Beef

IN WHAT I HOPE will become a continuing enterprise, I revisited the mysteries of pastrami. Two weeks ago I inquired into the background of "Romanian pastrami." After making several phone calls to delis in Baltimore and New York, and after polishing off a couple of sandwiches, I came to tentative conclusions about the name and the meat.I figured pastrami was called "Romanian" because the Romanians were the countrymen who perfected the art of curing and smoking the meat. The meat I decided, came from the belly of a steer and was fatter than brisket.

Once again our beloved governor is crowing about his responsible spending cuts while in office. In a recent opinion piece for The Sun, he wrote that over the last six years "Maryland has taken a balanced approach when it comes to fiscal policy - making responsible cuts to spending while prioritizing investments in jobs, opportunity, and a stronger middle class" ("Replace the sequester before it's too late," April 4). Since the budget has gone from $27 billion to more than $36 billion since 2007, when Mr. O'Malley took office, I would like to know just what cuts the governor has actually made.

W hen you visit the heartland of America, sometimes you overindulge on beef. It's easy to do, especially when you get off a plane on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving at 10:50 p.m., snatch your luggage off the carousel, stand in a long line to rent a car and drive an hour to the hotel, only to discover that your 15-year-old son is starving, just starving! What's more, he can't possibly go to sleep unless he has something to eat. Right now. At 1 in the morning in Indianapolis, you can usually find just two places open for a snack that late: Steak 'n' Shake and White Castle.

The folks at Conde Nast's ZipList sent along an interesting glance at the different food tastes of Baltimoreans and San Franciscans, as revealed by their respective searches for game-day recipes. In their search for the most popular game-day recipes, ZipList says that Ravens fans in Baltimore head for chicken, while Niners fans in San Francisco lean toward vegetable-based creations. Baltimore's favorite recipes are: Crispy Asian Wings Skinny Chicken Enchiladas Crusted Honey Mustard Chicken Crock Pit Beer Chicken San Francisco's favorite recipes are: Zucchini Oven Fries Baked Jalapeno Poppers Beef and Black Bean Chili Cucumber Shrimp Toasts ZipList is an online and mobile universal shopping list and recipe management service that enables shoppers to create and share grocery lists with family members.

Baltimore baseball legend and former Oriole Cal Ripken Jr. is teaming with Long Valley, N.J.-based Florio Sports LLC to sell a beef jerky snack, the sports firm announced Wednesday. The jerky, called Ripken Power Shred, is available only online at http://www.chewjerky.com until spring of 2011 when the product will be available in retail outlets. The snack, which is made from "lean American beef," according to a news release, will debut at the National Association of Convenience Stores trade show in Atlanta from Tuesday through Friday.

IF THE DISCOVERY of a single case of mad cow disease in the United States is not a cause for panic or overreaction, it does nonetheless raise serious questions about safeguards against the illness, and it illuminates larger concerns stemming from the grotesque industrialization of the meat-packing business. The good news for American cattle farmers is that the infected cow, which had been living on a dairy farm in Washington, apparently came from Canada; the bad news is that until last May the United States was importing about a million cattle a year from its northern neighbor.

On a scorched afternoon a few days ago, two men sat in the deliciously cool black-lacquer- and-leopard-print dining room of the Prime Rib, Baltimore's high temple of carnivorous cuisine. The table between them was empty except for an open bottle of San Pellegrino water, an untouched ramekin of raw horseradish and dinner plates holding six New York strip steaks. One of the men, David Derewicz, the restaurant's affable and well-fed-looking general manager, sliced directly into the center of each perfectly cooked slab.

COALINGA, CALIF.-- Some ranchers think a fat, black, sway-backed breed of Japanese cattle may do for the U.S. cattle industry what the American silicon chip has done for the Japanese computer industry."

Once again our beloved governor is crowing about his responsible spending cuts while in office. In a recent opinion piece for The Sun, he wrote that over the last six years "Maryland has taken a balanced approach when it comes to fiscal policy - making responsible cuts to spending while prioritizing investments in jobs, opportunity, and a stronger middle class" ("Replace the sequester before it's too late," April 4). Since the budget has gone from $27 billion to more than $36 billion since 2007, when Mr. O'Malley took office, I would like to know just what cuts the governor has actually made.

According to a survey in the November issue of the trade magazine Food Arts, Americans may be more health conscious than ever; but when it comes to eating out, they want their beef.My survey was slightly less scientific. I went to McCafferty's on a rainy weeknight and saw that the place was packed -- when other restaurants would be languishing on the vine. Everybody, young and old, was eating great slabs of beef, rosy and juicy, with mounds of mashed potatoes.I like to think of McCafferty's as the Prime Rib of the '90s.

