Mabelline

This is an entirely serious question, Craig, if I can intrude on your wineknowledge...have the gene researchers of grape varieties found like the ancient varieties, where their locus originated, and what were like say Roman Empire or Moor origins? I know that people like the A.& M. sea research teams have retrieved wine residues from ancient wrecks, so I was wondering what you have found to be authenticated grape varieties from an ancient source? When you read the old literature, you come across all these famous ancient vintages, and I know there has been wine dna'd from Crete and Thera. I don't even know what I'm asking except can we trace a line to what kept Homer happy?

As a child, I was told "don't believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see," and that has pretty well helped me along. I view A.A.Gill as a 'personality' who is trying to come across as an acerbic cross of Oscar Wilde and Ab Fab. When someone is that vitriolic in their outright condemnation of a place with vastly different reviews from other less 'motivated' places, I cast a jaundiced eye. After all verbal volleyball is the main pastime with a lot of the tabloid writers, no? It is not fun, amuuussswiiinngg, or informative about a particular place. They MAY have a bad day; understood- but a machinegun job out of pure hedonistic preening is something most people will take for what it is---plain old bull****.

Don't you all think the amount of 'uncontrollable' salt you consume has a lot to do with your perception of salt-taste? If I use canned goods in a large amount in a recipe, I drain, rinse, and depending on the meat salt very little, or don't salt at all. With meat, I feel it has to have some salt. And, I agree wholeheartedly with the acidic suggestion- I use lemon, lime, and a variety of vinegars to bring up the salt/sweet balance. And I don't ever leave out the pepper...which varies in what type of pepper to the type of food.

The claypot chicken with lily buds sounded scrumptious to me-for I am just home from radical hospital time and any kind of Asian cold weather eats is sounding good. I am also a complete sucker for anything lily buds, velvet chicken, or heroically hot thick and pork. And I am now starting to sound fanatical.Sorry...

Ah me, I've got to tell you about Cosmic Spaghetti. You have a lot of empty-pockets college kids. You throw down all your money. You have enough to get 4 or 5 gallons of wine. You also have enough to get the fixin's for a humongous-ass pot of spaghetti. And you got a convenient non-student dealer who never ups his share of nothing, and he has first-class thai sticks. Go get all the ingredients, start passing wine around, and pinch a goodly quantity of that t.s. to make up your sauce. You can wilt it down in oil, or just use like a seasoning, but you will not ever forget that spaghetti. I can verify you'll end up with a very untypically peaceful assembly for collegiates, because it'll knock their mind off it's pedistal. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas?Are you all just figments of my imagination? Gertrude Stein made a comment once that she always kept some live lobsters in her bathtub in Paris so they would be fresh at hand "And besides, it kept Ernest (Hemingway) from passing out in their bathtub." You gotta love that.

Nessa, I don,t know if these are the best fajitas in DFW, but for Valentine's day, you could not miss by going to Joe T. Garcia's. It's a texmex landmark and you'll get good groceries.

Lemons.

On the subject of tomatoes that are good in Texas: Porter Pink - I understand that after the Porter Seedsmen all died in Stephensville, they tried to improve the Porter with limited success. But I recommend any of their seedstock or plants, because they are GOOD! Wilhite Seeds in Poolville Texas has an excellent Texas Grown program. Get their catalogue... Onion sets definitely from Brown's Omaha Plant Farm in Omaha, TX (duh). These are beautiful starts, believe me.www.bopf.com You asked about the lightbulbs, the yellow pears are stupendacular! I have always had extreme success by transplanting about 6 to 8 plants in a circle about 5 feet in diameter, and caging it with a circle of wire mesh (for pouring concrete) about 6 feet in diameter. It's 5 feet high. The tomatoes will be SOOO good after they have grown themselves some shade. Tomato is the true crop that thrives on neglect! I read on another thread lovebenton0, that you used some back-fence grapes. They are mustang grapes, no? Those grapes make phenominal wine, jams, jellies, and preserves. I really miss those grapes, as well as the good time spent out chasing them down! Lucky, LUCKY you, girl! One more thing. There's a GOOD roma-which the old fellers called sheeps' cods- that'll make you an excellent paste tomato- you can get a lot of success off'n them, too.

