therese

The dining scene in Montpellier is not the strongest. The best meal I've eaten there was this spring at La Maison de la Lozere. A very pleasant space with an enclosed courtyard in the old part of town. Comfortably upmarket, but no overly so, and the food a mix of very traditional and newer elements. I've not been to Le Jardin des Sens, and a friend who has lived there for years and entertains a lot for business says she avoids it, but perhaps it's just not to her taste.

Seems like the chef's more likely to use the familiar in this instance.

It was the wine, I'm sure of it. In fact, I'm so sure of it I'm going to go get myself another glass of wine. I don't know how common the problem is. Neither I nor anybody else in my family has any difficulty at all (and believe me, we'd know if it were an issue, because I like to use them), but others apparently do. I've served Jerusalem artichokes to guests and not gotten any bad feedback, but then I have exceptionally polite friends. Bleudauvergne actually described it in her blog (on the first or second page), and a discussion of it appears later (on about the eighth page). A word of caution: do not go back and look at this blog unless you are a masochist.

Congratulations, Cusina. We celebrated our 15th earlier this year, and were I to add up the points from that week (which included a trip to the Napa Valley as well as high end dining here in Atlanta) I'd have used my entire allotment for a month, I think. Hmm, maybe that's why I'm on WW at this very moment? I'm pretty sure it's the cookies I got at Bouchon bakery that put me over the top. Tess, the sugar alcohol thing is not a reaction in the conventional sense, not an allergy or anything like that. Our bodies can't process the molecules very quickly, as we don't have the right sorts of enzymes in our guts. But gut bacteria (endogenous, normally present, very important for normal health) do have the right sorts of enzymes and so can metabolize the sugar alcohols. The bacteria produce gas as a by-product of their metabolism, gas which your intestines would really much rather be rid of. It's possible that ingesting sugar alcohols may either promote the growth of certain sorts of bacteria (that can metabolize them) or that enzyme production is induced in the bacteria. Some people have a similar problem with jerusalem artichokes, in which the offending material is inulin, a non-digestible (by humans) carb. I don't have a problem with them myself, but it's an issue for some.

I've never heard of livermush, actually. Where's it from? My grandmother made headcheese, but I was comfortable with the provenance of the ingredients (having generally made their acquaintance long before they ended up on the table, though we were careful to not give them names or get too friendly with them) so there wasn't much of mystery meat component to it. Other than the name, of course.

Oh, yeah, forgot to mention that the sugar free York peppermint patties are quite tasty. So unlike the "take a multivitamin on an empty stomach and you'll want to die" approach to unhealthy weight loss tactics, the sugar alcohol one is actually appealing in the very short term. It takes a while for the side effects to develop, so "bait shyness" (aka bearnaise sauce phenomenon) is not nearly so likely to be an issue.

Actually, scrapple and head cheese and similar products are pretty good. It's the commercial preps that give me the icks. Shades of Sinclair's "The Jungle". Irrational, of course, as I eat sausage and pate and so forth. Something about the decidedly downmarket image and packaging of scrapple, I suppose.

Another chapter in my tireless research efforts on behalf of the eGullet community, specifically the WW subset of same. The various non-nutritive sweeteners out there all have their drawbacks, the biggest one probably being that they mostly taste pretty terrible. Nutrasweet, Splenda, stevia---none of them is nearly as good as the real thing. But I hadn't had much experience with one class of sweetener, sugar alcohols, until recently. Mannitol, maltitol, sorbitol, xylitol all belong to this group. They're not strictly non-nutritive, but are a bit lower calorie (because they're so sweet you use less) and don't stimulate insulin production the way regular sugars do, thereby protecting one from the pernicious effects of high insulin/low blood sugar cycles. But it turns out they have another really effective aspect from a weight loss point of view, something that's euphemistically referred to on the packaging as "a laxative effect". Turns out that the laxative effect is dose-dependent, but as little as one third of one serving (a single sugar free York peppermint patty in this particular experiment) is enough to cause fairly severe cramping and nausea. Long-lasting nausea, too---if any guys out there want to experience morning sickness, this is the ticket. So if you realize that you've gone a bit overboard on breakfast and lunch one day, just eat a maltitol-containing sweet and you'll be happy to forego food pretty much entirely until the next morning.

