Could this question be edited a bit please?

March 26, 2005 12:32 PM

Impulsive skim-reading foodies could be hurt by cooking with tobacco. Could this question be edited a bit please?
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen to Etiquette/Policy at 12:32 PM (59 comments total)

Cookin' with Big Bud
posted by puke & cry at 12:42 PM on March 26, 2005

Exactly how stupid do you think people are?
posted by found missing at 12:49 PM on March 26, 2005

Clearly anybody who could blindly add tobacco to a dish after reading a MeFi recipe has other, more fundamental disturbances that any amount of editing would be unlikely to rectify.
posted by peacay at 12:51 PM on March 26, 2005

I didn't look at the tags and didn't get what was really being asked until someone spelled it out. While drinking tobacco sounded incredibly gross, I suppose someone could've tried it; but anyone who actually reads the thread would get wise quickly to what's actually going on. That said, I'm not sure what the point was of being so circumspect, if you're then going to make "marijuana" one of your tags.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 12:56 PM on March 26, 2005

I think most foodies would spit out the first sip of hot chocolate made with tobacco. I have my doubts that you could really make a lethal concoction that way, anyway, but no one's going to try it, except perhaps a future Darwin Award winner.
posted by anapestic at 12:58 PM on March 26, 2005

Maybe it is misplaced concern. I don't think people are stupid, but they are quite prone to doing the thinking part a little too late.

I only just found about about chili and chocolate mixes - chocolate and tobacco doesn't seem like such a huge leap at first glance. A few grams doesn't seem like a lot. I can see it happening.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:26 PM on March 26, 2005

I only just found about about chili and chocolate mixes - chocolate and tobacco doesn't seem like such a huge leap at first glance.

This is exactly what I was thinking (esp. considering that the question was about a special _Mexican_ cocoa), although I couldn't imagine how tobacco would taste nearly as good. (In fact, the only reason I read the rest of the thread, up to the point where I realized what the question was actually about, was to see if anyone said what it would taste like.)
posted by advil at 1:56 PM on March 26, 2005

Clearly anybody who could blindly add tobacco to a dish after reading a MeFi recipe has other, more fundamental disturbances that any amount of editing would be unlikely to rectify.

However, overdosing on nicotine would rectify those disturbances quite handily.


I go now.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 2:00 PM on March 26, 2005

There was an episode of "A Cook's Tour" where Tony Bourdain had a custard made from coffee and tobacco at The French Laundry.

Maybe Thomas Kellar was trying to kill him.
posted by Cyrano at 2:12 PM on March 26, 2005

Yeah, Kellar probably got a mention in "Kitchen Confidential" and was trying to extract some revenge.
posted by fixedgear at 2:23 PM on March 26, 2005

From here:

The fatal dose of pure nicotine is approximately 40-60 mg (0.6-1.0 mg/kg, 1-2 drops) i.e. the quantity contained in 2 g of tobacco (equivalent to 2 common blend cigarettes; 15-25 mg of nicotine per cigarette). However, the smoke contains less than 3 mg per cigarette, with smoke of most nonfiltered brands containing 1.2 to 2.4 mg and filtered brands between 0.2 and 1.0 mg. Up to 90 percent of the nicotine in mainstream smoke will be absorbed by the smoker. Because of diminished bioavailability, tobacco is much less poisonous than expected on the basis of its nicotine content. Furthermore, the dose may be spread throughout the day and this is not unusual for a cigarette smoker.

Extraction via infusion seems like a good bet for getting a dose that'll make you pretty sick.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 2:44 PM on March 26, 2005

Tobacco is a legitimate trendy cooking ingredient these days.
posted by fire&wings at 2:55 PM on March 26, 2005

Tobacco is a legitimate trendy cooking ingredient these days.

And how many deaths have been attributed to culinary tobacco?
posted by anapestic at 2:59 PM on March 26, 2005

I'm actually a rather experienced psychonaut and in reading the first part of the AskMe thread I found myself wondering if there was some kind of obscure chemical reaction with the chocolate, fats and sugars that would make real tobacco safely edible in those quantities.

So, if I'm thinking that - even though I'm going "ewww" and not really interested in trying such a tobacco concoction - there's probably some poor stoner out there that's thinking it's a really good idea. You know, the same kind of dumb stoner that gets high off of raw, grated nutmeg or morning glory seeds. Which are also known potentially lethal substances, with negligible psychoactive bonuses.

