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There was/is a decent Chinese restaurant in Tucson called Fatman Kitchen. One of the chefs was from Xi'an and their menu just calls the noodles "Xi'an Oil Splashing Noodles". No mention of Biang Biang there, although a local newspaper review did make that association. 🙂 They were delicious!

Smoked Salmon and Cream Cheese Pizza from Pizza Nights by Alexandra Stafford. This recipe is written for a half-sheet pan and is listed in the book as Smoked Salmon and Cream Cheese Pizza for a Crowd. It’s a pan pizza crust, topped with Everything But The Bagel seasoning and baked, with the toppings (chive cream cheese, smoked salmon, capers, red onion and dill) added post-bake. No crowd here, but I had a ball of pan pizza dough that needed to be used so this was a good option. I only topped this piece and will use the rest of the focaccia-like pan for sandwiches.

@Dejah no matter what you do , check all the information you get from the internet even @ eG w the dietitian that directly deals w renal failure patients , if you can. information here is far more reliable than the internet at large. renal failure , subsequent dialysis , if a serious matter . but the good news is that the situation has been figured out by professionals for a long long time , thus , confer with them . its science , not influencer hocus-pocus . however , dietitians can be a bit weak on ' flavor ' work from what the patient likes , check the Na, K, PO4 , then add flavor.

You definitely got a better deal! I purchased mine at a fundraiser for a good cause, so I didn't mind paying a bit more than I usually would for a used book. 🙂

@Dejah, SpiceTrekkers said: We don't add phosphorus or potassium to our blends, but they may be present in small amounts in the spices themselves. Since the spices added to recipes represent only a tiny fraction of the total amount of ingredients, the amounts are not listed. Because most of our blends do not contain salt (aside from our zaatars, our rubs, dukkha, and, of course, our salts), there is no link for salt free blends except the direct link to our online boutique that will give your friend access to our products’ descriptions and ingredients list: https://spicetrekkers.com/en-ca/store

If you buy (or bought) the onion, make sure to wrap it well. That one really permeates!

Free Tomatoes ... fun! Amazon sent me the wrong tomatoes, so I didn't have to pay for them. These tomatoes were packed and shipped from Modesto, CA, and were mislabled as whole, peeled tomatoes. They were sent to Houston, TX from Modesto, and then to an Amazon warehouse in Mississippi, and from there they made their way back to California, about fifty miles from where they were grown and packed. I'll use some of these in a soon-to-be-made chile.

Thanks for letting us know. It was never a big issue. Irish pubs have that effect. Love them!

So you guys had me second guessing myself about the Guinness, so I got in touch with my son who lives in Sydney and asked him what we had to drink there. It turns out you were right, I did have a Guinness but the photo I had taken was of his Smithwicks beer brewed in Kilkenny. Hope that’s all cleared up now.

Hi Dejah, I haven't been in Egullet for a long time, but logged in specially to answer this. Actually one of the reasons for not being on Egullet so much is cooking for a dialysis diet and how restrictive it is. My husband has been on hemodialysis for the last 14 years and I'm the cook in the household, so I can give perspective from my experience. (Not a nutritionist, but had to read a lot about this over the years!) Potassium is the biggest issue and the item you most need to restrict as it builds up in the body and levels that are too high can be fatal (though over time dialysis patients tend to build up a tolerance and can end up being okay with levels in the blood that would kill a "normal" person). Google high potassium foods and make a list of what you need to avoid or severely limit. By the way, the USDA nutritional database can be a highly useful resource. But off the top of my head, avoid or restrict: Mushroom Tomato Green leafy vegetables Peanuts, other nuts, dried beans and legumes Citrus fruits Stone fruits such as peaches Bananas Potatoes (but Google "leaching potatoes" to make them more possible to serve by removing some of the potassium). Salt substitutes Coca cola Chocolate and cocoa Honey Sodium in general is not generally THAT much of an issue. At the risk of sounding elitist, nutritional guidelines are usually written for the lowest common denominator, and a lot of people can be either not that smart and/or routinely consuming a diet filled with processed and extremely salty food. The recommendations for avoiding salt is IMO aimed at such people. (This observation is based in my husband observing other patients and their dietary habits over the last 14 years as the vast majority COMPLETELY fail to follow any of the dietary restrictions). A bit of salt in a dipping sauce, as soy sauce in the dish you are cooking, or sprinkled over something is not going to be life changing and can make the difference between enjoying ones food or not. The main issue for most patients of too much salt is that it is thirst inducing, making one want to consume more liquid, and if liquid is being removed from the body only via dialysis, routinely turning up for dialysis with too much liquid in the body is bad because: - it puts extra strain on the heart - it can lead to extremely painful cramping during dialysis as liquid is being removed from the blood but there is a a higher amount of liquid still in the muscles - if there is a really high amount of liquid in the body, it might not be possible to remove it all during one dialysis session, putting even greater strain on the heart. Phosphorus: You have a difficult balancing act between meat, fish and eggs containing phosphorus, which should be limited, but it being advisable to follow a high protein diet. You can't square a circle, and you can drive yourself nuts trying to do so, so don't worry about it too much, and concentrate more on providing the protein. What you can do though is concentrate on avoiding other high phosphorus foods, such as preserved meats such as salami and the like. Lentils and dried beans also have a lot of phosphorus, but I think you wouldn't be serving that sort of food all that much anyway... If in doubt, phosphate binders are available which can be stirred into water and consumed with a high phosphate meal. My husband does this once in a blue moon when he REALLY wants to eat South Indian food, such as dosa, dal, etc. For what its worth, I usually cook Chinese and Indian food at home. The vegetables I use the most tend to be green or red peppers, fresh green beans, zucchini, broccoli, cauliflower. Also okra, bitter melon, Chinese or Indian gourds such as winter melon/ash gourd, ridge gourd and the like. Onions, ginger and garlic, of course. I use what I consider a standard amount of salt and soy sauce, and tend to thicken north Indian dishes by stirring in high fat yoghurt at the very end after turning off the heat instead of the more common practice of thickening dishes by cooking tomatoes down at the beginning. Either that or leave them runnier than they would normally be. I have no issues cooking with bought Thai curry pastes and canned coconut milk, but tend not to add extra fish sauce so as not to make it too salty. Hope this helps.

