At last! Relief from Iraq War documentaries, George W. Bush documentaries, and documentaries in general! Seriouseats reports that the charmingly creepy YouTube phenom Food Party is coming to IFC. It’s a like a little piece of Brooklyn in your TV set, but without that smelly guy who’s ironically drinking a 40 and some crazy mash-up band that has shakuhachis and samplers and somehow, someway, just got on the cover of Fader. (Do they have a publicist? Or a personal friend at Fader? WTF?)

On the heels of my recent post about Fairfax’s greasy-sewer lawsuit against Krispy Kreme, the company is teaming up with Dunkin’ Donuts to offer (you guessed it) free doughnuts for (you guessed it) National Doughnut Day. Question: is National Doughnut Day something we should have? I’m onboard for Presidents Day, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Arbor Day, Take-Your-Kids-To Work Day, Secretaries Day (sorry, Administrative Professionals Day), Thanksgiving, Ramadan, Yom Kippur, Kwanzaa, and Christmas. But there’s a day that fat-ass diabetic Americans get free doughnuts courtesy of two enormous scary corporate doughnut-makers?

But maybe I shouldn’t be so cynical: the Alternative Health Journal reports that National Doughnut Day isn’t the creation of scary LLC’s, but, in fact, was created during WWI to “commemorat[e] Salvation Army volunteers who braved the front lines in order to provide home cooked foods as a morale boost to soldiers” since doughnuts “made in those days were often times cooked inside of the metal helmets of American soldiers,” earning them the nickname “doughboys.” Now that’s some historical shit. Marvel at that knowledge I just dropped for awhile, then somebody write and tell me why the fuck the Alternative Health Journal is writing about doughnuts. Boston Cremes aren’t really in the Neti pot/patchouli aisle at my local grocery, you know?

Bonus link: Any copy editors out there can tune-in to this discussion of “doughnut” vs. “donut” before going home early after not going on a date. Be sure to heat up a microwave meal and eat it alone before sinking into your moldy couch with your cum-encrusted laptop to play the RPG game of your choice. (Sorry, the thing about the cum-covered laptop is a bit much, I know.)

S. CAROLINA PESTICIDE PEACH AS SEEN FROM I-95

Hey all you vegetarians, raw foodists, posi-eaters, fruit apologists, Whole Foods shoppers, Jamba Juice drinkers, produce aisle lurkers, and fruit fetishists: get off of your healthy high horse! The Environmental Working Group has published a hypochondriac-friendly Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides that will leave sweet bell pepper, apple, and (especially) peach enthusiasts chagrined/scheduling appointments with their physicians to search for any and all relevant cancers. (The peach scored a 100 out of 100, making it the most pesticide-ridden fruit on a scale whose methodology is not detailed in the linked article. Obviously, journalistic standards are a bit low here.) Anyone sticking bananas in their a-holes and/or woo-hoos can celebrate, though – bananas only scored a 34, making it a (relatively) pesticide-free fruit. Onions are the least pesticide-y veg – they scored a 1 on the mysterious 1 to 100 scale. Is this such a surprise? What free-roaming critter wants to dig up an onion when they can feast on a peach hanging low in a peach orchard? I’ve seen a lot of things in my 32 years, but I’ve never seen a rabbit or raccoon chompin’ down on an onion, that’s for sure, unless they had a skillet to fry it in and some garlic to fry it with, not to mention some frijoles and rice and avocado to make some burritos (avocados are the second-least pesticide-y veg, making burritos pretty pesticide free, unless you put some tomatoes (29 out of 100) on them.)

Brooks Headley (pastry chef at Del Posto, former pastry chef at Komi, former drummer of Born Against and the Wrangler Brutes, and my former housemate) is headed to Osaka to participate in a dessert demonstration for the curiously-named Japanese pastry shop chain Gramercy, New York. Headley will join Alex Grunert of Blue Hill Farm and Robert Truitt of Corton, and the trio will demo signature dishes and lead Q & A sessions for classes of 20-30 dessert-crazed onlookers.

“People at this [event] are obsessed with desserts and pastry chefs from New York, like [we're] rock stars,” says Headley, who hopes to score a recipe for an obscure Japanese spongecake by way of cultural exchange. “The way the Japanese approach desserts is completely insane, methodical and analytical…to be immersed in that for a week is going to be awesome.”

Japanese or not, dessert fetishists should take a gander at Headley’s sfera di caprino with celery and fig agrodolce and celery sorbetto:

“It’s a dessert for people who say they don’t want dessert,” says Headley. The caprino (goat cheese) is rolled in to balls, coated with salted breadcrumbs and served with celery sorbet and a shaved celery garnish. The fig makes for a sweet-and-sour experience. “I refuse to take it off the [Del Posto] menu even though it doesn’t sell that much,” Headley adds. “Like if you’re in a band that likes one song that gets no response from the crowd, but you play it anyway.”

