Malawry

Yes. Get a large pot of boiling, salted water. Have spinach, a spider, and an ice-water bath with a sieve sitting in it (no ice in the sieve) ready. Quickly, now: dunk the spinach in the boiling water by the handful and push each handful down with the spider to immerse. Once it's all in the boiling water, use the spider to pull it all out and put it in the sieve in the ice water. Leave it in the ice water for only a couple of seconds and pull the spinach out by removing the sieve. Squeeze dry by hand, or twist up in some cheesecloth. I usually use cheesecloth to drain it. You can dump the ice water from the bowl and let the spinach rest in the cheesecloth in the sieve over the bowl until you're ready to eat. (This can be done many hours in advance...probably even a day or so!) When you want the spinach, heat some butter or oil with aromatics and add the blanched spinach. Season and just cook until it's heated through. Voila, no gray-green water on the plate.

Have you ever cooked for this many at once? It takes a lot of planning and organization to do so--I do it every day at my job and it took me a month of doing it to learn how to catch my breath (and I have professional training and experience). I do think people expect a dessert at a wedding. I recommend your daughter hire a professional to make a wedding cake if there will be a large cake for everybody as the dessert. Wedding cakes are tough even for people who know how to assemble and decorate a beautiful birthday/special-occasion type cake. You don't have to have a big wedding cake though. At my wedding there was a small wedding cake so there would be something to show, and then we had a dessert table with pastries and fresh fruit. (My family tends to like that sort of thing best anyway.) Some tips for cooking: 1. Everything takes longer than you think it will when you cook for large groups. MUCH longer. Build in time for this. 2. Start as early as possible. You can measure/weigh dry cornbread ingredients weeks in advance. You can make mops, sauces, and rubs weeks in advance too. Anything like this that you do early on will save you a lot of bother later. 3. Have an organized system and stick to it. As the wedding becomes an immediate proposition you'll have a ton of people trying to "help." Best to consider this in advance and figure out what you want those people doing for you rather than letting them be in your way or unthinkingly assigning them a task you later wish you hadn't. Folks who can't cook can set up buffets, go for ice runs, keep kids corralled away from the kitchen. Folks who can cook can cut cornbread, man the grill, make the slaw. 4. Reconsider cooking for this thing. Really, do you want to be spending all that time in the kitchen right before the wedding? Most parents of brides and grooms are rightfully busy entertaining guests from out of town, helping their kids get ready for the big event, and running last-minute errands. You can't do those things if you're in the kitchen. If you really feel it's best, at least try to hire some help for the event itself to serve and clean up. That way you can leave the kitchen and socialize when you're finished with all your hard work. 5. Try to delegate if you have local relatives who will be coming to the wedding. You can delegate the dessert (just not the wedding cake) easily, for example.

What did you end up doing, Chris? I've looked at the lobster tails at Costco many times but always walked away, figuring I'd be better off getting a live bugger and killing and cooking it the way I already know how.

We went out for dinner at Firefly afterwards. We wanted to walk, but it was over 20 city blocks from the theatre to the restaurant and we had only about 20 minutes to make it. We felt guilty taking the Metro to get there in time. We've both been doing the low-carb thing for months now and didn't make any exceptions over dinner. And we've only had fast food once since January 1...a breakfast drive-through from Mickey D's...so we felt somewhat self-righteous. He acknowledges that fast food joints serve what people want to eat, but "at least you could offer a choice besides fries and fries." Amen.

Some people blanch spinach before sauteeing because sauteed raw spinach expresses so much water, it doesn't look so good on the plate. (If you blanch your spinach, you can squeeze it dry before finishing it in the saute pan and there will be virtually none of the unattractive spinach water on your plate.) I don't generally do this, but it does work well.

I just saw this film yesterday--and am surprised more people haven't posted about seeing it and what they thought of it. I thought it was rather well put-together. To dispel a few myths earlier in this thread: Spurlock only supersizes when somebody asks him if he'd like to, and this happens only 9 times during the month (5 of them in Texas!). He does try every item on the menu once as one of his ground rules, so you see him eating a McSalad Shaker at one point for example. And he talks to one guy who eats at least 2 Big Macs every day...who is rather healthy-looking, interestingly enough. Spurlock touches on a lot of issues that, while important, are not necessarily germane to the McDonald's story...like school lunches, which so far don't seem to be catered by McDonald's. (I'm interested in these side stories, but they aren't a McDonald's story.) One thing that really surprised me about the film is that, early in his monthlong experiment, he actually seems enthusiastic about eating at McDonald's. He admits this is "every 8-year-old's fantasy," and the sandwich he ends up ralphing up is a sandwich he KISSES before he starts eating. (hmmmmm...)

