Still, I suppose it would be possible to bring a suit, which might actually work in international law, to regularize use of the word "guacamole."  Cf. the way the vintners of the Champagne region insisted, and prevailed, that only their bubbly stuff can be called Champagne; everything else is "me'thode champenoise."  Also, cf. the perhaps more controversial way that the Greek dairy industry successfully laid claim to "feta."

So, who exactly would strike out for securing "guacamole"?  Mexican avocado growers?  Mexican restaurateurs?  Mexican cuisine-artists?  Diana Kennedy?

Regarding Diana Kennedy, my husband, a Julia-Childist who however was raised eating Mexican food in Imperial Valley, CA, says that if she can ever possibly find the most difficult way of preparing anything, she will.

And, FWIW, IMHO, having eaten that green stuff often in Mexico, in New Mexico and here (yes, my husband makes it -- though the poor lamb does not have a lava Aztec sacrifice stone on which to do the mashing), I consider it rather over-rated.  I mean, sure, when it is made well, it is very good.  But it is hardly one of the principal glories of Mexican cuisine.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

I suppose you'd shrug it off, then, if ADM were to come out with a bottled beverage called "Martini drink," featuring a dash of gin and a bunch of industrially produced corn liquor? After all, it wouldn't be marketing a Martini, but rather a Martini drink!

Corporate marketing logic has clearly outstripped my reasoning abilities.

Victual Reality

How the standards fall...

A more interesting aside to the legal questions, when I worked in an organic food coop in Calgary, AB (that's in Canada for the geographically challenged) you could only buy soy cheese if you knew who to ask and it was brought out of hiding from the basement.  It was actually illegal in Alberta to sell soy cheese because the very powerful diary lobby had convinced politicians with $ubtle argument$ that it was misleading consumers calling it cheese.

That was early 90's, no idea how the soy-smugglers are faring today.

"The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest." -- Kilgore Trout

Tom baby, I am not sure I am quite with you on this.  But this comes down to being a legal problem, no?  I entirely agree that it is really a civilizational problem.  And yet, it seems that the people with the money, who get to hire the lawyers, always manage to jump ahead in the line.

Coby Beck's example from Alberta is interesting, alongside mine from France and Greece.  Why in the world do we need "cheese" to be legally defined for us?  I am afraid I am quite libertarian on this matter: so long as the producers of "soy cheese" make the ingredients of their product entirely visible and legible, they can call it "chocolate pork rind."  That would be a perverse trick, of course, doomed to backfire, plus a headache for the grocers.  Clearly, though, if the product is intended to function as cheese, and if it is made of soy beans, then "soy cheese" seems like a perfectly reasonable name.  No one will buy it in the expectation of acquiring dairy cheese.

"Champagne" is trickier.  Lots of very good white sparkling wine is produced outside of Champagne, the region, e.g. in Languedoc, the Veneto, Catalunya, California.  Would lots of customers in the market for champagne refuse to put out $35 for a bottle of "true" champagne, if they can buy, say, a pleasant product from Freixenet for $12, also called "champagne"?  My own feeling is, the name means little.  I know who the high-quality producers are, and I want wine vendors to keep those bottles separate.  And I would like to think, most customers would recognize the distinction.  But on the other hand, if vintners outside of Champagne can produce a product as good as "true" champagne, then that should be recognized, and the price difference should shrink in reflexion of that too.

On feta: IMHO, there is no reason to think that Greeks make better feta than anyone else.  I have had excellent feta from Bulgaria and Turkey (yipes!, the Ancient Enemy!; but that is OK, they learned everything they know from the Byzantines).  I have not had French feta, but I would expect it is also very well done.

By the same token, "parmigiano" seems not to be a very carefully controlled name at all.  We usually get "reggiano parmigiano," from a neighboring district in north-central Italy, which is a bit cheaper, and suits us fine.  Sometimes my husband goes shopping without his glasses, and picks up parmigiano from Argentina -- definitely a mistake, though very much cheaper, because it is a quite inferior product.

Of course, the stuff that is shaken out of a can is unspeakable.

On "orange": It is one of the most fascinating words in the language.  Color-theorists and linguists have written long dissertations on the meaning of "orange," and its translation in other languages.  "Purple" too.

