good news for the holiday season: Ruthie & Moe's has just reopened, under new management

Well, we've been waiting and waiting, and I just got a call this morning from our friend Judy that what we all knew as Ruthie and Moe's diner at 40th and Prospect is now reopened as Somers, serving breakfast and lunch from 0600-1500, five days a week, Monday through Friday.

Here's a link to an older web presence to refresh your memory about what the diner thing is all about. We used the place a lot as an early morning meeting place, and look forward to doing so again, soon.

Gloria will let you know more, later. The new owners are the same ones who run Somers Place out on West 150th. Judy is the same lady who was the main waitress at Ruthie and Moe's, and she's been working for the Somers people since the diner closed in early 2006. It's been nearly two years, so get on over there!

eaters speak: commodity farmers are welfare queens

Weed It and Reap - New York Times -- The politics of food are becoming more apparent, thank goodness, as we begin to question how subsidies affect the public health and ask why we pay so much to enable being porky and diabetic. This op-ed piece provides a very useful perspective on what we subsidize, and how it costs us in so many other ways as well. Our MTB talk with Phil Nabors of The Mustard Seed Market touched on this last fall, and we've talked with Maurice Small and Niki Gilotta since, about what it takes to be healthy and sensible about food.

The op-ed contributor, Michael Pollan, is a very good writer who skewers with wit and garnishes with wisdom. As the NYT briefly points out, Michael Pollan, a contributing writer at The Times Magazine and a professor of journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, is the author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and the forthcoming “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.” Here are some samples, but read the whole piece:

Americans have begun to ask why the farm bill is subsidizing high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils at a time when rates of diabetes and obesity among children are soaring, or why the farm bill is underwriting factory farming (with subsidized grain) when feedlot wastes are polluting the countryside and, all too often, the meat supply. For the first time, the public health community has raised its voice in support of overturning farm policies that subsidize precisely the wrong kind of calories (added fat and added sugar), helping to make Twinkies cheaper than carrots and Coca-Cola competitive with water. Also for the first time, the international development community has weighed in on the debate, arguing that subsidized American exports are hobbling cotton farmers in Nigeria and corn farmers in Mexico. . . .

. . . . But as important as these programs are, they are just programs — mere fleas on the elephant in the room. The name of that elephant is the commodity title, the all-important subsidy section of the bill. It dictates the rules of the entire food system. As long as the commodity title remains untouched, the way we eat will remain unchanged.

The explanation for this is straightforward. We would not need all these nutrition programs if the commodity title didn’t do such a good job making junk food and fast food so ubiquitous and cheap. Food stamps are crucial, surely, but they will be spent on processed rather than real food as long as the commodity title makes calories of fat and sugar the best deal in the supermarket. We would not need all these conservation programs if the commodity title, by paying farmers by the bushel, didn’t encourage them to maximize production with agrochemicals and plant their farms with just one crop fence row to fence row.

And the government would not need to pay feedlots to clean up the water or upgrade their manure pits if subsidized grain didn’t make rearing animals on feedlots more economical than keeping them on farms. Why does the farm bill pay feedlots to install waste treatment systems rather than simply pay ranchers to keep their animals on grass, where the soil would be only too happy to treat their waste at no cost?

However many worthwhile programs get tacked onto the farm bill to buy off its critics, they won’t bring meaningful reform to the American food system until the subsidies are addressed — until the underlying rules of the food game are rewritten. This is a conversation that the Old Guard on the agriculture committees simply does not want to have, at least not with us.

good news about kudzu

In Tennessee, Goats Eat the ‘Vine That Ate the South’ - New York Times -- I never thought I'd see kudzu brought to heel. I've spent a lot of time in Columbus, Georgia, and in Atlanta. I've fallen asleep outside and had kudzu advance on me overnight. We still see more kudzu than we want to be seeing when we visit the kids in Knoxville. Now, there may be hope: goats.

Don't miss the part about the guard donkeys' being replaced by llamas.

