When I was a kid, our family kept cows. Well, never more than two or three at a time. Never enough to be called a herd.

Our cow was a holstein, a large, docile, relatively dull-witted black and white spotted thing. She looked exactly like what you pictured in your head when you read the word “cow.”

At one time or another we’d kept pretty much every animal on the farm See and Say – chickens, goats, sheep, a pony – so cows seemed a natural progression. We’d bought her fully grown for $150 from a dairy farm... More

An anguished tweet showed up in my timeline the other day said Trader Joe’s is no longer stocking poutine. Could poutine’s hipster star be fading?

Well, maybe not hipster. If I know about it, it’s not hipster any more. I prefer to say a food has been gentrified.

Many of the same rules apply in both neighborhood and food gentrification.

Something that is already upscale can’t be gentrified. This is why Park Slope can be but the Upper West Side can’t. Chicken and waffles can, but lamb chops can’t.

In addition, the dish or neighborhood... More