markk

Well, the ingredients are right on the label, or in the case of cold cuts, the wrapper. So even if they have it peeled back past the ingredient list (which frequently repeats with the logo), there's usually a backup one unopened on display (or many of them), at least in most of the stores that I go to. As I say, I've been in salumerie in Italy reading the ingredient labels on Mortadella, and they have many chemicals in them, including MSG, at least the last time I looked. I can't say for sure whether the one that Jerry's carries has it or not, of course, because they wouldn't let me see the label (he says, chuckling).

Well, I'm flabbergasted by this experience. I've been hearing about Jerry's Deli in Englewood for some time, so the other day I made a trip up there. It had some interesting stuff. In the deli case were three different varieties of Mortadella, which the man told me were from Italy; they were all fairly large in diameter. I asked if I could read the ingredients, but they didn't have their wrappers, so he took an entirely different brand (different name, different size) from the case and asked if I could read that one. I replied that I wanted to read the ingredients on the "Italian" one before I bought it. He told me that the ones with wrappers were in the back, and that it would be too much trouble. So I left. Who needs an unpleasant scene? I can shop elsewhere without one. Out of curiosity, I called the store later and asked to speak to the store manager (they don't have one), and then I asked to speak to the owner. He got on the phone and asked what the problem was, so I told him the story. He asked "So, what's the problem? Mortadella is pork - you don't know Mortadella?" I should have just hung up, I guess, although that would have been rude, so I explained that I know mortadella quite well, and that I was surprised in Italy to see that most of the brands have lots of chemicals, including MSG. He replied "no mortadella has msg, you're wrong. It's only pork - you don't know mortadella." Intrigued, I asked him "so are you saying that the product you carry is completely natural?" and he answered, "all mortadella is natural - no chemicals in Italy - no MSG - they don't even know what that is. You say you know mortadella, but the problem is, you don't know mortadella." Well, with that kind of misinformation, I'd be afraid to shop there. And with that attitude coming from the top, I'm certainly not going back there. I'm just flabbergasted. I guess the deli guy just didn't want to go in the back and get an unopened mortadella, like he'd have to do if he finished one, I guess. But I thought the owner would have taken a totally different attitude than he did. Anybody familiar with this place? Any thoughts?

Well... the case is made by people struggling to deal with the high cost of medical care, hospitalization costs, and health insurance, that all the people who eat the double bacon cheeseburgers (with extra salt on their fries) and then at some point have heart attacks and are stacked up in line at the cath labs in the hospital waiting for angioplasty, are driving up the cost of medical care in one way or another. Don't get me wrong - I'm not really in favor of legistlating what we can eat and can't, but I do realize that for most of the population, healty choices are just not available in the supermarkets, and I see that in most families where both parents work, and limited time is available for shopping and cooking for the family, it's sometimes necessary to make your food purchases from what's available as you fly down the supermarket aisles - where, in my opinion, almost all of the processed foods are deadly bad for you. If you're not cooking from scratch, I don't see how you could avoid unhealthy levels of sodium (and other things) in the foods offered for sale to you.

Sure. You can use the basil-pops anytime you want to add the taste of fresh basil to... well, anything! You can drizzle it on tomatoes, you can use it anywhere, any time you want. I do it all the time.

This IS a great thread! I'd love for Lobster Thermidor and Lobster Newburgh to make a comeback as well.

I'll have to check the two Hoboken locations and report back. As of recently, they've been totally without merit of any kind - nothing more than what the other supermarket chains have, at somewhat higher prices. And since we have a Shop Rite here that carries really high-end items, it has been putting the two Kings stores to shame.

I saw the La Quercia prosciutto at the WF in Edgewater, NJ last week.

Today I remembered a story that I have repressed for years, and I wanted to share it with my fellow gulleteers: Some years ago I came back from a long trip to France. A woman who worked in one of my local food stores said to me "I haven't seen you in a while, were you away?" And I replied, "yes, I just got back from France." So she asked, "How was it?" And I replied, "It was great, and the food was great!" And she answered, shaking her head slightly, "I don't like French food!" To which all I could say was, "Oh." Then she added, "My son's a chef, and he makes French food, and I don't like it at all!" So I perked up a bit, and asked, "Where does he cook?" And she replied, "Oh, he's the chef at the Holiday Inn down on the truck highway in [the industrial zone]. He's always cooking French food, and I don't like it at all."

I'm just saying, I was to Bermuda once, so I can tell you that Europe isn't all it's cracked up to be. And as for European and other exotic foods, if you really have to have those, you really can't do better than right here in the US of A either. Please, oh please, tell me that you're kidding or being sarcastic or fecetious or . . . in any case, not serious! ←

You'd be doing all that traveling to all those different continents for nothing, when you could see duplicates of all those things just as good in one place! What's the point? I mean, I used to think that EPCOT was the best you could get, but now that we have Las Vegas there's really no need to leave the US at all !!!

