Pork!

In response to the ridiculous bans on pork imports from parts of North America by at least ten different countries, I propose that those of us who normally eat pork incorporate it into one more meal than usual. I started this morning with bacon. Mmmm, bacon.

I suspect these pork bans are more about raising a trade barrier than anything else.

Who's with me? For tasty pork, and against panic and protectionism!

Edit: added the word "imports" and reworded first sentence for clarity.

Free to a good home: queen sized mattress and box spring, with rails. [Davis Square, Somerville, MA]

It's leaned up against a tree in front of 45 Kidder Ave. One of our neighbors asked if we could get the word out.

It's yours for the cost of carting it off.

Today's Boston Globe did a story on some Latin American chicken places in the area.

Pollo Campero, the popular Guatemalan chicken chain, easily found in places like Wheaton, MD, and Elmhurst, Queens, has opened a new location in Chelsea, MA.

Okay, they know their market.

So the Globe, having done an article for Pollo Campero's opening, decided to compare it to various other Latin American chicken places around here. Having eaten the chicken at Pollo Campero--which killer_mango described as really good, even if really bad for you--I was more interested in what they had to say about the various other chicken places they tried.

From http://www.boston.com/ae/food/restaurants/articles/2009/04/29/pollo_match/?page=full:

Over the course of several weeks we set ourselves to the task of finding out, in the process consuming entire flocks' worth of chickens, ensuring bad chicken karma for all eternity and incurring nightmares of being pecked to death by giant, angry pullets. Though we tried several restaurants that serve chicken but don't specialize in it, it just wasn't the same: To make a great bird, it takes hyperfocus, total dedication. At the end, we wound up with five great versions, any of which we'd be happy to eat again (if not for a while). A tasting panel of 11 people then convened to choose the best of the best.

Our tasting panel crowned Pollos a la Brasa El Chalan the winner of the pollo match. A whopping six out of 11 people gave it the nod. Three people chose Machu Picchu, one chose Pollo Campero, and one - a Peruvian, no less! - chose the Dominican Alex's Chimis. I had the advantage of sampling each of these chickens at a restaurant as well as to go. Eating in, my favorites were Machu Picchu and Beto's. For takeout, I preferred Machu Picchu.

I'll have to try them all when I get around to eating chicken again. But right now I'm concentrating on pork. Today, I had bacon at breakfast and tonkatsu for dinner. I think I'm doing pretty well.

(http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/food/articles/2009/04/29/the_contenders/ lists restaurant locations, which they for some reason omitted from the article itself.)

In honor of Duke Ellington Day.

This morning, the Duke Ellington Orchestra played on a special run of the last surviving 1939 A train in honor of the 110th anniversary of Ellington's birth:

Edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCj1J0jY-2s has some better interior shots, although it also has more advertising for the Bahamas and for JetBlue.