If they were good enough for Tony Soprano, I figured they'd be good enough for me.

Turns out I was wrong. I wasn't so pleased with the onion rings at Holsten's, in Bloomfield, New Jersey.

That's where the Soprano family ate their last meal, the pièce de résistance—that's Italian, isn't it?—being onion rings.

I went there for the same reason they did. To disappear quietly. And to eat onion rings.

Couldn't beat the price: $2.50.

The onion rings are beatable. They're a flawlessly round commercial product made with chopped onions mixed into the breading. I believe the term for the factory process that makes such rings possible is "extruded," which sounds like a messy mob hit.

They were crunchy, though. And they had an oddly appealing oniony flavor. So I enjoyed them. But no matter what excuses I make for them, the truth is that they weren't particularly good.

Holsten's is terrific, by the way. But so you won't be disappointed when you visit, you should know that you can't play Journey's "Don't Stop Believin' " on the jukebox. There is no jukebox. Holsten's does have a candy counter, stuffed animals, bucolic farm scenes painted on wood, and superb ice cream.

The only thing menacing about the place was my menu. I got a momentary thrill when I thought it was spattered with blood stains. On second thought, I decided they were hot fudge drippings.

Just about everybody has something to say about the final episode of The Sopranos, which was basically brilliant. I caught one wrong note, when Carmella slid into the booth and said to Tony, "What looks good tonight?" She wouldn't have said that. Holsten's has been serving pretty much the same dishes for almost 70 years. Everything looks the same every night.

The Sopranos had the right idea, having their farewell at Holsten's. I'm glad I did the same. We both picked the perfect place to say goodbye.

Got a beef with Alan Richman?
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My Austrian neighbor, a psychiatrist, came back from her vacation in Vienna with a half-carton of eggs in her luggage and a look of relief on her face.

"Finally, I can have an omelet again," she told me. "I stopped eating them over here. I never had one I liked."

She didn't blame the cooks, although omelets are without question prepared more ineptly than any other item in an American restaurant. She blamed our eggs. I was curious why she had such strong feelings about eggs, but I decided not to probe. With her training, she should be able to figure that out for herself.

She doesn't eat American eggs. At first I thought it was more European elitism. I made fun of her pretentiousness. For once I would have been pleased to see the baggage handlers at JFK airport heave her suitcase around the way they always do mine.

Her eggs, however, came through the passage in perfect condition. Those Europeans do know how to pack.

"Here, take one," she said, relinquishing one of her precious brood of six. "Cook it. Tell me what you think."

Her egg came from Toni's Freilandeier, an acclaimed major Austrian egg producer. It was brown, the product of organic, free-range hens fed vegetarian food. I decided to put her egg up against one from Eggland's Best, an acclaimed major American egg producer. It was white, the product of vegetarian food. Not organic. Not free-range. The cost of the eggs wasn't much different—hers were slightly more expensive, which could have been attributable to the difference between the dollar and the euro.

I cracked both, carefully placing each one in a separate bowl. I had to be careful. I had one chance. I felt like an Iron Chef.

The yolk of the Eggland's Best was pale yellow. The yolk of the Toni's Freilandeier was true orange.

I fried each one, sunnyside-up, in a judicious quantity of butter. (Perhaps I should have poached them for a purer taste, but I'm not much of a cook and this was the best I could do.)

I did a fine job under pressure. The whites were slightly crisp, the yolks just warm enough.

The color of the Austrian yolk deepened with cooking. The American yolk looked about the same, nice and bright yellow—that's why we call them sunnyside-up. In Austria, by the way, they are called spiegelei, mirror egg.

The flavor of the two eggs wasn't appreciably different. Both were eggy. The mouth-feel of the yolks was enormously different. The orange Austrian egg was creamier and richer. It had a longer, smoother finish.

Sadly, she had turned out to be right.

"What do you do different to your eggs?" I asked her.

"I don't know."

"Why do they call them spiegelei?" I wondered.

"I don't know."

I told her I was disappointed because psychiatrists from Vienna were supposed to know everything.

"Listen," she said. "I always have the urge to ask questions. I'm a psychiatrist. But with spiegelei, I don't ask."

Got a beef with Alan Richman?
In need of food-and-wine advice? E-mail him at AlanRichman@GQ.com. He’ll respond each week right here on ‘Forked’

During a stop in Australia, I asked a taxi driver why locals always eat such huge breakfasts (to say nothing of oversized lunches and dinners).

I always thought it was inspired by British tradition—you know, waking up to blood pudding, canned bacon, potted something-or-other and a grouse or two—until the taxi driver pointed out the real culprit.

He put the blame on you, me, and our advertising agencies.

"It's you Yanks' fault, with all that talk about breakfast being the most important meal of the day," he said. "Everything you do we do 20 years later."

Got a beef with Alan Richman?
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Food critics tend to develop conservative tastes. We visit so many restaurants serving artificial cuisines that have been developed solely to attract publicity or dazzle a jaded public that increasingly we find ourselves craving simple, satisfying food.

I had a stellar example of such a meal recently. It was traditional French food, and it made me regret that restaurants serving such fare don't have a place in American cities anymore. I'm not certain they have a place in French cities, either.

The chef was Jacques Pepin, one of the great stars of the American culinary scene. You love his books. You watch him on television. You adore him. Yet you probably never eat the food he prepares best.

He was cooking at the James Beard House as part of a series called Masterpiece Dining. Yes, the food contained a lot of butter. If that's why you no longer desire classic French food, I can't do much but admit defeat.

The first course was a substantial potato soup, smooth and creamy, topped with a scattering of small, buttery, homemade croutons that floated exquisitely, not sinking a millimeter. If you ever wondered why croutons exist, which I do, you would understand better after experiencing this perfect expression of contrasting textures.

The second course was codfish with black butter, which helped me recall why I used to like cod. The sauce, with just a hint of bite from vinegar and capers, added to the fish everything it lacked: richness and tartness.

The third course was roasted squab with tiny fresh peas in a squab jus. Fresh peas seem to be somewhat forgotten, whereas once they were revered for their sweetness and their association with the beginning of spring.

The wines were traditional, a series of flights from the producer Bernard Magrez. I wasn't surprised that the wines I liked best with this meal were two Bordeaux: A 2002 Pape Clement white—mostly minerals and toasty oak—and a 2003 Pape Clement red—a blockbuster of a young Bordeaux, intense and full-bodied. I would not have expected it to be ready to drink at such a young age, but it was heavy with fruit, and the tannins were so soft it went down easily.

