kellycolorado

thanks everyone for the info. My grandmother is Belgian so I feel I have to catch up and pay tribute to my Belgian side now. My Irish and German sides have gotten more than enough attention. Thanks for listing the trappist ales. I will definitely be reading up on the Chimay website.

when I lived in Colorado Springs and couldn't get good tomatoes 10 months out of the year, Frontera Grill's chipotle salsa was always in my pantry. I found the Herdez salsa casera in the can well priced but WAY too salty. Otherwise it would have been a great solution to my salsa desperation the past 3 years.

yes!! also, KFC...

Thanks for the great info! Will a true trappist Belgian say "trappist" on the label? I love Chimay. I must try the others now... my husband is in the Rogue/Arrogant Bastard camp of "more hops is better". I need to start doing the beer shopping.

Well, about a block from Blue Chalk is Nola. They call themselves contemporary Southern. I would say upscale cajun/creole. It's not cheap but I've never had a bad meal there. I love their jalapeno cornbread most of all though. We go there a couple times a year (when we're living in Cali) because my husband is crazy about their jambalaya. He's a big chilehead. Funny you mention Blue Chalk because the one time I ate dinner there several years ago it was a very southern menu, including blue corn hush puppies and collard greens. They must have drifted away from the southern focus even moreso. For us it was a place to play darts and shuffleboard and drink beer.

This is Cal-Mex, but for a quick meal I really like Andale Taqueria in Los Gatos or Palo Alto. Their chicken is rotisserie and I love their salsas and agua frescas. It's been a staple of mine since I have a toddler in tow nowadays, though I've been eating there for 10 years. I would love to discover more (authentic) Mexican places though, especially with homemade hard tacos shells. mmm...

This arrived iembedded in the plastic bag in last Sunday's San Jose Mercury News. I set it aside for my future amusement.

wow, so many dislikes! mine are: -most fake foods -offal -can tolerate green peppers in a pinch

I craved Thai food- especially a nice spicy red curry. Or a nice Indian dish. those spices just sat so well in my tummy... and red meat, which I had pretty much given up after working summers at McD's in high school over 10 years earlier. I'm still a big beef and lamb fan 1 1/2 years later. I could eat almost anything but would gag on broccoli and the smell and taste of microwave popcorn was the worst thing ever.

yum... YES! especially in arabic and indian preparations.

bread

I am really enjoying your foodblog. Thanks for sharing your food and dining photos. The alfresco dining area looks like an oasis of peace and relaxation for enjoying meals. Your plating photos are an inspiration to me. I love seeing your kitty - big cat person here. note to self to try peppercorn sauce soon.

oops.... double post.

I love reading everyone's memories. First memory? Not sure! Most of my good memories of my mother though involved her cooking. Her mom was Belgian and she cooked almost everything from scratch- no prepackaged stuff or casseroles like most of the other neighbors in our working class Detroit suburb. Everyone wanted to eat at our house. I remember my eating food at the home of my best friend from about 2nd-7th grade. Her family was from Baghdad and the food was wonderfully exotic to me. They had a 50 lb. drum of basmati type rice and it was at every meal, cooked in tomato juice. I had my first lamb there too, and dolma, picked cauliflower, baklava, other sweets with dates..., yum! She always wanted to eat junk food and would spend her allowance on hostess snacks and Funyuns. In college I remember us all going to Taco Bell after hitting the parties and fraternities for the 59/79/99 value menu at around 1 am. Also having Indian food for the first time, a couple blocks from the dorm. One of my roommates was Indian and introduced me. I loved it but had to go by myself a lot because I couldn't find any takers among my less adventurous friends. My first Thai food the summer before college was memorable too- I was visiting my aunt in Boston and we took the "T" to Cambridge with my cousins at a Thai place. It's hard to believe both Thai and Indian were missing from the first 18 years of my life! Oh, I remember very early on going to my maternal grandmothers house in elementary school and having a cup of bouillon in a tea cup and loving the saltiness and daintiness of the cup of broth. She and I would snack on black olives together too. And my paternal grandma's house every Sunday for "dinner" at noon with my dad when he had visitation. She would usually cook a roast and I love potatoes so much I was always getting teased about my half Irish blood... well, I'm sure there's lots more but I digress.

