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Sorry, but the diaphragm is a muscle (and is actually what a skirt steak/fajita is, as it actually looks like a skirt, but that's in a cow so never mind). Almost no fat at all, just muscle and pretty dense fibrous connective tissue. It separates the thoracic and abdominal cavities. It's possible that some butchers/slaughterhouses call the caul "diaphragm," but it's anatomically incorrect.

FoodTutor is technically correct, the caul that's typically referenced in literature is the amnion, or amniotic membrane, and when an infant emerges from the birth canal with some of it over his face it's considered good luck, and sometimes specifically protection against drowning. But Milagai's pretty close, as the amion actually covers the surface of the placenta (which is about the size and thickness of a large steak but a lot, um, spongier, and nothing I'm eager to eat no matter how it's prepared), and once the placenta's been delivered the amnion's pretty much just a filmy rim of tissue attached to the edge of the placenta. Delivery of a child through the placenta is really bad thing, with high risk of hemorrhage and death all around. That omentum and amnion are both called "caul" has to do with the fact that they are both filmy sorts of drapery or shawls. They are otherwise entirely unrelated from an anatomy point of view.

Cool. Anybody else here familiar with the other type of caul?

I've had, um, uneven experiences at Petite Auberge over the last year, and definitely won't be returning to South of France anytime soon. Dined for the first time at Nikolai's Roof a few weeks ago, and was distinctly underwhelmed. Decor interesting, but food not nearly worth it. The Colonnade is still rocking, as is Mary Mac's. The Peasant Pleasant has dropped off the radar (open, but with different owners), but one of the original owners, Bob Amick, is going strong with new ventures:One, Two, Piebar, Lobby, etc.

No, restos make restos touristy. It's decisions on the part of the restaurant owners/managers that lead to good restaurants turning into crap restaurants. Or restaurants simply starting out as terrible, but succeeding because they meet the expectations of visitors from out of town. This phenomenon is not confined to Paris or France. I live in Atlanta, and if you want to find poor quality, overpriced food I can tell you exactly where to find it: downtown, where the convention crowd dines exclusively.

Ditto my question. There is, by the way, potential for confusion here, as there's something else that's described as a caul that has nothing whatsoever to do with the omentum or any other fatty tissue.

I did my own kitchen design as part of a remodel/addition to my house a couple of years ago and got exactly what I wanted. Because it was part of a much larger job I had some input from my architect and interior designer, but the real nuts and bolts came down to my contractor and cabinet maker. The finished product (and a lot of other extraneous random stuff---just scroll through until you find kitchen pictures) is featured in my food blog from a year ago here. I did talk to a kitchen designer (who came highly recommended) but in the end was not happy with her "we don't do it that way" approach. About 10 years ago I did a much more basic kitchen remodel in a smaller house, and used a kitchen designer at Home Depot EXPO. I knew what I wanted, and he was able to make it happen on a very tight budget.

Great information, Voodoo. Thanks for the heads up.

Yes, you can get to IKEA using public transit if you don't mind the walk at the end. Take MARTA to the Arts Center Station (N5). Walk north on Peachtree to 17th St and turn left, taking the 17th St bridge over the freeway; you can't cross at 16th St, the official street address for IKEA, because there's no bridge there. You could also walk south to 14th St and cross there. You might want to take MARTA to IKEA and then take cab back if you've given in to the temptation to buy something bulky or heavy. Do note, though, that it can be extremely difficult to get a cab in Atlanta. No problem catching one at the downtown hotels, but getting one to come to another location can be very time-consuming, and hailing one on the street anywhere but downtown nearly impossible. The customer service desk at IKEA can probably call you a cab, but give yourself plenty of time. The store itself is pretty much the usual IKEA experience.