With the exception of the squab, which I suspect was cooked a little rarer than it might have been in 1965, this meal felt as though it belonged in a different era, that of at least 30 or 40 years ago. It was a historical memento from the days before nouvelle cuisine changed the world.

Perhaps my only culinary regret is that I didn't eat nearly enough French food back then, but, to tell you the truth, I couldn't afford it.

Got a beef with Alan Richman?
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In the old days, one of the pleasures of a Vegas vacation was sitting in your hotel coffee shop, reading a newspaper.

The coffee shops were the centers of hotel life. Everybody stopped by. These days, hotel coffee shops aren't really coffee shops. They're fast-paced casual restaurants. Nobody hangs around. Nobody looks in to see who's there.

I had an inspiration. I wanted to see what would happen if I went into one of those notorious hotel breakfast buffets and acted as though it were a place to relax, not a place to eat as much as you can, as fast as you can.

I went to the Bellagio. Paid $14.95 as I walked in. The charge slip had a space for a tip—kind of weird to be tipping before you eat. I added a couple of bucks.

I got a big table. Juice and coffee came right away. I read the sports section while I waited to see if anybody was going to come by and ask me when I would be getting going with my eating. Nobody did. Overall, breakfast at the Bellagio was pretty close to perfect.

I went to the buffet line four times: (1) Fresh fruit and yogurt—plenty good. (2) Smoked salmon and toast—plenty good, although a bagel option would have been appreciated. (3) Eggs benedict—the worst the world has ever known. (4) Danish pastry—plenty good.

Every time I got up to get more food, my used plate was whisked away. My coffee cup was refilled at least a dozen times. And the coffee wasn't bad.

I hung around for more than a hour. Read a couple of newspapers. On the way out I found the lady who kept bringing me coffee and slipped her three bucks. Okay, it could have been more, but I had already tipped once, and I'm not that big a sport.

I recently did something dumb. When a Washington, D.C.,-area restaurant insisted that I confirm my reservation with a credit card and agree to a penalty of $50 per person if I failed to cancel within a specific period of time, I accepted the terms.

I signed on the dotted line—well, in this case, I agreed electronically.

My plan was to visit an old college roommate. Others were joining us. Less than 48 hours before we were to sit down to dinner, he came down with a kidney stone and was incapacitated. The trip, a mini-reunion for five friends, had to be cancelled.

The reservation was much harder to call off. A new car would have been easier to return.

I found the website and read the cancellation policy—it seemed to indicate that calling 24 hours in advance was fine. No problem. I called, the cancellation was accepted, and I was assured no penalty would ensue. The next day I received an e-mail from the assistant to the restaurant manager, saying I would be charged $250.

My reservation was for five, and it turned out that a reservation for five or more had different rules. Cancellation in this case was 72 hours in advance. Yes, I had read that. Yes, it was in the fine print of my agreement. However, I'd made the reservation several months earlier, and I'd forgotten. After all, it wasn't like I was buying a house. I was going out for pasta.

What a mess.

Here's a rule: Unless you're a lawyer and wish to enter into protracted negotiations, don't sign a contract to dine at a restaurant. Don't think about it. Don't consider it. Just don't do it.

Contracts are binding agreements that are supposed to benefit both sides. This sort of contract is of value only to the restaurant. It does you no good.

After five or six phone calls and a couple of e-mails, I finally reached the manager of the restaurant—Maestro at the Ritz-Carlton in Tysons Corner, Virginia. He asked a lot of questions: Who did I speak to? Why did I cancel? He said he'd get back to me. Much to my surprise, he did. He said that under the circumstances, a friend's illness, he would waive the penalty. His name was Emanuele Fissore. He could not have been more pleasant.

After we cleared that up, I identified myself as a food writer and asked him why he put customers through such horror.

He said he hated to do it. I believed him. He told me the no-show rate at Maestro had become excessive. He said his restaurant was small, and on some nights 25-30 customers would neither show up nor call to cancel.

He said this caused two problems. One was obvious—loss of income. The second was trickier. Customers who wanted an 8 p.m. reservation but could only get a 6:30 p.m. reservation would be eating at a time they didn't want and notice all kinds of empty tables around them when 8 p.m. came around. They'd feel mistreated. "So much frustration," Fissore said. "Why can't people just call and say, 'I can't come.'?"

I ended up feeling worse for Fissore than I did for myself. That's unusual. He seemed passionate about making his restaurant great and his customers happy.

Still, as much as I want to eat at Maestro, which has a wonderful reputation, I'm not going through that again. And I recommend you don't, either. When a restaurant demands that you guarantee with a credit card, just say no and eat somewhere else.

By the way, Fissore told me he had just come from a visit to his dermatologist. He got caught in traffic. He was 15 minutes late.

"They had already charged me for a missed visit," he said. "I said, 'I'm here! I'm here!' "

Don't get me started on dermatologists, the pickpockets of the medical profession. I've yet to meet one who cared about his customers as much as Fissore seems to care about his.

The maker of Equal, an artificial sweetener, is in court to put an end to the claims of Splenda, another artificial sweetener.

Splenda has gained enormous consumer acceptance by declaring that it is made from sugar and is therefore natural.

You've seen the slogan: "Made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar."

The battle rages. Experts are testifying. I am certain they will contradict one another. A decision will be rendered that is unlikely to have anything to do with reality and everything to do with technicalities.

I would like to rule on the case.

The ingredient that makes Splenda sweet is made in a laboratory. It's cleverly called sucralose. It's synthetic. It is definitely not sucrose, which is real sugar.

So if you want to use Splenda, by all means do so. I have no idea if it is better or worse for you than Equal. By the way, Equal's sweetness comes from aspartame, which is definitely not sucrose, either.

In my estimation, the makers of Splenda are dead wrong to make any claims whatsoever that sucralose is like sugar.

Soap is made from animal fat. Would you believe the manufacturers of Ivory if they claimed their product tasted just like kobe beef?

Yet again, everybody is down on doughnuts.

This time, it's because some dumb kids at a school on Long Island, a suburb of New York City, handed out Dunkin' Donuts laced with a laxative.

One of the victims, 14-year old Shane Hartigan, said his chocolate doughnut with sprinkles "tasted fine." (Shane might not have a future as a food critic.)

The kids who spiked the doughnuts said they were imitating something they had seen on MTV.

No, I'm not advocating the banning of MTV, though I'd rather drink a bottle of stool softener than watch any of the programs on that network.

