So, what I'm saying is

...I'm not quite sure.

How much pesticide can hurt you? If it's just on the skin of a fruit or vegetable and you peel it, how much permeates the flesh of the fruit or vegetable? Does washing make a difference?

There are lots of questions unanswered. Stay tuned while I do some more reading.

I'd like to leave you with this interesting quote from Ruth Reichl's Garlic and Sapphires (which I'm just getting around to reading because for a while I felt so DONE with Ruth Reichl):

...There are still restaurants where rich people get to remind themselves that they are different from you and me. But there are fewer and fewer of them. As American food has come of age, American restaurants have changed. Going out to eat used to be like going to the opera; today, it's more like going to the movies.

And with that, I'm off to the movies (Greek food and then the Bob Dylan pic).

This one goes out to SLO and reader Ellen...

Here's more info on pesticides in different fruits and vegetables. See below link for more:

An Environmental Working Group simulation of thousands of consumers eating high and low pesticide diets shows that people can lower their pesticide exposure by almost 90 percent by avoiding the top twelve most contaminated fruits and vegetables and eating the least contaminated instead. Eating the 12 most contaminated fruits and vegetables will expose a person to about 14 pesticides per day, on average. Eating the 12 least contaminated will expose a person to less than 2 pesticides per day. Less dramatic comparisons will produce less dramatic reductions, but without doubt using the Guide provides people with a way to make choices that lower pesticide exposure in the diet.

METHODOLOGY
The Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce ranks pesticide contamination for 44 popular fruits and vegetables based on an analysis of nearly 51,000 tests for pesticides on these foods, conducted from 2000 and 2005 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. Contamination was measured in six different ways and crops were ranked based on a composite score from all categories.

The six measures of contamination we used were:

• Percent of the samples tested with detectable pesticides
• Percent of the samples with two or more pesticides
• Average number of pesticides found on a sample
• Average amount (level in parts per million) of all pesticides found
• Maximum number of pesticides found on a single sample
• Number of pesticides found on the commodity in total

The philosophy behind the guide is simple: give consumers the information they need make choices to reduce pesticides in their diets. In this spirit, the Guide does not present a complex assessment of pesticide risks, but instead simply reflects the overall load of pesticides found on commonly eaten fruits and vegetables. This approach best captures the uncertainty of the risks of pesticide exposure and the value judgments involved in the choice to buy food with less pesticides.

Pesticides cause many adverse effects in well designed animal studies, from cancer, to nervous system damage, to reproductive effects. Rather than assign more weight to cancer than birth defects, we simply assumed that all adverse effects are equal. There is a significant degree of uncertainty about the health effects of pesticide mixtures. This ranking takes this uncertainty into account in the most defensible way possible, by simply ranking fruits and vegetables by their likelihood of being consistently contaminated with the greatest number of pesticides at the highest levels.

The produce listed in the Guide was chosen after an analysis of USDA food consumption data from 1994-1996. The 44 selected were those reported eaten on at least one tenth of one percent of all "eating days" in the survey with a minimum of 100 pesticide test results from the years 2000 to 2005. An eating day is one day of food consumption reported to USDA by one individual — some of whom were followed for three days.

The clean and dirty dozen

The November/December issue Utne Reader breaks down the 12 most and least contaminated produce. You might want to reconsider that apple-a-day

MOST CONTAMINATED

1. Peaches
2. Apples
3. Sweet bell peppers
4. Celery
5. Nectarines
6. Strawberries
7. Cherries
8. Lettuce
9. Grapes (imported)
10. Pears
11. Spinach
12. Potatoes

LEAST CONTAMINATED

1. Onions
2. Avocados
3. Sweet corn (frozen)
4. Pineapples
5. Mangoes
6. Sweet peas (frozen)
7. Asparagus
8. Kiwi
9. Bananas
10. Cabbage
11. Broccoli
12. Eggplant

Tipping the balance

My ever-faithful reader A. Smedley sent me this a couple days ago:

Hey, Mouth ... all these years I have tipped based on the total bill (tax included). There are others in my family, I recently observed, who tip based on the pre-tax amount. What is the current expectation? For instance, last night I paid a bill that totaled $113.95, including the tax. I left a tip of $20, which puts me slightly over a tight-fisted 15% tipper but less than a lavish, devil-may-care 20%er. But, which is RIGHT? Before sales tax or including?????

