Miracle noodles!

Todd Kliman, food and wine editor

• The New York Post takes a (typically scathing) look at picky holiday eaters. I like the alternative offered up by the persnickety Kyle Megrath, a vegan, who packs his own food in Tupperware to take to dinner parties. I realize that in some way it’s just as narcissistic and melodramatic as all the other can’t-or-won’t-eat-it sorts, but at least he doesn’t force the cook to make concessions and impose his superior minority position on the meal. Of course, he COULD just eat before he shows up. Your worst nightmare!

• Adam Platt takes his mother to La Grenouille for the Dover sole. Reading along, I couldn’t help thinking of my own mother, who sometimes accompanies me on my own rounds as a restaurant critic. I just can’t hear her, even with all her spunky opinions, making that kind of pronouncement upon a dish. Unless it was Harry Belafonte, whom she met a month or so ago at a French restaurant—but then that’s a different kind of dish. Reasons to Love NY: 2011

• The Hedy Lamarr you never knew—though I suspect most of you probably don’t know her at all, being 26 and convinced (though you only just learned the name) that she was somehow before your time. As if your time doesn’t take into account all previous times. But my point is—Hedy is TIMELESS. As the venerable Richard Rhodes well knows. The author digs up lots of fun facts for his slim new bio. Inventor of torpedos! Would-be maker of soft drinks! Glamour and Munitions: A Screen Siren’s Wartime Ingenuity 

Nigella gets sticky for Stylist. Photograph courtesy Stylist magazine.

Todd Kliman, food and wine editor

• In this delicious trashing of a new book about olive oil, New York Times book critic Dwight Garner hips us to the industry’s dubious claims, and also offers up some lessons in good writing. Olive Oil’s Growers, Chemists, Cooks, and Crooks

• Forbes with a timely slice of service on cheapo ($40 and under) Champagnes for the holidays. 6 Ways to Beat the Coming Champagne Price Hike

• Remember the Voluntary Simplicity movement—urbanites self-consciously renouncing their worldly possessions in order to seek uncluttered lives of virtue and peace? Now, with the Great Recession, the practice is a little less voluntary . . . but no less smug. In this piece, “Brian and Katie” leave their high-powered lives in New York City to live in small town Staunton, Virginia, and run a grocery store. Which isn’t just a grocery store, no sir—just as their fleeing the demands and expenses of urban life isn’t simply bagging it. No, sir: It’s a metaphor for how to rebuild America! My Brilliant Second Career: We never thought we’d be grocers

Grub Street examines the drinking minefields that are office holiday parties. Photo: NBC.Com

Ann Limpert, food and wine editor

• Most useful service story of the season? Grub Street breaks down—complete with chart—exactly how drunk you’re allowed to get at your holiday party, whether you’re an intern, the big boss, or a “plateaued cog in the machine” (It’s Cuervo time!). Sloshed: How Drunk Can You Get at Your Office Christmas Party?

• Everyone has their food-writing pet peeves, and I have always prayed the terms “drool” and “drool-worthy” would die, die, die. Now, I’ve got science to back me up. We Don’t Actually Salivate at the Thought of Food

PETA makes liberal use of Photoshop in its holiday appeal to the wee ones. Photograph courtesy PETA.org

Now that's what we call a value meal:
In the New York Times business section, Paul Sullivan nerded out on turkey pricing. Turns out eating organic will cost you more—no surprise there—but a green feast with all the fixings still comes in at just $10.63 a person. That's, like, cheaper than lunch at Potbelly.

Frankly, Doug Allison, it's disturbing you'd even ask:
On NYT's Web site, meanwhile, a reader asked Diner's Journal if it's okay to cook a turkey frozen in the 1980s.

Here we thought it was the wine . . .
CBS News reported that giving thanks on Thanksgiving may make you happier.

Kelefa Sanneh takes a circumspect look at java zealotry in this week's New Yorker.

Todd Kliman, food and wine editor

• Do we know that eating at the likes of IHOP, Applebee’s and Chili’s is bad for you? Of course we do. But raise your hand if you knew that the innocently named Bistro Shrimp Pasta at Cheesecake Factory is tantamount to eating three-plus sticks of butter. Men’s Health boss David Zinczenko investigates. 8 Scariest Restaurant Meals

• Richard Florida, the professor and “creative class” guru, brings out a self-serving analysis of why great restaurants are clustered where they are. Florida believes societies with a sizable “creative class” are more open and tolerant, and hence more likely to produce great restaurants. I wish I had this kind of free time to waste. Great food can be found the world over, but great restaurants—as defined by the likes of Michelin and other self-styled tastemakers—are largely a product of the sort of affluence and leisure we in Europe, America, and Japan are lucky to enjoy. It ain’t that complicated, doctor. The Geography of Great Restaurants

Sweetgreen: Keeping it local. Photographs by Stacy Zarin-Goldberg.

Ann Limpert, food and wine editor

• Matt Selman, executive producer of The Simpsons, talks to LA Weekly about this weekend’s much-hyped episode “The Food Wife.” In it, Marge and the kids take up food blogging (obviously, “Homer thinks being a foodie is lame”). The whole thing sounds packed with insider-y allusions and cameos—keep your eye out for the José Andrés/Ferran Adrià–inspired character. Q&A With Simpsons Exec Producer Matt Selman: The Food Wife, Food Blogging + Dining at Jitlada With Matt Groening.

• Eater scours the countless Thanksgiving-themed food magazines out on stands—and piled up on my desk— and bestows some awards, such as Poorest Choice of Words in a Recipe Name (Cooking With Paula Deen’s cherry-pineapple congealed salad) and Pie Porn of the Year (Martha Stewart Living’s pumpkin meringue pie). Turkey Totality: Eater’s 2011 Thanksgiving Magazine Smackdown Spectacular.

• Words of wisdom for budding sommeliers. (“A sommelier is still a busser. Or should be.”) What I Should Have Known in the Beginning, and Wish I Could Always Remember Now.

Jessica Voelker, online dining editor

• Here’s a good life rule: Don’t compare people to murderous dictators. They tend to freak out and stop eating at your restaurants. After Chef’s Hitler Remark, Bankers Change Lunch Plans.

Maya Angelou: unrepentant about her cookbook. Photograph by Kyle Gustafson.

Todd Kliman, food and wine editor:

• Not quite in league with the righteous Tzaddiks, but hey, we'll take it: two Muslims save a bialy shop in New York.: NY's Oldest Bialy Shop Is Saved by Unlikely Owners.

• A former marketer for Nabisco, General Mills, and Pillsbury turns the tables on Big Food.: Confessions of a Former Big Food Executive.

• My buddy Robert Sietsema with a fun and phlegmatic rant on a dismaying new subgenre of upselling at high-end restaurants—a frothy blend of pretension, earnestness, hucksterism, and narrative backstory.: Why I Hate Upselling in Restaurants, and the Emergence of Narrative Upselling.

Jessica Voelker, online dining editor:

• It irks as much as it intrigues, but W. Blake Gray's blog post—in which he takes it upon himself to explain why newspaper food writing is bad (recipes, specialists, women left to their own devices)—is a provocative read.: Why Newspaper Food Writing is Bad.