This isn't the first time doughnuts have been misused in this particular way.

In 2003, a couple of teenagers in Grand Rapids, Michigan, brought laxative-laced donuts to their school, also as a prank.

We could solve this problem, of course, by incarcerating all teenagers as a precautionary measure. There they could perform the one task that's within their intellectual capabilities: breaking rocks.

Better yet, we need a doughnut initiative. Americans should be better informed about one of their most misunderstood foodstuffs.

Doughnuts are deep-fried. Therefore, they must be eaten hot. Even a teenager should be able to understand that.

Remember when we couldn't get enough of Krispy Kreme doughnuts? That's because we could get them hot. And I seem to recall Dunkin' Donuts being made fresh in every store, but perhaps I was misled by the famous "time to make the donuts" advertising campaign of the 1980s, which made it appear that way.

Remember this: An old, cold doughnut is worthless. If you're going to eat them that way, extra-added laxative might be the tastiest ingredient.

In the category of unfortunate opinion, I bring you the words of Darren Rovell, who writes the Sports Biz blog for CNBC.

He says of a new ballpark concession item from the Gateway Grizzlies of the Frontier League, "It's pretty awesome."

His praise is directed at a foodstuff that any rational person would curse as a crime against cuisine. It is described by the team as "a thin-sliced, steam-grilled, square-shaped burger topped with cheese and grilled onions that is then breaded and deep-fried."

Yes, we're talking about a deep-fried White Castle burger.

Last year, Rovell proudly points out, he endorsed the team's bacon cheeseburger served on a Krispy Kreme doughnut. (By the way, forget the Grizzlies. I'm pretty certain this concoction was invented much earlier by none other than the late rhythm-and-blues singer Luther Vandross.)

Here's a quote from Tony Funderburg, the general manager of the Grizzlies, on the deep-fried burger: "This is just another way to make Grizzlies games at GCS Ballpark more fun!"

According to fledgling food critic Rovell, when he heard the idea from Funderburg, here's what went through his mind: "I thought it was brilliant."

Wherever this guy got his training, I can't believe it was at either culinary or journalism school.

He tasted the burger in his office, after it sat around for an hour, getting cold. Then he had a flash of inspiration. He thought, "I can only imagine how great it is out of the fryer sitting at the ballpark."

Unless it's a foul ball ricocheting off your head, nothing can possibly happen to you at a ballpark that is worse than eating one of these burgers. And, of course, nobody will eat just one.

Gourmet Rovell added that he couldn't eat too much of his burger, "being that I'm down a gallbladder."

He isn't up a lot in IQ, either.

Henceforth, Wolfgang Puck will only use eggs and meat from well-treated animals in his restaurants.

No more foie gras from overfed ducks. No more eggs from penned-up chickens. An admirable plan.

(Okay, he isn't going to alter his preferred method of killing lobsters by slicing them in half while they're alive, but he says his "conscience feels better," and so it should.)

Here's the problem: He has yet to address the problem of cruelty to humans.

I speak now of his breakfast pizza. It consists of scrambled eggs, bacon, two cheeses, and a drizzle of "Wolfgang's very own Ranch dressing" on a pizza crust.

Puck says of his new, benevolent, farm-animal plan, "We want a better standard for living creatures. It's as simple as that."

His ban on inhumanely produced food followed extensive protests by Farm Sanctuary, an animal rights organization, although Puck denied that he was responding to that particular campaign. Nevertheless, it's time for some well-meaning organization to initiate a campaign against inhumane breakfast pizzas. Remember, people are creatures, too.

Finally, I found what I'd been looking for all my life.

My dream job.

I came upon it accidentally, when I read a story about a new book called Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated into What America Eats. It's a good title, I suppose, although I could eat a package of Twinkies in less time than it takes to figure out what it means.

In the book, you will learn that the Interstate Bakeries Corporation, makers of Hostess Twinkies and Ding Dongs, Drake's Yodels and Devil Dogs, and Wonder Bread ("…provides essential vitamins and minerals—an important part of your family's healthy diet") employs an executive with a magnificent title: Vice President of Cake.

Maybe you wanted to be a fireman when you grew up, but not me. I just wanted to eat cake. You have to figure that this lucky guy gets all he wants.

I called the company asking for an interview with the Vice President of Cake. I have to admit, I misrepresented my intentions. What I really wanted to find out from him was when he was going to retire—or maybe get promoted to Executive Vice President of Sweets. Then I could apply for his job.

I received a blow.

The position no longer exists.

Two different spokespersons for the company gave two different stories—one said the Vice President of Cake had become the Vice President of Mass Marketing. Another said the new job title was Vice President of Snack.

I didn't know which one to believe. It probably shows how befuddling a situation can become when too many Twinkie-eaters become involved.

Here is a list of ten foods that nutrition experts say will put you in a good mood:

Milk
Oily fish
Strawberries
Spinach
Sweet potatoes
Turkey
Brazil nuts
Low-fat yogurt
Caffeine
Cottage Cheese

Supposedly, they all contain magic ingredients like whey protein or omega-3 fatty acids or serotonin boosters that make you less irritable, or fend off depression, or calm you down.

I'll concede that caffeine, which is more a drug than a foodstuff, seems to fend off gloom. As for the rest, just reading that list put me in a bad mood.

Unless you're coming off a hunger strike, those ten items will never make you happy.

I've modified the list. Here are ten similar foods that I guarantee will put you in a good mood:

Chocolate milk
Smoked salmon on a bagel
Strawberry ice cream
Creamed spinach
French fries
Thanksgiving dinner
Honey roasted peanuts
Full-fat Greek yogurt with honey
Double Chocolate Chip Frappuccino
After-dinner cheese course

I'm not a nutritionist. I'm a realist.

Under a headline promoting them as "A feast in a single bite," the Los Angeles Times is enthusiastically sanctioning a new kind of pot pie flourishing in Southern California.

It's not a chicken pot pie, a turkey pot pie, or a beef pot pie. It's a root vegetable pot pie.

Would you care to know what makes these pies especially great? Allow me to quote from the Times article: "The brilliant touch is a wild herb salad that sits atop the pot pie, a tangle of spicy cress."

First of all, the headline is confusing. They are not one-bite pot pies, crusty hors d'oeuvres. For that matter, the article gets the fundamental importance of the pot pie wrong.

Nobody wants to find a tangle of salad greens atop their pot pies. I sure don't. What I want to find is plenty of meat inside.

