therese

Tuned. Too bad that you have to postpone your date, but an evening in the red light district will be interesting as well.

Well, wine's relevant to my daily life. I actually like fashion and I still find the comparisons, um, unhelpful. Dessert wines are pajamas? Huh?

Wow. Truly and impressively hellish. You are so going to enjoy your new kitchen. More pictures as things progress, please.

Um, like when you are dead? From an eGullet perspective, this is like saying that there comes a point in life where we're no longer interested in food. Well, yes, that day will likely come, but I will probably not recognize it, as I'll be in a coma. Being a hottie makes you want to live forever, doesn't it? Wanting a better life is a powerful motivator. In NulloModo's case it seemed (and was) accessible, but for many people in the U.S. it's not.

Anyway, before things get too very weird here, I'm going to go back to the original idea that French women don't get fat. And they don't get fat (I think) in large part because they don't want to get fat: their society rewards them for staying thin (they're not just considered more attractive, but more "in control"), and penalizes them when they do. It is, admittedly, much easier to stay thin in places where people live close together and one can easily walk and use public transit and so forth. Tess's experience losing weight when she visits Europe is similar to mine, but I experience the same effect whenever I travel (generally for work, though not always) as I don't have a car and so rely on walking and public transit whether it's in the U.S. or abroad. I'll also point out that French women who do live outside of urban areas and can now afford cars are getting fat. And their daughters are getting even fatter.

Any pushback from friends or neighbors at the time? Even very subtle sort of stuff?

That sort of skinny dried out look is actually a very classic look for French women, and it is considered attractive by many (themselves and their partners both). There's a difference between a thin woman who acts and dresses as if she's attractive and a thin woman who acts and dresses like she's a tough, skinny old lady. That we don't really see the skinny dried out look as even possibly attractive reflects our ideas of beauty and attractiveness, and how closely they are tied to youth. The exceptions (SB's special category of "mature" women who are, gosh, in their 30's, songs like "Stacy's Mom" (not sure if that's the title), a local nightly radio call-in called "Hot Moms" ) only serve to illustrate the rule. [edited to point out that I think that aspiring to be a tough, skinny old lady is fine, and that I don't consider it SB's fault that the category of "mature" now includes women who aren't actually very old, they're just not very young]

Heh heh. Your profile says you're from northern Minnesota. Does it count if one's wearing a bikini with long underwear? But back to my original point: do U.S. attitudes towards aging and sexuality actually discourage us from exercising restraint when it comes to food? There are clearly lots of other factors at play, but I do think that this is one that's overlooked.

Thanks. All the advance suggestions and scouting reports very welcome. I'll post when I return as well of course.

Strong work, cigalechanta. Did you experience any negative reaction to doing so? Was this the norm among your contemporaries/social group? Was this in the U.S. or France or both (or elsewhere)? And what decade are we talking about?

The issue of "looking good on the beach" raises questions about differences in French and U.S. attitudes that the author may or may not address (I've not read the book, so if anybody here has I'd love to know whether she does). I'm a middle-aged American female. I've been generally thin my entire life except for the usual hormone-driven weight changes associated with child-bearing (two kids), and have always eaten a generally balanced diet without thinking too much about it. Whenever "ma ligne" looked a bit lumpy, or a skirt didn't hang quite as straight I adjusted my intake a bit and things returned quickly to baseline. Now that I've over forty it takes less indulgence to nudge "ma ligne" out of whack and most recently a bit closer monitoring of intake (I'm using WW to do this, but it's not really been a change in the way I eat) to get it back on track. So here's problem: now that I've gotten things whipped into shape, am I in a position to "look good on the beach"? By which I mean do I have permission, as a married American female, over the age of 40, mother of teenagers, to wear a bikini at the beach? I'm thin, I'm fit, I have no scars and minimal stretch marks or varicose veins. Is it okay for me to wear a bikini? Or even a non-matronly maillot? Because it is okay (based on my experience, your mileage may vary) for French women my age to wear bikinis. It's okay for them to see themselves as attractive, and to present themselves to others as attractive, whether it's at the beach or out for dinner or at the office. This is not the case in the U.S. (again, your mileage may vary). Societal pressure keeps us out of bikinis and fitted dresses and night clubs, so there's very little incentive to forego dessert.

Is there something inherently wrong with this practice? When I was a kid, that was almost the best part of eating a cupcake. ← Should I admit that I ate the paper? Saved time, less messy. ← Heh heh. No, there's nothing inherently wrong with sucking the frosting off the paper. Unless you're a mom, and you're interested in minimizing stray frosting in all its forms. As for eating the actual paper, was this after you'd eaten the cupcake and were left with the last little bits of soggy cake and frosting stuck to it? Or did you just eat the whole thing in situ, treating it like an integral part of the cake itself?