Sure. I do it all the time. I've even followed plates coming out of the kitchen, and I usually do a clever stroll through the dining room (on the pretext of going to the little boy's room, or if the route there is a direct one from my table, going out and coming back and pretending to get lost on the way to my table so I can do a reconnaissance of the room). Of course, now that I'm older and wiser, I generally do this before I order. And lots of time I'll stop the closest waiter and ask "what dish is that?". And if it happens that I see a dish and want to change my order after I have given it, I always rush up to somebody and ask, as quickly, and as nicely as I can, if I can swtich or if it's too late. (Always, they check with the kitchen, and probably more times than not they make the switch, unless it's the case that my plate is coming out of the kitchen at that moment). But if it's okay to add this thought, as a rule I usually go into the kitchen before a meal if I have been there before and have met the chef, and sometimes, frankly, even if I haven't, to ask what the chef himself recommends (well, this may be a whole other thread, and require an entirely different class of medications).

I just wrote to her and told her it's crueler and more harmful to lull them into a false sense of security by raising them gingerly and treating them well, and then one day killing them, wrapping them in suffocating cryovac, and sending them to supermarkets so people can take them home and put them in a hot oven. http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/members/voss.asp

Yes, I used the wrong word - I shouldn't have said "grade". But what I was curious about is how many other supermarkets are offering so many "types" or "brands" of beef; finding the same cut of steak with 5 different 'pedigrees' in one store seems unusual to me.

I don't like boneless, skinless chicken breasts. In fact, even when I eat roast chicken, I try to avoid the breast meat as well. To me it's a dry, boring taste (even the ones that they now get to cook up rubbery but moist). But my point is, I only think of boneless, skinless chicken breast as a dietetic/low fat option, or a punishment. What got me thinking was a post in the dinner thread where one gulleteer posted a photos of a chicken breast dish that looks fabulous, saying "Sunday dinner my wife wanted chicken breasts so I made this: pan seared breasts, with tomato butter sauce, crisped homemade lomo (cured pork loin) on top of a mixture of asparagus and mushrooms that was seared on very high heat till a little charred, inspired by a recipe in Paula Wofert's Slow Med Kitchen (also had garlic, pancetta, lemon juice and olive oil). This was a very good way to add flavor to plain old chicken breasts." And judging from the photo, it was a winning preparation. http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...dpost&p=1261286 I'd be happy to eat that, but of course, it's the butter, pancetta, and pork loin that's needed to make the chicken breast palatable, but still you'd need to be sure to incorporate all the "stuff" into each bite. So my real question is, (whether or not I'm explaining this correctly) why would you crave a chicken breast to begin with, even as a base, if all of that other stuff is needed to make it good?

I find it to be a a mixed bag, some places too salty, some not, but they're usually consistent - a place that's too salty for me is generally always too salty. (I usually assume the chef is a smoker.) And in these places, if I return, I always ask them to make the food less salty. I also eat a reduced-salt diet. I'm not as strict as I should be, but one thing I notice is that cold-cuts are frequently so salty that I have to spit them out. And on two occasions I've had to return smoked fish to the store where I got it, one case being a piece of whitefish so salty that it burned and stung my mouth and I had to spit it out. I guess it's what you're used to, though. When I was just out of college (many, many years ago) I had an older friend (sort of a mentor) who used to cook dinner for many people every night (we were in the theater business), and I would help him cook. He'd put a large batch of something up in the afternoon to cook, and of course he'd salt it liberally when he started. Then, he'd come back to taste it every half-hour or so as it cooked, and each and every time, time he'd decide it needed more salt, and add a heaping hand-full. (He was a heavy smoker, btw.) By the time a dinner for 10 was done, he'd have put several cups of salt in it! A lot of times, when we sat down to eat, many people would still think it needed salt; it was then and there that I personally learned that rather than have my food absorb tons of salt in cooking, I always take some out, cook it down rapidly to taste it concentrated, and if it needs salt, add a little bit to see if that corrects it. If it does, I let the dish cook without it, opting to salt it at the end - this works just fine, and probably results in clearer flavors, too. For me the little bit of salt at the end does the trick and is perfectly satisfying, and certainly cuts down on our consumption. But if restaurant food is sometimes too salty for me, I'm sure it woudn't be for my old friend Mr. Salt.

My local supermarket (a ShopRite) now carries 5 grades of beef! In addition to the "regular" beef, in the main meat section, there's a separate refrigerated case that contains (in addition to veal, and a large assortment of D'Artagnan products) the following grades of beef: • Certified Angus Beef • All-Natural Certified Angus Beef • "Nature's Reserve" all-natural, grass fed, free-range Australian Beef • Dry-aged Certified Angus Beef from Buckhead Beef Co. (they may be the people who supply Ruth's Chris) Not all cuts are available in all grades. The Buckhead Beef is only rib steaks, fillet-mignon, shell steaks, and porterhouse/t-bones, each steak individually vacuum packed in cryovac. Some of the other brands include not only those, but top round and flank steaks as well. All this comes at a time for me when I'm trying to limit my intake of fatty meat! So I haven't tried them all. I've had the Australian grass fed, which is incredibly lean, and of course, not as good (although I recently made a rib roast from them which was really good), and I've had the flank steak from the All-natural angus beef, which was tender and delicious. But, how many grades of beef does YOUR supermarket have? Anybody seeing anything like this?