I guess I've got horns right now, because I don't like the taste any alcohol picks up from aluminum cans. Drink my beer in a bottle, can't even imagine wine. But hey, there's a market, so that'll bypass me. I'm thinking that PERHAPS this may be a way for guys to score with college girls, since that's around the same time girls swear off beer as too many calories in sororities!

Damn, I feel like this calls for a missive about that on again, off again relationship I'm in with Beef (that big hunk!). Will have to look our old letters up!

Pan, I reckon he meant that eGers don't pay too much attention to required crap to be healthy because we pretty much eat from all the food groups by choice and availability. Edit to disregard the bad english and unintended pun

Yep,and if you can't eat the geese, you could always use them to patch blown-out tires!

This is kind of OT but you see that unrelenting population of sparrows everywhere; they stem from 18,gads 18!! that were brought back to America by an industrialist who liked their song(??) and set them loose in a park. I cannot, however remember if it was Central Park or somewhere else like Baltimore or Boston. 18 lousy little birds! Grrrrr!

What he he both said. The only thing I would add is to get yourself a marble slab from a monument company, and keep it exclusively for the cold- sensitive stuff.

Ah, you must have read my mind. We contacted the owner who was actually letting them out because he was too cheap to feed them properly. He starts getting a genuine case of the ass with me and my sister. At any rate, we went down to the neighborhood CO-OP and invited anyone with a shotgun to come to that field at dawn. It sounded like a Dick Cheney pheasant hunt. What made me sooo mad about the alfalfa was that it had been cut and baled about 1 1/2 weeks before. We were irrigating it at that time, so the alfalfa was real susceptible to non- recovery at that point.

While we are talking about animals causing havoc to be wreaked in fields, etc., I have to add the effect that 200 of my neighbor's guinea hens made to a 50 acre alfalfa field. It was pitiful.

Hot about a kick-butt Chicken and Dumplings? Chili, chili, chili (I love chili). Thai roasted green curry pork. Posole!

And some still have their little bitty shoelaces attached

Man, I did a survey for Nielsen, and I didn't get to taste any wines! I was robbed!

MM, thank you for that site. Russians in particular seem to have a lot of Brucellosis. If you ever notice, I can get carried away about B. There's a good reason. My auntie Evelyn caught B. from contaminated cattle she and my uncle were butchering. The disease Undulant Fever is a tidy little side effect. Once contracted, she couldn't get around warm-blooded animals any longer, which was disasterous for her and my unc. because they milked out at least 150 cows.

OOhwee, feral hogs. I believe that the Arkansas razorbacks are outcrosses of escaped domestics and wild. Then some brilliant guy 100 years ago imported the real wild and scary Russian ferals to Texas. They are a blight. But they will cookup good with a smoker. My middle daughter got 49 stitches from a feral hog when we were in a deercamp. The hog got the death penalty.

Sam's is good. I never had a Costco till I got up here. But Sam's gets down with their samples, too. I used to make two trips a month from Weatherford to the one on Cherry Lane in Fort Worth. They always gave out skinny slices of pizza at that kiosk. Yum.

I went so many circuits of Costco with a NZ lamb demonstration going on that I'm pretty certain the security was summoned. It was THAT good. But Costco is definitely the undisputed ruler for sampling here.

Ah, I got to tell you about my little kid in a fur coat(one of my cats)... green olives drive him absolutely BONZO!!! I always keep some, and my cat Sneaker, will roll on the ground, catch the olive in his mouth, fling it around etc. Has ANYBODY ever seen a cat act like this? Also, both my cats will clean you out of watermelon or cantaloupe, if it's sliced anywhere near them.

pepperAnn: Welcome to the big eG! You shall find a multitude of positions, opinions,recommendations, and pure nonsense. Got to vote for 5 Bros. It's just plain ole good. Cooking pasta. I've always gone with the method of Craig Claiborne: Start with cold water. That has something to do with the molecules available in cold vs. hot. Bring the water to a furious boil, put pasta in, bring back to boil for 2 minutes, then turn off the burner, cover the pot, and wait 8 minutes. Don't knock it till you try it.Killer!!!