A colleague who'd recently visited San Antonio said that he'd liked Azuca. I don't know him well enough to trust his taste yet, but it's a starting point. And there's dancing.

Great blog, with great photos and lots of cool local color. I'm also interested in the recipe for the semolina pudding if you'd care to share.

Monkey bread's often made using tinned biscuit dough. So even though you may have made yours from scratch do be warned that many people will assume that you've not. Somewhere back in this thread it was pointed out that it's a good idea to make the contents of an item obvious, not entirely covered in frosting or whatever. That's how we do cupcakes, specifically not spreading the frosting all the way to the edge. Not only can the customer still see the cake color below, but there won't be any frosting stuck to the cupcake wrapper (so it's tidier, and nobody's tempted to try and suck the frosting off the paper).

Heh. It's pre-school. But then, come to think of it, these kids don't actually have any money of their own, so it'll be the parents doing the buying. In which case maybe they'd do better to just set up a bar. They couldn't actually sell drinks, of course, but they could charge admission to a gallery showing of sorts and give the drinks away.

Cupcakes pretty much fly off the bakesale table. Yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting are the big winners around here. Easy to make, and easy to handle (bake them in the little pleated cups, of course). Your pre-schooler can definitely help with this project.

It just seems wrong. Dim sum's appeal lies in its being a leisurely and casual meal enjoyed by families (small children and grandparents a bonus) and friends (including the profoundly hungover), choices made at the last minute from what's right in front of you (often prepped tableside), all of it contributing to a slightly chaotic hubbub. No reservations, no elaborate plating, no fussy service, and no big bill at the end of meal. Fine if he wants to serve har gau, but maybe he could call them something else, something that does not invoke dim sum.

I like the bright green that blanching gives greens and beans and so forth, and of course it cuts down on final prep time later on, but it's also a way for me to keep from wasting produce. I do most of my produce shopping once or twice a week, and if I go ahead and blanche things the day I buy them I can then keep them in the fridge until I need them without worrying that they'll go bad. Nothing so disappointing as finding a droopy bag of decomposed chard at the bottom of the fridge.

Thanks for the info re Le rêve. I'll keep it in mind as an option for deep pocket hosts (unfortunately scarse at this particular meeting). A look 'round the web suggests that my hopes of finding German food in San Antonio proper are unlikely to be rewarded. Anywhere other than Mi Tierra at El Mercado to try?

Just noticed this. Yep, that's exactly what we did (see my post above). Before the remodel we used it for both family dining and TV/games. The original kitchen was too small, and the original breakfast room (children's dining, actually) was a laundry room at that time.

For formal dinner parties and buffet service for large parties only, so perhaps 10 times per year. It's very formal, and separated from the kitchen by the family room. It used to be in a very large room adjacent to the kitchen (which was very small, built for use by servants in the 1920s), but we remodeled, turning the old dining room into the family room, and a former library into the dining room. It's still large enough, but no longer the largest room in the house. Our new expanded kitchen includes a large dining area that's surrounded by windows and a great view. We do all (family of four) sit down together and eat dinner most evenings. Soon we'll be eating outside, either on the deck (before the mosquitos arrive) or in the screened porch (after the mosquitos arrive).

I agree, the plastic slippery ones, particularly those without tapered ends are particularly difficult to use. Pretty much any other sort is fine, so long as they are long enough (my hands are fairly large for a woman) and the coefficient of friction between the material and the food is high enough. I like the wooden ones because the coefficient of friction will be high no matter what you're eating. The disposable ones are also great to pack for lunch boxes. I do find it frustrating eating rice off of a flat plate with chopsticks, but the usual offered solution is not much better: a fork only. Without an accompanying knife (which is often not supplied in U.S. Asian restaurants) I'm left chasing food around my plate.

Which chopstick using culture do you come from? ← Both practices are considered rude in Atlanta, where knives and forks are used for Western food, chopsticks for Asian food. It may well be that drawing conspicuous attention to the poor quality of the dining equipment provided is quite the thing in some cultures. I just don't happen to come from one of them.

Hmmm, I must have missed the part of this thread that didn't talk about chopsticks. The original question had to do with whether or not Asian restaurants routinely provide chopsticks or cutlery. Tables in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Vietnamese restaurants in Atlanta (where I live) are routinely set with chopsticks only. These restaurants cater to a predominantly Asian clientele---restaurants in non-Asian neighborhoods are more likely to set the table with Western-style cutlery, or offer forks to children, but these are the exception. Much easier to use than Western-style utensils, though my 11-year-old daughter still has some trouble with slippery items.