I get depressed when I buy one of those supermarket pies and they're little more than carrots and gooey gravy. I'm always poking around under the soggy microwaved crust, desperately trying to find one more gristly chunk of protein, muttering to myself, "I had two bites. That can't be all the beef they put in there."

Vegetarian pot pies are like vegetarian hot dogs, a fundamental culinary mistake. I'll tell you what this country needs: A vegetable-free pot pie, served with a tangle of spicy meatballs on top.

We Won't Overcome

The high-spirited Los Angeles Times reported recently that "fast food is fun again."

In case you don't recall it ever being that way, the Times says the last period of exuberance was when "In-N-Out Burger heated up" and "Krispy Kreme made a splash." (I have to agree, nothing is more entertaining than splashing donuts.)

Why the new sense of exhilaration?

It seems that "a new generation of chains" from Guatemala, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines has arrived in California. You know what that means: These fast-food outlets will soon be spreading everywhere.

I, for one, endorse them. They will lessen cultural disparities in this country, and that can only lead to greater bonds among Americans.

For decades, those of us who trace our roots to Europe and Africa have borne the burden of fast food. Hispanics and Asians have for the most part escaped the curse.

Now they will suffer right alongside us.

I clearly see a nation indivisible, all of us eating badly, united as one.

There Is Wind Beneath Those Wings

Wings had a great image until chickens came along. The wings of eagles. The wings of fighter planes. The wings of Icarus. All of them glorious.

Chicken wings are not glorious. I don't know anybody who has ever roasted a chicken who didn't wish they weren't there.

The other day, I got a shipment of Buffalo chicken wings. I was not pleased. I'd been kind to someone, and their gift to me was two huge frozen packages of chicken wings from Buffalo, one version labeled "hot" and the other "BBQ." I didn't know what to do with them.

You might not believe this, but I'd never eaten a Buffalo chicken wing and had no interest in breaking my record. I'd been in Buffalo a few times back when the city had an NBA basketball team and I was a sportswriter, but nobody in Buffalo was interested in Buffalo chicken wings in those days.

The wings came from a place called La Nova, which is apparently a pizzeria. Further insult. I couldn't even get wings from a place where the primary business is wings. In the enclosed promotional material, the owner called himself "The Wing King," but that didn't impress me. Everybody in Buffalo seems to have a wing identity, and such self-proclaimed titles are meaningless. In this world, you can call yourself just about anything and get away with it. I'm thinking of calling myself the Prince of Bel-Air.

I cooked the wings the way the La Nova suggested—22 minutes at 475 degrees. Seemed nuts. I was certain they'd come out shriveled and dry. I served them to two pals, a food-magazine editor and a cook, with nonvintage Delamotte Brut Rose Champagne. I knew the Champagne would be good, and it was.

We all went nuts over the wings. The chef preferred the spicy ones. She thought the heat was artfully added and enhanced the chicken flavor rather than overwhelming it. The editor preferred the BBQ, and found the sweetness "appropriate to a foodstuff of that particular size." (Food editors tend to talk that way.)

I found it astonishing that the wings could be both crunchy and moist, harmed not at all by reheating. A miracle. Reheating chicken is usually a bad idea.

I served the traditional accompaniment of blue cheese dressing on the side, not sloshed over the top. I didn't particularly care for it, legendary though it might be. The cook said she thought the dressing added an addictive component. In fact, she decided it was the combination of creaminess and hotness that had brought about the chicken-wing craze.

I learned a few things while researching the history of Buffalo chicken wings, which were indeed invented in Buffalo, apparently about 1964. If you go to Buffalo and want to fit in (and who doesn't?), never call them "Buffalo wings." They're just "wings."

I never found out what the people of Buffalo do with the remainder of the chicken after they've cooked the wings, the only part they seem to like. I guess it has to remain one of those culinary mysteries, like what the people of Paris do with the rest of the frog after they've eaten the legs.

A Simple Idea

Much is being written in praise of Momofuku Ando, the Japanese businessman who invented instant noodles. He died this week at the age of 96.

Just what was his genius?

Was it helping feed the hungry masses of Japan after WWII?

Was it having his original product, Chicken Ramen, taste of chicken rather than pork or beef? (Chicken, he once said, is eaten by every culture, shunned by none.)

Was it packaging his noodles in a waterproof polystyrene container?

Was it creating the first instant-noodle museum? (The Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum opened in 1999.)

Was it sending vacuum-packed instant noodles into space? (Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi took them with him during a 2005 mission aboard the space shuttle Discovery.)

In my opinion, it was none of those things.

What this man did was market a brilliant and convenient dining concept. It goes like this: Add hot water.

Now that was a smart man.

More Bratwurst Brain Damage

The time-honored concept of the "last meal" has a new meaning.

You probably think of it as the lavish spread offered to death-row prisoners before they go to their final reward. Not so in Milwaukee. Some funeral-home directors wish to serve hors d'oeuvres and drinks in the visitation room where the dearly departed are on display, thus adding festiveness to what traditionally have been grim proceedings.

Guests will eat, drink, and chat, presumably saying nice things about the deseased instead of bad things about the food ("Now I know what killed Old Enos—the cheese puffs").

The newly departed will not dig in, of course. However, he or she will add a bit of gravity—or perhaps a better term might be dead weight—to the proceedings. I would recommend that the parties include coasters embossed with the likeness of the angel of death. Nobody likes to see unsightly ring-marks on a brand-new wooden casket.

"We're not in the funeral business. We're in the hospitality, family-event business that just happens to involve the person who dies," undertaker Mark Krause said to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He's serious. He has taught a continuing education class called "Would You Like Lunch with That Cremation?"

I have to assume the purpose of serving food is to make sure that everybody who is everybody—to say nothing of everybody who is a body—shows up.

"We're moving from a ceremonial base or agenda to a social agenda in the course of serving families," said Ron Hast, publisher of Funeral Monitor newsletter and Mortuary Management magazine. Why stop with the families? Why not throw in a complimentary subscription for the deceased, the publications delivered graveside? A possible promotional jingle: "Give the gift that keeps on giving to those who aren't living!"

Now, both men have a point. Compared to funerals of yore, our present method of conducting such ceremonies is abrupt. A few words, and down they go.

We used to cherish our funerary superstitions, my favorite being the primitive hope that the passing was temporary and if the body was allowed to hang around for a few days, it might spring back to life.

We also had weird food rituals, the most chilling being the role of the sin-eater, a despised and unclean individual who ate food off the body of the dead and thus took his sins upon himself. (A restaurant critic would be particularly well-suited to this task.)

