Callipygos

I have heard this from SO many people. Exactly. A possibly new angle: I have heard recently that there is some evidence -- only anecdotal evidence at this point -- that Atkins can lead to an increased likelihood of contracting gout in some people. I've seen something that could very well support that -- my SO's mom is on a medication which has joint pain as a possible side effect, and does indeed have this side effect -- and, she's also on Atkins. I don't think that the argument is as simple as "Atkins gives you gout," more like if you were prone towards gout anyway, Atkins can aggravate that. I've mentioned this to ths SO to pass on to her (haven't mentioned it to her directly, because she scares me just a wee little still...)

My SO will do this, in minuter quantities -- but just the condiments. He will every so often wander to the refrigerator, pull out a bottle of something like salad dressing or worcestershire sauce, have a little sip and put it back. Is THAT what's going on there?

Surprise Me. Melon liqueur Peach Schnapps a dash of Creme de Cacao cream Serve over ice Keywords: Cocktail ( RG849 )

Surprise Me. Melon liqueur Peach Schnapps a dash of Creme de Cacao cream Serve over ice Keywords: Cocktail ( RG849 )

I actually am going to be sacreligious and suggest going with fruit rather than chocolate. The first dinner I made for my beloved -- which probably counts as the most romantic of our meals (although, I believe this was largely in part due to the fact that it was very early in the proceedings -- this was that all-crucial "third date") I made a very simple sauteed pear dessert, where you sauteed sliced pears in butter, then when the pears were done, removed them and added some wine and cooked it down for the sauce. It's not as heavy as anything chocolate would be, and the simplicity is kind of in the spirit of the bistro theme. I've made something similar with poached peaches, where you then cooked down some wine and sugar, and spiced with a cinnamon stick, a star anise piece and a couple juniper berries -- THAT was good. The recipe was in the HOW TO COOK EVERYTHING book and so should be easy to find.

do you think the restaurant regularly serves food that poisons customers? Tommy, I was merely saying why it looked odd to me. You are free to regard the situation another way if you so choose. Hadn't thought of that.

The summer after I got out of college, I was living with two friends in an apartment very near the greenmarket at Union Square in NYC. These friends were also vegetarians and owned a juicer, so often that summer we had a LOT of fresh fruit juice and smoothies and the like. One rainy day I came home and found they had made this INCREDIBLE lentil soup. It was light enough for summer, but warm enough for a rainy day, and had this REALLY unusual flavor to it. I loved it and asked them for the recipe. I actually asked a few times, getting increasingly suspicious as they tried to dodge my question. Finally one of them blurted out, "we don't know how we made it." Turns out what happened was -- one of them had tried making vegetable juice in the juicer, out of a variety of green leafy vegetables. The resulting juice, apparently, tasted terrible. So they decided to try turning it into soup, by dumping the juice and the pulp into a pot, dumping in some lentils, and in their words, "just adding spices until it tasted good." They couldn't even remember what they'd used because they were in a panic of "grab it off the shelf and let's try that". I hadn't had as much practice in the kitchen then to try to recreate by taste, and it's too long ago now to recall the flavor accurately enough. This is one of my great tragedies.

Up until this moment I was a little embarrassed to have purchased McCormack's paprika from the grocery store, rather than the good paprika. No more.

What I'm not understanding in all of this is -- why reimburse with a gift certificate? To me, that smacks of, "You got food poisoning from us? Sorry -- here, come back and have some more!" But maybe that's just me.

Hmm. By the "hot soak" method, are you referring to bringing them to a boil for a couple minutes, setting them aside for a couple hours, then draining them and cooking as usual? Because that seems to work for me in cutting down the digestive distress factor.

Brownies. You taste nothing but brownie either. I will say nothing more.

Started this because I have a question about a specific substitution. I'm going to be making a venison stew recipe that calls for juniper berries. I have every faith I will be able to find juniper berries (Dean & Deluca does carry them, and I'll be going to pick them up tomorrow), but just in case they're sold out or something -- what can I use instead of the berries? I only need three, so whatever it is I won't need much.

Interestingly, the first and only time I'd ever eaten in a Cracker Barrell was on a solo road trip; I think I was somewhere in Indiana -- yes, in fact, it WAS Indiana. I remember specifically stopping in a specific town because it was the birthplace of John Mellencamp and home to the country's biggest Wal-Mart. Oh, this was a trip where I was expressly on the lookout for kitsch. But for some reason it seems I managed to have sidestepped the more upscale chains throughout my entire life up till now, my 30's. (Fast-food chains we got where I'm from, but Olive Garden/Outback/etc., no.)

I work in the theater and live in New York City. If I wasn't constantly economizing, I'd be bankrupt.

Soaking them for a half-hour or so in really hot water spiked with white vinegar and a shot of Tide with Bleach. Okay, yeah, so the fact that the Tide is in there is probably due to my obtaining this info from Tide's web site, but the vinegar aspect was independantly verified on a site about how to restore vintage clothing. And speaking of bleach -- I hit upon a radical, but effective, solution for accidentally mixing bright colors with whites in your laundry. Once I was given the task of laundring all the costumes for a show I was working on, and accidentally put a bright red sock in with all the white costume pieces (apron, shirts, socks, handkerchiefs....) and turned the costumes a lovely fuschia color. I spent a panicked half-hour in the bathroom with a tub of boiling water and a jug of Clorox -- and fixed it all! I'd consulted with the costume designer before, during, and after all of this, and we came to the conclusion that this probably wouldn't work on very delicate clothing pieces, but for fairly sturdy shirts and socks, it works well.

