing this for years. I suspect that they are both right -- your food (soups, sauces, etc.) will taste much better if you make your own stock, rather than use that salty stuff they sell at the market. One problem, though. I've been trying to make veal stock for about six months, and I can't get my hands on enough veal bones to do it. I've checked all the supermarket butcher counters around, and nobody gets veal bones in quantity. Whatever happened to the stand-alone butcher shop in America, anyway? That's a subject for a longer, more thought out post.
  
• The New York Times has a good article about Ina Garten, aka the Barefoot Contessa. It describes her risky move into the world of publishing (Would-be authors take note: Garten used $200,000 of her own money to hire a consultant and a publicist. All the people I know who know anything about the publishing industry recommend doing this as well. It'd be a better use of your six figure advance than that Lexus hybrid you were coveting) and her resistance to become a shrieking whore of consumerism. The Grinder uses the article to take a jab at everybody's favorite Food Network shill. I've always felt a little ambivalent about Ms. Garten. On the one hand, her East Hampton life with "Jeffrey" (former dean of the Yale School of Business, apparently) represents a completely unrealistic, Martha Stewart-esque mode of existence that can be off putting. Her food, though, is simple to make and damn tasty (although a little butter-happy, if you ask me). Edan and I have two of her cookbooks. They are among the best and most useful that we own.
  
• What's the next stage in eco-conscious eating? Refrigeration optimization. Why waste the freon keeping your mustard cold when you can just leave it in the cupboard? While this article devolves into a laundry list of items that don't need to be refrigerated, it does have a few interesting tidbits. For instance, Ed Koch apparently refrigerates balsamic vinegar. The other problem with the article is that everybody knows that most subzero refrigerators are used to keep boxes of takeout cold. Just like most people with "professional kitchens" cook about once a month.