Actually, I suspect Milwaukee-style funerals will ultimately prove to be not particularly abnormal at all. After all, what are cocktail parties but occasions where we stand around next to somebody who has absolutely nothing to say?

Why I'll Never Live in Northern California

Conversation with the guy taking orders at Taylor's Automatic Refresher, a burger joint in San Francisco's Ferry Building where the meat is automatically cooked medium-well (I guess that's what makes the place "automatic").

ME: "Why not serve them medium-rare?"

HIM: "Do you know what would happen if you served 100 burgers medium-rare?"

ME: "The customers would come back for more?"

HIM: "A hundred returns. People don't want their burgers all bloody."

Oddly, the restaurant serves its Ahi tuna rare. So this can't be a health issue—it has to be about locals believing undercooked fish is good for you and undercooked beef is not. Northern Californians seem to have issues with meat.

Or maybe it was just this guy. He had long sideburns, hair in a bun, goatee, and mustache. He not only sounded like Satan; he looked like Satan.

But I guess I always feel that way about people who don't care whether or not food tastes good.

I'll Testify

The small Massachusetts city of Worcester recently bit off more than it can chew.

A superior court judge there ruled that a burrito is not a sandwich. For the most part, the judge relied on the testimony of Chris Schlesinger, a noted Boston chef and restaurant owner who also owns a sandwich shop that serves such items as a Pastraminator and an Atomic Meat Loaf Meltdown.

No offense to Schlesinger, an old pal of mine who is probably way smarter than me (if for no other reason than that he's related to the great writer Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.), but I believe a ruling based on his opinion can easily be reversed. After all, he has a vested interest in defining sandwiches his way. Schlesinger's All Star Sandwich Bar in Cambridge sells muffalettas, melts, reubens, subs, and all manner of variations on the original theme of protein between two slices of bread. Signs at his shop denounce the wrap, which is nothing more than a variation on the burrito. It's like deciding a legal issue between the Red Sox and the Yankees by calling in George Steinbrenner as the expert witness.

Schlesinger would qualify as a star witness if the case was to decide whether or not meat loaf is meat—the kind of issue a small central Massachusetts city is qualified to handle. What is and what is not a sandwich should be decided on a federal level, perhaps at the fabled Washington, D.C., courthouse that has had sandwiches named after it (I refer to the tuna supreme sandwich and the turkey supreme sandwich, of course).

The case went to trial after a cafe that had an exclusive right to sell sandwiches in a shopping center demanded the ouster of a Mexican restaurant that had burritos on its menus. The ruling stating that burritos were not sandwiches allowed the Mexican place to remain in business.

It's likely this verdict can be overturned on appeal. When that occurs and the case works its way up through the legal system, a non-partisan expert will be required, somebody whose entire life in food has been defined by a pastrami sandwich he ate in the fifties in a small suburb of Philadelphia. That would be me.

The Worcester court's ruling was much too narrow. Much is left to be determined where sandwiches are concerned, and I stand ready to offer my know-how.

Is an open-faced sandwich a sandwich? (I think not, and the name will have to be changed.) Is a club sandwich a sandwich? (Certainly, a sandwich-and-a-half, as a matter-of-fact.) Is an ice-cream sandwich a sandwich? (Not when it comes out of a convenience store freezer case and the cookies are revoltingly soggy.)

We haven't even addressed the vital issue of fillings. Is a sandwich really a sandwich if it does not incorporate mustard or mayonnaise? (I often have my pastrami plain, so perhaps I am not the best person to answer that.)

This is all much bigger than the simple question of whether one flour tortilla is the equivalent of two slices of bread.

Another thing. Schlesinger testified that a true sandwich is made from "two pieces of leavened bread," which means that the traditional Passover sandwich of bitter herbs between two pieces of matzo (unleavened bread) can no longer legally be called a sandwich.

Religious freedom is at stake, yet another reason why this case is bigger than a Worcester courtroom. I will say, from a personal point of view, that if the final decision results in me never having to eat another piece of dry ceremonial matzo, I will shake Schlesinger's hand.

Best Left to Locals

Australia's answer to peanut butter is a potent spread made by Kraft and marketed under the name Vegemite. It's dark brown, creamy smooth, and smells like the inside of that medicine cabinet at your doctor's office you weren't supposed to open. The product, made mostly from yeast and salt, is sold in cute little jars with yellow caps and yellow labels. There is nothing cute about the flavor. You can get some idea of the taste by chewing on a beef bouillon cube.

The company promotes Vegemite as being rich in vitamin B. So is beer, for that matter, the perfect beverage to wash out your mouth after eating the stuff. I tried it for the first time on a recent Qantas flight to Australia, and I did not become a convert, despite noble efforts by two Qantas cabin stewards, Tim and John.

Said Tim, "Everybody in Australia likes it, and even those few who don't have the occasional craving for it."

Added John, in a contrarian spirit, "Only in the last year have I been able to eat it."

I asked him how long he was not able to eat it.

"Forty-six years. I'm 47."

Tim claimed that when spread on toast, Vegemite is the perfect breakfast food after a night of drinking. That might have impressed me, except that every dreadful Australian food is said to be the perfect antidote to a night of drinking. In that category, Vegemite ranks below meat pies topped with scoops of mashed potatoes and mashed peas—a nightmare version of Wendy's Classic Triple.

Vegemite is goo. Spread on hot toast, it melts into the bread like a horror-movie, life-sucking mold from outer space. Adding butter helps cut the saltiness, but the taste itself is unassailable. An Australian fellow named Keith, sitting next to me, promoted it as one component of a delightful Australian way to start to the day, the other half being a milky cup of tea.

"Vegemite and coffee doesn't sound right," he said.

Astounding, I thought, that something this awful would come with a beverage pairing.

Should you not be traveling to Australia, a similar product called Marmite is available in Great Britain. I've never understood why the organization known as the Commonwealth of Nations exists, but now I get it.

To Be Honest, I'd Pay $1000 for a Decent Cheese Danish

I will not be buying Hacienda La Esmeralda coffee. Not that I ever have.

This Panama estate sells coffee that costs more than $100 a pound, but that isn't the reason I'm restraining myself. Considering what we pay for wine, $100 isn't horrible. Nor is it because I can't figure out whether the actual name of that $100-a-pound coffee is "Hacienda La Esmeralda Especial" or "Hacienda La Esmeralda Geisha" or "Hacienda La Esmeralda Jaramillo." I've seen it all three ways. Coffee designations have now officially equaled wine designations in needless complexity.