As recently as two or three years ago (haven't been back since, sadly), in Alsace (but mostly in the southern end) there were a lot of restaurants (where almost no American tourists go) that had gone either entirely non-smoking, or which had large and strictly "non-smoking" separate dining rooms. I was chatting with the owner of one of them when a French couple arrived for dinner. The host looked down at her seating chart and said to the woman "I have a table for you in the non-smoking room", and the diner replied "Perfect!" I think that a lot of French people are non-, or anti-smoke, as well.

A Texan goes to Israel, and sees a guy with a rake working a small patch of land by the road. He stops and asks him what he's doing. The Israeli replies, "Well, I'm a farmer, and this is my farm, and I'm farming." The Texan drawls, "Well, I've got me a spread in Texas, and when I wake up at sunrise, I get in my car at one end of my property, and by nightfall I still haven't reached the other end". And the Israeli replies, "Yeah, I had a car like that once!" (This is to say that my brain is more addled than my cellar is large.)

You drink a lot of wine. You forget a lot of things.

I found some older California wines in my cellar that I'm thinking of bringing to a dinner party. I wonder if anyboy has any experience or preditions as to their drinkability. They've been stored quite well (at least the 79 and 82 Bordeaux that's been stored in the same place have done just fine). Thanks. 1977 Ridge York Creek Cabernet 1980 Ridge Cabernet Monte Bello 1979 Markham Napa Valley Cabernet 1982 Markham Napa Valley Cabernet 1982 Duckhorn Vineyards Napa Valley Cabernet - 1985 Grgich Hills Napa Valley Chardonnay

Yes. And I have a glass top electric range as well, with the knobs lined-up in a row at the side, and although they have little diagrams showing which controls which burner, I apparently have a mental block about understanding them. So I'm forever turning on a burner under something that's using the space to rest on. And I can tell you, you haven't smelled anything until you've melted one of those styrofoam boats that the supermarket packages meat in. Plus when you're called to the kitchen by the stench and you lift the thing off the burner, it makes fine little strings as it stretches and dries in the air, and it won't come off of anything! So, yes, I do. (The only thing is that now that I'm a little older and wiser, knowing that I still can't learn the knobs, I try to make a habbit of clearing off the entire stove before I light even one burner.)

Well, if you're looking for Cantonese, a perennial favorite is New Luck Kee, which was called Sun Luck Kee when it was on Mott St. in Manhattan for ever (I guess). They relocated to Flushing several years ago (and only just recently got around to reprinting their menus). It's a great place for seafood and lobster and traditonal Cantonese favorites.

Well, I know a lot of parents who buy organic milk, and somehow when you reach for something that kids need and which you traditionally think of as "wholesome", the carton that says "organic" makes you think that the other milks which don't, and are right there in the same dairy case, have all kinds of hormones antibiotics and things that don't belong in milk, and are not what you want to feed to your growing children. Besides, I don't think kids can taste the difference between organic and non-organic milk. But when it comes to cereals, the "health-food" cereals that don't have the high-fructose corn sweetner or partially hydrogenated fats, etc., are usually in a totally different aisle, perhaps even an aisle that many people don't even venture into, so it may never occur to them that there's a choice; but also, in this case, kids can certainly taste the difference, and if you give a kid an unsweetened whole grain cereal instead of his Frosted Count Chocula Loops, he'll likely spit it out and demand the regular cereal. So it might be that parents who are rushing through the supermarket don't know that there are choices in things other than milk and eggs, and it might be that if they're only somewhat health-conscious or just paying lip-service to it, they can get their kids to drink organic milk much easier than they can get them to eat other healthier options, which require some pretty difficult parenting, and ease their consciences with the thought that they did buy the organic milk and eggs at least.

I snoop too because I am intrigued by what people buy and eat, but I would say that the people I see buying organic milk and eggs are pretty much not buying processed foods, and I'm always impressed by that, that they got it right, I mean. But I also see a frighteningly lot of people buying entire carts full of crap; I mean the other day I saw a woman with a 7 or 8 year old girl (who was severely overweight), and they had a cart full of Count Chocula and Fruit Loops, cartons of fruit "drinks" that are pure high-fructose corn sweetner, and the complete line Hostess and Tastycake packaged cupcakes and things like Twinkies and the chocolate things with the creme inside, and lots of candy. They had nothing organic, or even resembling food, in their cart, and I see this all the time. On a related note, today I bought Grape Jelly for the first time in perhaps 20 years, and as I looked at the brands in the supermarket, I saw that Smuckers had an "organic" version; whatever kind of grape was in there (I didn't notice but I presume it's organic), I noticed that it contained only "organic sugar" but no high-fructose sweetner, but that all the other brand did.

I don't haggle at the Farmers Market. I appreciate what the farmers are doing and that they're trying to make a living, and I always pay the posted price. I too find that when I buy a large amount of something they usually throw something in, an in turn I always try to thank them with my return business. But - I do haggle almost everywhere else in life. (One example is those 'pushcarts' that they have in the center as you walk through most Malls -I haggle like mad in those, and always get lower prices. But then again, these people aren't up at daybreak plowing fields for whatever profit they make on string beans.)