I am in the camp that thinks organic eggs are worth the extra price- When we got our eggs from an organic farm last year, the yolks were a beautiful yellow and just tasted "eggier". Plus it was important to me to know the chicken's diet and living conditions. the Wolfgang Puck soups are way overpriced IMHO. And the ingredients aren't that impressive (additives/natural flavorings and tons of salt).

Now, if they said "Kelly, you really need to get some taste when it comes to xyz", THAT I would take personally.

Heather, this is exactly what I thought of when I saw this thread! hlshorter said: This "snobbery" topic comes up all the time on the parenting boards and it never gets resolved. With both I think that sometimes passionate people come across as sounding superior. Of course the minority ARE condescending, but that is definitely a minority IMHO. It seems (to me) that when someone says a food is "better" or they find another food "lower quality", some people take that as a personal affront on their eating decisions and are personally offended. I guess I don't totally understand that reaction because I don't take things personally. Even if someone sound holier-than-thou. I just figure they need to work on their manners or add some smilies. I go more by whether what they are saying has merit or is just blowing hot air and try to learn from as many posts as possible. does that make sense? wait, don't answer that.

I just bought a 2 cup moka pot a couple weeks ago from Ikea- I really prefer it to the drip and french press methods. It's great alternative since I don't have the time and money right now to invest in a nice home espresso setup.

Fresco, it is just unbelievable that someone with such horrible "recipes" would have her own show and cookbook. It is like being in some alternate universe. She doesn't use good bottled/jar gourmet items, she uses packaged, preservative rich, mass market, artifical color/flavor packed crap. And that's not the worst of it- I think the worst is her tablescaping or whatever it's called and her personality. It's a good show to torture people with by making them watch too though IMHO.

Carolyn, I used to watch it too probably 5 years ago in the San Francisco bay area, on Fuji TV, channel 8 I think. It was on Saturday night at 8 maybe. It was the nondubbed version. I heard there were dubbed versions, but some kind of lawsuit or disagreement ensued between Fuji TV and the producers. Half the fun was trying to figure out what the ingredient was though- Sometimes there was that one word of english on the bottom right of the screen, ie. "carp" sometimes not! And taking away the original Japanese took away some of the flavor somehow. One guy spoke japanese with lightning speed like he was on crank. It didn't translate as well into the dubbed version.

I always get my americanos short there now- otherwise they're WAY too weak. I discovered that a few months ago living in an area where 3 indie coffeeshops had closed and two more Starbucks opened in a 3 mile radius within a year.

We went to Cazuela's earlier this week- yum. (Although I like my guacamole better. ) It was spicy like requestd but I should have tasted it before he left... it needed a bit more salt and lime for my tastes. The leg of lamb was awesome, and the au gratin potatoes tasty and different. Chicken mole was good, although I'm not a huge mole fan. The decor was nice and the blue and white plates really decorative. Why can't more places have good food AND decor? Oh, I agree, Maggiano's has big portions of bland foods. (and a loud, crowded atmosphere). There are many other chains I'd rather eat at if given the choice of only Italian chains (like Macaroni Grill).

The half bushel of roasted Hatch green chiles my husband brought back from New Mexico last fall.

Also, I think people in this country are used to their food budget (especially non restaurant) being a much small percentage of their income than many places in western Europe for example. My neice had wheat and dairy allergies which she outgrew, but my sister in law was appalled at the prices at Whole Foods for non packaged foods needed to cook from scratch ( they didn't have any indie grocers so made trips to the health food stores). She was so happy when she could eat packaged goods again... back to the Easy Mac and Spaghetti-Os! It's just mind boggling to me...

Pork, I feel similarly. When I moved out here to suburban sprawl CO a few years ago, I first ate at an Applebees on our house hunting trip, and boy was it uninspired and overpriced. I joke to my husband that it symbolizes to me all that is wrong with chain restaurants. He is quite sick of my little rants whenever we pass one. About the popularity of the Walmarts and such, I think that the majority of people are going to shop where they get the best prices or the most convenience (such as a "super mart" where they can get it all in one stop). Also, the majority of people in the US don't have very good taste. (ducks) Fortunately, I think there are at the same time some great movements with farmer's markets, supporting the small grocers and more demand for quality/organic foods going on around the country. I just wish I knew more people in real life who cared about quality food.