Having seen Mike Phillips’s routine get put together, I have to say, the most impressive thing about it is how simple the ideas in it are. Simple as in Escoffier’s maxim, faites simple. It may require fast hands and daring execution, but there no touch of extravagance or complication for complication’s sake anywhere in the ingredients or the routine. It’s kind of stunning to watch, actually.

And you really gotta root for the home team on this one. So one more go Mike. This time, just go and win it.

:::UPDATE::: He did it! Yay! Mikey!

But why all the bellyaching about it?

Well done meat is just plain awful, and while it’s not exactly wrong to like it, it’s kind of wrong to like it. You’re just missing all the fun. And you haven’t lived until you’ve had uniformly medium rare short ribs from sous vide. But that’s ok, because that just frees up the better cuts for people who are going to actually enjoy it. It’s sort of like French Roast is wrong, but we accept it because it’s a way to get rid of the leftover green coffee from last year.

At a steakhouse, (or for that matter, any restaurant that clears a lot of steak) meat is ordered in primals. A shell primal (New York or Kansas City Strip) has maybe 4 great steaks in it (rare, mr), a few not quite as good as that (medium), and a few that are ripoffs at the prices a steakhouse charges (cook the snot out of them). A good grill cook is responsible for keeping track of which is which.

But you’re right. It makes you deeply, deeply uncool.

About two years ago, I wrote here that Peak Oil was already upon us. The argument provided by people who refuse to believe it usually runs along the lines of “we can always find new sources of oil that have been impossible to extract in the past, like offshore drilling, the Canadian oil sands…” Well, now we know what that looks like.

But drilling that far out in the gulf was clearly insane, and how much do you want to bet that what happens next is going to be even worse? Wait, just wait for the full force of the spill to contaminate every last stretch of ocean front on the Gulf Coast. This will be worse than Katrina, and it will be all of our faults.

Yes, my fault too. And yours.

So, anyway, all the usual missives about personal responsibility – ride your bike to places instead of driving, buy local food even if it’s more expensive, recycle, and all the rest.

It seems like every time Caitlin Flanagan writes something, everyone immediately jumps on her for being Caitlin Flanagan and for having Caitlin Flanagan’s opinions. Fair enough, after all, this is the same woman who famously almost felt bad about feeling that having a nanny and a stay-at-home job as contributing editor to a top flight national news and opinions magazine was the best thing since sliced bread. But after all, it is more important to be interesting than right, and Flanagan is one of the best at writing interesting copy. Ainsi soit-il.

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