chow guy

That is such wise advice. Several of my friends have lost their "significant others" and they've all reported feeling abandoned by many of their friends a week after the funeral, which is when they really need the support most. I think a lot of people don't know how to relate to a new "single" entity that is no longer "Betty and Bob " etc. We took one widower friend under wing. After his wife died we invited him for supper often .

I haven't heard of this one, please clarify. The name probably comes from "everything but the kitchen sink" or worse: ingredients rescued from the drain in the kitchen sink. They often come with an odd cheese like smoked gouda, and a combo disperate left overs: like chipolte seared chiken livers, brocoli rabe, celery root, canned black olives and sesame seeds. Ingredients are placed on a flour tortilla folded and browned in generic cooking oil or broiled under the salamander. You get the drift. The thing that astounds me is that lots of folks pay $12.95 for helping clean out the fridge.

Thanks for the recipe. But don't you get worried that you are going to burn down the house with the onion confit, if you have to leave it on the stove overnight while sleeping? ← I make onion confit in a crockpot so no worries! ← The crockpot makes doing the onions a breeze, I love it. I make onion soup a whole lot more often because of it.

Two ideas come to mind, quinoa tabuleh with lots of mint and flat leaf parsley and mojitos.

Wow, this topic brought me back to the very first time I cooked with more than just a meal in mind. I was 18 years old living in my first apartment ($40 a month) on Mott and Spring Street, in Little Italy. I fell head over heels for a gorgeous woman who was dating this rich preppy guy at my college. When I heard she had broken up with him, I invited her over for dinner. I spent a whole day getting ready. I made eggplant caponata {my landlady's recipe), stuffed mushrooms and a salad. I bought sausage and meatballs at the local salumeria, bread from the bakery downstairs and made my mothers tomato sauce with pasta and even grated the parmesan cheese with an old mouli cheese grater my mother gave me. I also made butterscotch pie with graham craker crust with freshly whipped cream (my favorite dessert from childhood). I served Chianti and dripped candle wax on the bottles afterwards. Just before she arrived Disaster struck..I broke a mirror while rushing around trying to clean up the place. I took the pieces of mirror and made an elaborate sculpture with candles and flowers. She was blown away. Instead of seven years of bad luck... I had seventeen hours of good luck. We spent the next day in very close proximity and fell in love at least for the summer. Ah! sweet bird of youth!

Many thanks to Melissa for your links and Daniel for your wonderful words and recipes. I must revisit Babette.

I add them to Chinese dumplings.

True, nobody died... but the show sure did. IMO It had no redeeming value, whatsoever. I won't watch it again. I think your right, the target market for the show is not the egullet crowd.

This is terribly self-referential because its by me. But anybody who wants to know a little more about the show will at least gather the odd fact. ← Nice article thanks for the link.

I had silk worms in Korea.

Ditto about the mango! But, naked in the bathtub for me. There's also tomatoes right off the vine and peaches from Colorado's western slope. Whew. It's getting hot in here.

I think the ketchup snobbery thing got started when French chefs started generalizing that American's eat ketchup on everything or at least "Mon Dieu" on their beautiful creations. As for moi, I use "waaaay" too much ketchup (Heinze only please) on fries and burgers (never hot dogs or meat loaf) and not too many other things... except scrambled eggs, (not fried eggs just scrambled) it's required.

My parents were in the restaurant business and didn't have time to bake me a birthday cake (and I didn't want a Carvel ice cream cake). So I asked my garandmother to show me how to make a coconut cake with buttercream icing. I started baking my own birthday cake at a young age. Even as a young kid when we went out to dinner to fancy restaurants I would order sweetbreads, oysters, snails etc. things most kids wouldn't touch.

Tarragon, marjoram, sage, tricolor sage, Italian parsley, salad burnet, spearmint, lemon verbena, lemon balm, garlic chives, chives, oregano, rosemary, Thai, Genovese, Holy and Purple Ruffle basil, nastursiums, several kinds of tomtoes, lots of flowers and a few chile plants is about it for me this year. I'll be traveling alot this summer, but I must have my kitchen garden. I want to try saffron bulbs one of these years and I'm going to get a kaffir lime tree that I'll bring inside in the fall.

Cilantro is the only food I can think of that I just can't stand. I'm surprised not to see more cilantro aversions in this thread.

[ I think the sundried tomatoes, at least, ended in the '90's. As for balsamic vinegar, I'm a huge fan, but only when used correctly. Smothering everything in it is just not the way to go. There's a gorgeous passage in Ruth Reichl's book "Comfort Me With Apples" where she discovers balsamic aceto. Of course, she's a fabulous writer, and the way she describes the viscosity and taste of truly excellent balsamic is almost sexual (she's dipping asparagus spears into it). I wish we could go back to a time when balsamic vinegar was so rare that only the good stuff was served, and every experience was like that one. As for my most-hated food trend: cilantro. On everything. And in places where cilantro had always been (most notably salsas), people just started adding MORE. I hate cilantro, and am SO glad this trend seems to be dissipating. ←

So true and very funny

Amen! I've never understood why more people don't get it? It seems so obvious.

Truer words were never spoken... Reinhart's book rules... so does his, "Sacramental Magic in a Smalltown Cafe".

I sure will.

I did a very eclectic finger food /open house for 45 guests for my parents 35th. After considerable work and expense I discovered the menu was a little too sophisticated (carpaccio, sushi etc.). People said nice things and all, but finger sandwiches and more familiar foods would have been a better choice. In the words of professor Hill from" The Music Man", " You gotta know the Territory". I would say keep it simple, and make more food than you think you'll need (the 2-5 time slot means most people won't eat lunch and if they can get away with it... dinner as well). Congrats to your in -laws and most of all have fun.

Rosie, Thanks for the great write up. "Measure of Grace " is my new favorite cookbook and the cause of a pilgrimage to Boulder later this summer. Now , I can't wait to get there.

I've talked into my digital mini tape recorder like it was a cell phone a few times, but I always seem to get the digital tape thing screwed up (there are too many little buttons), and I also feel self conscious with it, especially when I push the play button by mistake and this strange descriptive sentence about the bread blurts out. What works for me is a text book and a notebook. I study it and make like I'm taking notes on a big legal pad. Works like a charm. Last week a server tried to read the text part over my shoulder, shook her head (like that's Greek to me), and left me alone. If I'm with a group I make like we're making to do lists for the company picnic.

David Leite presented a course for food writers in the eGullet Culinary Instittute (several years back). He gave lots of good advice. I found it extremly helpful. Sorry I don't know how to link it for you but... do check it out.

Throw them at villans in melodramas.