Good Wednesday morning.
I consider myself a fairly adventurous eater, and I fall into the “try (almost) anything once” camp.
I would draw the line at Ortolans, anything that’s still alive, and most bugs, I think.
Oh, and tripe. I’ve tried it, and I’m sorry, I know it’s a delicacy for a lot of people. Maybe I just haven’t come across the right preparation? But before you send your recommendations for A+ triple recipes and dishes, I think I’m OK without it.
I am very big on trying local food while traveling, much to my husband’s chagrin. That may or may not have been the reason I got incredibly sick during our last big trip to hike in remote areas of Peru. Or, maybe the doctor was right and it was Zika, it’s hard to know for sure.
I did sample a lot of local delicacies during the year I lived in France, which is well known for its incredible food – most of which isn’t terribly challenging, but just simply delicious. There are a few exceptions (see the above link regarding the Ortolans), but overall, French food is, in my personal experience, fantastic.
I have to confess that does not necessarily apply to escargot. Though bathing anything in copious amounts of broth and/or wine, butter and garlic makes it delicious – even slugs that live in protective shells – I can’t really get over the texture thing.
According to this purveyor of luxury foods, snails are a “good source of protein and minerals, including magnesium, iron, zinc, and calcium” as well as B12. They’re also more or less fat-free – bonus! And, like other mollusks, they contain tryptophan, an amino acid that aids in the production of serotonin in the brain.
Unlike a number of other French delicacies – like champagne – the provenance of snails is not a requirement to calling them “escargot,” which really refers to the preparation of the dish and not the dish itself. (Note that the French do not have the market cornered on snail consumption).
With the exception of the cone snail, which lives in tropical oceans and is extremely deadly, snails – even the garden variety in your backyard – are safe to eat, but you have to be sure to harvest them from vegetation not treated with pesticides or herbicides.
The real danger is in the preparation, which is to say that if they’re not thoroughly cooked (heat them to at least 165°F for a few minutes) they could be contaminated by the dangerous rat lungworm parasite.
If this freaks you out, probably best to leave the whole thing to the professionals. If you’re ordering escargot in a restaurant, they were either harvested from the wild by people in the know or raised on a farm. And if you really need a fix, you can also find them canned and frozen. (You can even get them at Walmart).
Though escargot is a dish very much associated with France, it turns out that it didn’t actually originate there. Humans have been eating nails for hundreds of years, and the practice appears to have started in Spain.
It will be cloudy today with thunderstorms likely in the afternoon. Temperatures will again be in the mid-70s. (An interesting piece of trivia before we get to it: The Brooklyn Bridge opened 140 years ago today).
In the headlines…
President Biden today will mark the anniversary of a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two teachers were killed, by calling for congressional action to address gun violence.
The president will deliver remarks by the grand staircase of the White House to remember the victims of the shooting, a White House official said. First lady Jill Biden will also attend.
The 19-year-old man who crashed a U-Haul into security barriers near the White House and threatened Biden said he looks up to infamous German dictator Adolf Hitler, referring to the genocidal leader as “strong.”
The driver of the vehicle was identified as Sai Varshith Kandula, 19, of Chesterfield, Missouri, the Park Police said in a statement, and the U-Haul truck contained a Nazi flag.
A significant majority of Americans say they believe President Biden’s mental fitness is a real concern they have about his ability to be president, according to the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll.
Respondents said so by a 62%-to-36% margin, rather than dismissing it as simply being a campaign strategy used by his opponents. Biden did, however, actually see a slight increase in his approval rating to 45%, up 4 points from last month.
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is planning to announce the start of his 2024 presidential campaign today in a live audio conversation on Twitter with Elon Musk, the platform’s polarizing owner, according to people with knowledge of his plans.
DeSantis’ decision to enter the race this way will make a typically blunt statement about his campaign, the unruly populism of the modern Republican Party and an accelerating conservative media revolution.
A key political group supporting DeSantis’s run is preparing a $100 million voter-outreach push so big it plans to knock on the door of every possible DeSantis voter at least four times in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — and five times in Iowa.
One of Biden’s judicial nominees is pulling his name from consideration for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench, the second such politically painful withdrawal this month.
“The Hill We Climb,” the poem written by Amanda Gorman for Biden’s inauguration, was moved out of the elementary section of one Miami-Dade County public school, the district confirmed. It remains available to older children.
“I’m gutted. Because of one’s parent’s complaint, my inaugural poem, The Hill We Climb, has been banned from an elementary school in Miami-Dade County, Florida,” Gorman said in a statement posted to Twitter.
Gorman noted in her statement that, while not new, book bans have been on the rise in recent years. The American Library Association found nearly 2,600 titles were targeted for censorship in 2022, an almost 40 percent increase from the previous year.
The nation’s top health official issued an extraordinary public warning about the risks of social media to young people, urging a push to fully understand the possible “harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.”
In a 19-page advisory, the United States surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, noted that the effects of social media on adolescent mental health were not fully understood, and that social media can be beneficial to some users.
The advisory notes that although there are some benefits, social media use presents “a profound risk of harm” for kids. It calls for more research into social media’s impact on youth mental health, as well as action from policymakers and technology companies.
The Social Media and Youth Mental Health advisory says social media can perpetuate “body dissatisfaction, disordered eating behaviors, social comparison, and low self-esteem, especially among adolescent girls.”