The coffee I'm talking about recently sold for $103.90 a pound. I hear it tastes good. A writer for the Chicago Tribune said it "dances wildly across the palate." Not many newspaper columnists can even dance across a room, which might be why he got so excited.

What bothers me about this coffee is that it was created by removing the best coffee beans from the estate's general production and creating an elite blend. The company admitted that those particular beans come from "one area that was producing an exceptional cup."

That's called cannibalizing. What remains for schnooks who are willing to pay a meager $15-20 a pound for ordinary La Esmeralda coffee is a blend not quite as good as it used to be. It's like buying a porterhouse steak after the filet has been sold separately to a rich guy who's a friend of the butcher.

You see that happening frequently in the wine world, and it's dismaying. Wineries produce single-vineyard bottlings where the most promising grapes are separated and sold under a special label to wealthy collectors. What's left goes into the commercial cuvée. (To their credit, the great Bordeaux estates almost never do this.)

Here's my advice: If this becomes widespread in the coffee business, switch to tea.

The Opiate Eaters

A friend recently sent me a poppy seed strudel, an old-world sweet. I was thrilled. Who doesn't appreciate getting cake in the mail?

I wasn't so sure it really was a strudel. My friend, Eric Levin, called it a strudel. The package called it a strudel. I wasn't so sure, and since I think of myself as an old-world guy, my opinion counts. To me, strudels are defined by multiple sheets of thin dough. This strudel was more like a sweet, eggy, brioche-like cake. The poppy seeds were never in question. There seemed to be millions of them.

It wasn't until I'd started eating and noticed the mess I was making that I asked myself why anybody values poppy seeds. They're hard black specks that look like coffee grounds and stick in your teeth, roll around your kitchen counter, drop into cracks. I don't know any other food item where such a large percentage of an ingredient falls off and remains uneaten.

In America, poppy seeds are commonly found on bagels and muffins, less so in pastries or desserts, although I recently discovered poppy seeds in my sponge cake at the fancy Montage Hotel in Laguna Beach, California. (Orange County just doesn't feel like poppy seed territory.) There they were sparingly sprinkled in the cake, more for effect than flavor.

I called my friend to thank him for the strudel and to ask him if he was as irrationally attached to poppy seeds as I am. He said he was. He is a restaurant reviewer for the New Jersey Monthly, so I trust his judgment. He said he liked the crunch and the absence of sweetness.

To me, they have no taste whatsoever, an absence of everything, although I've heard it said that poppy seeds possess "nuttiness." That's one of those all-purpose culinary words. When nobody can describe a flavor, it's frequently nutty.

To me, poppy seeds aren't nutty. They're nothing. But I love them. Levin said it had to do with the part of the world our families were from—Eastern Europe, not far from Turkey, one of the locales where the Papaver somniferum grow. They're also found in Romania, where one of my grandfathers was born. The Papaver somniferum is the plant that provides us not just with poppy seeds but also with heroin. Eating poppy seeds has been known to cause false positives on drug tests.

Levin said, "We eat the seeds in fattening cakes, other people make dangerous drugs from them. We blow out our bodies with cholesterol. They blow out their brains with heroin."

It's always nice to have a deeper understanding of oneself. I cut myself another slice of strudel. This time I buttered it.

McDanger

McDonald's is thinking of serving breakfast 24 hours a day.

The CEO of McDonald's recently said that friends of his were clamoring for limitless opportunities to devour the "high-quality product that we deliver at breakfast."

I'm not one to bash McDonald's. I say live and let live, assuming that's possible for anyone who eats fast food regularly. I've always believed that if McDonald's sandwiches were prepared carefully, which they are not, they would taste pretty good. Unfortunately, the majority of the company cooks look like juvenile delinquents given their last chance at gainful employment before being shipped off to penal colonies. Nevertheless, I have eaten McDonald's meals that I've enjoyed, a confession I'm not too proud to make.

I've also eaten breakfast at McDonald's. It's prison food.

Take McDonald's Big Breakfast™. The corporation is so proud of this assemblage that they trademarked it, which means that any schlub who opens a roadside diner and tries to sell something he calls a big breakfast will soon be visited by corporate lawyers demanding that he cease and desist. Yes, the word "big," followed by "breakfast," belongs to McDonald's and McDonald's alone, even though it's as generic a term as I can envision. We all thought big oil interests were running this nation. Now we know the big breakfast interests have political clout, too.

McDonald's Big Breakfast™ consists of scrambled eggs, a biscuit, a sausage patty, and hash browns. Every single item has one dominant characteristic: rubberiness. You could bounce them off the floor. I was tempted to do that, not for testing purposes but out of sheer frustration. That's how bad most of them taste.

I have to confess that I didn't mind the biscuit, but that's because I come from the North and have no idea how a biscuit is supposed to taste. I have heard the word "flakiness" used with biscuits, and this biscuit sure didn't have that. Still, it's better than sliced, packaged white bread, and we Northerners are grateful for any upgrade.

The sausage is bland, sweet, and greasy. The eggs, a deadly dry assemblage midway between an omelet and scrambled eggs, do boast a slight egginess. The potato cake appears to be made from army-issue reconstituted potato flakes, although when I called McDonald's customer service, I was assured that the contents were wonderfully fresh.

Breakfast in America is declining rapidly, even though the rest of our restaurant meals seem to be improving. Little could depress me more than the thought of all Americans sitting around eating Big Breakfasts™ 24 hours a day. Then the nice McDonald's customer satisfaction representative made me feel worse. She asked if I'd tried McDonald's Deluxe Breakfast.

"What's that?" I gasped.

"Hotcakes," she added.

Indeed, it's true. Take the Big Breakfast™, add hotcakes and hotcake syrup, and the Big Breakfast™ is promoted to Deluxe Breakfast status. I rushed out to try McDonald's hotcakes. They are beyond comprehension. Think of the floury taste of pancake batter. Now think of that batter transmuted into solid form. McDonald's pancakes do not taste as though they were cooked.

McDonald's has yet to trademark the name Deluxe Breakfast. I would like to think they were turned down. Perhaps our federal government has finally taken a righteous stand against big corporate interests, even if it's only where breakfasts are concerned.

No Time to Lose

The supermarket lady started telling me that I was wasting my life. I admit it wasn't quite in those words, but that was her message.

"Think of all the time you can save by drinking your yogurt instead of eating it," she said, smiling one of those a supermarket smiles. They are intended, I believe, to enhance supermarket believability, badly in decline since we learned that virtually all grocery store products, even organic broccoli, contain trans fat.

