JPW

I'll make flavored pasta on occasion depending on the sauce I'm using (ie if you're making a big heavy spicy ragu, you won't be able to taste the flavorings in the pasta). Sometimes I just start grabbing things from the spice cabinet - pepper, red pepper flakes, thyme, etc. Small pieces of fresh herbs make an interesting visual in raviolis. I made an interesting (aka tasted ok) squash and leftover turkey ravioli with some sage in the pasta. You just need to be careful when adding things to pasta when you are rolling it out. It tears even more easily than typical. Finally, in "My Two Villages' Mario Batali has recipes for a squid ink pasta (black pasta! cool!) and pasta with nettles. Haven't tried these, but they could be the source of inspiration.

Now I see. Thanks for the explanation. I'll have to get that for my wife. She'll find it funny (if hitting a little too close to home). My FIL, however, sees nothing unusual with his food habits so would probably miss the point. Have a good weekend all.

My favorite tune of all time. If they have the good taste to play that then I must go soon.

Never read any of his stuff, so joke is lost on me.

Perhaps this is the source of my general adversion to anything that comes from the sea. My mother always overcooked any and all fish/other seafood we ever had. I've slowly tried to teach myself to eat fish, but have a long way to go. I'm good with tuna steak or swordfish etc., but real fishy fish is still a problem. A couple of months ago I tried cooking salmon at home. My wife loved it. I made it to the second bite before...... (use you own imagination). Don't even get me started on shellfish.

I'd like to first apologize to the list for my vulgarity. I generally abhor poor manners and am kicking myself for reacting to what I viewed as an attack in such an uncouth way. Sam - thanks for the explanation. I'd like to download your brain so I could carry it around with me. My apologies to Raynickben and his liver as well. If you can tell the difference then you can. I myself fail to notice any difference at all.

Hey JPW: Try a night of drinking the cheap stuff and then a night of drinking the top shelf. After which night do you feel better the next day? The purer, high quality liquours tend to not leave quite the hangovers the cheap stuff does. That's a crock of *&^(. There are certain things that will make you more or less hungover based on amount of alcohol -- mainly how much non-alcohol liquid/other nutrients did you consume with the booze. But I defy you to show any proof at all that "premium" booze leaves less of a hangover. If i'm drinking bourbon with my FIL, I feel just as crappy if I drink Maker's Mark or a single barrel batch as I do when I drink the generic crap he does out of a plastic bottle. I do feel less bad if I stop at 4 or 5 intead of moving ahead to 8 or 9 Now if I was hanging out in a Less Developed Country, I would probably avoid the cheap local stuff.

Anything my mom made fits in this category. She was the worst cook imaginable. It's amazing that I'm as fat as I am today. Thank goodness she started working as nurse when I was in high school and she usually had the 3-11 shift. I learned to cook out of necessity.

Maf, I drive DC to Charlottesville (and then on to Lynchburg) about once a month. 29 is indeed a cultural wasteland, with some notable exceptions. Roughly East to West -- The Pig 'n Steak (can't recall the name of the town) on the North side of 29 there's a stoplight with a McD's in an Exxon. There's lots of signs. Road house BBQ. Thyme - outside Madison. Decent nouvelle euro Blue Ridge Cafe - pretty average sandwich place/bar about 30 minutes East of Charlottesville on 29. Interesting in that they serve lots of VA wines by the glass. Bavarian Chef - Pretty darn good black forest cuisine about 15 minutes east of Ch'ville on 29. Great german beer. If you find yourself on Rte 15 just south of I66 there's a nice little local steak house called Anne and Bob's (that's not right - I just remember that it's the first names of the couple that own it. Haven't been there in a while)

My frugal traits are entirely due to my FIL through my wife. She's not quite as bad s he is. You should see some of the food this man eats. 1 oz. of cheese under 8 oz. of mold? Just cut it off. Mayonnaise a month out of date? It doesn't smell too bad,yet. Fuzzy stuff on the meat? Just scrape it off. Nobody could ever poison this guy because he's been building up immunity to food borne pathogens for decades. Our frugalities are: leftovers - mainly my wife. She will combine dishes from different nights for lunch (eg stuffed pork loin in chicken curry) Recycling tin foil and ziplocks (just wash them out) That said, I do not scrimp on ingredients where the ingredient is the key -- if I buy a steak to just grill I get prime not choice. BUT if it's going into a highly flavored dish then I'll scrimp a little bit. I always laugh at people in bars getting mixed drinks and specifying top shelf liquor. If you're drinking a SeaBreeze I defy you to tell me you can tell the difference between rotgut vodka and stoli underneath the grapefruit and cran. I buy good bourbon because I sip it on the rocks, I buy gordon's vodka ($13 for a 1.75L) to put in my Vodka TOnics.

