Gambit gets a lot of press releases. Especially with the Saints season opener coming up, we get a lot of NFL related product pitches. For example, is this the snack chip that will make your game watching truly special? But check out this winner. (FYI, it is a media invite, not open to the public.) Apparently women love to clean and cook for their families. What could be more satisfying to a mom than having the men in her family watch NFL games in a “fresh’ environment. Wow, I heart traditional values.

The graphic makes a nod at suggesting that all this cleaning and cooking would be of interest not just to moms but to the whole family. The pitchman, Brian Cash (of MS&L Worldwide), was less PC in his email text (bold emphasis added):

“Febreze and the NFL are partnering for a second year to help moms across the country be “Game Day Ready.” With the help of the “First Lady of Football,” Olivia Manning, Febreze is getting moms ready by providing great home freshening tips and trick as well as game day recipes that the family will love. If you’re interested, Febreze and Olivia are hosting an event on September 9th to kickoff the season and the Febreze Game Day Freshness Tour. Below is the invitation, please let me know if you’d be interested in attending. Hope to hear from you soon!

Thanks,
Brian”

I did not know that Olivia Manning is the “First Lady of Football.” Or that she endorses “freshness.” But she’ll be there to share tips and recipes. I am sure a lot of women (reporters) would love the opportunity to take some hard-to-clean items down to this event and see how Olivia would tackle the challenge. Of course, some women might just like watching the Saints, or football. That’s good clean fun, too.

This Saturday, Aug. 28 brings the 5th annual Rising Tide, the lively day-long discussion put together after the storm by New Orleans bloggers at home and away …

After the flood that followed Hurricane Katrina’s landfall, the internet became a vital connection among dispersed New Orleanians, former New Orleanians, friends of the city and of the Gulf Coast region. A surge of new blogs erupted and, combined with those that were already online, a community of bloggers with a shared interest in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast developed. In the summer of 2006, after the success of the first Geek Dinner, and to mark the anniversary of the flood, the newly formed NOLA Bloggers organized the first Rising Tide Conference, taking their shared interest in technology, the internet and social media and turning advocacy for the city into action.

This year’s event (held at the Howlin’ Wolf) has a great lineup of speakers, starting with the keynoter: Mac McClelland of Mother Jones, who has been doing a spectacular, skeptical kickass job reporting on the oil disaster. Other panelists include NOPD Superintendent Ronal Serpas; Gambit’s Clancy DuBos (if you want your chance to hear Clancy use his full vocabulary, this is it); The Times-Picayune’s excellent columnist Stephanie Grace and equally excellent TV Ranger Dave Walker; Tulane criminologist Peter Scharf; and many more. Topics include public safety, politics, the environment, HBO’s Treme and “Why Can’t We Get Some Dam Safety in New Orleans?”.

Gambit is pleased to sponsor the event. Tickets are only $25 and can be purchased in advance here.

I particularly love the cover this week — conceived and executed by art director Dora Sison.

Inside:

Interviews with filmmakers Harry Shearer and Spike Lee, whose documentaries The Big Uneasy and If God is Willing and the Creek Don’t Rise both make their debuts this week — plus a review of The Big Uneasy.

A look at the state of medicine in New Orleans, five years later.

Clancy DuBos examines the reforms made after Katrina. Chris Rose asks the unanswerable: What if it never happened?

Noah Bonaparte Pais remembers big-box music stores and reflects on how music retailing has changed since the storm. Lauren LaBorde surveys local booksellers and gets their picks for the best post-Katrina literature.

Dalt Wonk on post-K theater; D. Eric Bookhardt on post-K art; Ian McNulty on the restaurants that vanished in 2005 and never came back.

It’s a good issue. Pick it up around town starting Sunday afternoon, or check back Monday for the online edition. And next week: the annual Best of New Orleans.

Up until a couple weeks ago, I hadn’t eaten meat in almost four years.

I wasn’t entirely meat-free. There are the occasional seafood po-boy and Gulf-caught fish. And I eat cheese and eggs and drink milk — on the conditions they come from safe, humane and local sources, if possible. I don’t support factory farming. Period. And for obvious reasons.

Last month, I cut all of those foods from my diet and committed to a vegan diet for a month. I wrote about that experience in this week’s Gambit. And judging by the comments and emails I’ve received about it, I did it wrong. Never mind that I consulted with a vegan dietitian, as well as Peter Singer, a vegan scholar if there ever was one, and my vegan friends, who have navigated the halls of New Orleans restaurant culture and could steer me in the right direction — and that was what I wanted to find out: can a vegan experience the restaurant culture in New Orleans the same way a non-vegan does, which is something people in New Orleans live to do and some would feel they can’t live without. I let a few others answer that in the article.

