More Stuff, or Pre-MLK Day

[Pardon some editing…]

Haven’t been blogging, due to after work events (ah, bar associations…), alumni stuff (ah, Alma Mater Law School has improved on its food provisions, has it?), tummy aches (man, what have I been eating? oh, yeah, that…), and Facebook (umm, yeah).

Time’s Lev Grossman has posted on the Time.com blog, “Nerd World” that Hasbro’s a little pissed with the people behind “Scrabulous.” I agree with Grossman, as he writes: “I just hope Hasbro is smart enough to buy Scrabulous and resuscitate it on a firm legal footing. Because I’ve got a wicked bingo to put down.” I agree – please don’t just scrap “Scrabulous”; negotiate!

Meanwhile, NY Times reports on how, as much as Scrabulous application on Facebook is beloved, other applications on Facebook leave much to be desired. Otherwise, yeah, well, the Scrabble/Scrabulous dispute continues…

Jennifer 8. Lee on the history of the fortune cookie – and how it may not be as Chinese American in origin as believed? Lee writes that, although early Japanese bakeries in America brought the cookie to this side of the Pacific:

Early on, Chinese-owned restaurants discovered the cookies, too. Ms. Yasuko Nakamachi [food historian] speculates that Chinese-owned manufacturers began to take over fortune cookie production during World War II, when Japanese bakeries all over the West Coast closed as Japanese-Americans were rounded up and sent to internment camps.

[Derrick Wong, the vice president of the largest fortune cookie manufacturer in the world, Wonton Food, based in Brooklyn] pointed out: “The Japanese may have invented the fortune cookie. But the Chinese people really explored the potential of the fortune cookie. It’s Chinese-American culture. It only happens here, not in China.”

That sentiment is echoed among some descendants of the Japanese immigrants who played an early role in fortune cookies. “If the family had decided to sell fortune cookies, they would have never done it as successfully as the Chinese have,” said Douglas Dawkins, the great-great-grandson of Makoto Hagiwara [a Japanese immigrant who oversaw the Japanese Tea Garden built in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in the 1890s]. “I think it’s great. I really don’t think the fortune cookie would have taken off if it hadn’t been popularized in such a wide venue.”

The accompanying slideshow and video are pretty nifty too. Getting eager about that upcoming book of hers, I must say…

Mark “The Minimalist” Bittman on whole grain pancakes. The accompanying video has a different opening theme music, by the way…

So, how far we go in respecting our food? Pretty far, according to this article on how chef Jamie Oliver and others believe we ought to look our meat in their eyes. I kind of respect the idea; not everyone’s going vegetarian, and while we can’t expect to be 100% humane, getting close to it or at least being aware sounds – well – respectful, to our stomachs and the animals.

Can Eli Manning and the Giants pull it off against Brett Favre and the Green Bay Packers this Sunday? “The Mystery of Eli Manning,” on Slate, explores the perennial problem of being the little brother – you’ll be second-guessed, but you might get a little sympathy out of it, so life can’t be that bad. Hopefully.

Friday night: some dinner at Republic on Union Sq. – good eats.

Oh, and it’s Winter 2008 Restaurant Week.

Pete Hamill lecture, sponsored by Downtown Alliance. Not that I had attended the event (although, I wish I did) – but great stuff in the NY Times’ City Room blog – kind of timely, as we think about diversity and tolerance before the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.

The passing of Bobby Fischer, chess genius and – to put it kindly – eccentric (the eccentricity probably having been due to many reasons).