Instant rice is easier than a rice maker? You gotta be kidding me. Add rice, add water, and (to plagerize from Ron Pompeil) Set it and forget it! My personal goal is to work on my sauce making. Tied in with that is overall presentation. Step 1 for my sauce making goal is to actually get around to making all of those stocks that I promise I'm going to do everytime I roast a bird.

Hell, this is so funny, I'd probably forget about the $4 and the aggravation and consider it a price well paid for a story good enough to tell for years. I can't believe that there was actually somebody else out there that had run into the same thing. The thing that made me laugh hardest was the reason why. A)The last time I checked butt capacola was not very expensive at all. B) Last time I checked, the customer generally pays the price for food inflation. Priceless.

HJ, Having suffered through the drought of good pizza in DC (Vace and Pizzeria Paradiso being the exceptions for real Neapolitan pizza) I decided to take up your suggestion of Giuseppe's. Being a Pittsburgher, I instantly noticed all of the photos on the walls of infants in Steelers jammies. It turns out that the family is all from my old neighborhood. The son (about 45) used to work at a legendary pizza place there called Mineo's and brought all of the recipes with him. I mis-spent a large part of my youth in Mineo's. On the weekends after drinking beer in the park, that's where everyone congregated. It's not Neapolitan or New York pizza, but it was a damn good Pittsburgh style pie (a little bit thicker than New York). Combine that with the memories and I was in heaven. Thanks

OT, but Bombay Curry Company is one of the places I miss most from my time in Alexandria. Just thinking about the lamb vindaloo makes me start to drool. Might have to schedule a trip over the river soon for that.

Where are there any left? I thought they went under. Not all gone. You can still find them in the rest stops on I 95 in Maryland, off of a couple of the northernmost exits of I 270, also there are a couple off of I 70 in Maryland. You can find a few throughout western PA and Ohio.

Soba, IMHO the biscuits are 1000x better than the croissants. Those things are horrendous. Once they are heated or even just have hot stuff put on them, they become very unfortunately soggy. I always found the muffins to be too salty. And if memory serves me right, McD's has even occasionally tried bagels. Ugh.

OK, Michael. Please spare us the trite REM jokes..

Caught this on one of the Food Network history/schlock shows. THe original owner (can't recall name) found that the burger with the holes cooked more quickly than a solid burger. Faster cooking = more sales.

Working in Rockville (28 just West of 270), I have bemoaned the lack of decent lunch options. I usually go to Safeway and get a sandwich (fave is the Grecian Delight) For a workaday lunch, the best of the office building diners is Research Cafe on Research Blvd just east of Gude. Bombay Bistro is OK to pretty good. The best deal is the Friday buffet. I like Lebanese Taverna and Thai Farm. Addie's is very good, but since it is more of a high-end type place, the pacing is not always fast enough for a work day lunch (great on the weekend). Anybody ever do dinner there?

Another one to add to the list. On the suggestion of my better half, we did Sunday morning at the Woodside Diner. Georgia Ave, just south of the beltway (pretty much across the street from Snider's). A real hole in the wall (and I mean that in the best way possible). The perfect diner waitresses who called everyone male or female from 2 to 92 "Hon". Good french toast, decent sausage, and passable grits (truly high praise from the southern-bred Mrs. JPW). Total check for 2 - $13.60.

Ooh Ooh Ooh Mr. Kotter!!!! Fast food is a bad addiction of mine. I just love fries (McD's of course) For breakfast the McD's sausage and egg biscuit wins hands down. For other meals -- 1) Roy Rogers roast beef 2) Wendy's Junior Bacon Cheeseburger (I generally take off the tomato and wipe most of the mayo off) If you're lucky enough to be in certain locales -- 1) Pittsburgh - The Original (aka Dirty O) for hot dogs and one of their giant buckets of fries 2) DC - For burgers 2 words -- "Five Guys" . Try it once and you won't want to go back to national chains. 3) Chicago (Evanston actually and I don't even know if it is still open) -- Buffalo Joe's -- burger, waffle fries, and the best wings outside of upstate NY.

It seems to me that by the amount of attention she has garnered here, she has pretty much succeeded in her goal. Perhaps we would be better off by ignoring her. Out of the blue....

Ah yes, now I see. You would think that having lived up there for 7 years I would know that. Almost time to go home.

Not knowing what the heck is meant by "French Bread" Depends on what you're getting. A baguette is ............................... une baguette The thicker loaf we usually see as "french country bread" or Paysanne or whatever is (if memory serves me right) ......... un batard. The best part about Boulangeries is the ability to just get a demi-baguette so you don't waste any. Even in France they get rock hard in 24 hours

I think that salad dressings are particularly prone to this. French, Italian, Russian, etc. Where the hell are the 1000 Islands though? Others I particularly like are "Black Forest" ham and English Muffins. The Euros get us back with cafe a l'americaine/caffe americano.