Priscilla

The elk looks great. Did little Fred join you during cooking? And, AGAIN with the Fiestaware! The cookbooks pix are very inviting. What books have you relied on the most in your cooking life?

Heather, getting the books I use out and accessible is one of the biggest steps toward feeling at home after moving, for me. Good luck with that! 2 new to report: McGee's On Food and Cooking , and the elsewhere discussed Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan

Yay a Great Southwest foodblog! Moabians sure seem to like their Fiestaware.

Yay I got this too! Looking forward to discussion/cooking. I have had better luck with first editions at Costco than pre-ordering at Amazon, I swear -- ran in for a wild sockeye filet, emerged with the new Dorie Greenspan (as well as the salmon). However, I agree with Russell that Costco's cookbook range ain't what it used to be. Maybe this signals a renewed emphasis.

I have always known (and loved) a Salty Dog to be a vodka-grapefruit juice drink, with a salt rim. At least, this was what I learned years ago from the Ladies (of a Certain Age) Who (Drink Their) Lunch at the erstwhile tea room in the erstwhile May Company department store on the Miracle Mile, its magnificent Deco shell preserved as the LACMA annex. Personally, I wouldn't have wanted to argue with 'em, about anything, particularly as "lunch" wore on, as it would. Fresh grapefruit is of course used by all the best people; however I endeavor to keep a shelf-stable bottle of Tree-Top 100% on hand for emergencies.

Mine too! My favorite flowers. I love how, on a hot day, you can practically watch their stalks lengthen, once sprouted. Some I brought from the house we moved from, and then a year or so later added some liberated from an empty lot down the street about to be graded, and the two groups have yet to bloom on the same schedule, even though they reside in the same bed in identical conditions. This does lengthen the bloom show, but how long can plant genetic memory be, for corn's sake? Will be slicng excellent tomatoes, whose existence owes nothing to me except I sometimes turn on the watering system, with dinner tonight, as happened last night.

Can't you just see a BLTini? Baconcello, and V-8, which conveniently concomitantly delivers tomato and salad. A toast soldier garni? Maybe not. But then, why not. Thanks for the mind-bogglinization, ongoing!

Hathor, when I whack a clod in my garden with the shovel, it nearly always is a rock, a big old granite river rock. Of some use in the garden hardscape, and especially charming with bonus imbedded fossils. Good for pressing accused witches to death, too, I would think. I am glad you appreciate your rich growing medium. It sounds lovely. All is not lost, however. Tomatoes burgeoning (had the first ripe one last evening, a large Brandywine, alongside grilled wild sockeye), Sun Gold in profusion, Mortgage Lifter loaded with green fruit, a Lebanese variety with smallish fruit for which Ivan has high hopes, flavor-wise. Of course these are not my doing, and I only know these details because yesterday, after we'd been out there attempting to civilize escaped Red Flame grapevines, (excellent crop of potential dolma wrappers, and even fruit if we can beat the raccoons to it this year), assiduously not paying attention to tomatoes, Ivan poured me an icylicious sake and made me go look. And, OK, as I passed by I mindlessly picked a few of the deepest-orange Sun Golds, the tomato that tastes like a perfect tomato sauce, right off the vine.

Thank you, Rachel. And, in re hope, you are so right.

MtheC, an excellent, thought-provoking piece. I tend to lump modern chefs writing children's cookbooks in with erstwhile college-radio singer-songwriters recording albums for children -- the music no less granola. Both cause me the same brain scream: Why? (I understand about the money part.) As I am sure you understand, just as we eschewed toy tools for our child as soon as he was big enough to hold the petite picture-hanging hammer, (and of course now he can heft with one hand the big old honkin' 18.8-volt Milwaukee cordless drill while I have to steady the relatively wimpy 20-year-old cast-off Makita with two), we also have instilled the idea of real cookery using real ingredients. I admit to a slight frisson of West Coast pride in reading that the Sunset book was somewhat less worse than others... the Magazine of Western Living has long been a repository of open-minded, decent, forward-thinking food writing. Course a child could take any of the charmingly pithy recipes from any of their regular publications and make them work, I think.

CG, thank you!

Someone said, "We read to know we're not alone." Thank you for sharing the ways we are the same -- I love hearing that. Exactly what the foodblogs are all about! Wonderful blog, Lori. Good on Alyssa for fixing you up with your personalized accoutrements. Ham loaf looks good! The only thing I can't see on the recipe card in your photo is the ingredient list for the sweet & sour glaze -- other than the brown sugar, what's in it? Awaiting the reveal of the North Side of the House View!

