Verjuice

I do that often. Great combo and it holds up well. I always bring food that doesn´t give off strong smells because I once sat next to a man with a weak stomach during a turbulent flight. The guy in front of us opens up his Burger King McNasty in a closed ventilation environment and he lost his lunch. So out of consideration for otehr passengers and also for the sake of avoiding attention I leave the stilton on the ground. I also once travelled with a good friend who was body-building at the time. As much as I love tuna, I wanted to smack him when he popped open a couple of cans of the cheapest stuff on the market and put it into hot instant oatmeal. Other favorites include Marcona almonds or other nuts that I toast and perhaps spice or caramelize at home. Really lifts the spirits when you can have something other than the usual little packet of hydrogenated cheese flavored pretzel mix or stale peanuts that they offer with your aperitif on board. I also bring cherries if they are available but make sure I finish them all before I get to customs . If there´s a good pastry shop in the airport, I always pick up a couple of treats for dessert. I had a layover in Paris yesterday and picked up pistachio macarons and a rhubarb and frangipane tart. Also got a small roll with lardons. Friend got a croissant but that was a mistake because although it was wonderfully flaky she ended up with crumbs all over her black coat for the rest of the flight.

I've always thought that it smells like a public toilet. (Sorry.) When I was a kid, I would sneak into the kitchen and sprinkle rosewater onto my stationery to perfume it. I disliked it so much that my Lebanese mother subbed orange flower water in dishes that called for rosewater.

Since a friend from the U.S. visited a couple pf months ago, bearing (as instructed) several jars of Arrowhead Mills peanut butter and four bottles of Sriracha, I have been eating both in various forms every day. The usual suspects: -Shots of Arabic coffee all morning at work (the alternative being Nescafe- blech) -Zaatar tea around midday. -An espresso after work. -Extra dry vermouth to quench my thirst while I'm cooking. -Mint tea and Turkish coffee in the evenings. I also drizzle unfiltered Jordanian olive oil quite liberally on my dinner, whatever it many be. I have a whole case of the stuff. I could probably give up all of them very easily but I'm not sure I'd be a better person for it and certainly not a nicer one. I used to be addicted to PG Tips with 2% milk but now that I spend so little time at home it's become a difficult habit to maintain. Mostly I am addicted to reading about food. Cookbooks, magazines, eG and the neverending quest for recipes, trivia, whatever. I have a hard time staying away from it for more than a few hours at a time.

A couple of interesting articles on this subject here and also here

Daniel, For that missing course, have you thought about setting the quail eggs on a salad? You could use some peppery, bitter wintry greens like watercress or rocket. though. Endive would be good too. You could use either your tuffle oil or your meyer lemon olive oil, as well. Check out this excellent article about chefs' creative use of eggs, and this one, specifically about dishes featuring poached eggs. These look good, too. You can probably adapt them without much of a problem. Bitter green and poached eggs go really well together. Crayfish and Poached Quail Eggs Salad with Truffle Vinaigrette Poached Quail Egg Salad with Watercress and Tarragon Sauce As for dessert. How about thin sliver of clementine almond cake (just oranges, sugar, almond and eggs, not too rich but very tasty) with small scoops of Greek yogurt. Drizzle of honey and sprinkling of chopped pistachios, perhaps. Come to think of it, I bet it's be fantastic with olive oil gelato. Don't know about the Meyer lemon bit, though. I love Meyer lemons but they might overwhelm the cake. Or a pavlova with pomegranite sorbet and lots of passion fruit seeds squeezed over; meringue is light, right? Or you could make a light sponge cake and serve with poached fruit. I like the upthread idea of pomegranate sorbet. Pomegranate and quail is very "Like Water for Chocolate", if I remember correctly. I've heard great things about well made dark chocolate sorbet, but I've never tried it myself. Tuiles. Warm, tropical flavors are always welcome in winter, no? Mangoes, passion fruit. Didn't you make a coconut creme brulee a while back for one of your dinners? You could serve tiny portions of that in demitasse cups, with a little mound of tropical fruit salad. If you can create a homemade approximation of that amazing Liberte coconut dessert yogurt, then that would be a lighter alternative. Good luck.

