therese

The "French Door" style fridge that Rachel mentions (made by LG) was actually first test marketed here in the US under the Kenmore label. It is on sale at Sears at this very moment for $1700 (until the end of July). I needed a counter depth fridge, othewise I'd have gone for it. I absolutely loathe side-by-side configuration: deep narrow holes, never big enough for a serving tray, etc.

I have a freezer on the bottom-type fridge and quite like it. Pull out wire mesh trays. Some tendency for things to get lost on the bottom, but not as bad as things getting lost in the back of my previous top freezer model. I also have a separate chest freezer, so really big stuff goes there. The real advantage to having the freezer on the botton is that the fridge is then at the perfect height, and I use my fridge much more frequently than my freezer. Sure, it's less than optimum having to bend over to reach things in the freezer, but it's really bad having to bend over to retrieve things from the vegetable crisper. We remodeled our kitchen this year, and one of the things I love the most is our farmer-style, apron front sink. No divider, just one big basin. I can wash anything in it. A quiet dishwasher is worth the money. Mine is a Bosch, and I can start it in the middle of a casual dinner party and nobody even notices, even though they're seated less than six feet away.

Actually the point of using agar as a support medium for bacterial cultures is based on the fact that it's not nutrient-rich, at least as far as bacteria are concerned. Bacteria are frequently characterized according to whether they will or will not grow under certain conditions (such as the sort of sugar present), and agar's an easily manipulated medium---you can add exactly what you'd like and not worry much about what's already there. Agar is simply a cheap support medium for displaying bacterial colonies. Its translucency is a nice feature as well, permitting inspection of bacterial colonies from all angles (as petri dishes are also clear).

Yeah. My grandmother was much more of a pickler than a fryer. The only thing she ever fried was chicken.

Grew up in a combination of the south and midwest, with summers spent on the very rural farm of my grandparents in southwest Virginia, high school in Kentucky, college in Virginia, graduate school and professional life in Atlanta. Lots of eating in private homes and all sorts of restaurants all those years. I'd never even heard of fried green tomatoes until the movie came out, and I've only ever eaten them in semi-upmarket places in Atlanta and Charleston (which cater largely to non-locals). They've been okay, but not amazing. In any case, not so widely available in the past as they seem to be now.

The museum with the dinosaurs (and lots of other very cool stuff) is the Fernbank Natural History Museum, not the Fernbank Science Center (which houses a planeterium and is basically a teaching resource for Dekalb County public schools). Both are adjacent to a nice forest, the Fernbank Forest, which you could walk through except that it will likely be very hot. Another museum option would be the Michael C. Carlos Museum on the Emory University campus. Beautiful campus for walking around, and the museum has an interesting collection of art and archeology. Campus nearly student-free at this time of year. Lenox Square is a shopping mall, and Brasserie le Coze is a French restaurant (which hasn't impressed me thus far) in the mall. Maeve's from Montreal---I think she could skip Brasserie le Coze and sleep soundly. And does The Dining Room serve lunch? And what would a person do in Buckhead during the day other than shop? South City Kitchen also serves lunch, is near MARTA, and close to the Arts Center/High Museum (very nice art museum), but the food's not as good as Watershed. Finally, for the ULTIMATE southern lunch experience, you could take a cab from the airport to the Atlanta History Center, visiting the center (which includes the Swan House and the Tullie Smith Farm, both extremely cool, as well as museum exhibits) and then dining at the Swan Coach House. Not southern country cooking/soul food, but "upmarket" ladies-who-lunch food, the sort of food that our grandparents ate when they went to a restaurant that didn't serve barbecue or catfish. Again, I'm not sure there's enough time for this last trip, but it would be pretty cool.