I agree with the difficulty of defining "very high intake" without giving some actual numbers, but it's well within the realm of possibilities for the government and professional societies to make recommendations that are not absolutes. Something along the lines of "no more than one drink per day, no more than a total of three drinks per week". Very conservative actually, and it would keep strangers from poking their noses where they don't belong. Well, actually, it wouldn't, but at least I could enjoy a glass of champagne for my wedding anniversary without the server giving me the "eye".

Atlantans are fond of The Varsity because it's a home town thing, but that doesn't mean that they don't recognize it for what it is: tourist food. Yes, people eat there, but then they also eat at McDonald's. The service is better at The Varsity, I'll say that. I rarely eat the sorts of foods that most people identify with the South in restaurants, as they're pretty much never any better than mediocre, and frequently dreadful. Traditional Southern foods rely on very fresh ingredients, simply prepared. You want slow food? Imagine growing or rearing everything you eat. Restaurants simply can't manage it, unless you're talking about someplace very upmarket indeed.

I just love reading stuff like this: "any meats cooked less than shoe-leather tough (toxemia risk)". The author means toxoplasmosis (a parasite infection that you usually get from cat poop, but can get from meat), not toxemia (a lay term for pre-eclampsia). But hey, who needs fact checkers? Fetal alcohol syndrome results from very high intake, particularly early in pregnancy.

And please, please, don't make me eat a cheese steak or scrapple. If I want to eat crap food I can just head downtown to the Varsity (I live in Atlanta, for those of you who aren't crap food cognoscenti). Absolutely the worst Italian food I've had in recent memory was at an Italian restaurant in Philadelphia. And then there was some really horrifically bad (but very expensive) seafood at some tourist trap. I also had some nice if not necessarily memorable meals in Philadelphia (at Rouge and at a combo fishmarket/restaurant a couple of blocks away) on the same visit. But the real question here is why anybody would come here with a culinary chip on his shoulder in the first place. Well, call me silly, but could it be because the rest of the country looks down at us as ignorant layabout racists who make good barbecue because we've got plenty of free time on our hands? Because you can only have sex with your sister so many times a day.

Sounds like a a great trip, Jensen. Sorry that the pickled onions weren't up to par---do you remember the brand? I only eat the pickled onions that come with my cornichons (both of which are quite good), so have no experience with brands offered in the U.S. Your ploughman's lunch reminds me to ask about this material called "fat free cheese". Other than ricotta, what sorts are available? And where does one find them, as I've never seen them in my local grocery.

Not sure about this, but the "safety cone" term might have been because the usual cake cones have a flat bottom, such that one could actually set it down on a flat surface without it tipping over (assuming the cone wasn't over- or assymetrically filled).

Couldn't say. I've never done the control experiment, the one where I'm not drinking while I cook. Unless maybe you're talking about breakfast, in which case I've also not done the other half of that experiment (though I'll let you know if I do).

I don't live in the Triangle area, or even in NC, but my opinion on this applies anywhere and everywhere: we just don't bother with kids menus, and never have. I'm not going to feed my kids crappy food, plain and simple. We don't usually eat in restaurants that offer them in any case, but even when the usual chicken fingers and fries are an option we don't choose them. Really little kids are fine with small portions of Mom's food (though we didn't dine out much with really little kids, so never mind). In-between ages are generally fine with a half order of pasta (not the kiddie pasta, but the real stuff) or an appetizer (my daughter developed a penchant for mussels when she was 8). My son's now 14, and the problem now is keeping him from ordering foie gras, tuna tartare, and kobe beef short ribs all in the same meal. And no, dear, you can't have the cheese plate tonight. Hmm, are you sure you want to rear eGulleteers? It gets pricey. Japanese food is always great because of the small portions. Anything served family-style is also great---Vietnamese, Korean BBQ, etc.

A visit to Dekalb Farmers Market in Atlanta yesterday yielded the usual large stock of Total yogurt. Turnover there is extremely high, so if there were a problem with availability I'd expect to see it there. I did pick up an extra container, just in case.