But, on the "real juice!" business: Not being a parent, I am somewhat mystified by the fond regularity with which young parents thrust juice boxes into the hands of their toddlers.  My feeling is, teach them to discriminate between the various shades of Coca Cola as soon as possible, and of course to detect the difference between Coke and Pepsi.  Also, rolling a joint, preparing a bong: very important parental lessons.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

So, I would have to say a thunderous "yes!" to faux guacamole.

I personally don't like mayonnaise, so back when I used to eat tuna I made my tuna salad with mashed avocado instead.  It really would never have occurred to me that there were people who didn't like avocados.  Besides, in good guac the avocado supplies texture more than anything, since it's almost guaranteed to be overwhelmed by the chile, lime, and onions.  I can't see green peas really working for this, although I guess you could use chickpeas and make a Mexican-flavored hummus as a guac substitute.

Oh, and Canis, when I worked at Artesanos (a Mexican import shop in downtown Santa Fe), we sold molcajetes, and I have to say, those things scare me.  I know supposedly once you've ground up enough uncooked rice or salt or whatever in them, they stop shedding pieces of stone, but...well, an archaeologist once told me you could learn things about farming by seeing the condition of the teeth on excavated remains, because the mano and metate used to grind the corn left little bits of stone in the corn, chipping the teeth of those who ate it.  When I make guac I just cut things up and then moosh them together with a fork, heathen that I am. :)

(One does not expect Mel Gibson to have much to tell us on the subject.  He is indeed interested in suffering and death, but usually of a more gorey nature.  I am afraid I shall have to see "Apocalypto" at some point, for professional reasons, but I am not looking forward to it.)

My Michael also just scoops out the avocado into a ceramic bowl, and mashes it with a fork.  It occurs to me that I have never had a truly sensational guacamole, because either I have eaten his, and he makes it very mild, or I have eaten it with him in restaurants, and he always instructs the guacamole meister to make it very mild.  He claims that the best guacamole he has ever had was at that restaurant just beyond the Santa Fe Opera and the Tesuque Casino, on the east side of the highway, which I think is called Gabriela's.  And I do indeed remember liking it -- perhaps because of the green chiles.

Another term which is currently in legal dispute, by the way, is "vodka."  Apparently the countries around the Baltic have traditionally made it from the distilled juice of, I do not know, potatoes or rye or something, but other producers in Western Europe and North America make it from other stuff.  So the Baltic countries are insisting that only their vodka deserves to be called vodka.  I do not have a dog in that fight, never liking vodka very much; though I did recently taste a pleasant, herb-flavored vodka from the Netherlands which I liked a lot.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Which just goes to show, don't ever assume everyone has the same taste buds as you.

I am not so sure I would proscribe corn liquor (ethanol, aka bourbon when aged in oak barrels).  Try an old fashion or manhattan up instead of having one buried in ice for a change sometime for those of you who can drink such mind altering concoctions.  The little cherry can be especially festive this time of year.
 

But, hey, whatever makes you happy. :)

And Canis, the restaurant is Gabriel's, and they do supposedly have excellent guacamole, although I haven't eaten there in so long I don't remember it personally.  I find the architecture creepy--you have to go sort of around and down a ramp to get to the dining area from the front door, making it seem dungeon-like--and in any case the food's not as good (in my opinion) as it is at Diego's in the De Vargas mall, or at the Pojoaque truck stop right up the road from Gabriel's.

I guess it's good that there are people who don't like avocados, tomatoes, and green chile.  More for me! :)

More important, though, are all those chemicals, added probably for flavor, texture, preservation and color.  I thought monosodium glutamate had been suppressed, but I guess I was wrong.

No doubt all this mixing, of this and that, took a lot of lab research; and I almost feel anti-intellectual to complain that it is work for nought.  Let us not underestimate the impressive artistic sensibility that must have gone into blending just the right amount of Yellow 6 and Yellow 5, against just the right amount of Blue 1, with just the right amount of "artificial color" mixed in to cut the chroma, to arrive at a green that can pass as avocado-ish.

I just noticed the very interesting last sentence of Diana Kennedy's recipe, on how in Mexico one eats guacamole inside a fresh warm tortilla (presumably not spread too thickly).  That sounds very promising indeed -- I am afraid I like (some) tortilla chips, but not really as a vehicle for guacamole -- , so much so that I am prepared to erase all my guacamole memories and start afresh.