Ignoring the excessive use of exclamation points, it's a good question. I tip on the grand total, tax included, trying to hit it somewhere between 16 and 18 percent. I just learned (thanks to my tech-savvy 11-year-old) that my phone has a very easy-to-use tax calculator on it. It specifically asks for the post-tax total with which to calculate. I use that as Exhibit A in defending my argument.

Reinvigorated, it's Monday and there's a smile on her face...

Sure, it was Thanksgiving, which I spent eating gunk with family. But much more importantly, I went to three smallish, independently owned, delicious, worthy-of-review new places. I'd been feeling a little low--a bunch of recent forays yielded nothing worth reviewing other than big, corporately owned chains and hotel restaurants. A food critic loves the thrill of the chase, ferreting out the uncelebrated underdogs.

Here's what's on the horizon for reviews:

Went to Pierogi Grill. It's oxymoronic, yes (what would a grilled pierogi even look like?), but really good. Jeff Houck at the Tampa Tribune did a great story on it, so it's not completely unsung. Still. If you eat a whole plate of pierogis you lapse into a narcoleptic torpor, but I'd recommend the spinach and meat, the cheese, the potato (nice dilly flavor), the one with cheddar, and a combo bite of the sweet dessert blueberry one with the sweet cheese one. Also, there's delicious borscht that looks like pink Easter egg dye floating some little meat dumplings. Stuffed cabbage is mild-mannered but sturdy. The soundtrack was extremely heavy on Bryan Adams. Why? One of life's little mysteries. 1535 Gulf to Bay Blvd., Clearwater, (727) 216-3055

Next stop, Zen Bistro Grill and Sushi Bar in Westchase. Totally lovely hipster-minimalist interior with neat Plexiglas floor tile revealing little sand-and-stone Zen gardens, and floppy living bamboo in towering glass planters. The food is accessible pan-Asian, heavy on the Japanese and Vietnamese flavors. Family friendly, nice little martini list. 9620 W. Linebaugh Ave., Westchase Town Center,  (813) 792-8665

Then my husband talked me into going to a new Greek place called Acropolis in New Tampa, at the site of the defunct and deeply frightening Brickyard Restaurant. The lingering memory of Brickyard had made me gun shy--totally unwarranted. It's owned by the brother of the guy who owns the restaurant of the same name in Ybor City. There's live music, breaking plates, the grapevine dance snaking around the restaurant and people yelling "opa" at intervals. But that's not why you should go. The food is generous, flavorful, fresh-tasting and very inexpensive. I'm reviewing it quick before the portion sizes get adjusted downward. 14947 Bruce B. Downs Blvd., Tampa, (813) 242-4545 (that's the Ybor phone #--the new one doesn't seem to be registered with directory assistance yet).

Any other places I should check out?

Breaking out of the dining ghetto for a moment...

Hey, happy Thanksgiving, all! May you eat tremendous food with tremendous people in the next few days. If you're traveling, see below for some general travel suggestions.

Regardless of how you travel during the holidays, bear in mind that, statistically, the season is stressful to most folks, as is travel—a double-whammy. Whenever possible, extend to people the good cheer and empathetic spirit with which the holidays were intended.

Outtakes, Vol. 1

I had an epiphany of sorts this weekend.

I decide on where I'm going to review like this: hearing stuff; reading stuff; driving around and eyeballing promising-looking joints; receiving press releases or calls from restaurants; reader recommendations. People tell me things--my hair stylist, the lawn guy, they all have a restaurant they think I should write about.

Problem is, sometimes they're wrong (not dissing you, hair stylist, so no revenge cuts!). I drive for miles, battling traffic and my own terrible navigational skills, only to slog through a ho-hum meal. What's the point of telling St. Petersburg Times readers NOT to go to a little, out-of-the-way restaurant they would never have known about were it not for my ink? Who does this serve?