Went back last night with my esteemed spouse and enjoyed the salmon carpaccio and an excellent roast chicken. The chicken came with soft, comforting cabbage interwoven with bacon and a couple of prunes. I hoarded the skin but otherwise generously (and reluctantly) shared with E. I love the cured salmon at this place and have been known to completely clean my plate...lemons and all. A glass of cava washed it down nicely.

Yes, many thanks for the detailed reviewsRlibkind...and also Hannah for your comments, I feel I have some sense of your palate after several meals together and I am sure I will check out some of these places you enjoyed.

bump So I'll be in Bar Harbor later this month. I'm most interested in lobster and other local fishy treats. Any other suggestions?

bump I'll be in Quebec for two nights shortly. Any additional dining recommendations? I'm looking for dinner ideas that hover in the $25-30/per person (without alcohol, for two courses) range, and for any special lunch ideas...cheap eats of things we can't get easily in the States especially.

I don't believe in cooking Vidalias. They lose their sweetness cooked. If I was going to cook them, I'd try to cook them in a way that they didn't cook all the way through. My Vidalia hushpuppies are one good example of this...the heat of the cooked batter isn't enough to cook the onions through, so they can be tasted still. And I'd lightly kiss Vidalias on the grill...enough to get marks, not enough to be completely softened. Raw uses: Thick slice on a burger On a tomato sammich As a cocktail sammich, with herbed butter and crunchy salt Teeny-tiny brunoise in chicken or tuna salad...best if mixed with similar brunoise of red onion for color-flavor effect I've consumed Vidalia onion relishes that were terrific, and I keep meaning to try one this year.

Whatever happened to Chef Tracy? Is she trying to get something of her own off the ground? She's got chops.

Hey...Varm could combine Asian and New Orleans flavors! Alligator satays! OK, OK, I'll shut up now. Another soup idea would be turtle soup, which I absolutely adore. You are inviting me, right?

I think if you go in the Mayhaw Man direction you should do a showier New Orleans-style dessert...bananas foster come to mind instantly. Though the Cafe Brulot sorta adds the same kind of theatre. I do not recommend alligator on a stick if you are going with this theme.

I'm a big fan of stuffed cabbage, personally. Also it's good as a Thai-style slaw, with fish sauce and lime juice...with an Asian meal or as a topping on a spicy sausage. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it!

Sounds fabulous. The shower my attendants threw for my now-spouse and I had a "domesticated wildlife" theme...including some ribald treats like breast cupcakes and an, ahem, special pasta salad. (There was also a delicious sangria, cookies, cheeses, and some other more common nibbles.) I love the idea of doing Southern-themed food for this sort of event...little biscuits with country ham, lemon squares, candied pecans, brandy punch or bourbon lemonade perhaps. If I were to host one, and the bride-to-be enjoyed that sort of thing, that's probably the direction I'd move in.

I'm in.

This whole subject deserves its own thread.

Chicken meat picked off a carcass from a roasted chicken I made last weekend (stuffed with tarragon, thyme, lemon, garlic, and rubbed with lots of butter...so the meat has all those flavors in it ). Combined with teeny-tiny brunoise of onion and celery. Hellman's and Maille. Voila: chicken salad.

I should be available, but whether or not I come depends on what goes on the menu. Once it's posted I'll confirm. I'd like to be there.

Sorry I couldn't make it, Tarka. It was the only night last week that I had to spend at home with my esteemed spouse, so he won out. I'm sorry nobody else came.

FYI, Vidalias are excellent raw, but when you cook them they lose almost all their flavor. Use the cheaper ordinary yellow onions for caramelizing. Maybe you could top each of the croutes with a little dab of Vidalia onion relish or some such if you really want to get the Vidalias in there. I generally don't believe much in doctoring up my cheeses, but there's something that really appeals to me about baked brie with condiments. In college I used to bake brie with a splash of amaretto and top it with sliced almonds. I may make this for a special dinner I'm doing for my girls next week...they've hinted at an affinity for brie.

If you could get it to fry without totally melting, now, that probably wouldn't suck. Swizzle of sweet chili sauce sounds like the right condiment to me. Ohmy.

FYI: I am not one of the Takoma Park crunchies referred to in JPW's post. Well, I am, but I wasn't there last night. They've been pretty dead the three times I've walked in there. But while I like them, I'm not excited by Adega like I am by Red Dog.

Varm, I don't know about deep-frying raw eggs, but you just reminded me that Scotch eggs are a wonderful treat from the fryer.