I lived down the street from a Dunkin Donuts when I was in college, and somehow the turpentine tang of "hazelnut" and "french vanilla" would waft into my bedroom window every night and permeate my skin, my hair, my clothing... I couldn't shake it. I smelled like a donut for two years. So I figure that all of the flavored coffee at Dunkin Donuts must invariably reek of fried cake, because that's what the storefronts smell like to me. Blueberry coffee? Is that funny-sad or funny-haha?

My sweet tooth experienced a fair bit of frustration tonight. I'm visiting family, had a pretty sizeable dinner, and was looking forward to a little something sweet. The uninspired odds and ends in the larder weren't really doing it for me. Now it's midnight and although I've eaten a pound of sugar I'm still not... satisfied... I ate, in the following order (note the degenerative influence of a craving that has not been properly addressed): -A Gala apple (nice start, a valiant effort to remain virtuous) -Two ripe bananas with natural peanut butter (delicious, but I'd already had a couple throughout the day and they were not what I wanted for dessert) -Two bowls of Greek yogurt: one with maple syrup and the other with walnuts with ginger honey and pistachios -A couple of (very) stale brownies (the cakey kind, meh), warmed through and eaten with (generic and tasteless) vanilla ice cream -A handful of mini Toblerone bars -A Nature's Valley 'Sweet 'n' Salty' bar, peanut butter flavor -A small bar of marzipan dipped in bittersweet chocolate -Three stroopwaffels warmed and eaten with more peanut butter and more mediocre ice cream - A Milka bar -Some warm caramel sauce (just over a a cup's worth, I'd guess) that I whipped up as an emergency measure (Maldon sea salt added, since I usually carry it in my purse), eaten out of the saucepan and under the date palms, in the dark. -Four squares of green tea bittersweet chocolate -A few honey-soaked, almond-stuffed local dates. -Half of my sister's Godiva raspberry truffle bar. I usually hate fruit and chocolate combined and I'm no fan of Godiva, but this was kind of good. Reminded me of those Pim's cake/jam processed junky tartlets... -A third of a box of Pim's pear junk tartlets My GP warned me last week that my metabolism will probably taper off soon, so I'm definitely trying to make the most of it . But I wonder why I'm still hungry? And more importantly, where is the Nutella?

I have gotten some great ideas from the Jamison's A Real American Breakfast.

So... I can't beat last month's premenstruavaganza in terms of variation, but I think I'm pretty close in terms of caloric damage. Last night's visit to the market brought endless good tidings today, contained in a jar labeled "peanut butter". Arrowhead Mills, the good, hearty, lip-smackingly tenacious stuff with the heavy, gluey texture of book paste. The real thing. 1.25 lbs of it, to be precise. On soft, fresh whole wheat bread with honey. On toasted rye bread, plain. On bananas, with bananas. Betwixt and between chocolate. Spread onto impromptu ice cream "sandwiches". Malted and fudged. In a bowl of brown rice, with sriracha and cilantro and peppers and broccoli and scallions. Bespooned, with macerated strawberries. Alongside a sliced Fuji apple. Sprinkled with salt and swirled in caramel. Gado-gado. Dressing cold, slippery soba noodles with lots of sesame oil and tamari. I really love it.

Whoa, that brings back old memories with remarkable force. I had completely forgotten about this dish, and it was my mother's obsession for years when she began eating meat again after an exhaustive affair with vegetarianism. We had it on the table four or five times a week for three or four years during my childhood. I would pile the prunes and olives onto rice and ignore the chicken.

Lamb is great. In New Mexico, I had access to such fantastic lamb that I inadvertently went almost two years without cooking beef. It just never occurred to me. And let us not forget the holy trinity: lamb-garlic-anchovies.

I love Al Forno. My uncle and aunt in Worcester used to take me there for dinner every summer within the first two or three days of arriving in the States for vacation. The caesar salad there marked the beginning of the summer holidays for me. I remember imagining that each leaf of romaine had been hand-painted with dressing before being arranged on the plate. So I would talk to my salad and eat it very slowly. When I was in college in CT, I'd sometimes stop in Providence on the (long) way to Worcester, to have dinner on Federal Hill and pick up some snail salad or gnocchi for the same aunt and uncle. I still talk to my salads, btw. Just not in the same way. Excellent blog!

eGullet. First and foremost, as it turns out.

