therese

Lovely, Chufi, just lovely. And fall is the perfect time to talk about traditional Dutch fare. Really looking forward to more.

I bring my lunch from home and eat in the lunch canteen with my colleagues. I'm actually passing up free food to do so, as my meals are entirely subsidized: unlimited items, portions as large as I'd like, etc. Many of colleagues don't even seem to notice. Those that do are generally envious, as my food's obviously better (and healthier) than what they're eating. Restaurants can be easy or hard, depending on which ones they choose. Can you steer them to those that offer reasonable options for you? If you just go ahead and pack your lunch every day you'll have a back up plan for those days they want to go to someplace that you'll find difficult---just plead a last minute deadline and eat in your office.

Chiming in here from a different weight loss thread here at eG, the Weight Watchers thread. Weight Watchers is nowhere near so fussy about what you eat and when you eat it, but a lot of eG'ers end up in the end eating pretty much exactly what Montignac recommends because it's the easiest and healthiest way to stay on the diet, lose weight, and not feel hungry. It's been very effective for me. Anyway, specific suggestions re lunch outside of the home (which is also the single biggest issue for me---I work full-time and also have two kids, so mornings are tightly scheduled): Prepare single servings of lunch items ahead of time, and store them already packaged in the fridge. Whole grain and roasted veggie-based salads are standards for me. Lentils (either as a stew or as a basis for a salad) are great, particularly this time of year. I use little re-usable plastic tubs that stack nicely and can be washed in the dishwasher. If I am too rushed to pack lunch and have to eat in the canteen/cafeteria I choose roasted chicken (a standard item for us) and salad (we get to make our own, so usually spinach and cucumbers and tomatoes). Cook on the weekend (excellent replacement for Lucy's "pastry therapy"----I simply can't have pastry of any sort in the house unless I'm willing to eat it). I get a large box of veggies every Saturday AM (via a CSA program), so am compelled to either eat or cook pretty much everything that day or the next. This turns out to be an excellent way of increasing your consumption of good foods, and of course you can just go ahead and package whatever you've made for lunches throughout the week.

I own a couple of aprons that people give me, but rarely wear them. If I'm in a hurry and it's a weeknight I cook in whatever I wore to work, including high heels. No big issues with spills, but then I'm pretty tidy when I cook. Weekends I'm more likely to already be dressed casually so no big deal either way. For entertaining I'll have done most of the prep earlier in the day. No apron over what I'm wearing for guests unless it's something really nice, and then I'm unlikely to be wearing it to entertain at home in any case.

She's still drinking milk, right? Plenty of protein there. I wouldn't sweat it. As Chris points out, her food preferences will change drastically over the next 20 years or so, at approximately 6 month intervals. About a year ago my 12 year old daughter announced that she was vegetarian. I had to point out that vegetarians actually eat vegetables, and that she was really more of a "breadarian". Except for fried chicken and country ham, of course. Oh, and kobe beef carpaccio and foie gras. Little kids routinely alternate days of heavy eating with days of near starvation. Again, nothing to worry about. Hey, where are those baby pictures I keep asking about? Isn't anybody listening to me?

No, to the intense disappointment of a friend of mine who grew up in bayou Louisiana but converted to Judaism as an adult, in deference to her husband's family (as, truth be told, I don't think he really cared so much). Anyway, they are now what her husband calls "cajun kosher": they don't eat pork, but shrimp and crawfish are okay. It would be pretty difficult to be Jewish and even remotely observant of dietary laws and still enjoy cajun fare.

Heh heh. Did (or will) Chris have a wee heart attack when he saw that? More baby pictures, please. Food-related, of course, but pictures with cute babies always very good in a blog. And I'm also one of those people who needs to steer well clear of halvah lest she eat herself into a coma.

My last afternoon in Greece I used to visit a bit more of Athens, including a visit to the central market, where I took the following pictures, in no particular order. I always make a point of asking whether it's okay to take a picture, and in Athens those queries of course started with (in Greek) "Good day. Do you speak English?" Very very friendly butchers in Greece. Lots and lots of pigs' feet. Or maybe they weren't all pigs' feet:

That evening I joined the meeting faculty (about 30 of us) for dinner at a fish house on the waterfront in Glyfada. I've no idea of the name, and it was a bit grimy. Greek starters (taramosalata, etc.) which I followed with fried squid. A German colleague and I decided that we'd like to split a small serving of fish, so I ordered the small fish. As it turns out small fish meant a large serving of lots of very small fried fish, eyeballs and bones and everything. Fortunately I don't mind very small fried fish with eyeballs and bones and everything, and neither did my German colleague. The next day featured breakfast and lunch at the conference center. Grim, very grim indeed. For breakfast each day I ate yogurt with either honey or cherry preserves and coffee. For lunch I ate Greek salad, skipping various fried savory bits and some truly repulsive-looking non-Greek pastries. Dinner that night was at George's Steak House. More Greek starters, Greek salad, mixed grill (enough meat to feed my family for a week), and fruit to finish. All of it good, the fruit absolutely astoundingly great. Sweetest watermelon I can recall eating. Breakfast and lunch the next day still unappealing. I was starting to lose weight. Dinner that night wass catered by a hotel about 1 km from the conference, Hotel Phoenix. An easy walk if there'd been sidewalks, but of course there was no sidewalk, so harrowing. In the end not nearly so harrowing as the food provided by the very drear Hotel Phoenix: dessicated gray lamb chops, gray steamed broccoli, sticky pasta salad, dessicated gray frozen fish portions. I took some tomatoes and cucumbers and figured I'd eat something later. All around me people (predominantly Europeans) were consuming this food. Some people were actually returning to the buffet line. Apparently these people are extremely polite, because this food was, without question, the worst food I've ever been served, and I'm including elementary school cafeteria meals in that category. Breakfast the next day looked pretty wonderful compared to the previous night's dinner. For lunch (oh dear, those nasty pastries again) I revolted, dragging a Danish colleague off to Glyfada town center to look for edible food. We found it at a taverna just across the street from George's steaks. We'd paused to see if they looked open, and were instantly approached by a waiter who invited us in to see the kitchen. We chose tomato and cucumber salads and moussaka, followed by fruit. The best Greek food of my visit. On the way back from the hotel I purchase a kg (well, actually more like 1.5 kg once he'd finished tossing a few more in) of fresh figs from an old guy selling them from his car. Excellent. Dinner that night was another hotel dinner (yes, another walk along the highway of death), this time at a fancier place with a much posher, actually edible buffet. Not as good as I'd expect for a similar dinner in the U.S., but edible. Breakfast next day yogurt, which I supplement with fresh figs. Lunch is just figs. Dinner that night was a dance at the conference center, which meant no stroll along the highway of death but also possibly a dinner even worse than that offered by the Hotel Phoenix, but it was actually edible. Not great, but edible. I toured Athens the last day of the meeting (more in later post), and returned to Gyfada to change clothes and join the group for a bus ride back into Athens and dinner in a different taverna in the Plaka (I've got the name here somewhere if you really want to know). Greek starters, Greek salad, our choice of a couple of meats, and some very nice Greek sweets. We asked for more sweets and they said no. Oh well. Sorry no pics, but then again, maybe it's a good thing. This meeting was, by the way, planned with local representatives who were on site and could have checked things out ahead of time. And perhaps they did. It was also reportedly a fairly expensive place to hold a meeting.

Back from my trip to Glyfada. Glyfada is small seaside town with a marina that houses all sorts of small yacht-type craft. There's a small town center with a church and shops (it's actually known for its shopping---lots of upmarket designers like Armani and Hugo Boss and so forth, but not interesting to me since I've got all that at home in Atlanta) and restaurants. Hotels and condos and posh vacation homes behind high gates surround the town center. Upmarket night clubs front the beach. There's a nice tram that runs from the town center all the way into Athens. It's cheap, clean, and very modern (including air conditioning). It's pretty much the only thing in Glyfada that meets all of these criteria. The tramline runs parellel to the coast road, which features 8 lanes of traffic (four in each direction) and very little in the way of effective traffic control. Public transit buses travel in excess of 130 km/hr, and of course they're in the slow lane to the far right. This wouldn't really be an issue were it not for the fact that there's very little in the way of sidewalks along much of this road. There was sidewalk between the conference center (where I was lodged) and the town center, but to the other side of the conference center there was either none (dirt and broken glass only) or it was entirely blocked by cars. So we came to call the coast road the "highway of death". My first evening in Glyfada I was in charge of picking the restaurant for myself and three colleagues. I chose a Lebanese restaurant that I'd passed earlier in the day, and we had a lovely meal. If you're visiting Glyfada and want to know more PM me and I can (possibly) direct you to it. The next day I dragged a different group of colleagues with me to Athens. We stopped for lunch at a taverna in the Plaka, on the small road that's to the immediate east of the Parthenon. This is the view from the restaurant: This is the restaurant and one of the staff (presumably family): These tables are located outside the garden. We ate inside the garden, which featured a very pretty pomegranate tree. My pictures inside the wall all include colleagues, so I won't include them. The service was friendly and the food decent standard issue Greek, as good as I expect to find in the U.S.

One. Love it, love everything about it.

Ah, so that was you. The link in your link doesn't quite take me back to the original piece, which I recall as being enjoyable enough that I wouldn't mind re-reading it if you would be so kind as to track it down for me.