To FFletcher: by all means, enjoy your martinis as you wish, with whatever you have on hand.  The bourbon idea does not sound too inspired, but whatever.  It has been a good decade since I have had a martini; and in this part of the world, "martini" has long ago come to mean "vodka martini."  So, when I requested a gin martini, called cutely a "007," from a huge "Martini Night" menu in which only that one was made with gin, I received stares of amazement from my bar mates, and even the bartender looked rather bewildered.  I certainly did not end up feeling anything like James Bond.

To Willa: Yes, Gabriel's is a strange, labyrinthine building.  The second of the two times we ate there, a modest-sized wedding reception was taking place, and I could not help thinking, they surely could have found a more festive place to celebrate.

In 1993, De Vargas Mall was pretty close to the southern edge of the city, expanding of course ever southward.  I remember biking down Cerrillos -- I was staying at Saint Ann's Church, off Agua Fria, at the time, so it was for me and my K-Mart piece-of-junk, that odd vehicle of the ever doubtful chain, a significantly long ride -- to see "Jurassic Park" at the movie theater in De Vargas Mall.  But, alas, I did not eat at Diego's.

My favorite eating experiences, in 1993, were at a place called Maria's, I think, on, I think, Saint Michael's, that not very attractive multi-lane east-west avenue a couple of miles south of the Plaza.  It was warm and intimate, and not very touristy, and it was OK to go there alone, with a book, and the food was a source of great rejoicing.  Or, mejor dicho, was a sublime way of feeding my green chile addiction.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

My grandfather had a martini--as in, made with Tanqueray and a whisper of vermouth--every single day of his adult life, which, while it put me off the idea of gin until I discovered they don't all taste like mouthwash, firmly fixed in my mind the idea that martinis are made with gin.  "Vodka martini" has an odd ring to me.

That's okay, though.  I discovered I prefer Bombay Sapphire, preferably with Blue Sky pomegranate soda, or tonic in a pinch. :)

I think, btw, you are thinking of the Villa Linda mall, since De Vargas was and is the northern edge of town (where Albertsons was, and is, though they've moved to the other side).  It's funny, your comments on local, "authentic" stuff works right into what I should be reading for the 15-page paper I have due on monday (the book I'm working on at the moment is Judy Mattivi Morley's Historic Preservation and the Imagined West).  So, I think I'll go do that...

6 parts gin
Bottle of dry vermouth
Cocktail olive

Shake gin in a cocktail shaker with cracked ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and look at the bottle of vermouth. Garnish with olive.

I understand that later in life, he dispensed with the Vermouth bottle altogether and had his butler bow in the direction of France after pouring the gin.


Victual Reality

On the cultural background of "vodka martini" coming to be the default martini in NYC, of course you understand that the bar that I referred to was a gay bar; and in NYC society, gays have been initiators of various fashions.  The newish popular drink in the Chelsea bars in the mid-1990s, which I hated, was the Cosmopolitan, a vodka martini with lots of gunky fruit-flavored liquor thrown in.  My understanding is that this was the drink of choice for the young ladies in "Sex and the City."

Willa, thank you for reminding me that the name of the far southerly mall is Villa Linda.  I did not know the name of the Albertson's mall, even though I used to shop at Albertson's a lot, until I discovered the Wild Oats on Saint Francis just east of Cerrillos.  There was a restaurant that I sometimes went to to write letters, on Sunday afternoon after Mass at Our Lady of Guadalupe -- it may very well have been Diego's.

Gin-and-tonics are a favorite summertime drink.  Them, and margaritas.  It is not easy to find a good margarita, though, if you like them on the bitter side.  We had a few lovely early evenings at that second-floor place on the west side of the Plaza, at the southern end of the block, sitting on the balcony with margaritas and chips.  Whether the margaritas were themselves excellent, I do not remember; but the ambiance made up for them, if they were not.


Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

A group of prospective Canadian Mounties are receiving a lecture on wilderness survival techniques.  After telling them all the standard techniques for starting fires, etc, he says they should always carry a bottle of gin, a bottle of vermouth, and a an empty bottle with them.  That way, if things get really desperate, you can pour the gin and the vermouth into the empty bottle together, put the cap back on, and start shaking it.

Because no matter where you are, someone is guaranteed to tap you on the shoulder and say, "Son, that's no way to make a martini."