We Yankees are faced with more formidable challenges than kudzu: What we have to do in Cleveland is to find something to eat all the McDonald's food-packaging detritus. It probably would be easier and quicker if we all just stopped buying and consuming McDonald's and their ilk. Not only would we have a quantum leap in public health, but we'd also experience a massive environmental cleansing.

Haviland preview: Ruthie and Moe's to reopen

Last week, when we MTB-talked to Jim Haviland from Midtown Cleveland, Inc., he told us that the owner of Somers Restaurant was purchasing Ruthie and Moe's Diner at 40th and Prospect, with an eye towards reopening soon. Two nights ago we checked out the Wednesday fish fry at Somers Place at 4197 West 150th (no website available that I could find), and we also found a little bit more about the plans for the diner. This morning, we happened to drop back by for breakfast (Somers has the largest selection of steak and eggs combinations I have ever seen anywhere) and ran into our old waitress friend Judy Scott, who's traveling back to the diner on Prospect when it reopens this May. Judy tells us Ruthie is now at Bistro 185, and that the new hours of the diner are 0600 to 1500, which should be good for early breakfast appointments all this summer, at Somer's. Judy's also looking forward to getting back in touch with her old clientele.

Fat Tuesday revival

The Reverend Dr. David Bahr is reviving (his actual term was "resurrecting") an old Archwood-Denison neighborhood tradition, Fat Tuesday or Pancake Day, over at Archwood UCC, and I told him I would let all the rest of you know, too.

Click on the image to the right to make it bigger. Print it out, share it with your friends.

The Archwood United Church of Christ has a long tradition (I can think back to attending meetings there as early as 1979) of supporting our community gatherings, and we should all reciprocate to assist a good neighbor. David Bahr is a community builder.

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Fat Tuesday
PANCAKE SUPPER
Tuesday, Feb. 20th, 5-7 pm
Mardi Gras beads free to the first 100 patrons!

Celebrate the night before Ash Wednesday with traditional fare:
Pancakes, Sausage, Syrup, Applesauce
Milk/Juice, Coffee/Tea
Adults $5, Children (6-12) $3, Children under 5, Free
Eat In or Take Out ~ For info call: 351-1060
Archwood UCC — The Steeple Vigil Church
2800 Archwood Ave (Pearl Rd & Archwood) — Cleveland

doggie dinner

Make your own bulgogi at home - Slashfood--When I worked for the US occupation/expeditionary forces over in Korea in the early '70s, the goon chiefs (village officials) once invited us Ugly Americans downtown, brought in the dancing girls, got us all cranked up on beer and rice wine, and fed us the greatest bulgogi, but then told us in the middle of the meal that our marinated feast was dog-based, not beef-based. Some of my compatriots blew chunks; others smiled wryly and put down their chopsticks; I called their bluff and asked for more. It's all in the marinade and the tenderizing.

Now, where in the Cleveland area can we score some kimchee/kimchi that doesn't have all sorts of salt and MSG in it as preservative? All the stuff we see in the stores around here comes out of Chicago or New York and has way too much in the way of additives and preservatives. Kimchee is one of the best accompaniments to bulgogi, and both of them together will keep you well all winter.

Chicken Paprikash Cook-Off

Upcoming.org: Chicken Paprikash Cook-Off at Studio of 5 Rings (Saturday, January 20, 2007), AT 7:00 pm TONIGHT. Gloria and I are going and taking our friend Ed, who may make the best chicken paprikash in town. George Nemeth may challenge. Be there.

Where
Studio of 5 Rings
2400 Superior Ave.Clevelad, Ohio 44114

Description
It's the middle of winter - cozy up with paprikash and fine wines. We'll even have warm, spiced German Gluh Wein to help shake the chills off. Make your secret recipe and bring your finished dish. No entry fee, but be sure to RSVP since space is limited. 7:00pm - 10:00pm
http://www.studioof5rings.com