Maybe I should be more supportive of Darwinism or something, but I really don't want to see MeFi on the mainstream news for the first time because some dumb kid drank an infusion of tobacco.
posted by loquacious at 3:05 PM on March 26, 2005

Clearly anybody who could blindly add tobacco to a dish after reading a MeFi recipe has other, more fundamental disturbances that any amount of editing would be unlikely to rectify.

Exactly how stupid do you think people are?

Clearly anyone who would trust what they read on AskMe must be irreparably stupid and (implicit) deserves whatever they get, huh? Well, fuck you. Apparently I am stupid enough to believe that there is actually a recipe in the world that calls for 4 grams of tobacco, because I read that and thought "huh - I wonder how that would taste?" Is eating tobacco dangerous? If so, I'm not aware of it. If you think this means I have "deep issues" then you're a smug asshole. What's the harm in editing the question? Do we risk the health of a few trusting souls so that we can preserve the capriciously-applied euphemisms of one AskMe question?

Kudos to IAJS for posting this. As to the rest: don't be a dick about safety, mmmkay? Be a dick about something else.
posted by scarabic at 3:28 PM on March 26, 2005

You've made your case. You're stupid.
posted by found missing at 3:36 PM on March 26, 2005

Anyone else want to sign in to the smug asshole register?

This reminds me of the wiping-after-peeing discussion, wherein several people allowed themselves to feel incredibly manly because they never wipe their penises after urinating.

If you think this kind of thing = intelligence, you've proven your case as well. This reminds me much of the ammonia + bleach incident. Lots of people thought you had to be irretrievably stupid not to know about that, either, but as it turns out, MetaFilter is full of so-called irretrievably stupid people.

We bow before your flawless culinary judgment and infinite acumen in decoding drug-related euphemisms. However, I scorn the hesitance to just say "I EAT POT" in the clear. Pussies.
posted by scarabic at 3:45 PM on March 26, 2005

I want to make those brownies, but instead of tobacco, I want to use antifreeze. (Hey, it tastes sweet.) And since I'm out of rum, I'll just down these things with shots of rubbing alcohol. Double buzz!

Look -- it's not about safety. It's about common friggin' sense. If it were about safety, we wouldn't entertain questions and answers about check fraud, excessive penile torque, gluttony, voluntary brain surgery, illicit drug purchases, and dozens (hundreds?) of the anonymous AskMe postings dealing with everything from unprotected sex to fraud and theft.

At some point, the responsibility for taking someone's advice (or recipe, in this case) needs to transfer to the person actually taking the advice. Or should we be required to put disclaimers on everything we submit, in the off chance some idiot gets hurt by following advice that, had s/he read all the way through the thread, should have set off alarm bells left, right, and center?
posted by aberrant at 3:54 PM on March 26, 2005

i didn't read the thread ... i honestly thought it was about tobacco ... my reaction was "yuck", no way am i drinking that!
posted by pyramid termite at 4:10 PM on March 26, 2005

Perhaps if not edited, a note could be attached to the post with some kind of warning/clarification.

I don't think it's at all unreasonable for someone to have no idea of the dangers of tobacco ingestion since we really don't hear all that much about the subject. I would hope people would read the thread and get it, but as many people have mentioned, they didn't understand initially.

That said, this probably is exactly the kind of thing Five Fresh Fish was talking about in terms of opening oneself up to litigation by setting precedent. If this is edited/tagged as potentially harmful and something else isn't which subsequently becomes associated with harming someone, can a case be made that the site holder then become responsible?
posted by spaghetti at 4:17 PM on March 26, 2005

At some point, the responsibility for taking someone's advice (or recipe, in this case) needs to transfer to the person actually taking the advice.

I'm fine with the fact that you feel that way, but do you really believe it so passionately that you would withhold a helpful edit to the question? That's like building a road with a sharp turn in it and not putting a yellow turn arrow sign near the curve. Anyone stupid enough to drive fast deserves what they get. Screw 'em. Darwinism. Pat self on back. Rinse, repeat.

That's the point of view that much of the world holds. Your safety is in your hands (of God's). I think the modern approach is to mitigate all harm in all reasonably available ways. That's safety, and that is what it's about.