A sugar cone is a pre-made waffle-type cone with a pointy tip. It's made of a much darker, denser, sweeter, "stretchier" sort of cookie than a cake cone (which is, as somebody's already mentioned, vaguely reminiscent of packing peanuts and appears to be made in some sort of injection mold), and I've never liked them, finding that they call too much attention to themselves and detract from the ice cream. Waffle cones may or may not be made in-house or locally, but in any case are manufactured to give the impression of non-industrial product: much larger, sort of raggedy edges that don't line up. Typically a lighter, crispier sort of waffle. As they're large they hold a lot of ice cream, the amount I'd generally give to my entire family of four.

Above all, smells. And not just food, but laundry detergent (I had to change brands when I was pregnant with my second child) and pipe smoke (one of my colleagues smoked a pipe with some sort of cherry tobacco, and to this day even the thought of it makes me queasy) and various other things. Basmati rice was absolutely hell. I entertained for work quite a bit the second time around, and pretty much lived on plain baked potatoes for a couple of months. Small frequent feeds of bland foods really does help. I once "outed" (inadvertently) a young woman who works with me, as I noted she was eating saltine crackers mid-morning and immediately inquired as to the status of the presumed gestation. Fortunately there were only men in the immediate vicinity (who had no idea what I was talking about), and she was able to keep her secret for another crucial month or so. It was a girl. Morning sickness is, anecdotally at least, worse with girls.

Cake, always cake. If obligated to use either a sugar cone or waffle cone I just bag the whole concept of a cone and go for a cup.

The wars and consequent rationing (which lasted well beyond the wars themselves) did have a profound effect on the affected populations---borderline adequate nutrition affected not only the people who lived during those periods (particularly those at vulnerable points in their growth), but their progeny. The Great Depression was another factor both in Europe and the U.S. Particularly extreme examples of the phenomenon are seen now in the U.S. among progeny of immigrants from southeast Asia and central America: 10 year old girls who've grown up in the U.S are not infrequently taller than either of their parents, and their children will be even taller. Historically poor parts of the U.S. (like Appalachia, where my mother was born) have seen similarly dramatic changes over the past five decades. The French may be able to keep from succumbing entirely to this "disease of the affluent", but probably only by taking fairly extreme steps vis-a-vis public policy. Fortunately the French are culturally adept at adopting or eschewing certain behaviors.

Looking forward to your blog, snowangel. Thank you for you willingness to share your insights and experiences re caring for your daughter.

Made another type of whole grain this week, kamut. Supposedly an Egyptian variant of wheat. It takes a while to cook, and this time I did it in the slow cooker for about six hours on low overnight (following a recipe I found on line), 1 cup of kamut to 3 cups of water. The result was mushier than I like, so my next batch will be on the stove top. Kamut has a slightly buttery flavor, very pleasant in both savory and sweet dishes (I've been combining this somewhat-too-mushy batch with yogurt and fruit for breakfast). No points data at WW, so I'm counting it as bulgur.

Nope. I don't even think they were available at the time. This wasn't a difficult diet for my husband to stick to, as he doesn't like fruit, and rarely eats dessert, and will really pretty much eat whatever he's served or told to eat. You may well be wondering at this point why he was even on the diet, as he didn't have all that much weight to lose. The answer is that he was interested in seeing what would happen to his lipids. His biggest issue is not cholesterol but triglycerides, and the increase was sufficiently dramatic that his physician (who was taking care of a number of other patients on Atkins, and so familiar with the expected changes) basically ordered him to stop. Well, I'm presently on the lowest calorie/fat setting that WW uses, and finding it easy to do. But I think that's because I already prefered the sorts of food that figure prominently in this type of diet. Things like prime rib and bacon are great every once in a while, but being told that a diet encourages me to eat all the bacon I'd like leaves me thinking, "Great, but where's all the food?"

Well, I was doing the cooking, so at home he was getting the usual sorts of meats and fish that I make (varied, everything from flank steak to lamb to chicken to whatever) along with green vegetables and salads. I use olive oil pretty much exclusivly when I cook. At work whatever worked, I suppose. He did manage to make himself ketotic, just barely, so was doing the diet "correctly". He did point out that he felt that one of the ways Atkins works is that the food's so boring that you can't bring yourself to eat any more of it than you absolutely have to. It seems to work well for many people, we're just not among them.