Frank Bruni on the Paula Deen “situation.”

You show me a truly skinny food editor or writer who frequents serious restaurants and — in two out of three cases — I’ll show you someone expert at a brand of knife work that yields infinitesimal bites and an illusion of gluttony where mere grazing occurred. They should be surgeons, these people. I know. Especially during my five years as a restaurant critic, I ate with many of them — and can assure you that people in the food industry are among the least likely to clean their plates.

Many of the acclaimed chefs whose television appearances, cookbooks or venerated restaurants whet our appetites have only an occasional, formal relationship with the luxuries they hawk. For a forthcoming book, Allison Adato, an editor at People, debriefed some three dozen of them about how they themselves ate.

“When I asked them what kind of food they cooked at home, it was surprising to me how many said roast chicken and vegetables,” she told me. “You can’t imagine. And none of them are particularly known for roast chicken.” 

“Sports Drink and American Smile”

— Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks) January 23, 2012

(That Causes Your Gout Pain)

— Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks) January 23, 2012

Lactose is the natural sugar found in milk. Sucrose is the common sugar we put in or on our food. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.

— Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks) January 24, 2012

The Weird And Dangerous Link Between ADHD And Yellow

— Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks) January 24, 2012

Some background.

I’m not usually into these tear-jerker stories, but I read this the other day and it made an impact. And I’m a cynical 20-something bored in the ’80s! So there’s probably something to it. The entire piece is worth reading, but here’s a particularly impressive passage. 

“So I stole it.”

Neal tucked the book under his jacket and took it home — and loved it. After finishing the book, he sneaked it back into the library. And there, on the shelf, he noticed another novel by Yerby. He stole that one as well.

This book was also terrific. And, to Neal’s surprise, when he returned it to the shelf after finishing it, he found yet another by Yerby.

Four times this happened, and he caught the book bug. “Reading got to be a thing I liked,” he says. His trajectory changed, and he later graduated to harder novels, including those by Albert Camus, and he turned to newspapers and magazines as well. He went to college and later to law school.

In 1991, Neal was appointed the first black district prosecuting attorney in Arkansas. A few years later, he became a judge, and then an appellate court judge.

But there’s more.

At a high school reunion, Grady stunned Neal by confiding to him that she had spotted him stealing that first book. Her impulse was to confront him, but then, in a flash of understanding, she realized his embarrassment at being seen checking out a book.

So Grady kept quiet. The next Saturday, she told him, she drove 70 miles to Memphis to search the bookshops for another novel by Yerby. Finally, she found one, bought it and put it on the library bookshelf.

Twice more, Grady told Neal, she spent her Saturdays trekking to Memphis to buy books by Yerby — all in hopes of turning around a rude adolescent who had made her cry. She paid for the books out of her own pocket.