We're not talking about closing an amusement park because a couple of idiots decided to stand up on the roller coaster. We're talking about editing an AskMe question. No one has done anything to convince me that anything will be lost by editing it.
posted by scarabic at 4:18 PM on March 26, 2005

scarabic, I don't think any of us really think that anyone who would do that deserves to die. That part is just being flip because we don't think that anyone is dumb enough to try it in the first place. No, editing the post won't do any harm, but neither is it likely to do any good.

Inferring someone's entire world view from remarks made in this thread is an inexact science at best. Your rather energetic disapproval might be better directed at someone who's actually going out of his or her way to harm someone else.
posted by anapestic at 4:28 PM on March 26, 2005

Scarabic, I'm all for tagging the post if we can go back and do that for any other active post that might cause injury or other harm. We should be consistent.

(See how silly it sounds?)

To answer your question: I'm certainly not opposed to helpful edits. However, I think we're disagreeing on the utility of such an edit in this particular case.
posted by aberrant at 4:35 PM on March 26, 2005

I agree with scarabic.

Like him, I am also incredibly stupid. I thought that people were actually putting tobacco in their chocolate.

I wouldn't have tried it myself but I might have mentioned it to someone even stupider than me who might have done so.

Scarabic, I'm all for tagging the post if we can go back and do that for any other active post that might cause injury or other harm. We should be consistent.

I can only think of this one and the ammonia one. If there are others, please point them out. Yes, I am serious. I dont see why this is silly at all.
posted by vacapinta at 4:48 PM on March 26, 2005

Whoa, whoa, hold on a second here. They were actually talking about cannabis sativa? OH SHI MATT PULL THE PLUG
posted by Dean Keaton at 5:07 PM on March 26, 2005

Tomorrow morning, when you see that half full beer bottle on the coffee table with a cigarette butt floating in it, don't drink it. You have been warned.
posted by found missing at 5:08 PM on March 26, 2005

Exactly how stupid do you think people are?

yeah. when I was a little nerdy kid on BBSes (7th grade?) I tried to build a urinebox.

i wasn't quite able to find all the parts but I never got there, which is a good thing, as, several years later when I had forgotten all about it, I found out that it was a joke, and quite possibly would have blown my hands off or something.

course right around that time i tried to make a smoke bomb in the microwave (instead of on the stove top) because that way there'd be less mess (as i wouldn't have to pour the saltpeter and powdered sugar mixture into a bottle afterwards -- i could just throw everything in the bottle and nuke it for a minute).

all those things seemed like a friggin' great idea at the time, which has taught me an important lesson: "BE VERY SUSPICIOUS OF GREAT IDEAS"

whether or not it is mefi's job to teach this lesson to others i'll let you decide.
posted by fishfucker at 5:25 PM on March 26, 2005

I skipped the question because I thought it was talking about using tobacco, not marijuana. What a good way to eliminate those who could have helped answer the question.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:32 PM on March 26, 2005

So people are actually taking a stand against appending a note to the post saying something like "Warning: nicotine when delivered in a large enough dose fast enough is a deadly poison."?

And you're taking this stand on the basis of... what? What the fuck do we lose by editing the post? "Hey, this might keep someone from accidentally poisoning themselves, but... nah! Fuck 'em, they're idiots anyways!"

Honestly: present one salient reason why we should not edit the post. There's something to be gained and nothing to be lost.

Exactly how stupid do you think people are?

To answer your question: pretty stupid. But the people I'm thinking of here are by exemplified by you.
posted by kavasa at 6:20 PM on March 26, 2005

Oh no. You went ahead and drank that ashtray/beer, didn't you? See, and I tried to warn you.
posted by found missing at 6:32 PM on March 26, 2005

Kavasa: Fine. But I want all posts regarding alcohol, drugs, or water to have the same warning.

Dihydrogen monoxide overdose is a very real threat to our society. Our role as guardians of the internet demands that we warn people about the dangers of hyperdihydrogenmonoxidosis!


Wont somebody please think of the idiots?


I mean children. Won't somebody please think of the children?
posted by aberrant at 7:10 PM on March 26, 2005

There's a huge difference between drowning in water and the potentially deadly suggested use of tobacco in a foodstuff recipe. It can easily be non-intuitive. Consider: people smoke tobacco. People put tobacco in their mouth for chew. People even snort tobacco in the form of snuff. There are even "Nicotinis", which just sounds like a surefire recipe for a sour stomach and a hangover.

