Rosé yeah! Foie Gras Nay?

I always manage to find the most amusing tidbits of information while procrastinating on the internet. Yesterday I ran across an article that gave me quite a chuckle. Apparently according to the New York Times article, The Summer Drink to Be Seen With, Rosé is the trendy new “it” drink of the summer.

“Rosé has replaced prosecco and cosmos as the new chick drink,” said Ken Friedman, an owner of the Spotted Pig, a celebrity-friendly restaurant in Greenwich Village, which offers five rosés on its wine list.

Also, it seems that some idiots, I mean New Yorkers, are willing to pay up to $30 a bottle for a Rosé. This makes me laugh for two reasons: First because I love when the New York Times “discovers something. And secondly because as an ex-NewYorker it’s hilarious to see otherwise clever and worldly urbanites get suckered into paying $30 for a 5 euro Rosé. (Hey, I have a piece of the Brooklyn Bridge that I could sell you…) Not to mention that the French people have been drinking Rosé all summer since “toujour” as my French mother-in-law informed me yesterday afternoon at lunch while we were sipping an absolutely exquisite Rosé for which she payed little more than 5 euros.

On another insane food news front, the city of Chicago once again proves it is indeed very much part of the slow and ass-backwards Midwest, by banning the sale of Foie Gras as of August 22nd. For those of you who don’t already know, foie gras, (pronounced fwah-GRAH) is French for "fat liver”. To fatten the liver of the birds, a tube is inserted into their throats twice a day and partially cooked corn is pumped down the esophagus. Gives new meaning to the expression “down the hatch!”

Personally I’m not a fan of Foie Gras. I eat it every year at Christmas dinner, but only after I’ve already had nearly a half bottle of champagne. Even so, this new ordinance makes me laugh for several reasons: The first being the very idea of fat-ass, old politicians with Midwestern accents telling other people what they can and cannot eat is just sadly comical. My second reason for chuckling is that being an ex-midwesterner I know for a fact that Chicago used to be known as the great 'slaughter house’ of the US, yet there are only three foie gras farms in the entire United States. ( two in New York and one in California)
But wait, it gets better: it seems this case of the crazies has also made it into the water supply in California where Governor Schwarzenegger approved a measure that would end the practice by 2012. Also Israel, the world's fourth-largest producer of foie gras, has recently banned production of the delicacy on the grounds of cruelty. (Ok, so lemme get this straight: Blowing up countries- OK. Hurting birds- not OK. Alrighty then.)

On a much lighter and funnier note, partly in response to all of the nonsense in the US, France, which produces about 80 percent of the world's foie gras, has taken swift pre-emptive action to protect it's Fois Gras farmers. French lawmakers unanimously passed an amendment pronouncing foie gras a legally protected part of France's cultural heritage.

This also marks the first time in the nation's history that French lawmakers have ever unanimously agreed on anything.