Before her was a table of free samples, tiny cups filled with a tasting portion of liquid yogurt.

She urged me to try one. I did. Mighty flavorsome. She explained how drinking this product would enable me to eliminate the time-consuming process of enjoying yogurt in its conventional, squishy form.

She might have had a convincing argument if she'd been pitching the value of liquid yogurt over making yogurt from scratch, not that I would ever attempt such a dangerous act. That would put me in close proximity to weird cultures with names like Lactobacillus Bulgaricus, the ones that viciously attack milk. I would never take such a risk.

I intend to leave yogurt-making to those Azerbaijanis who want to live to be a hundred. In fact, I generally prefer to eat a product similar in many ways to yogurt but providing far fewer health benefits—sour cream. It is the Jewish answer to yogurt and promotes early entry into nursing homes. I also admire the makers of sour cream because they are honest fellows who never pretend it's good for you.

I know that yogurt is popular, and I started wondering how much time Americans actually would save by drinking it instead of gumming it. We all need more leisure time that we can spend watching Rachel Ray cook food that is even worse for us than sour cream.

I set up a scientific study. I would open a container of Stonyfield Farm raspberry smoothie—labeled "a refreshingly drinkable lowfat yogurt"—and drink six of the ten fluid ounces. I would then open a six-ounce container of Trader Joe's organic lowfat raspberry yogurt and eat that. What must also be considered—and only a top scientific mind like mine would think of this—is the time required to wash the spoon.

Since the only guarantee the supermarket lady had made for the liquid yogurt was speed, not flavor, I decided to drink and eat as fast as I could. I would make no effort to enjoy either product, not that there is anything enjoyable about yogurt.

I set my watch on the table. I began.

Unscrewing the top from the liquid yogurt and then ripping off the aluminum seal took a full 15 seconds. The seal was not user-friendly. Gulping the sweet, tart, thin, cloying liquid took 18 seconds. Total Elapsed Time: 33 seconds. I felt a little sick.

Removing the aluminum seal from the Trader Joe's yogurt took one second. Eating a whole cup of strange, wiggly stuff within required 45 seconds. The reason I was so slow is that buried inside the yogurt was something I can only describe as liquefied raspberry jam. Nauseating goop. I put the spoon in the sink, stood back, and timed the process of washing it. Three seconds. Total Elapsed Time: 49 seconds.

Clearly, the supermarket lady was correct. Were I to drink six ounces of liquid yogurt every day instead of eating the semi-solid kind, I would save more than an hour-and-a-half each year. I don't think that's quite enough to excite consumers, which doesn't mean yogurt producers should give up their efforts to promote efficiency. They should consider manufacturing yogurt in injectible form.

Cheesesteak, Cheesesteak

My hometown of Philadelphia has many culinary virtues, all of them modest (Tastykake, scrapple), none more beloved than the cheesesteak. Of late cheesesteaks have proliferated, appearing even in chain restaurants at airports. That's not good, because an authentic cheesesteak has certain properties that aren't easy to replicate. It's soft, gooey, and overcooked. Come to think of it, those properties are easy to replicate. Still, it's hard to find a cheesesteak outside Philadelphia that tastes like home.

One of Philadelphia's greatest purveyors of cheesesteaks is Tony Luke's—which is actually more famous for its sandwich of roast pork with broccoli rabe and provolone cheese. In New York, a branch of Tony Luke's has just re-opened on 9th Avenue, not far from the Port Authority Bus Terminal. It's the right neighborhood for a cheesesteak emporium. Across the street is the League of Mutual Taxi Owners and Papaya Dog.

The place has been in business before. Evan Stein, who made money in an internet startup and invested it all in this shop—okay, he didn't make a fortune—first built this outpost of Tony Luke's in 2005, replicating the original's exceedingly downscale look (cement floor, a few stools). He says, "Nobody came in after 6 p.m. They'd look in and think it was a check-cashing joint." He closed for remodeling.

The new version is pretty slick, with exposed-brick walls and a full-service bar. The Italian fries with romano cheese (Philly is a romano, not a parmesan, town) are supremely crunchy. The roast pork sandwich is good, although I think the pork is too lean and healthy. It's the cheesesteak that stands out.

Have it the proper way, with Cheez Whiz (called wiz in Philly slang) and fried onions. You might think that sounds repulsive, and technically it is repulsive, but Stein gets it exactly right, creating a magnificent wiz-onion mélange. To his credit, the bread is very fresh and the meat overcooked, two key elements.

When I stopped in recently, Stein was a little concerned he had made the place too fancy, but I assured him his food was worthy of tables and chairs.

A New Foodie's Bible

David Kamp is not a food writer, but he is one of the most brilliant journalists I know. That gives him a pretty significant edge over food writers. Let's face it: Eating is one of the few human activities that takes no intelligence whatsoever. So it's nice when a superior mind takes on the subject of food.

Kamp has written a comprehensive and dazzling book about the history of food in America. It's titled The United States of Arugula, and it traces our evolution as eaters. He documents how we moved from being "Jell-O-abusing women's-page ladies" and "terrapin-eating boulevardiers" to a "gourmet nation."

The book is full of encyclopedia-quality tidbits, both in the text and in his particularly entertaining footnotes. However, the primary virtue of the book is Kamp's insightful sketches of everyone in the food world you have ever admired and quite a few that you probably forgot you knew. If he's missed anybody, it's the guy running a bodega at the end of your block.

There's a bonus, too. Should you ever have wondered about the sensual sides of Julia Child, Alice Waters, or Barbara Lazaroff (ex-wife of Wolfgang Puck), considerable information is provided. To tell you the truth, I had always thought Julia never did anything more provocative than dropping a chicken on the floor of her kitchen (and she might never even have done that).

The United States of Arugula comes out this week. You will never be able to make up for all the wonderful meals you've missed over the years, but now you can find out how good they all would have been.

All the News

Last week, The New York Times discovered pigs in a blanket.

Our nation's leading newspaper was nearly hysterical over the scoop. It announced that without pigs in blankets, "no black tie cocktail hour is complete."

The story ran on the front page of the "Dining In Dining Out" section. An accompanying picture took up a quarter of the page, about the space the paper might give to a photograph of a presidential inauguration. The pigs in blankets—I shall henceforth refer to them as "pigs," notwithstanding that pork should never be part of a proper pig—were on an ornate glass tray.

