In Episode 158 of The Sporkful podcast, Dan talks to The Chicago Tribune’s Kevin Pang, an eater and food writer, about issues of food language.

Then Kevin lists his top ten types of sausage, and he and Dan cover optimal sausage length, girth, and consumption technique. Kevin's intense sausage reveries also bring back mixed memories of his childhood. (If he wrote a book about sausage, it would probably be called "Dreams From My Father.")

Plus a reporter in Montana looks into the scientific merits of the five second rule. What foods can withstand an onslaught of bacteria the longest? Ruth Eddy reports.

Links and Such

Check out Kevin Pang's website, Twitter, and excellent profile of Chicago chef Curtis Duffy, with many multimedia components that flesh out Duffy's story.

Here's Ruth Eddy's website, with more of her work.

Subscribe to The Sporkful in iTunes or listen through the free Sporkful app for iPhone or Android.

Listen to much more of Dan's conversation with Kevin Pang when you sign up for Sporkful Premium.

Photo: Flickr CC / Spigoo

I'd love to get some of the kids in this video into the Sporkful Junior Eaters Society!

via Kottke

They debate optimal chunkiness, the tomato question, proper tortilla chip dip technique, and much more. Plus Laura offers a suggestion for testing whether a guac is chunky enough, and Dan discusses his latest innovation for preventing chip breakage.

Plus, Dan issues a challenge to NPR's Sandwich Monday.

This show was taped on stage at Guactacular 2013 at the Bell House in Brooklyn. See more pics from the taping below. Above photo left to right: Chris Salgado, Laura Anderson, Lee Frank and Dan Pashman.

Links and Such

Revolutionary tortilla chip breakthrough: It's not a scoop, it's a dome

Listen to and read about Dan's testy exchange last week with the guys behind Sandwich Monday, and contact NPR's ombudsman

Lee and Rachel's new book Ultimate Nachos: From Nachos and Guacamole to Salsas and Cocktails

Show sponsor: Get your free audio book when you sign up for a free trial of Audible

Guac photo at top: Flickr CC / Vegan Feast Catering
Guactacular photos by Mrs. Sporkful

But the conversation wasn't without controversy, especially when we covered the issue of the correct definition of a sandwich. (Listen above to that part of the episode.)

When I asked Ian about Sandwich Monday's ever-expanding definition of this beloved form, he cited "The Neuhaus Rule," which defines a sandwich as "any protein encased in carbs," and further argued for Sandwich's Monday's right to "draft" any food into the sandwich oeuvre if it doesn't already fit into a known food category.

As I told Ian, I find this reasoning to be both faulty and dangerous. I am a strict constructionist, which means I believe we must look at the framer's original intent to determine the definition of a sandwich. (That's why I'm known as The Scalia of Sandwiches.)

So what was the Earl of Sandwich's intent? The noted scholarly resource Wikipedia offers a history lesson:

A rumour in a contemporary travel book called Tour to London by Pierre Jean Grosley formed the popular myth that bread and meat sustained Lord Sandwich at the gambling table. A very conversant gambler, Lord Sandwich did not take the time to have a meal during his long hours playing at the card table. Consequently, he would ask his servants to bring him slices of meat between two slices of bread . . . The sober alternative is provided by Sandwich's biographer, N. A. M. Rodger, who suggests Sandwich's commitments to the navy, to politics and the arts mean the first sandwich was more likely to have been consumed at his work desk.

Thus, for a food to be considered a sandwich, I argue it must meet two criteria:

1) The Eater must be able to pick it up and eat it, with minimal mess to the hands.

2) The fillings must be sandwiched between two discrete food items.

By this logic a breadless sandwich is valid, but neither open-faced sandwiches nor burritos belong in the category.

Ian tried to use tape rewind technology to argue that the simple fact that I used the term "open-faced sandwich" was an implicit acknowledgement of its place in the sandwich canon. Mike suggested that the Earl of Sandwich could not have anticipated the burrito. I think that in both cases, I beat back their rhetorical deceptions.

What's your take on this debate? What is the correct definition of a sandwich?

And should inquiries be made with NPR's ombudsman, who monitors the use and misuse of language at NPR, among other issues? (I think so. Contact him here.)

Listen to the sandwich conversation above, and check out last week's episode of The Sporkful for more of my conversation with Ian Chillag and Mike Danforth.

Photo: Flickr CC / EvelynGiggles

Proving once again that transportation planners have all the fun, the list of panels for next week's 14th Annual TRB National Transportation Planning Applications Conference in Columbus, Ohio, is an extraordinary assortment of food puns and references.