If any punk rockers are still reading this, check out Headley and Mick Barr’s (ex-Crom Tech, ex-Orthrelm) project Oldest.

Welcome to the fifth and final day of “One Man’s Bread!” It’s been a wild ride, but I’m looking forward to unsupervised eating for the rest of my days. With no one looking over my shoulder, I can eat vegetables and whole grains without hurting my image.

Without further ado:

Thursday, June 4, 2009
10:37 a.m. 5-7 Whole Foods vegan Duplex Creme Cookies and Trader Joe’s White Pomegranate Tea.
It’s become less funny to write about how frequently I eat cookies, so let’s just say I ate a lot of cookies and leave it at that.
2:15 p.m. 5-7 Whole Foods vegan Duplex Cookies.
3:47 p.m. Leftovers from Sunday’s curious home-cooked meal.
That meal was cous-cous, kidney beans, and green pepper, if you don’t remember.
4:42 p.m. More Trader Joe’s White Pomegranate Tea.
(Please read the following in an Irish accent):
Unseasonably cool, yesterday, wasn’t it, walkin’ the dog and gettin’ a chill in thee olde bones and needin’ some tea to take the chill off? But the dog doesn’t care how cool it is outside – he wants his walk twice a day in any under any class of conditions – snow, rain, sleet, hail, earthquake, anthrax attack, swine flu. Even if yer wantin’ to go see X-Men Origins: Wolverine or Terminator: Salvation, the dog doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about movies or media or the postmodern condition, only about walks and food and shittin’ in peace without the cat next door sneaking up to scratch him, may Mary Mother o’ God protect him! (End Irish accent.)
7:18 p.m. 5-7 Brussles sprouts.
Also leftover from Sunday.
11:01 p.m. 5-7 Whole Foods vegan Duplex Creme Cookies.
11:45 p.m. 2 Tofutti Cuties.
Unbeknownst to be, Tofutti Cuties had been hiding in my freezer under assumed names like chocolate-y participants in a Delicious Treats Protection Program. Needless to say, once these Cuties were discovered, they were torn to pieces by the coordinated operation of my upper jaw, lower jaw, salivary glands, tongue, and teeth, and swallowed without as much as a thought.

Confidential Young & Hungry sources report exciting news about the National Geographic Society’s cafeteria:

1. At less than $4/pound, the salad bar may be the cheapest one in town. And they’re not skimping – they’ve got artichoke hearts, tofu, chicken, and quality greens (no iceberg lettuce need apply). Our undercover diner got a salad for $4.11 today – a comparable Whole Foods salad costs $8.49.

2. The cafeteria composts and, as this old blog reports, the Society allows only one to-go fork per customer.

3. Hexagonal trays allow for more table space. Evidently, NASA engineers were outsourced on this one.

4. The cafeteria serves both Coke and Pepsi products. Take that, bastard monopolies!

5. The cafeteria is only open to NGS employees, but our undercover diner wasn’t asked to show his or her ID.

You didn’t hear it from us!

Rosslyn’s Pho 75 has gotten the stamp of approval from blogger Scott Underwood. More than a stamp of approval, actually: “Do you remember when you discovered your favorite food?…Well in my case that answer is yes. About two months ago I discovered pho—Vietnamese noodle soup.” Underwood was turned on to Pho 75 by a friend who “espoused its virtues” (FYI Scott: I’m not sure if that’s a correct use of the word “espoused,” but don’t get mad – all my blogs and myspace pages and Twitter feeds are fucked up, too) and is now an addict. But Pho 75 isn’t a one-night stand for D.C. foodies – the cafeteria-style joint has already gotten the heads up from Tom Sietsema and The Washingtonian.

But is Pho 75 the real thing? The ongoing debate about pho – which Vietnamese beef and noodle soup, unless you’re not convinced that pho must have beef, or think it can be vegetarian, or think it must be seasoned in a particular way – is, well, ongoing and ongoing and ongoing and likely to go on as long as Vietnamese people have hot water, broth, noodles, and restaurants. (I guess a Vietnamese doughnut-maker could say doughnuts are pho, but that argument seems thin.) My favorite pho spot is Pho 99 in Bellingham, Washington, right off of I-5. When you’re touring up the West Coast headed to Vancouver and get a hotel in Bellingham for the express purpose of storing your merch so you don’t have to sneak it across the Canadian border, the last city before the border is Bellingham, and you’ll probably be hungry from all the merch-and-hotel related logistics and plotting, so get a room at the Motel 6, dump your merch, and go get some pho at Pho 99, because it’s fucking good, and also they said it’s vegetarian, though I’m not sure if I believe it.