Um, what? I think agbaber may be referring to a sort of museum downtown called World of Coke. If you had a lot of time left over you could break up your return trip and get off at Five Points. I've not been, but my kids have, and most people who go say it's at least interesting. History of the company, samples of Coke products from around the world, some sort of big odd soda fountain. I'm not quite getting the Outkast reference. Yes, they're from Atlanta (possibly even Decatur), but I'd be hard put to cite a Decatur locale that would feature much music by Outkast. Anyway, were I entertaining out of town guests who wanted to see something interesting after lunch in Decatur (other than the cute little downtown), I'd probably take them to the Dekalb Farmers Market. There's a thread somewhere on the Southeast forum about it. Very cool, not your usual food shopping experience. But you'd need to take a cab from Watershed (which they could call for you as you're ordering dessert) and then a cab from the DFM (which the information desk right inside the front door could call for you). But you're really not going to have that much time left over: by the time you get through customs and immigration (which you'll have to do here in Atlanta, I think, even though your luggage eventually goes on to Peru---even if your luggage is checked through you'll have to go through immigration) you'll have eaten up about an hour. Count on another hour (less, but just to be safe) to get to Decatur, and another hour to return. You want to be back at the airport two hours before your flight, and so that leaves you two hours to eat. Six hours goes by pretty quickly, doesn't it? As for recommendations, a po' boy is not classic for the region (though everything at Watershed is good). The salmon croquettes or hot vegetable plate would actually be the most classic things on the lunch menu. Oh, I just thought of another option if you do end up with extra time: the original Decatur courthouse has been turned into a museum. I've not been (geez, I need to get out, don't I?) but I'll check on the opening times, etc.

Go to Watershed in Decatur (the website Gifted Gourmet links to above is correct). Here's why you would be insane to go anywhere else: 1. It's very good. Traditional food, but with great wines an option. 2. It serves lunch. 3. It's got a sort of famous pedigree---Scott Peacock, the chef, just published a cookbook with Edna Lewis (you can buy the cookbook there), and it's owned by one of the Indigo Girls (a local musical duo if you didn't already know). 4. You can easily get there using PUBLIC TRANSIT. The MARTA train goes directly into the airport. Board it (the station is adjacent to baggage claim) going north (the only direction it goes from the airport, so this part is very easy) and change at the Five Points station to the eastbound train. Get off in Decatur and stroll to Watershed, about five blocks. Do note that it will be hot as heck, so wear comfortable clothing/shoes. If you're really lazy you could catch a cab from the MARTA station to the restaurant. No traffic hassles. You'll have been able to time your trip from the airport to Decatur, so estimate the same for the return trip. If you've got leftover time you could browse some of the little shops on your way back to the Decatur MARTA station.

Two egg omelette, fresh tomatoes, blueberries, and iced milky sweet tea with basil seeds.

Clafouti. Too easy given your background, but they don't have to know that. Sprinkle the powdered sugar on at the last minute.

Congratulations to your wife. I bet she feels great.

No. You cook boiled peanuts until they're as done you'd like them, and you salt them as much as you'd like them to be salty. They are the easiest thing in the world to make. Drier peanuts (whether because of variety, how long it's been since they've been harvested, how they've been stored) will need longer cook time (pre-soaking might work, but why not just turn on the heat?) and more water, but there's no secret involved. Not a problem. You may have leached out too much salt, in which case you add some back and cook them longer. I doubt that 30 minutes would have made much difference in the texture---boiled peanuts are typically simmered for hours (I use a crock pot so that I don't have to worry about boiling them dry).

So, reading this thread's a scary bit of memory lane for me---not that the memories were the least bit scary, but the fact that it took a bit of jarring to shake them loose. I graduated from UVa in '84, spent another year in town working at the hospital. Top of the heap then was C & O (anybody remember the bar downstairs?), with Boars Head for parental visits. Eastern Standard was pretty new, and I had my graduation dinner there. Never got hit on by Sam Shepard at the Virginian (before his time, daresay), but did get a really bad case of food poisoning there once. Anyway, I'm trying to remember a particular place that might well still be there. Downtown, seems like part of an old hotel that had a sort of elegant dining room at the time (but not great food). The place I'm thinking of was actually the bar, and it was sort of pub-like, mostly subterranean, favored by law students and lawyers. Ring any bells?

Fantastic blog all around, helenjp. Really enjoying the pictures and details of your family life. Thanks so much for doing this!

Clerks at conventional grocers often ask me what something is, or how to prepare it. Clerks at Dekalb Farmers Market (described earlier in this thread, clerks basically all from places very far away) will comment on my having purchased something that they use but aren't used to seeing somebody like me buy. Great conversation starter, will cooking tips included. One guy offered to have his wife come over to the house and show me how to cook even more cool stuff.