And I ate well. I won’t bore you with my month-long meal plan, but it was balanced, healthy, nutritious, and I surprised myself in the kitchen. Katelynn Phillips said it perfectly: “If you think about all the plant varieties in the world, there are thousands. And there’s really not that many meat options, so there is a ton of stuff you can eat … People are just used to the American diet.”

But I had cravings — omelets and grilled cheese sandwiches, mostly. (I settled for a cheese pizza — manchego on flatbread — at the end of the month.)

As the month went by, I opened up the conversation to both vegans and people who eat meat, like Scott Gold. I don’t personally agree with much of what Gold said (like the “sad, deprived existence” comment), but he echoed points made among many in the meat-eating community. I hoped his voice could lend some balance to the issue. It’s one thing to introduce why one should consider veganism, but it’s another to leave out the voice on the other side of the fence, which there clearly is, as Gold illustrates. After all, not only was I writing a personal experience, I had to produce a balanced story. I wasn’t eating meat, anyway, so whose team was I rooting for?

But when I went out to eat the weekend after I finished the month, I ordered a sandwich with bacon. I didn’t expect to order it, and I didn’t feel guilty about it. It wasn’t a decision I thought I was going to make, ever, but I did, and I’m in no rush to eat meat any time soon.

Perhaps that’s where I went wrong, according to some readers: I didn’t end the month deciding to become vegan full-time. Bottom line was, It wasn’t for me, at least right now. This was just one man’s attempt, not a vegan manifesto. At the very least I hope I started a conversation about veganism and hopefully readers will make better eating decisions because of it.

In a letter to Gambit, Derek Zimmer offers some (delicious) advice:

Buy a bag of kidney beans, a container of seasoning, and maybe a tub of Earth Balance spread, and treat yourself to some classic red beans and rice. Heck, grab a pound of soy-based sausage if you must! Top that off with a loaf of Leidenheimer’s French bread if you’re feelin’ real saucy, and that’s simply days of leftovers! Alternatively, touch a couple boxes of the ol’ Zatarain’s Jambalaya mix, add some chopped bell peppers, mushrooms, whatever (maybe more of that aformentioned mock sausage), and — tadaa! — you got yourself a delicious plant-based meal in 30 minutes! There’s also this thing our ancestors invented back in the day called a “roux” — basically you heat up oil, add flour, then water, which you then use to to make a cabbage, potato, bean, etc., stew! Oh, and ever heard of okra gumbo? Whew! What what a “sad, deprived existence” veganism in the Big Easy is! (Though certainly no where near as “sad” and “deprived” an existence as those of the animals inside factory farms!)

For more information, here are some New Orleans-related vegan and vegetarian groups and blogs:

www.pakupaku.info

www.nolaveggiefest.com

www.meetup.com/vegetarian-515

www.veganorleans.com

Who doesn’t like pizza? (A damn Communist, that’s who.) And who doesn’t like Italian Pie? That’s right, nobody. So we at Gambit World HQ in Mid-City were excited when we learned that Italian Pie was uprooting itself from its neighborhoody Bienville Street location and moving to the little Restaurant Row that’s sprung up around Canal and Carrollton since the storm. More lunch options for us!

But then we realized there are now four pizza places within about a block of one another:

(Clockwise from top: Wit’s Inn, Venezia, Theo’s Pizza, Italian Pie. Gambit World HQ is in the upper-right corner. And we left off the national-chain pizza place that’s on this map, which would’ve made five.)

Now, they’re all substantially different. Wit’s Inn serves good bar-food pizza and is a great place to watch a game and have a few drinks. Venezia serves the epitome of the red-sauce “pizza pie.” Theo’s has an amazing cracker crust and some toppings that sound eccentric but turn out to be delicious. And Italian Pie is a go-to spot for basic pizza that’s ideal for takeout (although the new location, which opened today, has little flat-screen TVs built into the booths, so they seem ready for football season).

No complaints with any of these pizza purveyors. But between them and the surfeit of Mexican/Central American places in the same area (three!), we’re just wondering: Can we get a good Thai restaurant up in here? Or po-boy shop? Or Vietnamese joint? (Doson Noodle House has Vietnamese noodle bowls, but not one of those Da Vinci Code-sized menus you get at Vietnamese places on the West Bank.) What kind of food would you like to see on Mid-City’s Restaurant Row?

Because there is, finally, if such a thing is possible — enough pizza.

EDITED TO ADD: Don’t get us wrong; we’re very grateful. You know who’s really screwed when it comes to lunch? Our colleagues at The Times-Picayune, that’s who. Ever tried to get something to eat around 3800 Howard Avenue?