Sorry to keep writing about vegetarianism on youse guys’ precious food blog, but check out this veg-friendly post on the Foreign Policy website. Jim Motavalli’s arguments about the inevitability of a vegetarian world (meat is an environmental disaster, raising cattle takes too much grain, etc.) aren’t new, but it’s cool to see Motavalli out of the New York Times liberal ghetto writing in a less ideologically-poised publication that someone who voted for John McCain might actually read/believe.

That said, I must object to this piece’s hed (”Meat: the slavery of our time”). I guess sensationalistic heds like that generate hits and are here to stay, but the whole “slavery” thing doesn’t (quite) reflect Motavalli’s (slightly) more nuanced argument. If vegetarians really want to convince other people to follow their dietary lead, the should read William Saletan’s Slate piece “Let’s Make an Abortion Deal” and see how Saletan’s call for moderation can be applied to their issue. Meanwhile, Slate, where heds are either apocalyptic (”Truly Terrifying Data about the Real State of the U.S. Economy”) or adopt a dubious first person that doesn’t necessarily appear in the article (”I Would Give to Charity if It Weren’t for All the Junk Mail”) should take a chill pill.

Everyone’s favorite ruggedly-handsome, confident, opinionated, ever-so-slightly condescending former junkie/chef has published a bucket list. I won’t spoil the photo essay by duplicating the list here, but Anthony Bourdain’s “13 Places to Eat Before You Die” includes restaurants on three continents: one in London, two in Spain, one in Napa Valley, one in Singapore, one in Seattle, one in Tokyo, one in Chicago, one in Kansas City, and four in New York City (that’s almost 25% of the list in good olde NYC – it always was a hell of a town!). So, if one trusts Bourdain’s palate (and who wouldn’t trust this charming bastard?), that means that you don’t really need to visit South America, Africa, or Australia before you die, which is a relief, because two of those continents specialize in water-borne diseases, and the third boasts of its famous kangaroos which, as far as I’m concerned, are really just enormous rats.

AFTER THE COOKIE PARTY

Day #4: a shamelessly cookie-heavy day. I think I ate probably twenty cookies, maybe thirty. I’m not sure why I eat so many cookies. To be honest – I don’t even like cookies that much. I mean, I like cookies as much as the next guy, I’m not some kind of mutant or something. I mean, every good American loves cookies. But I much prefer doughnuts (though they’re rarely vegan), or apple pie, or any pie. But cookies require little preparation, are always in the house (unless I ate all of the them), and work as breakfast, lunch, and dinner (or as a little dessert after any of the above), and as a midnight snack. If you’re not that hungry, you can have one cookie, but if you’re really hungry, you can have thirty! So you can’t go wrong with a cookie.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009
10:17 a.m. 5-7 Whole Foods vegan Duplex Creme Cookies.
As discussed above.
11:15 a.m. 5-7 Whole Foods vegan Duplex Cookies.
That’s two discrete cookie-eating sessions before noon.
1:47 p.m. 3 Whole Foods vegan Duplex Cookies.
Just a few more cookies while running out the door.
3:42 p.m. A lemon poppy-seed muffin and a 8 oz. bottle of water.
Lemon poppy-seed muffins given away at community meetings are not vegan, but they are free, which makes them “free-gan,” and I’ll settle for that when it’s almost four o’clock and I’ve eaten nothing but cookies all day. And I love an 8 oz. bottle of water. Reminds me of an airplane.
7:17 p.m. General Tso’s Tofu, a spring roll, and a mug of hot water.
A Chinese takeout on Vermont Avenue with a haiku-friendly name (White Lily? White Lotus?) is one of the few downtown eating options for Washington Post employees on the night shift that isn’t Subway or CVS. I didn’t have any money for the usual treats from the Post vending machine, and the vending machine doesn’t accept credit cards, so I had to place a takeout order (from Sea Flower? Spring Flower?) even though I wholeheartedly believe that American Chinese food is always mediocre at best. But, when I strolled down Vermont Avenue to pick up my order, I found that the Chinese food takeout I remembered had become Bao, which serves basically the same food in basically the same atmosphere for almost twice the price, and hadn’t even bothered to change their telephone number. I returned to my office and washed the gooey General Tso’s down with hot water (not tea, but hot water, as I had run out of tea) and threw away the leftovers. Tough times.
12:01 a.m. 5-7 Whole Foods vegan Duplex Creme Cookies and 10 oz. of Schweppes Ginger Ale.
Nothing like fizzy, gingery duplex cremes to finish off the day.