T. Rowe Price had reduced its stake in daily deal website Groupon, while increasing its ownership in Kayak Software Corp., the travel comparison site, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Baltimore-based investment company owned 14.2 million shares, or 2.1 percent, of Groupon at the end of November, according to a document filed Monday. That's down from an 11.6 percent stake at the end of July. Groupon's stock, which traded as high as $25.83 per share in February, closed Tuesday at $4.41 per share.

The state board that regulates Maryland pharmacies like the Massachusetts firm under investigation in a national fungal meningitis outbreak said it can adequately oversee so-called compounding pharmacies, despite cries from critics that the federal government should have more authority. The Maryland Board of Pharmacy said last week that in the last four years it has beefed up oversight of compounding pharmacies, which make drugs not sold commercially. New safeguards including random, annual inspections would make it hard for a Maryland facility to reach the level of contamination problems found at the New England Compounding Center, said Laverne Naesea, the board's executive director.

Let me start off this week's recap by saying, Kyle Richards knows how to throw a party. Portia's birthday party had balloon animals, cotton candy, amusement park rides, a llama and UNICORNS. Sure, they were brown unicorns, and I'm not sure that's actually a thing, but whatever, it looked like a good time.   Kyle doesn't have her friends to thank for that, though. For some reason, a group of grown women seemed determined to hash out all of their petty drama at a child's birthday party.

Someone pass the popcorn, there's a new legal drama unfolding at City Hall — Law & Order: Special Municipal Unit. You might have seen the news that Joan Pratt, comptroller, is suing Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, mayor, or at least, her technology office. Not to be outdone — because he never is when it comes to governmental hijinks — Baltimore City Circuit Court Clerk Frank Conaway has filed notice that he will sue the city over bad charges on water bills. And who knows, by the time you read this, maybe the trend will have spread to Annapolis, where Mayor Joshua Cohen recently busted a man allegedly relieving himself from the third floor of a parking garage.

State troopers on Friday will begin a new enforcement effort targeting truckers and other commercial vehicle drivers who illegally park along Interstate 83 in Baltimore County, according to the Maryland State Police. The practice, which has increased in recent years, creates "extremely dangerous conditions" for other drivers on the road, police said. Troopers will be enforcing the new "zero tolerance" policy by issuing a citation to any commercial driver parked on the highway's shoulders for a non-emergency reason, police said.

Your editorial "We built that" (Sept. 3), while recognizing the important role of the federal government in large infrastructure projects such as New Orleans' levee system, left readers with the mistaken impression that Hurricane Katrina scored a direct hit on New Orleans and its surrounding metropolitan area in 2005. Hurricane Katrina's landfall was on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, about 90 miles east of New Orleans. Our city and its area got the greatest impact from Hurricane Katrina's winds and storm surge, which overpowered the poorly-designed and built (with federal funding)

Maybe this long spell of heat is beginning to affect our perceptions, but strange things seem to be taking place in Carroll County. Rod Serling, if still alive, probably could have scripted an episode of his "Twilight Zone" around at least one mysterious incident this week.During Tuesday night's terrible thunderstorm, Charles L. Orwig Jr. was driving south on Sams Creek Road near Marston Road when he ran into a cow that was standing in the road.The accident caused about $3,000 damage to his car and apparently injured the animal, which was lying by the roadside when Mr. Orwig left to summon help.

Prior to getting a lower seed than Washington College - an opponent that Goucher had defeated, 8-6, on Feb. 25 - in the NCAA tournament for not fielding a terribly impressive strength of schedule, coach Kyle Hannan had already been working on beefing up the team's schedule for 2013. Next year's lineup of non-conference opponents will include several new additions in Stevenson, St. Mary's and McDaniel. Those three teams will be added to a group that already includes the Shoremen, Gettysburg, Mary Washington and Randolph Macon.

Jeff Fitchett believes that a decent steak doesn't have to break the bank. At Poor Boy Steakhouse, he proves it. Fitchett, working with Kyle Algaze, opened the Severna Park restaurant last fall in the space vacated by the duo's other spot, the Breakfast Shoppe (now in the space formerly occupied by the lauded, but short-lived, Cynthia's). The concept was years in the making, and the team's perseverance and planning paid off. Poor Boy's food works, the service is attentive, and while the steaks aren't bargain basement cheap, they are moderately priced.