My parents live in a place where there just aren't very many good restaurants. There's an Outback and a TGI Friday's, and a smaller, tonier place or two, but that's it. Many times when visiting them, we've just gone to Outback because it was a no-brainer -- the food wasn't the best we'd ever had, but it didn't suck dingo kidneys either. I'm reminded of a slogan a taco place near me used to use -- "Our food is...good enough." Yeah, that's about it. Fortunately, my dad is a foodie and has gotten used to better food, so sometimes if they really want to do it up better Dad cooks. One advantage of chain places in a city like NYC -- a lot of the tourists go there, leaving the really good places empty for us locals. Heh.

But how does the fat not...I mean, adding fat to fat, doesn't it just...I mean, wouldn't it liquefy, so wouldn't it...huh? I'm reminded of the time that a bunch of visiting Irish folk (a friend's brother, his wife, and another couple that were their friends) visited NYC and we hung out for the day. We got dim sum in Chinatown, and one thing we ordered was a plate of duck tongue. It was a little pile of small fried bits of matter -- but what confused us was, there was some sort of BONE in them. The concept of a tongue having a bone in it just baffled us. The two of us that were brave enough to try it only kept nibbling because we were trying to figure out whether it really was a bone, cartilage, or some especially tough and chewy part of the meat. The puzzled squints we gave as we ate kept everyone else from trying any, though.

I might possibly be developing a craving for spam. Will not indulge. Every so often I have a craving for "fake cheese" -- the kind that uses either Doritos or Kraft macaroni as a delivery system. In closing: I have never in my life had a corn dog. Thank you.

Not only have I never experienced latter-stage digestive troubles from spicy food, I didn't even know that such, er, "exiting effects" were even in existance. The biggest problem I've had with spicy food has been more a matter of taste -- I enjoy the heat, but if something is TOO hot, it just becomes overwhelming if I have too much. There have been many times when the first few bites of something very spicy are wonderful -- but by the tenth, the heat element has just become too much for me to the point where it overpowers all other flavor and I just can't go on. The upside of this is, this once let me stretch a single order of laab moo salad from a Thai place in my neighborhood for a week and a half (I'd take it out, have three bites -- the first was bliss, the second, "lemme steel myself for this," and the third, "okay, I give, this goes back in the fridge.") I DID once have a bad encounter with something calling itself a "taco kebab" at a fast food place in Ireland, but that was more due to e. coli than any spice element, I think.

I got the Braun with the whisk and the chopper attachment, and found that the chopper just chops things MUCH too fine. The blender, though, enabled me to make a decent latte without a milk steamer. (I used to just warm the milk in the microwave and just make do with the fact that I had no froth, but this frothed the milk nicely before I added the coffee. Heh.) I've also used the blender to puree bean soups and such. Haven't tried the whisk yet -- next time I do an omlette, maybe.

Fresh clams, obtained only a day before eating from the beaches on Buzzard's Bay. (I'd even go so far as to say that, much like there is a "Lender's Line" around the New York City area, past which you are supposedly unable to get a good bagel, there is a "landlock line" around Cape Cod, past which you are unable to get good seafood.) Forget roasting your own coffee -- I'm just pleased to have discovered anything above Maxwell House and Folger's. Loose-leaf tea. Fresh cranberries. I have an "in" on cranberries -- my family owns a big bog, and they're suppliers for Ocean Spray, and the family isn't always above helping themselves to a sampling of the VERY best of the crop. Heh.

Jambalaya. Risotto with ham and fresh peas. Lots of omlettes.

Placed a couple calls -- found a couple of good sources. Taking into account the state of my pocketbook and storage space, and the likelihood of purchasing other ingredients, I'm leaning towards buying some venison medallions tonight for preparing tomorrow. It seems that medallions would be easiest to prepare quickly (the other option was stew, and I won't be able to start the prep work until after work tomorrow, which would be 7 in the evening; I'd hate to start something that requires two hours' or so cooking time or something, and have him show up and we're both so totally ravenous by dinnertime that we wolf it down and may just as well have been eating burgers). So -- PHo, is that loin recipe adaptable to medallions? If not, anyone else have any other ideas?

I'm at work until 6 so the Union Square greenmarket is out. I'm much more attuned to more conventional fare -- much more akin to "take ordinary cheap ingredients and make something exotic OF them" than "start WITH exotica." For me, venison IS exotic.... Just did some calling around -- Citarella is out, because it would have to special-order something for far too much money anyway. Otomanelli in the Village has stew meat for $7.99, and Whole Foods in Chelsea has medallions for a similar price. I'm leaning towards the medallions, because it seems they would be easiest to prepare quickly (I won't be able to start dinner until 7 tomorrow night or so, and if I went with stew, I was envisioning him showing up and the two of us sitting there waiting the requisite two hours for stew to stew, and then being so hungry we snarf everything down so fast we may as well be just eating burgers). I've got another thread in the "cooking" section addressing the preparing -- but it looks like the procuring is all set. Thanks!

And it sounds WONDERFUL. My God. And easier to prepare than anything I've found, and easy to adapt down to two. (I don't have too much room for leftovers.) I also have limited prep time. I've been advised to try Otomanelli in the Village; will try that tomorrow. I live on the Lower East Side, am on somewhat limited means and am only used to shopping at places like Key Food....