An unfortunate early experience, as the bar is actually a perfectly fine place to sit by yourself. An example of a cool dining encounter: I was in Salamanca for a conference. I'd arrived a day early so as to adjust to the time difference, and took the opportunity to take a tour of the old university. When I inquired about visiting it was explained to me by the young man selling tickets that one could only visit with a tour. I agreed to the tour, and then he explained that the tours were only in Spanish. Again, that was fine with me. Perplexed, he pointed out that I wouldn't understand any of the tour. I refrained from pointing out that not speaking Spanish is not the same as not understanding it, and bought a ticket. During the tour I noticed another woman who was clearly anglophone, as she was reading a guide book in English as we walked along. She was older than me, dressed a bit conservatively. After the tour was over and we'd all left the building I noticed her across the street, looking at a menu in the window of a restaurant. I approached her and asked her if she was English. "Irish, actually," she answered. I explained that I was American, and alone for lunch, and asked if she'd like to join me. She answered yes, but pointed out that she had to wait until 1:00, as she needed to attend mass first. Only a tiny bit flummoxed (mass? what had I gotten myself into?), I agreed that 1:00 would be fine, and we agreed on a place to meet. We ended up having a lovely long lunch outdoors. She was a nun, and very cool. Turned out that it was her order's saint's day, and she pretty much had to attend mass.

I routinely meet people when dining along, and will also invite other single diners to join me. Lots of interesting sorts, and I've kept up with a few of them over the years. I've never had a bad experience.

And it looks like "leaf lard" is fat rendered from the fat that accumulates in the abdominal cavity (around the kidneys, in the mesentery, and in the omentum), but it's rendered, so is no longer associated with the connective tissue and so won't work to "bundle" or wrap your dish.

Okay, imagine the abdominal cavity. Now imagine that you've made an incision in the abdominal wall, and through this incision you blow a bubble, a really large bubble of something like bubble gum except that it's actually a very thin, filmy layer of connective tissue. The bubble reaches into all the nooks and crannies of the abdominal cavity, covering the pancreas and blood vessels in the back, wrapping around the liver on the right and the spleen on the right, draping around the large and small intestine and the blood vessels that supply the intestines (forming the mesentery). Finally imagine that there's some extra bubble that folds back on itself and hangs down like a curtain in the front of the abdominal cavity (forming the omentum). Anywhere that the bubble has folded back on itself will tend to accumulate fat between the two layers, and fat accumulation is particularly prominent in the omentum. Because the omentum is also relativly avascular (compared to the mesentery) it works especially nicely as a wrapping for terrines, etc. Okay, everybody clear on this?

An update re Nikolai's Roof, mentioned upthread as a possible (though outside of Melissa H's budget) option for dining downtown. We went last night and had the Chef's Tasting Menu (similar to the version presently posted on the web site) and were thoroughly underwhelmed. Not terrible, and we ate everything, but nowhere near the level of execution of other high end restaurants in Atlanta like The Dining Room at the Ritz Carlton Buckhead or Bacchanalia or Seegers, and actually not even as good as many second tier restaurants like MidCity Cuisine or Woodfire. Service at dinner very good, if perhaps a bit more familiar than seemed quite appropriate, but the bartender in the bar afterwards (where a swing band was playing, a great surprise) was positively surly. Decor verges on surreal, possibly unchanged since the restaurant opened 30 years ago. Bathrooms up two narrow flights of stairs covered in very worn carpeting, where you're greeted by an attendant who squirts soap on your hands, turns on the water, and hands you a towel when your done. It feels you're about to do some sort of clandestine surgical procedure. I drink a lot of water, so in the end probably dropped close to $10 just visiting the WC.

Sorry. Well, not too, but sort of. Made cream of arugula and spring onion soup for lunch (served with multigrain bread from Alon's, the bakery across the street from the market where I pick up my CSA, as well as Epoisses and a cheese called Hollywood made by Sweetgrass Dairy here in Georgia). Some kohlrabi sliced and served raw. I told my husband it was good for him. His answer: "It better be." Roasting carrots with olive oil and sea salt right now for consumption later this week. The key here is for me to transfer them to the fridge before eating them right there on the spot. Spinach blanched, also ready for dinner or lunch next week.