I live near a university, and the classic funny grocery cart contains store brand peanut butter, frozen pizzas, Pop Tarts, milk, and Froot Loops. The owner of this sort of cart is pretty much invariably a male. I do most of my shopping here in Atlanta at a really great place called Dekalb Farmers Market. Not a conventional farmers, but lots of great stuff at reasonable prices. A couple of years ago I was shopping for our annual holiday party. About 160 guests that year, so I used a caterer but also did some of it myself. So my cart was full of large quantities of very nice things. I'd noticed a couple of guys also buying large quantities of things, and one of them finally approached me and asked if I was "doing a cater" (as they were). I replied "sort of" and explained. They looked longingly at the contents of my cart and said they'd rather be going to my party than working theirs.

Excellent point, and one I'd not considered as I've never visited in warm weather.

Really looking forward to your blog, helenjp, and much thanks to Boris (whose blog I also enjoyed) for tapping you. Busy working mother of two putting together interesting and healthy meals...reminds of somebody I know.

We stayed at the Mount View in Calistoga a couple of months ago and liked it. It was our second stay there, and we find it good value for the area. You're right on the main street in Calistoga, so restaurants, etc. right there. There's a very nice spa on the premises (package spa and accomodations available, and good deal), and of course there are hot springs in the area as well (the main reason we like to stay in Calistoga). A new restaurant is opening in the old Catahoula's slot---when we were there it was going by a different name, now apparently going to be called Stomp. Downsides were breakfasts (not very amitious continental breakfast delivered to your room) and many of the rooms have less than perfect views of adjacent rooftops (though if you're in bed your view cuts that part out and you just see mountains if you're on that side of the hotel). It's at the north end of the valley, but we found accessibility to restaurants not a problem. It's also very easy to get into the mountains. We also liked the Wine Country in St. Helena on Lodi Lane, one of the cross streets between Silverado and 29. Great views from our room over an adjacent vineyard. Haven't stayed there recently can't entirely vouch for it, but same owners as when we were there.

Glad to hear you enjoyed Woodfire. We're pretty happy to have such a pleasant restaurant in the neighborhood. Very sorry to hear about your unfortunate run-in with the pavement, but it does sound like you're on the mend. Let us know next time you're in the ATL and we'll hook you up with some more options.

Ah, so it helps the salt stick. But I still can't figure out what the very strong, very unpleasant flavor was, and I'd like avoid it in future. I suppose I'll just have to avoid that particular item and hope that I don't run into the flavor (from the vegetable? from the amino acids?) again.

Okay, sweet/salty and the salad part is salad oil, which I don't quite get because they're weren't particularly oily, but never mind that: what they were was perfectly foul, so bad that I disposed of the remainder of the two cracker package and well as the entire bag as quickly as possible. I had nightmares about the taste of this item. This is the first time I've ever had this reaction to any Japanese food product, ever. I like everything thing from the mildest chestnut sweet to mochi to tsukemono to natto (with yamakake, no less), and this was just too horrifying for words. Spoiled fish would be the closest, but somehow worse. I can't help but think that they'd been somehow adulterated during shipping or storage, but both the outer and inner wraps were entirely intact. And I don't usually have a problem with products from this market. What would the "vegetable" on the label possibly have referred to (nothing green about the crackers in any way)? And is "amino acids" just code for MSG?

Okay, went shopping randomly last evening at one of our local (I live in Atlanta) pan Asian markets. Not where I usually get Japanese things (there's a market called Tomato that's got much better Japanese things), but I did pick up a packet of crackers called...well, I don't know what they're called, actually. The packet says "rice cracker (amakara salad)" and the ingredient list is "rice, vegetable, salt, amino acid extract". They come packaged two to a plastic sleeve, and are crunchy disks about 10 cm in diameter, 1/2 centimeter thick. Pale yellow with raised white bumpy surface. Anybody have any idea what these are?

I'd say the question should be more along the lines of "Are they ready for Atlanta?"

Well, pig's foot, anyway. Which is the house specialty, so altogether appropriate. The "au" bit in this instance means "at", with an implied "the home of" or "the place of" or "a restaurant that serves really kickass". You could also think of it like the name of a pub, as in "The Crazy Rooster" or "The Big Anchor" or whatever.