After the surgeon general warned that social media harms young people, young New Yorkers agreed. But some also said that the government — and their parents — should back off.
The trial of Donald Trump has been scheduled for March 25, 2024, the judge presiding over his Manhattan criminal case said at a hearing yesterday.
A state judge in New York cautioned Trump to obey a protective order dictating how he can talk about discovery materials during the upcoming criminal trial stemming from hush money payments paid to a former adult movie actress.
Lawyers for Trump sent a letter yesterday requesting a meeting with Attorney General Merrick B. Garland related to the special counsel investigations into Trump’s conduct.
Attorneys John Rowley and James Trusty wrote to Garland seeking a meeting at the attorney general’s “earliest convenience.” Trump posted the letter to Truth Social late in the evening.
Public education advocates at the Alliance for Quality Education want to overhaul how New York’s schools are funded — addressing a 16-year-old formula that could alter the trajectory for many districts in the state.
A program to expedite permanent citizenship for New Yorkers who have served in the military — as well as citizen status for their families — will clear a major hurdle this week when it passes the state Senate.
Applications opened yesterday for a state scholarship program that offers free tuition to City University of New York (CUNY) and State University of New York (SUNY) students, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced.
New York state officials are taking additional steps this month that could lead to expanding health care coverage for more undocumented residents living in the state.
The Hochul administration reportedly has identified dorms on three SUNY campuses to use as housing sites for migrants: University at Buffalo, Stony Brook University and the University at Albany.
Albany County Executive Dan McCoy declared a state of emergency and issued an emergency order yesterday afternoon as the county prepared for the possibility that asylum seekers from New York City may be temporarily housed in the county.
A judge in Syracuse yesterday afternoon approved two temporary orders blocking a Salina hotel from housing migrants and blocking New York City from transporting them to Onondaga County.
Mayor Eric Adams is seeking a suspension of the city’s “right to shelter” regulation as it struggles to provide housing, food and legal services to over 40,000 migrants with limited federal assistance.
The legal push, signed by Adams’ Assistant Corporation Counsel Jonathan Pines and addressed to Judge Deborah Kaplan, requests permission to get “relief from and modification of” the 1981 consent decree that enshrined the right to shelter into law.
Adams administration officials say that the arrival of 65,000 asylum seekers has presented the city “with challenges never contemplated, foreseeable or indeed even remotely imagined.”
New York City’s migrant crisis “could go on for years” if the Biden administration doesn’t fork over more federal aid, Adams’ top budget official said, slamming the allocated $38.5 million as so puny, it doesn’t even cover a full week of migrant-related expenses.
The situation is getting so dire, Jacques Jiha said, that the administration is likely to increase its projection for how much the city will shell out on the crisis by July 1, 2024.
Adams said that he’ll ask state officials to launch a probe into the now-disputed story about homeless veterans being displaced by migrants to make room in the state.
The woman who spread a false story about migrants displacing homeless veterans from a Hudson Valley hotel was stripped of her award as one the state Senate’s “women of distinction” just a week after it was conferred.
Asylum seekers housed in several of the city’s “respite centers” have not been able to properly wash themselves for days because there are no showers at the newly-opened sites, according to people who’ve stayed there and migrant advocates.
The City Council in New York is set to approve this week a major expansion of a rental subsidy program to help people move out of homeless shelters and into homes more quickly. But the effort will run into a formidable opponent: Mayor Adams.
New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission voted to designate the former ‘Colored School No. 4’ a protected landmark. Adams also announced he will provide $6 million in funds to rehabilitate the site.
“We stand on the shoulders of the young men and women that attended this school, and while they may be gone, I am honored to ensure they will never be forgotten,” Adams said in a statement.
An eight-year legal battle over whether community preferences for low-cost housing violate housing discrimination law has been cleared for trial.
A 39-year-old man was charged with shoving a woman’s head against a moving subway train in an apparently random attack at a Manhattan station that left the woman critically injured, the police said.
The iconic Flatiron Building was bought for $161 million at auction yesterday afternoon by its majority owners, who immediately floated plans to convert part of the the office building for residential use.
The Manhattan college professor who threatened a Post reporter with a machete has been fired, the school said, as it emerged she is suing the NYPD for allegedly abusing her during the 2020 George Floyd protests.
Owners of small restaurants fumed over new City Council guidelines that will force them to scrap street sheds — big investments that run as high as six figures and have come to account for a major chunk of their business.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who is gearing up for re-election next year, is facing the wrath of Asian-Americans for leveraging their heritage month celebration to raise funds for her-re-election campaign.
Madison Square Garden is accusing the New York State Liquor Authority of “colluding” with lawyers it banned from the venue — to bring “bogus” charges against it, new court papers show.
A 23-year-old man was fatally shot by Saratoga County sheriff’s deputies after he opened fire on officers conducting a court-authorized search at a suburban apartment complex just after dawn yesterday.
In a turnaround boosted by state and federal incentives for green energy, General Electric said it planned to hire 200 people to work at a new $50 million onshore wind turbine assembly line at the company’s downtown plant.
Doane Stuart School, which has been rocked with financial and enrollment crises, is joining another private school in what the schools are calling a “partnership.”
Burying the unearthened remains of 44 Revolutionary War American soldiers — which were found during construction in the village five years ago — back at a Lake George state park is drawing support from local and federal elected officials.