Still, it seems wasteful that I've spent lots of time and the paper's cash to no end. Here's the epiphany part:

I'm going to write short descriptions of the "outtakes." Meaning, for restaurants I visit that are good, but maybe not worthy of a full-length review, this is where they'll get a little play.

See below for my first one.

Wow, the naughty critic wrote me back.

Looking through my comments this morning, I found this. It links back to this post:

Dear Critics in Arms,

I was so sorry to read all of the negative responses to my performance as the "food critic" on the TV series "Kitchen Nightmares."

As many of you have pointed out, no real food critic would go on national television to review a restaurant.

As a new editor at Dan's Papers, I was sent, along with the rest of the Editorial staff, to have fun, put on a show and get a humorous story for the paper that week.

Once the cameras were rolling, my job as an actress was to deliver my performance exactly as the producers and director instructed.

The resulting "review" and the story by my colleague about our experience on "Kitchen Nightmares" was meant to give our readers a taste of what it is like to be on reality TV.

My review of the food, however, was written in the spirit of my character on the show, as the producers of "Kitchen Nightmares" had requested it for use on the program.

I apologize if I have become the unlikely poster girl for food criticism; that certainly was not my intent when I agreed to join the cast of the show. Although I am an aspiring environmental and scientific journalist, I am not a food critic and have never written a serious, blind review of any restaurant.

As anyone in the entertainment business will tell you, "reality" TV is simply an exercise in improvisational acting. The "reality" aspect is imparted by using unknown actors and laymen and by creatively editing many hours of footage to look like a seamless whole.

Posted by: Sabrina Mashburn | November 16, 2007 at 05:47 PM

Cigars have been on my mind.

Hey, not in a Freudian, weird way. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, remember? Anyway, reviewing Council Oak at the Hard Rock, where 93 percent of people smoke (the other 7 percent have a Skoal bandit tucked between cheek 'n' gum, I reckon), it got me thinking back to my own cigar-smoking days. That would be back when Demi Moore looked all glamorous puffing on the front of Cigar Aficionado.

I guess that aura of invincibility has worn off enough so that I reliably wear seat belts, I don a bike helmet and I don't smoke. It's called adulthood. Still, for a while, a cigar after a fabulous meal was a good thing. If you haven't ever understood the allure but have a little curiosity, click below to get some basics down.

Or stop by the Cigar Heritage Festival in Ybor City on Saturday (Nov. 17). Quite possibly the biggest and best cigar event anywhere in the nation, there will be more than two dozen cigar vendors, live music, a national broadcast by Cigar Dave and a variety of Cuban and other ethnic foods. For event details call (813) 247-1434.

One critic needs to sit in the time-out chair

There’s been a big brouhaha this week amongst the nation’s food critics. We’re up in arms, I tell ya.

It seems that a critic named Sabrina Mashburn appeared on the Fox show "Kitchen Nightmares," throwing her weight around, acting like a big shot, saying things to the restaurateur like, “Do you even want a review? Do you need it?”

She’s a critic for a group called Dan’s Papers out of the Hamptons. Here’s the back story and the actual review that resulted from her on-camera visit.

She broke about a zillion ethical rules:

1. At the behest of the restaurant, a family-run Irish pub, and the Fox Network, she agreed to blow her anonymity.
2. She accepted an invitation (did she get her meal for free? I don’t know) for a “grand reopening,” clearly too early for a real review.
3. When she didn’t get seated in a timely way, she got all uppity and threatened a bad review or no review.
4. She admitted that the camera crew essentially staged her hissy fit.
5. Then, after all this clearly unorthodox behavior on everybody’s parts (presence of a camera crew, grand-opening mayhem, etc.), she went ahead and wrote the review.

Many of the country’s food critics are reeling, saying she has wounded our collective credibility. Shame on you, Ms. Mashburn, and have a gander at the Association of Food Journalists’ guidelines for critics.

P.S.- There was one other egregious transgression. Read the review. What did the critic have as her cocktail of choice? Jaegermeister on the rocks. Ew, Sabrina.