March of the Prissy Little Bitches

Mario Batali, PLB? Newsletter subscribers, click for video (courtesy Serious Eats).

Here's a phrase you won't find in the Food Snob's Dictionary: "Prissy Little Bitch."

Coined by Melissa Lion at Bookslut.com, the PLB is a chef or foodie who is Just So about Every Little Thing on your plate, up to and including the plate itself. I'd place Martha Stewart and trend-chasing menu writers in the PLB camp; Lion adds Mario Batali (whose cookbooks provide recommendations such as “Find a good organic poultry supplier and support them -- or raise your own.”) as well as bow-tied "Cook's Illustrated" founder Christopher Kimball and Jeremiah Tower, whose book "America's Best Chefs Cook," Lion says, "should have been subtitled, the march of the prissy little bitches."

On one hand, of course, this is all very unfair since anyone who gets excited about Intelligentsia Coffee, sneers at supermarket tomatoes or has even considered sniffing and slurping a sip of wine exhibits PLB characteristics. That said, watch the episode of Sundance Channel's "Iconoclasts" that pairs Mikhail Barishnikov with Alice Waters and tell me if you don't feel just a little like strangling her. 

That's why I've fallen in love with Windrose Farm. While I am riddled with PLB tendencies, Bill and Barbara don't share so much as a PLB cell between them; farming is too hard for that. Nonetheless, their passion and dedication for growing and raising great foodstuffs has turned them into foodie rock stars.

The best chefs in Los Angeles know and love them for the organic fruits and vegetables they sell. You can see them on an episode of MOJO Channel's "After Hours With Daniel Boulud." They'll be in Los Angeles magazine's Food issue next month, profiled  for the lamb they raise. (Bianca is not for sale or slaughter. The bottle-fed Bianca wails piteously if Bill leaves her sight.) Spending a weekend on Bill and Barbara Spencer's 50 organic acres outside Paso Robles allows me to ride on their coattails, indulging the best elements of PLB-dom (PLBs tend to eat very well) while killing the worst bits dead.

If you can't handle the trailer, the farm's open for occasional tours during harvest events like last month's tomato tasting and this weekend's apple hootenany. Those who can deal are fortunate because for a PLB like myself there isn't much better than picking vegetables for a breakfast frittata made with the farm's eggs. And Barbara stocks the refrigerator with things like Rinconada Dairy sheep's milk cheese (made 10 minutes away), a local grocery's addictive cinnamon bread and grape "jellium," a slurry-like jelly made from Windrose grapes.

You also have to consider the Paso Robles alternative, which currently isn't much. La Bellasera bills itself as a "luxury boutique hotel" but looks like an overgrown Mediterranean McMansion. And while it sounds nice to have a whirlpool spa two steps from the king-size premium-linened bed -- er, mildew? That's not yet a problem (it opened in August), but the tub is designed to break your neck and it's decorated with a paint-by-numbers wine country mural as tacky as anything in Las Vegas.

Comments

[ohiogirl]

Ooohhhh I LOVE that phrase "PLB"!

I am very happy cook, but I live in the real world and though I am sure he means well, Christopher Kimball has driven me nuts for YEARS. I stopped getting his mag after reading an article and the pages upon PAGES of directions only to throw it down and exclaim to my husband "Oh for God's sake - it's a cookie! It's just a cookie!"

I'm not saying that I'm not choosy, or that good directions aren't nice. But that tone, that tone, that picky picky this is "the only right way to do it" tone!

So happy to know I'm not the only one who feels this way and, that I have a new highly useful phrase in my vocabulary.

[MaMaSan]

Dang, "Ohiogirl" beat me to the punch.....exactly what I wanted to say about C. Kimball. AND his cookbooks are all PLB editions - impossible to get through the monotonous rehetoric to the recipe.

Batali's video that came with this blog comes right on the heals of Mark Bittman's NYTimes 10/17 piece advocating an incease in the sauce over pasta ratio. I side with Bittman, which my daughters will attest to, having eagerly consumed bowls and bowls of our peasant-style sauce(Bolognese w/o dairy) over minimal spaghetti.

My PLB awareness has been raised, and I'm going to curb it at every opportunity.

[melissa lion]

Hey, wow! I can't believe I've coined a phrase, especially a foodie phrase. Thanks so much! Made my week. Take care, Melissa