A pig, for any of you who have never attended a wedding, a Bar Mitzvah, or a poker game, is a miniature hot dog, preferably kosher, wrapped in puff pastry. It is junk food for Jews.

The editors of the Times think otherwise. They referred to them in a headline as "the kings of the cocktail hour." Page four of the dining section had yet another color photograph, almost as large as the first. This one featured four eager young people, mouths open, preparing to down pigs. They were all having the times of their lives, sampling fare from an exotic destination they had obviously never visited, a kosher delicatessen.

The Times, never one to let well enough alone, discussed socially acceptable variations on pigs, one more revolting than the next. They condoned replacing mustard with such dipping sauces as quince paste or barbeque sauce. They also endorsed variations, like andouille in phyllo. Sure, that's a pig, like I'm Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. They went on and on. The story had the breathless excitement of tabloid coverage of an alien spaceship landing in the New Mexico desert.

Oddly, the Times never explained how to make pigs. Everyone should know how to prepare them, because they are one of only two foodstuffs—boiled shrimp is the other—that are much loved by all who attend parties. Not only will I disclose my recipe, I will reveal the secret that makes my pigs superior to all others.

Purchase one package of cocktail franks, preferably kosher.

Purchase one package of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls. (The reduced-fat variation is fine.)

Here's my secret: Place the franks in a small saucepan filled with water. Cover. Bring to a boil. Remove from fire. Drain. By par-boiling the franks, you will eliminate the yucky, salty, packaged taste.

Unroll the dough on a cutting board. Slice into thin strips, about three-quarters of an inch wide by three inches long. Don't worry if they are irregular, too short or too long. Nobody cares.

Wrap a strip around each pig, barber-pole style. (Okay, you've never seen a barber pole. How about candy-cane style? Same thing.) Traditional pigs do not have the best bread-to-meat ratio, the single shortcoming in an otherwise near-perfect product. My pigs have less dough than most. What you are really seeking is a pig in a scarf.

Place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Cook for 17-19 minutes at 375 degrees. Flip pigs halfway through, burning your fingers in the process. (Pigs are worth the pain.) Serve immediately, with the mustard of your choice. Mouth-burning is also encouraged.

I cannot wait to see what is next for the Times. It is my belief that the upcoming "Science Times" section will announce the discovery of gravity.

Not Quite Authentic, But Wonderful Nevertheless

It's called Bamn! It's not quite a Horn & Hardart Automat, even though it tries. The color scheme is a glowing amalgamation of magenta and hot pink. The tiny space is standing room only, with no place to sit and loiter away an afternoon over a cup of coffee—Starbucks has, to its credit, taken on that role in our society. It's in the East Village, only recently gentrified to a point that a gent with a pocket full of jingling coins could walk down the block without being hit on the head and robbed of them. Still, it is a little like an automat of old, and that's a thrill to those of us who used to patronize them.

In case you're wondering what the word automat means, it's in the dictionary. Here's how mine defines it: "A restaurant in which the customers obtain food from closed compartments by depositing coins therein."

Once automats were all over New York. They were huge and shiny, and any kid who got to go to one had about as much fun as kids could have where food was concerned. We had a different lifestyle back then—meals were under the supervision of mothers, not television commercials. Most of what I remember about my visits to Horn & Hardart Automats was getting a bunch of nickels from the cashiers—they were nicknamed "nickel throwers"—and heading straight for the little windows that dispensed baked beans. I sure loved those beans, probably because cowboys ate them around campfires.

Bamn! takes quarters. It offers only a few dishes, and other than the hot dogs and possibly the grilled cheese, I'm pretty sure none were available in the old days. Not the chicken wings, the teriyaki burgers, the roast pork buns, the Japanese donuts, the pizza dumplings, the peanut butter & jelly croquettes, or the mozzarella sticks. Surely not the spam sushi. Everything goes for $1.00-$2.00. I tried everything and liked the pork bun best.

As the world has moved toward self-service—grocery stores, gas stations—the food world has gone in the opposite direction. Everything is handed to you. Taking whatever food I wanted was the most satisfying aspect of an automat meal. If I had tried that at home, I would have gotten my hand slapped.

An Honest Man

Perhaps the single greatest food produced in America is the tomato. It is the only vegetable product that can satisfactorily replace meat as the primary ingredient in a sandwich. Thickly slice a ripe tomato, place it on fresh country bread, add mayonnaise. That's all you need. (Peanut-butter-and-jelly is almost as good, but it requires a crutch—an accompanying class of cold milk.) And, of course, there's the beloved bacon-lettuce-tomato sandwich, certainly among the five greatest of all time.

The simplest tomatoes, in season, are as good as the heirloom varieties that cost $6.98 a pound in silly places like farmer's markets and gourmet stores. In fact, they're better. The very best tomatoes of the year are available right now. They grow in your neighbor's yard.

They are as wonderful as ripe peaches that drop from trees in Georgia or sweet corn languishing in fields in New Jersey. Unlike peaches and corn, neighbor's tomatoes are close at hand. They are unguarded and irresistible. They are asking to be plucked.

With corn and peaches, we have no choice but to eat what is gruesomely referred to as "supermarket produce." The really good stuff is inaccessible. Tomatoes, on the other hand, are in our neighbor's yards. In my case, I can practically reach over and pick a few tomatoes from my neighbor's plants without crossing the property line. What makes them even more irresistible is that my neighbors have foolishly planted these tomato plants out of sight of their house. If I trespassed, they could neither see me nor shoot me.

That doesn't mean they wouldn't eventually notice. If I took a bunch, they'd eventually realize something was missing from their tomato plants—the tomatoes. On the other hand, throughout the course of the summer they have offered me none whatsoever, and isn't that wrong, too?

Is it a bad thing, I ask you, to pilfer a neighbor's tomatoes? Isn't it they who are behaving badly by not sharing? Isn't it true that revolutions are ignited by those who have little, like me, and resent those that have so much, like them? And what of the forgotten fruit, perfectly ripe, that is about to fall from the vine were I not to move quickly and save it from splattering? Would I not be doing the plant a favor by saving its tomatoes from an ignominious fate?

It's not like I could grow my own. I could design a rocket that would hit the moon before I could cause a plant to grow.

There's another point to consider: If the neighbors saw me, would they call the police? I telephoned my village police force and asked the officer on duty if anybody had ever been arrested for stealing a neighbor's tomato. He said, "Not to my knowledge."

I don't know how much longer I can restrain myself. I keep thinking, if the police do come, won't they accept a bribe of a perfect BLT?