The other things that I usually look for are kitchen linens, usually dish towels, but occasionally tablecloths or napkins. Using them reminds of the trip, and since I spend so much time in the kitchen it's a more effective reminder than some sort of bibelot might be. This time I got fairly boring towels at Monoprix (because I simply didn't have the time to do any real shopping at all). So instead of showing them I'll show you a really cool tablecloth and napkins that I bought last year in Venice, on Burano. They feature a very cool technique called faggoting, also sometimes called drawn work. The pictures are from Thanksgiving 2005.

You are not alone in this sentiment, Lucy, believe me. I generally spend a bit more time shopping when I travel, as I'm generally traveling for work and so don't have long stretches of time to devote to things like museums. But since I prefer to glean the "feel" of a place from everyday life it still works, as I eating out and sitting in bars and cafes is actually integral to my work. I always go to grocery stores, even if all my meals are already arranged and my hotel room has no means of storing food, as it's a great indicator of the general population's diet. The amount of floor/shelf space a market devotes to a particular type of item is particularly informative: breakfast cereal is an area that's expanded a lot in European markets in recent years. Even if I can't take advantage of too much in the way of fresh produce, dairy, or meat, I generally manage to find some sort of dry good items that I can use at home. This time I bought a box of anise-flavored candy. As oppose to the bulk candy that I buy to take to work, this one features a pretty picture (a scene of seduction, actually, a common motif for candy boxes) on the box that I'll keep to use later:

I re-started my CSA subscription today. End of winter, early spring crops here in the sunny south. Here's what I got: Baby spinach, cabbage, carrots, baby broccoli, turnips, arugula, onions, kohlrabi. Not pictured are salad mix and 2 lbs of frozen blueberries (that this farmer "banks" during the summer so as to be able to offer fruit share in lean months).

Other stuff I brought back: All sort of downmarket candy, including Kinder milk chocolate bars filled with that stark white creamy stuff. The label says "+ lait, - cacao", and it cracks me up. A range of Haribo items: gummy Schtroumpfs (as expected), green apple and licorice chewy candies (better than I thought they'd be), and raspberry sweets that are sort of like very dense marshmallows coated in hot pink sugar (sort of disgusting), assorted mixed wrapped sweets. Pierrot suckers, both fruit and caramel. I bring most of these to work, where they are immediately inhaled by my co-workers. I used to bring much cooler sorts of candy and cookies back from trips, and they tended to sit around a lot longer, presenting a serious risk of overconsumption to me, who had to walk by the treats table regularly.

They knew you'd be there? Because, other than Seeger's, these restaurants are generally pretty busy when I'm there. I've not been to Seeger's since the re-do, and since there are fewer tables now he may be managing to fill them.

True. But then you wake from so sound a sleep that you can go out and stay up late. Just make sure you drink lots of water. I realize that I left out some crucial information: what did I bring back? So, starting with beverages... 1. A type of pastis I'd not tried before, Plantanis. 2. Calvados Pays d'Auge, labeled both Baron de la Briere and Pierre Huet. I'd planned on getting Calvados in Normandy, but somehow the thought of dragging it around with me while we toured, and then home on the train, was a bit daunting. 3. Pimm's. I get Pimm's at home, so nothing particularly unusual or exotic about it. I'd gotten it as a backup at the same time as I picked up something I'd never tried before, Gloss de Suze. The latter is labeled as being cherry and ginger flavored, and I was expecting some faint fruit notes against a bitter background. Instead it was, well, unbelievably foul: cherry cough syrup, and not very good cherry cough syrup at that. I got Fi to try it. Ask her what she thought of it.

Seeger's has been looking around/talking about moving for pretty much forever.

Well, sometimes I skip the half day of sightseeing in favor of a few hours in a cafe. Or two.

You don't scrub down all the surfaces of the stove, including the buttons and knobs?

But it's also not atypical. Depending on the etiology, onset can be rapid, and particularly rapid if there's a lot of pre-formed toxin in the food item. There's basically no way to know in this instance.