It's not a huge leap to think it's ok to whip up a batch of creamy hot cocoa infused with a few grams of the stuff.

There's no sanctity of content or purity of philosophy to be protected here.

Please get the fuck off of your windmill-tilting, legless anarchosyndicaliberatrianistic horse and give a shit. Thank you.

Now, can we just smoke this fatty I rolled up and chill out or what? Pass to the left in the time of war, right?
posted by loquacious at 7:28 PM on March 26, 2005

Err, anarchosyndicalibertarianistic horse, that is.
posted by loquacious at 7:28 PM on March 26, 2005

I'm going to side with caution here. I really don't see any reason that a warning added to the post would do any harm.

I read the thread, and I sure wasn't going to whip one of those up - but if I was and I hadn't noticed the 'marijuana' tag (which I didn't) then maybe I would have used tobacco. After all the post itself and the first response both used 'tobacco' as a euphemism.

I agree with many here, it is pretty unlikely that anyone is actually going to follow this recipe and do themselves any harm. But I'm an ex-smoker, and recovering all around know-it-all and I didn't know that ingested nicotine was that toxic, so it's possible that someone else who didn't know would just go ahead and try it.
posted by pasd at 8:34 PM on March 26, 2005

For "Bob's" sake.

Why would you not be explicit with your question?

Is it somehow illegal to discuss cannabis recipies? Please tell me if it is. Because if that's the case, and Metafilter is going to be shut down because someone wanted to know how to put pot in their cocoa, then I truly fear for your once great nation.

I very much doubt if there are any legal issues with discussing drugs. Things would be much simpler if people just asked what they wanted to ask. It's not even about people coming to harm - it's about people not being fucking ridiculous.

Like FFF, I looked at the question, thought "what the fuck? thats sick!" and moved on - around these parts referring to dope as "smoking tobacco" is kinda pathetic.
posted by Jimbob at 8:44 PM on March 26, 2005

Seriously, have there been any actual cases of people dying from cooking and ingesting 3 g of tobacco? I understand the concept of a lethal dose, but the mere act of mixing something with food is going to have an impact on the bioavailability. I'm asking because the whole premise of this thread is that someone taking the concept of that thread literally is in lethal danger, which is what calls for action. I'm still waiting for that first part to be established before moving on to what the action oughta be.
posted by soyjoy at 9:48 PM on March 26, 2005

Edit by all means.

I still think it's beyond weird to think that someone would continue eating a dish that tasted horrible.

And Scarabic: chillout. I made a flippant remark. End of story.
posted by peacay at 9:49 PM on March 26, 2005

I also assumed it was about actual tobacco; sounded a little gross, but then, pipe tobacco smells quite sweet, and I vaguely imagined that somehow the cooking process changed things or whatever. The fact that mexican recipes often use chocolate for savory dishes probably influenced my thinking on some level, too. And I had no idea that ingesting that amt of nicotine would be lethal. I'd never have tried it myself, but it doesn't seem impossible that some adventurous soul would have experimented...
posted by mdn at 10:08 PM on March 26, 2005

soyjoy, I don't really think it would be lethal in a healthy, normal person - but from what I've been reading since I posted this, you'd puke and feel really ill.

I'm not arguing for deletion, and subsequent comments in the thread have probably rendered editing superfluous now. But that's sheer luck.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 10:16 PM on March 26, 2005

I don't think editing is necessary. If anyone is tempted to try one of the recipes with tobacco, they'd at least read the whole thread to look for the best available recipe and find out by the comments that it's not actually for tobacco, but for pot.
posted by Penks at 10:24 PM on March 26, 2005

I think, perhaps, the difference between tagging this post with a warning, and tagging other threads lies in the duplicitous nature of the original post. We wouldn't tag a question about drinking beer with *warning: alcohol is dangerous* because everyone knows up front what the question is about. We don't have to over label/warn, we just have to be precise. The poster made a mistake, or didn't think/know about the ramifications of replacing one substance with another. *shrug* flag the post, learn, move on.
Saying we shouldn't do it because there are other threads about dangerous stuff is the ole slippery slope argument.
posted by edgeways at 10:32 PM on March 26, 2005

I'm another idiot. I thought it was about tobacco, and I thought that some aspect of the cooking probably neutralized whatever toxins were in the tobacco.

found missing : "Exactly how stupid do you think people are?"