We are just getting into berry season here and it is a huge industry in this area - a lot is grown for commercial purposes ie. frozen berries, jams, jellies, etc. There are still plenty available at u-picks, farm stands and local farmer's markets. Strawberries are the current crop, soon to be followed by raspberries, then blueberries which last well into fall. Then, around the beginning of October, cranberries are harvested.

For a long time after biang biang mian appeared on the streets of China’s ancient city of Xi’an in the early 2000s, signs or menus utilising the name were all hand painted. It appeared in no dictionaries and was impossible to enter as a computer character. However the dish was far from new. I ate it often when I lived in Xi’an in the 1990s, yet never saw that name. It was 油泼扯面 (yóu pō chě miàn), literally ‘oil-splashed torn noodles’ and very popular. Some restaurants in Xi'an today sell 油泼扯面 to the locals and Biang Biang noodles to the tourists at a higher price! Today the character used to describe them is more famous than the actual dish. It is said to be the most complex character in Chinese, made up of 42 separate strokes in the most widely accepted version. The character is said to be onomatopoetic, ‘biang’ resembling the sound of the smack of the dough hitting the table when they are being stretched. 面 (miàn) means wheat noodles. The trouble is the biang character is a new and unofficial invention. Its origin is murky, with a cited notion that it was invented in the Qin Dynasty (221–206 BC) having been long debunked. There is no record of it before the 2000s. The most likely and accepted story is that it was invented as a marketing tool by one of Xi’an’s more imaginative noodle shop owners (although no one agrees which one). There is another story believed by some that it was invented by a local university student as a way to pay for a meal he could otherwise ill afford. Again, which university, and Xi’an has several, is never identified. It took until March 2000 for the character to be added to Unicode in version 13.00, but that version has still not been adopted into all platforms or fonts. However, it is now here on eG. 𰻝𰻝面 (biáng biáng miàn) Rather idiotically in my view, some clown has gone on to develop a Traditional Chinese version, 𰻞𰻞麵. (‘Traditional’ Chinese). However, the size can't be altered in the trad font. hmmm. Apart from the question as to how can anyone invent a new ‘traditional’ anything, Traditional Chinese is very rarely used in mainland China where the dish’s new name concept was invented. Also, others have sought to ‘improve’, on the original by adding even more strokes, with versions including up to 70 strokes. I have only given the most accepted version (and the ‘traditional’ one for its very slight amusement value). Here is my local biang biang shop. As you can see they couldn’t write biang biang other than in Roman letters The shop name 忆长安 biangbiang 面 means Remembering Chang’an Biangbiang Noodles, Chang’an being the ancient name of Xi’an, in the Tang Dynasty (618–907 AD) the largest and richest city in the world. And their noodles. PS. The character 𰻝 still appears in no Chinese dictionaries.

How unusual. I've been photographing Guinness for years on three different continents and never seen anything like that. It must be a peculiarity of the light rather than how the pub serves their Guinness. Coloured light, perhaps.

Sorry, but I guess that’s the way they serve Guinness in that pub in Ireland because it was definitely Guinness and as @liuzhou mentions that the small amount left in the glass in the first photos shows Guinness and that’s the same glass. The light is reflecting off the glass not through it.

@MaryIsobel Thank you and they sure are a versatile cake base for a variety of different toppings. At this time of the year, my focus is pretty much what’s coming in locally. I’m fortunate in having a very good FM .

I don't see a sale price. Do I need some sort of code?

Hot milk cake is my go-to for the base of so many desserts - love the way you've topped yours.

If you happen to be in the LA area, Epicurus Gourmet has these 10 flavors of Bordier butter for 30% off thru Thurs 6/26: The algues (seaweed), yuzu and piment d’espelette are particularly nice. Unfortunately, the basic demi sel and doux aren’t included. I know this is useless to most but I couldn’t resist!

Made a nice big tray of Iraqi dolmas. 275/100% steam for 45 minutes. I’m not gonna flip it

Sponge cake with freshly made apricot jam, warmed diced apricots in jam, raspberries, sour cream and pistachios. A tender fine textured crumb , the cake was made yesterday and was equally delicious to the first day version. Adapted from KAB hot milk cake.

Pretty sure I linked specifically to the salt free blends? The first one listed has neither orange peel nor salt. my apologies if it wasn't helpful

I hope you don't but if you do, you'd at least know what to do about it!

I recently bought this one from a thrift store for $2.49. It too is over 800 pages. I hope this store gets more of these.

one other thing : isopropyl alcohol , on a paper towel , works nicely at cleaning the window , etc and does not leave a ' perfume ' like commercial branded cleaners. works better , and is cheaper.

Spicy soft-scrambled eggs with onion, garlic, chile serrano, pickled jalapeno, tomato paste, and feta cheese. Served with toasted rye bread. Egg and tomato tastes good but rarely looks appealing.