Sauerkraut’s being touted as a wonder food these days, maybe even an antidote to avian flu. First came the Polish Women’s Health Study, showing an association between sauerkraut consumption and a reduced risk of breast cancer.

Then came the discovery that kimchi, a South Korean cousin to sauerkraut, may fight off bird flu; after 13 bird flu-infected chickens were fed kimchi for one week, 11 of the birds appeared to recover. The buzz about sauerkraut’s benefits sent sales soaring in the U.S. and Britain.

The gossip in gastronomic circles last week centered on a half-baked hatchet job on Alice Waters that ran in the New York Times Style magazine recently.

The premise of San Francisco chef Dan Patterson’s piece – that Water’s influence has created some kind of Tyranny of the Simple and Seasonal that’s stifling culinary creativity among Bay Area chefs – generated plenty of buzz along with a rebuttal or two, of sorts, from the blogosphere.