Thanks, Jackal. And no worries, they didn't get too much bread, they only visited for part of each day, and were off to other activities elsewhere. As for water, it was the running creek that was their initial attraction, so plenty of that.

MtheC, you know there are some foods, for each of us, in life, that hold a place of their own, benchmarks against which all else is measured. And it's not just the bread, for Ivan, but also tomatoes from the enterprising Georgians in the state-sanctioned farmer's markets. Tomatoes of mythological proportion, taste-wise. The particular black bread of Ivan's dreams was the least-expensive, least-refined of what I have heard described (many times, she said, employing remarkable understatement) as an incredible range of delicious breads available in the average 1970s behind-the-Iron-Curtain Moscow quartier bakery. This bread was a dense, sour, perfectly thin-sliceable pullman-pan loaf of a sort that could redeem the hackneyed "staff of life" epithet. (The loaves I've tasted were toted trans-Atlantically by friends and relatives; one day old is not a problem with all-sourdough breads.) Ivan says it was 8 kopeks for a full loaf, but was usually bought in half- or quarter-loaves, at a correspondingly fractional price. Pam: Thanks, and I bet they would, esp. rye, which is a northerly sort of cold-weather grain, eh?

Lori, thank you!

Chris, this is way ultra cool. I know you'll be traveling all over the nation, but it will be great to see some California influence on FTV!

Broad beans and Fava Beans are the same species, Vicia Fava. Actually a species in the "Vetch" genus and an "Old World" legume. I'm not sure about variety differences between various countries. The next thing I really want to try is fresh Lima Beans. I hated these when I was younger, and am curious what they would taste like to me now. ~Erik ← We are having very good luck with favas too, this spring here in Southern California, our first time growing them. I attribute the success almost entirely to the seeds, from Bountiful Gardens, who also sold a seed inoculant that I am sure helped a lot. Never had good luck with shelly beans or peas before. Also growing Bountiful Gardens lettuce, from a mixed-seed package but I think one is their Bronze Arrow, perhaps the best lettuce ever, and of which I will get a discrete package. But, all good. Just now planting another round.

Two additions, one, Fonda San Miguel, a gift from an eGer and recent houseguest, which looks beautiful and is all the nicer because it is a favorite of the giver's. Also Marcella Cucina, which I for some reason didn't get around to when it was published. I was reminded of the egregious omission when Chufi posted a pic of fava bean and lettuce soup from it, RIGHT when I have a lovely burgeoning huge crop of favas.

Per my powder-room wall, dated November 1987: I will tell you of one incident that might amuse you. I was invited a week or so ago to a 'small' caviar tasting by Mats and Daphne Engstrom, producers of a magnificent caviar taken from sturgeon in Manchurian waters and called Tsar Nicoulai. I was staying at the Stanford Court in San Francisco where they lived and they also invited James Nassikas, a mutual friend and president of the hotel. We met M.F.K.F. in the lobby and invited her to join us. The Engstroms then decided to have the tasting in a small private dining room in the hotel. They arrived promptly at eight o'clock the next morning with five pounds of caviar. Seven of us sat down to those black pearls, a mount of buttered toast rounds and endless bottles of Roederer Cristal champagne. For the first time in my life I refused a final offering of 'one more spoon full.'

This is fortuitous, Chris-- the very night before seeing this, I'd made tempura udon for dinner. (Shrimp, & onion slices on top of the soup.) I've been working on tempura in general; maybe this Cook-Off will help keep me on track!

Good score, Tolliver. I'm sending it over the psychic cookbook transom that you will find the companion volume similarly. Two recent additions for me, both Keith Floyds: Floyd on Britain & Ireland and his autobiography, Floyd in the Soup.

Ya, checking his website I see that "Around the Med" is pretty new -- 2001. What is Channel 5?

And, according to the Travel Channel, there's more to come, as Floyd Around the Med winds down it's to be followed by Floyd on Africa, which I have not seen, and, another unseen to look forward to, Floyd Uncorked! Looks like Floyd on Spain begins the last day of May, too. So yay for all that. Here's hoping they just roll through his entire catalogue.

Saw a couple of good ones this week, from the "Floyd Around the Med" series, which I hadn't seen before. The dishes he cooked in Greece, in particular, were very inspiring, an almagam of local Greek ingredients and Floyd cuisine. I have always liked how he brings his own sensibility and talent to the dishes he cooks, rather than striving for mere reproduction or putative 100% authenticity, an overrated if not bankrupt concept.

Cakers can claim Boston Cream Pie, which is clearly a cake.