I remember those stilton and port Kettle Chips. Not bad, but not salty or pungent enough. I prefer the s&p and the honey dijon.

Last night: Qatayef; crispy on the outside, juicy within. Geyser of hot sugar syrup all over the chin. After four of those babies, I started scraping out the spiced walnut filling and stuffing the irresistible, deep-fried pancake shells with vanilla ice cream (homemade, wonderful). Ate four more. Tea, obviously. Arabic coffee and candied pumpkin. Kunafa from Tripoli Sweets in Abu Dhabi. I always sprinkle the cheese's underbelly with Maldon salt before I eat it. And I make sure that the pastry is warm and that the cheese is melting. The idea is to eat it before it has a chance to harden. Later on, while I was out,I made a pit stop for my favorite kunafa of all: the one that's made with a crust of semolina flour like nammoura instead of kataifa or shredded filo dough. I especially love going to the bakery and having them cut off a slice and stuff it into a ka'ak before drizzling the whole thing with an obscene quantity of syrup and handing it over, along with a fat stack of napkins. That's my kind of fast food, right there. I also ate six of those little schoolboy chocolate biscuits (dark), spread with nutella (an entire small 200g container). At 2am, a grilled peanut butter and nutella sandwich. Thought about throwing a sliced banana in there for nutritive oomph but decided against it. I don't really like bananas.

I second the suggestions for Bistro 315 and Trattoria Nostrani. The wine offerings are varied and interesting, and the food is usually excellent as well. I left Santa Fe quite recently but in Santa Fe restaurant terms it might as well have been a lifetime ago. I always bought my wine at either Kokoman on Taos-bound 285 N or locally at the Liquor Barn on Cerrillos (wine buyers never seem to stay long there, so I can't say for sure what the selection is like now, but I have found some outstanding French wines there in the past and the prices there invariably make everyone else's seem outrageous). I've also noticed that the wine selection at Whole Foods has really grown and improved ever since the store wwas revamped earlier this year. You might also be interested in this link, which provides locations for all of New Mexico's vineyards, wineries, tasting rooms etc., should you you happen tp find yourselves thirst and with a bit of extra time on your hands. Have fun- and don't forget to report back!

Visited the family for dessert after they broke their fast (it's Ramadan and I'm in Arabia, where, during this time, sweets after dinner are taken very seriously, even by those who might otherwise pass). They ate (forgive my spelling) homemade kunafa made with ricotta (my dad prefers this lighter version to the original), qatayef (with walnuts and raisins), qaymat (crispy, bite-sized, deep-fried and soaked in honey), freeki (buttery!) with clotted cream, and something that translates as "ladies' forearms" and which is stuffed with cream and garnished with candied orange flower blossoms (I think)... bowls of warm rose scented syrup passed all around to be drizzled over the lot of it. Still hungry after all this was cleared away, so my baby sister and I made sundaes with vanilla ice cream, peanut butter, nutella etc. She added marshmallow fluff to hers, and then we split a Luxury Flake bar for dessert- I mean, em.. a digestif. I then spent an hour on the phone in the study eating countless mini Toblerone bars out of the secret stash in the desk. Then I went out and had some Turkish coffee and sticky toffee pudding. My friend didn't want her walnut maple bar, so I ate that as well. And when I head to bed in fifteen minutes, I'm taking the jar of Nutella with me. So there.

