The skinny on the fat

News10.net reports that California is moving to ban the use of trans fats in restaurant menu items.

The bill is being challenged by restaurant owners across California who worry the trans fat ban will force them to use more expensive alternative oils that could change the flavor of their food for the worse.

Why is it that I can hear sac-eats’ stomach grumbling now as it ponders a world without artery clogging, heart attack creating, yet oh so creamy industrially created as a side effect of partial hydrogenation of plant oils – a process developed in the early 1900s and first commercialized as Crisco in 1911, trans fatty acids?

“It’s going to be a big fight,” said Terri Mead, manager of Sacramento’s Pancake Circus Restaurant. “We don’t want them telling us what we can and can’t use in the restaurant.”

You tell’em Terri (a nay sayer from the Pancake Circus? Get out…). We don’t want those health freaks telling us what to do. Next thing you know we’ll have the government telling us that we have to maintain a certain level of “cleanliness” and “freshness” in order to “pass” a random “inspection” or face being “shut down”.

As someone who just threw back 3 or 8 zero trans fats per serving Tagalongs, let me just say that I don’t miss the trans fats at all.  And if it is good enough for our Girl Scouts of the USA, it’s good enough for me.

Eat like a mob boss

Maybe I’m just too big a fan of “The Sopranos,” but when I noticed baked ziti on the menu board at Cafe Milazzo, I just had to go for it. I could just hear Carmella telling Tony, “there’s some ziti in the ‘fridge,” and him grunting in reply.(Small and weird aside: One of the characters in “The Sopranos” sports a version of one of the names in la mia familia. My cousins can’t decide whether to be happy or horrified at this.)

Or maybe it wasn’t “The Sopranos” at all, but me just jonesing for the way Nonna used to make it. And the ziti? Perfect, with lots of gooey Mozarella and a tangy tomato bite. Better than Nonna’s, really, but probably not better than Carmella’s.

SNR website revamped; Mayor admits railyard purchase misstep

I’m getting a little behind here, working on launching a new website called BLUE MAG, an entertainment wing to my online mansion. Enjoy…

So a completely new look for the News & Review website. I think aspects of it are very attractive but it seems to me to be way too busy.

A great railyard story in last week’s issue as well. Mayor Fargo thinks that Thomas Enterprises didn’t bargain hard enough to get Union Pacific to move the tracks to accomodate the new infrastructure.

“Union Pacific should have moved their tracks. They could have done it. It would have been easy. … It’s a little bit of a sore subject, because we had hoped that our partners in all of this would be stepping up a little more, but the reality is, we wanted to get this done badly.”

So had we, Heather.

Mike Dunne Falls for Thai Food Trap

I laughed out loud when I saw Mike Dunne’s writeup of our old friends at Ruen Thai.  What particularly stuck out was this little gem:

The name rang a bell. I get more phone calls and e-mails about this or that exciting Thai restaurant than for any other kind of place, and over the past year a disproportionate number have been about Ruen Thai.

And yes, Mike had the soup.

Artest arrested on dom. violence charges

ArtestedCBS13 has the goods

Placer County Sheriff’s deputies have arrested Sacramento Kings’ Ron Artest on domestic violence charges.

Deputies say they got a call from Artest’s wife at 9:23 a.m. this morning.

Deputies responded and arrested Artest. He was taken to the Placer County jail in Auburn.

At this point I would like to retract 95% of my statements about the dog abuse thing…

UPDATE: CSI Sac provides the mugshot info

El Camino de los Mexicanos

Not being Mexican myself, or even Spanish, I have no idea what this title means. Like JFK in Berlin, I’m probably saying something akin to “I am a doughnut.” That being said, it’s always important to embrace the language, culture and food of our hosts, the people of Mexico; for,as FauxPaws pointed out last week, all of the land that we call home was once part of the great country of Mexico. So, in order to be one “of the people,” I have foregone my traditional Pellegrino and finger sandwiches for horchata and tortas, menudo and cabeza (which I think is Spanish for potatoes.)

Due to our recent relocation  to Del Paso Manor (literally translated “Manor of Paste”), a new world of restauranting has opened up to Mrs. Eats and me. So, if you find yourself on El Camino Ave (“Avenue of Cuddles”) and catch yourself hankering for Mexican food, here’s where you can go to get it.

Continue reading “El Camino de los Mexicanos”

Camellia Day

CamelliaYou might not know of this particular claim to fame, but it makes sense that Sacramento is officially Camellia City of the World. You also might not know that today is Camellia Day. One thing is for sure. You can’t miss the fact that there are probably a million of these brightly hued flowers blooming across the city, as they always do in the waning days of winter.

Camellias are native to Southeast Asia and first came here, like many other things, during the Gold Rush. Colonel James Lloyd Lafayette Franklin Warren came out West from Boston in 1851 to open, among other retail establishments, a seed shop. A year later, he imported the first batch of camellia seeds into Sacramento and they quickly took root as one of the favorite local blooms.

Continue reading “Camellia Day”

Do you have to let it linger?

When referencing this year’s cold and flu season, the answer is a resounding “YES!”

This is truly the affliction that will not go away, and I’ve heard horror stories of people whose nasty cold has turned into pneumonia. It’s an insidious bug going around, one that will knock you out for days, have you hack up a lung every quarter hour, make your chest scream in pain, run a fever, make you dizzy — and once you start feeling better and resuming a fraction of your normal activities, it will come back in the ring to take another swing.

Bottom line? Rest up, my friends. If you’re sidelined by this, DO NOTHING or as little as possible. Clear your calendar. Fire up the electric blanket and settle down with your pet of choice and remote control. Keep hydrated, and stay classy.

What’s my dateline?

A little late in the day for this, but here’s a little game, sure to be as wildly successful as Make Us Laugh. It’s called Where’s that dateline? I’ll give you a news snippet and you pick the dateline. Ready? Of course not:

A pregnant woman was shot in the back. A 17-year-old girl was shot in the head, rendered blind. A 20-year-old man was shot and killed behind the wheel of a moving car; his 15-year-old female passenger was shot as well.

So what’s my dateline? (No fair guessing if you read the paper or any other local news source before 4:30 today…) Is it…

A. Baghdad, Iraq
B. Sarajevo
C. wherever “Children of Men” takes place, or
D. a few hours in South Sacramento over the weekend?

Do I really have to answer? Bet the Police Chief is wishing he could have squashed that recent story about Sacramento having the lowest number of uniformed offers per capita…