Behold some of the offerings:

Liver-able Communities and Environmental Juice-tice

Pudding Traffic Operations To Work

FromagGEO-Spacial Analysis

Meat the Latest in Activity-Based Modeling

No Fudging Allowed: Model Validation

They Know Beans About Statewide Data/Freight

It goes on. And on. Check out the whole program here, and thanks to Eater Peter Ohlms in Charlottesville, VA, for the tip!

Photo: Flickr CC / Honou

Among the many interesting things Isaac told me, he explained that a flat, triangular chip is not as sturdy as a bending, undulating one. As he puts it:

It's kind of like a dome shape. A natural, very strong shape in compression is an arch, and a 3-D arch is a dome. All the elements are able to take that load, work together, and just keep pushing, pushing, pushing, all the way down to wherever they're supported.

That got me thinking about the scoop, which I've always viewed as an admirable (though imperfect) attempt at innovation. After all, what is a scoop but an upside down dome?

Thus, I am pleased to present my "It's Not A Scoop, It's A Dome" Technique for tortilla chip and guacamole consumption. It works like this...

1. Place a scoop chip on your finger like a thimble, and brace it with your thumb.

2. Run the dome through the guac, picking up as much of it as you please. The chip won't break.

3. Make sure you use a bowl with high walls, that's only half-full of guac, so you can use the walls for leverage.

4. Remove unbroken chip, insert into mouth, and enjoy.

You're welcome.

By the way, I also asked Isaac about the classic triangular chip debate over whether it's better to hold one point of the chip and dip with the other two, or to hold a flat edge and dip with one point. (This was covered in last week's podcast with Ian and Mike from NPR's How To Do Everything.)

Isaac said that while dipping with two points is tempting because it offers a bigger space for dip, it puts too much strain on the thin end of the chip and increases breakage.

Finally, a quick guac-related reminder: I'll be hosting a panel discussion on guacamole at Guactacular 2013, this Sunday at the Bell House in Brooklyn. If you're in the area come on down, eat tons of guac, and watch The Sporkful taped live on stage! /dan

You're with a group of people, some of whom you don't know so well, and you're trying to figure out where to go to dinner. The group is having trouble agreeing. Some people claim not to care, but then they turn down the options others suggest.

Josh lays out his strategy as follows (listen to the call above):

You can't be too quick to shoot down bad suggestions, in part because you may hurt someone's feelings and in part because if you come across as the person who shoots everything down, you'll lose credibility. So don't enter the conversation too early.

"Let the conversation get to that indecision moment," he explains, "and then you're going to step in and save the day with this magic phrase. And you're going to say this very politely but very decisively. You use the phrase, 'Someone told me about a place.'"

Josh likes this approach because it "shifts the responsibility away from everyone in the car," and adds a vague sense of objective authority. But there are pitfalls.

"You can't let the other people realize what's happening, so you have to be really smooth, or they're going to know that you're just trying to manipulate them."

It's a good tip, although we haven't heard yet whether Josh's decision to divulge this technique on The Sporkful has rendered his manipulative powers impotent.

Photo: Flickr CC / zigazou76

Elizabeth also offers a quick tip for how to tell whether a cheese will melt well.

Each guest reveals their cheese guilty pleasure, then Laura cooks up two quesos, one a Velveeta-based concoction from her childhood, the other a queso blanco made from scratch. Finally, Laura and Dan reflect on what they've learned over the course of the Table to Farm series.

Listen to more episodes of Table to Farm, find the queso recipes on Slate, and check out the new cookbook Ultimate Nachos: From Nachos and Guacamole to Salsas and Cocktails, source of the queso blanco recipe featured in this podcast.

Also, if you're in the New York area, get tickets for Guactacular 2013, at the Bell House in Brooklyn on Cinco de Mayo, where Laura is entered in a guacamole competition and Dan will be taping The Sporkful in front of a live audience. Hope to see you there!

This episode is free association with guests Ian Chillag and Mike Danforth, hosts of the NPR podcast "How To Do Everything" and producers of NPR's "Wait...Wait Don't Tell Me!"

We cover broccoli as podcast metaphor, tortilla chip technique, sandwich theory, burger-to-bun ratios at the famed Billy Goat Tavern, and more.

Dan lays out the definition of sandwich and takes issue with Ian and Mike's distortion of the term for their regular NPR blog segment "Sandwich Monday" and Ian imagines settling the debate before a Supreme Court we all wish existed.

Links and Such

Ian and Mike's podcast How To Do Everything.

Get tickets for Guactacular, May 5 at the Bell House in Brooklyn, where you can eat tons of guacamole and watch Dan record a Sporkful live on stage. Sporkful show starts at 5 pm, and you can see it with any of the three types of tickets.

Subscribe to The Sporkful in iTunes or listen through the free Sporkful app for iPhone or Android.

Listen to more of Dan's conversation with Ian and Mike when you sign up for Sporkful Premium.

Photo: Flickr CC / seishin17