Apparently, I_am_joe's_spleen has a pretty good sense of how stupid people are, because he correctly identified that a lot of us aren't nearly as smart as you.

peacay : "Clearly anybody who could blindly add tobacco to a dish after reading a MeFi recipe has other, more fundamental disturbances that any amount of editing would be unlikely to rectify."

Fundamental disturbances such as?
posted by Bugbread at 10:37 PM on March 26, 2005

I knew what was actually being euphemised there upon skimming the AskMe front page, but after now looking at the thread, I think if I had read only the first few comments I would have wondered "wait, are we really talking about regular tobacco then?"

And, in fact, no matter how outlandish it may seem, it's been done (with much smaller quantities than suggested in the first Ask thread recipe, note)... So, nobody's stupid for misunderstanding here, especially if they didn't notice the marijuana tag or read deeper into thread.
posted by taz at 11:03 PM on March 26, 2005

The thing is, it's not that people are stupid. It's that people, often intelligent, well-read, worldly people, have strange gaps in their general knowledge, such as the LD50 for nicotine.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 12:19 AM on March 27, 2005

Fundamental disturbances such as?......
taking flippant comments too seriously
posted by peacay at 12:57 AM on March 27, 2005

I think it's pretty pointless so far as the legality or appropriateness of the post goes to put Marijuana as a tag, and not in the topic proper. Just come out and say it.

On the other hand, I never read or even see the tags, so yeah, it's not going to stop someone from trying this with smoking tobacco.
posted by lucien at 1:40 AM on March 27, 2005

A number of posters seem to be attempting to establish their own stupidity--and the consequent necessity of a warning tag--based on the fact that they initially misinterpreted the meaning of “tobacco” in the recipe. However, every one of you were not fooled for long. When I posted “exactly how stupid…?”, there was already plenty of evidence in the post to make it clear what was really going on. In other words, none of you have succeeded in proving that you are stupid enough to need a warning tag. To do so, you would have had to ignore the contextual text, actually make the recipe, and feed it to your children, dog, and cat. And, if you are in fact that stupid, are you reading warnings?
posted by found missing at 6:55 AM on March 27, 2005

found missing, the simple fact is that the questions used the wrong word. It should have read marijuana instead of tobacco. The misrepresentation of the question made the poster miss out on some potentially useful answers and dilutes the usefulness of the questions for other people looking for recipes who use a search instead of searching tags. And if someone did use a tag search, they could ignore the question after reading it and seeing it was talking about tobacco. "Hm.. that post is mistagged."

The edit is necessary to make the question match what it is actually asking, in order to increase the usefulness of AskMeFi.
posted by Apoch at 7:17 AM on March 27, 2005

Apoch, I couldn't agree more. However, that was not i_am_joe's_spleen's point when he started this thread.
posted by found missing at 7:25 AM on March 27, 2005

Consider: people smoke tobacco. People put tobacco in their mouth for chew. People even snort tobacco in the form of snuff. There are even "Nicotinis", which just sounds like a surefire recipe for a sour stomach and a hangover.

It's not a huge leap to think it's ok to whip up a batch of creamy hot cocoa infused with a few grams of the stuff.


Consider: People drink water. People put water in their mouths for refreshment. People even gulp water when they're really thirsty. There are even designer brands of water, which increases the desirability of the beverage for some.

It's not a huge leap to think it's ok to drink a gallon or two at a time.

In conclusion, jesus h christ. We're getting upset at the wrong person (hautenegro, the asker of the question), instead of the person who posted a potentially-lethal recipe (ladybonita)? Why not deal with the problem at its source, flag the answer as "not helpful", and move on?
posted by aberrant at 7:51 AM on March 27, 2005

Welcome to the Chocolate Factory. I'm Troy McClure! You probably remember me from such films as `The Revenge of Abe Lincoln', and `The Wackiest Covered Wagon in the West'.
[haunting native American music plays, scene changes to an Aztec pyramid]
The history of chocolate begins with the ancient Aztecs.
[see a hand holding an `Ah Fudge' candy bar]
In those days, instead of being wrapped in a hygienic package, chocolate was wrapped in a tobacco leaf.
[candy bar changes to a coiled tobacco leaf]
And instead of being pure chocolate, like we have today, it was mixed with shredded tobacco.
[pull back to see a smiling Aztec fellow holding the cigar-shaped tobacco leaf]
And they didn't eat it, they smoked it!
[Aztec lights it, takes a puff, and smiles broadly]

