Fat Guy

I was at CVS tonight and my eyes were wandering over the immense candy selection. I noticed, among other things, a box of Caramello bars. Caramello bars? I had completely forgotten about the existence of the Caramello. I'm sure I haven't had one in 25+ years. But I do remember liking them. I'm now thinking I should have bought one. This all caused me to consider some of the candy bars of old, and how much I wished I could be part of a community of people who enjoy discussing such things. Reggie bar anyone?

I agree that what tastes best should be the guide. I am on record many many times as caring less about authenticity than pretty much anyone. Likewise I have no problem going global for the best-tasting thing. Maybe some of you have done better than DOP San Marzano tomatoes. As far as canned, I don't think I've had better. I also don't think I've experienced fresh ones that perform as well as the DOP canned when you're talking specifically about pizza sauce. I do well with Pomi in the aseptic box but that's a fairly different flavor. I'd like to do a more structured tasting at some point.

Home-grown and farmers'-market tomatoes can be wonderful in many ways. They are not however direct substitutes for San Marzano DOP tomatoes. You won't find most (or perhaps any) of the world's top pizzerias switching to fresh local tomatoes in season. It's a different animal.

I'm not sure that's a legitimate San Marzano tomato product. I'd be interested to hear a careful reading of the label.

That's probably close to the result I got. I wish I'd paid more attention to the exact costs and quantities. What I remember is spending about $20 and not having quite enough raw materials for a third pie. I'm thinking we were doing about 14" per pie with actual San Marzano tomatoes, fresh cow's milk mozzarella and Italian "00" flour, with the sauce and cheese applied more heavily than a purist would tolerate. Some other ingredients -- olive oil, basil, yeast, salt -- came from the pantry. If I'd had to buy those too we'd have gone off the charts.

Why do you say that? Doesn't food cost run in the 25-30% range at most restaurants? And that's based on bulk purchasing of ingredients, so one's food cost at home can be expected to be higher for equivalent products.

No, that winds up being cheaper than what I was doing with a friend recently.

The cheese, tomatoes and flour were all costly. Fresh mozzarella of good quality is a lot per pound, San Marzano tomatoes are expensive, and any flour other than all-purpose gets pricey. I needed like twenty bucks worth of stuff to make a couple of small pizzas.

I made some pizza recently. I couldn't believe the cost of ingredients when making pizza from high-quality products. Is it now impossible to make good pizza cheaply, at home or in a restaurant? If so, it explains a lot.

I just got a press release saying that Adour is offering a special Ducasse greatest-hits menu for the month of September. It's five dishes representing favorites at his restaurant around the world, in honor of his 55th birthday (I can't believe how young he is, considering his stature). This is how the menu is described:

Yes, so far the two contenders have been St. John the Divine and Landmark on the Park. Landmark is not available on the date and St. John the Divine is still being investigated.

I'm looking for an event space for approximately 350 people on the Upper West Side of Manhattan -- or it can be in Morningside Heights or South Harlem. A raw DIY space that's cheap. This group would do all its own decor and food, etc.

The bottom plate was the only one to hit the shelf. No other plate in the stack has ever touched the shelf. Nevertheless, every plate in the stack went in at once.

I can buy that this is something other than FILO or FIFO. However I just spoke to the plate-factory packer, a Mr. Chang in Shinzen, China, who informed me that he remembers my plates and that, as is his signature, he built the stack upside-down, then flipped the whole thing over for packing. I then reviewed the security-video footage of the storage room in the Bronx where the plates spent approximately a year. The order was not altered.

But that does not accurately describe what happens in my kitchen.

But the stack is preexisting. It came out of the box as a stack. It lives in the cupboard as a stack. The behavior being analyzed is the behavior of taking plates off the stack and putting them back on.

I don't follow. The stack is already there. If I have one plate in the dishwasher and I unload it and place it on the top of the stack, that's essentially first in. If I then go to the cabinet to get a plate and take that plate off the top of the stack, that's first out. If I'm working with two plates, or three which is the norm in my home, I don't really know which one has priority, but overall I'm still only getting three plates deep into the stack of 12. The bottom plate is not affected.

Do you have a link to an example of that product?

My concern is potential uneven wear over the course of hundreds of uses and trips through the dishwasher.

The two-stack solution requires either cabinet space to burn or one of those risers that divides the stack. That might help but is not something that can just be implemented by change in procedure. When I was putting my plates away today, which is what caused me to think about this issue, I realized it would be a real pain to put plates on the bottom of the stack. They are heavy earthenware plates so it's definitely not a one-step job -- it would require either two people or removal of the whole stack and shuffling on the countertop.

FIFO (First In, First Out) as opposed to FILO (First In, Last Out) seems the inevitable system of usage when you keep plates in a stack in the cabinet. We have a stack of 12 plates. I'm not sure we've ever used the bottom one. Has anybody come up with a good way to defeat this arrangement?

Dairy Queen birthday cake

We visit New Haven often -- it's where my mother-in-law lives -- but our range of dining experiences there has been limited. We eat a lot of Sally's pizza, and we eat a lot of meals at my mother-in-law's house. When we do vary the routine it's often to Claire's or another of the regular places my wife's family has frequented for decades. Our son, however, is a huge fan of Thai food so a couple of years ago the search began for good Thai in New Haven. We discovered the Rice Pot, on State Street, early in the process. It is an unremarkable-looking place on a lonely stretch of State Street, with a handwritten sign indicating the parking lot. The interior is not particularly nice, though it is clean. The food is good, not world-class but entirely credible. The tripartite lunch specials are particularly good. Yesterday I had drunken noodles, shrimp with ginger and mixed vegetables, and spring rolls. Also good are the standard noodle dishes, particularly pad see ew. The summer rolls ("fresh roll" on this menu) are very well executed, and the satay offerings are generous and tender. The only weak link I've found so far in the offerings has been the green-papaya salad, which is limp and not particularly well seasoned. We've tried other Thai places in New Haven -- downtown on Chapel Street there are about five of them in close proximity, and there are Thai restaurants throughout the area -- and nothing else has come close to the Rice Pot. So, FYI, if you are in New Haven an want Thai, the Rice Pot is the place to go. Rice Pot 1027 State St, New Haven, CT 06511-3959 (203) 772-6679 ‎

A personal essay today on the opinion page, by Anna Stoessinger, discusses her recent surgery for stomach cancer -- which involved removal of her entire stomach. A food lover, she details her celebration of food leading up to the surgery. It's a great read, bittersweet but wonderful in its way. One point the piece makes is that it's possible to live and eat without a stomach -- you just have to eat smaller amounts more often. Is that true?

It seems that in Italian-American pastry shops it is almost mandatory for cannolis to include chocolate chips. Yet chocolate chips are not a traditional part of the cannoli recipe, at least I don't think they are. I've also see pistachios, and candied orange peel. Plain too. What sorts of things have you all seen in cannolis the world over?