First the mess, then the cleanup.

My friend Saura Fabra runs [Casa Oliver](http://www.casaoliver.com/), a Spanish food mail-order house in Seattle, and she recently brought me some products to try. The one that blew me (and Iris) away was the ulmo tree honey, which is not from Spain but from Chile. I don’t know what an ulmo tree looks like, but it produces the brightest-tasting honey I’ve ever come across. Highly recommended, and not very expensive at about $9/jar.

Meanwhile, I was becoming dissatisfied with my paper towel holder. It was a U-shaped device that gripped the roll from either end. The problem was exactly what you’d expect: give the roll a sharp jerk and it falls to the floor and unrolls semi-comically.

So I found an awesome replacement. I say “awesome” in the sense of “cool,” but also in the sense of “awe-inspiringly loud.” The roll slips over a ratchet mechanism, so it can’t get out of hand and unroll too fast. The ratchet mechanism sounds like a sci-fi movie robot sound effect. “Just don’t get any paper towels while I’m sleeping,” said Laurie.

It’s available in a wall-mounted or countertop version:

Perfect Tear Chrome Paper Towel Holder, wall-mounted

Countertop version

Note that for reasons I can’t explain, the wall-mounted version has free shipping, even if you don’t spend $25 or more, and the countertop version isn’t eligible for free shipping at all.

Today in the Seattle Times:

Eating the Asian Way: Less Meat, Full-On Flavor

> “Choosing a bag at the checkout line is typically far less important than choosing what to put in those bags,” wrote Clark Williams-Derry on Seattle’s Sightline Institute’s blog, The Daily Score.

> His colleague, Justin Brant, followed up with a calculation: Change the contents of one grocery bag from mostly meat to mostly plants and you save enough energy to manufacture 186 plastic bags. Producing meat–yes, even organic, local meat–requires a ton of energy.

I have been known to, say, write an article about chard and get so sick of chard that I don’t eat it again for a year. This was just the opposite. I’m still routinely taking less than half a pound of meat and turning it into dinner.

On Culinate this month:

Small Fry: Little fish are tasty, fun, and good for you

> Delicious, fresh, local fish, every morsel edible from head to tail, and they’re only $2 a pound? (The same fish counter was selling wild salmon for $28 a pound.) I made fried smelt for the family, and my daughter gobbled them like fries.

And today in Gourmet:

A Thai Twist on Pasta Salad

> In short, take any Thai salad, add cooked cellophane noodles, and it becomes yam woon sen. (Unless you begin with the chopped-meat salad called larb, in which case it becomes larb woon sen.) This is good news. It means you can have a different yam woon sen on each of the remaining days of summer.

Yesterday at breakfast I said to Iris, “So, what should we have for dinner tonight?”

“How about something from The New Steak?” she said, glancing at the bookshelf. Ah, _The New Steak,_ repository of deliciousness.

We decided on flank steak marinated with shallots and sherry vinegar and served with sauteed mushrooms and roasted potatoes. I changed the recipe in two ways: they were out of flank steak at QFC, so I substituted rib eye (poor us), and instead of making the potato gratin from the book, I just roasted some ruby crescent fingerlings in olive oil.

To make the plate look fancy, I arranged potatoes around the rim, mounded sauteed creminis in the middle, and put sliced steak on top of the mushrooms. Then I sprinkled everything with Maldon sea salt and served it up. The sherry vinegar marinade gave the steak just a hint of acidity that brought everything together, and the potatoes were nice and crunchy. (For fingerlings in general, halve them lengthwise, toss with oil and salt, place cut-side down on a sheet pan and roast 1 hour at 375°F.)

It’s not (just) that I’m trying to pimp my Amazon links, but have you noticed that _The New Steak_ is only $13.50? That’s less than you spent last time you bought steak, right?

So, I know you read the New York Times article, 6 Food Mistakes Parents Make. Whenever I read an article like this, I think, “Hey, I should comment on this article.” Then I think, “Wait, why does anyone care what I think about this article?” Then I think, “Hey, I have a blog. Posting my opinion, asked for or not, is what it’s all about.” By that time several days have gone by and it’s too late. What is the opposite of intrepid reporting?

But last night Laurie had an insight about this part of the article:

> **Giving up too soon.** Ms. Worobey said she has often heard parents say, “My kid would never eat that.” While it may be true right now, she noted that eating preferences often change. So parents should keep preparing a variety of healthful foods and putting them on the table, even if a child refuses to take a bite. In young children, it may take 10 or more attempts over several months to introduce a food.

I’ve criticized this advice before on the basis that it doesn’t work: you can’t mold your children’s tastes, and I’ve served Brussels sprouts dozens and dozens of times (and will again tonight) and Iris just doesn’t like them. Which is fine.

That’s not the problem, though. The problem is, *it doesn’t make any sense.* I don’t serve Brussels sprouts regularly because I want to make Iris like them. I serve them because Laurie and I like them. “Don’t give up too soon,” says the article, but what does “giving up” mean? Not serving Brussels sprouts any more? Serving them but telling Iris she can’t have any?

“They should just say, ‘Serve food you like,'” said Laurie. I agree.