Great topic, Chris. I remember falling in love with brussel sprouts myself about three years ago. I was converted after savoring them in a dish where they'd been halved and sauteed until crispy-brown in butter, pecans, soy sauce and maple syrup. I was ravenous after a long hike and the sprouts were salty, robust, greasy; the most satisfying thing I thought I'd ever tasted. I also remember being very, very young (two or three years old) and not understanding why anyone would ever feel compelled to order a vanilla cone when they could have chocolate. Didn't they realize that they were short-changing themselves? Vanilla was inferior, neutral, boring, flabby, blank, empty, nothing, zero. Those who voluntarily consumed it when given the alternative option of chocolate seemed patently absurd. If you must have white, put whipped cream on your chocolate. My first vanilla cone was a stubborn negotiation, a soft-serve cone at a beach when I was four (they were out of chocolate and my older cousin pressured me into giving vanilla a whirl by promising that it would "taste like candy"). I was instantly reformed. And I have a special place in my heart for mister cheapy soft-serve vanilla cones at the beach. I like to have tabula rasa in my mouth. I wouldn't touch tuna until I was seven and observed my uncle's girlfriend (now his wife of 15 yrs), who was beautiful and generous and also the most skilled cook in our whole extended family prepare herself a tuna salad sandwich while we were all sunning about in bikinis at their cabin on the Cape. She made tuna salad and ate it on perfectly symmetrical wedges of toasted whole wheat pita with romaine lettuce and dijon mustard, Vlassic dill pickle spears alongside. I remember thinking, "Susan is smart and has the best taste of all, and she looks like she's really enjoying that sandwich, so I might have to give it a try...". Susan made me a tuna salad sandwich every day for lunch that summer. I was sixteen when I ate pork for the first time. At home, my parents' religious convictions had branded it forbidden, but during my first year away at college, I spent winter break with friends in Somerset. The hostess was a classically-trained chef who had planned every meal for the five of us (just her immediate family and I) over the nine day period; at least 50% of the dished contained pork. My first taste was actually an accident; I took a huge bite out of a sandwich that was handed to me when I first arrived at the dairy barn, the resonant snap of the sausage was revelatory, epiphanic, but I was so startled that I actually started to cry. For dinner, I ate three servings of gammon (joint) and wept again, this time with pleasure rather than remorse. For breakfast, I ate bacon and black pudding and I knew that I would die content.

I prefer to view butter as a kind of mild, creamy cheese, therefore I apply accordingly. Always lots more than the amount that can be absorobed. These days, butter is more of a main feature than background music.

Today (drum roll): Two tins of (excellent) sardines, half a dozen scrambled eggs with truffle butter, an entire bag of black sesame rice crackers with miso, peanut butter spoonfuls (insert emoticon with eyes rolling heavenward). An entire loaf (2lbs)of freshly-baked bread soaked in fruity green Jordanian olive oil with a whole sliced avocado alongside. A massive chunk of flourless pistachio cake with spicy ginger cream cheese frosting. A huge slice of flourless chocolate cake from the same bakery, first warm and gooey in the car and then cold and fudgy from the fridge. A tuna and fontina panini with red onion, gherkins and wasabi mayo. Homemade caramel straight from the Tupperware container. Homemade peppermint patties straight from the freezer. Slapped some polenta on the grill and ate it with butter and maple syrup. Ample quantities of Maldon salt sprinkled over the lot of it, everything, all of the above. Acupuncture, raspberry Emer'gen-C and catnaps, oh my. Endless cups of salted cream tea. Elderflower lozenges to engage my oral fixation. Is it just a matter of time before the women of Planet eGullet find that their cycles have synchronized? The sun rises and sets on eGullet tonight. Keeps my greedy little paws occupied while the Kitchen. Is. Calling. My. Name. Fortunately, I shall lose about five pounds in urine tomorrow and can look forward to a poor appetite for a day or two. Ahh. Now, where did I put that bottle of pinot?

Yesterday: An entire head of ordinary cabbage, sauteed in olive oil until translucent and sweet. Today: An entire head of ordinary cauliflower, fried until the whole neighborhood smelled like my grandma's kitchen after an afternoon of Lebanese cauliflower fritters. I rarely eat an eggless breakfast but these days I have been craving cruciferous vegetables at the crack of dawn. Tomorrow: broccoli. Hurray.

Black's! Also, Black's. Did I mention Black's?

Dear Nutella, Thank you for helping me find a way to use up that uninspired and suspicious loaf of old banana bread. I love you.

As for myself, it was a toasted brie and nutella sandwich for breakfast. And another for lunch, subbing cheddar for the brie.

On my first Seattle sugar binge, I bought a small box of these at Pike's Place; in you are at the market and are pressed for time and don't think you'll make it to Fran's, you can find these chocolates (and their less thrilling cousins, the milk chocolate caramels with sea salt) at the marketplace/deli which is a couple of doors down from the Starship flagship store in Pike's Place. I have done the Pike's Place/Macrina/Dahlia circuit by foot on a pastry mission a couple of times. The walk is short (ten to fifteen minutes) and very pleasant.