1. Locally grown, sustainable and organic.
I appreciate the principle, I totally support our local farmer’s market but we’re at a point where I’ve heard enough about the plucky couple who decided to spend year only eating what they could gather from within 5 miles of their home, Safeway excluded, and are now telling their story of courage and sacrifice but how great it was to save the world even though they were miserable and sucking on sticks for most of February.
2. Artisanal Anything. (Microsoft Turd doesn’t recognize artisanal. Hm.)
See above. I love the idea that people are taking the time to carefully make yummy foods from choice ingredients but every week the paper has an article about some plucky couple who gave up their 10 trillion dollar a year income to simplify their lives and now live in a rural area and work 12 gloriously gratifying hours a day on their honeybee farm carefully crafting heirloom Valencia-strawberry honey infused with Avignon amber thyme and Malasian treefrog peppercorns. Snore.
3. Recipes with Crostini
What’s crostini? A giant crouton? A piece of toast? It’s like something you put in the recipe to make it sound fancy, like chutney or chipotle before it was a flavor they even have at McDonalds. Likewise serving suggestions that include “crusty bread.” Let people decide for themselves what kind of bread (or as Steve would say, filler) to serve. Maybe they want uncrusty Wonderbread.
4. Shuttered
Saying that a closed business has been shuttered. Why not just say closed? It’s right up there with coffer for writing cliches that sound like fancier writing but are really still cliches.
