Worried about Honduran cantaloupes? Chill out.

Honduran president defends melons by eating one

> He’s no Julia Child, but Honduran President Manuel Zelaya showed Tuesday he can attack a cantaloupe and U.S. government claims in a single motion.

> Zelaya lifted a cantaloupe from the box, placed it in front of him, then grabbed a knife and a fork.

> “Permit me to make a demonstration,” he said, then cut open the fruit, sliced off a chunk, put it in his mouth and chewed vigorously.

> “I eat this fruit without any fear,” he said with his mouth full. “It’s a delicious fruit. Nothing happens to me!”

> Though the symptoms of salmonella infection — nausea, vomiting, fever, diarrhea and abdominal cramps — typically do not occur for several hours after eating tainted food, the point was made.

In other food news, we have Paul Graham, who is a venture capitalist and something of a professional bomb-thrower in the programming world. Graham is not usually known for his food writing, but I couldn’t let this slip by without comment.

You Weren’t Meant to Have a Boss

> “Normal” food is terribly bad for you. The only people who eat what humans were actually designed to eat are a few Birkenstock-wearing weirdos in Berkeley.

> If “normal” food is so bad for us, why is it so common? There are two main reasons. One is that it has more immediate appeal. You may feel lousy an hour after eating that pizza, but eating the first couple bites feels great.

My question to Graham: what kind of defective pizza are you eating?

**Iris:** Mama, did you know that in Japan, udon noodles make everyone feel better?

I’ve been using a cookbook holder [like this](http://www.stacksandstacks.com/html/10599_cookbook-holder.htm) for as long as I can remember. I used to have a really huge one, but it broke, and I had to replace it with an annoyingly small one because I couldn’t find a big one for sale. Aren’t we supposed to be supersizing everything, people?

What do you do when you’re using a cookbook in the kitchen? Get sauce on it? Scan/photocopy/Google and keep the book out of the kitchen? Something fancy I don’t know about?

I’m late to the [Wooly Pigs](http://www.woolypigs.com/) Mangalitsa pork belly party. Rebekah Denn wrote about it for the P-I:

> I have eaten the pork belly, and suddenly I comprehend the zealot’s gleam in Heath Putnam’s eyes when he implores buyers of his Mangalitsa pigs not to trim the fat. This fat-laden cut — belly with some small ribs — is sinfully rich and salty-sweet. By the time it left its slow braise and joined some glazed turnips and Brussels sprouts on the plate it was practically pork candy, or the pig equivalent of foie gras. It was so tender and moist it fell apart at the touch of a fork.

And more recently, Matt Wright [cooked some up](http://mattikaarts.com/blog/?p=523) and pronounced it “simply un-sodding-believable.” I wish I were English, like Matt, so I could say this without people laughing at me.

Wooly’s Heath Putnam gave me a discounted piece of pork belly a couple weeks ago, and I finally got around to cooking it. It was a small piece, and I wanted to be semi-scientific about it. So rather than cooking the pork in chicken stock and white wine, like Matt and Rebekah, I braised it in salted water. I cooked it for about five hours, which was longer than necessary, but I had to leave it going while I picked Iris up from school. Then I took the pork out of the braising liquid and cranked the oven to 500°F. I salted and peppered the meat and crisped it up for 15 minutes, then sliced it into individual ribs. If this pork is as great as everyone says, I figured, it’ll be good with no help from wine, stock, aromatics, or spices.

It was. Iris was delighted with crispy pork ribs for snack, and so was I.

Now, to say that this is a niche product is an understatement. It’s mostly fat and bone, and it sells for $25/pound. I was all set to launch into an economic analysis, but then I realized: if you’re within the Wooly Pigs area, you’ve probably already decided whether this is the pork for you.

Recently on [Serious Eats](http://www.seriouseats.com/):

A Dispatch from the Old School

> **Pancake parties:** This reminds one that last year pancake parties were all the go at the fashionable seaside places in France. At Étretat especially it became quite a mania. The pancake batter was brought on the beach ready mixed in a jar, and a small portable charcoal stove was erected in a sheltered corner against the rocky shore.

There Will Be Fish Blood

> “Hey Iris,” I called. She was in the living room watching TV. “I’m going to clean this fish. Want to help?”

> “No.”

> “There’ll be fish guts.”

> “I’ll pause!”