-- Educational film at the chocolate factory, ``Bart the Murderer'
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 7:56 AM on March 27, 2005

I didn't read the thread, since I have no interest in tobacco. Thus I had no idea it wasn't actually about tobacco. I filed it away in my mind: "Hmm, you can cook with tobacco? I didn't know that." I wasn't particularly surprised to learn that you can cook with tobacco because, after all, I learn something new on MetaFilter almost every day. At some point in the future I might well have mentioned it to someone who would actually have gone and tried it.

How stupid am I? Well, I don't know much about drugs, but I don't think that actually makes me stupid.
posted by kindall at 10:47 PM on March 27, 2005

Bit of relevant reading material.
posted by fire&wings at 3:13 AM on March 28, 2005

fire&wings.. That sounds like dessert after the fugu feast. :-)

If you make yummy tobacco desserts, be VERY aware not to share with the kiddies, ok? A little bit of insecticide goes a long way.
posted by reflecked at 6:19 AM on March 28, 2005

It's not a huge leap to think it's ok to drink a gallon or two at a time.

Indeed.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:56 AM on March 28, 2005

Wait, if you edit the tags will the edit say that mary jane is illegal and one should therefore not acquire it?
posted by haqspan at 11:38 AM on March 28, 2005

I'm also among the stupid.

I don't smoke, nor injest nicotine in any way. however, I do cook, and have cooked Mexican dishes, including mole and other savoury Mexican dishes that include chocolate as an ingredient. But, I don't have an in-depth knowledge of the cuisine - I honestly thought it was some obscure, regional variant of a dish that I've never heard of. After all, other cultures eat things all the time that we find disgusting/inedible, like fermented yak's milk, corn fungus, raw whale blubber, Jack In The Box hamburgers, etc.

Also, because I don't use tobacco, I have no picture of what 2-3 g of tobacco actually looks like. So, I found it vaguely plausible, and for a split second, I tried to envision cooking with tobacco. It wasn't until later in the thread that I realised that 1. this would be a phenomenally stupid thing to do, and 2. that they were talking about 'tobacco' (with air quotes) instead of the actual tobacco leaf.
posted by spinifex23 at 12:04 PM on March 28, 2005

Look, that post does not need a legalistic safety-warning tag edit. It needs scare quotes put around the words "smokeless tobacco" (and all subsequent instances of "tobacco" and "nicotine" in the answers). That way, it clearly indicates that the phrase is not to be taken literally, which should be enough of a tip-off as to what's actually being discussed.

This is just another one of those times where the nuance and inflection that would make the meaning clear in a face-to-face conversation didn't make it into the text, with obvious misunderstandings all around as a result. Just clear up that misunderstanding, and the reader can take her own chances with the "tobacco" recipes from there.

Also, where there is a risk of death and/or serious injury, people shouldn't just assume that everyone has the background knowledge necessary to "get the joke". This is pretty much the same issue as the ammonia/bleach comment (which no longer seems to be Google-able). There needs to be some kind of clue for the clueless (including me in this case) - a link, scare quotes, whatever. "But I was only kidding!" just doesn't cut it as an excuse after someone's had to call Poison Control, and more people (read: User #1) are exposed to risk than the original poster alone.
posted by skoosh at 1:14 PM on March 28, 2005

Tangent re: editing, from fire&wings' link:

In the British edition of "The Art of the Tart" (Random House, 2000), a cookbook by Tamasin Day-Lewis, she included a recipe for fig tart with tobacco syrup, which is based on one she ate at the Lindsay House restaurant in London. Her editor in New York, however, took the tobacco syrup out of the recipe in the American edition.

"It's an absolutely wonderful dish," Ms. Day-Lewis said. "The gingery innards of figs are not unlike tobacco, and the combination is magical. You have the dryness of the tobacco alongside the bosky figs. It's really sad that it's not in the American version."

Her American editor, Pamela Cannon, said, "I just didn't want anyone to open the book onto that recipe and be turned off."
posted by mediareport at 9:33 PM on March 28, 2005