So let me first say that I do think it's just fine for Yankees (or rather people who don't happen to be from the southeastern U.S.) to write about "Southern" food. On the other hand, as somebody who is from the southeast but doesn't happen to sound like it, I am not infrequently privy to non-southerners' discussions of all things southern as somehow inferior to the remainder of the country. We're traditionally the poorest and least educated area, and these days we get to carry around the additional label of racist. Far from arriving at their subject with "a paucity of pre-conceived notions", non-southerners not infrequently already have an impression of southern food that includes deep-fried everything, overcooked vegetables (with added meat), and the world's sweetest desserts. These preconceptions are by no means universal, and certainly I'd expect anybody who was interested in writing about food to be able to approach the topic with an open mind. But I've also seen too many people spit out boiled peanuts and complain that their pole beans are overcooked to not be a bit wary about the possibility of southern food be interpreted out of context. All food is about culture, and southern culture is reviled or relegated to the terminally quaint by many.

Post 191 in this same thread.

Somewhere around here on eGullet I've described scuppernong/muscadine eating strategy step-by-step. I'll link to it it when I find it. I generally don't eat the seeds (very bitter) or skin (bitter and tough), preferring the inside flesh as well as the very sweet flesh that clings to the skin. If the grape is very ripe (feels loose on the grape, generally more bronze color, stronger smelling grape) the skin will have lost much of its bitterness as well as tough texture, and I may eat it.

Given that you're first stop was DFM I'm assuming you're at Emory? I live nearby (walking distance) and can give you tips on neighborhood restos. As for great Asian, try Super H Mart for Korean and Japanese. Be sure to check out the Mozart Bakery to your immediate right as you walk in, as well as the food court stuff. The perimeter of the store (which is a very clean supermarket) features a number of independent vendors selling all sorts of specialty stuff. Lots of stuff to try. You should also look into the various Indian restaurants and shops on Lawrenceville Hwy/Church/Dekalb Industrial (near DFM). All sorts of nice stuff, including vegetables that not even DFM carries.

Drinks at Pegu Club after dinner this last Saturday. We arrived 9-ish to a not-too-full room and took the last two seats at the bar. Beautiful space, staff pleasant. Things got louder (but not too loud) and crowded (but not unpleasantly so) as the evening wore on. I started out with an Earl Grey Mar-TEA-ni and quite liked it. My dinner date got the Pegu Club, and so I got to taste that as well, similarly very nice. Things get a little blurry somewhere along the line, so I'm not entirely sure what followed: as the Mar-TEA-ni reminded me of the sort of frothy drinks my mother used to drink (but that I never tasted) I asked for a Brandy Alexander (very good) and a Pink Lady (which our bartender had to look up, and with good reason). I finished up with a Negroni, again for sentimental reasons (involving an old boyfriend and some lost time in Milan some years ago). Altogether very pleasant evening, and perhaps the best thing about it was that when I realized the next day that I'd left my AmEx in the bill folder (hmm, wonder how ever I managed that...) I wasn't too concerned about it having gone truly astray. Sure enough, my phone message about it early in the day was returned that afternoon, and I promptly dropped 'round to retrieve it.

I'm there for a week, actually staying in the building where the meeting's to be held, so that will be very convenient indeed. My first full day on the ground (jet lag recovery day) will be Monday, and it does look like the light rail/tram goes to Glyfada, so a day in Athens proper will be feasible. Then it's three pretty grueling days of work and work dinners, followed a couple of slightly less grueling days (and then off to Italy for week's holiday). My previous experience with taxi drivers in Thessaloniki this time last year is congruent with your advice re their colleagues in Athens. No dining before 9:00 pm, definitely (fortunately one can fritter away hours and hours in very nice bars/cafes), but I'll have to make a point of staying away from U.S. and northern European colleagues who get testy if they're not fed by 7:00. I'll check out your previous thread for some possibilities.

I'm visiting Glyfada (reportedly a beachy sort of suburb just outside of Athens) for work later this month. I won't have a car, but will likely be with some others who do. Anything in the area of note?

So you've moved to Atlanta from St. Simon's? Or you're just in town visiting? Tell us what you got and we'll tell you what you missed. Also note that there are at least 10 other gigantic ethnic markets with a wide range of unusual stuff that you can visit here. DFM is actually sort of "market lite" by Atlanta standards.

From Atlanta? Hmm, wonder who's left town recently...

It all looks great. Thanks for blogging.

Meat dishes very nice, but we also particularly enjoyed the pumpkin on our one visit this spring. Stop by the sweets counter on your way out.

I churned a lot of butter as a child in my grandmother's churn (which I still have but no longer use), also using clabbered/soured cream to start. We didn't chill it before churning, and had no problem getting the butter to "come". The butter had to be worked a fair amount after churning to get all the whey out. The final product was at least as hard as commercial butter after it had been chilled.

I've never seen or heard of these, and my grandmother (from rural Virginia) made lots of different sorts of pickles. She did use red hot candies to make apple butter. The flavor's subtle once it's diluted out by all the apples, and the color's only a little bit different from the version without the candy, just a slightly warmer brown.